Diagrammed Life

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/07/diagrammed-life/

You plot out your dreams, and layer schemes until every possible point is mapped, webbed, diagrammed into a sunset-reality with wildflower hills rolling into a swooping valley and a whispering stream, and the evergreens and weeping willows glow in the aging sunlight and the quaking aspens have burst into an autumn gold – and then the sky falls, and lightning cracks like a whip. The storm canter-claps across the heavens and hail hammers into the country-side like the hoofs of a great and dreadful beast.

But the sun dawns again, and the flattened flowers rise and bloom, and the grasses hold up their heads and answer Whitman’s question so sagely and wise that the stream is almost silent, pensive over the stones. Time is just this, no? Where the raging stream widens and slows, then stumbles into a slope and races and falls and flies into a waiting pool, where it sits patiently, and ambles towards the ocean as a drunken bloke, speeding up and slowing as the earth leads.

I’ve lost track of time. I came into this past month realizing my intentionality, my process, and knowing the sequence of my life as surely as a machine. My instructions were already lined up in the processor, awaiting the machine to stamp each tape deck, nod at the instructions, and calculate the function. But now what?

Providence, divine, has sewn wings onto my arms while I sleep, and the wind now carries me aloft, and I’ve no control, little control, over the breeze that sails my over the trees. A first house, a first girlfriend, a first time for many responsibilities, and life is overwhelmingly beautiful, but overwhelming. These are not, I’ve discovered, exclusive in the slightest. I think they resonate so intricately that they cascade, rebound, and reverberate until the echoes resound loudly in the ears of time.

Even Especially a Child

 http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/even-especially-a-child/

Even especially a child can change the world: the boy with stockings, suspenders, and too-big shoes and the lass with frilled dress, mother’s necklace, whistling a new-found tune. Now, when the stars are too big for solemn hearts and the moon, Olwen, larger than any room in the manse of my soul, I contemplate the negative space of shadow, and is that light? And does the lunar night illumine dust? Or twilight angels falling as broken stars, meteorite well-stones wishing for right and wrong to clarify in the ripples of falling fire?

Is the number of questions without answer, divided by the number with, irrational or just am I? Do the heavens mock, or is the gravitas pulling my own satire back into my own eyes?

We’re at the blurred lines of time, and I’m still running my stopwatch to see if moments are faster than always, but I’ll wait until the end for conclusive evidence. If this is a race, I’m wishing I hadn’t tied my shoes together, and cinched the blindfold so tight, but with the heavens as my guide I may be all right.

I’ve not gotten sufficient sleep lately. I had a few words stuck in my head, and as I stared at the cloudy sky they rumbled around my skull like thunder, but without the lightning strike cracking through the fogginess of creativity. So there is a tiny bit of cleverness and a lot of finding myself squinting my eyes at every word I write, wondering whether it could be worse, and whether focusing on that aspect is actually driving me in that direction. We’ll see, but for now there are questions whose answers I might only find once I pass the starting line. I thinking I’ve only managed to knot my shoes further, and maybe I must progress barefoot, for spiritual travel is sanctified ground sometimes.

Clouded Time

does it hurt to be so alive, rent open wide, so wide, the entire earth crashes inside, swallowed  in the hole of thee? your heart, its unbelievable size and pathetic gravity, remembers everything in dime-sized eternity.
Life seems to be a window, and I’m not sure how to work the latch. The weather outside oscillates between pleasant and frightful, and is often obscured by night. Am I glancing outside or back at my reflection? Figures pass by, quietly, and the wind rustles the screen. What can I offer the lifelike trees, wandering so close, so distantly?
Only a week until my little brother graduates high school, three weeks until the last of my greatest friends in this world are married (barring brothers), five weeks until I possibly own a house, eight weeks until I live only in that house. There is too much going on. I want to make slow, crazy decisions, like a predator, like a warrior, like a grandfather cat walking through the underbrush, like the tentative steps of the moon over the pool, as the clouds hanging overhead. I saw them each one, caught as daguerreotype frames on a vast, panoramic imax of life: the zeppelin emerging from flames; the mittened hand, reaching through snow; the shark with remora, gliding the ocean heavens; the dragon with arched spine and folded wings, all curves and sweeping motion as the ancient Chinese worm; the archipelago of turtles and ducks; cotton candy piled up and shredded by the coyote cloud.
This, too, is life, and every moment reminds me it’s time to crawl through the window and enter the sun, soak in the elephant sky, and run wherever the wind guides.

Spinning on a Dime; Tea Time

Spinning on a dime, friends, our tiny-toothed edges augmenting our rotation with wobbles. Love used to be a function of chemistry, a mingling of elementary romance; now it’s interdisciplinary, a little messy geometry mixed with theatre. Oh, such a masquerade, with such interesting shapes, distinctions made on circles and squares. Sit back, mon ami, soon drama and entertainment will ensue, and an interlude before the comic end, or tragic, depending on your view.

Today, I went on a long walk. The sun was out and the weather sat perfectly at eighty. Is it sad that only as I went outside I put shorts on? I’m always cold: how is that? The orchards smelled of newness and spring, and I walked past roses, hydrangeas, poppies, daisies, geraniums, nasturtiums, and dozens of flowers whose names I don’t know. Will someone tell me the names of flowers, please? I want to know the names of all of the flowers, and their stories, but I have no one to tell me.

I wrote this as a bit of silly poetry, and though it’s a tad lousy, it was fun. Someday, I’ll even edit things like this and they won’t be so completely ugly. I actually cringed a bit re-reading it, but figured any changes I made tonight would only be undone tomorrow if I look at it again. For now, here it is: Tea Time.

The Mad Hatter another tea party holds:

Psyche arrives in formal attire,

Bacchus, bearing a barrel of beer,

Pan appears in a flourish, theatrical,

piping a tune; a boy shuffles in tow.

Ah, tea time, as always, the Hatter sighs,

but Bacchus pays no mind, and starts

on wine, while Pan guffaws.

Psyche’s eyes are lost with love,

beautiful, sad, and demure.

The boy, however, with thoughtful eyes

asks what is the matter with tea time?

Nothing’s wrong, but it is ever the matter,

the Mad Hatter brusquely replies,

and never time for love or wine -

Bacchus, though, begged to differ.

What, my boy, begins the Hatter,

have a faun, a madman, a god,

woman and boy in common?

Drunkenness, remarks Bacchus.

Why yes, mused the faun, it is

what a tea party is for.

Love, mumbles Psyche.

Everything else, as this god, is a boor.

Bacchus, asinine, paid her no mind.

Only he is here, the rest are who

here is for, said the faun.

Ah, things have come to a tee,

The Hatter clapped with glee.

What may we do you for?

I don’t know, what do you mean?

Asks the boy, sipping his tea.
Mean? Mad, perhaps, not mean.

Psyche answered: a gift each

will bring, to guide you

to wherever it is you dream.

Bacchus began with a blessing:

be not an ass, revel and sing,

who knows what tomorrow may bring?

Psyche gave the boy a golden apple.

Choose what your heart desires

and pay dearly the cost for love.

Pan piped a ditty and passed over

a song and flower; remember

my boy, the earth and the water,

and the path the moon takes over sea.

The Mad Hatter, last, asked:

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

The boy, for this, had no answer.

And so it is with love, boy,

The impossible is possible if

You believe impossible things.

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/05/spinning-on-a-dime-tea-time/

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.

Inundated

Inundated

seas outside,
who requests this moat, tonight?

Once a house, a boat

soaring on an inland sea.

In undated lands, we

flow over, overflow

low mountains, clouds, drifting

below the flood, below

gold-leafed mud, shining

tiny cities, water-whelmed;

rising, the ocean breathes

salty dreams alkaline,

brine bitter as wine clams

over hearts tonight

locked behind window, pains

bleed over the sill, puddle

in your eyes, faltering

hands fumble, still

desperately distinct.

all your answers lie

in my heart tonight.

Where you are in always

time, there is, love

never sleeps, ever

dreams.

Story Writing Mode = Less Blogging I Suppose

Well, what is there? Again and again they ask questions of time, and I've no response. Time is slippery as shadows, as sure as blood in water - stop it, slow, if you may, you'll only gain bloodied hands. And you? Share your heart and I'll shed mine. Emotions, doctor, is it cancer then, this fire within? Only burning sin, killing your insides out. May it never continue so, but on I go, on I go, my breadbin into hell. What gains he who sells his very soul for a pittance of fool's gold? Nothing.
Please, distance as wind to wind, opposite walls of solitary prison. I can hear you think but not breathe, love but not sing, dream but not speak. If we shed these skins and skim the sky, fly not so high, dear, we're on Icarus wings. If must we fly so high, take me, and let's fall as one. How, how such wide eyes, Eckleburg? Green, then? Green as the american dream? Or dollars? Or icy green, on pine tree leaves, frozen in the frost of morning?

I cheated today. I finished some of my first chapter of NaNoWriMo. I didn't want the restriction of NaNoWriMo, but wanted the motivation. I longed to write a story, but not within the exclusive bounds of November, and I got a bit overexcited for the beginning of this one. This one is also different in that I'm co-authoring the endeavor. I'm already feeling the strain on my other writing and reading. It can't be helped, can it? Time to return to story writing mode...

Life is a broken-winged bird ~ Hughes

Today was Maya Angelou day. As a poet (though I'm not one yet), I appreciate the visceral roots from which her poetry derives. She's fiery, angry, ardent, singing, and screaming loud as a caged bird for the plight of her people and others similarly caged. Other times, she's passionate with the power of love.

the free bird thinks of another breeze / and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

but a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams 

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream 

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing

we grow despite the horror that we feed on our own tomorrow

poignant as rolled eyes, sad as summer parasols in a hurricane

I also read some more cummings. I can understand the countless years of study and practice of poetry. I'm impatient, so I'm reading hundreds, maybe a thousand poems a day (slight embellishment. I think I actually read ~200-300 today at least), and although I rarely linger long on any single one, for analysis or careful dissection, just now, I'm learning what I sought.

Today, I noticed a trend of birdsong in my reading of poetry. Maya Angelou frequently references birdsong as a motif of freedom; cummings in a similar fashion; Wendell Berry often as a naturalistic leaning or as a chord in the agrarian song-life; Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson all include birdsong in quite a number of their poems as well, from what I recall. Those in the city view it as freedom from it; though in the country as their lot and pride - an exemplar of their chosen life. Sometimes, it is even contrasted with more obnoxious bird calls, such as the crows cawing. 

What to write today?

You cannot drop what's never held. The sleep-silent window mirrors - if the future, it won't tell - but leaves insipid tastes. The past's present, present's past, and heaven's hammer strikes the tolling bell, persistent as the permanence of time. Truly, when gazing into the sun, shadows fall behind. Upon a vitrine, framed to dusty fate, does it still beat? Mornings, when eastern sun streaks through yon window, even abandoned glass shines, reflecting grainy lines, beating light against the wall. Then, scraping open this grumpy display, wiping away the grime of time, you're perched on the mantle now, heart of mine, or under. Pulse with the rhythm of fire. 

The beginning of writing stories is upon me. I'm not sure to what capacity this writing, here, will be accomplished in the coming month. But we'll see. I made a bet with myself, so I shall continue. I always win, and lose, against myself. This will be no different. Back to reading Maya Angelou to close the night. 

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

~ Langston Hughes

Books, Names, Things

I've encompassed myself with literature. I'm double stacking my bookshelves because, until I own a house, it makes little sense buying more bookcases without anywhere worth putting them. Actually, this is one of my favorite and least favorite aspects of Oregon. Powells is awesome. For the last several weekends, I've invested a little time in visiting the Beaverton branch and studying, reading, researching. Powells is a magnificent beast, though beast it is. With such a marvelous new and used bookstore stamping its colossal footprint into the valley, how can smaller bookstores compete? Countless customers flood into the Portland Powells every day, and, though quantitatively less, Beaverton Powells exhibits the same draw (without the intimidating city aspects of parking and entry/exit).
But in the surrounding cities and towns, the quantity and quality of everyday bookstores feels almost non-existent. This is one of the draws of Washington. Half-Price Books was nearly a second home for me, and the Redmond and Sammamish libraries offered vast collections of books for perusal, and an incredible system for inter-library requests in the greater King County region (Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and a whole host of great libraries besides - though Seattle eventually decided to be lame). Where I am situated in Oregon, counties are bordering on all sides, and each neighboring town seems to claim its own library system. It makes for a miserable me when wanting access to all the vastness of literature immediately.

Erhem. Anyway...

I've little time left. November approaches in tumultuous bounds and my frozen fingers fret over story strings, but my rhythm's off-beat and my prose's pitch poorly sings - my muse's gut requires replacing and a fine-tuned vacation. The only reliable aspect is the metronome clicking in my head, reminding me that time ticks forward inexorably. It's the names, there are too many. Characters dreaming and flying in season, capturing a magic and the mystery of life unto their own. My creativity insufficiently breathes their dusty ink into life. Then the trees: the sugar maples and japanese hedge, the round-lobed leaves of oaks and gyro-copter seeds of maples, the rust hues of cedar and the deceptive camouflage of shaking aspens among the birch - how can I ever remember their names, Old Man Willow?
The flowers, oh so many flowers. Gallant sunflowers, fragile snowdrops, intrepid trilliums, dichotomous roses, delicate daises, gentle germaniums and fragrant violets, lurid and voluptuous tulips, splayed lilies. Would that I might taste with my toes like the butterflies, and see in so many colors that the flowers are a forest, a coral sea of colorful creativity, where each flower paints an invitation to sensory ecstasy.  Would I were a bumbling bee, capturing the world in ultraviolet, where whites are blues and nectar ambrosia is a visually euphoric entreaty of blooming delicacy.
And what of the stars stories and names? Of Cassiopeia vainly boasting in her chair, or ursa major, glancing at his cousins below, bafflingly bereft of tail, or Orion shaking his shield and sword, or bow, and hunting the with the likes of Nimrod. The wind shivers and drags us into the mountains whose names I cannot recall, their silvery peaks smiling as the gods teeth, as a fiery chariot drags that unnamed beacon across the blue vastness of the heavens.
I cannot even remember the animals: the black-tailed deer, the sly bobcat, the eager raccoon, sly as a burglar, the mountain jay and the vexatious starlings tunneling into roof slats, the cougar, the crafty coyote, the industrious beaver, the scampering squirrel, the chattering chipmunks, praying with their hands cutely clasped, the mantis, praying a different prayer of predatory efficiency, the dragonfly with rainbow wings.
Hopefully, if nothing else, I can remember the name of wisdom.

Adventures are coming, distant and many, and I'll be seeking the intricate naming of many things: the touch-smell of the grey wolves racing through alpine woods, the graceful wings of the nighttime sky on the tops of mountains, the coinage of the sun on the steppe, the shifting of the seas of crimson sands.
I'm full of half-thoughts, now and always.

City

I'm a country child. I was born with a backyard, a garden, a large maple tree and a collection of birch trees, and all the space for running around an energetic boy needs. Eventually, we moved across the country, from mid-west chills and humid heats into precipitation and less cloying heat. We lived in a crazy house with an epic backyard, my favorite backyard of all time. We had a deck on stilts with stairs leading onto a hill that sloped down towards a creek. Then the backyard sloped steeply up towards a rickety wooden fence with planks missing (perfect for scampering out of the backyard as a shortcut to the high school soccer fields) The tiny creek was a boy's wonder: frogs, tiny waterfalls, chemical-orange colors, fizzing waters, eddies, salamanders, the smallest of fish, water-skippers. Because of the steep slope, my parents gardened in terraces, and my father built a series of descending levels on the sunlit side of the backyard. Much of the backyard was shaded by towering pines.
When I was twelve or so, we moved again, to my parent's current residence. The backyard is a forest and a creek meanders through there as well, though getting to it proves a worthy task (we were more stubborn than the brambles - we made paths). I've never lived in the city, in an actual city. I think there is something frightening about cities, and fascinating. The magnitude, the intoxicating and muddled scents that assault the senses, and the claustrophobic and unnatural meshed with the communal and industriousness. It is an ant colony with every ant its own queen, and other queens besides: queens of business, queens of religion and culture, queens of media and industry, queens of monetary value across the spectrum, and queens for each district and home.  How do you make sense of this chaos?
This is what today has been. A city. Friends suffering from hurts, panic, stress, fights, busyness, married life as introverts, changes of churches, difficult work partners, sickness, more sickness, tough job situations, shortages of money, frustrated bosses, hospital visits from fear, anger, frustration, impatience. I woke today and expected a day off, a day of peace, and I received a sensory overload of emotional angst from each friend I visited today, and worse things. It's like visiting a city and encountering a wall of smog that irritates your eyes and burns at your nostrils until you cry. You want to fix the industrial waste flooding the city, want to give life to the trees, blue to the sky and waters, vigor to the zombie-ant-workers shambling down the streets. A tsunami of hurt, and I felt dissected from it, as though I could not pierce the wall and help, only watch as an outsider.
When my friends hurt, I get nauseous. This is most particularly involving fights. When people fight, and my friends are hurt (emotionally, spiritually, physically etc) in the process - whether I am witness or not - my gut gorges on a city of its own, a city of chaos and visceral turmoil. I almost feel physically ill if the anguish is enough, and just lie in my bed praying. I have not felt so for a long time. But tonight, as friends suffer without sabbath at the mercy of endless bleeding days - does it come tonight? Will I sleep, or lay awake and stare at the window, listening to the thoughtless slapping of drops against the glass and screen.
And finally, just finally, the compelling news of the finish line, broken and reddened against the asphalt. I drew this, I think, and I knew this ended here. Too many things, too fast. I wanted one chance, I wanted to help. Is there any possible arc of time where winning was even a remote possibility?
What a night.


From space, the cities are stars, speckling the globe as candles. All these fireflies, street strobe lights -what stories these constellations? A global bioluminescence, transforming this marine world into a glowing jack-o'-lantern, an incensed thurible, a disco ball, spinning and dancing around the sun. I dreamed, last night, of a regression of time. That was my original topic.  These were the notes I wrote at 5 in the morning when I awakened from the dream:
dream: going back in time - everyone is going back in time
elms are labeled (even though they are maples)
tell dad to remind me of a quote I said: apparently my journals traveled through time?
(find the black spider of time)

Time to drink chamomile tea, curl up beneath the blankets, open the window, light a candle, read a book, and drink in the serenity of the world when everyone has retreated into themselves.


I was back home, the luscious greens of summer still wreathing the yard.  The garden clambered up the fences and sprawled across the walkways. But strangers had invaded our yard and placed stickers on everything, weird giant labels on trees, bushes, grass, garden, house, and somehow even the sky - even the clouds were labeled. I glanced at the giant maples towering over the yard, and the giant label read: "elm" in atrocious yellow and black. It was not an elm, it wasn't, it wasn't, I heard voices shouting inside my head. But I could not argue with the strangers - the label transformed the tree into an elm, and the beloved tree was a maple no more.
I didn't want an elm, I wanted a maple. Father came and walked around the yard with me, glancing at each peculiar sticker. Sam came running outside, and we knew something was wrong. He was getting younger. Somehow, we knew that each day, he was losing a year his life. Tomorrow, he would not remember this year, would have lost a year of his life. What would happen when he reached birth? We tried, each following day, to remind him of this, but it worried him so, and we gave up. Soon, he disappeared. Then I started getting younger. I could not stop the regression of time. I wrote things in my journal so that the next day I might remember them, but I forgot about my journal the following day. I thought up a crafty and hopeful phrase, and told my father to always remind me of it, each day until I was no more. I cannot remember the phrase now. It was a blessing, a faith, and a hope where none existed.
We found out, when I was but 10 years old, that a black spider was causing the time regression. My parents, too, now regressed in time. Every day, they lost years, and we only knew through the keeping of journals. We searched and searched, but could not find the black spider that was destroying us. I woke before I was undone, though I remember my parents getting younger faster and faster, almost surpassing me. A frightening vision into my psyche, I suspect, though I awakened with wonder. I remembered thinking that God had given me a phrase to keep me, even in the times where everything appeared inexorably in decline. I almost remember the phrase, the one I implored my father remind me of each day, but come morning I just could not quite recall it.

Seasons

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." ~ Gaiman

Once, I believed it might be nice living in Guam, or somewhere equatorial, enjoying the steady temperatures preferential for outdoor living. In places in Malaysia, mean daily temperatures often range from 75-85, year round. I've often envied the predictability of these averages.  Barring tropical storms, hurricanes, a season of heavy mists, these places offer a picture of idyllic serenity, especially when enduring the upper and lower limits of temperatures in increasing latitudes. Imagine a world where every evening was beach weather, every afternoon ready with fountains and golden sunshine. I'd soon become complacent and carefree as a lizard on a stone, sunbathing ad eternity. 
But then there are other days, days I could not imagine being without. My cynical comeback towards such pluperfect human resorts is, "where does all your green come from if it does not rain?" Yet, this is merely silly presumptuousness, and curmudgeonly at that. These places, for all their glorious sunshine, are frequently not dull, dry, dusty, but often filled with pines and ferns, coffee and sugarcane, butterfly brush, coconuts, agave, flowers and flora high and low.  How can this be fair? For such verdant life in these parts, the weather ascribes to the "consistent rainfall" strategy. Do secret fowl fly the air at midnight in these strange lands, clasping water buckets in their talons and dripping sugar-sweet dew across the starlit shores, an ancient moon the color of yellowed paper lighting their journey across the sky? Herons and storks and albatrosses, gardeners of these moonlit shores? 
If they do, tell me. I'll pack my bags. Still, there are days, I promise you, when every radiant flower blooming: lilac, tulip, crimson pirate, rhododendron and hydrangea, button flowers and wild carrots, nasturtiums, roses and daisies, trilliums and snowdrops, each flower opens agape its maw and exclaims, "spring, spring, spring!" in singing beyond words, a floral cooing of cherry-blossoms and dogwood trees. When birds tweet and nest and flutter along the eaves in the wild proclamation of winter's end. When summer's short sleeves and flowered skirts,  violins, guitars, and mandolins played across the grassy hillsides while butterflies take wing - summer! When deciduous trees decide its time for changing leaves, golden, red and amber, and button-top mushrooms poke aloft, and soggy moss collects on branches. As piles of sodden leaves cluster beneath ghastly trees and pines still sing hallelujah, where the cold dry earth is replaced with coffee brown, and the clouds in every shape return.
Even winter, snuggled around the crackling fire, sweet cider and kittens across our knees, and stories of summers and springs taste sugar sweet on our memories. When every night, piles of blankets protect us from every inspecting eye, and it's only ourselves and heavenly warmth against an encroaching freezing night, clasped in God's perfect embrace of cotton and fleece - even winter is perfect in its time.

It is for these, I could not forego my seasons. Keep your perfect weather, I have mine.

Pace

The previous subject of meter has drawn me into the contemplation of pace.  Where metric is measurement, pace is passing over the metric.  In writing, this is controllable through punctuation... or lengthy, drawn out, meticulous descriptions. Or concise sentences. These are, of course, the most obvious methods. More subtle patterns exist for stalling the reader in contemplation, or spurring a galloping, careening, may-day-crash of a denouement that thrills and cajoles the audience into the stomach of the tale.

Pace exists in everything. The tone, setting, rhythm, rhyme, metric - all forward the pace. And now, in this marathon, I've maintained a pace too great. I mentioned before, it is almost as if instead of simply running a race, I'm attempting to juggle flaming torches, paint the sunset, all whilst scampering barefoot along 26.2 miles. And I'm not in good shape. That analogy fails to explain that none of the parts are particularly difficult. It is more like I'm jogging ten miles while reading a book, dribbling a soccer ball, staring at the stars. On their own, each of these activities is trivial. Together, they emerge into a complicated multi-task, a juggling act. Perhaps that is the stem of my dreams.

There is a part in a difficult journey that may arise where the distance remaining is uncertain, and seems eternal.  Where mistakes are made, and each footfall wonders whether it's time for stopping, resting instead of running. It is at these moments where a simple man entertains heroism and cowardice. It is the tired pace. Halfway is almost here.

Per ardua ad astra

Life is full of pieces, each with eternal implications. Recently, I watched a movie where a picture on the wall says, "All you can take with you is that which you've given away." Each distinct moment of our lives touches everything - a flap of a butterfly's wings effects a tornado elsewhere.  While this aphorism hyperbolizes  cause and effect to some extent, perhaps it merely illustrates the efficacious nature of time.  One of the great conundrums and fancies of fantastic fiction revolves around time travel.  If we interfere with the past, do we alter the future? Or would we simply be accomplishing something in the past already set in place: a recursive destiny?
In truth, it matters not, since time for us mortals is quite linear. Yet, I sit here imagining each interaction and influence my life has produced in each soul surrounding me: a moment of laughter, a touch, a smile, listening ears and eyes, caring and heartfelt prayers, actions of love. Then I fret over each failure, and the consequences of my inaction, failings, cruelties, and frailties. I endeavor not to harbor long on these, as my shame increases until I am overrun.
Now, sitting here in the quiet silence, a steady breeze brushing across the leaves and a drizzle of water dripping from the eaves outside, staring at the would-be stars, imagining them sown across, skyline to hilly skyline, I connect the pieces. I draw constellations in the space of my life, stories of lions and gods, grandmothers in rocking chairs, bears with their tails still attached. Both struggles and creation have forged this sky beneath which I lie.  Each star a person, place, an identity that shews me my place in this land, and guides me home.

Somnium Caelum

Lift into skies open wide
Bright as soft blue eyes
Gentle, gently
Muse my music on the other side
passive, patient
stomach tied in stiff butterflies
frozen wings, take me
gliding into gazes lost at night
ticking time until taxi
surprise, then, and pearly smiles
arms and love embrace me.


Finity strikes the hour gently, beginning of an end begun. Chrysophrase and sardonyx, chalcedony and amethyst, gates arrayed as mirrors of an eternal splendor. I dream of eternity, and it pains my mind. Was man meant for such? The trappings too fantastic, the infinite too pronounced for conscious evaluation. Nausea strikes me as I analyze the infinite. Like staring into the milky way, hypnotized in frosty swirls. We are not at center, no, but at the outskirts of the endless, with forever to go.

I stare upon the horizon and see only clouds of charred popcorn, thunderous and vengeful.  They approach. And I am, with faith, the stronger.

Time

Time is inexorable, our defined perpetual machine.  Animals care not, nature takes not note.  A perpetual machine not harnessed, but which, perhaps, tethers us.  We are bound to it, bound through it. Our world is not dualistic, though we phrase it so. Darkness is not equal and opposite light; good is not equal and opposite evil; cold is not heat's antithesis.  Aristotle posited a third option we oft forget: the Aristotelian Golden Means.  While this concept existed prior, Aristotle phrased it with clarity: everything in moderation, including moderation.
Yet, this ideal does not preclude dualistic scenarios. Sometimes, there's no twilight between night and dark; no middle tide between high and low, and our choices entertain only two antithetical trails.  But time is an interesting quandary, a quantity that relatively feels both quick and drawn.  A youth in love frets at fleeting moments; while the destitute in trial languishes as each moment passes in excruciating sluggishness.
Then there are those moments which pass with equal disdain for each, moments racing by in slow motion. Where seconds effortlessly pass, too slow, too fast. We are cursed, we are blessed, and many things in between.
So, as intermittent time sweeps on by, in drifting dreams and midnight tides, join the sweeping chorus of creation as it sighs and sings, sleeps and dreams, in endless, shifting time.