Barely there

Have you lost your mind? I mean, felt you lost your-self-when you were right there the last time you checked but now suddenly there is a vacancy that looks like a closed door with the new sanitized tape on hotel room doors as if that made it safe-we still don't take off the pillow tags. 

I lost it-Recently. 

Like coming out of store late in the day, hungry, tired, half there, hands full, mind elsewhere, where did I park? Suddenly the direction toward the car seems wrong, or maybe not...a panic squeezes in, a moment of helplessness, as vacuous as the entrance to the dark woods you have just moved into-notice the absence of shadow figures in the dark moonless heavy dusk? This carries over...

Recognizing the solitude, nobody sees and this moves me forward because it is all I can do when my eyes have been placed just so in that direction while my head is loosely tethered by thin string tendons to my shell, and I find my car, don't need keys, get in, sit there, and wonder if I will ever feel safe with myself again? 

The rain falls hard pounding the moonroof. I cannot feel my extremities. The engine is purring and the gaslit interior is showered in blue light. This dark night my lights, like my eyes, revealed only the most necessary next step, next cat eye, next mile marker, next canto, next ring...

Artwork by Gustave Doré, from 'Paradise Lost (12)' in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Diary: From the Cage

a Monologue is a Diary entry (a.k.a. Blog)

2020 MMXX

How to Improve the World (While it gets worse)

"There is poetry, as soon as we realize that we possess nothing." -John Cage

The beat goes on…the line

MM.

The best we can do, the MOST we can believe (we have ALL the evidence needed to conclude) that LOVE is the rarest element, Love as in War, fairness, not human justice, becomes a spectator sport whereby we are relegated to the sidelines, like marginalia not a minority, meaning there was never enough space in the thick of things for everything or everybody, as in Justified, paragraph or body, filling the white spaces which had been left intentionally blank. The difference between font and handwriting is that none remember how it all ended with a period or what comes last and none are able to decipher the cursive which was once composed as a hybrid theory of print and point like code, one is true-the typeset, the other opinion, fluid connecting gradients and a blending of tone.

Dial tone-there is no OPERATOR-nobody was there and nobody noticed there was no busy signal we were just too busy to wonder if the other is ready to receive us, never mind, the tone we needed to call out on an open line became a recording device for the wireless messages, the reading of thoughts and sending of signals seamlessly untethered

To the wall, booth, outlet, and yet it feels like an inlet, a rush of information and forceful alternating currents suck us in like a Black hole which you know holds no history of itself, resembling pupils opening wide for the shallow blue light emitted by this pale blue dot, not pixel or vector or ‘X’, it is only area, conjecture, look what could be here, look who we could be, we have friends and likes and like friends distributed opinions and impressions liberally causing the conservative to recoil, everyone’s hates hippies, the lazy, the wrong people chosen for the right-choice is no longer as cheap as freel will. 

We pulled a Trump card before losing the whole pot to the house. The tarot doesn't even know how to draw out the future. Like passport stamps and books of stamps, badges and business cards, libraries of matches and books of matches, cases of paper and cases of beer, bic lighters and bic pens, sharpies that have been banned and dried up and crayons that have become candy-Apples, a barrel of-

Monkeys escape only to entertain us in their anthropomorphic endearment, flattery, flinging poop and wide gum grins, picking lice and having a bad day-they look just like you, or the other way, you are what you consume.

We all died of consumption. 

Save the Planet, Save your Soul, Save the Bees, Save our Ships, Save the Day, nobody saves what they don’t have to use right now, which is called need, like common sense which has been added to the national deficit so nobody notices how scarce figures may be…

The race has been lost, we need not run in place, inside, from ourselves, from them, from the return of the RED SCARE and Pennywise and the Joker and the scabs have re-opened from constant abrasion, personal space resembles dark matter, heavy and plastic, full of preservatives to linger longer and avoid the living while surviving longer and if only Twinkies were clonable we might become sweeter on the inside or carcinogenic, the big C as terminal wars will never be over, people just go home, or return to where they came from, or where they remember being last since homes had been foreclosed upon like plywood windows, a cautionary deterrence for ill winds. Not here, not today, No vacancy, No welcome mats, no hospitality.

XX.

There was something not clear through the screen, the snow that didn’t white out the sound we waited for the attachment that was not attached and fell into the ether without a paperclip symbol, the signal seeking itself, eaves-dropping, line sharing, filming, peaking and ebbing of influences, like grand idea and super-ego, there was representation where like-ness was not like this

Be original. Artists never needed money. Artists don’t eat food. Artists require shelter for storage, like a flash drive, and Artists were thirsty-but-the-water-was-tainted-so alternatives were offered, red pill, blue pill, white pill for all ailments and enabling the growth of the HMO membership, enlistment was for hacking not sawing, nobody saw a thing but it was recorded by a lamp-post that turns on when it begins to feel dark, like religion.

Who told you to believe that? You believed them, in them. You believed what they said which was what someone they believed told them and it was not about what you thought, it was about what they thought and not about listening.

We are never lost. Now, we will always find an alternate route. We follow directions dutifully as if all  we needed to know was left or right or ETA or ERA, but rights on reds are the angles efficiency of FedEx-EXCEPT packages still get lost and messages are misunderstood...

MMXX.

In this century we call this ‘in the Ether’, knowing quantum physics has already accounted for this element or is working on the forensic accounting of what fell off the back of the truck, walked out the back door, knocked off the flat earth, this Ether has holes and gravity waves in-between zeroes and ones that hit us making ripples in our reality of Newtonian necessities such as what goes up must fall, as if Karma carried weight like Atlas, finally shrugging it off-no patience would provide clarity-wait-we never asked where the stone fell in, we only assumed someone, somewhere understands and can demonstrate simplest like color coded radar which was always accurate based on humidity and pressure changes, such is life. This is why flat tires are heavy and feel squared up against right angles and left blinkers like arrows one way-archery is a forgotten skill like Latin, camping, Thank you notes, Customer Service, and stick shifts.

Love. Love was always Love. Technology would never cure the struggle. Curing requires exposure to the elements out of our control. Love we scream in song, in prayer, in death and by birth, for a car, for a cat, for that thing you thought would make you whole, a hole in the wallet, no worries, we carry no cash, peddling and bagging are no longer employment, do it yourself, find the change, put your purchases in your deep pouches and follow your dreams.

Who remembers their dreams when we must get going before we know where we have been and how to start making a difference between yesterday and now-making love never seemed so necessary for our future starting tomorrow,

It will be clear, sunny and 2020.
We will never know what to wear for this occasion.

Just so you know, I can only read the first row.

I need glasses. Don’t pour here.

X marks the spot that needs a kiss. Saving our selfies, we needed faces we could touch and roll cages not airbags. Driving is safer. North and South are not so fixed as indefinitely Up and Down or 0 and 1. 

Where to start over?

Finally, the cat ran out of the box marked with a capital ‘S’. It was blind and afraid, but it “lived” nine lives this one time, Lost and Found traded places. Many a man contemplates becoming a Martian, meanwhile, it all occurs as novel, again, nobody listened to the ending.

"We need not destroy the past, it is gone." -John Cage

Inspired by "Diary: How to Improve the World..."by John Cage

http://sigliopress.com/book/diary-how-to-improve-the-world/

Painting by Harry Wilson Watrous, 'The Composers' c. 1910 in Public Domain.

The worlds we are

I am interested in the concept of a passive revolution. This is how all revolutions begin. It is the seed germinating under our trash. It is the scent that concentrates in the morning sun. Discontent begins internally and violently. It is fascinating to me how such a dramatic shift goes virtually unnoticed over the course of weeks which may be months or years. This is the passive part. We are all like the days, we count, we gather in groups and we make the tide turn, we wait our turn, we miss our ride, we are in the right place, we know the wrong people, the hands of the clock are pointing outside the cycle hinting with an arrow that there must be another way to go around.

The best part of sobriety, or not drinking alcohol, is the predictability. The crispness of mental clarity gives one a false sense of power and control. More commonly, however, the doldrums of routine feel poignantly pointless rendering most powerless and ready for a stiff drink. The power to deny ourselves may not be a life-saving choice. When meaning escapes me, I have learned not to replace this vacancy with alcohol by volume or other similar chemical costumes.  Despite the encouragement of concerned citizens,  I remain naked and exposed, sober and certain. Meaning finds me making room and making up the bed for a long term guest. 

I was going to make chicken again for dinner. I no longer believe that a Revolution is simply having too much idle time with our hands, it is because we have never really gotten to the seed of the need for revolt. Confidently, I am able to predict that at 5 p.m. I will be standing at the kitchen counter. Maybe I will make eggs instead.

Have you ever asked someone if they were hungry and the first thing they did was check the time? Almost everyone does that. 

My stomach is not on my wrist or inside my smartphone. 

Wouldn't we know if we were hungry? Shouldn't we know what the body needs?

What do you say when someone asks you, “How are you doing (today)?” Usually, we have a loaded standard response we return like an echo, sometimes we only hear the end. 

I think the question is framed in a way that is impossible to answer depending upon the emphasis. There is statistical evidence that comparison praise is detrimental to performance and self-esteem. I do not know How am I doing it, I don’t really know which thing I am currently doing, can we say we do not know without seeming dismissive or dumb? You probably don’t care about what you seem to be (doing) to others nor should you consider how.

I am doing great. That is a great response. I agree. 

My daughter, a college student, just purchased a pencil pouch that has an illustrated headstone which reads “R.I.P. C.O.D. (Cause of Death) Small Talk”. It is comforting to be common-enough-to have your opinion on a zippered pouch. Her name is not common so she was never able to get the once-popular name pencils, license plate frames and Cokes. Do they still make those? Pencils?

I have a couple thousand weeks left in total to do what I need to do. 

I don’t think I have ever finished a To-Do list entirely in a day without any carry-over. Ambitious. 

It drives me crazy. When you sit that still, you can actually hear the second hand move across your spine. The seconds it takes to change a mood, the seconds it takes for the sun to set under the horizon line, the seconds it takes for the light of a falling star to disappear...There are no seconds. There are only firsts. Nothing has been done before. Exactly.

He comes home. Drinks. Eats. Gets on his phone. Talks about youthful memories and aggravating work. He worries about his workload tomorrow. I wonder about escape velocity and payloads. He wishes there was more time in a day-to get all of the work done. He is always doing things until they are done.

He is not doing so great.

We sit on the Goldilocks planet porch, there is only a table between us. He sips his scotch, I crunch ice cubes and the worlds spins its yarns.

Our lives revolve around holding each other a safe distance a part and passively ever after,

thinking of the thick atmosphere and ways to escape without incineration. 

Painting by Walter Dendy Sadler, 'Married' c. 1896 in [Public domain].

Village people

Here’s the deal. Truth upfront. All the problems in the world, well, maybe just in the (un)United States, are caused by us. US, I said. Self-evident truth and all those civil liberties that have become buried and embedded into the strata of geological time. This has nothing to do with cerebral concepts such as the pursuit of doing what you love, finding happiness, being mindful and getting rich quick. The issue is breeding and duplication. It is out of control. Is humanity and adapting and making do with our rapidly changing environments or devolving from our terrestrial realms and merely grounded to our emotional subjectivity.
I want to know what the heck is happening to our offspring?
What are they being taught? What are they learning from us?

Who raises their own children anymore? How will they know what not to be?
Isn't this a bit scary?

I have yet to meet a person that appreciates being told that they are doing it wrong.
From investing money to parenting and from kissing to cooking, there is no one right way to get the most out of an empty well or to live a life of harmonic balance. Although I know less than nothing about financial investments (which matches my net worth to the penny,) I do know a thing or two about parenting and the investment of resources and time required to keep the job without any guarantee of tenure, retirement or security.
There is no balance to anything-that lasts longer than a moment. Balance is a constant adjustment.
Anybody that tells you about life-balance has fallen off their own ball.

It is sad, heartbreaking to notice that making more humans is not taken very seriously. There is no testing, no counseling, no random safety checks or quality inspections, and in my experience, although I lived in a real Village, there were no people to assist me with raising my children but I think I was better off knowing what I know now about that Village. 

One summer vacation my kids and I were visiting the tiny mountain town I grew up in and my daughter asked if we were going into the Village to see the Village people today? The sentiment was so innocent. She really thought all towns are called villages. People don't live in cities she informed me-where would they sleep? Cities have airports for all the people that come and go, she once informed me. Looking at it her way, the homeless were just displaced travelers waiting on stand-by.

So many people seem to be so preoccupied with all the other people. When did we start being so curious about what people we do not know are eating, or need to know where they go, or want to hear what they listen to or read and believe any of it is true or interesting?  We are all unique, but not that different. We were the very first- who knew how to find out anything with our fingertips but were too pre-occupied to notice that things figured us out first. 

When the parents of the world stopped raising their children's eyes from the screen, the window to the world became handheld. The world in the palms of our hands became a quite literal demand. The iPad is the babysitter, the teacher, the consoler, the nurse. It’s all fun and apps until your child points out that your smartphone is smarter than you, your car now knows if you are paying attention to where you are going while we trace our steps wondering if we are losing this game we have so much skin in. 

Village people are simple, not idiots. Villages were never meant for growth or else they would be called  Cities. To call a place a Village it must be larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town and is situated in a rural area. By this definition, Villages are endangered if not at the brink of extinction. Rural? Hamlet? Villages used to conjure up the idea of a farming or fishing community since these clusters of people living together often were producers of sustenance. A village is socialist, it is dare I say, communist in its ideal working conditions. And villages are described also as ‘unincorporated communities’ yet considering the alliance of the residents, I would dare to guess that Village people are more pleasant and productive than city folk. 

The way and how we live has changed dramatically but we still gather in groups, even if we don’t look at or speak to each other. We have a lot of the same needs and desires, we also share our worst fears which is why we leave the lights on in the city all night. Nobody lasts long doing the graveyard shift anyway. 

The number one function of a village is trade. I have only seen cash traded for various items in this village. One must give to get. When I gave birth I got a new job. When I accepted the new position and big title I foolishly felt like a part of the bigger world.  When I realized I was chosen, I did not choose otherwise it was humbling to learn that assemblies are always required of us. I recently quit a job that traded my life by the hour for a few dollars to buy dinner. The woman who was my boss suggested, “We should trade. I will take your kids and you take mine,”  she was serious. It was hilarious and preposterous.  She suggested I adopt her brother-in-law’s young son as if anybody could raise anybody's’ child. I guess there are still Village idiots thinking that working together means living together. I guess we are all over-spending our dumb luck?


Painting by Frédéric Bazille, 'View of the village' c. 1868 in [Public domain].

The muted mockingbird

When she decided to stay and discover what beautiful music they may make together, you should have seen the way he looked at her. Her plumage, her markings, her song seemed to be just what he always wanted. They swirled in a world of their own orbit sharing each other's wind.
She lifted his eyes, he lifted her wings.

The two created a distinct harmony, they found each other's notes and carried them-for each other- until those once juicy earworms began sounding like the same old shriveled song. 

He began a solo search for any new and interesting instruments he may have never heard before. 

His memory of her distinct beauty faded into the textured wallpaper. 

She stayed inside, dutifully pecking at the seeds he left thoughtfully strewn on the circle floor. He did not see that being free was what made her breed a thing of beauty. Her whistles turned into wheezes. 

She swung back and forth like a pendulum on her roost, passing the time counting up and down, staring at the bars and seeing the space between as just enough room for the stale air to pass through.

She never could have imagined such an enclosed life with nobody to hear her, nobody to sing to, nobody to pick up her next note, nobody to suggest a new one, no ears to perk and not a single tiny conscience to consider what happens to a bird in a cage. An Orca placed in a pool causes its dorsal fin to fold over, an undeniable six-foot sign of suffocation. She had never felt so isolated inside, inside, inside, feathers fold-over feathers, her heart feels muffled.

He, her master, must have clipped her wings out of security, his own. Now she would never notice her sky falling without the ability to see-above. 

He tries to reassure her, inside voices, silence is sweeter, don’t sound so shrill, you are missing nothing- outside. 

He said he prefers that she cannot soar, her helpless flapping is enough to demonstrate that she is still alive-inside. And when the first shadow of the evening ravens going west crosses the white wall, he is drawn to the changing light like a flicker of truth, a flame he cannot grasp, the murder moves on and on. 

She is told she should be grateful for her brass plated bars, the security, safety, the solitude and peace. Outside of the comfortable zone he made for her is a world full of predators, he warns her. She can only pray that one day she may feel the chase, the furious wind under her breasts once again. She thinks she could live happily without this peace of empty place. 

Noticing his neglect, she no longer manages more than a feeble peep. 

He thinks she could maybe use a feathered friend to share her sentence, to converse with, to occupy her while he is away. He is always away, even when inside, he is no longer at home.
He has forgotten their chorus.  

He does not reach in to touch her.
He no longer hears her song and conjures up memories.
He said he will never let her go. 

She knows that means, outside. 

She has heard that some species lose their voice from overuse, abuse and stretching it to the extreme, and others become muted, like the fallen tree in the forest, only to be taken in by the forest again.
She barely makes a breeze, not a spontaneous sound escapes, nobody picked up her last call, none saw her last tweet, without any melody, there is no need to wonder why her song is no longer sung.
There were no words to share. 

No echoes would carry her away.

Image in Alcide Dessalines d'Obigny, Orpheus dorsalis, c. 1847.

Purple Prose

When I say February, do you picture red? Love and hearts and all that? What about blue, since it falls in wintertime for the Northern Hemisphere? Do you even see a color or taste the temperature?

Between blue and red reside purple. February is purple. The stone, amethyst is always purple, unlike some other chameleon gemstones, amethyst is crystallized as the stone of February.

February and I have been in a lifelong relationship. Yes, I was born in the small month and I was probably purple myself on that day many years ago. February has always been purple, cool, aloof and superior. I am not over embellishing either, there is not much time or space. It is a condensed month, it is a mourning and morning month. Pink Jasmine, lilac vines, star quantities of white and pink blossomed trees are all in chilly bloom matching the steel winter skies.
February could care less about us and our expectations our resolutions, our plans, our dates, our hopes, our disappointments. It comes and goes leaving only a stain of chocolate in the corners of the calendar.

The first purple (Tyrian) dye came from a snail. My grandfather used to give me a bag of salt and instructed me to find and kill all the slugs I could find. I did not look very hard for slugs but now I wonder if a stain was left where they decomposed?

Purple is not violet, a common mistake. Violets are blue. Why do we like roses that don't smell? Purple doesn’t actually exist optically. And I bet my purple is not the same as your purple. Purple tinted moss and urine also make a brilliant royal purple dye. In 1993 a crayon was added to the box called ‘Purple Mountains Majesty’ to represent the Rayleigh scattering effect which makes distant mountains appear hazy purple. A purple heart medal does no soldier stationed in the grave any good. There is no such mammal as a Purple People Eater. Purple Haze and Purple Rain are music and not meteorological events. And Robert Burns used the word curple to make his rhyme making us all feel a little like a horses ass for reading poetry.

Purple is velvet, it is midnight seduction, jazz music, the reflection streetlamps in a street puddle after a rain, it is a mumuration in the sky, the soft folds of the human body that are never touched, purple is a marriage of hot and cold, it is a dance with two leading, a blur of friction, it is the aura of wisdom, it is the inside of my mind on a clear path.

'Inside of a geode' taken 2008 in Public Domain.

Re(a)dwood

I have a distinct memory about a vague object.
I don’t remember where it came from originally. I would never know its true origins-nor need to.
It was not in my house where I grew up-I don’t think. I am pretty sure it was in someone else's home. But I do clearly remember spending lots of time sitting on the ground next to it, admiring all of the tiny intricacies, ridges, I rubbed its smooth and rough spots and imaginatively stared at the shape of dust clumps like snowflakes which had settled deep in the crevasses that adults with big eyes seldom see. And there were many of these tiny recesses and pockets, places big enough I realized so I would place a penny inside, a broken crayon, a tiny rock or even cigarette butt. 

Sometimes objects own us, not the other way around.
There are certain matters in life that seem impossible to eliminate. These are the same objects that we cannot seem to free ourselves from, like this thing that had a firm grip on me. I am certain that what turned into a lifelong project was sparked by this first encounter with an object that was not mine. An object that I determined to make mine. Instinctively I knew I would need a place to hide my tiny trinkets in life.
At 16 years old when we are certain we are far more competent than most humans to have ever lived and we like to exercise and stretch our free will, I decided to buy a raw version of the object from my past.  Unfinished, a cut of it, a slice like a brain-the big top piece anyway.
I picked two pieces to go together of course. Like a matchmaker, soulmates scream for eachother and are more when in alignment, when thier strengths are stacked together, when one has the others back, or front, or wherever the spot is the weakest. These two would be fated to be an inseparable pair, mated for (my) life and on proud display- one day, when each was a bit more refined and presentable.

You wanna slice of me?

Yes. I will take that one. With all those jutting angles and a couple of deep nooks. I don't care if you think it will break, that is the one I want. And I like that other one for the base. It reminds me of something…like a knuckle or horses knee maybe…tendons.

I took the two home from the mill like an adoptive mother, nervous on the ride home.

And I spend hours with my two bare hands sanding, rubbing off sawdust, carving out imperfections, peeling back layers and making smoother. Eventually, I grew weary of trying to perfect what was already perfect. Not smooth, but perfect enough. There were some spots I simply could not get to. My toolbox was pretty empty at this young age. 

My stepfather reminded me often how much elbow grease was needed for getting any project done well. He developed tennis elbow. He never swung a racket. He did play the guitar. Guitars are also called axes. We did have a woodburning stove for a heater.

It sat in the corner of a room. I tried to rekindle the initial passion I had. I talked about it, intimately. I boasted about its unique properties, the way it had revealed itself as being better than I could have anticipated and yet, unfinished always seemed a better state to stay. That way, nothing is ruined.

A painter knows the epileptic jolts of paralyzation that spontaneously arise when something is potentially coming together as we envisioned, there is an implicit challenge to mess it up, to apply the human touch to the butterfly wings.

So it sat quietly, collecting dust. I threw a sheet over it at one point when I moved away for a time.

After one of my grandparents passed away my mom called me to see if she could throw it away. She wanted to make room for all the junk collected by my grandparents. The room that I once slept in had been converted into a music room by my step-father and was due to become a storage pod. I told her I would drive up to get it. She was very pleased and informed me I should take some more stuff. I agreed. I drove away with a rented mini-van of stuff, the details of which are a whole different tale. 

When I returned with it, brought it into my adult life, 22 years after the project began, there was an exciting renewed enthusiasm and appreciation for the wood pieces. I have noticed that most people from Southern California are stupified by and in awe of burly big trees-and rightly so. Palm trees are not nearly as characteristic as the giant redwoods of my youth. Kind of like Leonardo Davinci, who was intrigued by the wrinkles of aging men, how their life hung on their cheekbones and sorrows were stored in their chin as if any this could be read in wood. To me, the sculpture was merely a piece of home away from home.

“You did this all by hand?” I would be asked by friends that happened to pass where it then sat in our garage collecting different dust motes from a different latitude. I had hoped with the access to power tools, the project may get completed to a point where it would all just come together. And boy did we use tools. Several people stepped in to try to help clean out deep crevasses and sand rough nobs all with a strong loving hand as if to leave a couple drops of their own elbow grease in between the grains. Seeing the people from my future life handle the raw wood I hand-chose was one of those juxtapositions of time that I loved to savor. Of course, all of that combined effort and light machinery was still not enough to bring the project to a satisfactory completion. It sat-still. 

Five years later it sits in my living room under a warm glow. It is dark, the rich reddish-brown of a Chestnut racing horse. It has been sealed-only lightly. It sits proudly in the center of the living room occupying all focal attention with its intricate swirls, rings, knots, bulges, and recesses. There are stories between the lines, one gets lost looking inside the folds. The top is merely resting on the base or trunk. It is not permanently attached (yet? I haven't decided if I want to). I think of how this resembles us. It is burly but I get anxious when there is anything, a drink, a book, keys, a notebook, the mail, it could become unbalanced. Maybe over time I will stop caring so much. It only took me 26 years to put it all together thus far...and yet, it is only just barely composed-held together-by balance.
It is finally finished.

Last image R6, Private Forestry, California burl, c. 1920 via Forest Health Protection [Public domain].

Wrinkles in time

*****

My adult son and I were in the game store when an old man in his 70's peered inside the glass door his left making a door on the side of his left cheek

notices me and smiles widely, eagerly pulling open the store door, flashing his yellow teeth at me he catches his breath before speaking, his eyes change

and he says to me "Oh, I thought you were my wife, I'm sorry, " and walked out seeking his missing white-haired mate. This was just today, when I was forty-something. I wondered if I was the lost one. 

*****

I went to the racetrack to bet on the ponies this season, but really to see a concert for free-when you stay and play, you do not have to pay for the show. You have already paid-with losses.

While standing in the security line, among all ilks and ages, an older woman in her 60’s, with purple-white spiked hair smiled at me while simultaneously giving me elevator eyes. “Such a cute outfit,” she said pointing up and down my body. “I get to see what all the people wear, it is one of the reasons I love this job, it helps me stay in touch.” I smiled and thanked her. She added since the line had not progressed, “Just a bit ago though-I saw the saddest thing. A young man wore a jacket that had a cross, crossed out! So so sad! And underneath that it read ‘Bad Religion’ and I wondered who in his life had taught him about God, who steered him the wrong way?” I smiled wider, “That is a band.” Her mouth fell open, her face flushed, we laughed lightly together and all moved on. I now had second thoughts about my outfit.

*****

I had both of my children when I was young, younger than most women. I wanted to have the energy and relatability of a young mother. Now that they are adults and all the adults my own age have young school-age children I am even more pleased with my naive choice, I am unable to relate to my peers but have found my relationship with my own adult children in full bloom. They are wildflowers. I don’t even water them. They grow how they want, I observe their new beauty and admire their lack of fear when sticking their petals out tall. Strangers always mistake my daughter for being much younger than she is, my son is afraid of strangers. Other people are stranger than my children. We are all old enough to know there will not be enough time. We are all adults trying to save our childhood.

Painting by Jacopo da Empoli, 2nd half of the 16th century in [Public domain].

Leave a legacy on

When given a moment alone with ourselves a voice speaks up. Yeah, it's you. Maybe not the nicest you. Call it our subconscious voice, our hyper-critical mind, the hamster running on the wheel, a monkey mind, the ego, the problem solver-engineer or whatever title you may give yours, it is an all too familiar voice. And much like our closest family members lilt and intonations, this is vocalization we immediately recognize and listen to our entire lives without ever seeing the source. It is a mutable voice. We are even able to ignore at times-as if we could really be thinking about nothing (not in a Wittgenstein sense). That would be a nice staycation. I am not certain about the source of this voice, its sorted past, its questionable intentions, but mine nags me about the same thing all day every day. For as long as I can remember hearing my own thoughts, I have never thought of it as (a) God or a higher power. I have no proof that this voice is trying to help me or the Universe.
At times I feel like one of those dolls with a pull string in her back. The recording seems to offer only the following encouragements, “You should be writing”, “Reading, Read,”, “You are wasting valuable time”, “You could be writing”, “You could be reading”, “Write, Write,”, “Stop wasting Time”, “No wonder you are behind” and it’s not just that the voice is relentless but cruelly condescending. I probably need that, but it just never lets up, it never offers encouragement. If I write all day until my eyes are fogged glass, my fingers cramp, my pinkie stained with ink, that voice still chimes in to criticize me if I stop to eat or heaven forbid, lay my head on the pillow without a book or piece writing to edit.

John Irving said, “Your friends and family may honestly want you to do what you want to do, but they also want you to do things for them. Worse, they want you to do things with them-go to lunch, go for a drink, go to the movies. They may want to know how long it’s going to be. They will probably not accept the answer a writer has to give: It may be quite a while, it may be forever.”

I am poor in cash but rich in life experience. I raised two kids that turned into kind adults that love and respect me more and more every passing year-really. I am in a mutually loving long term relationship that is not bound by marriage but respect and fueled by making each other better navigators through life while sharing an incredible journey. I have cut the chords and anchors that bound me to my own childhood history and am now able to write right now. Money is tainted. It should leave a red residue. I do take (verbal) donations. I then give them away. I try not to get attached to any-thing. I am able to manage and budget but do not covet those with more money and less time to spend. Having loved ones support you in a creative endeavor is a suspension bridge, you can trust it in a storm. Honestly though, these same supportive loved ones simply cannot love me when I am the writing me. I am far away, I am untouchable sitting in the dining room, on the couch, I am out of office, I am late, I am jumpy, raw, I am smiling for no reason, I am irritable, and-in mid-sentence-
Unfinished and interrupted, all of my aspirations and notions are always simmering at the back of the stove while I am providing nourishment for others.
These words that taunt me, all the words, I wish to trap and splatter across white paper-they will wait, will be there, will come out, will participate with others and make some sense of all this disparate non-sense...One day, if I am afforded enough time, I will have something of myself that lasts forever. Someday my words will last an eternity. These shared words will be an investment, each and every word chosen with thought will never wasted. When I say how proud I am, when I tell them they must listen to their little voice. They call me a mentor, they say my failures inspire them and hearing them say I love you is the brilliant ending of the book I cannot seem to finish.  Not a single penny nor second-thought is wasted. I remain unfinished and completely full, filled, forever.




Painting by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 'Portrait of a Woman' c. 1787 in [Public domain].

Here ye

Nobody really listens. They plan their next move instead of watching. There are so many distractions it takes effort to concentrate on what is more important than our own perspective.
There is never enough time to absorb all of the information available about anything interesting.
I listen to the lecture while at work because it is all I can do to plug the brain drain of monotony intentionally not named 'slavery' but 'employee'.
The topic of the lecture stimulates me mentally while I simultaneously liquidate my soul by the minute, comatose to the genuine, smiles and customer service take precedence.
And in intervals of 60 I hear the coins drop into a shallow well and I take note that this lecture has been heard 18,046 times, or $180.46, after gas and coffee a net of $18, less than the ATM will give away. I hear half-attentively something familiar as if I have heard this before
-and I think I missed something, maybe half of what was said and I know this story. I have heard him tell it before. I wonder if I have heard it all before. Since he is a writer, he has written this all before.
I think of how creative one must be to make any money being creative.
I found a recorded video from one of his elite retreats which received 4,627 views in 5 years, 5 months and 5 days. I note how it doesn't take much to be notable. He is quotable, sincere, and it has been nearly a year of selling my-self short-sighted-ly. I listen at 1.5 times the speed so I can cover more distance in the same time-except when I know the ending. I quit.
Anyways, who listens to the whole thing? Have I learned anything today?
Who speaks and who pays? I wonder how many want to know what the point of all of this trading paper money for time. The secret to the success of others may be-not having to listen to others repeating themselves and we still are too busy-helping others before ourself...as if someone that does not know us could say the right way for us to live, a definite direction we could take that would lead us to more time to say, is anyone listening? Did I say this already?

Photo credit: Unknown photographer [Public domain], Paul Dudley White c. 1954.

rare (in the middle)

We can only ever really come to know ourselves.
Honoring oneself is continuous action.
We stand up-right because we must
be able to move quickly.
As I am learning to love
and respect myself, deeply, I am more
open and receptive
to Others-
which results in an Awareness
I had
been trying to blind myself from.
Looking away does not make any-thing go away.
When we shut out the bad we shut out the good,
and none of the above was real.

There is only one way to escape.
The truth sets us free.
There is only one Way,
to be truly Free
and we must own our truth,
it is our Deed.
If we hold value in this
we can show it and share it with Others.
This is good pride.
We can be proud of ourselves for doing the
Work
we are doing on ourselves.

To each other, bound and gagged.
We have made no vows.
We honor no vows.
We cherish, nor keep promises
taut, and unspoken
loyalty we have given,
more there is obligation in place
of Devotion.

There were missteps and leaps
in Love, like falling and landing
makes its greatest impact
inside.

And so it was
where I found myself
falling in Love
and
not for me to know
any-thing
other-
wise.




Painting by Marion Boyd Allen (1862–1941) [Public domain].

Igloo castle

We all live in here and now at this time in an unfair, unjust, undone and unrelenting existence where everyone else has it easier, better, luckier, more fortunate than We-

We dwell in our own developed Hell, long overdue to be rezoned, remapped, re-charted, retrofitted and updated to the current year, the Now-

The only way to tell where you are at this time is by landmarks scarring the sand and the wounds we call seasons.

Seasons are unstoppable, stopping and starting on their own accord. 

A revolution was in order, a new day waits around the corner, this makes our angles sharp and pointed.

The point being, after drawing so many circles, our weary hands loosen their grip. The circle becomes an ellipse and we are made blunt through exposure, worn down by corrosion and loosened from our rounded structures. 

By Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, PPOC, Library of Congress, 'Two members of Frederick Cook's Expedition' 1909 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Arch-i-texture of the moon

It was good vibes, I said in a teenage mocking tone -poking jabs at my generation.
And then, it was said on the television that way, as if I had become a preview machine.
And so I feel you, I do. I even said to myself, I (am) hear and am listening,  I shall be careful where I step. And then I fainted for the first time in middle age, at the end of the hall. Saw myself. Convulsed as I came back in-side. There was the connection between things that stood and things that fell.
I was warned. The moons disentanglement was coming. I was being let go. I wondered how this would work.

At the job site, looking for the job site, in the general vicinity, I found myself cowered under the architecture; the churches and archdiocese and the way the woman we asked-for directions,
looked at me, looked -at- me, well, I see now that nobody can see through me. She simply said the blueprints weren't specific enough. We found it and I knew where it was, suggested it lightly, was rejected and so just went with the flow.

I feel it still, like vertigo, the spinning, perhaps the free fall from the moon, a sense of horizon at my toes.

And I knew it wasn’t done, it only looked like I was just going with the flow. Steady as she goes. Balancing on beams builds strength. One foot in front of the other.
The foreman told me about the man-made river in Mexico-Bente minutos of floating in clear, aqua warm water-fishes too!
Beautiful, I said Prague was more my feel. Casting a long glance at me, he saw the ocean. Most people do. It's true, I like the sun and more and more I feel a coming around.

Meanwhile, with no choices or control, baited breath at times, I stand on my needles and pins and know that it all begins again and again.
I am hopeful, it keeps my feet from bleeding, karma keeps me from standing my ground too firm or settling (in)...
Things are changing. I eat my words. Things change, and that is a sign of life I always say, and it was.





Image credit By NASA John W. Young (Great Images in NASA Description) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bump(her) Stick(her)s

We were running late, behind schedule this morning. I drove my son to his college classes this morning, I let the elementary school children cross, the crossing guard was not at her post, and then another grandmother with three children approached, I let them cross too.

That was nice, my son observed a tad impatiently. 

The children are just starting to learn. 

Bumpers were put on cars to absorb impact, a little ding, a dimple, a dent-and it could be so much worse. Low and behind, as the sayings go-here. Autos Advertising Beliefs-AdBe, vote for-, save-, free-, I love-, my other bumper is on a-, honk (if there is a near impact). I thought horns were for the symphony. All these (un)common courtesies strike a chord, middle c is barely passing. 

When bumper stickers ask us to coexist does it change the way the driver merges?

To get a discount on car insurance, I needed a letter from my son's college to prove he is a full-time student. As I entered the administrative building, a women came out the doors cradling papers, a jacket and I am not sure what else. Her eyes squinted attempting to adjust to the noon sun when a white slip of paper escaped her clutch, spinning in the air and skipping on the ground, “Maam,” I said “you dropped something,”picking it up for seeing that she had no free hands, I handed it to her. She smiled, exasperated and slightly surprised, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

I know how identities are easily stolen from loose-leaf sheets. For the record, we are what we do.

Without any pre-planning or blueprints, today I was kind

of nice

holding the door open at the cafe when I left for a self-conscious Hispanic construction worker in steel-toed boots and cement splotches all over his flannel shirt,

surprised to find me waiting for him and holding the door open. He picked up his boots as if he were barefoot and flashed me a newly built and shiny yellow smile, “Gracias Senorita!” 

I was grateful not to hear Senora. 

Small acts of random kindness are supposed to be good for you,

which implies a personal benefit as the primary motivation 

hence making the kindness a bartering chip in the gambol for karma

and thereby reducing randomness into a simplified calculation of roots and (co)sines, plus or minus consideration for others in-kind(ness). 

Painting by Jacob van Oost (III), c. 1673 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Viral

The jetliner makes an Emergency landing in a flat open wheat field somewhere in the middle of the North American continent.
The inflatable Emergency exit slide unfurls and inflates outside of the rounded door on the port side of the plane.
It takes 4.6 seconds for each person to get out, and get down to solid ground, one at a time.
It takes 11.5 minutes for all bodies, pilot and crew included, to escape the Emergency situation and certain impending danger.
Smoke billows out of nooks and crannies, gaping holes and through welded seams, the pilot sweating,
inside the plane reaches 122 degrees, meanwhile powdered sugar snow lay in sporadic piles waiting for rain to make icing.
The one hundred and twenty-eight passengers run and scatter like birds flying the coup, while flames lick the oval windows, they run for their lives-
And then-upon reaching 53.3 yards distance away, they all stop to a screaming halt, fan out and reversing course, approach the engulfed jetliner, arms raised, their eyes locked on a wreck-tangled screen, not seeing the Emergency vehicles, the red dots spread.



Photo credited by www.Pixel.la Free Stock Photos (flight-plane-accident-crash) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

In the act of composition

If not full-blown superstitious by nature, all writers are somestitious (minimally).

It’s the words. The words that follow us, the words that taunt and haunt, the words that sing for no reason, the words that hurt and sting, all the annoying ones, poky ones, the deliciously pert and apt ones, it is the words themselves that make writers tick and clack way pushing hot buttons with black keys trying to dispel them as if cleansing a curse.

It is also paradolia, or the fault of seeing human faces in random things such as corn flakes and Cheetos, or the Virgin Mary on a chicken nugget, or even more naturally, an angel in a cloud or David Bowie on a peach. Faces are everywhere, faces are elusive, faces need names, people need to say the names.

Names are given to us of course. Words find us, they also escape all of us, just like names. Writer or not, we all lose face(s) sometimes.

It is nothing short of miraculous that we arrive in our cultures born with a ready compressed language file in a zip format just waiting to for the set-up to be executed and unfolded. It seems that way anyway. Our chords are wired for sound. We become words. All the words collected, collated, conjugated, and put away in their appropriate compartments and drawers make us, define a certain experience that is the gist of us.

Some words like ‘serendipitous’, ‘peace’ and ‘vibe’ aren’t specific to anyone or any thing and yet they are concepts that resonate with each of us for different reasons and at different times evoke different responses. They are dynamic and possess infinite potential. The word ‘narrative’ has begun to sound like nails on a chalkboard to me-why have all politicians and news anchors decided to constantly chew on this word like a breath mint, to spit it out at every crossroad between Point and Dead End? Their ‘same ol’ story’ makes me nauseous. There is no plot in that ‘narrative’ and the characters are all weak.

As a writer and lover of words, it is offensive that politicians have grammar-napped such a beautiful round concept as the word ‘narrative’ and made it mean something plastic wrapped, like ‘motive’ or used it synonymous to ‘story’ or (gasp)‘myth’ because it sounds fiction-esque and hence less vulnerable to dispute.

Words won't save us all. Some words we have to eat and those are often the poisonous ones.

Writers are often so hyper-focused on where the story starts or how to start, that the writing can kill the story before the real beginning begins (endings are always easier since there is no real end). Writing is much like science that way. Will we ever know what happened at the beginning and before the beginning and before that?

Anyway...a life is born, a writer is born in February and against all odds is born but not a writer, or the other way around. My mother was on birth control when she had me on a rainy day in 1976. Something saved this life and somehow I don’t remember what. I honestly don’t remember being a baby but I do remember not being wanted, perhaps thought of as a fetus. My mother was married-for a short time, I did not know my biological ‘father’. He ran over my legs (under age 2) while doing mechanic work on a forest green “bitchin’ Camaro”. I have fond and terrifying memories in that car. He, the ‘father’, did two tours in Vietnam, his second was voluntary. I am an only child-break the break the mold kind they say-and with me they meant it literally. I wonder if there is a mold for a generic fetus like Rodin who recycled body pieces. I had some doctors remove a fetus from me as if it were an infection. At the time-it would have killed me. If none of this has made sense to you it is intentional nonsense, an urge to scribble or babble like fish or fish, verb or noun. And it will stink when I eventually reread it.

I am entitled to say the truth-and I only mean my truth. There is no such thing as THE Truth for all. Paperwork? I don’t have the papers that show the title to this body, but I am the only one who knows how freaking heavy she is and after carrying her nagging voice around for all these years, I see her point and I raise it-that is my entitlement. Proof? Oh, you mean, “Experience”? Nah-okay, some, but that’s not the thing that retains or grows value or wealth. The only thing worth owning the title to is yourself. This is where you should invest and direct your energies of criticism and applause. Have you looked in the mirror lately? I mean really looked at yourself- as if you were someone you know, someone that drives you crazy at times? More important, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror with genuine care or dare I say-love? To love what you see behind the eyes and underneath the grey matter, loving who you are or are becoming before its too late, we are all entitled to this Truth.

If I was confessing a truth to a total stranger, like you, I would tell you I lost my virginity to a gay male. Some of my best friends were gay men growing up. Did I know he was gay? Yes. Did he know? Yes. His mother and father loved me. He loved them too. I wonder why the word ‘unconditional’ has not come under scrutiny the way that ‘loyalty’ or ‘pursuit’ has. Where are all the parents with unconditional love? Things have changed since I was growing up, acceptance of gay or transgender is acceptable in most cultures and cities but I don’t think much has changed with the eldest family members or extended families. There are transgender bathrooms in my favorite burger joint. It is a ‘known thing’ that the men's rooms are always messier than the women's restrooms- naturally, we can only speculate about what will happen to ‘known things’.

I have known that gravity waves exist since I could walk. I nibbled on photons when bored, stacked rocks like legos, known the time by the sky, but I am no Einstein. I’ve always preferred poetry to math, I do have a fascination with fractals (and pi), but words were always my thing, my noun, my adjective, my verbiage, my everything. Science in words is philosophy, no? What took so long to discover gravity waves? The body must catch up to the brain. We needed proof and more concurrence and further confirmation and then we can say we have evidence and make predictions. Or we could just guess and say the first thing that comes to mind and call these decisions and statements -evidence-based. I wonder what would happen...your guess is as good as mine.

All art is science-based. The two need to cross the aisles and begin a new narrative.

Math and money are forms of censorship and sponsorship. Both are intangibly American. 

My daughter is waiting for decisions to come in from her college applications. College is a big deal for (the little) us. She has a lot riding on her essays. All of the schools she has applied to are seeking ‘diversity’. They all decide on the ‘whole package’ they say. If all universities want diversity, is it still diversity?

Scientists and artists are more alike than different, both explore unknown regions.

My daughter is going to be an artist and a scientist.

Writers are well-practiced liars whom enjoy their craft. Scientists make things up and then make up solutions and even politicians and preachers, live and die by the word and the power to use it.

Censorship is like superstition, it is fear based on what is in the mind. In our endless quest for truth and justice we must say where we have been and where we need to go so others don’t get lost and yet, so many are at a loss for words-even without someone trying to take them away...

And it could all just be a ‘fiction’ of our imagination anyway.


The words in bold are from the list of words the 45th President has ordered to stricken from all CDC reports during his term. A poem written on this topic was also published on the CDC Poetry Project website (here).

Painting by Santiago Rusiñol [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hawking Radiation

Weighting keeps us here.
The day that Stephen Hawking died,
the day Albert Einstein was born 139 years before,
Hawking born the day Galileo died 300 hundred years before
and someone was born on this day. Pi day, the day the chasm opened
and dark matter was ejected from the light.
I suppose we all got to where are by quantum leaps, by climbing, rolling moving across and over greater fields-we succumb, we are nowhere, we rest in solitude.
My own shoulders are up to my ears, I keep my weariness behind my shoulder blades and I feel my own mortality jutting out-I cannot look directly,
like microwaves and radiation, these invisibilities are equally scary like dark matters and dark energy without heat.

As my daughter says frequently, ‘Be sweeter’,
we should all kneel more, perhaps it would amplify the tiny voices
and it may allow the light to penetrate and diffuse itself further if we could only muster the energy to move out of our own way. It is all about the angular momentum and perspective. Rainbows are only visible in certain conditions. Rainbows are always sweet.

What goes around comes around this sphere eventually. We all find ourselves back to where we started at some point even if we never walk the same path. The choices are limited. For now we can only see things set at twenty-three degrees in relation to the sun and a shrinking two and a half light years is suspended between our galaxy and the hungry Andromeda, I am reminded of Benzine or the Ouroboros and the spiral enlongated in our DNA which may make all of this swallowed whole by more than one ellipse, or black hole singing at 432 Hz carrying a message for us all about the birth and death of stars and the inevitable darkness out of which new light is born.




Image credit Hewholooks at en.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Chit for chat

How do you think he spends his days?

What do you mean?

I mean, the hour by hour stuff. He can’t possibly do it all in one day...

Well, like all the rest of us I guess. Just trying to get it all done.

Yeah, I guess. But how does he get so much done? Like that video, he put it together himself, you can tell.

Yeah, he is incredible. No doubt about it. Remember, he has ‘people’.

Of course. I am not saying he is solely responsible for any of it. You can’t argue the fact that he’s the inspiration for all the organizations, he is the ‘special sauce’.

Absolutely.

So I guess what I am asking is really, how does he have time to be inspirational?

Now I really don’t understand what you are asking.

Inspiration takes time.

Doing takes time.

So, even if inspiration were instantaneous, creating something out of nothing is certainly doing something.

Ok.

*

What about Oprah?

I don’t know about Oprah, I’m the wrong person to ask.

You know enough. She has a ranch with animals, a lush vegetable garden, a long time boyfriend, she reads books and then there is all the ‘work’ she manages....

And…the people.

Some people are more work than they are worth. She doesn’t look overworked. Ever. And she is still inspiring others, excuse me, women.

Yes, I concede your point there. Perhaps these two have hacked time. Have you googled it?

That is the question I am asking you. I'm googling you. How do they spend their time accruing free time? Are you not an accountant?

I don’t do payroll. I outsource.

Well, that was time well spent.

*

Look at Smokey, he’s such a handsome cat. So happy he is today. He looks like a lion. 

He sleeps all day, he gets treats from you, he hogged the bed again last night...I’d be in a good mood too.

A restful sleep is priceless. Likewise, a peaceful mind is invaluable.

Ignorance is bliss...

No, that’s not what I was alluding to. I was thinking that brilliance is magnetized toward those stepping out of the light.

Now I’m in the dark. Weren’t we talking about Time or Money?

Electrodynamics, Economics, GDP, IP and bright people. Bright people make time. It is inspiring.

And you're adorable.

I'd rather be wise.

Painting by Jean Béraud [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Family dinner Table

It is impossible not to catch onto the continental drift, meaning feeling the spreading and slip faults, under-foot-in-mouth-

there is boiling just beneath the surface.

And Oh how we have known this volcanology for centuries, the flow of temperature, electromagnetism, schisms,  and the cosmic microwave background re-distributes energies,

It becomes hard to focus on one spot when things as small as photons erode before us into virtual reality and augmenting this pseudo-civilization we insist on polarization.

It was the Generation they said 

And problems with the country, I stand form moving more than a mile a minute, 

It is dizzying, the speed of progress and the discomfort was apparent on the surfaces,

so we built borders, walls without windows, so we cannot see what is coming.

And since we have all been blindsided, and are famished for justice, parched for freedom and ripe for decomposition,

And despite all this preservation of self and species, all the worlds problems lie on the table,

And my adult children and I discuss in depth and debate all aspects of these prickly problems-

And great progress is underway.

Just today, we gnawed on the dispute between Pinker and Musk,

about the pursuit of intelligence whence, it is not our own,

and the syllabic sparring proved artificial anyway-

Yet the issue remains

an ethical one, anyway, Thy will be done.

Should we proceed with constructing intelligence-artificially?

If we don’t understand the question-it remains unanswered.

Do we flip a coin; heads we shall be Gods, tails, we are asses?

What is really at stake? Fear? Being surpassed by what we make?

I look at my children.

Suddenly, we are all responsible for finding solutions

And securing ourselves against outside elements known to be corrosive-

Violent.

Someone suggested that mental health screenings for all adolescents should be required,

which is a hair closer to the trigger than the finger.

And the finger is pointed-inward-to the nuclear family, WMD’s and

There it is, 

The landmine, the nuclei, the main dish, the pyramid.

The jumpy microcosmic scale that mirrors the macro-cosmic tragedies,

It is the net effect of families that combust, decay, repel, rebel, squander energy,

that assemble negatives and positives, displace energies and shatter these proximal covalent bonds with such force hitherto unknown,

the annihilation of love,

demonstrates how naturally things can fall apart while still connected

and that a nucleus is nourished by positive traits and hot plates. 

Photo By White, Clarence H., 1871-1925, photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.