Squalls and Serenity

I had a post prepared regarding an interesting abortion article I read today. But I'm entranced by the rain, and my words tumble through my fingers in incoherent patterns. It's the clapping of a thousand tiny hands; the swishing of new seas, without names, sloshing across blackened streets; whispers of wind whisk the water into waves, rippling into rising mists. What was I contemplating? The deaths of unborn infants? Les enfants mortalis?

Why such somber notes while these tiny percussions plummet to patter against the slanting roof, drizzle down the gutters, and puddle and pool across the green grass? Waters collecting into droplets, streaking down the windows into pools along the walls, forming runnels in the grass towards rivulets in the roads, gurgling into drains against the curbs and stagnating in rainbow-swirl pools on sidewalks and where the road dips and deepens. Sugar maples slap their branches against the walls, the oaks jettison browning leaves, dogwood whispers with the whimpers of butterfly wings, and the regal pines ruffle,  but stand proud against the prevailing winds. 

An excellent night for philosophical dialogues while sitting under fleece blankets and sipping ciders. One of my roommates and I, we discussed determinism and predestination, miracles and divinity, Christendom and creation, stories and mythologies, culturally infected beliefs and ideologies. I've missed long philosophical dialectics full of witticism and crafted hypothesis. I could linger long into the night on such musings, if life permits. Tonight, life does not permit. Humbly and thoughtfully, I retreat into the darkness of the room, and listen once more to the rain's storming outside these screens. Makes me want to set up tarp and tent, and sleep beneath the soggy heavens, snug against the bristling winds and tearful clouds.

Oh, I wish I lived in a log cabin with a loft and could listen to these sounds until morning. The power flickers. We'll see who succumbs first: the storm or the electricity. Let the tempest of this night commence. 

Fingertips...

You need them.

I was grating ginger for a curry soup with a micro-grater, and removed the tip of my index finger. It swiftly formed a pool of blood (deep enough not to drip right away - actually bad), before I stuck it in my mouth. Fun facts for self-doctoring: saliva contains mostly water (over 98%). The part of saliva that is not water contains some interesting things, including white blood cells and enzymes useful in the clotting of blood. So if you cut yourself, spitting on it or sticking a cut finger in the mouth can aid in the rapid covering of platelets and a sheathe. In addition, saliva is an anti-bacterial, and helps prevent against infection. Pretty fancy. So I spent a while sucking on my finger. I'm slightly anemic, because I don't get as much iron in my diet as I need, but my blood tends to clot better than it should, considering its thin aspect.
It's difficult typing, I assure you. Some strange things I noted: the rest of my fingertips, despite sustaining no injury, all prickle in pain incessantly, as if enduring a sympathy throbbing for the inflicted finger; being bi-dexterous helps a little, though I still require my right hand for certain activities. The blessing is that my left hand catches on quickly to delicate tasks. Also, I use my right hand a lot more than I anticipated, and my passwords for the computer are muscle memory, and since one of my fingers is out of the equation, I have been having trouble remembering my passwords (since I can't use that finger). Bah.

Rivulets down the roadside streaming
Tides the autumn breeze's bringing
Light in cozy abodes flick'ring
Eyes unfocused distant dreaming
Hopes they waver, faiths unfold
A lone, untouched, unbridled cold

When choosing to fight lonely battles, you can only blame yourself for defeat.

Sanctified (beginnings)

Sanctified (beginnings):

The canter clap of the horses’ hooves and the thunder of the wheels grinding against the cobbles drowned out the deathly melancholy of the marketplace.  Except in Elisa’s ears, the market’s disquieting murmurs were more deafening than the chariot and the horses combined.  The chauffeur screamed and cracked his crop, clearing a path before the carriage.  This was not how marketplaces should be: muffled, strangled.  It felt sterile, like a physiker’s ward.  No, more like a funeral.  The colors carried that motif like death’s pendant.  A musty, sad scent wafted through the districts outside the wall, accentuating the stygian overture.

Here, in the sanct’s marketplace, only one in twenty even wore any semblance of color.  Those that did scurried quickly about their business, eager for escape out of this bleak place. 

                It always aggrieved her eyes, like watching her city slowly bleeding to death.  It was an uncanny sense of despair. Yet, contrary to the funereal  aspect, the citizens living here did not trudge as though time were a paste.  As the chariot bolted down the center of the street, without concern for those hapless citizens too slow to escape its path, the black-robed and cowled Sancts danced out of its path with predacious grace.  

This is vaguely cheating. I'm considering writing this story for nanowrimo this year. The other option is part two of Crestalcoatl, which I also want to write at some point. It would be fun having a series of sequential nanowrimo novels.  I'm not sure whether I'll name the story Sanctified or something else, but I suppose I have a month.

Pebbles

Skipping shale into the sea
Will this stone be - the last stone throw
before the ocean overflows
white currents snagging me away
waving, praying
past the quay into the deeps?
If I breathe the final breath
will sky burst overhead
shattering
into many stars?
If I steal a tick of time
can time remain?
can love foment in thee the same?
Holding hands with destiny
did you bless me - but with torment?
Tossing pebbles 
in the ocean of emotions
Does it seem the waters rise?
Except in your eyes, I'll never know.


It's way past my bedtime when I start writing stream-of-consciousness poetry...

Color me tired

Of all the lousiest ways of spending a Friday night, mine takes the cake. I fell asleep for almost 2 hours right as work finished. My immediate plans had been: call mother and inquire as to how she's feeling today; eat something dainty; play soccer in the rain. Instead, I collapsed in a heap, piled blankets on myself, and fell asleep while praying.Now, instead of enjoying the company of friends and chasing a soccer ball around darkening fields, I've only the wind and rain for company. I should have accepted J's offer for a board game night.

My mother is faring better. I'm fairly certain only mothers can receive calls regarding their visit to the emergency room, and turn away questions of health into questions of, "met any cute girls lately?" At first, I believed it a Jewish mother specialty, but I've since learned Jewish mothers do not have a monopoly on such questions.

No, Mom. I think all my female friends will be married by next year. I've never even held hands with a girl, and mother expects a fairy-tale falling. I expect she prays for it each night. Poor mother, cursed with three socially difficult boys. But how are you doing? 

There is heart disease, or something, on mother's side of the family. She fears a heart attack, and has let us know about her worries. She exercises daily, watches her cholesterol and blood pressure carefully, eats especially well, and appears a blazing light of energy and health. The doctors said the same, and, thankfully, it was not the heart causing the pains, but an acquired acid reflux probably.

If I defined the week for you in five words, exhausting might not even make the list. It should have, I just refused to grant it notice. Every day this week, my body slept adequately until four in the morning, and then in small bits until work. I suspect my rem cycles averaged one a night. Yet this fright with my mother caught my body's fatigue up to my mind. I'm still in bed, still listening to the rain putter against the gutters and the wind whistle through the screen, rustling the blinds.

And now, evening drowned the sun in darkness, and I wish I had something worth writing, but my enervation has deprived me. I'm blind to inspiration.

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            So strong are these feelings, that when you encounter even a few of the Rhuach, senses are easily overwhelmed – the fainthearted have died with bliss in their eyes, a fatal rapture. On the day the great city fell, even the great desert islands of the south, the pearly-peaked mountains of the distant north, to the far-flung reaches of east and west, a lilting song echoed along the wind without discernible words, across the worlds, breaking the hardest of hearts. Even in the farthest countries, over the seas and under the earth, the exotic and nutty smell of cardamom and honeyed saffron drifted like memories.

:But who destroyed the city, Grandpa? And why?:

Grandpa sighed, deflating visibly. :It was a grand greed, the delusion of theft:

In ages long past, they appeared. From whence they came, the first Rhuach, we know not, for they arrived before the great cities of man: Mezekh, Ulan, Il Ariesa. Already, before these laid their first foundations in the hearts of man, the Rhuach delved into the deeper arts, desiring return to the land of their home. To us, it might have been magic; to them, it was but an art, a creative birthing. In a forest glade, far to the west, they linked together in a tapestry of color and sentient mingling, and a great awakening was born.

            Not the city, but the stone of colorlessness at its center. It is neither stone, truly, nor matter, for when held they claim it is liquid sometimes, or of no weight at all, and of changing form.  In this stone, they placed the fullness of their artistic weight, the compleat mastery of magic. But it was not enough, and much was destroyed in the attempt, the earth riven, the forest torn asunder, rivers rent and mountains burst forth about them.

            Devastated, they journeyed far unto the Harmonah river, building the city from the stone’s great powers. If the stone were destroyed, so, too, were the Rhuach, and the city in its wake.

            There were, in those days, several polis in the region. Disregarding the artistry of Zevah Nuahr, its strategic and cultural positions were also substantial.  Crossing the mountains through any other pass required more than a day’s journey, and the danger of bandits was significant. Rogue’s Roads, they called them, for if you were crossing on other paths, you were as like to meet them as be them.

            Strategically, then, it possessed a vantage on every trade route from Nesul to Mezekh, and any routes destined for the western coast. The lake beneath the waterfall offered a welcome respite for weary travelers, and the sight of spiraling rainbows and Zevah Nuarh soothed sore eyes. While caravans frequently passed without lingering in the city, many climbed the extra hours for the safety of a city and the refreshing qualities of an inn, dancing, and the serenity of the city of colors. 

Long night...

Be anxious of nothing.
Let your gentle spirit be made known to all men. The Lord is near.

I received a call during work today: "Your mother called 911 and is in the emergency care of the hospital." There are words to instantly transform a pleasant day into a nightmare. My dad was already heading towards the hospital, and didn't have much information, either. Fear is the mind killer.
How do you continue working knowing your mother is in the hospital, and not the reasons? Should I drive home? I'd have hit every city of traffic on the way; would have taken me nearly 5 hours. "No, no. I think everything will be fine. I'll call you in a few."

How impossible are those minutes. I was struggling through a difficult problem at work, and suddenly my problem-solving capability was obliterated.
There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.
Nothing made sense. It was the unknowing, and the terror that is worse in the mystery. I didn't know if it was severe or a tiny thing. How could I know?
Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Blood samples, hydration, scans, sterile-patience dragged out over an enemy of hours. And in the end? Only prayer and patience, hope and helplessness. The reminder of mortality is frightening, however  distant. I don't want the people I love to die, not yet. And if God takes them, I want to be there, speaking love into their ears and holding hands. I want to be in their eyes and they in mine as they go. In a brush with mortality, the wideness of the strokes is irrelevant.
A long night, and I am tired.

Wednesdays

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire 
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. 
   This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

~ Sonnet 73 - Shakespeare

I work four tens, and instead of receiving a long weekend, my week is split in twain, with free Wednesdays. One might suppose that these are days of infinite freedom, open for hanging out and whimsy. Such is frequently not the case. I long ago discovered that if I ran all my errands on Wednesdays, when the weekends arrived and everyone was off work, I wouldn't have any errands left to run.  Unfortunately, this hampers any plans people assume I am free for on these Wednesdays: lunches, coffee (tea, please and thank you), or other varied activities. Also, I view Wednesdays not as free days but as "special work days". When I finish with errands, I begin writing or reading or choosing activities that might increase my aptitude (learning, music, technical skills). On particularly tough weeks, I will occasionally relax with an easier read or enjoy lighter activities all day, it is true, but I prefer that these days are productive in some fashion.
They usually are.

All this because today I intended to finish my story, a light, casual little tale I began. I did actually work on the story, but I only managed to transform it from a short into a novella form, realizing I'd sewn more than I could reap in a short story format. Then I got dismayed and ended up writing about clouds, colors, and smells instead. As the sun set, I wrote about violet turtles crossing the heavens with pink underbellies and splayed appendages. I even wrote a little story about them. Not productive.

Some days defeat you; some seasons defeat you.

Heart of the City

In the time of our grandfather's grandfathers, a time few remember still, child–

            :What?: The boy said, snidely. :No one can be that ancient, Grandfather. And I’m not a-:

            :Silence, boy: Grandfather frowned darkly, and a glint of wrath entered his eyes briefly which the boy had never witnessed.  :This is a true story of long ago, and I will not have your insolence tonight: The boy hushed as his grandfather began once more.

            Many summers ago, in the land of our forebears, a beautiful city overlooked Parrin Pass, on the Harmonah waterfall ridge, the most beautiful city this world has known. Before the death of the river, a great waterfall tumbled over the precipice on which the town was built, and the mighty Harmonah river split the city.  It was a city of magic, the pinnacle of all the ages.

            Every structure was built not of stone, nor even of regal cedar, but of glimmer-strands, the light magic lost aeons ago.  Bridges spanning the river and its eddies through the town were as the roots of rainbows, twisting and spinning across the waters in a dazzling display.  Homes were opalescent and veined in many colors, colors not even remembered. They were lovers of fountains, the dwellers of that town. River sprites and water kami dwelt in font-shrines across every square, and man-high trees with silver-veined leaves that smelled of cedar and cherrywood, pine and sugar maple and whose colors reflected everything nearby like tiny mirrors.

            The homes were open and cheery, and you could part the wall-colors to enter any home you liked if you knew the way. Around the city, a wall of colors flowed with rivers of every color swimming in chaotic swirls. When you walked through that wall into the city, it felt as if you were being split into a thousand colors and spit out into a new dimensionality of beauty. The entire city smelled of roses and violets, apples and first-rain, hints of flowers and a heady smell that overwhelmed even the most stalwart of travelers, turning them slightly tipsy.

            As the river tumbled over the precipice over Parrin Pass, the river prismed into countless tiny snakes of color, spinning in a helical aura as the waterfall poured into the crystal waters below. Travelers approaching the pass often watched for hours -until near sunset when the pass was no longer safe - hurrying between the mountains before nightfall.

            From miles away, even before the city’s glowing ambience illuminated the sky and mountainsides, an eastward breeze might waft the scents of the city and lighten the loads of the weary. Smells of rosewood and plums, sandalwood and pine, incense, myrrh, and eucalyptus, sweet lemon and cranberries wash across the coastal mountains into the valleys and hills on the other side. Even the barest hint of its aroma is enough that many a strong man broke down into joyous sobs at a whiff.

            But to describe the city itself? Ah, it is impossible! The dazzling display of nacreous streets, iridescent walkways, and the light-weave boats that float idly down the Harmonah like bobbing, circular lanterns; the ever-shifting structures striated in resplendence, sometimes miming the architectures of the cultures: pagodas, pyramidal ziggurats, colossal cathedrals of color, or just simple yurts, while other times, the city’s structures mimicked nothing culturally recognizable: swirling minarets with a smoky-pearl aura; gold-obsidian towers coated in clouds of silver; floating cerulean spheres; a tropical forest, where lampposts shimmered and waved like trees or undersea kelp, and the houses appeared as coral in a bizarre, alien reef; or, manses like in the southern kingdoms, with yards of pristine greens, silver-leafed hedges, fonts and glimmering limestone streets.

            In the night, ah, what a sight! The stars are magnified, as though brought nearer, gazing with a greater intensity into the city – and none shy away from sight. The moon is always broad and round, and of the brightest golden yellow. The Harmonah carries its own stars as the river fills with the half-spherical boats made of light, forming almost a complete walkway across the water of bobbing boats, and the fae flit across the surface of the waters.  A dullness of light affects the outer buildings, leaving the central heart as a beacon of fiery energy.

            A delicate resinous smell with a hint of citrus and lavender wafts across the waters, and incense is burnt in tiny lanterns hung on lines over the river. A dance begins, though who starts it each night, none can say, and a sweet music as of a harp, or a flute, or a melancholic violin orchestrates the wind and the slowest of dreams drapes over the living. Sometimes, on the darkest of nights where storms rage outside the walls and the rumors of war break through even these stolid walls, a thin, vibrant falsetto floats across the city. The music briefly pauses and every movement ceases, as every ear strains to catch the words, though even those who understand the pensive and plaintive words remember them not in the morning, only as a distant wisp of a dream.

            Whatever shape and style the city, they say that from the tallest mountains looking down, the city always has a heart at its center, vibrant and pulsing with life, and the roads and canals are its arteries, carrying the lifeblood throughout the city. The heart’s shape and hues transform, also, but it remains the city centerpiece, in form and function. And this heart, the ventricles of town, was where the Avov stayed, the creator-creatures of Zevah Nuahr, city of liquid color.

              If Zevah Nuahr’s resplendence was unmatched, its people were more so, carved from a different plane of existence. The first time anyone saw a Rhuach, it almost overwhelmed the senses. They contained a presence that tore apart the senses: smelling of nearly cloying sweetness, as of honey and wine; they appeared as ghostly figures of spinning colors, spirits of spiraling threads and a copper fire that billowed behind each color, giving substance to a plasma ghost: bipedal, lean, tall. You almost believed you could pass through them, and it might be akin to walking through the prismatic wall, a spiritual passing. Stranger yet were the other feelings assaulting your senses in the presence of a Rhuach: a taste of cloves and cinnamon; a tingling sensation as of arrows of cool wind passing across your skin, fletched with a fine mist; the sounds of a keening voice, high of pitch and ever somber. Those who spoke of it after always described its being a lament of unbearable loss, but one borne mightily.

Dream Dialectics

I’ve gushed about fall enough, perhaps, for one season, yet I must shiver with glee at one more of my favorite pieces of this autumnal puzzle: cider. I absolutely love cider (non-alcoholic.. OBVIOUSLY). Now, without further ado, I shall begin my rant, my tyranny of writing. This one is a bit more dense than usual.


In my dreams, I met an atheist (or perhaps an agnostic). It, for I suspect that the creature in question was neither masculine nor feminine, I will call Raven, for its dark and flighty manner, and its opportunistic approach of swooping in on carrion arguments. Yes, I argued with an imaginary bird and, what’s more, in my dreams it may not have even been a bird. I attribute that identity post-sleep.
Why must God? Raven crowed.
Why indeed? must have crossed my mind.  Whatever belief system you hold, it requires at least a modicum of faith. Humanity does not possess objective answers on all accounts.  Our finite minds cannot easily comprehend the infinite, and, according to the logic of the universe by which we abide, there cannot have been an infinite past behind us.  Time is a strange phenomenon, an invention by which we live and die.  Let’s say you are a runner, and while standing at where the race was supposed to start, the referee approaches and tells you to retreat a hundred paces at least, for the starting line is behind you. Once you arrive, the referee continues his or her frantic waving, indicating you’ve simply not gone far enough: the starting line is at least five-hundred paces earlier.  If the starting line is infinitely far back, you will never reach it.
The same quality is true of time.
I understand your foolish argument, Raven cawed, interrupting me. But the universe was once without time, and time was constructed in a quantum effect and so on. Forgive me if my science is fuzzy, but –
Okay, okay, I replied, frowning at the dark matter peering at me with beady eyes. I’ll try another tack. Let’s assume that the prevailing theories of science in regards to evolutionary theory are correct. Evolutionary theory suggests that, according to macroevolution, species adapt and evolve according to a set of mechanisms: genetic drift (some reproducers in a population are luckier); genetic variation: sex, gene flow, and mutations offer a varying of genetics in a population over time; and natural selection: since there is variation, and unlimited growth is impossible, not everyone gets to reproduce according to their full potential.
What happens when you have a population who, through evolved natural process, cognitive capability, creativity, and sentience has greater control over heredity, potentially? Humans have no natural predators, and even the mechanisms that subvert population explosion are few, and rarely stop us long. Using our heightened awareness of what we deem the ideal candidates for reproduction, can we not, hypothetically, take a democratic vote of what we deem the greatest genetics worth passing into mankind’s future? For instance, why should the strongest, smartest, best-looking, healthiest, most creative exemplars of humanity be given license to procreate at a level unreserved for those of lower quality?
If there is no God, everything is permitted. ~ Ivan in the Brother’s Karamazov
One of the gravest problems with science and a lack of divinity is a lack of moral standard. If there is no God, there is no agreed-upon moral law. Why should you or they or anyone decide what is right, what is good, what is lawful? If I am the smartest, most creative, handsomest person this world knows, what is right is what I have invariably chosen. I know better than the rest of those beneath my level. Where religion and morality break down, we’ve made gods of man. The government may have decided that killing is wrong, rape is wrong, stealing is wrong, driving fast is wrong – however, if the pursuit of happiness is this country’s highest ideal, and those things bring me happiness or serve to increase humankind’s generations and evolutionary process, who can tell me that murdering someone is wrong? I can scarcely discuss these arguments as they disgust me so much.
Think of it this way: if I am stupid, foolish, ugly, ill, or uneducated, I have no place in society. Simply eating up the money of advantaged and successful people is, in a bizarre, scientific-naturalselection-amoral viewpoint, a sin, a gross evil. I’m holding back the evolution of mankind in a positive manner, and if evolution and science IS the standard by which we live, only the privileged should be granted the selection and choice of mating and procreation. Suddenly, A Modest Proposal doesn’t seem so farfetched. A whole slew of satire falls into place as a respectable, moral future that we should endeavor towards, right?
However extreme these statements, unless an alternate code is supplied, a differing standard by which we might measure goodness and morality, then Ivan is right: everything is permitted. There can be no true value system. And why should I trust yours or theirs or anyone’s value system but my own? I’m the only being I can prove possesses any rationality in the first place. I can’t prove you or anyone else actually exists. If there is no God, everything is permissible.
But deep within, you are crying out “no, no no!” You watch the news each day and cringe at each continuing horror and travesty shown. A war, a rape, a murder, a car crashing and people rushed to the hospital, sickness and poverty and pain, heartbreak and natural disaster and tragedy – each is almost enough to force you to turn off the television, dismayed at the turn of the world.  Are all of these things evil, inherently? And you see a long-separated family reunited, a soldier returned from war or holding a child of the enemy and pulling it from danger, or firemen rescuing a cat from a tree, or a spontaneous healing of cancer. These things bring smiles and tears of joy, unbidden, to your face. What is good, you ask? There are goods that span cultures and times, and evils that change not since the beginning of man. Can you change morality? And who are you to do so? If you claim there is no god, and set yourself up as one, what are you?
Why is God?  the creature called, unruffled by my words. Why does God?
I sighed. Good question my fine, feathered friend.
Sometimes this is the hardest question. The question of evil definitely requires the greatest consideration. Once, I heard the question answered very strangely: why do bad things happen to good people? The response? They never do. It is almost a Jewish response, though current Judaism holds that humanity is intrinsically good. But the idea is that there are no “good” people. There is none righteous, no not one. There are people who strive and endeavor for a moral life, and perhaps even succeed at a greater capacity than others, but does this mean they are good? Without the blood of salvation, would God consider their actions weighed and worthy of eternity? I am not the judge of salvation.

I wish I had more time to write, so that I could flesh all of this out. I feel like I’ve placed several straw-mans up and skeletons without flesh. Someday, I’ll have enough time for writing a full essay with actual research and careful planning, again. Maybe for NaNoWriMo I should write a series of essays instead of a story. I could do all sorts of exciting research and fun things. Well, we’ll hold that off for another day. Time to drink some delicious cider.

Stumbling into Fall

Early-morning frost sits heavily on the grass, and turns barbed wire into a string of stars. On a distant hill, a small square of yellow appears to be a lighted stage. At last the truth dawns on us: Fall is staggering in, right on schedule, with its baggage of chilly nights, macabre holidays, heart-stoppingly beautiful leaves.
~ Diane Ackerman - A Natural History of the Senses

Autumn batters that distant gong
This new season's song
A glorified rhyme and time
The dawn rises in pink butterfly wings
Slippering the hills - the morning sings
Notice now this summer requiem
Questions I ask the clouds
Whose cotton shrouds heaven's lantern
It's now the poets and authors and muse
Pen their lines and lyrics and truths
While gutters sputter and water spouts
Queries I pose at the shapely clouds
A rhino, an angel, a spoon
Do they know?
Where the winter sits in august's time?
How lightning lights and cracks and blinds?
When feather snow from heaven's pen
Stops us in our homes, curling
Like kittens on the mantle, purring
In that radiant glow,
reflected in our eyes and brow
Ember leaves drop - somehow
Coloring and cleaving close to earth
Cleft as the dreams and hopes
Of the loved and loving days of halcyon
Will you - Autumn dear - come near at night?
Under the falling stars of this white-robed sphere
We'll garden walk, our toes alight
On diamond-dewed grounds like fields of starlight
Whilst whistle we write and dance and smile
Through mountains, forests, the tigris, the nile
It's Autumn, telling transparent tall tales
Where copper, crimson, and umber prevails
In the honeyed, pumpkin, cider trails of time.


Cleft is an interesting word, in each of its conjugations. It is a rare word that means nearly its opposite. I cleave to my ideas, I am cleft from hope. It assumes either a separation or a uniting of pieces, a breaking and a binding. But between each element, whether in the cementing or the clipping, a thin slice remains. When a man cleaves to his wife, there is still an individuality, a preventative from an ultimate merging. The progression into the next season is such, a cleaving more than a clear-cut, a sliver between times.
Already the maple leaves assume a yellow-green, light and lovely as daylilies, and dogwoods hint at their crimson future.
So many things fall, this time of year: the leaves, the hours of sunlight, the temperatures, the clouds over the valleys, the rain (oh, the lovely rain!). It is the season of writing, when temperatures outside forbid long mountainous hikes and I begin penning, sketching, defining the flavor of the clouds floating above like mashed potatoes in a menagerie of grey, mythical shapes.

Augury of Autumn

The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. 
~- Lord of the Rings

A curtain of mist descends upon the valley, and the earth radiates redolence in reply. Not far now, not far. Summer's scorching strangle-hold over the sky is overthrown, and silver linings settle in, augury of autumn.  The woods thrive on this; you can hear the whispers, and as the sun sets, somewhere behind that glaucous veil, does the sun settle down to rest? The wind howls beneath the grey wolf sky. There is no moon.
No fanfare sunset with wispy clouds like exploding pastel balloons, no dramatic denouement into dusk - this solstice strikes the world as a shooting star, flickering and brief. I saw one, last night, and wished, for what use superstitions if we cannot smile and dream?



September Sonnet

On this then, Autumn's eve
Aspen greens still leaves deceive
Mulling ciders and chimneys smoking
'neath blankets thick our hearts are warming
From summer's callous, hungry scorching
Borders clearer now, distance greater
Mountain's clouded brow, fog and rainy river
Ocean's wide and growing whisper
Faithless one, can you not believe her?
Or leave her your bleeding heart
Sacrifice - is that not your art?
Like summer sun doth love depart
And parts the seasons into mists
Fall's birthday, dear, blue eyes I've missed


Some things I've never known, cannot know. Patience I work on - need it tarry so long? Trials and tribulations bring joy, right? It is a praying night, a thoughtful night. One of those days where you wake up excited, ready for joyful adventures and friends, and discover they're all significantly busy - is it still the season of love, loveliness, and wildflowers? Silent Saturday, then, and one I've probably procrastinated too long. And church a la mañana. Be peace enough.

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The shape sliding through the underbrush was unseen, though it concealed its passing not. An acrid aroma hovers ominously on the air, the smell of sacrifice or industrial waste? What town was this that assaulted the senses so? Dim lights burned in the valley, silent as stars, and atop the ridge, vertical slits watched, unblinking.

Swampy Swamp Swamp.

Words that slump into a murky swamp, ugly-low on the land. Moss-algae-mud the colorsmell of sulfur-rotten-ancient-scum-lichen-toady-sewer death.

Even the mushroom-vultures and cultured cultures steer clear.

I cannot see my face; the swamp bog of words renders, replies nothing - who am I in this?

WHO? Even the owl shrugs and stays not long in this TS Wasteland.

Eckleberg averts his gaze, rubbing his crimson-cream-eyes, tired, so tired, and removing those circular owl rims

Still, no words mirror me in this grog

And these are my words - or yours.

How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?

"The master's words, not mine", the quag belch-spake

My words, your words, I'm in none of these

Emptyeverythings

Your words, my words, ignore my endless pleas

Fen beyond my ken, humor me

everglade, mire mirror, won't you reflect one image, please

Or at least, explain what needs change

afore I sink, before I drink,

the muddy-gummy-grimy-boorish dismay

of bitterfoolish defeat, viscous-morass-sighing dreams.

Is it naught but quicksand goodbyes and rodents of unusual size?

I see.

And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

~ John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath

Bogged down much? Aha! Or perhaps, swamped in life? Time to marsh away! Or marsh-all yourself to peace? Aha Aha! In one of today's many lulls, I read some of my recent writings. I noticed a distinct trend toward short, concise, shoddy sentences in my casual writing that describe ill-defined ideas, and leave the reader with a frustrating staccato of stutter-stepping sentences. They are not eloquent, not clever, and the length rarely varies. Worse still, a hastening leaves pieces behind, like carrying too much laundry and dropping socks; like a leaking vessel at sea, jettisoning the hold; like a bleeding engine, hemorrhaging across the paved and murdered earth; like tree leaves come Autumn, though not beautiful - no, not beautiful.

Then the stories. My missing, mutilated muse: asphyxiated, poisoned, exsanguinated, diminished by degrees like a diaspora of belief, and yet I'm basking in stories as silver and swaddling as a lunar swoon, silken and heavenly. Not without existential quandary, without patient angst leaking into each like crimson ink in crystal water - the stories subtly infiltrated with ideas and poisoned with pulchritudinous emotions. It's your fault, yes it is, I say to the dreamers, the dreaming, sand sifting between his piano-fingers, spindly thin and wily. But it is also hers, and his, and always theirs, the blame shifts as the breeze, resting eventually in the billowing sleeves and the earl-grey-tea eyes of the painter, turning easel lakes into splendid scenery, a majestic, endless, panoramic canvas of subconscious imagery.

I was lent a poetic book, and I've been enjoying every moment of it. The book's writing is quite sensational (aha! pun night!) It is called, "A Natural History of the Senses" by Diane Ackerman. It is poetic, and it is lovely. She breaks each sense into sections in the book and each section into tinier segments that capture a specific detail, a "sense" of each of the 5 senses. In 'smell' she writes a section regarding violets and perfume, and in taste, she describes a grotesque and morbid cuisine invented by the British in the 1800s. Each section is meticulously studied, and, though each is but a brief and poignant essay, she infuses poetry into the fiber and blood of each and every sentence.
It is strange, the assortment of books I've read in the past week: a myth-fantasy with celtic, norse, and tolkein-esque motifs; a russian satire; a book of romantic poetry; a history of the senses; Bible passages; an enormous pamphlet on a proposed super-futuristic evolution of earth; the count of monte cristo; the two towers. What imaginations, what grandeur God has allowed us to dream! I'm thankful every day for creative license, and, more than just the freedom, the encouragement in artistic pursuit by the very creator of the universe. See what God has created? I feel like a young child with playdough who, on twisting and wrangling the dough, produces an indecipherable mess. Proudly, I hold it up in both hands, beaming face angled toward the heavens. "Look! It's a giraffe!" 

Seasons of Dreamings

The seasons are changing. Now, leaving my window open all-night-all-day requires an extra blanket at night, as temperatures drop below 50 at night, and mornings leave a crystalline dew that collects in lazy droplets against the screen. I even start each morning in sweats or warm-ups rather than shorts, and slipper usage on hardwood floors soon becomes a necessity.
Rain approaches, and the cinereal sky darkens the mornings, burning away in afternoons into an archipelago of popcorn-island clouds. The first leaves metamorphose. It is a season of stories approaching, myths, and my muse is blind, or deaf, or distant, or dreaming.

Last night, my dreams consisted of an apocalypse, and twin whirlwinds, spinning around like a destructive helix, approached the town. Only a tiny string of townhouses, rudely erected on the edge of the forest in which I played the piano in a log cabin, stood between me and devastation. I knew my older brother and the female goddess each slept soundly in those buildings, though I could not play loud enough over the deafening tornado winds to awaken them. I had not time to find them, for I knew not in which house they slept, but if I could only play a little louder, the apocalypse might end, and they might awaken to soothe the winds into sleeping.

That's two days in a row of oddly melancholy dreams, though only the first day I awakened in grief. This last one came with a strange expectation of hope, a belief of conclusive victory, however violent the storms and imminent their devastation.

Skipping Stone

Some days I feel as a skipping stone
sharply thrown
How long until it drinks dark waters?


Spssh against the waters, raising a spray, fwoooo through the air, the waves whizzing by beneath the spinning stone, flat and volcanic. Sleep.

Fwoooo

The seas of my dreams were savage with squalls, last night, where the sleeping oceans tasted the tears of the sky. Dream-tales of friends beside, then waving goodbyes before dissipating into mists like ghastly wisps of twilight fog - graveyard mists. I slept and woke, drowning in an inexpressible sorrow, for the images on my bleary eyes were fleeting, but stained the somber shores of waking. I woke every hour for a few minutes, surfacing for moments..

Spsssh

Then awakened, and the morning drizzle and southeast breeze pulled over the hills the sweet resins of the forest, the pines, the maples, the birch and fir, the mighty elm and the regal plum. The rich scents of mud and chilling rain.

Fwooooo

Work was... different. The project is vague and disorderly, through no fault of my own, and much time was spent grinding out irrelevant details while important points gathered dust in the corner. Blind eyes turned onto difficult problems while we leaped over anthill obstacles, thinking we'd determined the course of the world, ignoring the mountains rising up before us. And always a definite consternation, lingering, of inhibited progress on milestones ill-defined.

Spsssh

But, freedom. I read, in its entirety, The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, and though not the greatest work I've read, it contained some interesting developments and its flowery diction was smooth and easily read. I slept through my lunch hour instead of writing or reading, as intended, but the sleep was needed after last night's choppy

Fwoooo

Sometimes days are like skipping stones, ever striking the sea, dousing you in a salty spray like a slap in the face before you are, again, soaring above the waves. Today was such, though I believe it ended soaring.

Sunday Night Dreams: August Lands

Rumors drifted as a cool breeze across the burning hearts of the sore dwellers. They stood there, as every eventide, entranced in the prehistoric cannibalism of night, consuming the fire of the heavens. When the sun was swallowed, the thousand-eyed monster would open its eyes, and with countless teeth gnashing from the sea, it stared hungrily down, and the tribe would soon scamper into the hiding places, the caves of the coast, until the angry burning was reborn.

Their backs were stooped, scraggly hairs and hirsute faces merging into chest and arms, like patchy animals with ragged nails and teeth. Dull their eyes, but something, deep in those wells, shone a knowing, a spell of survival that surpassed simple savagery. And this knowing despised something of the searing heats, and their childlike thoughts savored myths of the temperate lands like sweetness on the lips. I remember. There are few of us who remain, when the prophet came, telling of the land behind these tooth-tipped waves and beyond this dome of the sky. He appeared from the wind, and his words invented magic and music these creatures understood not. Still, to this day, the distant children of this people cry, knowing not why, missing pieces of their soul. Listen: his songs fill those holes.

"A distant land beyond these waves, with peaceful nights and cautious days, whose maples sway and leaves gold turn, turn, an endless fall. You've sought it long, and know not for what you're made. These lands call your names. Golden trees with silver leaves, a pleasant breeze and fearless eves, and a love worth taxing days."

Some were bought, some stayed, though the sea was fierce and broad. I, for one, must see this fall land, this endless summer burnt me bronze and black, eyes dark as night and no joy, no joy left for this living fire. So I ran across the waters, we were stronger then, faster, and we chased the sun at night. So fast, so fleet, it never escaped into the monster's maw, we pursued it endlessly. At least, the shores of silver greeted our endless sunset race, and golden trees and singing birds whistled as we landed, the deer grazed unafraid. Even the sky cried in joy, and we cried in fright at its falling tears, hiding under those honeyed boughs.

We stood taller, eyes shone brighter, and we paid the price for fall, and gained a strange knowledge in return.



Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes when you fall, you fly.
~ Neil Gaiman

Mimicry

In a sense, much of our learning derives from mimicry. The magic of intelligence is not its mimicry, but its adaptive potential. One of my greatest foibles is a lack of abstraction. I see, I discover, I imitate, and when tomorrow arrives, I've learnt in a linear fashion, instead of dispersing that knowledge into connections. It is like a puzzle game where you see doors with a green lock all game, and eventually find the green key. However, if you only recall the location of the last green door, the rest of those connections you made on your entire play-through are squandered. 

In programming, old languages (and even new languages, sometimes) require the developer to consider memory. In those old languages, you specifically asked for segments of memory, and constructed pointers to access those memory instances. When you finished using that memory space, you cleared the space from the program's usage. This way, you don't end up with memory leaks in your code that lead to all your computer's memory disappearing and your program swallowing all your computer's computation and memory.

More modern languages abstract away that clean-up in a process called "garbage collection". When you lack abstraction, you aren't connecting those pointers. Your mental program is wasting space with leaked memories, floating about in your head without having revived those dusty corridors of brain-space. This is my artistic failing. I'm swimming in a sea of lost pointers and memory leakages, and every new fact is isolated and devoid of translation. 

100

I had something worth writing, on the topic of fasting and fellowship and atonement. I've lost all that. It was a genuinely peaceful day, full of repose, prayer, thought, and excellent friends. But what ideas have I left at the moment? Few. I was asked countless times today (while watching Star Trek) - are you happy?
This stems not from an expectation of "no", but from a nervousness at no longer being around much, and knowing little of my current experience. Am I happy? I think I'm happy. I don't feel unhappy, and I'm enjoying my life. Am I content? I think I'm content.

I expect there are moments on either side, like I'm tiptoeing across a balance, and it shifts with each step.  I'm happy I'm happy whoa whoa whoa I'm in trouble! Oh, things are good again! And so on. I remember thinking once, at one point in my life: "does sanctification mean loneliness?" I think that is what people think, sometimes. Solitude, setting yourself apart, distance - are you lonely? Are you okay?

This is why, I think, that Yom Kippur denotes a little bit of loneliness, in my opinion. Fasting always seems a little bit like solitude. Does it mean I'm not okay or unhappy? Of course not.

I learned some things in my holyday meditations and reflections. I think the holy days prepared in the Old Testament sometimes are my favorites, simply because they exhibit a different viewpoint, a world we've mostly forgotten. Anyway, I've rambled enough. This is what happens when you don't eat for a very long time, play soccer, bike around, and then eat as much as possible when your body is falling to pieces - you go a little loopy.
Maybe that is just me. Happy 100.

Yom Kippur

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to kindle the sabbath and Yom Kippur Candles

Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us and has brought us to this special time.


I've noticed through studies and reading and different interactions that each culture views God in a different manner. Almost every Jewish prayer begins like these two for Yom Kippur: baruch atah hashem, eloheinu melech ha'olam - Blessed are you, oh Lord our God, King of the universe. In fact, when writing out these prayers, the Jewish people often write out "ha shem" which means "the name" instead of the word for Lord, for fear of taking the Lord's name in vain. If you've ever seen G-d before, you know a Jewish writer is writing such to avoid actually spelling out the name of God. There is a lot of fearful respect there that I've always found a bit fascinating.
Anyway, it is Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement for Christians is strange, as we don't receive our sanctification and redemption through priestly sacrifices (though the Jews do not either at this point).

Leviticus 16: Day of Atonement Text

Many of the traditional activities current Jews avoid are not found in that chapter, but in the Talmud and later writings. Wikipedia lists these as traditional, though I'll probably stay relatively Biblical:

No eating and drinking

No wearing of leather shoes

No bathing or washing

No anointing oneself with perfumes or lotions

No marital relations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

It is the one Biblical holy day that is a fast. Later, the celebration of Purim (Esther) includes a fast as well, though it was not an original holy day. I was sitting here and playing guitar, lighting candles (Jewish holy days all have candles. Light is a very important motif of Judaism), praying, thinking, and singing, and wondering what this day actually means for me. Is it like an Easter or Pesach? Thankfulness for God's sacrifice as our passover lamb? Or is it praise and thanks for the blessing of sanctification? I honestly cannot say quite what it means to me, and I've honestly never succeeded in keeping Yom Kippur. Last year, I was walking and praying and doing a fantastic job, when a whole row of blackberries tempted me when I was spacing out. I ate handfuls before realizing how stupidly I'd broken my fast.
Another traditional piece of Yom Kippur is the remembrance of those lost to us. This is another thing I'll be remembering.

Tiny Houses

It's P and L's fault that I'm entranced with tinyhouses. Early this spring, P and L visited my house and we made dinner, walked through the orchards, watched the sunset, and pored over countless blogs of tiny houses. How easily was I swayed! Originally, I thought a nice tinyhouse on the cliffs of scotland, but realized how unlikely that dream might be.

I was born and raised in the country, so woods, mountains, streams, and gardens speak more of home to me than buildings and clustered community. I love community, I love fellowship, I love people and all my fantastic friends. I also love natural beauty and its serenity. I do not for an instant believe I must suffer a solitude of nature, but if nature experience is solitary, I suffer it gladly.
Tinyhouses always seemed ideal. I don't own many things. My "bed" is a mattress on the floor. I have three bookcases (four sorta), a desk, clothes, blankets, a guitar, and my work computer things. What else? I have some knick-knacks of course, artwork, gifts, and items valuable to me, but I can easily store everything in such a house. Only two best friends remain, and both will, likely, be married by next summer.

Now, instead of writing, I've spent about half an hour looking at tinyhouse blogs. My favorites are the ones like log cabins. Subsistence farming from a tiny house? Sounds like I'm turning into a Wendell Berry.

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

Day of Atonement

I'm eagerly looking forward to this Yom Kippur. Many Christians have thrown out the holy days of Israel all together. I don't think this is a problem, but sometimes I enjoy the appointment days. I've actually never successfully celebrated Yom Kippur. It is the only true fast from the Biblical holy days, though several others have been added to Jewish tradition (the day before Purim: celebrating Esther and some others).
The last time I attempted to celebrate Yom Kippur, I was out on a camping trip, and while walking and thinking (I was in the process of losing a friend, and processing that), I came upon some blackberries and mindlessly ate a whole bunch before realizing I was supposed to be fasting.  I've managed a number of different fasts and find the meditative aspects and discipline of fasting useful for me in my faith. I have not, as yet, successfully celebrated Yom Kippur as a fast.

The day is considered to be the holiest day of the year for the Jewish peoples, although if you ask a Jewish person what the holiest holy day is, they may very well say "the Sabbath". It is the day where the entirety of God's people was atoned for, and was accompanied by much praying as the gravity of sin was upon the nation of Israel. I will not be going to a Synagogue for this (I've actually never been to a Synagogue service, in my recollection. My Jewish relatives are not very devout). I actually let it creep up on me, and didn't even take the day off of work, though I should have. It will also mark the day, I believe, of my 100th post. I think there is a landmark there, a finality.

I think with Yom Kippur, it has always felt like a very heavy holiday. Whereas Yom Teruah (Feast of Trumpets) is a celebratory feast, full of fellowship and fun, and passover, however intense, is my favorite holiday ever, Yom Kippur carries a strain with it, as though a weighty holiday, a dark one. Is that strange? It is the day of atonement? I think, perhaps, it felt like a duty. Like a failure meant that you were not atoned for the year, that you were cursed. It seems like so much more depends on obedience on this day, and there is no accompanying celebration. Perhaps fasts have always carried that somber disposition for me, as they seem... lonely. You can feast with friends, but fasting seems so solitary. Part of this stems from the passage in scripture where Christ says that if you fast, don't broadcast it. This was due, in large part, to the overzealous pride of the Pharisees in their good works. I do not think a collective fast is without merit.

I think this is a finish line, and hopefully a successful one. I've run a race, and though I did not win, did not, in fact, even do well, I'm still going to cross the line with dignity. I was the only one running this invented marathon, and the only one playing this imaginary game. I finished, and even though I know I lost, at least I tried. It was worth the try. I'm not sure what God has in store for me next. I only pray, with faith, God will lead me through unto green pastures beside still waters. Though perhaps I'm more ready for the spiritual warfare analogy right now than the lambs metaphor. My sword is sharpened, my shield lifted on wobbly arms, and I'm girded with truth. No weapon formed against me shall prosper? Sounds like a winning game.

Tuesday Night Lights

Autumn appeared and Summer played its last mischief. The sky was beautiful tonight, like a shadow cast over the purest lapis lazuli, fading into a dull ember orange near the skyline. With a foxtail moon and a dusting of stars, the temperature and atmosphere is perfect for thoughts and simply laying in the grass, staring into the heavens and asking questions of eternity. Where next, Lord? Oh, never mind, it matters little, doesn't it? I can't see very far, truly, when contemplating the greatness of this world, this universe. What's it like, Father? Do you eternally see it as good, each moment since creation?
Silly questions, frivolous questions, but Cassiopeia  smiles and rocks in her little wooden chair as she listens, and pulls up a glass of water with the dipper, though the bear, whose tail it is, was not impressed, and Orion chuckles as he holds aloft his hunter's prize.
Every year, I think, has held its ends and beginnings, its hopes and queries, its trials and joys. What would it take, I ask, for a fulfillment of my dreams? What must I do? The stars just twinkle in response, and the divine is silent, this time, though the breeze over the hills is not. There are a lot of questions, a lot of loves, a lot of thoughts, a lot of wishes, broken or filled or patient, swimming across my mind like those satellites in the sky. Many of these will be broken, shortly, but they'll be replaced with new dreams. Is that the way of it then? Why bother fretting, when all will be clear as this sky, eventually?

We're alike, the moon and I.
Wax to life, wane goodbye
Shedding silver light by night
Shift away by day
No argentine remains to grace
Fae forgotten dreams
I'll trace your name among the stars

Apple Juice Dreams?

A week ago, I discovered that drinking apple juice immediately prior to sleeping induces incredibly vivid dreams. Supposedly, it increases the production of acetylcholine which enhances memory and, potentially, dreams in brain activity.

This fascination with dreams, it is my roommates' faults. I thought it might be worth trying, as I love apple juice and I love dreams. I've had absurd dreams this past week, and last night's was no exception. It is worth repeating, however silly.

We were on a cruising ship on the outskirts of an island full of bridges that leaped into the ocean, falling into the sea. Our ship's engine was loud, though we had a sail raised also, and the wind pressed strongly into the cloth. The purpose of our voyage was simple whale-watching, and the boat was shaped as an extraordinarily large metal canoe, a tiny ironclad bobbing atop the waves.  As we sailed beneath the overhanging bridges, a giant humpbacked whale breached and soared into the air nearby, spouting as its entire length soared over the sea not twenty meters distant from our boat. Our captain was in shock at the proximity of the whales, and ordered our vessel slow, as traveling so close to whales is prohibited by law, he said.

More whales began leaping all around is, sailing through the air like flying fish, and striking poses as tourists snapped pictures madly. Then the captain panicked and said we must race for shore, because so many whales meant an attack, and we had to make it to shore before they ensnared our vessel in their clutches. So, with the wind surging behind us and our motors chugging, we steamed towards the nearest island. Then, as we passed beneath the arches of several majestic bridges, the whales began leaping beneath the ship, lifting it into the air on their backs so that the ship veritably flew over the waters.

We were running shy on time. The whales almost had us within the grasp, the captain cried.

Still, we could go no faster, as we now rode atop the whales' backs. And, soon enough, the captain was correct in his assessment. They lifted their flukes around our vessel, anchoring it in location just off the coast of a giant, temperate island.  Then, with a swish of movement, they flipped the vessel, and suddenly, somehow, we all stood atop the belly of the ship, trying to maintain our balance as the whales rocked the sinking ship. Those who could not maintain their balance fell into the water and swiftly swam for the safety of shore.  I managed to discover a technique that easily left me the last man standing on the boat, whereupon I leapt into the water, victor of a ridiculous game. 

Once on shore, we had a tiny canoe that appeared from nowhere and everyone thought was our original ship (though a canoe of that size would have held only 3 people, and we had ten or fifteen on shore). It quickly became apparent that night was coming, and if we did not find shelter soon, we would all freeze to death in the arctic temperatures of night. We began looking around for shelter, and I hurriedly let everyone know that I did not remember to bring my blanket. I would die once night fell, for I would freeze to death. I asked Matthew if he would share a blanket, and he said he had but one, and it was a tiny blanket.  The captain decided we should hasten and visit the hotel on the hill, and ask for blankets there. We ran up the hill and entered into the hotel, and a lady was cleaning the floors with a large brush. 

"Can we have some blankets?" Matthew and the Captain asked the girl. She looked at them gravely, angrily, and said, "No, I will not give you blankets. You'll have to freeze to death."

We implored her for blankets, knowing she had extras as the inn appeared empty. We even asked her for a room at her inn, and she refused us everything, even when we offered money for our stay. We decided that we were going to have to steal blankets, and left the hotel to formulate our mischief.

Then I woke up, just as we were about to return into the cold of night.

Words from Winnie the Pooh

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

~ AA Milne - Winnie the Pooh

I'll admit a certain fascination with Winnie the Pooh as a child, though the Heffalumps and Woozels terrified me. There is something positively frightening about every ignoble character in every childhood movie I watched that forced me into watching from around corners. I couldn't watch the flying monkeys from wizard of oz, or stick around for the cheshire cat (still creeps me out, even in the book a bit), or numerous other baddies that rattled my bones with fright. Luckily, most childhood movies provide easy musical and visual cues (thunderstorms and minor chords) for indicating a scene wherein the villains are present: "time to hide behind mom" cues.

But I was looking through some Winnie the Pooh and stumbled across these gems. I love rivers, the snaking waters slithering down hillsides and mountains and stretching lazily across the plains on an adventure into the seas. Sometimes I remember these when playing Pooh-sticks on long hikes, or just when running along the riverbanks, or crossing the Columbia into Oregon or Washington, or when canoeing or kayaking, remember that I know everything needing knowing. It is like Keats said, though nature speaks fewer words:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all  

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

~Keats - Ode to a Grecian Urn

In those moments of beauty, watching the rivers and the mountains and the trees, all at peace, do I need know anything else? The Lord is near. 

And the second quote, which shames me sometimes in my busyness or impatience. It is like Abraham, when promised a son that is not forthcoming in many years, loses patience with God and goes in to his wife's maidservant. Sometimes that same quality of impatience is upon me, and I, without waiting on God's timing,  make a fool of myself and miss the mark. ...there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. Paulo Coehlo (author of the Alchemist and Veronika Decides to die - the latter is where this quote comes from) writes, "The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter." I'm forever leaping too early, or too late, and rarely listening to the whispering and shouting, beckoning and patient voice of Yeshua.  Wait. Listen. Leap into the arms of God.

I conceived a sunrise poem this morning, which I've temporarily named, "The dawn of day in beauty". In it, I discussed some of these ideas in verse, and I rather enjoy how it came out. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, a glad morning of fellowship and friends. I'm ready for the week, though patiently so. Let's go.

Nonsense

I'm exhausted from this long day, from these long two days, but I linger on in writing for just a moment longer. I'll spout a little nonsense.

There are secrets to tell, secrets to spill, but they are secrets, now, and I shan't say. Secrets of the thousand cuts that bled not a single drop, though the veins laid bare; secrets of what roamed the streets, born of a god's nightmare. Secrets dark, secrets small, hidden whispers thrum along each hall - shrouded mysteries. Hide your heart, cover your eyes, child, these truths may charr your soul, or twist your world upside down. Bitter waters may drink you  drown. Watch careful, closely look, in the vale of dark despair, a gentle crook may hook and save you, ram ewe, fold you, take unto a forest-pond for safety there.

Listen. Tired words are words still; hopeless love is love still; broken hearts are hearts still; distant dreams are, perhaps, dreams still.

Three Thunderstorms, Rosh Hashanah, Home to Home

Last night, another thunderstorm crossed over the hills where my parents live, this one by far the most frighteningly awe-inspiring. There is that edge, I think, to beauty sometimes. The beauty of the canyon, staring down over the precipice; the beauty of the spider or the panther, elegant in their predation; and  in the volcano and depths of the ocean. The tension of safety and magnificence snatches our lungs and squeezes, and even in the thunderstorms, I felt a little of such. There was lightning like I've not seen since my childhood, too numerous for even calculating seconds between strikes, most of the time. One bolt struck not far uphill, less than a soccer field's distance away from my house, temporarily knocking out a street lamp. A fright possessed me, sitting with my nose to the screen and watching the cracks in the skyline. What if someone's house was struck? What if someone was hurt? I stayed up many hours, watching the lightning crackle and the thunder rumble, and listening to the rain tumbling down. I slept little and enjoyed myself immensely in the cradle of the valley, in the nook of the night.

Rosh Hashanah is the feast of trumpets and the Jewish new year. Rarely is a year's beginning so early in the Gregorian calendar. Unfortunately, I was in the wrong state to feast with friends, but I'll probably celebrate it in some capacity, regardless. (Matthew why you leave the country? Phil, why you at work?) I like the Jewish holy days. Especially the high holy days. Most people, often even Jews included, do not celebrate many of the Jewish holy days anymore (a land and temple thing, but also a parting from belief that the holy days are sacred). I'm not religiously Jewish, but I really appreciate the value in the appointments God prepared. Plus, they are always an occasion for a special celebration. A special appointment holy-day celebration ordained by God? Please and thank you.

And now, after a fantastic visit home, it is time to go home. With slightly more laden packs filled with new books, my heart is light and my drive looming. Goodbye beautiful forest backyard with its large maples and droopy pines, its jolly firs and wild blueberries, its garden and hills. I'll miss the nightly games, family dinners, and my charming closet of a room. Hasta luego, Redmond.

Lyrique

Thunderstorms rage outside as I listen to melancholy musique, tearing up at the somber poetry and its symmetric outpour. Do not decry those tears; rain seeped through the window into my soul. I pen, in the silence that is the storm.
Where I stay up all night / And all that I write is a grey grey tune
Even the dim light of this laptop screen draws moths towards the window - night creatures eager for light. The bats soon swoop in for the feast. A great silk moth latches onto the window, and in my fright, I thought it a bat. Are they here for the light or the shelter beneath the eaves?
Are you looking for answers / to questions under the stars?
Dimly, the street lamps flicker through the valley beneath, illuminating needles of heavenly weeping falling onto unyielding asphalt. The souls of a thousand faces, spread across countless spaces, struggling, fighting, praying. I imagine a web of intersecting colors, illuminated by the cracks of lightning splitting this sky, a network of all our spiritual supplications. I read the Genesis, I read Psalms 23, I read Philippians 4, and I read Revelations 22. Listen, the storm is a song.
Oh I'll never know what makes this man
With all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away
Dreams collide, dreams of balloons and skies and transparent goodbyes, but distant, distant, as though a painting of a photograph of someone else's lives. It is a speculum of silver and stained glass, showing clearly nothing of love and hope and love, and the drums of the stormy night rage unending, though it is not rage, but the humming of bass strings.
All I ever learned from love / Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.
Small rivulets burn their whispering paths down the hills into the valley, into the creek in the hammock of the hills. I suspect the salmon leaping upstream to love and death, inextricably bound, mind this not. I can hear their splashes, a counterpoint. A coyote howls, an owl shrieks, the creatures stand still. But not the rain. I smile, and wonder what whispers the wind to comfort the clouds. May those words be carried far and fair this night.
Won't you come away with me tonight? /  We can fly past the moon and the starlight
What the water wants is hurricanes,  / and sailboats to ride on its back
And I ride the storm into slumber to swim with the salmon, gallop astride the lightning, and follow these rivers unto the vastness of the ocean, so I may gaze in its reflection and witness the sky.

And then, there are no words. Only the weeping of violins as bows breathe across silver strings.

Dichotomies

We love our dichotomies, our contrasts and comparisons. It is almost an inherent dualism, a study in black and white, light and dark, love and hate. Many favorite phrases in our languages are contrived on this principle. Look up any famous writer, rhetorician, or anyone with meaningful quotes, and swiftly you'll discover a dualistic quote of some sort:
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ~ Einstein
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. ~ Mark Twain
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ~ Phil 4:6

We could write without these, but comparisons, metaphors, similes, dualisms, couplets - these are the strongest points of linguistics. Pictures through verbal tension. Verbal tension is one of the greatest tools of our language, the strings we tie around our readers fingers, drawing them in with promises and poetry. What is poetry but beautifully rendered comparisons and metaphoric linguistics? I'm simplifying things, of course. I often do so. Frequently, we invent our own clever metaphors and creative comparisons. I do. And when I do, I often beam at my ingenuity, pleased to have cleverly devised an artistic glass through which I can contemplate creation. It sounds right, it sounds perfect, it even sounds clever. Then, almost by accident, you stumble across someone with an equally clever witticism, reversed, and it, too, sounds valid, sound. Paradox, another piece of our cosmos that we hate and love because it draws us nearer as easily as it drives us away, drives us insane, or into faith.

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The pot of gold cheapens the rainbow.



Before the strength of man's conviction twisted the earth into a sphere, there was a village at the end of the world. Built into the basalt cliffs on the shores of earth's edge, it sat and watched and waited until such time as it was needed no more. The village had long past been named Rope, for that is what it guarded and waited upon. Or so the boy was told.
Down by the beach, waves still washed up against the shore from an ocean only paces wide, and a blackness lay beyond, deep and dark as before-time. At the furthest point of the beach, against the precipice of the world, an arm's length over the water into the great void, there was a rope, or a perhaps-string. It hung from the heavens, falling between the stars, and in neither night nor day could you see its end, but it shimmered as gossamer in the daylight, and as opals in the night, an ever-shifting glimmer of light. It was a single strand, and none in the village knew its purpose, many thinking it was simply a portion of the frayed edge of the world. Beneath the rope, on the barest edge of the shore, sat a boy. He was from the village, though it had been some time since he was of the village. He was forbidden to approach the string, but no matter the punishment or the confinement, the next morning he was always discovered on the beach once more, staring up at the gossamer thread.
It may have taken a year, a season, it may have taken only minutes, but the boy decided, eventually, the string was to be pulled. It was not fear that stayed his hands, not precisely, but the mysticism. Was it better imagining what might happen? If the stars might fall behind a curtain of night, or the sky itself collapse; or if the earth would become the heavens, the heavens the earth, and they might all traipse along island clouds, drifting along sky spume into an unblemished horizon, replete with salty stars. Would the angels corral in chorus to this world on the ringing of a bell, or demons rise from the gaping maws of hell?  Would the world curl into a ball, like a giant rolypoly? Or would the world's edge be drawn back, and whole new lands unveiled to explore? What equally stayed the boy's hand were the disappointing outcomes he conjured in his imagination. What if nothing happened? Or what if the string itself fell, and disappeared off the edge of the world, and he could no longer gaze upon its illustrious glamour? What if it crumbled to ash in his hands? Perhaps it was a fear of a sort, but not of his fellow's punishing, but of an unforeseeable end.
It was wodensday, only a fortnight following fall’s blue moon, and the moon died tonight, only a pale sliver remaining.  The waves were calmer tonight, softer, and a chill breeze forced the boy to cinch his scarf and tuck his hands deeper into his pockets. The rope drifted subtly, though not with the wind, and the boy imagined he could hear the tinkling that might draw the angels earthward to listen, like the gentle plucking of silver violin strings, high, and quieter than the crickets.
Was it time? He pulled his shaking hands from his pockets, feeling the wind against his trembling fingers, wrapping around each digit and pushing it towards the shimmering strand with gentle insistence. His hands hovered there, only a wrist-width away, too tentative to touch.
It might have been courage, though it was likely a clumsy motion that made him stumble forward and latch onto the rope. It was silken, but elastic, and strong as web. It stretched slightly as he fell forward onto it, hanging over the precipice of the world and staring down into bleak nothingness through the translucent waters of world’s end. An eternity of tiny moments he hung there, now clinging tightly onto the strand dangling over an impossible abyss. Then, without any lurching motion, the rope drifted higher into the sky, higher than the shrubs, higher than the houses against the cliffs so that the candle-lights in the windows looked like jack-o-lanterns or wisps inside glossy eyes. Above the hills he clung, until the walls and shores below became like golden and grey landscape snakes beneath him. He climbed up the rope a short ways, wrapping his legs around the strand with terrified fervor, though, in truth, he was more fascinated than frightened.
Alongside wispy clouds he floated, his clothes dampened by the foggy strands as the stars winked at him conspiratorially from above. Along the shores and into the hills, east, east towards dawn he was borne aloft. He stretched how his legs and imagined he was walking on the clouds, and from above he heard the singing of the winds, sweet as the songs of the angels. Over the hills and mountains along the spine of the world, rivers racing as the veins and arteries bringing life to the forests and living things.  A volcano gaped is orange maw from beneath the boy, spewing its boiling fires from the underworld, and the mountains melted into valleys. Vineyards and grapes hugged the hillsides, and roads of hard-packed earth traced webs into the grasslands leading towards roads cobbled together with lime and quarry.
Down below the cities lights were fireflies, like the skies had fallen into the ground, and twinkled on a carpet of farmsteads and village homes of candles and fireplaces. The rope swooped nearer, and the boy glanced down into a city. On the still lively streets, lit by warm, yellow lantern-light and chimney-glow, a few faces gazed up into the sky and saw him, giving him a confused wave and pointing for their friends. Though the boy was whisked by, and stayed not long in place, sweeping over town like a falcon and soaring back into the sky on the updrafts of the night, back into the anonymity of the heavens.
Hours still, he drifted, his arms never tiring, his eyes never shutting as the world shifted past in twilight hues and crepuscular tides, until, at last, a dim fire flickered at the horizon like dragon’s flame and honeyed gazes.
As suddenly as he was raised, his descent began, and soon his toes touched the ground in a glade of maples and elms. Low grasses and thistledown crowned the glade in a fairy ring, the center of which was quartz, burning garnet with the dawn. Nymphs and fauns and dryads emerged from the tree-line and the fluting of pipes and the piping of flutes set their feet to caper and frolic and dance, a sonata to sunrise played by the early birds and the fa of the forest. And the boy danced, and danced, and when a girl floated into the circle and danced beside him, he clasped her hands and danced some more, until he could dance no more.
When he awoke, they lay, she and he, on the beach by the sea on the edge of dreams on the world’s final beach. Worried, still clasping her hand, he glanced up, fearful of what he might see. The sun warmed his neck as he stared up into the rainbow beauty of two gossamer strings, drifting against the sea breeze, singing the song of dawn.

And the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down

In rushing, rising rivulets.

Still, it makes my backyard look positively splendid (albeit soggy). And I lovelovelove that maple. I think it's my favorite backyard tree.

Ghosts of Faces

ghosts of faces are passing by
past they fly
could they be your friends, or mine?
or I theirs? - it's fine
for on streets or trails there's no goodbyes
for passersby living their own lives
rarely intersecting lines

and what of friends in different places
gone ten million paces
witness distant times
sharing but a moon and stars
of the sky's -
not ours
mountains here, desert there
forests and valleys
or dunes and seas

our times may meet but never, or twice
And your eyes say,
I love
I fly
my spirit's a dove
you'll never watch scrape the sky
nor the tears,
it cries,
of the endless phantoms you never meet
never treat for cups of tea
or campfire retreats
where rivers run besides
and their stories, well
you can never tell
they might have changed your life
might have loved, too
if only you, they, had chanced to say
who are you?

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We celebrated my mother's birthday today. Surprisingly, the weather held. Here's to hoping it lasts a couple more days, so I might hike along the ridge or up a mountain on Wednesday. It does not look promising. We drove to the beach and went to a restaurant that mother dearly loves, and we all glanced out the windows over the ocean and into the water as the ducks paddled by, the jellyfish bounced their way through the waters, the seaweed drifted in its soggy swirls, and kayaks drifted by in the amiable waters. The sun gleamed off the waters and the windows of passing boats, fishing, drifting or sailing in the brine with sea breeze gently pushing at the waters.
Matthew is going to Korea, tomorrow, which is my last outside-the-house friend in Washington that I'm aware of (currently in the area discounting his family and my family - sorry if I forgot you). It will be quiet, perhaps, though I've long needed a little quiet. And how quiet is it really when the word games get crazy? When the card games with the family get joyful? Not. So. Silent.
Or when the coyotes howl with the distant neighbors huskies or when the wind races through the valley, stirring all the trees into frenzied whispers and wooden groans. It is a good sort of silence, and loudness. A restful set. Maybe I'll finish a few more books this week, too. Time for some creativity, time for some art, time for story magic and myth.

A day in the hills

I climbed my little mount yesterday, and meandered through the hills. I took a few lousy pictures. Turns out, I may be the lousiest photographer. I also completely forgot my pen, so I could not make any sketches or write any stories. Maybe I'll climb again Wednesday, weather permitting.
Even if these are not the best of pictures, it was the most beautiful of days (even with a grey-ish haze to the sky that made it, at times, more faded than blue)

The birds that stole my sandwich when I recently went were not as prevalent.  The chipmunks, however, were out in force. Nearing the top, it was readily apparent that the plants thrived on short seasons, and the trees were all stinted pines, though near the top, there were actually a surprising amount of mountain raspberries. I saw no mountain blue jays, and only a few camp robbers (grey jays) on the mountain top.