glaze and reflection

it is like a glaze; the way the fog comes in at speed unlike the breath from your lungs. air moves faster than your tissues know how to handle. temperatures seem hot and cold in interstial flashes; like dawn and dusk happening in sequential cycles but at the speed of an antique strobe. it is not the flash that gets you. it is the burnt piece of plastic and strands that look so beautiful after the light that leaves you wanting to say that it should not be over like that...not like a cheap flash.

it's never over like that. it's just you find it hard to believe that it is that way. it is hard for you to believe in a string of events, a string of anything larger than your senses can tell you. it is the source of our passion. it is the source of our love and hatred. it is the source of the entire spectrum of our emotions. we are lords to entities within ourselves that are and have always been larger than we can control. and that is the allure.

Limbs or crooked lines

Collision

Thinness or is it shallowness?
Limbs or crooked lines
against a thick flat grey;
a ceiling that reflects
as much as it shelters.

Branch or forearm?
Appendages
that have purpose –
how do such organs compare
with the spongy grey

that thinks or the red
pulsing lump that feels?
There are so many
extremities like a thousand
souls reaching out, each looking

for a new flavored Nirvana.
And they are all related to
two particles crashing
into one another in the vast
traffic jam of this universe.

(May 12, 2007)

To see further

a found poem (on blackbird.vcu.edu)

by PAULA CISEWSKI

Telescope Psalm

Am I afraid to be forgiven?
I’d have to wear nicer suits.

By the time everything is fair I will
have devised a system to send word

via the birds on my roof. But I am
of two minds about most subjects

and, in turns, one mind must elbow the other
who is snoring. That’s why I thought I enjoyed

talking too much tonight at the brewpub
until the silence of the long walk home

made a better argument, better
company. The sky’s library of stars and dust,

whatever is possible remaining possible
even as it’s gazed at through the private

telescopes of an entire hemisphere.
It’s now. It’s not forever. And this

forever shall be true. To see further,
those without telescopes sometimes

cup their hands around their eyes.

believe it or not

"Believe it or not, I can actually draw."
– Jean Michel Basquiat

bonjour à jeudi

thursday morning in vista, looking northwest. the fog comes like liquid, knowing that the warming sun on the other side of the ridge will soon melt it into vapors ascending into the distant blue of earth's ceiling.

twin tailed gazers

lola and bo bo at the window this afternoon.

wish i had a video cam to capture the synchronized flicking of their tails...

if only

lola on the window sill in the afternoon.

all our moments could be this serene...

endless seeds

drifting yet stationary
flimsy stalks dream of movement
as endless seeds are sown
on the flight of sister wind

april 2007

23

yay!!!

she tucks me in and wakes me up

Because she is the last to stay up and wait for me to go to sleep, Lola is also the first to see me awake. Well, she is the first one to wake me with a purr and a headbutt at before 5 in the morning...long before the sun hints at grey or violet on the horizon. I don't fight it or try to go back to sleep. Sleep will return or not when it does, or not. Meanwhile, these quiet predawn moments are precious to me. They are as precious as sleep or perhaps even more so because it is not often that I don't mind being up so early. It is not often that I'm fightin to go back to sleep.

So I watch the #9 cool grey horizon seep through the early morning mist and filter past the venetian blinds accompanied by a thousand waking songbirds chattering this Spring morning's gossip...

It's a cloud, it's a broken boat

it was a rather dramatic sky in the late afternoon and at sunset today so i thought of this tune:

Drastic Measures

by Sarah Slean

I should go to drastic measures
Steal enormous works of art
Write a piece for eighteen violins
It's no march
But it's a start

Rub their eyes and wake, distracted
Frantically they fill their days
Please say I will never be like that
Safe
Politely dazed
Politely cra-azy

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

I never held a truer notion
Then when my dear I held your hand
May your shadow always follow you
Through
Our get-away plan
Out master pla-an

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees and the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh

Cra-azy
Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh, don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Throwing tantrums, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

is this clear?

out shopping with brian for ingredients to make chili. we'd been at this mercado several times but i had not noticed this sign before so of course i blocked the doorway and snapped a photo. i was hoping to at least get a dirty look from the proprietor but nothing, not even a glance. maybe i'll read a magazine next time though it's not like i am in the market for a car... :p

technorati tags:photo, random, funny

morning light

something that explains the morning sun to me the way this morning arrived...


Distance as the Story of Plenty
by Erin Lambert


If the landscape has a pattern then it begins with your wrist,

between the radius and the ulna where it finds the will

to consider the oak and the wheel before inhabiting your pulse,

the heavy signature of a river, or hollow stubs of cornstalks

left to winter. If the mountain wanted to write you

of the many cries concealed within its famed anatomy,

or the bold and plentiful vision inherent to trees, perhaps

how even light finds its valleys come morning, it would have to

begin by conceding that it still cannot comprehend

how the crow is in everything, the caw so essential to the air,

though it would know the decisive knife strokes imbedded

in the flight, and how it was first conceived from the violet

of the evening, then cradled by the cold’s incalculable distance.

Saturday morning mess

I woke up to this mess on my desk. It looked good in the filtered rainy light though. I stared at the objects a bit and each one of them were telling me their stories. They reminded me of where and when they had come into my possession and by whom and why. They associated me with what was going on with me at the time of their acquisition. Even if I were not to keep a journal, little and large things around me always remind me of my own history in real time. They constantly give me points of references to where I am mentally and emotionally. Sometimes I come across something I've not seen for a while and either a smile will come to my face or the tears will flow...

on my desk. each item has a story. together, they could probably tell a novella's worth if i elaborated...

left to right, top to bottom: bottle of advil (essential); old but reliable iPod given to me as a gift from a very good friend; ink bottle (private reserve tangerine dream); edge of another ink bottle (lamy red); grandfather's old watch; dozier custom knife i bought right before a fly fishing/outdoor trip with mom back in 2000; aluminum fountain pen from japan given to me by an old friend after he went there on business; pelican feather quill pen i picked up on the beach on a camping trip with friends to the sonoma coast, ca in summer of 2006; insert from my most recently acquired moleskine; razor used to cut quills; red recife crystal fountain pen i bought as a present to myself in 2001; usb cable to scanner; top of orange juice can with screws from my old ibook that i just dismantled to take out the hard drive–the logic board died; buffalo horn money clip bought in vietnam during work trip in summer of 2005 with ican (ican2.org); xikar cigar cutter i bought on chestnut street in san francisco in 2002; cell phone headset; keys; burts bee lip gloss; button from a pair of khakis that need to be sewn back on.

This photo reminded me of a poem I'd written four years ago.

song birds

morning came to me in the chirpings of little feathery things.

in california, the birds are kind enough to wait til 6am or so. in south georgia there were birds that started at 4am, i love birds but then, i would have liked a Bellini shotgun then. but no point. i only kill what i would eat. no point in songbirds.

they say it's spring but there is for the most part nothing else

lit horizon

this evening near the time of sunset, i looked out at the view beyond the windows and saw an expanse of ocean lit up by a sunburst. though i knew the distance was at least 15 or more miles away, the horizon seemed momentarily close to me. it felt as if everything seemed tangible for a slice of time. it was fleeting but it was a good feeling.

soot and ash

to make soot and ashes of one's past.

today i read a poem by Jacob Polley. it was about how his father used his old diaries as fuel for a fire in the stove. it was a visual experience for me though i found it disturbing that someone would burn their old diaries.

would i do that? i asked and pondered.

would it be a sufficient way to purge your mind of those experiences and memories you'd like to forget? for me, probably not as the television screen of my mind is more vivid and higher in definition than the best plasma screen available. that coupled with a photographic memory, i would have to throw my whole self into the pyre.

makes me kinda stop and think, ya know? ;p

story

i once read in a novel that "i write now so that later i will have something to read." then later, i myself wrote the same thing. it was such a powerful thought that i kept it and believed it for so long. then one day i looked at the same novel again and in the ending it reads, "trust me, i'm telling you stories."

so i've been lying to myself. i don't write now so that i may have something to read later. i write now so that others may read it. others might even like what they read. but how odd is that when you are writing something that is so overwelmingly indulgent? what audience? am i thinking of an audience when i'm writing? hell no.

i have no audience because this is not a book for publication. this is a safe place for me to say whatever i want to say and there are a handful of people who look at it. and that is okay. it is okay because i trust them enough to say whatever i want.

so is this a story? am i telling you stories? good question. what does the masthead of this blog say? hah!

but there is a story here as all words contain some sort of stories, it is just sometimes we don't really want to know it so we don't pay enough attention. other times, we don't really want to know the real story so we pay the wrong kind of attention. perhaps this is how myths are created, quality assurance in storytelling. skin out the ugly stuff and leave the tasty, meaty stuff behind –– devoid of connective tissue. is that a little like the person who loves chicken but won't eat it off the bone? perhaps they ought to be vegetarians. perhaps they ought to just eat hamburger and nothing else. heh, i like that thought. perhaps i ought to press that on to someone!

so back to the story. i'm sure there is a story here but i doubt i'll start at the beginning. perhaps the fourth or fifth section of the book because if i start at the beginning none of the later parts will make any difference. it would be like having a nice dinner and being obsessed with whether the dessert you ordered is really going to go with the courses that are being served.

well, i lied. well not really. i just mean i'm not really to tell the story yet but there is one. just wait, you will just have to wait.

trust me, i'm telling stories.

random crossings: Easter, 1916

i had thought of this poem in a long time. years ago, i chose it to recite for a storytelling class in which i was being videotaped. looking back, i must have been so nervous the emotional content of the poem was lost in the reading. but today, years later when i came across something relating to Yeats i went searching for it and read it again slowly. it was so vivid in feeling that i could taste and smell the words; the sentiment and the pain...

and i realized it speaks volumes to what is going on with me personally and in the world we are racing in – this crazy world of beauty and violence, sadness and laughter. so here it is:

Easter, 1916

I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

tuesday night's dream: the gauntlet

i was in sf or the east bay, but i think it started in north beach.

i was doing something with christine and david.

unusual cause the two of us have not done anything together for almost ten years. we met and went out to eat and hung out at cafes. when it was time to go home, for some reason that is not clear, christine was not going home and was leaving her car to me to drive to her place to crash.

i said ok but went somewhere else with david and andrea instead.

it was a little restaurant, kind of ship-shack but cute. it had little wooden tables for four people with small vases of flowers and simple but well placed settings on all of them. we walked into an oblong room with windows on the right wall and on the far wall. there was a view, it looked out over water.

i also have memories of a carnival somewhere along out there.

i don't know how long we stayed there but when we left david turned out that he was driving my old toyota from my art center days. we joked that it probably needed a new registration tag and a new headlamp so he'd better be careful.

he took me to wherever christine was living. i knocked on the door and a young woman answered. she was obviously woken up and dressed for sleep. i explained who i was and what i was doing there and she must have known who i was so she let me in. she showed me to christine's room. it was a spartan but comfortable looking place. all the furniture were made of wood. the bed was unmade.

the girl left me and i undressed and went to bed right away.

next thing i knew was that i woke up to voices or giggles, i opened my eyes to faces peeking through the bedroom door. they shut the door as soon as i sat up in bed. confused, i got up and wrapped something around me and walked towards the door. i pushed the door open and walked through to the adjacent room and was met with a sight that stopped me in my tracks.

it was a narrow long room with rows of beds just like the one i slept in. again, all the furniture here were wooden. the thing that made me stopped was there were about twenty young women sitting there staring at me and giggling to themselves.

there were "ooh's" and "ah's." it obvious i was not supposed to be here or this rarely happened. i felt not embarrassed as much as vulnerable or out of place. i started to walk towards the bathroom on the other end of the room. it felt like i was walking through a visual gauntlet. i remember whispers of mutterings of things like "ooh it's a man" and "whose is he?"

that last comment made me dash for the bathroom and close the door.

that is when i woke up.