Another Place

I started another blog at: http://benjaminwblog.com/

Or, rather, I started a new place for the same blog. I've still got a lot of work to go on that, and it also is spread out over two domains - but I'm enjoying the project so far. It's also easier to remember a url like benjaminwblog.

I'm still recovering from my marvelous weekend. It's difficult spending time at the beach with friends, and then finding yourself back at work, programming android devices and wishing you could hear the waves, the storms flattening the salty grasses, the voices laughing in every room. I wish I'd had more time for writing this weekend past. When I find myself richer than Smaug, I'm going to purchase a nice castle on the cliffs of Scotland, and write whenever I can drag myself away from the scenery.

One thing that struck me as strange this weekend was a comment made by the host: "I'm thinking next time, because of the stage of life so many are in, I'm going to have to ask that we try and find sitters for dogs and babysitters for children." (paraphrased - may have been speaking particularly of dogs) Fifteen people at a beach house, four dogs and one child consumed an unsurprising amount of attention. What did we expect?

It's strange to think that I may be one of the oldest at the event, and I'm nowhere near that stage of life. Yet, even I've noticed responsibilities resting heavy on my shoulders as I move towards house ownership, some financial decision making, and the organization of my own time. I want to have adventures, be a child, run around in the fields and smell each of the different flowers - but does one balance the requisite responsibilities of adulthood and a youthful outlook and joy?

Some of it is found here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"  (Matthew 6) You can see it in the eyes of the president, the weight on the shoulders of the exhausted, and the greying hair of the stressed. Worry adds age, and in all this I'm doing my best to avoid worrying about how everything will turn out, and am simply enjoying the process of looking at houses, of writing, drawing, and building a website, and of loving those around me. Life is just the rim of an ocean, rising and receding at the draw of the moon.

Abstract Oceans or Dervish dance of sand

Abstraction is wisdom for a writer - the metamorphosis of knowledge into poetry. Water dripping from trees transforms into a metaphor for weeping, and the willow's long, emotional tresses make it the somberest of trees. Without abstraction, clouds stay as only-clouds; sunsets are simply light passing beneath the horizon, eight minutes old; magic is poorly explained science; and love is a collection of complicated hormones and obfuscated neural connections.
Abstraction separates the mind from the historical algorithm. Show a computer a bicycle, then a different picture of a different bicycle, and the base composition of pixels, hues, saturations, and even backdrops prevent the computer from understanding both objects as the same, though any three-year-old child instantly grasps the connection, though his feet aren't ready for the pedaling. Tell a computer: "time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas", and logical paradox, or ask it to divine by zero, and computer's reply with explosive incomprehension.  But dividing by zero, that's as wide as the universe, and logical paradox is another weapon of the proficient storyteller.
BW has it down, but perhaps that's what separates the bestseller from the novice blogger. You can understand persons, and really know, love, and care for persons, but unless you know people, your writing scope is limited. An author must know everything, so each facet of reality may face its abstraction and carve light into a prism of possibilities.

when the wind of many bites your eyes,
and the sea-spray-gray surges
up the beach to clasp at your ankles,
while the blinding sand stings and fleas
gnaw at your knees for a little respite -
surrounded on all sides, an island sinking
in a sea of hungry eyes -
though I hear the starving shriek of storm
pounding at the windows with its tears,
I'm in a corner, pooled in a blanket of quiet
denial and puzzle pieces, wondering whether
they're even all there, or the picture matches
the box, or even if the night cares.
and time is tired, but smiling, and by my watch
trying to tell me something.
I'm climbing trees, ophelia, look
I've found pretty stones, virginia,
so why are you crying?
is it because you could not stop for anything, emily?
collige virga rosas, do not drop them
in a hurry down the styx
the wildflowers only transform hillsides
after a long and frozen winter
all our names are writ as keats'
but it's elegant, look, watch the ocean breathe
watch the storm sing
and watch the dervish dance of the sands
in a world whimpering

Pebbles

Skipping shale into the sea
Will this stone be - the last stone throw
before the ocean overflows
white currents snagging me away
waving, praying
past the quay into the deeps?
If I breathe the final breath
will sky burst overhead
shattering
into many stars?
If I steal a tick of time
can time remain?
can love foment in thee the same?
Holding hands with destiny
did you bless me - but with torment?
Tossing pebbles 
in the ocean of emotions
Does it seem the waters rise?
Except in your eyes, I'll never know.


It's way past my bedtime when I start writing stream-of-consciousness poetry...