Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Marching Ants - Inspired by Dave.

Today was one of those days so sunny and beautiful, you must enjoy every last minute of it, even if it means forgetting to eat dinner - and lunch. Okay, so that was unwise, but shall we say that sun was enjoyed? It was. And as nice as today was, tomorrow is supposed to be sunnier, with clouds rolling in this weekend just in time for.... my beach trip. Lovely. I'm actually excited for the clouds rolling in over the breakers and the beach - I'm certain that will be beautiful. But I'll want it warmer when the winds start blowing, I'm sure.

top of a building, lay of the land
is a mound of a million marching ants
without a queen, and though
the world is prone beneath my feet,
I've no dominion, and no conviction,
only a fear of falling, knowing
the land would swallow me
unknowing, like a flightless bird
why won't they flutter properly, langston?
why did I never learn, even in dreams,
how to flap my wings

when I walk, xee jogs, as I jog, xee runs
running behind, xee flies, and I leap into the sky
riding the updrafts until xee becomes sound
and vrooms. Then I close my eyes and hum,
becoming the music that sings the earth along,
but I'm falling further and farther behind,
when finally xee becomes light, a meteor
taking my wishes and shooting for the moon
blazing an arc of light across the sky
and in a single moment, xee's gone
and now I'm standing still, wondering at the moon

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Conductivity and, well... bears

A while back I had a dream where I'd developed a superpower. I was pretty secretive about my power, not because of any real fear of discovery for the sake of those I loved (spiderman style), but more because my ability was a wee bit embarrassing. Somehow, I'd even managed a nemesis, and one whose power was actually quite impressive.
His power was fire, and one would think that in a dualistic world, I'd probably have some really incredible water powers, able to extinguish his flames. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, my superpower was the capacity to transform into an oil slick.
I didn't have any real edge on my nemesis, or on anyone for that matter. A random nobody starts robbing a bank, and what can I do? Try and slip him up on his way out? A clever superhero might sabotage his vehicle somehow, using my magical oil powers, but really I don't think my dream self had that kind of intellectual prowess.
In truth, at the first sign of my nemesis I turned into an oil slick and slid away into the ocean.  I remember getting carried away by the current, and finding myself deep at sea, but so enamored of the endless stars, I'd never swim for land when I saw it (how do oil slicks see? magic). I didn't have to eat, because my oily self wasn't hungry, or even sleepy. So I just watched the stars, and formed a thin residue, a patina of filth on the ocean.
Recently, I started contemplating a new story about a couple of characters with reasonable superpowers, but they had a couple of huge negatives: 1, they can only tell one other person 2, if they tell anyone else, they lose the power 3, they don't know who that person is 4, their superpowers isolate them, even though no one else knows. As I started writing it, I got sidetracked and have so far written very little of the actual story, and mostly just meandered aimlessly through CS Lewis land between worlds.


I wonder if there was a grand mistake, a baddie of a bungle when someone composed the components. Ah, started the probable trainwreck of thought, usually only the finest dust, but for this one, a different strategy: sulfur. The bones will be small, the sinews crumbling, the fingers brittle like chalk. The stench, why of course! That’s unique, I think, a truly remarkable obstacle to overcome.
Eyes like a dormant volcano, hair a muddy residue, words the phantom fumarole leaking malodors from the earth indigestion.
The others, why, gold, silver and copper were more conducive for the normal, and what advantages the coinage persons had! But this blunder? Even lightning couldn’t electrocute a mouse held in the hands of sulfur – the capacitance is too high a demand. So here it is, without charge, without current to follow, merely a stench and yellow streak, a bubbly piece of stone riddled with holes like a petrified moon-rock cheese. That one science project a third-grader did alone, without help from the home, and it’s a moldy sandwich left from an old lunch, covered in mustard.
Mustard, like sulfur without energy, melted into mush.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. ~ Walden - Thoreau

A fish struggled against the current. As he watched, its scales glistened and burned with prismatic sheen, like opal armor in plaited sheets. Mighty it swam, coiling and springing each muscle in a taught waveform – the tenacity of the ocean drove it upstream, to die, to gift life.
                It leapt free from the dragging rapids, up a single terrace of stony steps, the tiny falls only an arm’s length beneath the arch of the bridge.
                Only a few more stairs to go.
                El was tempted to scramble down to his knees and collect the fish from the air, depositing it at the top of the cascading stair, where the water smoothed and streamed gently – but he was enthralled. The scene seemed metaphorical, almost mythical.

                     Life in us is like the water in a river.

                The water pushed the fish down a rung, and El felt his spirit slump, and time outside the river stooped to a crawl: the doe frozen nibbling at the grass, her fawns unmoving beneath her thin-limbed legs; the birds halted in spring song; the air empty of wind. Still the fish battled, soaring back up each small waterfall, resting in an eddy, and then surging again at the next obstacle, until only one remained.
                El held his breath. You can do it.
                The dedicated life is the life worth living. You must give with your whole heart.

                The fish burst into motion, swiveling its form like a snake, a lightning bolt of zigzag motion, a flash of color and then a thwip into the air, leaving its own breath behind in a beautiful struggle. A great paw swung from nowhere, smacking the fish out of the air and onto the bridge.
                Elian fell backwards in surprise with a yelp, falling onto his rump, and found himself staring into the volcano-ember eyes of a great, black bear, large as anything he’d ever seen.
                This had better be a dream.
                Come away, O human child!
                To the waters and the wild                With a faery, hand in hand,                For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

                The fish flopped and spasmed on the dry bridge planks, until the bear violently grabbed it in its teeth and slapped it against the railing.
                Wherever this metaphor is taking me, I don’t appreciate it anymore, thought El.
                As if in response, the bear smiled, a great crimson grin as wide as the wink of the moon, El imagined; as wide as the rim of the world, he suspected. All he saw was teeth.




 (Yeats, Annie Dillard, Thoreau)

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Wordless Romanticism

everything just so, curtains closed
candles nipping at even's toes
tablecloth smooth as spilled milk
frozen at it falls -
food cooling on the stove
the wine plays with shadows...
just so, the bare-bones fractured
between dreary and romance
with words, as everything is arranged,
rearranged until worries are furrowed in
until all that is, is undone -
then fuss and muss
'til the moment's gone out of time,
and it's time to love or die trying,
grasping now the mystery
you've somehow always known -
the night now over, over and gone;
food cold, candles fizzled down,
love imperfectly or not at all
and such problems are never solved
in the smoothing of the linen cloth,
the music, the dim, dancing light,
or the vittles cold on the hearth
with no second, no time
or opportunity for words to work
alone, along with the silence,
fingers hover above an empty world
of keys never touched


I can't tell what it is about this one that I don't appreciate. Basically, I was having trouble writing, and, well, I wrote this instead of what I was intending to write. This is what I had been working on :
----

El woke under a tree, golden light sifting between the oaken boughs. Time had passed on, sometime. His clothes were soaked through, though the ground around him was dry enough, and that he'd managed to sleep was as mysterious as his current location.
Rolling hills stretched out at his ankles, gilded in the shafts of dawn light.
   A child said, What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full 
       hands;
   How could I answer the child? ... I do not know what it 
       is anymore than he.

A thin river carved a sinuous line in the valley of two knolls, burning its crystalline path. A brittle bridge arched over the rushing waters, the leaves dripped with the remainder of the night's deluge, the grasses thick with prismatic condensation, the butterfly with wet wings on the stone, not ready, yet, to fly.
    A butterfly with frozen wings, the early bird swooping over me; it's fly or die, and my paper lift flutters ineffectually. Out of time, yet, what have I ever lost by dying?

It was a dream; it must be a dream.
A doe nibbled at the grasses, her fawns lapping at the stream banks, thirsty as the morning trees whispering in the breeze. Wildflowers dotted the hillsides, punctuating every grassland question in colorful reply. The cotton clouds were in whimsy, wandering across the heavens with wonder, with the birds beneath singing, bringing in the spring and fashioning it into beds.
    Every morning / the world / is created. / under the orange / sticks of the sun / the heaped / ashes of the night / turn into leaves again.

El stood, shaking free the swamp attached to his being; as it fell, the droplets stopped and started in staccato, time juddering as a dying machine. The birds, too, stuttered in a broken song, and the doe raised her head in slow segments.
The world is breaking around me, in a whimper.

The bridge - a small dirt path wound around the hills, leading to the rickety bridge. El began walking.
    tread softly because you tread on my dreams

------

this is part of the free-writing I was doing this afternoon that I got stuck on.
(pieces of quotes used from Mary Oliver: Morning Poem, TS Eliot: The Hollow Men, Rumi, Robert Bly: Rumi Translation, Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, Yeats)







Saturday, April 26, 2014

Inkblot Sky

Yesterday, for soccer, the sky cleared up and the sun shone through for the two hours it took to run around and wear ourselves out. The instant I got back on the road, the rain returned. It was a simple thing, but I'm thankful God broke through the clouds long enough for sunlight to warm us as we ran, and the sunset purpling, mantling the clouds along the rim of the world was a splendid end to my day. 
When the sun finally set, the clouds formed a thin stratus over the heavens, an inkblot in which my mind perceived all sorts of strange symbols: a beating heart, a raven, Edgar, even a cask; a pearl, a pony, John; a whale Herman, and the sea; an old man rowing a boat, Ernest; shadows on the wall, Plato; a pond, peaceful and deep, Henry David; but mostly I saw a giant moth, eternal and subsuming all the light above and below in its cavernous wingspan, but at the edges of its expanse, I saw the dark-light-blue twilight whose colors melted my heart like a tropical ocean at night - so clear and pure and perfect.


there is a dancing of hearts at night
and a singing of stars
and though try the clouds might
they cannot eliminate
what's essentially ours

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Writ in Water

every morning, who stitches the clouds together,
whether the sun rises or the dawn looks bleak,
long since bleached of color, dishwater blue,
draining down from the frothy soap heavens
and onto my journal, where I write, blurring the words
obscuring the lines between lines and lies
and who would lie to a diary, unless the skies
are liquid azure and the sun melted gold -
and even when
rivers from melted snow from falling water
lifted from the sea split from the streams
passed along the rivers - even in redundancy
water is never drudgery, but sometimes currents
submerge into waters cold and dark
or distant ponds of algae and forest swans
gather wings, lilies, and frogs in a silent, monastic
hymn of morning, and if no one is around to listen
I think the music streams into the seas of our souls
without a doubt, John, all life is writ in water


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Lavender Chamomile Candle

everything is new and old, in equal disproportions. the finicky lavender-chamomile candle flickers like a beagle barking at bear big as a mountain, and we're telling stories in the shapes of tongues of flames and the ghosts of night define us. the tragic, the comic, the epic and romantic intertwine, commingling like the flea and bloody wine, Mr. Donne, a tragic affair, to be sure. dining pigs standing on twin legs and wallowing in egotistical mire, muddied delights of desire and defiance - who are we beneath divinity, but parched paper in a fire. chance, a lucky prayer, as an ant walking between the legs of a thousand spiders, so help me God.
Now, let's pretend time is a telephone wire, all I hear is static from the other end. but the candle shivers to no avail - what does it know?

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Weather of Spring - Why

the weather waffles quicker than
thoughts through my mind
smiles then cries in toxic haste
intolerable beauty,
poignant and suggestive smoke
that appear as the roofs of cartoon trees
without their knees - flamingo clouds,
where are your feet?
sobbing reply; do they defend
the sun, or hide its light
thou shalt not covet, or cover it,
they shelter me in lies
how politic, pedantic, pregnant
with foolishness is our sky -
or perhaps it only reflects in the sea
of eyes below
again, I'll never know
anything, unless I find my own feet
instead of woolgathering
beneath the sodden cotton clouds
wondering whether, when, and why
spring resurrected into rain when
we just remembered sunlight
but still it's lovely

Monday, April 21, 2014

Fear - People - Children

I tell myself a lot of things; really, I'm a shockingly good companion for myself. Truths and lies and by-the-bys, why, there's nothing I won't soliloquy. I dialogue and diatribe, digest and deny, and pages and pages of diary define such directionless drivels. And nowhere I go, quickly, faster than you know.
Yesterday, while failing rather spectacularly (the result wasn't spectacular, only the difference between the result and reality) at drawing, a rather adorable boy (aged roughly four), came scampering across a wide field towards me. I was seated upon a bench, gazing into the orchards of hazelnuts and across a grassy field, and the boy, breathless and excited, came scampering all the way across the field directly towards me.
His sisters, aged probably fifteen, saw where he was heading (me) and frantically began chasing him, racing to recapture the renegade child - but they were too far behind, and the boy reached my little bench and plopped down beside me.
"I'm tiiiiiiiired" he said to no one in particular, breathless, and slumping down in adorable fashion.
I smiled and said he'd run a long way and so fast! He was quite the little runner.
By this time, his sisters had arrived, and with many apologies, they took the boy away as quickly as possible, hastening him to another bench, though he'd been no bother whatsoever.
I remember hearing a story from a russian missionary when I was a child that I've never quite let go. They said it was not unusual for a neighbor in their small town to knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning, 1am, 3am, or even a random stranger. In these instances, the owner of the household would rush to the door, and welcome the stranger into their house, offering them food and hospitality. Often, the missionary said, they would not even lock the doors, and would always be prepared with drink and food, even to make a feast in the middle of the night for someone they did not know.
This hospitality and kindness is so dissonant with the american individualism and paranoia, but it's beautiful, too. I always cherished that level of kindness and consideration, and that level of community. In America, we're trained right from the moment we can understand that strangers are not to be trusted. The little boy wasn't old enough, but his sisters were well conditioned to be wary of strangers, and to hasten his separation from me - am I creepy or frightening? Dear Lord, I hope not - and shepherded him away from me in a frenetic string of apology.
There was fear.
A couple of days ago, a little boy was looking over the railing of his apartment complex while his mother hung laundry below. When I walked past on the sidewalk, the little boy began waving with a mighty wiggle, shaking his whole body in his excitement to say hello.
"Hello! Hello! Hello!" he called out to me excitedly.
I turned and waved at him. "Hi! Hello!" and gave him a broad smile.
The boy, likely also four, or maybe three years of age, turned to his mother and said, "Mother, the stranger said hi! Is that okay?"
It bothered me a bit, this fright.
There are many things that are more worthy of fear (spiders, wasps, hookworms, spilt juice), but we indoctrinate our children right from the get-go to fear every unfamiliar face. And the saddest part of it all is, sometimes, a lot of times, I can't blame them. Watching the news, it sometimes seems like  only a matter of time before something monstrous shows up on the front porch. Why can't people be good?

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Stories; Superpowers; Time

I was writing a story about a superhero today, because of an odd dream that I had, and suddenly it angled into an existential piece. The original dream was simply about someone who could stop time (standard stuff) and used it for trying to shoulder the burdens of the entire world. Time-stopping is a bit of a mechanism in the story, because how does the character feel when time is stopped? And as I fleshed out the scientific mumbo-jumbo behind an irrational superpower, I discovered how lonely superpowers can be.
A lot of superheroes can't function as such in normal society as an average person. Without an alter ego, Superman's celebrity and heroic status wouldn't allow him a normal job like a reporter - how could superman waltz up to a story and expect not to suddenly be the focus of attention - instead of asking questions, he'd be pestered with questions, requests, and awe that would make impossible a casual identity. And does Superman want to be identified as Superman? Or Clark Kent?
There are a few superheroes that sidestep the identity crisis, simply by making no distinction between superhero and personal life (Ironman being the classic example), but many choose a separation of person and vigilante. Of course, there are many reasons for having a secret identity, such as protecting those you love and preventing villains from finding you, but it also seems like an easy way of maintaining a normal connection with society.
In the story I was writing, the character (Elian) realizes through a traumatic experience that he can stop time. He is given the power by some sort of djinni, and told that the instant he shares his secret with anyone, he will lose his power. He can still smell, touch, hear, see, or taste, but there is no wind, smells do not travel far, he can only hear his footsteps and his own motions, if he touches someone, they don't feel it at stop-time speeds, they just feel a normal touch after he resumes time. At first, the superpower has a novelty effect: he can read books without taking up any time, or do tedious tasks without wasting time - it tires him to stop time for too long (possibly - just thought maybe there would be a downside - this is all theory crafting); then he starts wondering about the advantages of the superpower: he could be a superhero, a vigilante. At first, he considers doing so, but struggles finding any banks to stop robberies at (the future), any gunfights to put an end to. He doesn't have a police scanner, and doesn't want to sit around watching the news for events to solve - slowly realizes he gets bored with wasted time very easily.
He realizes he can sit and paint a skyline before the sunsets, even if it takes him hours; he can painstakingly describe a scene on paper while is sits there stagnant before him; he can deliberate for hours on the correct thing to say in any situation, and evaluate possible scenarios without having to make rash decisions.
But he realizes that his power isolates him. Not in quite the same fashion as some of the other superheroes, but he can't share his secret with anyone for fear of losing his power, and he can't share the time he spends with time stopped either. He hears people say, "I wish this moment could last forever" or, "this is so beautiful, I could sit here and look at this forever" and these thoughts depress him, because he can, but whenever he does, everyone else is stuck. He cannot share these moments with anyone, and they acquire a sort of stagnancy.

In the original dream, there were actually two characters. They found a djinni under a bridge, and in exchange for something, the djinni offered them each a superpower of their choosing, (though he reserved the power of veto regarding their choices) and if either of them revealed their superpower, they would lose it (except to each other). The one chose to stop time, the other chose the superpower of being able to shoulder the burden of any other being at any time (feelings like pain, stress, etc).
Both struggled with not being able to tell, and both managed their difficulty in different ways - though they could tell each other, they drifted apart and came together through their lives as friends because of their differences.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Stars & Thunkings

The stars have no patience for city lights and smoggy skylines, crowded streets and a world of street lamps. A few bully their way through the hazy shine of smoky brightness, the smudge of fluorescence blocking out the sky, and these stalwart few weakly murmur the words of stars. But far away from all the noise the celestial orbs twinkle with mischievous guile, for they've tricked the verse and we so susceptible.

I'm wordless tonight, and time thickens, it thunkins, it thunkmms until thinking and mumbles and time coagulate into a jumbled mess, a scab of life that I can't stop picking at, itching until it bleeds out again, slows, and clots in persistent recursion. I'm a spinning record past the tracks, a looping program, a train, a drudge employee, a migratory bird, following the same preprogrammed ruts ad aeturnum.

I've been starting into writing stories again, which is probably one of the reasons I'm writing less and also writing less poetry here. I don't really enjoy posting pieces of things here unless they are parts I particularly like, or are things I want to work remember for a later point - or if they are stories that I created stream of consciousness while blogging. But I'm excited, because it has been a while since I've written stories, and getting back into the swing of things feels really magical, as though each of the pieces of writing I've been working on are fitting together, and the puzzle-pieces of writing are beginning to make more and more sense the way I see it.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Gibberibberibberish

I’ve come too late to so long a road. The clock a tocking time-bomb in my head, an incessant chipmunk in a box, how he mocks the time and sucks it dry with every tic - lifeblood leached bone dry. The succubus smirking in the corner traces lascivious lines along the sphinx’s chin, and shirks my eyes – the more masks I hide behind, oh, how the nakedness grows. And that, the cuckoo stuck out on time’s tongue coos, is her cue.
On the left, an ash, on the right, a false cedar, and like that bird I don’t belong. I do not long for that I cannot comprehend. How might I crave that which lay beyond my ken? Yet, you long for it passionately, for me, despite my naiveté. There is a worth, a hidden currency, you must advertise until I buy everything you believe, an entire world. Until it’s no longer I you wish to see, to complete, but an inner unease. You are no confidant, no comrade in arms, but a politician, a solicitor, a hawker, an evangelist of personal priority. Can you understand I’m fine without your stamp of happiness superimposed over me?
I traded the knowing of eden for that of vulnerability. A minotaur reads an artist’s empty book, tabula rose, full of blank red pages ; Cyclops and Odin discover parallax, while Mary is a little lamb with Circe ; Loki starts a charity, and Ophelia and Virginia Woolf discuss Poseidon’s poetry ; Pluto and Descartes prattle on most amiably, while Plato makes finger-shapes into monster shadows on the walls. And I sip at my steaming tea, contemplating all this sophistry, and ask if everything always crashes like a dam, bursting out so violently, or whether revolution can happen quietly, while the Christ-child sleeps.

 Am I one of them? Oh, most definitely - my heart is a revolutionary, and my soul a sleeping dragon, and my mind is a child, holding tight onto a balloon string and rubbing the bellies of clouds, tipping a hat at the mountains, and scoffing at the smallness of everything.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

It would have been sufficient

Passover is my favorite holy day of the year, by a substantial margin: the story of the Exodus, the providence of God, the analogy to Christ’s own sacrifice – contemplating a whole series of miracles like a divine Great Escape. During one portion of the Haggadah, the leader goes through a series of “If God had only … but not” statements, to which everyone replies “Dayenu” or “it would have been sufficient”.
I wish I had this graceful a response to God’s involvement in my life. More often than not, my response is “are you serious? Why this any not that?” But if there is one great takeaway from Judaism I’ve gleaned in the past years, it is that God is God. If God had only rescued the Israelites from Egypt, but not judged them – it would have been sufficient. It would have been enough.
If God had only brought me to this point, but not blessed me in numerous ways – it would have been sufficient. If God had only blessed me with friends, family, but not a great job – it would have been sufficient.
And what have I been passed over from this year? Every year, this is something I’ve considered. Some years, it was a difficult school, or frustration at my inability to communicate or socialize properly, or a lack of faith, or simply a sense of lacking direction. And these things don’t necessarily disappear, eradicated in a moment in the ritual of wine, bitterness, festivity, medication, sanctification, and companionship. But it’s as if the bitterness has been lifted from me, transformed. My cup was not as full, for each of the pains endured, but the angel of death will pass over me – the sacrifice has been made.



threshold beneath the orchard leaves,
columns of trees and barrow mounds,
white blossoms, a secret garden
of lost and found where shadows hide
and sunlight's golden threads tie errant hearts
down in this labyrinthine trap of branches -
can you smell the sandalwood, 
the cedar, the hazelnuts before the fletching
and sharpened arrowhead make a nest
in your chest and it hurts like love
or death or splinters would

Monday, April 14, 2014

Pesach

Because, of course, the combination of horseradish, wine, and dense meats that have cycled into my gut are, in some fashion, alien, I'm struggling to sleep - here I am writing. When at all possible, I avoid wine, because it tastes bitter, and I despise bitterness (beer, wine, chocolate, coffee, etc). So this holiday hits me worse than most, due to its ceaseless influx of wine into my baby belly, and the violent partaking of bitter herb which ravages my sinuses and mauls my stomach.
Anything that tastes this bad should be outlawed, right? But so should slavery, so it is the weakest of analogies, and grants some tiny, infinitesimal perspective on the horror that is slavery, and the memory of redemption, and its cost.
But I'm glad of friends, feasts, and remembrance, even of events that transpired long before my birth, long before my parent's parent's births.  There is something fascinating about legacy, and the Jewish legacy in particular, and I feel like I'm reclining with Yeshua at the table, right there beside Thomas, breaking unrisen bread while my stomach is churns with a precognizant warning of the terrors of the impending night. And I'm sitting here in my comfortable world saying, oh Lord oh Lord, please take this cup from me, and I'm not even about to be crucified. I'm actually praying about each literal cup.
And now I'm tipsy tipsy from tippling too much and being in the weight class of puppies, and sleep is evasive. I would watch the moon, but I fear being locked out; I would count sheep, but my stomach wants no mention of sheep at this juncture, thank-you-very-much, though it was delicious.
And so I just lie here, staring at the ceiling lit by the passing cars in the street beneath, wondering whether my stomach is the mortar and my diaphragm the pestle, or what sort of animal is bleating in my gut, complaining about not being passed over. But sleep is not coming.

Thank you friends, for coming. And happy passover to everyone. Remember.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Expectations

Is life supposed to be a series of consecutively diminishing expectations? 

Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.
Isaiah 40:31

At first, you are flying, and believe the world is endless; then running, across the valleys and mountains and beneath the tall trees; and eventually, your legs are weak, but you walk beside the still waters in pastures green. Yet, it seems like I'm dreaming of flying when my wings have failed me, and I imagine running as I'm crawling on my stomach through the mud, and eventually I'm forced into dwindling returns with each outlook.
Is that okay?
It frustrates and disheartens me whenever I begin thinking: "maybe I should surrender and settle for..." or "perhaps I don't have what it takes after all." These are self-deprecative and destructive, even though of late they seem more and more honest. If I've set my expectations too high, why can I not simply raise the bar of motivation to match? Or will my being into greater capacity, with practice and diligence? And I trytrytry but it's a neat string-sequence of failures, like hoping for 100%, expecting 95%, and getting a 40%. The chasm is embarrassingly broad - was I such a fool? Did I have no chance from the get-go? 
And everywhere this follows me, like a bully I’ve installed inside my own head: you’ll not succeed, so give up; you’re not worth that much, so lessen your beliefs; stop pretending there’s hope, and just surrender into redundancy.
That’s the tragedy I fight every day, the Death of a Salesman tragedy. It’s the darkest tragedy I’ve ever read, to me, because it’s so prevalent, and I’m stricken. I’ll never suffer the Oedipus Rex tragedy, or the Romeo and Juliet tragedy, or Antigone or any of the famous, classic tragedies. No, mine is Biff’s, and Willy’s tragedy:

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?
(He tries to make Willy face him, but Willy pulls away and moves to the left.)
WILLY (with hatred, threateningly): The door of your life is wide open!
BIFF: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!

I’m a dime a dozen. When I submit entries into a competition, and don’t win: I’m a dime a dozen; when I compete in a race, and finish not first, or play a game and fail to achieve the best of me – I’m just a dime a dozen. Every day, I play a dangerous romance with cultural norms, as I devil-dance around acceptance, accomplishment, and what our world classifies as success, and then balance on the dichotomy of difference, Godliness, faithfulness, love, hope, and personal achievement while maintaining a semblance of personality and individuality that leaves me unique instead of a stamp of humanity spewed out of a mold of media.
Our culture churns out empty personalities and cultural failures on an assembly line of couches as fast as any fast-food chain produces faux-food and fattens our grossly gluttonous society. Whatever it is, we want it fast, now, and without any effort.
So why is it that when I put an effort in, it still seems like I cannot raise my head about the waves?
I’m not waving, but drowning. I fail to understand how and why the mass appeal is so fascinated with progressively inferior productivity, as long as it satisfies some banal craving we’ve been told we have. Is it just me to desperately need something exceptional, and to refuse to threaten my standards with lesser things because that would mean I’ve fallen into the same desperate hell the rest of society has chosen? Am I being foolish again? Tell me if it’s so.
I’m not a loaded cannon or a charged revolutionary – I’m no rumbling volcano or pin-less grenade. But that doesn’t mean I’m without dreams. Just because I bury, drown, box, hide, and secrete away my hopes doesn’t lessen them, or disintegrate the hurt that rises like a fire in the belly with each failure. Sagely fellows always say how valuable failure is, but that’s only true in light of some eventual success.
I simply cannot fail ad aeturnum and hope to maintain a healthy resolve. But I must. I contemplate my life chances and wonder if it is all luck of the draw. It’s not talent that defines greatness anymore, but fortune with a pinch of caliber.
Don’t ask me to surrender my passion, my hope, my dreams in exchange for yours. I won’t have it. I always wanted this road, and sometimes the swiftest way for dreams to lose their allure thus.
Thus did my siblings and I learn one of the hard lessons of life: the best way to strip the allure and dreaminess from a lifelong dream is, very often, simply to have it come true.
David James Duncan – The Brother’s K

And with every passing day I’m striking out. I don’t remember how long I had intended to do so, but it seems so short and so long now. Hopefully, with scars, scrapes, scabs, and bleeding, gaping wounds, I’ll eventually crawl my way into a world where I’m worth a quarter, or at least a score of pennies. I’ve a long path to go for a million, but I’ve no other path I’d rather follow than that of dreams, love, and hope.



 And it's weeks where every morning I think: this is the best day of my life, and every night I pray for a rest before another such day. I'm a boy who's flown too high, with melting wings. But at least for the time I'm free. And for the hundred-thousandth night in a row, I fall asleep as a dime a dozen.


Friday, April 11, 2014

Land Octopus

I found a nice knoll this afternoon, worth a stroll and a quiet picnic, and some grass on which to journal. I didn't, the sky's allure was simply intoxicating. Drunk as the bees buzzing in the clusters of dandelions, I just smiled. I dreamed the stars in the sky were falling, and I grew frustrated at every wish I missed, until I realized the stars were streaking down the sky and crashing into my garden, burning entire rows of carefully cultivated crops.
I watched as the barrage from the heavens first decimated, then obliterated every last pea, squash, pepper, tomato, or herb I'd watered, fertilized, and meticulously weeded for weeks, months. Everything was a charred wreck, a blackened, smoldering mess that bubbled like a marshmallow fallen off the stick.
Full of anger, I rushed into the center of the garden, kicking the coals and snatching them up in my fists. It burned, but I was determined to show my ferocity, my fire, was the hotter.
Let go of the coals
Open your fists, and let go of the coals
Open your fists, anger will not solve this, and let go of the coals
Slowly, painfully, I released the coals and, kicking aside the ash that was my garden, I buried each one, the burning remnants of stars. There were no longer any stars in the sky - it was an empty heavens, a blank, black canvas.
When I woke the next morning, the coals had sprouted into flowers of all colors and heights, towering as tall as sunflowers, or huddled close like daisies, and they bloomed in turquoise, citrine, opal, sapphire, peridot, ruby, pearl, emerald, diamond, aquamarine, and garnet. Each color was arranged in rows and formed an intricate squarish-spiral inwards, towards a central flower with a brilliant amethyst purple for each petal and a golden heart. It was tall, as tall as I, and I felt it was staring into me as I stared at it.


I'm an octopus on land, and I can't feel my toes. I want to run and play, but my legs have me anchored here, and I don't have any bones. Dip your pen into my soul and ink will run, thick as blood, and stain your fingers black. So graceful in water, so fragile on land. I'll be braying like a moose in a tree until you free me stuck though I be by my own sucking immobility.


Thursday, April 10, 2014

Oh how the fat lady sings

Deaf, dumb, blind, amnosia, anhedonia - while bawling my eyes out on the last hundred pages of my most recent book-reading slog-fest (I kept pulling a Matthew and reading other books), I couldn't help but appreciate the magical prowess of this author in captivating, capturing my senses and rooting them so deeply in the lives of the characters that I was one of the family, fictionalized though they are.
I'm sitting here, reading by lamplight, praying that the heroes punch the enemies in the face, and then repenting of my cruelty when one of the characters whispers to his brother: "open your fists and let go of the coals."
I'm weeping now.
Then, as one character is duped, all are desperately seeking love, and each follows an unusual path back into redemptive family, I find myself wanting to start all over again, to traverse the same hurts, pains, angers, fights, and eruptions, because I know my heart will break only the more when I find the redemption, hope, and enduring family that rises from the ashes of despair.
L and A: this is your fault.



I feel like my emotional insides have been pressure-washed out clear through me, and I'm not sure whether I'm clean, or raw, or even functional at this juncture, only that I was a vessel through which something brilliant was poured, and right now I feel not clean, but cleaned out - perhaps even struck out. There is, to be certain, a distinct out-ness which permeates my being, which I pray will be partially remedied and stupid-relieved by sleep. Oh, how the fat lady sings, and it is the swan song of my evening, beautiful and sorrowful and bright.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Climber of trees

she climbs in the trees again
hooting with glee and then
wondering
how high this pine will go -
ah, but not high enough for she
who would climb into the moon,
beyond, if the beanstalk allow -
she's climbing in the trees again,
and though the wind and weight
of the world drag her down,
down,
why, she's upward bound
and no stopping -
branches snap as she ascends to seize
the end from whence she'll start anon:
the tallest mount or moon beneath
her feet before she never bends



// I just can't get this one right

Monday, April 7, 2014

Sleepless Dreams

Last night, after hours of what I might be hesitant to call sleep, I finally lapsed into a light snooze near dawn's light. And with apple-juice chemicals seeping down my veins, I dreamed, and the semi-lucid nature of this dream elucidated the unsteady proximity of this sleep to wakefulness. Yet, I dreamed.
I was in a manor, full of family, relatives, friends. It was one of those manses you imagine when reading nobler exemplars of british literature, with chestnut trees lining the approach, a marble fountain in back, a high hedge around the lot, and all fashion of incredible landscaping that comes from a permanent staff of gardeners and absurd amounts of money. 
Of course, none of this catches the eye nearly as surely as the mansion itself, with Doric columns showing off a regal, daunting archway and gaudy threshold. The house itself is Victorian, with sash windows and the daunting facade that is nearly as much fortress as house.  
Inside, though, that is where I was.
There was a great hall, somewhere in the upstairs of the mansion, with a rounded ceiling arched along a great length. Everywhere on the walls were hangings that split between an eido-japanese and shinto artistic genre and a historical, european lineage of wall-hangings that described a pedigree back to creation in intricately painted portraits. 
The great hall was filled with people, prepared for a banquet. Food was lavishly arrayed about the long, central table, and there was eating and drinking to rival the romans or the vikings in their heyday.  But I was not particularly hungry, and craved only to explore the household.
It was a strange house. Every room centered on the main dining hall, which was the only room in the house not to touch the outer wall. The house was old, and every room contained a door to a small balcony, specific to that room, where you could overlook the grounds. Unfortunately, the constructions for these was crumbling, and I went room to room, trying to find one on which I could stand without it crumbling beneath my feet. As I stood upon each, I found myself scrambling for purchase and frantically leaping backwards into the house for safety, as the stone crumbled down into the garden.
In one room, a number of children were jumping up and down on a mattress, and laughing with glee. But there were dangerous objects clustered around the base of the mattress: knives, pins, nails, and so I shouted for the children to stop, though they would not listen. I rushed into the room and swept away all of the dangerous items, and joined the children in hopping on the mattress for a time. The mattress grew, and was large as the entire room, and the low gravity the room acquired allowed for some fancy leaping shenanigans.
Shortly thereafter, I realized someone was looking for me, someone I knew. But I knew if they found me, I'd have to explain why I left, why I was wandering - so I leapt out of the mansion and into the garden, and hid beneath a bench, behind a raised bed of flowers. 
Ash trees surrounded my hiding spot, and the scent of flowers rushed to my head like ambrosia. I heard the person who was looking for me pass, and I scrambled out of my hiding place to explore the garden. There were flowers everywhere, of every color and type. I began searching for one, a very particular flower that grew in no other place than this mansion, and found it.
It was the most sought after flower in the entirety of the world: purple and short, with petals soft as a rose, and as brilliant a violet as royalty ever wore. The stem is tiny, as short as a daisy, so the flower rides close to the ground, and the center of the flower blossom was liquid gold, like honey, and tasted sweeter.
If you plucked a flower, it would shrivel and die within a minute, the purple petals turning ashen and burning away like chaff.
But they possessed a magical allure, a siren-call that incited anyone who found them to immediately pluck them, and give them to the one you most cherished. I plucked one, hoping the same, and found how quickly those dreams turned to ash in my hands.
At this time, everyone was helping clean up from the feast, and I knew I should help. So I wandered back inside and was told to help empty giant bowls of water. So I kept taking bowls from the kitchen into the garden, and watering the flowers with the unused water.

Then I woke up.




Sunday, April 6, 2014

Sunday of Dandelions

Today was sunshine and dandelions, and drawing things that looked like neither. Spring pries winter's fingers from its strangle-hold; flowers and souls blossom to life; starlings nest in the roof slats; grass grows; dogwoods, cherry-blossoms, and plums delight in fragrance and alight with startling colors; and shorts, sun-skirts, light jackets, and the outdoors replace time spent huddling inside under mountains of blankets. It's remembering-the-world season.
I've missed it, the world.

 The world rocks, Ahuva, shudders and burns, quaking beneath the thumping knees of the heavens. Aviva sprawls, she shakes her slippered feet, pops neatly from her cocoon, but your wings are not ready, dear, and the sun cries anxiously.
Ahuva, dance the puddles down the city streets hurry, beloved, time is not, nor will ever be...
lasting, everlasting,  as we seem, so smell the flowers and the trees while racing along every city street, fly while holding hands
and breath, remember everything. for nigh the time arrives to say goodbye, Ahuva, don't wait for me, you're everything when you believe - and I'll surrender everything to see
how far you'll fly




jumbled-diction-stuff-day

Some days, like each of these, I've a magnificent golden mane, and others I'm all seeds, tattered and translucent, fragile as the breeze. I'll travel, but there will be pieces of me dispatched most violently to God-knows-where. Golden-mane-me makes a fine tea, but with these white plumes, people pluck me violently with questions thrown into the wind. Life is not all sunshine and daisies, I exclaim to the tiny white flowers surrounding me, and they natter on irreverently. The tulips understand, praying with delicacy - they understand timing and set the stage most elegantly.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Morning at night

the soft sleeves of morning
form dewdrops of sorrow,
or the golden smiles of dandelions,
around the hazelnut orchards -
stay awhile, it's too beautiful
to leave, lie beneath the boughs -
wind slippers my toes
fog my fuzzy pantaloons
tell no truths I cannot bear -
flower faerie rings,
the magic of dreams girds me,
and below the cherry blossoms,
below the plums, beside rose bushes,
from the dust I rise to dawn
good morning








Thursday, April 3, 2014

Writ in fire - amnesia

Where is the fire behind the pen, the blazing sunlight flaring from this nib? Will my writing resurrect in sacred embers, penning these dying words from phoenix feathers? Oh Keats, I understand, what does everyone want from me? I'm inscribing these in flames, leaving fiery lanes of diction known only to me, and soon on and on forever. There's a furnace beneath my feet, and it's hell on my heels. I fear the diving deep, knowing it could be the last thing, my carving letters into the sea soon washed away. Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird! I wish you not half in love with easeful death, nor consign to fate your final breath, for it is not on the end we dwell, no, nor on misery does happiness hold her sway.
It's a gambit; this all was. I notice footsteps in the dust around this head of mine, and they race around in obvious disdain of geometrical similitude, and though they neither exit nor enter, arrive nor leave, I never see whose feet these footsteps belong to. But I love whoever it is, for the delicate rhythm and the stubborn willingness to disturb the dust and dance the dream, I love despite the hurt. If you fall in love with the volcano, you are bound to be burned, and if the sea, why, what ripples can you make in such a thing?


Blind woke up, and he was. Around him, capsules similar to the one in which he lay also swiveled open with a dry, ratcheting noise, and Blind attempted to orient himself in the room based on the sounds, but his head pounded and his mind eked along like an ice floe.
He remembered nothing.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Story Notes

The first thing he knew was light, and the second was life. Thousands of pinpricks of it, scuttling along invisible pathways and organic circuitry. Third was sound, an echoing growl of sound, modulated and pitched with intent, though such was lost on his ears. There was a whistle, a slamming, an irritating buzz, and the voice emanating from a dark figure by the wall, whose face the orange tip of a cigar dimly lit.
The fourth sensation, as the shadow-person leaning against the wall approached and inserted a thin needle into his arm, was pain, though a dull, sharp pain. A soft touch was the fifth, a hand brushing back his hair, and another hovering hand shone a bright light into his eyes. Behind the hand was a pair of light-blue eyes, kind and concerned, and this was the sixth.
The seventh knowing, as the two figures retreated, shutting him in the darkness behind, was nothing he could name, but hurt worse than the first pain, and there were no eyes to console him.

** deceit cannot recall identity? or blind? both


cryo-1



Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Boromir-Ben

It's such a mess, life, poignant and beautiful. Everyone with divergent expectations, dreams, hopes, with so many jagged edges to so intricate a puzzle - are there any neat connections? I know you feel it, the longing, and mine's another, and hers and his and theirs, like a mess of tangled tentacles in a mosh pit of jellyfish. Infinite monkeys with typewriters never produce hamlet, countless kittens with yarn never knit blankets. A billion humans, why, we're the worse by half.
It's that moment on the road, watching the tire burst and the oncoming vehicle swerve, that eternal second that never-always ends. You've poised your entire self upon a spinning dime, and the whirling wind has already decided on a deterministic destiny, heads or tails. It is no fifty-fifty, but a hundred-zero, always, but you are blind, and rushing into the other lane. Dreams do not make you invincible, only vulnerable, but you must strive for them anyway.
And I sit, contemplating whether I should even try to untie the knots of poisoned tentacles, or simply snip the tips and truncate so many hopes like unlucky strings at the end of the roll. It would be easy if all these were mine, but no decision is an island, either, but a continent of seaweed struggling to stay afloat, and intertwined.
Will you hate me with a knee-jerk response, once this cruelty strikes your spine?
Sometimes, you must drive off a cliff to protect another's life. I heard today a person say that you must always look out first for the needs of numero uno. No, I think. In the end I believe my needs are the final ones in line, in a stack ever increasing in size.
It's a sisyphean task, and one I'd never ask you for. I love, and it's not enough, I fight, and fall further behind, I care, and who knows - because the eyes are always turned aside.  I'm Boromir - how desperately I want to provide restoration and healing for all I know and love, and how foolish I have become in my plight. Sometimes, you must let the onus pass.