A Game of Clones

As if we were all just standing around in a circle not making eye contact with anyone else while a game of double-dutch proceeded in front of us, in the middle of us all and it was anyone's turn, but we watched the whirling web, waiting for when we should jump in without getting choked or tripped up and falling flat on our faces-stopping the game and being that one that has 'bad timing' and coming to the conclusion that the ones that so seamlessly folded themselves in and out-were pushed-by an outside agent-we would like to think this
survival of the fittest game has no formal rules and subsequently may just work if given enough rope-
it's anyone's game.



Photograph By State Library of Queensland, Australia [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Say "Life" but mean Death

Pieces of the Pi bring it around full circle. Writing about writing about it. 

A spectacle, even.

First, there was Hoarfrost. This was the ideal expression of crystals to stimulate fractal growth.

Then there were 6,800 languages spoken around the planet.

Now, excluding familial words, there live “untranslatable words”:

wabi-sabi (Japanese)-finding beauty in imperfection

ma (Japanese)-negative space, blankness, vacancy-a tangible pause

waldeinsamkeit (German) is-being alone in the woods

schadenfreude (German) joy or pleasure derived from another persons pain, injury, or suffering

Where lies stability?  

Words adapt? How do we know? Survival of the popular-who peaked and fell off the Ngram

(in high school)?

We could say-instead of ‘Red’, somewhere between 620-750 nanometer wavelength,

in lieu of ‘Temperature’ say, the average speed of a group of particles,

instead of ‘Gravity’, call it, the geometry of spacetime, and it would take more time-

but based on the maximum velocity of human hearing and thought, 

might meaning mean more than the time

it takes to say? (in thought)

All proteins are comprised of the same 20 amino acids.

26 letters have been manipulated infinitely.

One string plucked makes its own sound, vibrating sounds together make overlap find accord,

a harmony with the difference, indefinitely, musical.

Together they work to do something together, making sound fall somewhere

between movements and notations.

Alone and smaller, pieces of the whole can only spin, ready and waiting. The inertial duty. 

Purpose is a master; a goal is a favor, 

it projects colors.

Then there is the accrual function,

the tools in our box, the letters in a chain, we need those. The storing of information as stuff,

fills in the blanks, overflows with old technology, duplicates should be checked. 

A miracle is rare because it has never been imagined. Language is like that. 

Words keep meaning if they are needed.

Any word is unimaginable.

The second law of thermodynamics is pointed toward entropy.

Originated in chaos. Now, is the future more exciting than the past?

Open systems, like open boxes, allow the cat out of the box before Schrodinger could sneeze.

This was unforeseen. 

Anticipation needs others to work for it.

Anticipation tries to predict, it does not propose it knows.

Anticipation is bigger than one possibility, like translation,

it can be expressed as having more than one meaning, depending on temperature, 

color, geometry or vanishing point.

The first law of LIFE is to anticipate the end

anywhere on the circle. 

Painting by Abraham Mignon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

*This piece was inspired by another wonderful article featured on Nautilus, "How Do You Say "Life" in Physics?" written by Allison Eck. 

I was framed

Oh, honest silver sheet! 

For thou art salvation from embarrassment, a mercurial ounce of prevention, a rainbow against the backdrop sky.
The setting bedazzles, they way in which you show us the beauty in our characters! Hats, coats with arms, lip-sticks, eye-glasses, ear-rings, gemstones, crowns, shiners, and horror, grotesqueness. Yes, you spare no favoritism-beveled truth be told thou fairest
outlines of all, in my mirror, mirror, on the wall!

See,
when we look in the mirror,
we face some reality we do not normally
see.
We trust this vision as the reflection of what may not be
overt or obvious to us; be it a booger, a stray hair, a smudge or streak, a deep hole or incoming car in our periphery-
All of which may be larger or closer than they appear.

Yes, the mirror is trustworthy. Like the spectacles, a symbol of knowing (more) perhaps. And mirrors are crisper, more full, than the ghostly reflections we may casually cast on windows.
There is a complete sense of self when one looks into a wall mirror-although not nearly as intricate and complex as many fine artists portrait paintings-
and yet there is honesty there. That may be the difference.
Here, in a mirror, we can get a real glimpse of what others may see when they look at us,
which is why we rely so much on these household props and inventions of the mind.

How do I look (to you)? I wonder-
how I look-how I may seem (to you). One must not
look at anything specifically tied to their own shape in order to catch a true glimpse-
like an idea or impression, of how others may see us-at all.
It seems I still do not know more than my own impressions...

dreamer--bookworm--pretentious--removed--absorbed--crazy--incomplete

thoughtful--learned--superstitious--unique--enraptured--inspired--to be continued

Crystallized panes pressed together, the kiss smudge, the make-up that makes us up, smears, sets, and powder presses. Preen-for others sake-bejeweled and adorned in folded prismatic layers that arrest our white spirit and sever it into slices of complimentary tones called auras or imaginary glows.
One never knows if this shows...until they peer into a mirror.

We normally see reality when not looking for it.  Ghosts among us (our past),
more present when we pretend other things are more real.
When facing the mirror we clearly see the flaws in our story,
the holes in the rough outline, the disconnected points of interest,
and finally,
the foci of the somber stare,
where our eyes appear closer than normal and pores open larger than they seem to need to be to keep our insides from falling out.
What is presented here is a lie.
It is all imaginary. It is the way we want to seem.
The clothes we buy, the hairs we cut, the smells we emit and face muscles we choose to use,
all are practice,
pretending and proposing that props and signs were just as important as their utilitarian intended need.
A need to know how things work,
we check in(side) the mirror, we avoid reflections such as these, and fear the misconception of chance, how light goes through some holes and not others and escaping solid shapes and walls was the first glimmer of finding oneself in shadows. 

This is the art of puppetry.

Here is my hand. Come see with me. This is you-and that was me,
that is you, this is me. Who stands behind whom?

Quod fuimus, estis:

Quod sumus, vos eritis

(What we were, you are;

What we are, you will be)

Painting By Charles Martin Hardie (1858-1916) (Bonhams) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Holzwege Stew

Hunger is for words. 

I crave becoming obese with vocabulary; having my skin fold over itself with proper diction, Fat roundness of the tongue, eloquence with where I step and impress my impressive weight. And perhaps because I cannot have-I wish to always eat. A state of bliss where an aftertaste never leaves the palate, jumping from taste to taste and always linger thereafter over and over certain notes. 

Like perfume that stays in the room when all the bodies have vanished. 

Words, like bread crumbs, that entice, lead us along...And with such small tokens, 

we become hungrier for more sustenance, 

we desire more savory, deeper into flavor.

The crumb is not enough to sate the insatiable, 

a curiosity toward where the feast resides, 

even toward the end.

Molten is not merely hot in temperature. 

It is a state, a past participle of melt. Molten on the floor. 

When we feel indescribable love, we resort to these new lands, we have melted into a pool, we become molten. 

We may make new lands with our liquids. 

We are moved by this process, changing stats, become obsessed with outside forces which we cannot control such as changing climates, vapors and invisible streams of electricity both man-made and manufactured, conjured around us. 

And yet we marvel at the sparks that fly, the connections that do not fire and the new trend toward the path of least resistance.

Nowhere is closer to infinity than we should like to think.

I suppose being called spacey is an insult. 

The astronaut experience, however, revered as talisman, meaning only man’s experiential, literal otherworldly transcendence while a passenger, a feeling wholly attainable here on the gravity-bound planet. We have defied our gravity. When will we be successful? When we are Martians? Or Jupitarians? Or all Anuses? 

Seeing things as they are from afar, being called aloof, a strange enough word, considering the world and not your little, worn path, yes, strange, but real. Real scary. Real worth it.

Why did my grandfather teach me fractals as a small child? A question I have pondered, his choice of entertainment for me in lieu of coloring books. I loved it. 

When I close my eyes I can still see the green type in DOS on the rolling black screen and feel the bated breath sensation as my pointer finger becomes cocked over the enter key for the final stroke of the magic formula. The explosion. 

I quickly learned from typing so much code how to play with the shapes and colors. 

I tried to trick it. To kill the fractal. 

I made better fractals.

After contemplating the very telephone wires he used his own spindle to take part in weaving, Alexander Graham Bell was noted to say the following of his revelation at that moment:

“Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so, you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before.”

Scary or intriguing? Your answer is everything. It is your path. Your path with smooth easy bends and soft wide open dusty barren earth or our wildflowers, mushrooms, dragonflies, deer and falling stars.

I learned an interesting flavored word recently, ‘holzwege’ in German, loosely trail leading nowhere or “timber tracks”. An instance of this very word in action was described along with the definition of ‘following a path the leads to a clearing and disappears into a meadow of stumps, promptly ending, as though it spilled its destruction, like magma, there in front of you.

When I was around twelve years old, my parents, along with their friends, took our last camping trip together. The destination had been an unofficial routine for several years- to pack up at the last moment and journey to a little town at the base of a volcano named Mount Lassen. I think it was a state park but it had no designated campsites, nor facilities. 

For that reason and the dead body perhaps, it was the last year any of us went back. 

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad.  I hiked to the top of Mt. Lassen with one of my parents' friends who may be dead himself. 

Volcanic, not Vulcan, Viral.

I remember needing to be alone in those woods with my poetry book and wandering off to seek a location of pure solitude. I sought hard or just succeeded in eliminating humans. 

And I was also lost. Lost and unprepared. Circa pre-cellphones. 

I was lost until just past sundown, when I gratefully heard the crackle of a strangers campfire. 

Along the day-I met more than one such path, 

that led not into a meadow, but a hillside. 

Deer path perhaps. I was led along. Is it led when you are willing, or is that lead...Wanderlust. 

That’s another great word that tastes utterlessly delicious.  

Images credits in order:

'The Queen of the parlor was eating bread and honey' c. 1860 -the original uploader was Cactus.man at English Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Painting by Jules Tavernier, 'Volcano-Hawaii', 1888 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Painting by Eero Järnefelt, 'Siami in the meadow', 1892 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fractal art By Soler97 (Own work), 'Supervolcano', 2008 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

By ALAN SCHMIERER, MT LASSEN AREA (https://www.flickr.com/photos/sloalan/3924819490/) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Image By OSU Special Collections & Archives : Commons (Mt. Lassen in eruption-California) [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Piercing the Bulls' eye

Objectivity is greater than aim can aspire. The subject is information and to extract without distortion. 

We would lose an appendage reaching into a black hole with our light bodies to retrieve already synthesized or archived data and extract it out as if we knew the shape we should be feeling for. 

From this perspective, the reach itself spells only the desire and a scent of mischief of misguided cravings in an attempt to just take the low hanging fruit so we may be satisfied that we tried. 

What happens to ones ten digits once inside a black hole? 

We know the outcome is either zero or one, no less. Possibly patterns that resemble other numbers, like thumbs, and indexes of which the remainder dropped off since it was never whole enough to be a digit of singularity, thus by separating the sheep from its flock, the black one stands out.

If the objective was just to arrive on the other side, would the singularity entangle all major limbs so they fit snuggly in straighter jackets? 

Light was wholly ignored but it where the attention was most focused, uninterrupted and beaming. 

What started as white ends up in yellow rags soaked in red, conveniently repellent toward saltwater and fibrously repulsed by solid matter, like tables and chairs, ribs and eyelids. 

The reception was about to begin. 

Now the objective shapes can carry all the notes too heavy to float along in sound, like the word that arose from thought which sought its utter meaning but made no point when given volume to pierce.

Black holes were better for collecting thoughts and compressing them into rays of hope often mistaken for solar flares. 

Image credit By Smithsonian Institution from United States, 'Centaurus, A Jet Power and Black hole-Chandra image (X-rays)' [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons.

Forge a head

How little should be let out as to not drown out their dreams, how many drops do not dilute the concentration of their pungent magic that lives only on fresh air and new seasons, tiny eternities in which every-which-way is a fractal blossoming out of potentialities…it seems any rational and metallic words, like screws unthread, useless, may interrupt, suffocate and sever the boundless expanse of the plane, the stretching possibility of entanglement or the greatest good reverberating out from where hearts have shattered and self-heal with the thick paste of time and enlightening the way out or by exhaling

Desires settle into embers before giving into coals where some semblance of rationing will be met and meted out for others to consume as heat. Hands up, palms and face forward, the extremities tingle in the charged air

Where silence is golden

And gold retains its heat, resistant to rust and nonconductive.

Worth less

Than never. 


Painting By Airy, Anna, 1918 The "I" Press Forging, in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Inheritance

Even though I have sacrificed the most I can muster without giving everything I have not got and then some, the result is not a real number, the answer, the sentence does not equal a positive or whole but a fraction to make sense or solve the problem-a new symbol or operator is needed, the characters caused the result.

I owe my children an apology. The kinks in the chain, the taut metal streaked with broken veins were my breaking. I chose their father to take me away from my misplaced misery, and like wise he chose me for his own miseries. Regardless, it made the same result, where the positives stand apart and refuse to coagulate or assimilate and the largest numbers stay on top just out of reach. I subtracted their fathers negative charge and was left with less than the x-axis for a lifeline. My parents, their grandparents did not choose me, nor I them, the result was the same, which is starting at zero, fortunate for the conditions that allowed everything to grow from nothing

I could do about it, their journey parallels mine for a time, they look over at me and gauge my speed, mimic my mannerisms and say they have found a way to live without the negative signs.

I have added much love to carry the ones, the remainders will end up rounded in and dropped off in soft loose links that indicate assembly will reach further, anchors will keep us in place, and Moonrakers, like the seine net, will make more Stardust than the galleons will float.

When the tide goes out we forget where the highest waterline once stained the sand,

but we have a feeling it will rise again, take the sand from our soles and float the rest.  


Painting by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1628 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lost the Alamos

“These are complex technical things, but they touch on the very basis of our morality. It is a grave danger for us that these decisions are taken on the basis of facts held secret.”

This was said on February 12^th in 1950 by a man addressing the President of America's wife, Eleanor on her Sunday morning television broadcast. 

This man with all the answers, knew best how to keep secrets. Top secret and under hat and he let those secrets bounce around in his radioactive being until the corrosion became more than the structure. Settling within him and festering around like a cloud, it seems he could come and go with omniscience. He was brilliant to all could not look at him directly in the eyes. Those that could take it knew he could have been brighter, more welcoming in the desolation of night, they were embedded in that sky under the same forces. So scared, some thought his yellow fingered trembling was evidence of this, that he need always clutch his own personal fire; via a wand or crutch, incessantly forcing his fingertip to take the flames off the cherries, he knew he was trying to make it numb. It was only a start, he never thought about the end before he lost where he was going and went instead with the wind and waves, swallowed and sunk safely away from the American Dream. off the Virgin Islands, he is perpetually pulled and pushed by waves of saints and martyrs. The legacy is nearly forgotten. Finally, there was none left awake to do the tactile work, like making bombs that would forever change the world. He holds his breath I fathom. 

Photo credit By Federal government of the United States [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Trinity sight post test (Jumbo, July 1945).

Gatherer

While you are here, make yourself useful. Instead of leaving no footprints or blazing trails, in place of rooms stacked with forgotten props for making memories and treasuring trivialities of these in trinkets and symbols of some emotion we once had while collecting bones and relics for hanging in closets just in case of a storm. Rather, you could pick up what I have lain down before, it was already here and waiting like this red carpet for barren feet in which you may tip toe so softly so that none notice the shift in shag or bulging pile, the insistence of your presence, the red of your wait makes the earth feel like home for a time.
With you staying longer and nearer, it has made a lasting impression to run fingers over and collect the tips of things to make sense of the things we may feel, like more than necessary for one. 

By Kuroda Seiki (1866-1924) (http://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/252689) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fools Rules

Things have changed. 

As usual, kids these days, they say, incapable of paying attention to only one thing at one time.

They cannot afford to be bored, the kids will claim this while earning lack of interest and learning to invest in installments by bits or bytes of feed and data to collate and parse or peruse ever to gently over the surface, present without touching a thing but reaching further than conception can fly by rail, by plane or Falcon 9. 

And the whole time they were growing taller and able to see over the heads of past generations,

often not understanding the foreign language they use to say how big and strange the kids have become. 

The untranslatable said to be familial if not familiar cuts the tongue and distance is breathing

room. 

Some rules apply to all tight circles.

These are not rules.

Conflict creates sparks. To kindle this is Choice. Paper or plastic. Cash or credit. Fruit or Vegetable.

Man ate the apple.

We should all agree, unanimously, to treat each other with Great and Grand curiosity, instead of the horror and heart racing fear of the past passed at the speed of light, a code they will crack well after we can look back and say progress is not a lifeline or any linear conception that stretches generations.

Of course, the kids thought the adults were obedient and simple.

Always being right of something that has no sides or edges but event horizons, similar to virtual reality or alternate avatars of us which shows that only perception is infinite and limited unless you can learn to balance both ‘i’’s and juggle while focusing on more than five to seven things which may mean the multiverse is possible, or probable in a world where rings carry truth into black holes.

Poor us that shrunk while the everything expanded, who could no longer reach the ends and make connections in the dark by feeling our way around things and knowing what they may be one at a time, intimately aware of all the potential items and uses, like a life and what one should use it for.

And yet the youth always thrives because they are soft enough to adapt and keen to collect the sharpest tools that came before them and eager to learn how it was done with bright eyes that see better ways.

And yet the adults still call them fools.

Women covered up.

There are no definitions of circles that end. 

There is always room for growth. This much won't change. 

There are no rules for making lifelines with what was found.

The minerals line and build up with the bodies both old and new. 

It was only different from this view

Photo of The Atwater family, from archives by unknown, in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Fire

Burning…does that spark any distinct memory as in location, stimuli, an inkling? Burning, as in unstable state, seethe with what it means to turn matter into smoky air, burnt bridges but cremation and incarnation of time and place, thermomagnetic transportation perhaps it was never there in the ashes or stars carried away in heat waves. A ray of sun then magnetized on top of the red dirt, bark dances low and white in motes on the trail before me, nymphs and fireflies and feel always lead to castles and sweet escape of now, smolder and embering to meet me another way. 


Painting by Philippe de Champaigne (c.1645-1650) in  [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Water-Aqua Vita

As if we could withstand the curiosity, in fact, this is how it all began, not with fire as men may say. This terraqueous planet describes us, shapes us, prepares our moods, reflects feelings in water with rainy days, and on hot days it seethes to the surface. A love-hate. The odorless, tasteless, colorless, rainbow making substance making up most of what we see, including our own body, its secrets hidden behind surfaces sometimes called skins and in reflections that can be blinding. Tears may escape this wrath, you salivate, you sweat, there are many ways out, but we all know thirst in a more intimate way. Why does the river run or meander? Where is it going so unstoppably. The sea, you say. Yes. I guess these tides too taunt sameness, require membership, seeks its own kind, mutual matters. The tides taunt us relentlessly, love-hate, push-pull-sun-moon, always churn so you know it is breathing, there is life in there, resistance and persistence. Trapped as we may be in our bodies that need, trapped like ants on our hills and screaming about wills that fall on deaf ears, we still climb, we crawl, claiming to know where we are going on our islands by push-pull-time of day-we know ice when we see it, we see cold water steam, hot water vapors, and boil and evaporate and condense and it all boils down to the one scientific question-whose is it, not Prometheus, not ours to steal, it was all part of it, it needed the other matters to matter the most. Water is life always returning to become part of another body, just like we, genetically.

By Moran, Thomas, 1837-1926 (artist); L. Prang & Co. (publisher) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Earth-ling

Pleasant, soothing at it sounds seemingly to some, Mother Earth may be a callous symbol to Others.

For arguments sake, if this Mother is no longer responsible for her children-

Then why do we need to claim

Heritage, Hierarchy, Habituation, Home

By relation-dirt don't hurt no

Ship of Fools

as if entitlement and document were worth trading or grinding down.

Apes with tools erected schools of thought, others say Respect your Elders even if given shorter straws.

Piles and miles we move dirt as if we made it matter more, who is keeping score, who cares who matters

Who dares to entertain the road, let the line lay and bears all the load, but no resemblance-to us,

She is the soul maker of Beauty. 


Painting by Herbert James Draper [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Air

Noble Highness, Princess Ayre,

I see you up there-everywhere I stare down the atoms,

                                                 showing off your prowess with your plumage.

Spreading the skies with talon,

                                                  a parting breeze-Please-you dance as if the world

were watching,                                                your silhouette in spritely gambols.

without a word

Still as Summers Eve,

Avian apparatus                                       demonstrating what stirring is

and how                we should                    exhale in murmurations

                             after swallowing  

the heavens whole-                                and absolve the tears from rain.

Following your advice to Look up I have been mistaken for preying again and again.     




Artwork by Nicolaes Piemont [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.   

Blue Study

I think you know the familiar kind of-- sick of yourself --each swallow tastes like a glob of chunky chartreuse, you feel disgusted, dirty inside and nauseous unable to sit still and so you try to clean but realize after your hands are raw from chemicals and red from pressure that it is futile, so you think you should read for a little while, you think perhaps you have been busying and stretching  the wrong muscles and you could use the preoccupation of the mind, as though it was ever unoccupied or somehow free from little dust devils, a gathering of motes or thoughts that matte the shine, whose raspy murmurings stand on top of the very tracks of thought causing some horn to blare, so you decide to walk away, nearly deaf, you decide to take a hike, chew the view, and out there too, every step, left, right, there, reminds you of you, so you decide to seek Others to preoccupy the eyes, which you see, only reminds you of how you act that stupid human way.

It is like the days you wake up with a thought-most certain, confident and clear that you will remember and capture this crisp epiphany, but before you can even begin your word search or jar finding the temporary file is unrecoverable, contents empty, the pen dry, poof…. As when photons, which add up, yet individually are equally as heavy, contribute to experience and now it is forever out of focus and you decide the pen is too sharp, a gentle brush may work better, colors may even cure the acidic aftertaste, acrylic may do the trick, at least aromatically, or was this only about aesthetics, taste, yes…oil needs water, and I find footprints on the canvas. Somewhere near, a cat walks with blue paws.

The stuff at the bottom, the sediments, dregs and lees, the slag and settled matters, remnants and residue of making, fermentation and processing-were better to spit out on the page than swallowed whole hearted murky dejection, carbonation or abandonment of pursuit with ennui and flat out No Thank You, repetitively dishing disappointment on an uncoated bleached paper plate. Serve yourself please.

Be a spork. Utility has you. Continue to recall. Not all answers end in never. Some rhetoric is right for some, for some rhetorically left alone. Stand over here-in blue and corrected, this is what I red, primarily. 

Painting by Ludvig Karsten [Public domain], The blue kitchen (1913) via Wikimedia Commons.

How to mingle without getting muddy

Explain how the ripple came to be?

Easy.

You were right about one part. The air sleeping atop the crisp sheets, yes linen has always seemed lovely and of comfort. Let us say a semipermeable comforter, we like blanket terms too. The special phenomena, right off the top, is that this form of gentle is incomparable to the world or anything you have never felt. It occurs soundlessly as a culmination of friction, passionate projections opposed, finally finding its apex in a touch, a synchronized demonstration of composure, expect this, it is a normal reaction to momentary chaos.

It is when the air forms solid cubes and stacks together, carving out valleys with detritus shapes and wind with in it, water rises to the challenge and pinches back for measure of dream, getting an atom or nose in between swing and edgewise, push and pull, awake and snap.

An interruption smoother than prophecy, symbiotic as choreography, responses are red and al dance without stepping on toes-

That is how a ripple goes.  

Painting by John William Godward [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

All thumbs

Payne’s grey dried and embedded under my right thumb nail and as obvious as this is, numbers won't help me, my digits deny wrong-doing, I have an alibi.

Porcelain gesso flakes on these forearms pretend this doll skin can peel, I must step out of the light so  may scratch these off, knowing even after all the bleach I was immersed in yesterday, the stains and imperfections all remain as if the function were to remind me of what this is not, mirrors and pixels which explains the impulse to smoke and blur, these gestures sweep and move genres.

Sure I may talk big, but I could never carry out such cruelty as to send my dearest enemies these mirrors, so instead I paint and portray cells, the canvas becomes a loose cage able to contain this heart embedded rage, this one gives me trouble and the door remains ajar.

I am stuck. The cracked glass. The hour stand and black sand that not just trickles down and out but spills upward and around the sides and I no longer am able to get the picture- still defiant and incomplete, I know it could just be me, lost within this painting to be profound, I ponder and fume at the empty reflection knowing it needs some heartbeat, a sign of life somewhere, people, and wall to race against. For now, the background is all sky,

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why? 

Painting by Gerrit Dou (1647) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

killing time

To Others-

Watching them, it appears as though the two were dancing around each other, aware of each other toes or playing the same game. Not against each other, or themselves, not a team sport or idle play, just for fun.

No, for mastery. To have won. To be declared-a winner-as if always applicable. It does sometimes. When one has won, over another, they are familiar with the feeling, as though it were the same as before.

The two were not competing, not against each other, occupied in their own two feats.

It was a race against Time.

It was attempted murder somewhere along the way, a second-degree homicidal revenge, an all out assault waged on time, two against eternity, injustice in exchange for all the lives taken by the monster T.

In stead, in lieu of, making more with what they had around, they bet it all, waged what they thought was the same war, fore time,

She was trying to save Time, he was busy killing it. There was none left over for playing games together. 

One view with two eyes

After I realized how few only one of us truly are, as in, the rarity or endangerment of the only child, I see how few may understand me-genuinely-the way my children understand each other but not me and the crucial if not mortal necessity I feel for solitude. And alienation is not ostracizing if one never felt a connection. It is not found in silence. And although there remain tones of this essence underneath, it is too muffled to make out. Somehow I made it through until now, more than once I made it to the outside world, to others, to simply touch something and come back, quickly I recoil from over-stimulation.

I see others acclimating quite nicely. You get used to this, one could say, like the train or the ocean.

Meanwhile, I am watching all this from inside these windows, I see connections and glass; crystal structures and rainbows, and although I stand so low to the ground I feel out of place, a touch of vertigo because I know I could be the only one who smells the rain rising from below, feels the clouds falling on my head, see them spinning…and say too much.

This is why we blink, I realized, it should not be up to us only to refresh the view. 

Watercolor painting by Winslow Homer (1892) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Too soon?

'You had to be there',

was what we used to say back in the dumb days not quite dark ages, before smartphones and googling.

Now, it is all there, unfaded, in easily reassembled pixels, or virtual memory, clouds.

Both of us, born before Search and Share and compare versions of history, or alternative facts, we can crop and auto-adjust the lighting, or apply filters-for warmth.

It is the way he shows me, pointing down the rabbit hole, we were just bunnies.

He says I will come across these pictures myself in the morning so he should explain.

I prepare for the confession, he is pointing to a collage of She’s, some he has known since high school.

The photo of the old school developing film paper type, a bit blurry some seem hazy with sun,

I squint and see girls, maybe sixteen, all dressed and posed as Cinderella’s, he points and says that party was fun, costumes of trying to look twenty-one. I see these young ladies racing, smiling, at what lie ahead.

He asks if I recognize the birthday girl and I do. The others seem more of interest to he, smiling fondly. 

It was obvious. 

Teen girls wishing to become-and portraying to be-savvy little ladies, married to Mr. Right, looking marvelous and wealthy- now -really--only miserly unfair maidens merely mulling over memories and what could be's, looking strangely silly to me.  

Weren't smartphones supposed to parse us all through this?

Some of the photos were duplicates, I had seen them before. Recently.

I have no photos of myself at that same time, at the same age, the boys did not take pictures back then. And then I am thankful. What an opportunity to forget…a thing of the past.

He still stares at his hands and I see sun spots, in case you were wondering. 

These women all worried the men may forget-what was then, what they looked like in a Kodak moment, when they had unlimited possibilities and poorer photo qualities, sadly they say they see

Then as the Best time, now it is too late. I never went to Pity Parties. 

Lately, he has shown me many, he agrees. He must be hungry for the plumped up past. He enjoys a reheated repast. I am never hungry (for leftovers).

He says, see there’s Me and un-pinches the post to zoom in, close as he can. I see.

That is not where he has been looking. He does not confess, he laughs it off walking away.

Close enough.

Things never were the same. He is googling away. I am deleting photos. 

Painting by Édouard Manet, On the Beach (1873) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Drive

The middle-aged man scissor strides wide down the empty sidewalk across the freeway overpass around lunchtime. The intersection is always busy.

Blue painters tape he has wrapped around the left boot, black steel-tipped toed hooves which smack carelessly atop the gold and silver glittering cement in a usual left, right way.

He twists his swaying hands in fists, turning them clenched in and out of sync with his inefficient gait.
He sneers around and his hair is trim. He wears a buttoned-up baby blue collared shirt with light black bulging cargo pants, masking knobby legs to show he was prepared for anything.

He wasn't, clearly.

It was hard to tell where he was going faster than all the fancy new cars jammed atop the asphalt
all around him.

Two million dollars blowing smoke and going nowhere faster than he fidgets.

It is easy to think of all the miles he must have traveled and all the wealth he has casually passed by and free ways he must have walked over, all the while, the important ones are collectively waiting in line and he is wearing out his durable souls going somewhere, believing the blue tape will work better than becoming a new man,
just before I lost sight of him
for good.

Our Glasses

Something went wrong. It is not for me to judge the degree by which this may have led to the inevitable consequences that unfold like light impervious to degrees good or bad.

Something just went wrong. This was the effect of due course and not the cause or point of origin as though could be specified succinctly where the beginning of blame is compact and obvious by distinction between layers of strata in Earth, this was then, then this was now, this happened thus caused this blood red dirt; this era-something went wrong. There were clues, globules, and hints that worked their way to the surface by usual volcanic activity calling themselves tiny coincidences, granite is a stoic collector an enduring supporter, an acquired eye. Yes, clues, scree, I wiped my feet. 

By assemblage, it would be best to use a logic puzzle grid and if all else fails, guess and check. Usually, in eliminating all impertinent information or relevant and most necessary negative extrapolations, we come closer to what we are not.

Some words were strange, numerically out of context, standing in for something greater than one possibility which makes it difficult to decide if we should be made an ex or a why…

Those outward signs, the nose, the fingers and weak organs, not so subtly and not easily dismissed by nature or lack of nurture, this only made this one stand out from the others. The odd cast out so as not to interfere with even, truth, or interrupt the act of Life. All the world is a black stage, I only intend to learn my part as the understudy, minimally working on my costume, I exhume the dream of anyone seeing me, it was a dream.

Captive audience or made hostage, either way I do not recognize this scene so I am rapt up temporarily and I am convinced a line I know will come along soon even if it is not mine.

I have not found heart, I never looked outside. These people are not my peers. There are public spectacles with wire frames paneled in glass and called anyone’s dream home. I scream at that ugly transparency, opaque in an alabaster way, permeable and subject to influence and wavelength, shale and sand-stone, color yourself like granite!

Something went wrong. I wasn’t supposed to find out. Stranger in a stranger land, the hourglass sucks in sand. Something went wrong. It should be empty by now. It cannot express infinity that way but does, with or without me, good or bad, always.   

Painting by William Orpen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dis-order

Alone, I tried desperately, throwing myself like a slingshot to see how far I could get before being reminded I was still a baby boomerang until I finally had to marry someone to cut the ties to get far enough away from my past-my little town- the small minds and tiny tree cages or giant semper virens prison I grew out of, fathoms enough away to not hear or at least unintelligibly muffle the moans, which originated as screams it seems, the empty echoes, broken boughs, and out of tune heart-strings only to be yanked right back there, teleported as I took out the trash, and there-traveling down the street, coming at me, over fences instead of between trunks, the barking, the dogs voice, his protective tone, the accusatory way this bark comes at me and says, no matter where you think you live, your permanent resident is at my back and calling me to another place-time out of this distant expanding private space, and I shake slightly, trembling at the thought, this is PTSD…

I wash my hands of all GSR and trash after having aimed at the moon, shot an evil eye at the neighbor and caught a star that fell randomly into my lap. It told me its name was Experienca.

Artwork By McBey, James [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have change

Just when we are confident we have it all worked out. Experience, observation and wisdom have all lined up, the necessary pieces not fit together and lo and behold, along comes a wrench when we really needed a flathead...

And so we go back to the box, drawing plane, surface situation and jam pack it with things for things or  whatchamacallits for thingamajigs that jimmy rigged together. For now, all went make to a humming working order; fixed and figured up from out of order to smooth sailing, for now we feel like Master Craftsmen and ultimately it feels good to be needed, a take it not a lever, our ingenuity to be necessary for some end, the right job for the right tool and all that.

Now, just what in the world are we talking about? Just about everything. Life is a series of working-on-it-fixing-it-thing-a-ma-jigs or some such sequence of events-some repetitive, others seemingly (k)new.

The anarchist in the village is change and the little devil is ruining the peace, his presence spells CHANGE, I know it is scary. It is offensive. It is personal, it is a dirty harsh word. 

Change is change-worthy, that is the one thing that never changes with change, it never changes to one thing without changing again. Change, for better or worse, finds us. Change changes us.  It changes situations, it can appear good or bad, it can be quick or calculating but never lingers too long in any one location.

The day it all breaks down, when change decides to stay too long, the day we notice it changing the way we live while we are busy living someway building up resistances, walls, and barriers, we will realize our bricks were made with straw and are starting to break down under current circumstances, that is the changing, the current of energy, the flux swung wider.

At the outset, we knew we need the AC and DC to work with electricity properly, and it is shocking-the resistance to change at our fingertips-at failure to understand proper conductivity and the power to change.

Climate changes. Yes, it does. We have seen this and every generation calls it new, a revelation in cycles. We make our homes so cozy and relatively free of quantum jitters, from inside we are protected from erratic tsunamis of gravity and this keeps most of us calm, accepting and willing to try change if only to move to higher ground.

Our cars, our planes, our holograms and computers are coming in stronger but we still do not see the necessity for change, who asks a baby not to grow? Every mother, of course-but that is love and something (holy) inexplicable. Wait until our computer fall short…Next we think we can direct the comets were to free fall-not too close-now-stay safe-stay alert. There may be patterns bigger than you or I can see, or correlate and restate as experience and knowing. It’s not personal, this change wasn’t about you. Look up! That is no rainbow, it’s a silver lining-come stand over here.

See, it wish I wrote faster-it already changed again.   



Image courtesy of By NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute [Public domain], Peering into storm (Earth) via Wikimedia Commons.