Envisioning Wisdom

I don't want these eyes, anymore. Why can't I see the earth as Mary Oliver: a gentle mother scooping me up in her skirts, revealing her pocketed lichens and seeds, flowers and trees, and cradling me to sleep. Or Walt Whitman, when a child asks, what is the grass, and he sees a flag, the uncut hair of graves, and knows the identity of grass may be beyond understanding. Give me the surrealist mind of Van Gogh (maybe not the sight. He probably had enough chemical poisoning he actually saw the sky like he painted), that I might see the heavens in surrealist splendor. Open my eyes, so even a cut like Sylvia Plath hath had, might reveal a pilgrim, redcoats, a turkey, or a Plath-ian macabre element.
I don't see the world like Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, or Mother Teresa, but I want my sight opened unto that world, tragic and devastating though it may be, for all I see sometimes is fog hovering over the little pond of my world, and a few concerned frogs croaking on lilypads. I want to see people's souls like orchestral movements - the violin is hurting and a bit bitter, playing a sharp minor movement in cut time; or joyous, dancing between dam-bursting crescendo and frenzied, whispering mezzo-piano, allegro allegro! I can't tell if a river is a dance, or a mountain a ballroom dress, or if the world might make less sense with ever metaphorical pass-around.

Wisdom?
Words aren't working, anymore, and perhaps never again
I forget, friends, what breathing is and isn't,
though a mist rises in my gorge, is this it?
a statue sits in the courtyard of a city street,
eyes scrunched shut, hands pressed tight, kneeling
he never opens his eyes, never sees,
but even he knows
visions exist so beautiful that, if truth hides
another more resplendent sight, I may be made blind -
shush, I shush, and shush again the silence
it bellows in my mind and a fearful fire rages
in appalling quiet
is this, Elijah, what the wind-passing-God -
oh God, she's so divine - is like?
My heart begs the mendicants for spiritual alms
and mother God plays the accordion
while urchin Jesus tugs at her drab dress and smiles
where is she -
there is something here so imperfectly clear,
you must let the mud in the water settle,
if you want to see your reflection -
(I want to see the sky)
I don't want these eyes anymore, I want yours

Superpowers

Eager. The word slides across my tongue with a bite, a bitter edge. Eee-ger. Am I so? Give me a choice and after a thousand days, an endless age, I will still prefer you speak, and I listen and harbor deep my sibylline dreams. I'm a ladybug on a leaf, all dainty, red fragility, and a whimsical wind might tear my spots from me. Meager, is me plus eager, and I'm a cradle in the tops of trees, rocking in the briskest of breezes. There are stories everywhere, and even the word silence has a sound, so listen. Eagerly.

Today, I became enthralled with superpowers. Those almost spiritual giftings the people around me possess that strike awe in me at every revelation: A's intuitive observation, M's memory of people, J's absurd recollection of stories read throughout life, and so on. I was listening to AH discuss his life's up and downs over these past few months, and afterwards I realized that if you patiently pay attention long enough, you can see the super in those you love. AH has a superpower as much as any of the rest of my friends, and the longer I engage with his words, wisdom and wit, the closer I draw to discovering how that gifting interacts with my life.
And then I got to thinking, what is my superpower? I don't have remarkable reading comprehension (J), hospitality, graciousness, and patience for people (S), memory magic (M), intuitive and observational prowess (A) - what do I have? I think I know, but as I've digested what I know over the past few days, I still can't help but believe my superpower seems, under the light I've exposed it, a wee bit sinister. But then, I'm partially left-handed, hmm?


Two fun little conversations today about birthdays:
1. (Ben-Matthew) - paraphrased:
B: "Will you agree to my birthday terms?
M: "Yes, of course. If you will agree to mine."
B: "As long as they don't contradict mine, sure. What are yours?"
M: "That I may get you some non-birthday gifts."
...

2. (Ben-AH) - paraphrased
B: *birthday explanation*
AH: "Ah, that's clever. I see what you did there."
B: "So do you understand?"
...after dinner....
AH: "So if I made you something, what sort of thing would you like?"
B:    :-( sewiouswy?

Birthday Requests

For those of you who enjoy purchasing gifts for events and celebrating people, I want to make it perfectly clear that I want nothing (read: AbSoLuTeLy NoThInG kthxbye) for my birthday. I've asked each of my friends if, for my birthday, I should be able to do what I wanted instead of what everyone else deemed appropriate for my birthday. Every single one of them agreed with the concept until I told them what I considered the ideal birthday, and then every single one of them told me no, I could not have the birthday I wanted. So thanks for that, friends.

For those of you curious folks, here is the birthday I wanted: a nice get-together with all of my dearest of friends where, instead of receiving gifts and getting treated to dinner or dessert or whatever, I treat each of my friends to such. I buy a nice group dinner and perhaps have cards or gifts for everyone as a thank-you for loving me and granting me the grace of kindness and love that got me here. It’s my celebration of life, and why should I not celebrate it by rejoicing in those pieces of my heart that keep me beating through life?

I already decided that I’m going to (craftily) follow through with a portion of this, but I doubt that I’ll be granted all of it. Birthday mischief.

So, first and foremost: I want to receive nothing for my birthday. Yes, you heard me – nothing. A group of people read this and think to themselves, that’s impossible. Everyone wants to receive something. These are the gift givers: C, Matthew, S?, A, errr… (are most of my best friends gift givers? What have I done to deserve this… and how are they still friends with me?)

If you are still considering buying me a gift, please don’t. Settle for a card, or a heartfelt letter. I can’t tell you how much I prefer your words, stories, time, lives, and smiles over your gifts. Whew, now no one is still considering gifts, right? (Please, pretty please?)

So what DO I want? I want to see as many of my dearest of friends as possible. The whole of February is birthday month, and I know you are busy. Me, too. So, text me and let's get coffee or tea, or let's play bananagrams, or we could grab dinner, or kick around a soccer ball, or go on a light, freezing hike, or we could go to powells - I don't even care, I want to see everyone. These are my birthday wishes (pleas).

stitches and stones

I cannot envision the elegance for you
a story fastening, cinching, and drawing through,
until its stitched closed like an eerie set of teeth
clenched until no space to breathe remains between
each tightly sewn up page -
a farce of sunlight aims its spotlight upon sparkling earth
gotcha, it beams, but no sun I know is so cold -
shivering, my mind stalks endless questions
with all the predatory excitement
of a lion amidst gazelle, an endless sea of queries,
sinking my teeth into each, I'm alarmed at my savagery -
but the book is closed, resting on my palms it's a potential energy
like a pendulum at its height, or a stone in the hand
this book is me, I'm just that stone
I fly, bounce over tense waters, sink and am borne
out to sea, I rise with the volcano, sculpt me into david
and the weeping pieta, I'm richer and poorer than I'll ever be,
I believe, and that sets me free from the stones on streets
ground into gravel for an eternity
- a nice sediment, don't you think? - do you?

dreams

In my dream, a headstone lies on a barrow hill, gently matted with the greenest of grasses. No rocks or stones or city-bones litter this land, before where I stand (beside the headstone). It's simple, not ornate, with a rounded top and squared-off sides, and the epitaph simply reads: here lies he who had not the bravery to believe, the heart to succeed, the courage to live or love or die, or the grace to give his life.
The ground was lightly tilled before the stone, and my favorite flowers grew there: snowdrops, bluebells, trilliums, and the purple button flowers whose name is lost to me. I bled, pained at this stark scene - is it my blood? whose blood is on my hands? why is there so much?
It is my dream, and I glance absently at my hands for days, wishing and wondering, but the sun stands still for me, and the flowers bloom most expectantly. Stooping down over the stone, I stroke lightly with my index finger the bottom of the stone. Standing back, the snowdrops seem to smile, and a few crimson roses bloom:
but he tried anyway.
Then I lay beside the bluebells and watched the stars rise, mine. Do I remember these?
My hands are clean.

rhetorical ramble saturday - the best sort of saturday

Sometimes, philosophy, theology, and rhetoric arguments remind me of conceptual physics. When in ninth grade, our school started the students with a novice physics course teaching bare-bones physics - enough to discover that: falling from high places will hurt; light occasionally behaves strangely; levers, pulleys, fulcrums, are magic devices capable of lifting gargantuan loads with a scarce a suggestion of effort (or, done poorly, can make it quite difficult to lift normal loads); and other trivial physics phenomena, . The trick to early physics is very clearly explained using a joke regarding physicists (a variation appeared in Big Bang Theory):

Milk production at a dairy farm was low, so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking for help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer "I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum."

Many concepts in physics are simply too advanced for introductory mathematics and learners. You receive an equation regarding gravity, but because of a need to simplify the calculations for simpler understanding and reproduction, you remove so many variables that the equation loses its comparison to reality. Sure, I can calculate how fast a ball will roll down a slope, barring friction, air resistance, changes in slope, temperature, with a perfectly round ball, and a drop that adds or subtracts no acceleration. 
But physics gets so much more complicated when trying to adhere to real rules or attempting to match reality. I believe sometimes the same is true of philosophical discussions, rhetorical arguments, and theology. It's a semantic battle where we argue without contemplating the relevance of so many factors: media influence on us and the material; cultural differences between past authors or philosophers and now, and/or a distance factor; context of passages temporally or literarily; the oblique, complicated, indefinite dilemma of engaging with the works of mankind and possible error; our own bias or a historical bias and so on. The list really could go on for quite some time, as these topics are more like plasma than a sword to grasp and swing at our rhetorical foes.
Really, it's rather impressive how many different interpretations of theology have produced divisions within our own body of Christ. And Christianity isn't alone in its denominational divisiveness, and neither is theology. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. The searching itself is necessary and asking questions is one of the great boons of sentience.  The problem arises when our belief systems harass or wound others, or the adherents of other opinions: when our beliefs dehumanize other individuals, or belittle their accomplishments or the fantastic truth of being created in the image of God (male and female). Whether you are a fundamentalist, calvinist, lutheran, catholic, eastern orthodox, baptist, nondenominational, quaker, agnostic, atheist, muslim, buddhist, jew, or just angsty, your belief system does not, and will never, grant you infallibility of character or knowledge.
So many times we misinterpret scripture, philosophical books, or simply things people say, and internalize those clumsy perceptions as axiomatic. With these fallacious perceptions we proceed to dehumanize women, those with different colors of skin, people based on their sexual tendencies, or even people based on their living locations.
I remember in american history class back in high school realizing something monstrous as we studied the civil war: both sides were praying to the same God for victory and moral justice. Each side was convinced in their morality and principles. But both sides prayed the same God would save them, delivering them from their foes, the believers on the other half of an imaginary line.
How could they not realize they were both so wrong? Or is that just my own bias shining through? Is that the only lens I can evaluate the world through, and how does my own lens obfuscate truth and detrimentally affect my outlook on people, places, philosophy, and the physics of belief?
But again and again I've been noticing how people pick out verses and wield them as rhetorical bludgeons of belief against their mighty foes and the obstacles of (their) truth. But how often are these "foes" and "obstacles" people, or are our brothers and sisters wounded in the "pursuit of theology and justice"? Real live, flesh-and-blood people for whom Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice?
What does it take to acquire intellectual humility, but still have the backbone for standing up for your beliefs?
Still, I believe it's not only silly, but detrimental to state our opinions and beliefs as objective truth, and attempt to brand them onto our fellows in the name of morality. We've discovered how far the ball will fly in a frictionless, vacuum without and resistances or temperature, but there are so many things unaccounted for. And you know, you may be correct - who knows? But without intellectual humility, compassion, love, and gentleness, the truth is a bludgeon, and a person backed into the corner of belief will fight or flee rather than believe.

Books and Things and Thoughts and Trees

I fear only fear. The whistling, wolfish winds of night; monsters steeped in shadows beneath beds; the many unknowns, shrouded beyond the veil and betwixt destiny's many folds; judgment and pain; breaking; distance and love; apathy and angst; failure and loss - the many catalysts of fear, pumping at the bellows of fright for a spark of fearful fire, with a malicious grin, do I fear these or what these bring?
Sometimes what appears inevitable branched from a stem of choice. You may choose boredom or adventure, though perhaps not always the adventures that arrive. You may choose good or evil, though not always the consequences of your actions. You may choose truth or deceit, love or hate, kindness or cruelty, hope or doubt. But sometimes, sometimes these are chosen for you, without you, over you, and your will gets trampled when you simply arrived at the wrong place during a stampede.
There are many doors, and the world isn't as dualistic as we'd like to believe. Pick one, pick some, and see where they lead.

I finished my last of four original Agatha Christie mysteries today (original meaning the first four I found). I bought another four, but first I think I'll be reading some novels that I've been meaning to read for a long while: "The Da Vinci Code" and "History of Love" and the rest of "The Story of Art" which I have not read since influenza ate my life. I think this is the year of Agatha Christie. There are roughly 80 novels that she has written, and my mother has notified me that she owns everything Agatha Christie has written. Easy game, easy life. They take roughly two or three hours to read each, so about 240 hours of reading. I also was told to read a couple of other books, so I probably won't get to Agatha Christie binge.
I also bought a Sue Grafton and am looking everywhere for a Josephine Tey (The Daughter of Time) and if you find it, I want to borrow it.

Clouds and Mysteries

How low and flimsy the clouds tonight
resting scarce above the grasping hillsides,
having been granted the treasure of flight
they squander it, curious at these ants who scurry
the endless seas of grass and streets below
how carefree they seem, when to us
they live so slow - we rush east, ever east
to our doom, crying and thundering as we go
with the stars in reach, why must we linger so
low and heavy above the vineyards and prairies -
what did we want? was it just more time?


I had something I wanted to write about tonight that excited me. And on the way home, I thought of something clever I could include, but somehow I managed to forget it completely by the time I had prepared for sleep. I think I'll read some Agatha Cristie instead.

Shhh

flickering candle, will you be my light
in the dark and distant places I hide?
night ever drags me through doors
of broken bone into lost, tragic rooms
made magically alive by a dying star
bleeding through the dusty window,
and my trailing fingers: dot, dot, drag,
draw two button holes and the button-bottom rim
smiling, the ashen glass; beaming, the candle
if you must be lost, might as well find yourself
lost at home,
asking questions of the loquacious faces in the walls:
do you understand how I forgot the world?
it was all there: hands, face, smiles
so you know, then, also
how the world flew away - do you?
it's difficult seeing another's world,
when your own grows too large before you



In a fantasy novel, were I a character, I think I may be the tragic villain. Not out of spite or anger at humanity, but a childishly competitive craving for knowledge. After countless hours in the library, I'd stumble upon some devilish volume no one had found for centuries, and I'd eagerly devour its pages. Already, my burgeoning magicks would have revealed themselves to me, and my cravings for continued prowess in conjuration and illusory tricks would entice me into a dangerous dive through terrible secrets.
It wouldn't be malevolent, believe me. But eventually, I'd conjure something that would consume me, or that I'd fallen too far to escape. Of course, it would have been prophesied long ago, and I'd be a perfect host for some evil djinn, having already mastered the many magicks of whatever world. In a strangely different universe, perhaps the hero finds me and drags me into the painful light of day, or a master discovers me and trains me in boring uses of the art without competitive aims. But I'm no Ged, and I'm no Kvothe, and I'm certainly no Harry Potter - I know where I stand. Maybe if I was fortunate, I'd be a Rincewind - at least then I'd be (Douglas Adams) mostly harmless.
I realized recently I wanted to write a novel that wasn't fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, or any of these, but actually non-fiction/essay. I started the other day, and I'm enjoying the process immensely. It will take me a while, perhaps, because I'll want to write it all down on paper before I transfer everything over to digital, but for once I'm actually really enjoying that process of conception and research.
I almost wish that I had chosen a more researchy major. Maybe I just wish I could be in school forever. I had a really great monday, all things considered. I think it will be a full week, but a pretty enjoyable one.

internal dishabille

It's easy for me, a perfectionist who has fallen fall short of such a standard, to lament my shortcomings. Perhaps it is easy for any motivated individual craving more ample opportunity, aptitude with this or that device, or more time. Would that I possessed a vaster intellect, like a Da Vinci, an Einstein, an Edison, or Tesla.
I glance at those phenomenal individuals surrounding me, those with a magnificent capacity for memory, comprehension, learning, teaching, writing, analysis, abstraction, discernment, sight, patience, pathos, faith, love, intelligence and all those attributes of creativity and social propensity that sometimes appear in my life like the moon, but disappear too readily when the sun brightly shines.
I was merely middling in high school, where discipline lacked and apathy reigned. I liked school, but I wasn't sharing my experience with anyone. I recognized my peers as intellectuals in my preppy high school, but didn't believe them truly worth competing against, and so I wasted a great deal of potential learning because my pride was too great.
Stories have always appealed to me, but something is lacking in mine. I think, perhaps, I cannot bear writing less magical stories than Carroll, or tales without the wit of Twain or Swift. Everything was always a comparison, and that's yet another of my greatest foibles. I've never been capable of writing my own stories, because those wouldn't be as magnificent as the stories of those titans of literature whose pieces have changed my life.
Settling is so difficult when magnificence is within grasp.
One of my favorite quotes is one by Neil Gaiman (obviously):
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.
...
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.
(Neil Gaiman)

It's an easy slippery slope to fall down. I get an eerie image of a funnel spider, and I'm at the lip of it's web, teetering. I can almost imagine the hungry monster waiting within this trap, 8-eyes of cunning waiting for the twitching strands of web. But Gaiman is wise. I'm none so intelligent as my father, many of my friends; I cannot read so fast as Matthew, nor comprehend as much as perhaps J, or gather in the details of creation as imaginatively as A, or bear up so strongly under pressure with such a pleasant smile as many of my friends.
I'm not, and (at the rate I'm going) may never be, an artist, poet, or musician, and I will never be able to produce a poem like Mary Oliver, Charles Simic or ee cummings, and my stories will not cradle the beating hearts of myth that Gaiman crafts, or the unbelievable intellect of a Dostoevsky, or the tragic, soul-wrenching cleverness of a Steinbeck story, but I still have stories - I do, I do. Some weeks it just doesn't seem like I can tell them.

I'm reading a bunch of Agatha Christie (I think I finished three this week and I'm started on my fourth). I love the way she develops character, and creates suspicion on every single person. It's true purity of person in the books is exceedingly rare, and those people you sometimes suspect even more, simply because the rest of the cast is hiding something, what haven't you discovered about them? She manipulates the reader so deftly that I'm consistently dazzled, just trying to arrange all of the characters and their relationships in my head. It's fantastic.

Genesis

With just two words, I dreamed. Stopless wind – Jorie Graham, how clever you are, and how artful your musings.  How are my own words so impotent, tiny in comparison?

Every now and again, an internal fever clutches at this gut, turning it once and again upon itself. I don’t know what it is, wanderlust?  It’s a drifting: buoyed up without an ocean, like a helium balloon that’s reached the zenith of flight, where the air is lighter, emptier, and cold crawls the spine.

Am I a star, staring down distantly at tiny humanity – ah, until the moon sidles in front of me and blinds my sight. Even so far, this exhausts me, the more for the daunting mess of my immobility. The greater the cloud of witnesses, the more silent this soul.

the first trees before seeds, grasses, and leaves

(was it green, the virgin earth?)

I gaze upon the lounging, white-beard god

reaching the sharp-nailed finger down to trace shapes in the sand

some noumenon exist in only dreams, I think

until Eve wrestles free from a dusty, drowsy man

(was there loneliness afore the sin, in paradiso?)

lost, frightfully lost amidst

Autumn, Eden’s final season, and a golden road

paved in a burning scimitar of leaves

how petty Cain, you are,

would that you’d seen eden

instead he killed for he was able

 ....

tbc

g-juni; lightheaded; inhibition; noumenos; not what I have not, but what with what I do; poirot

Eyes

Can you teach me to open my eyes?
In high school, someone affixed a horrific media image to their locker: a teenage girl's face with her eyes stitched shut with thick, barbed binds, and a tiny scalpel hovering on the right, ready to slice through the ties. The locker was near the front of the hall, so each passing into and out of the main hallway resulted in a brief glimpse of that image. I don't even remember the message, but on the scalpel were the words, "the truth". The truth about what? Smoking? Prostitution? Pornography? Abortion? Cultural propaganda?
Whatever the aim, the image has been seared into my memory, branded there so I mightn't forget.
Eyes are so vulnerable, so unprotected before this dangerous world. If I fall and bloody my knee, I'll be fine. If I scratch my eye...
And it's bad for me, worse. I can't stand watching people put contacts in, or using eye droplets, without my eyes watering in sympathetic misery. Eyes are magnificent and fragile things, and they make me nervous.
But I still want them open, even when the truth - the scalpel - terrifies me immensely.

Tell me how a fly sees, that I may understand - a blurry world of pieces, unfocused. And the bee, you ask? In ultraviolets transforming white clover into royalty. And what of the puppy, with her missing colors, or the hawk with sight piercing many miles. But I want to see inwardly, and the colors and motions of people as the live and love and breathe. I want to watch when your heart beats for what you believe and the turnings of your soul.
Can you help me to open my eyes?

Am I all cogs and wheels, gears and grinds?
This machine which every even unwinds, and winds
again through the night, is all of me, isn't it -
but I want to, long to believe in something beyond
grief and joy and disbelief, the mystery thereof
enticing me with nectar and honeyed wine
slipping into these toothed wheels -
sticky old clocks are a broken design -
so the bees buzz and pendulum keeps ticktock time
all cogs and wheels, when it's flowers I desired
it's only clocks I got,
and time is forever blind

Fingerprint Trails

There are a lot of questions and so few answers going around. Like a freezing night with a tiny blanket - do my toes freeze, or my face? My left side or my right? Or perhaps all of me can be covered, but poorly, with a ratty blanket, gnawed and thin with age. And it's so cold.

In my last several trips to visit my family, I noticed something interesting. Sitting outside the rooms where each family member sits, when they were alone, I heard nothing. But the instant I moved and made sounds in the hallway, down the stairs, past the rooms, they would start talking. Not necessarily to me, though sometimes, but more frequently just tiny snippets out loud. Why? Why would Phil suddenly find it necessary to say to himself, "This next scene is my favorite" when watching a movie by himself? Or Sam suddenly remark, "this guy isn't doing any of the right things, so we're going to lose soon if I don't play this next portion right" when no one else is in the room as he plays his game? Why would my dad suddenly comment on how fantastic a portion of mythbusters is - who is he talking to? - or mom laugh and exclaim how much she loves this show?

No one is around - who are these questions for?

Me. Me?

You see, when I wasn't making any noise, there was silence. But when I moved, suddenly someone is listening, someone is there. They don't know who, but each one of those people wants whoever it is to be interested, to be intrigued enough with the question to saunter in and be enchanted with his or her life. Not even to answer the questions, or statements, whatever they may be, but to invest their being in a response. I have no answers, but sometimes I can be, and be in the right place, and that is sufficient. And I hope that when the time comes and I'm spouting off cries for help or calls for assurance, that someone is there, someone does respond, and drops in to offer a little human contact.

Fingers leave oil prints on freezing glass, like foot tracks of a beast who went not far. Is it better, then, this glass, which brittle breaks into countless shards, than steely metals which when bent do bend, and so ceaselessly endure the pain? It's not me who asks - no, not me - but the fire-breasted robin in the trees and the japanese sparrowhawk as he wheels above the leaves, in air vaster than mountains and even seas. Questions without greener pasture or silky answers, warm as summer eve; questions at whose gravity the beast falters and falls, after but ten steps of dreams. When the weight of the world rests heavily, so heavily you cannot breathe, it's love or flee, struggle or believe, and under certain lights, shattered glass coruscates, bright as those endless stars.

Mystery

Although there are three (living) boy brothers in my family (Phil, Sam and I), Sam is so much younger, he's almost an only child. When I was growing up, I was the youngest, not the middle, and Phil and I were the dynamic duo. Phil was stubborn, opinionated, honest, possessed a fiery temper, enjoyed the outdoors, and wasn't overly competitive in nature.

I was competitive, shy to the point of silence, determined, watchful, not incredibly stubborn, dishonest, a rule-follower, and not incredibly opinionated, and I also enjoyed the outdoors. What a pair we made. My parents always said that when something went wrong, Phil would look the guilty party, and be innocent, and I would appear innocent, but would actually be the guilty party. Cookies gone? Phil denies it and turns red, and I deny it and poker-face my dishonesty through. Not my greatest of attributes: I was a good liar.

What has changed, really?

I've always loved mysteries. When I was young, I watched Perry Mason, Matlock, Diagnosis Murder (when it wasn't too scary), Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, and a couple other mystery shows with my mother. Growing older, my favorite show is now Psych (though I rarely watch television) and Sherlock (BBC production, though the movies are great fun as well), and even occasionally Monk. Phil and I used to watch Scooby Doo religiously, and I even enjoyed watching the few other famous mystery shows (Hercule Poirot, which it turns out is written by Agatha Christie, as well as Colombo). 

I lovelove mystery.

Now I'm reading Agatha Christie for the first time and I've realized that though I love mystery, I've almost never really read it. Sure, I read some of the Nancy Drew, some of the Hardy Boys, all of the Boxcar Children and a couple of the other famous children's mystery series, but I never continued that love into my teen years. I wish I had. Agatha Christie is fantastic, truly engrossing. 

One of the reasons that I enjoy reading many different genres of literature is that I believe there is something of merit in each author, in every story and creative process: art, history, poetry, music, physics, fantasy, science, fiction, non-fiction and so on. I want to study them all so that I can reproduce them all, but is that even possible? I'm going to run out of time in my life, I think, before I even get close to accomplishing all I'd wish to accomplish. If only I had Sam's brains with my motivation and more time (or if I didn't have to worry about making money ever again - wouldn't that be something? Someone be my patron)

Unfortunately, my work isn't spectacular enough to merit patronage at this juncture, or publishing. Eventually, perhaps, though I've long since realized it isn't the perfection of the work that sells, but the drive of the story (see Hunger Games or Twilight). But who knows what will happen; life's a mystery, God works in mysterious ways, and the future is its own enigmatic destination.

A little Smaug in the soul to keep things warm

Beyond the smokestacks and stacked streets
past paper producing factories
are urbania's outstretched talons reaching,
smog clouds grasping, slashing,
I suggest you move along
into the villages whose chimneys
are the children of billowing cities
and houses are headstones of simplicity,
yonder, as thin-leaf maples bleed into pines
and hops and grapevines leap over fine lines
like freeze-frame fish soaring
(into air they can't breathe,
but must bear, to eat, do you wonder
if it is not always so?) -
deeper than the rabbit hole
the sun has fallen,
with rays longer than the heart's harp strings
beyond and past and moving on, yonder
you must soldier on
into long deserted memories
where the beast nests deep his home
a dragon of self-deceit toasts a drink
salud, to health - but whose?
the answer smolders in its eyes


(Guys, I think I'm addicted to Agatha Christie. What happened?)
I was going to write, but I just want to find out what happens in this mystery!

Maybe I'm Batman

I'm living a caped masquerade sometimes. With AS, I watched several of the batman movies, and Batman is an interesting character. Aside from his brawling, his main two heroic powers aren't super, or mystical, but fall under the categories of capitalism and fear. Batman's greatest strengths lie in his utility of darkness to instill horror in Gotham's criminal scene (by the way, who would live in Gotham? It's a nightmare), and his expansive monetary powers from his alternate identity allow him access to advanced weaponry and machinery.
But Batman, like almost every masked crusader (bar Ironman), guards his alternate identity very carefully. Sometimes I think I'm like a masked villain (joker, green goblin, vader) with an alternate, hidden identity, or like I've got two masked identities, and no Bruce Wayne at all. In half my identity, I pretend goodness, I masquerade blessings. The other identity exists only to express the first is a lie, and understand that the true nature of my soul isn't generous, patient, kind, or loving, but selfish, ugly, cruel, unjust, judgmental, ill, and broken. This mask is nearly my true face, I think, while the other is the face I crave. I'm no less Janus than a Batman villain.
Perhaps, in my optimistic moments, I believe that significant investment in my benevolent half might effect a transformative change, eliminating my unholy villainy. But I don't, can't, trust these inklings, as I'm more a realist than an optimist, always. And every time I share kind words, lend a listening ear, encourage the fragile-hearted, or when I bless others with giving of myself or gifts, I inwardly cringe at my illusion of being, this deceptive lie I'm living - do they know? Is this me?
But masks are strange things. Wear one long enough and you'll find you cannot remove it so easily, or, perhaps, where the mask ends and face begins isn't so simply seen. Can so many deceptions make a truth? No, but perhaps an elaborate deception can conceive a reality, or plant a seed. Sometimes, even in rocky soil, a seed may sprout.


falling back in time when wine
was once a green and grasping vine
clambering over lines and rolling fields
those sweet sugar grapes
whose tart and solemn question
is only this:
how long will the stomping go on
the crushing weight and
hurt and pain laboriously
birthing the bitter whine
of sacrificial angst
until this grounding down
bursts forth the first
pass over in crimson
the first taste of heaven

Clouds - Hello Oregon

tell me true the topology of clouds
not the south, but the upper drifts the sun sees
and kneads across the heavens with winds
glacial-slow, an eventual avalanche forming valleys
cliffs and caves - a geography most will miss
staring so steadily at the ground
what phantom-hand nimbus molds these,
sculpting light into shapes
the dreams of mountains, rivers, oceans
flooding the heavens, where the wispy cirrus
are a curious circus of foam floating up high -
a shadow world whose transience races
from the ocean to the mountains
splashing against their sides with a percussive sigh
where the clouds cry with gold-eye sun shining by,
a friend on one side embraces only tears,
the other paints the rainbow
...


It's been a week since my last entry, and I've missed writing.  I visited my great friends A and S, and it was impractical (and silly) to blog every night - though I did bring my journal - and so I just enjoyed my time with them as much as possible without bringing the baggage of writing regimen into my visit. I had a lovely stay, and I love and miss them very much, though it's good to be back. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt and getting on a plane and flying up into the blue sky and back down through the glum grey and the musical rain that races in little white chips across the airplane windows, and seeing my friends again (JS - yous guys the best), and enjoying a meal and Sherlock - yes, I miss my friends in California and a piece of my love is with them always, but this is home, and the northwest is where my heart would have me.

wip: overflowing cup

A cup overflowing spills no less
than a broken, joyful tears
are still tears,
though they may be for hoping
the forest chimes sing, and I
missed their merry melody
for though I've no dogs to walk
nor farm,
no well-worn path past beaten down
beneath well-shod feet, nor birds
whose graceful swan-song flies
in vees out of a perfect pond -
village carillon are caroling the yuletide
winter themes I missed,
for I've no friends in sleds
or horse-drawn carriage,
I'm fever-red imagining the weather where
the city rests
honking its klaxon horn
now I've turned back home,
this is not my dream: hopeless faces
walking long-dead places,
is it the season or the eyes
that bring death to the skies?
I pray it's not me
town, city, and countryside
all pass by, with nothing
to see the sea calls to me, but it is pages that bleed
between my hands, out of my side
a sacrifice to silence I'll suffer myself
while the clattering carriages canter
beside, outside this life





sometimes you write and really don't like it, and hit the publish button anyway.... (because it's bedtime)

Palindrome Tragedy

How long, was it
long enough?
when the fevered sunset muses
on two great tragedies:
a palindromic life,
and the death of a salesman -
each astonishingly thin and trite
when you're blind

a false wind rifles shells
through the lonely-limbed trees,
where night swallows land in song -
birds or dusk both neither

this night is every other
and all the stars rest
heavily on this night, distinctly
as uniquely as the next and first -
it's a flower, a violet with its violent
petals, vibrant with love,
and not a racecar,
or a dozen dimes, spinning
one just like the other,
they fall like leaves,
i wanted

a billion stars binary blinking
and i'm thinking behind stormy clouds
a decision - maybe every decision - is conceived



I'm feeling a lot better already. I'm able to count my symptoms on one hand, which is a vast improvement. In fact, I'm mainly left with a stubborn cough and a runny nose (light), and I've gotten a (read: one) REM cycle on each of my last two nights. I think my body needed to start sleeping again, and I'm thankful for all the prayers that were answered in those two nights of rest.
I had actually begun to fear the night, considering it a time of unrest and tired, emptiness. I couldn't do anything but sleep, and I couldn't sleep. Joseph Heller could have written a ridiculous satire about such a conundrum. Now, I'm still slightly wary about turning off my lights and crawling beneath the covers. I feel as though I'm expecting some trick, and the fever and additional symptoms will suddenly shout, "aha!" flip over my mattress and hop on top of me while I struggle to breathe smashed beneath the springs, feverish and beaten. No one should have to be afraid of going to sleep.

New Year

Happy New Year.
This flu is stopping me in my tracks, making it increasingly difficult to do anything. But it can't stop me forever - I won't let it - and I'm already struggling to stamp the fire of this infection out and leave it with the ashes of the year past and the wind of memories. Right now, however, I feel like tiny someone's are setting off New Year's fireworks in my lungs, and they occasionally allow the fires to spread through the rest of my body. It's a cold coal miracle... the ember glows as the frozen nose of Rudolph, searing my everything with ice.

As I drove to Oregon today, I thought of an interesting piece to write on apologetics that I don't want to forget, though I cannot write it now. In fact, I'm long overdue for some sleep, even if I'm a bit too feverish for any actual sleeping yet. Hopefully tonight I can get some sleep, because I know I'll need it. Until such time as I receive it, though, I'll pray for:
AS: travel
B: father sick
M: Engaged! Whatt!
JS: sick, getting sicker?
P: sick, work after hiatus
P: new job!
S: ugly wisdom teeth removal
S: getting ill
T: sick
?: Distant friends

Hopefully, I'll be better prepared to write and think tomorrow.