Mostly harmless.

Finally, I was able to read again today. It's like finally being able to breathe after a fit of coughing. I still feel like the pinata after the party, but at least I can read once more.

Time muddies, sweat and tears will ruffle these sheets, covered with seashells - fitting, to wallow in this briny fever? Corral these sheep into pens of sleep, so they might bounce out again. There is no thinking deep, deep thinking in this bathypelagic dream-scape.
I can see the angler fish, taunting me with lures, it burns behind the shutters even when I shut my eyes. And the fever, the phlegm, the fatigue and stomach aches, the nausea and dizziness, the crescendo of illness-tides rising with the night fill this shipwrecked shell with the ocean sounds of far and distant waves.


I feel like this week is a Simic story: a poem whose satirical description ends in a twist, a smirk, and the hint of sardonicism.

Fever dreams and other fever things

Whenever I try and sleep, I'm getting fever dreams. My mother and I watched Oz (the relatively recent movie), and I tried resting immediately following the movie and woke up every couple of minutes with frustrating dreams. There were a bunch of braziers ablaze around me, and circles of light rose around them like smoke rings.
For whatever reason, this meant that the evil witch would return, and realize the wizard's farce.  I couldn't get the images out of my head, and I couldn't sleep. My fever raised from 101 to 103 in the past 24 hours, and I'm getting increasingly tired. After taking medicine (I haven't taken medicine in years), my fever dropped to a more reasonable 102, and my eyelids no longer felt like fire.
I need this sleep...

I'd hoped to drive back tomorrow, but it looks like I'm stuck here until I can sit upright long enough to drive home. It's strange, but I don't actually feel that terrible. My throat is only the barest bit scratchy, I can breathe mostly (low congestion, low lung tightness), no headache, no stomach ache. I have chills that make keeping warm (or cool) miserable, as I'm constantly sweating in and out of blankets and clothes, I have spaghetti limbs, I have an occasional wet cough, and when I stare at screens my eyes split (this is common when I'm sick or very tired because I'm half near-sighted, half normal-vision)
So I'm a bit miserable, but not in undue pain and, when I'm not sweating my way out of sheets and clothing, I'm relatively comfortable lying down with a mug of tea.
I just need to get better so I can go to California.

Creation

There are writers and philosophers who say that nothing new is ever created, nothing new has been made since the beginning. And they are right, in a fashion, and wrong. But me? I believe nothing new is ever not created, and that creation happens constantly. If someone asked me to read Alice in Wonderland and write it from memory a  year later, making it creative as possible, the end result might possess a bit of the plot and setting of the same story, but the flavor would differ.
I am not Lewis Carroll, and, try as I might, my writing (save what I may have memorized) will never contain the dreamy, chaotic, mythical, fae, fanciful swirl that his writing so easily assumes in a way that states, clearly, "I am Lewis Carroll". My writing will never do that because I am not, in fact, him.
My creation may not actually construct any new matter, or invent any motifs that have never before been introduced, but that does not mean its arabesque of imagery, flavor, and artistic aroma are not, in a fashion, unique. There is an old joke regarding creation and God.
A man says to God: man has ascended, and can create just as God can. See all of our cities and how we've molded metal to our will, and how we've set the world beneath our feet and at our fingertips?
The man and God proceed to set up a contest of creation, where they will each try and grow crops and bring a plant to fruition. God starts, and grows an apple tree instantly, and takes an apple, sitting back to watch the man. The man smiles and stoops to the earth with a seed in hand, and starts digging a hole, until God leans forward and says, "no, no, no, no. You have to use your own dirt."
In this fashion, the philosophers and artists are correct, but I think that creation itself is a major portion of imago dei. What do we know about God in Genesis 1, when we are created in his image, save that God loves what is good, and creates? So writers, artists of every design, may not create new matter, new dirt and plants, but we can still plant and harvest and create, utilizing those tools we have been given. One of my favorite Neil Gaiman talks was his "Make Good Art" speech, in which he tells an audience of students to tackle the world and create something that only they can create, not because they are better than everyone else, but because each person has that potential.
Gaiman also said: "There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can."
I really appreciate that sentiment.



What, on that first morn, did Eve say?
fashioned from that which captures
the heart, those ivory tusks that shut
man's dreams away in careful prison
know they, then, the secret trail back in?

--1-

is it only words crawling
up and down my spine?
you may surrender only so many ribs
before there's nothing left to give

--2.5--

i'm a glass dove
here's my broken cage around a weeping heart
fragile as feathers of rain in this hurricane
whose violent winds, shush, shush -
//--1--
what words did she say?

Christmas Eve

I'd rather be sick at my parent's house than anywhere else, though the timing is certainly inconvenient.

My parent's backyard (what you can see if it - I'm no photographer, apologies) was beautiful in the sun rising over the hills this morning. When the sun finally crested the rolling waves of earth and pierced through the trees, it gleamed through the mercurial fog like an alchemical magic, golden strands of sunlight streaming down like heavenly tinsel.
It's Christmas (soon), ladies and gentlemen, thought not a white one, I'm afraid. Merry Christmas.

I had nightmares about art history last night, and could not sleep more than twenty minutes at a time. I woke up sweating and exhausted every twenty minutes or so until morning, whereupon I surrendered and walked outside. Rarely do I experience a surrealism when ambling down city, or small-town, streets, yet here, cupped like a dove in the palms of the mountains, the clouds crashed and made frothy the waves of the earth. Here, the earth and sky battled, and the mists lingered long before, bruised and beaten, they lifted with despair. In summer, the maple's splindly arms don't seem so defeated, condemned to bear ice and lichen until spring resurrects them again.
As I walk through the forest, hearing the distant trickling of water hidden in the shroud transports me into the fae, and every shifting form, then, might be faun or unicorn, fairy or pixie, sliding between the silvery branches with slippery grace.

When I see such a world, it captures me. Does grace redeem these trees, flowers, hills and mountains, doe and falcon, as surely as for me? I inhale beauty, and it is very good indeed. It is, I think, more than truth.

------

I won super-giant boggle tonight, against the family. I remember as a little child, the parents always allowed me to use two letter words in the original boggle, and I still lost. My parents are quite talented when words come into play. But I managed to eke out victories in quiddler yesterday (up and down) and boggle today, which might be nothing but a miracle (though I think I won boggle by 30 points - so maybe I was on fire).
I'm glad I'm not a child, anymore, for the simple fact that I'll be getting sleep tonight. Santa, keep it down. If you deliver gifts, remember that not even the mice are stirring, please and thank you. I didn't sleep well last night, and I need to get better before a wedding this weekend, a drive back to oregon, and a visit to A and S in california.
Merry Christmas eve, everyone. I pray everyone has safe travels and a relaxing, peaceful time holding friends, family, and Christ close to heart.

Empty Pages

When you've sat and stared at an empty journal - or past, really - or an empty screen for long enough, you realize you are too tired for writing.

Hello, empty page, what say you?

...

Ah yes, that's kinda the point, isn't it?

...

How many stitches, how many times must the needle enter and exit before the quilt is made? Every shudder sets the thread painfully free - what freedom is that? Blind, bereft of beauty, a thread without an eye. Love is not the luffing sail, but tacking into the wind. Oh, and it's such a wind that drives dreams through the sky above the clouds of sea, into a world where setting and rising sun meet.

...

Well?

...

Almost Christmas eve, and the rain hammers the walls and windows without relief, a lullaby that settles the house into a Christmas silence, where not even the rodents dare disturb the Christ child's sleep. 

...

Good night to you, too. Isn't it all just doodles, anyway? Why this congestion of thought that stumbles forward like a sinus headache, and none of it parseable into coherent thoughts I may ink. Good night, deer, nibbling at frozen grass near the trees. I hope I enjoy this as much as you.

I think I'm going to suffer being sick at Christmas.

The sky was bruise black, today, an eeyore hide of sky, not the jaundiced bruise of impending tornado. And the rains dutifully came, washing our sighs away, and breathing new scents of pine into the mountain air. Does the night smell of lightning to you? I can see it in the doe's eyes.

It's good to be home for Christmas

1. Mother asked father what he was watching on television while my father played solitaire in the living room, and he replied: "Thor", whereupon mother acquired a rather dazed look, and said, "Thor? How do you spell that?" "T-H-O-R." "What's that," mother asked. "A movie about Thor, the norse god of thunder and lightning." "Huh." (mother has definitely seen both Thor and the Avengers)

2. Quiddler victory. I think it's a spiritual gift. Unless against Matthew.. I think his spiritual gifting is stronger.

3. Art history study under the warmest of blankets

4. World's End in front of the fire at Matthew's

5. Snow

6. Staring through the bony trees that look like the rib cages of colossal beasts, layered with lichen and moss over every available surface, pointing to north on every facet, and into the mountains and the hills, splattered with powdered-sugar snow.

7. Thick mists swallowing the low-land marshes at the base of the hill and snaking with the creek through the tall brush covered with hoarfrost so even the spiderwebs are crystallized and beautifully articulated in white

8. Quietude and rain.

9. Books: V for Vendetta, The Story of Art, ee cummings Selected Poetry, Carl Sandburg Complete Poetry, Simic The Voice at 3:00 AM

10. Chips and salsa everywhere (mother actually procured a great assortment of my favorite foods. I think she bought enough so that if I ate only chips and salsa, or only anything, she'd probably have enough of that one thing. Home is a sort of happy-trap)

11. Journaling

12. Being completely in the country, and driving along country roads. There is something about driving along country roads that empties me of pain and fills me with joy. I don't even need to know I have pains to be uplifted. It's like not knowing what a burden gravity is until you can fly.

13. The family. They are the best.

14. Cookies (I don't even eat many cookies - read #10. But knowing that they are there increases the level of Christmas by a far sum)

15. Tree, candles, tea, fireplace, wreath, lights, music, snow - it's a Christmas wonderland


I love visiting my family, though I begin missing my friends the instant I leave them. The tranquility at home, however, is unmatched.



Frost the leaves and they are diamonds,
spider's webs are stained glass prisms
trapping winter wishes
in grasses beside the road

hart and hind leave hearts behind
crossing frozen streams that hide
among the hoarfrost patches
that linger beside the road

broad the fog's grey-gloved hand
that cossets now the argent land
whose silver hair and flaxen plains
are dormant now,
sleeping, beside the road

though the aspens shiver,
the pines share not their coat
the maples, naked, ice-chimes bear
the firs are clothed,
yet ice grows in their hair -
does the wind sing eerily
when birds and bees have disappeared?
whispering beside the road
---

The moose was here,
his musk is heavy in the mists
that shrouded his steps -

can you mask such magnificence?
his cleft toes clench
the earth so gently

he brushes past
the spider-webbed grass
reverently

how can one
walk so lightly
who bears a weight so heavy

I ponder this
as his footsteps carry me
deeper into the mists

Journeys

The police were out in force tonight, though whoever was speeding tonight probably deserved a "reckless driving" notation as well. The clouds were so heavy they fell until they hovered over the road, perpetuating a mist that soaked the roads and car windshields not in heavy droplets, but foggy condensation, like poorly insulated windows in the morning. I was told to watch out for invisible pockets of ice, but I didn't see any, though I was excited to find snow once I reached the hills ascending towards my family's house.
Snow. Maybe I'll get a white Christmas after all.
My week is looking to be more hectic than I originally suspected, being that Christmas is on a Wednesday this year. Strangely enough, that makes things incredibly complicated with work scheduling and figuring out travel times. But it's good to be home, with the hillside outside slumped like shoulders under a thin comforter of snow, and the trees are carrying their own white paint on their green brushes. Merry Christmas, everyone, and safe travels.

*reminders to self -
1. scales, buildings, nature, skein
2. judgment, beyond reproach (murderer, once murderer, raskolnikov)
3. galatians
4. that sickness unto dying

Fried Marbles

I've discovered something
about people, striking
a match over the gas stove,

it kindles and crackles,
heating until the air shimmers
like summer -

clutching a handful of marbles,
it's so hard to let go,
glass globes rolling about
free as life -

there is no avoiding the heat
friends, but then, too, cold water
comes, and once silent marbles sizzle
in delight, so fragile,
a breath of beauty

Coffee Shop Existentialism

Staring around the coffee shop today, I found myself asking questions, inwardly, about everyone's life - what had brought every one of these people here, across lives wide as the sky or brief as a breath? Every seat was filled: babies burping against their mother's backs, or bawling at some discomfort; children reading on couches or exploring the underbellies of tables; teenagers rescued from the tedium of school, excitedly discussing sports, boys, and Christmas break; college students discussing existentialism on the couches, and the boundaries of love and loving one-self; other college students silently absorbed in nursing or psychology; parents and graduates meeting for tea, or bringing their kids into a new environ for adult adoration, and a caffeine-accompanied breather; middle-aged business meetings and work breaks; seniors reading the paper and sipping at black coffee or holding hands, as though youth was found again; and an old pop song tells of age and growing old, wrinkled, tired as a december setting sun.

Who are they all, and why is dissonance defining such distance between their souls and mine, when I just want to touch their lives? May I, please, just one time? But even in the chair next to me, they live in a different eternity, and the Christmas tree tells of gifts given like this. It displays, with glittering ornaments and a star guiding those with open eyes to see, though I'm no wise man, the way.

It's a hive of drones, each one droning on with scarce a moment for passing love, few with smiles even to light the day. Thought and memory always assault me so poignantly on wodensday, like carrion birds swooping in to carry my ramblings away.

Flat-footed

a deer, by nature
is never caught
flat-footed, her hooves
are all toes, are they not?
and mine, whose arches bend
like the arc of time
am struck, like that deer
motionless in headlights,
flatfooted

those wolfish yellows slide
to a halt, and off
into the forest she goes
betwixt mistletoe and ivy
trees wide and mighty
prancing on ballet toes -
tell me what is holy
if not this
the dancing doe leaves me
wholly thunderstruck



Sometimes I'm made of thumbs and heels. I finish work, and the end of the day startles me into immobility. Have you ever tried playing soccer on your heels? Or tennis? You've got no reaction time, no quickness. Runners are often told to run on their toes, why? It's a pivot, a brace, a shock-absorbent. The reason hands, and fingers, are so remarkable is the number of pivots allow for a wide range of motion and adaptability. You don't pick things up with your wrist - it wasn't designed for grasping. Yet, between ball-and-socket, elbow, gliding, hinge, and hip joints, our bodies are capable of a wide variety of motion. And each distinct joint doesn't require the capability of each other type, so your hip can't throw (my lack of hips can't throw, that's for certain), and your elbow's don't glide (thankfully).
Tonight, I felt trapped on my heels. Not stressed, not anxious, not upset, just motionless, as though desiring of journey, movement, action, but incapable of such. It's not literal, of course, for I spent much of my "motionless" moments pacing the house, leaving warm trails of footsteps as I defined a circuitous route heading nowhere, and getting there quickly.

Numenara and Christmas - add writing with ben

It's been quite some time since my last DnD outing, and I've missed it. Something about the lack of structure and the storytelling aspects of a branching world (some dm's allow for significantly less branching) has always sparked my interest. I think that I could watch a game, without even playing it, for hours, just admiring the creativity of the players and the personas they drive. There is always that conflict, also, between assuming a role and relinquishing meta-knowledge a player might have, especially in the brand of game we've chosen: numenara.
Numenara takes place in a distant (billions of years) future, and assumes that artifacts from countless ages are strewn about across the world. Now, civilization is lost in something of a dark age, and believes these objects to be religious in nature, mystical, or beyond understanding (scientific-mechanical). A character might find a 'space heater' in the game that, in a different age, might have been a super-computer, or an engine, or a generator of microwaves that gets hot, and knowing nothing about the object, simply use it for its radiation of heat. A car battery might be an explosive, and countless alien artifacts are likely being abused for activities outside their original intentions.
The dm can choose to articulate the scientific background of any object, if he chooses (nanotechnology or something), or leave everything up to the imaginations of the players. Player characters can be religious or scientific, as they choose. My character is something of an anomaly, having survived a treacherous wind (the iron wind) that intermittently strikes different locations in the world, and now is more machine than man (muahaha star wars reference).
I'm not even particularly great at dnd, due to my introverted tendency to linger near the rear of the party (as a person, not a character), but it's always a blast.

Not much of a post tonight; I got home too late. But then again, it's reading month, Christmas month, advent month, winter month, friends month! So what is this 'writing' thing of which you speak?

----

Christmas:
I realize I love the idea of Christmas quite a bit. I have a roommate who despises, or claims to despise, all holidays, and always attempts to get overtime on holidays. Maybe it's my jewish heritage, or just that I love seeing my friends whenever possible, but I love the idea of holidays and celebrations. What is better than dining with those you love, playing (word) games, visiting home, drinking cider until you burst, or celebrating some aspect of Christendom that actually makes a holiday holy.
I've never remember the advent candles, what order they are in, or what the four candles actually are. Whenever I think of candles in this portion of the year, I think Chanukah. I was talking to one of my bosses today, the one who lives in Mexico, and asked him about the weather down there. He said, "you probably would feel uncomfortable wearing pants." I think I might enjoy a lot of sun in my life, but I love seasons, and I'd miss them. When Christmas rolls around, the shorter days supply greater meaning to every candle lit, as the world outside is as festooned in darkness as inside trees are ribboned with light.
So, Merry Christmas season everyone. I love you very much, all. I'm not the greatest at giving gifts, mostly because I cringe every time I have to receive one. But I cherish very dearly intangible gifts: love, kindness, patience, grace, joy. I hope I can share as many of these as possible in the coming weeks (and maybe a few actual gifts, too).

Lousy Poetry, moving right along

do you love me? feed my sheep.

Stare out over the mountain into the mists

ten paces, the trees, twenty, a ghostly pallor

thirty silver paces away, nothing can be seen.

beneath, a city lies, shrouded in a mantle of white

invisible, though scarcely a mile below, nothing

but the ghosts of fog replying silently:

what force 

can chisel hope into shifting mercury

or forge steely faith from rusty misery

or dredge the drowning soul up from the deeps

my son, do you love me? feed my sheep.

twisting turns are motif and mythos

the advent of the city pulls at me
with its smokestack gravity, distressed
wood houses, brick buildings, sweet sugar maples
cradled in the valley and swaddled in fog.
the stars above hide, and no shepherds flock here today
even horses graze with frosty eyes -
windows golden glow with christmas trees,
and candles dance ballet -
why must the moth chase the light,
and why the firefly insists at being bright,

what can restore the broken-winged bird?
as he flies, wind fills my wings, also

child, do you love me? feed my sheep.

drafts seep and bleed through the walls
creaking with the ancient ache of ice and winter trees
the tomb is cold, encapsulated in morning light
rolling away the stone of slumber,
the world's awakening in lovely sun
you know that I love thee for thy everything -
then know
every heart, beating at once, will shake the world


A few years back, I heard someone discussing the possibility of mastering a new activity every seven years. I firmly believe this can be true, and though I also suspect I could master something far quicker, depending on the task, I realize that lives are none-so-empty. I don't find myself bored and waiting for something to do, thinking: "maybe I should start a seven-year mastery schedule." In fact, I sometimes struggle at finding time at all for all the things I want to do, and I'm freer than most.
Writing is something I've always wanted to master, though I started with a significant handicap in refusing to listen to authoritative figures and their advice regarding the topic, and only realizing that I wanted to acquire mastery over such a thing after school finished in my life. It's like wanting to have mastery of classical literature, but realizing you don't know how to read, or desiring mastery over soccer, but having to work your way through physical therapy first so you can use your legs. I want to perfect my tastes of writing, poetry, essays, story, myth, but my chopstick skills are sorely lacking.
I'm no poet, yet, in my first four months. Granted, I should give myself some slack, and allow for the full seven years for a stronger understanding of poetry and its underlying means, but I'm always hard on myself, so I won't cut myself any slack. I organized all of my poetry into a single text document and read it, and though there is improvement, it's all rather shoddy. Most especially this poem above, though I had to keep writing it because it had some ideas I craved.


But even bad poetry is poetry, and even bad writing is motivating myself to continue writing and that's steps forward. I get the mental imagery of a man struggling through the snow, every step heavier than the last, with the blizzard gusts blowing biting shards of ice into his face, but he's pressing on nonetheless. And, I hope, so do I.

Select your player... select your level... ok?

I've heard that success in our society can depend a great deal on looks. However intelligent you are, appearance plays a significant role in the ease with which you stream through life. Women who are prettier, according to the cultural and media models of the time, and in the eye of whoever is judging, receive jobs quicker, receive higher grades for similar work, and are lauded, touched, and spoken highly of more frequently.
The same is true of men, though in variant fashion. Men who are taller and handsomer are more likely to receive jobs, get friends, get picked up in playground or pickup sports, or receive the admiration and adoration of peers and patrons.
I've often wondered if this, partially, is what fueled the furnace of my competitive spirit and fierce motivation. I was always the shortest in school, and the smallest. In basketball match-ups in elementary school, the referee at the beginning of the game matches each player up against the nearest height equivalent, so that each kid knows who to guard, and without fail, the boy or girl matched against me was always several inches taller.
I remember the first time I was taller than someone in school (it was a small class of forty or so - private school) was in ninth grade when I'd finally passed a few of the shorter girls. A few years later, I passed a couple of the shorter guys, though I only brushed the edges of average height for males in America, on the lower end (5'10" - I might be that tall if I let my hair grow out). Whenever playground sports were underway, I was always selected last, alongside the girl who kicked her teammates and perpetually scowled. This could be partly because I was unpopular as well as tiny, though I was athletic. I was fairly good at basketball, above average for soccer, quite good at throwing left or right handed, quicker than most everyone, and had a surprising lung capacity for a little guy - and still I was picked dead last.
Small schools don't cater to finding friends that suit your style. Instead, you are tossed into a social bracket, and if the people there don't like you, you drop another bracket. It's like being plopped into an algae infested pond, and, depending on your social burdens, you either float, or drop until the water is heavier than you are. I dropped to the bottom.
On top of being short, I'm not particularly handsome: rail-thin limbs that make me more of a stick-bug or a street urchin, buck-teeth that required 6-years of braces to remedy, darker than average skin, a swan-thin, long neck, hawkish nose, long face, brown eyes (brown eye color is the only one without bonuses it seems - mine are light brown and I carry blue-eyed recessive genes, though there are 6 alleles for eyes, not one, so it is more complicated than that), a perpetual youth (not a bad thing, unless you are trying to go into R-rated movies when you are 25 and asked if you are 17 - I have since grown a beard), and a debilitating shyness that shoved my social-pond rock to the very bottom.
So I compensated. I developed a bunch of defense mechanisms to prevent myself from getting locked in sheds, or lockers, or cornered by bullies, with a modicum of success (even in private schools, these things happen). I became the stick bug in truth, or a tiny chameleon, blending into the silence. I made the friends I had to to survive high school, and got the grades I needed to, without trying to learn. I considered my teachers ill-read and tiresome, and my social bracket was libertarian, gun-slinging, drinking, anime-watching, risque-movie watching, angry kids. I became known as the one who canceled hanging out with people, because I didn't want to go shooting, watching dirty movies, drinking, or terrorizing neighbors.
So I would lie, because I didn't want to say no to the only people who would still call me friend, and say that my family was going out, or I was sick, or that I couldn't get a ride (this was the worst excuse, because I had friends faithful enough to me that they would always come pick me up with this excuse), or that I was behind on homework etc etc.
I've still never had a strong female friend for longer than five months, and no female friends until college, don't enjoy the taste of any alcohol, dislike the idea of shooting, and steer clear of risque movies, though I don't even remember how long it's been since I last engaged any of those high school persons. And that wasn't fair of me, as none of them were terrible people, and perhaps those things weren't all terrible things, I just didn't want to do them by association. I felt no obligation towards those people, and I felt like they weren't friends with me for my sake.
So I read. I read and I competed, because I never found a deep love for television that consumed the rest of the nation. And now, I don't have the job-that-earns-so-much-money-that-I-can-buy-a-boat-anytime (though I could, actually), but I love the peacefulness of my job. But things are changing. My roommate and one of my best friends (dat's you, J) is getting married, and that will be the last of my great oregonian friends left to get married. I've never been spectacular at making friends, as specified above. I don't even know how I made all of the friends that I've made over the years, or why they are friends with me. It's something that baffles me and I can't even speculate why they've continued to be my friends through difficult times, but I'm ever grateful and loving to them for having done so.
But the time may be coming to decide what's next in my life, where I want to go. Or, perhaps, where I *can* go, and what my initiative is. I've stockpiled a fair sum of money, and have no debt, and even if I didn't have a job or wanted to spend my time traveling, I'm fairly certain I could do so for some time without running dry. But where do I want to go? And with whom? Or do I want to just sate the eternal wanderlust and experience places? I could buy a home, or move, or find a tiny house in the woods, but I just don't know what I want, or who to share these experiences with.
I have friends in a number of places, scattered across this vast globe. Perhaps I could just go see them in each of their new homes, or maybe I will wait some years more. I don't have the looks or the imposing figure requisite for easy success, but I'm happy with how the Lord has blessed me, and excited for upcoming adventures. I've considered taking the PCT the whole way, or wandering around a few select countries, but there is time. Will this world lead me back to washington? Or somewhere new in oregon? Or somewhere exciting entirely new?
My paths diverge as wide as the world tree, with so many branches of fruit.

Silent Night

It's quiet, or the voices are, though the electric furnace burrs, the fan drones like the rotundest of grumbling bees, grandfather pendulates and wags his finger in time, the magic laundry box judders, the dish gremlins gurgle in their plastic house, a distant faucet drips as a river gone dry, wheeled monsters with bright eyes roll past with noises like masticating gravel, snowflakes drop with a serenity of mind, and the wind nibbles softly at the trees.
I stare up toward the stars betwixt the slats of the blinds, past the condensation on the glass, through the window and the screen and the branches of the trees - there are no stars, tonight. A night without moon, only clouds invisible and mute, like the house on this night of nights. But I imagine the stars: lions, old ladies, and bears, sitting and fighting and chasing their tails. How can all those animals fit? I asked. Won't the bear and the lion, the wolf and orion, the fox and the lynx, the dragon and the phoenix - won't they jostle and spar? The sky is so crowded with their lines and points.
Maybe they do, and some leave the sky for a season or two.
I dreamed that someone had come and replaced all our stars in the sky. I was immersed in a new universe with everything the same except the arrangement and names of the stars. They were named after the saints and fathers of Christendom: Paul who always points west, Peter, walking on the milky way water, Abraham, leading his son Isaac up the mountain, Israel staring up the ladder into heaven, Mary with her halo bright at the annunciation, and many more. No matter how they were explained to me, I was lost in a different sky beyond my understanding. I knew this world was beyond my ken, just because the stars were foreign - it was never meant for me.
But I awoke, and the stars fell in unique flakes to settle against the earth. They are not fire, as claimed, but ice, and soft as heaven's feather.

Fractals

You can't change the past. You can attach new lenses and visit the past in crimson, emerald, and cobalt; you can twist the kaleidoscope glass and witness the dance of the fractals; you can surrender, blanking the present until the recent past is ill and empty. I've made mistakes until I am mistakes, and left a scorched earth trail of ice and fire until all that remains is crystallized ash like snow diamonds that crumble at the breath of the wind. Sorry, sorry ad aeturnum.
If shattered glass is all there be, no wonder it means everything to me.
My life is a fractal of memories, really, a recursive destiny. Glance at the largest picture, then deeper, and deeper, but every consecutive pattern is the same, like matryoshka dolls, shrinking until I'm but a babe, rocking forth and back again. Is there enough and when is too much?
I understand you, Jonah, the reluctant prophet.
With your every step closer,
I retreat three,
It's not thee - I am the monster
or who's finally forgotten what it's like to be
a natan -
let me prefer the whale to the beach,
there's safety here, for them
and me, give me a fig, an olive branch
under which I might breathe
and let me weep with the willows for the fool I have been
let me weep, for this, friends, is humanity
and that, divinity
even the hands that weave a crown of thorns
are neither idle nor empty -
there's a crack in the fractal heart
and it goes eternally deep

I hide so easily behind moonlight shadow, when even those who love dig too deep. Irritation makes the pearl, and beauty hides as easily as casualty. The snowflakes in love go deeper than the ocean of the heavens above. Jacob I understand you, for you are me, stealing birthrights for soup and wrestling with he who cannot be beat. A strange year with an amethyst heart, when the knife-balance slips, who can stay put?


For all wondering, Frozen is a delightful movie, and I have the most fantastic of friends (Happy Birthday, S), even when my friends want to make me suffer for my upcoming birthday. The clouds have shipwrecked against the earth and the foggy swirls of broken clouds freeze against the trees, turning our greenery into a ghostly phantom of sugar glaze. Frozen spiderwebs are nature's greatest mystery, and blankets and candles are night's greatest delight. Sleep well, friends.
Almost the weekend. (if you are watching the hobbit, you are braver than I, and less 'already-falling-asleep')

I haven't the foggiest

I saw the sun, stared at it for moments and minutes until we understood one another. Dimmer than the moon, dimmer than the dull orange streetlamps, drilling through obscuring fog until it bore no more. Still, a blind white eye in the sky with dignity. It bleeds through the fog and despite being millions of miles away, the stately sun soldiers on, fighting its celestial war on terrestrial planes - for whom?

Despite the cold, the earth is closest to the sun in northern hemisphere's winter. The blade angles of the sun towards the earth and its proximity create the bluest of skies, when pulchritudinous clouds don't intercede. Our candles lit, furnaces stoked, chimneys puffing like the nostrils of blocky dragons, space heaters sanguineous, blankets piled high - snow is a great insulator, but it's only insulating the cold.

Everything from an angle, I see
dimly, profiles of people shifting as trees
in a deep dervish fog -

vague and thin as paper and twigs
is the world lightly limned in thick mists -

does everything still exist or are we
just ghost ships in a graveyard of disbelief
illy lit, our breaths just a fog factory -

try to see if this world is alive or just echoes,
phantoms, and wisps, i don't know,
know no way of escape from foggy dreams

Doodles

An inadvertent comment from a friend enlightened me to the nature of what I'm doing every day as I journal, blog, or write short stories: doodling. It was a floundering for words that I found I appreciated more and more as I rolled it over my palate:
1. to scribble or draw aimlessly
2. (Music, other) to play or improvise idly
I don't necessarily believe this is my precise aim, but it intimates the carefree yet incessant aspect of my practice. It isn't that I don't intricately design fancier, complete pieces, or that these doodles are completely without merit as works, but that they are not, from the onset, meant to be anything more than the aimless scribbling of words idly improvised.
I started writing, with motivation, about four years ago, and am still in the infantile stages of writing capacity. I fully intended, from the beginning of this journey, to take at least ten years of study and practice. And though I've come a ways, I'm wondering where I'll even be after my ten years are spent. Is there any time I'll ever be ready, or completely prepared? I'm no Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Mary Oliver, Gaiman, Tolkein, Eliot etc. I'm merely he who loves to read and the way the words sing as they prance across the page, or saunter or slide.
So I'm a doodler, doodle-dee-doo, and here are my drawings, sketchy though they be.

Where only the wind goes

Cracking open an egg, mixing the pigments and oils until a painting, once conceived in dreams, nips a hole in its shell and breathes in, at once, the first dawn light. Eggshell the clouds scattered over the heavens, yolk the horizon where the denizens of the heavens dwell, whites running over these peaks. Four compass directions from which to choose, and I chose up, higher, where the air thins and silent doldrum-air thrums serenely in my ears, alternating with the swift jet breeze which with freezing chills streams cold fire into my bones. In this icy world, my bones are merely stacked stalagmites shivering up from the powdered floor, icicles the mountain absorbs, glacially slow, into its own.

Here, the world's at peace; no fight bloodies these chill lands, though it is for such high places we struggle, and bravely die - for such a serenity. The prevailing winds subsist as I subside into the mists that run down this infinite slope into nowhere, quick as an osprey. This mountain's an orca of our countryside, breaching, beautiful, frightening in scale.

Have you seen the ice, the frozen lakes, the puzzles of cracked mirrors sitting in our streets? People walking over and under the mirrored nature-glass - which are we? Is this the reflection of the other world, the shadows of above, or are both worlds too frenetic to notice that, looking down, you can share a smile with one like yourself, only shattered into a thousand tiny fissures, and remember we were born, first, from warmth into cold, and we ache for the warmth again. But not I. I fell through that fish-eye lens, that hole between our worlds. Nothing remains in my reflection save a cloudy sky, and that is mine in each land - the silver-grey everlasting.

Some losses were born into the lines on my thumbs and fingertips.

Where only the wind goes, I have followed,

and I know that none save one may meet me here

There are whispers of whispers of names in the wind

The owl calls one, the thrush another, sola
though each snowflake is a kiss hardly given

unique as the next, as the next,

as the next falls and I give in

to a susurrus of surrender unnoticed

in the blizzard - and a triumphal entrance

I wave my palms and the sky falls

it is love, it is love I ascend 

Tl;dr: Micah, mountains

I feel so full of ideas tonight that I'm not even certain where to begin. Full, and empty, like hands holding butterflies, so light you peek to make certain they are cupped within your hands.
I wanted to write about so much: Micah; roommate dialogues; poetry reading (ee cummings); a beautiful truth I read today in a fiction novel; relationships; frustrating goings on; a fancy poem I wrote; mountains; the fact that I'm reading fifteen (15) books right now, and I may be going insane.. etc.

But instead of writing, I watched a lousy movie (read: without plot) nearly twice, and ended up having a good conversation on the phone while walking outside in the cold (I forgot to put on gloves or a hat, and my hands were quite sad, and blue, by the end of the conversation. It was a good convo). So, worthwhile, but for the second night in a row, I'm getting nothing done. Maybe that is what weekends are about? The problem is, this week is extraordinarily busy, and I have to finish 6 books before the university library's winter break so I can get new books and return my current batch, and I get to celebrate birthday's (hooray!), and work. Writing will suffer.

I read Micah today. A certain passage caught my interest, and it isn't even the most-often-quoted section of Micah (Micah 6:8, another of my favorite passages). What I love about Micah is his consistent use of puns and irony to make statements. Right from the beginning, statements like "At Beth-le-aphrah roll yourself in the dust" - at the house of dust, roll yourself in the dust. But it is an actual city name, so it's twice as clever. Or even, "Because a calamity has come down from the Lord, to the gate of Jerusalem" (Jerusalem is city of peace, dwelling of peace etc). He's quite a poetic prophet, and though the passages in this book are not necessarily sequential - they tend to be organized by theme - he's got a poetry in his prophecy that I appreciate, even though I don't speak Hebrew.
And it will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of mountains. It will be raised above the hills and people will stream to it....
Each of them (nations, peoples) will sit under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
(Micah 4:1,4)

I think this passage struck me for at least two reasons: 1. it has some similarities to possibly my favorite verse in the bible, Philippians 4:5 (Let your gentle spirit be made known to all men. The Lord is near); and 2. I really appreciate the peaceful imagery it suggests and the strength of God. It brings to mind the God who is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) with the God who gave Jonah a restful plant under which he might find shade. But I've also been contemplating mountains a great deal lately. I like hiking, backpacking, or just walking through nature, but there is something extra magnificent about mountains. Every time I visit my house, if the weather permits, I try and take a day to climb a mountain nearby.
Matthew introduced us, and we are fast friends now, my mountain and I.
As I drove home for thanksgiving, the sky was perfectly blue, a blue of an eternal peace, deep and dark as can only been seen when the sun is oblique to the world, and cold. Never have I so clearly seen the mountains: St. Helens, Hood, Jefferson to the south, Rainier, the cascades, the olympics, mount si, and the ridges surrounding issaquah. They were glossy white with their caps of snow, and I could understand why so many ancient cultures think of gods as living on top of the tallest of mountains.
There is something primal, domineering, majestic, intimidating, and demanding of our respect about the tallest of peaks, and even in summiting, we are not conquerors, but merely ants atop the pinnacle of nature, having picked our way up the glaciers, we have not ascended to the domain of gods, but, somehow, I feel closer to God every time I am in the mountains.
I really appreciate the motif in Micah regarding mountains, as I find mountains to be a place of peace and importance in my life.

The second thing I was thinking about today was relationships. I'm quite old-fashioned when it comes to many things. Well, I don't know if that is exactly true, because I'm a feminist, among other things, and that certainly isn't a traditional belief. But I generally prefer to follow the rules, and when I was a child I couldn't even understand how people could break them. When my mother said "no punching" I actually believed for quite some time that punching wasn't just against the rules of the household, but against the rules of nature. I could just as easily punch someone as I could fly. It wasn't until I was punched for the first time that I realized punching wasn't just a fake television event (like in the old batman movies: kapowie!), and could actually happen.
So if a friend of mine tells me they've had sex before marriage, I cringe. I don't believe in sex before marriage - it's very much against my rules. Then they spend an hour trying to explain how they believe that what they are doing is right and biblical even, and my stomach is turning. Now, I haven't experienced this point in a relationship myself, so I'm no authority. I've never been in a relationship nearing sexual anything, nor have I ever been in a relationship period. I've actually never even held a girl's hand outside of prayer, and I don't even have any good-single-female friends. (by next year, I don't think I'll have any good friends who aren't married). I'm not authoritative on the subject, but I have rules, and that people I know can so blithely stride past them with boasting confidence makes me feel quite uncomfortable. I really wish right now I had my own vines to sit under and my own fig tree, and that I could sit on top of the tallest mountain and stare out over a sea of clouds, contemplating such things. I want to think and write and pray and walk and stare into the stones of mountains letting water slip through their fingertips in waterfalls and rivulets, and clamber over stones into the snow-tipped peaks of the world's highest peaks. I want to walk through forests whose branches are bare, and sunlight streams obliquely through a glade, striking the sheathes of ice on each branch and blooming the forest into a fire of golden light that drips and sings like chimes, with the earth cracking beneath my feet and rabbits wrinkling their noses as dawn lights the southeastern sky, and the birds sing their sorrow-songs at not having migrated south until spring.


Well, that was a mess of words that went nowhere. A bunch of raw thoughts spewed out everywhere.



somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
 by E. E. Cummings

-----
The last stanza of this poem is one of my favorites of all ee cummings work.

Exhausted

Mulled cider, pico de gallo, and stir fry, with snow, white as a funereal shroud, veiling the  ground outside, while the whistling wind scoops handfuls of powder, sprinkling it around again. I saw myself from above and outside, tonight, wondering who inhabited that skin, really, and where might they be going. Steps predetermined or arrayed before me - mulled, my thoughts, and swirling as the steam on this cider. It is lovely having friends who love, laugh, and entertain ridiculous nights over vegetables and rice and pressed apples. May there be an endless number of such.

Too tired for writing tonight.
Powells tomorrow,  and much ado.
I'm praying for you, each one. Rest easy this night.


Steam whirls and clouds the rim of this mug
Condensation and cold rebounds from the windows,
within and without, the snowflakes unique
all nestle into the same ground, roof, trees, shroud
the light in eyes is warmer than fire
please -
curl by the hearth near to heart
remembering in each flickering log
the sparks brightening, rise -
each distinct - and disappear
deep into grey
now the cider cools, I drink
the murky brink is clear - out of steam

Nelson Mandela

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
~ Nelson Mandela

Today, a brave, important man died, and the world is a bit darker for his departure. But oh, how much brighter the world from his living. The man who fought apartheid, racism, and hate, persevering through anger, slavery, hate, and disregard into a triumphant model of love, redemption and forgiveness. He moved an entire country towards forgiveness and acceptance, a united people.
I read a story once called The City and the City. I've never recommended Mieville much to my friends, simply because his style is convoluted and confusing at times, though his writing can be a marvel. In the same geographical space lived two different countries, and they were forbidden any semblance of interaction. Even seeing the other country, its citizens, buildings, or possessions, was against the law. They were required to "unsee" anything from the other country, and recognized certain patterns and colors from the other country that they would subsequently erase from their conscious. Sometimes, you might be sharing the road with someone from the other city, or a sidewalk, or even a building - still you fastidiously forgot their presence, as soon as you could. Perhaps the worst crime in the city was 'breaching' or crossing over into the other city by means of seeing what you should not, or physically entering into zones restricted for the other city.
I'm reminded of this as I read through documents about apartheid and Nelson Mandela's life and South African history.
In the first quote above by Mandela, I'm also reminded of Dune (the book-nerd in me): 
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
~Frank Herbert - Dune

Just some thoughts, really. I read some Carl Sandburg today, marveling at the changes in his writing over fifty years. I have a book that contains all of his publicized poetry, essays, and stories, and it has everything in chronological order, so I can flip through the fifty years of writing in a breath, from his very first pieces to the things he wrote as he neared death. It is a strange thing, seeing how drastically my own writing changes year-to-year, being in a very infantile state, and then looking at a famous writer and seeing the improvements and changes he or she saw fit to make over the course of a writing career.


Cleft, together and apart into a knife
thin line separating us like sea and sky
forever apart, forever nigh
and what is the difference between death and life
the chasm crossing from black to white
and how far, really, are any two hearts
when the stars much farther apart still shine
bright and lovely
we, as the dark and light sides of the moon
~~~
each a season in its time
you,
summer eyes, spring smile,
winter hands and autumn tresses
and I
janus eyes, september smile,
vernal hair, and harvest hands
maybe meant to pass
like ships on different paths

Last Night of Chanukah

The last night of Chanukah, full of friends and laughter. We made food, set a spatula on fire, set candles on fire (on purpose), told the Chanukah story and read a children's story, talked and celebrated the festival of lights.  I've discovered two very different sorts of poets of those I've read recently: city poets and nature poets. City poetry contains a rugged, industrial beauty, full of sunlight slipping over glass and across stones, or birds fluttering between buildings. It frequently details a more somber note, of the walking death of empty souls strolling down streets toward lifeless jobs, or the dismal truths of city life in abuse and victims and solitude, despite the population. Like all poetry, it crests and troughs in oceanic waves of illustrious imagery, accomplishing that alchemical impossibility: transforming what seems worth nothing into gold.
Country poetry, nature poetry is what I love. Granted, not all poetry falls into these two easy categories - perhaps most of it doesn't. And there are plenty of other categories out there to find, like ee cumming's bizarre poetry, romantic poetry (nearly every poet ever), religious (Donne) poetry, story poetry (Shakespeare, Milton, Beowulf), mythical poetry (Wasteland, Milton, Keats: Hyperion), nature poetry (Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Wendell Berry).
Then there is modern and past poetry, and some of the strangest post-modern poets (Bukowski, Simic) or those who do spoken word. I'm barely knocking the hat off of the world of poetry, and I feel like every new poet I find opens a new world to me.


Everything wore the wedding cloth of frost
this morning, branches click-clacking as teeth
chattering in the breeze, even the bumbling bees know
not to hover about in this weather, no
it's safer inside clothed in the warmth of the hive and fire
blazing beside in the hearth, dreams of honey
peonies sleep, and so should I;
who knew it was only berries desired, and flowers
from the mountainside?
love is so simple, I've decided
clothed in sequenced rings, leafed and divided
as the weeping willow tree
and no less poignant.

Moving as Snails

I'm crawling inch-by-inch towards becoming a well-rounded person in knowledge, reading, writing, thinking. I realize now how much my foolish attitude towards schooling in high school was a serious impediment for learning, nearly truncating several avenues of thought which I'd closed off as a sort of teenage bravado. Now I'm frantically scrambling to patch this fabric of my learning that I left in tatters because I didn't respect the teachers, or the system, or the students in the class as viable competition, or just was an angsty teenager struggling through life.
It isn't just art history, but journalism, short story writing, poetry, chemistry, certain regions of history, music, plant physiology - I'm worlds behind in numerous areas of knowledge that I should have gleaned naturally, but ignored because I was too independent, too much of a self-deemed autodidact. I was good, too, but only persistent in particular areas, and ignorant of so many others. Smart, but naive, clever, but ignorant.

I read thirty pages of The Story of Art, and I realize that even when I finish this book, I still will only understand the margins, the barest patina of dew on the landscape of art history. But each new page is crammed with learning and tidbits that fill my mind with fancy and fantastic new knowledge. Everything just seems to move so slowly.
I read forty pages of fiction, and a bunch of ee cummings poetry. I love ee cummings, but his poetry is crazy, rambunctious, absurd, playful, and esoteric as much as it is fantastic.
It's times like this where I realize that I need extra hours in my day. At least two. I'm considering trying and sleeping less every night just to get more done during the day, though I suspect I'll have more time starting mid next year than I do this year. Who couldn't use just a little more time in the day? I guess I should count my blessings in that I have no commute time.
I just want to learnlearnlearn and read, read, read and write.

Full of prayers this week:
mother - teeth pains
matthew - work angst (quit)
s - work angst (expected full years worth)
jf - death in the family
p - job situation
sicknesses about


(thanks Lisa - I think I still hear this poem in your voice)

For a Five-Year-Old
 A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

 I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed 
your closest relatives, and who purveyed 
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.
                Fleur Adcock


Moving right along, at the speed of snails.

Choices

I was reading Samuel today, and a little bit of Ruth, and I'm a bit intimidated by people with such clear vision and bold movements. Not that Ruth knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Boaz would redeem her (he was old, she young), or that staying with Naomi was the path God intended for her - but she boldly made her choices, and followed in faith Naomi's advice when offered. And Samuel, who served as Israel's judge for many years, and the wondrous signs that accompanied his life.
Maybe intimidated is the wrong word. Bewildered? Impressed? I'm not sure any of these adequately describe this, quite.
There are many choices to make in the upcoming year: where to live, with whom, what would God have me doing - is it this?, choices of love and the trapeze swinging of life.
I'm realizing more and more each day how much I must learn before writing is even plausible. I'm reading such fabulous authors and am ever inspired by their ribbon dance of phrasing, the northern lights of rolling words.
Have you seen the northern lights? If not, you must do so; if you have, do so again. There's a transcendence in the miracle of particles that makes infantile the most extravagant fireworks in light of this natural light show. Even understanding the physics and science behind the ionization of these charged particles streaming across the sky... it defies explanation - it is too magnificent for even the dreams of words.

"What mind," he said, "can conceive aright
The floods of uncreated light,
Which from eternity hath shone
Around the Everlasting's throne,
When such refulgent glories glow
Upon his footstool here below!"
~ David Veddar

Watch with me what glories be
written in rivers and sines
in ephemeral light - what can it say
in such fleeting time?
whipping colors on heavenly line
a ribbon dancer intimating the waves
of a vast intricate ocean
spinning webs of colored truth
when my eyes are closed
my dreams still see through you

Advent Rain

There is no timeplacemoment like the rain. It's a symphony of sound, euphonious percussive bliss as the rain splashes around me, slapping into puddles like a snare, pattering against mailboxes like hat cymbals, gusts of wind brushing chimes like triangles. The bass beats in thunder and each step thrums a marching time, and rain encompasses you until you've transcended earth into a cloud of misty music: you are the river, you are the tides, you are the storm and the waterfall.
Have you ever been in a tent in such? It is my favorite dream. The winds crash and howl through towering pines and douglas firs brushing the teeth of mountaintops, and whistles a haunting nocturne while snap the canvas and flaps of the tent, flicking about this flimsy plastic which defends so bravely against the elements warring outside. And the rain, the perfect rain, singing the siren's song. I've tied a flashlight onto the tent's apex, and it sways, flickering around the inner walls and telling stories in shadows and flashes. Smells of pine, aspen, fir, and the sodden needles that carpet the forest floor rise in redolent clouds, and lightning strobes pictures of the outer-world against the tent, like phantoms of the forest, briefly alive and fallen, faster than the blinking eye of love.
You see the sun in its pinnacle of life in midsummer, staring down upon the world as a blazing brazier of heat and fire, but this, friends, is what clouds live for: those wintry days the colors of elephant skin. This the counterpoint: storms, rising up and falling down in shimmering waves. Hold out your hands, the rain fills them; tilt up your eyes, it cries and washes away your pain; close your eyes, and each puddle's an ocean, a river, a cloud to whisk you to a distant place, high in the mountains or low beneath the ocean, where nothing, except grace, remains.
Here my love grows and dies, lives and cries, in the locked and lonely places of the mind. It was never meant to move this way, a fortress, a moat, an army created every day. These feudal emotions for futile devotions, but, I tell you, the ocean is her guise and the cloudy day her mantle, and this swinging pendulum, dear grandfather, clocks when I see neither.


I can't even explain how good it is to be reading again, and writing hours less each day. I'm not planning, coordinating, defining story lines like intricate graphs of cohesive data. I can simply open my window and listen to the rain; or sit outside beneath the awning and read; or walk about beneath the waterfalls of the clouds. The rain is beautiful tonight, and just walking through it, stomping in puddles and listening to the gutters gurgle - it's enough. I need to remember to shut the window before sleep, or I'll wake with frost between my toes.