Seasons

I read an article recently on how, knowing what we currently do about our solar system, gravity, and the motion of celestial bodies, it’s well within reason to base physics on an earth-centric system rather than a sol-centered one. The author argued that convenience and long-standing tradition prevent altering modern physics into that arrangement, but that it’s no less valid an axiom of physical phenomena. Whatever the truth behind these arguments, for I’ve not the authority to challenge or back anything within this realm of reason, it spurred my thinking into the contemplation of motion.

I easily imagine the earth revolving around a stationary sun, anchored in spot like a tiny marble in those children’s games where you attempt to fit each ball into place by wiggling a tiny-maze platform.  But nothing (to my knowledge) within our solar system lies motionless. In truth, it’s too easy for me to imagine our solar system as a 2-dimensional platform on which the planets path in slow elliptical ranges around the sun. Rarely is anything so simple.

One of the passages I’m contemplating this week is : “Be still and know that I am God” from Psalms 46. My NASB version says “Cease striving and know that I am God”. Nothing sits still. The sun moves above the greater galaxy and every living body on earth moves with the revolving, rotating, spinning, dreidel of an earth on which we ride. Motionlessness is impossible you might say, as forces of gravity, life, and being exhibit pressures on us every which way, dragging us about like the current, the moon, the wind, the somnambulist beckonings of our subliminal souls. Ceasing to strive isn’t simple stopping, sometimes, but an anti-motion, a counter-motion.

I often contemplate what it takes for meditation, for prayer, for focusing on divinity and the spiritual, whatever it is. There are two interpretations of what meditation as a discipline is: either an emptying, a voidance of emotion, feeling, and thought, or a pregnant patience of being without preconceived patterns of belief that seek to alter the course of the waters carrying us along. Acts of meditation, of fasting, of prayer seem to be definitive attempts at halting and ceasing to strive. But they are not always, and I think we’ve Americanized the concept of each of these into a business proposal, a busyness that inhibits the calm and care behind the practice. We’ve industrialized prayer, we’ve transformed Christianity into capitalism, and Church is a business community sometimes that tries to embody a perpetual motion machine that eventually falters, sputters and dies.

But if you look around, reading Mary Oliver and opening your eyes unto the apparent divinity of surroundings, the creative hand of the God whose calligraphic brush painted the beaches and careful mosaics formed the mountains, I think a motionless can be embodied, though everything spins about, above, around, and here, sometimes, peace is found. In the flowering, fruitful, fullness of uncluttered patience.

2015

I've intended writing much more, but failed in the busyness of the season. NaNoWriMo which I need to finish reading (and writing someday); Christmas; Maryland visit; engagement; exhaustion; funeral; friends - everything. I remember telling someone over summer that life might cool down and settle once fall arrived, but relationship is a whirlwind of life and excitement and busyness that has led into endless summer activity through autumn and into winter. I'm reading less, writing less, playing guitar less, and seeing more people more often.
But I'm excited. 2015 is looking to be an incredible year, and perhaps just a mite fantastic. Perhaps soon I'll get to writing more.

I finished ~51k words for NaNo and though it has more that needs fixing than I should keep, I actually think I enjoy portions of this novel. More than anything, it requires character and embellishment - it's so difficult writing meticulously in such a short period of time with so many other life-requirements. I'm not a good first-time writer. It takes me so long to write anything worth reading.

Perspective

It’s all a matter of perspective. In another world, I believe a me with 10% less resolve might have fallen greatly into a devastating quantity of temptation. So many times I’ve skirted the edges of failure, lack of motivation, and deceit with begrudging kindness, patience, and morality. And yet, a 10% better me might avoid countless obstacles I’ve struggled over, and pass temptations and trials I’ve so foolishly leapt into headlong.

I pray I’m learning as I go, that I might eventually be the better me.

But really everything is a matter of perspective. You can be angry, or pensive, realizing how little anger solves. You can be impatient and cruel, but kind words and love in adversity effect far more substantial good.

Even a little tweak on perspective changes a good deal. Water, for instance, is necessary for survival. It hydrates us, floats our necessary vitals along lifelines throughout our bodies, gets nourishment and resources into organs and cells and out. It keeps the temperature of the earth within reasonable averages. The advantages of water are endless. Without water’s extraordinary properties, we couldn’t exist. And yet, water is devastating. Water floods, pours down and carries vehicles and houses away, seeps through cracks in the roof and decays wood, erodes stone, pools through our apparel and chills us to the bone. Water is as devious as it is necessary, crawling into every nook and applying a natural entropy.

Oxygen is the same. Without oxygen, our cells suffocate and die. Without oxygen, most living creatures on this earth cannot exist. And yet, oxygen rusts metal, and increases the rate of entropy in a great many things. Injected straight into our bloodstreams, it’s murder.  Too much oxygen and not a reasonable balance can overwhelm our systems. Liquid oxygen is an explosion waiting to happen.

It’s all a matter of perspective. Existence is tentative. Why be angry? Why be cruel? Is not nature and the rest of humanity cruel enough? Where has that brought us? Countless innocents are dying or refugees or are abused by other humans – what have we ever gained with hate?

Listening to Christmas

Listen. The sky-sluice unleashes its floodgates and the waters rivulet over the eaves and down the drains. It's all the same as those plastic chutes, racing marbles as children do, tiny marble-droplets of rain rolling down my windowpanes, Is the world different or just the same, with off-hued glasses removed, revealing the world in plain light? The birds warble and dive between the stormy night trees and the bats weave and dart among the leaves, and the weather is just right - a bit cool, I believe.
And nothing special, nothing wise, nothing crazy outside our lives rears its groundhog head, nor casts a shadow over this pre-wintry twilight light, whose full moon hides behind scraggly clouds. It's a bat night, if ever there was, and the hazelnuts pay no mind. But Christmas time, sing the homes, covered in uncharacteristic light and humming with sounds of chords and words of snow, though none shows (not here - we've green instead of white).
It's give and go says every Christmas show, but I've a mind to share and stay, and I've already given everything anyway, so here's my soul, my heart, my life. I, too, can give like Christ, at least in my own way. Gentle, gentle, hold me now, the evening begins its sway. Let me let you let us sleep and tomorrow we'll engage the day.

Pensive with Mark Strand

It's a reflective night, a pensive one, and as nano's left in its tiny coffin of tags, margin, and punctual bounds. I'm mulling over poetry, and the nutmeg and cinnamon sticks of my mentality perfume the dreamy air. I am Mark Strand in these stanzas, tonight:

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
(Mark Strand - Keeping Things Whole - Reasons for Moving)


We are all scattered pieces of a shattered whole. None of us, as yet, perfect, I'm fairly sure. Wherever I am, I am what is missing. I feel this, sometimes. Stronger in the retrospective melancholy of hindsight, where I am here and there and now and not. Nano is finished, but my story is undone. And in the void, spilled treasures of fae gold are left ashen. How I remembered these memories differently. A puzzle, once vibrant, stained in salty water that no longer matches its master - how will I ever arrange these cardboard cutouts again? If your life is remodeled, you cannot walk through the same doors, slide over the laminate in your socks, or ride the banister into the grand hall.



And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.
Mark Strand - Lines for Winter

Stories

Well, ladies and gentlemen: I'm near finished. I haven't written nearly so much this month as previous attempts at NaNo, but I'm glad to have gotten as far as I did, and I think that writing this story has taught me a lot of things about character driven story writing that I hadn't considered before. What's actually strange is that as I'm writing this story about knacks and magicks, I find myself mentally balancing the characters as if they were heroes in an online game. "Hmmm, that chararacter is tad overpowered. I'll have to balance that out with some great weakness" as though each character pulled from a limited pool of resource points, and tallied these into their character.
And this is an odd nanowrimo in another way in that I won't finish the story. Every other attempt at the novel writing event concluded with a finished product. The first year, it was a fairy-tale mythos that was the lousiest thing I've ever written ever. The second year, I attempted a Lloyd Alexander-esque piece, and met with some limited success. This is my favorite thus far, for obvious reasons: the first sucked, the third was a split piece that ended up being a bit of a mess (sorry Matthew), and this one is unfinished, and doesn't count yet. The third year, I co-wrote a mystery-dystopian with Matthew, and... well... I like the plot!
It needs a lot of work. They all do.
But it's interesting to look back over each year's renditions and compare the stories with my life experiences at those times, looking at my journal entries and such. It's interesting what you write based on what you've read, what you experience, and how you feel at different stages of existence. It explains a lot, seeing some of the characters that have written novels over the centuries: Poe, Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Donne, Keats, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and so on. Authors, and artists in general, are often peculiar personality. Perhaps we all are, and we merely shift the lens of scrutiny upon these individuals like historian peepers scouring the tabloid wikipedia for tidbits of juicy non sequitur from these artist's lives.
Writing is an adventure. I find out more about myself each time. It's a foray into wisdom, if you'll allow your external inspection become introspection. And motif, metaphor, themes, and beliefs all surf the rocky waves of the ocean we brave to create, whether we skim the tips of the salty surf in schooners, or flounder like a hound treading water. This is how I examine my life

Every season is love

It's not been a month for blogging, or journaling on many days. It's difficult to find time for extra writing when novel writing is already the struggle of the month. After writing 1700 words, sometimes I don't want to immediately rush into writing for myself, and even when I do, I often don't have the time to do so. And because of this, journal time gets tossed out the window, blogging gets flush down the toilet, and novel writing takes the fore.
It's a beautiful time of year. The cold of winter has arrived and it's no longer the portion of fall with brilliant colors. Fall is so short, sometimes. It comes back for a few days of Thanksgiving and for Halloween, but the interim is all winter's edge and the hunger of darkness.
Every season provides room for complaining. In winter it is too cold, too dark, or too rainy for far too long a time; in spring, the colors only arrive at the end, and really spring is winter in disguise. Spring, too, is rainy, and the snow hasn't melted off the mountains for hiking, and the allergens flourish. Summer is beautiful, but sleeping is often difficult when the sun refuses to set and the warmth lingers after dark, and the wetness of the air, and the constant sweating, cloying weather. Fall brings lovely colors, but dies too swiftly, entering eagerly into winter's deathly embrace. Fall suffers the same pains of winter, and worse knowing it has only begun and you've many months left to go.
If you want to complain, there are always points worthy of complaint in each month. And yet, you can also celebrate the differences, and there is ample opportunity for such blessings and thanksgiving. Fall is beautiful in its colors, and resplendent in its holidays: chanukah of the lights, thanksgiving with its cornucopia of colors, family, thanks, foods, and the warmth of togetherness; halloween with its candy, and the entire season full of pumpkin, apples, harvest, corn, turkey, fireplaces, cider, chai, and maple.
Winter arrives with the advent of Christmas, and what better holiday is there than that? Shortly after, you celebrate the new year, and the greens and the reds of christmas join Janus' two-faced nervousness about the impending days. There is valentine's day, the day of love and single-angst, stuck in the center of the northern-hemispheres cold, and st. patricks day celebrating green in a season of white and gray. Winter is full of snow, rain, lovely mountain peaks and early morning fogs. It is the best time for snuggling by a fireplace and reading a book, and drinking warm tea and lighting candles.
Spring is a blessing of verdancy, as the first snowdrops peak their heads out from the frost, and the deciduous trees tentatively turn out leaves, and the evergreens shake their white-fur coats from their sleeves. The animals emerge and the birds begin to return, and the fogs and lakes lie in cold beauty as the world remembers colors and light. Wildflowers come to life on the mountainsides, and the butterflies and bees remember life.
Summer is the time of life, the blooming of full flowers: lilac and lavender and rose, and the sunflower season and time where everyone is outdoors enjoying each other and the world.