Blank

Blank. I cannot remember, anymore, what I dreamed of writing, discussed writing, or actually have written this last week. Everything swirls together, a beautiful misery. I'm sleeping, dreaming, writing, thinking, seeing, ingesting words, and jettisoning everything temporarily superfluous, extraneous, inessential. And it's a race against my leaking intellect. Will I realize the race continues without end, surrendering first? Can I lose a game that exists only within? Or, perhaps, not even there?
Even the words are blank, like fake bullets the target ignores, or disregards - a nuisance, a distraction, a trifle, a red herring, if you please. Color me... disinterested, they say, child's play. They turn away into the sea, a vastness unexplained (by me, at least).
The moon's a mistress made of me, grasping at my tides, I, a pendulum in lunar sway. This lunacy, I plead - do the ocean's truly rise and elsewhere must recede: a teeter-totter, I see, I saw, now my vision's clouded intimately. I loved once, and lost twice, and regret thrice, afore the rooster crowed; and I love thee Lord, but scarcely feed myself. The wolf's teeth are canine white, angler fish's lure so bright, dart frog saturated with color, belladonna - doth beauty's embrace only destroy?
Fairy tale me is no hero, but the crooked man, swallowing stories for life. Not mine, the princess, nor battles won, riches gleaned, the dragon slain. No, I quite believed a different tale. If, knowing everything of everyone: dreams, desires, hopes, prayers, experiences, I expect I'd love them, wholly, unconditionally. The double standard is this: I believe if you knew the same about me, I cannot believe the same, or anything near. There is knowing... yet, understanding is supernal, a celestial gift. This I hide behind lest you enter the shell and find the sea.

Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
(Milton - Paradise Lost)

Midnight Sophistry

It's a night for useless philosophizing, and I, the eternal sophist. When it comes to actual writing, important writing, or important aspects of my own existence, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps this stems from my competitive nature. When I watch a movie like Ender's Game, I constantly find myself thinking: "I could beat him, let me play." What arrogance is this? Who am I? But even if I couldn't, my heart would try.
But I know my motivations, and my drive, and I know, too, that if that was my heart's desire, I may very well win it, against superior forces. Such is the power of conviction.  And now, sitting here contemplating pieces I've written and examining them, I find them pierced with errors like arrows, more wholly holey than a frayed web, and less useful.
What is perfect writing? I'm stuck in a platonic mindset where the mere existence of a story implies a perfect story.What is the perfect story? What is the perfect song? Are there an infinite number of perfect stories or perfect songs? Perfect paintings, perfect sculptures or vessels, the perfect art.
Then I think to myself, can there be more than one? Two sculptures, both perfectly done?  This is a mind-bending mental-yoga-preztal seen through a bent-mirror-prism-raindrop-stainglasswindow. Because, to my thinking, unless the sculptures are 100% equally perfect, how can they both be perfect? Is perfect like infinity? The numbers between 1-2 are infinite, mathematically. What about 1-3? Double infinite? No, just infinite. But it's double the infinite as between 1-2, right? Right? So can both paintings be perfect, but one be "double perfect"?
Even if that were true, what is the most perfect perfect? Can there be one? Or, like infinity, can you always add one more? You see? A sophists night.
But instead of getting wrapped up in all the cognitive gymnastics, I'm struck by this fierce competitive desire to acquire the most perfect perfect something, whatever it is. I'll never get there; that's beyond my ken. Yet, the intense craving stirs in my gut most mightily. How can I aim for less than perfection? It's like the quote by Les Brown, famous motivational speaker: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Oh, let me hit the moon.

To Err

Books to movies always grind my gears a bit. It always seems rushed. A book that takes about two hours to read, turned into a two hour movie (Ender's Game) is one crime after another as they rush past monumental aspects of the story.

I haven't had a bad day in weeks, but I think that, perhaps, today was one such. Not all of the day, certainly, just the motif of the day scraped incessantly, like sharp nails scratching at a rash until it bleeds. That makes it sound advertent. Sometimes such things are, and sometimes it's simple distraction, forgetting people are people. I know this; I've fallen into this same trap often. So why does something so expected stab at my heart, grind into my ears with the cruel screech of fingernails on chalkboards, the agonizing snap of splintering bones?

Because I'm only human and, more than that, the weakest of them all.

Alchemy

Epsom salt the dark night sky

filter through the moon lit

over brazier bright, silver

saucer full of light,

this mercurial soup,
wait

until this lunar sway tides 

over the smoky clouds

heated rims crimson as coils

golden the horizon

I'm slowing, each moment molasses slow in my fingertips as the world jumps by, swift as the white-tailed deer. Touch these hands - are they cold from the unknowing? The longest road?

Some feet were meant to take the longest path, some hands. The valley is darker alone with a light, than together without - I see that, and everything else. Together, this everyone, is this chemistry or alchemy? What difference does it make? One thinks, the other believes, before swallowing mercury, praying for gold.

Cold

Cold

White as bleached bones, soft

as goodnight, whispering

leaves adrift as fox-fur,
falling clothes of trees -
suffered

not I, huddled in cotton dreams

shaking free as the chords

the notes

a melody so sweet, far

over the rooftops, creaking

forests sleep.
echoes over mountains along

burns and streams, 

the sea hums,
sounds from the deeps,
twittering birds migrate, mournful

bellows of whales beneath

a sky of swaying tides,
shiver bones, and breathe -

the chill is heavier, borne
discrete



With a burst of speed, we begin. Three quick steps and aloft, winging on updrafts of discovery and adventure. Is this Icarus' vice, or can I fly higher, further, still?

Empty Envelope

Empty. Blessing or curse? Tabula rosa, I'm not thinking - am I? Candle flickers, rain bullets rebound from glass inevitability, cider sits half-empty, all empty, a night as silent as the moon hiding behind these clouds. In the rainy night: no clouds, no stars, no moon, no sky, just a blank slate heavens, unthinking, leaking, a perfect mirror for my mind.
I stood in an alley of trees, the smell of fall finally arrived. Fall sits, patiently awaiting the heavy rains, where the redolence is freed. Emptied, a heavy breeze carried the rain and a torrent of leaves, and I simply stood, catching the leaves as they traveled by, pelted with colors. Even a barrenness, an emptiness is beautiful sometimes: a ghastly beauty, a transparent, phantom elegance like dust and cobwebs in abandoned homes, like ancient, cracked mirrors, a winter wheat field,  shrouded in heavy mist, hands having given a gift, winter trees with fallen leaves, violins, wordless and minor in an eerie whisper, wisps of fragment dreams come morning, silence before a storm, the wordlessness of knowing, staring at the ceiling on long, quiet nights, mountain devotionals.
An emptiness of something makes room for a fullness of another.



may I be, awakened from my slumber
you slice, with gentle knife,
my blankets and my cover
whisking me from beneath
my veil of mystery
unwrap me in your soft
fingertips, smooth 
my wrinkled edges and smell
a delivered world
pen-kisses, thumbprints, a lick
of love, each dot, jot, tittle,
our hands held distantly
caress me, hold me in your eyes
closer, fondly, my heart as paper
in your tender hands


my heart is rent and sent as missive
mailed down rainy river
in return I found a pen
which doth my blood embitter
my ink-blood blue
pen-heart stained, too
please current soon deliver

Well, that was uglier than the first...
Listening to the rain: is there anything more peaceful?


Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know?
Can it be death?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost

What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
~ Milton - Paradise Lost

Life Garden thoughts

There is a game called race for the galaxy, a card game, where every turn is a gambit and a sacrifice. While I've only played this game a few times, I suspect it offers a keen insight into my every daily decision. Every day, I have choices, many, and in order to realize these opportunities, other sacrifices must be made. If I want to spend ten hours drawing, I cannot also spend ten hours playing guitar. If I sacrifice time going out with friends, I cannot read all I wished to read.
Sacrifice makes it sound somehow morbid, or a horrific truth. Like I'm shivving myself and stepping over lost opportunities as the paving stones to preferred ones. But you can't walk in every door, and explore every room - the manse of life is vast. Still, the perfectionist in me, the Christian in me, the sage and philosopher, the fighter and lover, the finder and the seeker, the sower and the reaper in me all ask whether the path I've chosen is the best path, the most right path, the most Christ-like path. It is a utilitarian internalization that is asking if this will bring the greatest good for the greatest quantity.
So while I sit munching on the harvest of my deeds, wondering what might have been if, instead of swiss chard, I'd sown rhubarb, instead of squash, pumpkin, instead of tomatoes, peppers.

Did I have time to plant more seeds? Did I water them each enough, or are these stunted plants? Harvesting life is none so clear, sometimes.
Should I probably be writing NaNo instead of this? Yes.