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.

hippocampus

he put his hands in his pocket
felt a spine and a curl

pulled out an ancient amulet
the crook of a tail wrapped

around his finger; hinting,
he looked down at his feet,

saw dirt, not sand, dry not wet
no need for a seamount

so far away from home.
he put the seahorse in a bottle

of seawater, promising
one day, they will both go home.

feb 2007

(bonsai) bent

for suttonhoo
in response to a photo on her blog of an old bonsai

tiny branches from
giant roots bent,
bearing the weight
of heaven to appease
human desires

mar 1, 2007

utterings

won't you tell me a little?
tell me the whispers between
the twiggy little branches;
the pale harsh light that
lives between dark trunks
too young to bear the full
weight of a thousand uttered
secrets of a fading kingdom

feb 2007

condensation

condensation on the inside of the window
indicates how cold it is on the other side
the still air in between clear layers

discusses the distance between two minds
discusses the discordance of given identity
against chosen integrity; oil and water;

fire and water; though in human terms
there is no self balancing mechanism;
homeostasis was not a lesson learned

in childhood nor in learned books
those who understand it hide it
like the air between layers in plain sight

mar 6, 2007

sotto voce

it is late and her voice;
her voice is lisping but
rolls in like lazy rows
of endless waves.
waves like the lazy
touch of a sleepy
lover rolling over my
restless cheeks; waiting
for some once promised
kiss; waiting for some
bouquet of blue irises
she said she'd send;
i roll over like dew on
the touch of dawn;
i roll over like a kitten
with vulnerable chin;
i lay stretched waiting
for my love, my fate
i lay waiting for her
to wake my affection
so i can touch the pale
light in her precious eyes

feb 2007

broken glass, swallowed

sometimes long sequences of delight and joy are followed by shadows of disappointment.

not from the same source of your joy but from other sources of your love or loved ones.

it is the nature of those who care for each other or feel obliged to care for each not by choice but by circumstance. it is the nature of mutual resentment, perhaps. what happens when for whatever reasons we can't clearly communicate to each other; years of misunderstanding; years of deception; years of whatever.

after a long time, it almost feels like the reasons don't matter anymore.

all that matters is you have this feeling inside of you that feels like swallowed broken glass and it causes this warm mellow almost blissful pain; and you don't really know what to do about it anymore except to experience it.

eastern light

morning comes with a cool breeze rising with the sun. in the midst of these hills the sun is lazy, staying behind chapparal and boulder strewn summits well past eight o'clock.

the westward view is hazy, trying to decide if it will linger or fly away to sea with the wind.

i walked the dog up the hill, breaking into sunlight; breaking into a movement of atmosphere cold enough to pull up my hood. birds chirped, not quite singing. they displayed their mustard yellows plumes like starlets in hollywood; brightly and briefly.

it is the setting for some difficult things i have to do.

to acknowledge disappointment i cause in others; to acknowledge i am just a person and to find a place for being ok within myself.

Jena

last night's dreams were of a traveling sort, again. it is not an odd thing at all. i am nomadic at a genetic level i think. anyway, it seemed i was somewhere in europe for a wedding. i think it was france, not paris but somewhere in france where there was a large river heading out to sea. i'm sure who's wedding it was. i don't even remember the bride and groom. the person i remember was something else though.

she was slight of build, had straight blonde hair and almost a perfect oval face. none of her features stood out more than the others, she seemed a model of perfect balance. she reminded me of someone who just stepped out of an early northern renaissance painting. she wore what seemed like an antique dress, lacy and slightly ivory. even her expressions were one of gentle calmness and restraint. i stood in front of her in a dimly lit room with wood panels that seemed they have seen their share of history, old and worn with a patina of a ten thousand touches from long dead hands. this is where it gets kind of strange.

we faced each other, not a single word uttered for a long time then i produced a quill. a calligraphy quill. she stepped closer to me and i leaned my head forward as if to see better. my right hand raised the quill and i looked sharply into her left eye and started to write on her cornea. gently and deftly the quill drew a capital 'J' followed by an 'e' then an 'n' and ended with an 'a'. i stood back and looked at the crimson color of the ink glistening atop the shiny and clear surface of her cornea. i was confused and then she smiled and the letters faded away. her eye was again the undisturbed deep brown of vietnamese lacquer. its luster and clarity seemed supernatural.

moments later, i tried to write the word again. i was unsure what the word was. was it her name? she still had not uttered a word nor had i. but this time as i wrote the 'J' and then the 'e', the ink dissolved into the liquid pool in front of me. the letter forms assimilated by the liquid walnut iris. what happened next was a little fuzzy. i remember kissing her and she kissed me back. she tasted of fresh picked fruit; somewhere between peaches and something else flowery.

the first words came out of my mouth, "come with me."

"i can't. i can't come with you," with no emotion in her clear voice.

"why?"

"i just can't, you wouldn't understand."

the next thing i knew i was looking from outside of my body. i didn't let go of her. i held her arms as if we were still standing there but we were falling away from me. and what lay below us as we started to spiral was not some abyss but the pages of an old open book. we seemed smaller as we fell away as it it were a black hole though and then abruptly, the book closed and i woke up.
--

so any takers want to analyze this one? ;-)

awareness of confusion [or lack thereof]

sometimes it is through the musings of another or the awareness of their suffering that you are awakened to your own ability for compassion and survival that sometimes gets lost because you are too much in your own mind, unaware of your surroundings and others around you. sometimes unawareness sticks to me like glue. how strange is it to have something to apparent and not pay attention? and how ineffectual you can be to provide any comfort to them...

i have a friend who is ill and in the hospital. in the last several days, i've found myself incapable of offering any comfort. this disturbs me. even though i know there is really not much i can do except to reassure her she isn't alone or forgotten, it doesn't seem enough.

i don't know where i'm going with this. perhaps i just needed to air my confusion and sense of helplessness...perhaps if i let it out it will fly away and something will present itself...

tripped me

he thought there were other people in the room. he heard voices. he heard chuckling. he was sure of it. he checked the window but it was closed. it was bright outside. even the blinds could not keep the bright white at bay. he turned.

across the hotel room above the dresser there was a mirror. blinking, he thought he saw people in the mirror. closed his eyes for eight seconds, he counted to be sure. lifted tired lids and there were indeed three people in the mirror. three people in different moments in time. wait, how could he know? how could he tell they were in different moments? he stepped closer, then closer to the mirror until the bed got in the way.

the cushy firmness of the mattress pushed back at him. he felt light headed, woozy but fought to stand. it was him in the mirror, but three times. he moved and tilted his head. it felt like looking through the eyes of an insect yet there were only three eyes. one stacked upon the other. the faces looking back at him remained stacked even if he tilted his head at an angle. it made the lunch and bad coffee in his stomach want to leave his body. still, find stillness he thought. closes eyes again, momentary darkness, the light seeping though his lids aren't the normal pink but green.

how strange.

opens again, focuses on the middle him. the one that seems as sickly in the reflection as he feels. the face is full of hesitation, just like he feels. that must be the real him. confusion, yes, that is there too. lost, sure, that is the real him. without moving his head, he turns his focus up. the upper him is staring down at him. lips look a little pursed. maybe the upper him is not so happy for some reason. he looks as if he is about to get chastised or something. not good. the real him that he thinks he is really wants to bolt, to run out of there, to make the flight or fight reflex kick in.

but he can't yet, not without seeing the lower him. that other face. the lower him is more focused. head tilted. lower him seems like he is looking up a little, just a little perhaps. but he wouldn't call it happy either, impatient. that is what it is. maybe he is impatient enough to get over this, this staring, observation, whatever this is. yes, that is what it is. maybe if he just stands still, lower him will get bored and then just go away.

he stands. still. deep breath. attempts a smile but nothing happens. middle him just looks confused still. moments pass, long moments measured by the death of spiders in the recesses of his mind. time is no longer.

there are only him's.

then a bell, then a bright light and a touch but a strange touch. he shivers and then jolts. he feels himself folding over at the waist as if he was going to get sick. the muscles of his abdomen pull and snaps him forward like trap clasping his body. the bell is closer, louder and the touch shakes him, vibrates in his chest. eyes pop open, darkness then a gap then a shaft of light from an open door.

a female voice, "sweetheart are you gonna answer that phone?"

– sd, 2007

the last rays

of friday's harsh white glow;
of searing cyan fading to magenta
spikily dispersed by pointed pines;

fast, stationary to flashing windows;
the cyclic thunk, thunk of steel wheels
ten feet below against steel rails

taking me fast to a southern view,
taking me fast to where night falls
like blackened copper into deep pockets

(23 feb 2007)

love is a stranger

love is a demon whose plains i roam like a mongol on horseback
mistress of my range is sometimes kind, sometimes harsh
she shows me a face of a blue moon at dusk
she shows me a face of a pale star at dawn
it is not by habit that i could guess her mood nor intention

love is a stranger whose bed i sometimes wake to sunrise in
mistress of my comfort sometimes hides her face from me
i am often left in a castle resplendent with candlelight
i am often left in a castle with a hundred windows and no exit
it is not by knowing my place that i am in her good graces

love is a jealous partner in crime who like me is a thief
mistress of my riches sometimes tosses me a golden wishbone
she brings me garnets and rubies but never a clear diamond
she brings me silks from far off places and uses them to bind
it is not by trust that i relinquish verses to her possession

love is a potion of a cynical heart torn witch i know
love is an addiction of a violent tempered god i worship
between spirit, body and mind love holds me together
like a thousand splinters trying to burst from constant heartache
like a multitude of hungers trying to meet their constant craving

late is the hour

late is the hour, yet my body and mind seem to be in another time zone where it is either early morning or early evening; times when everything inside is shifting from stillness into motion. it makes me wonder what it might be like to be able to go for four or six days without sleep and then sleep for several days straight through. or perhaps i just find something so soothing in the late hours of night's darkness when most everyone else is in deep slumber and my senses are not disturbed by their waking static. i don't understand the dichotomy of my feelings about people most of the time. i don't understand how i love and hate people at the same time so frequently. perhaps it is just a reflection of my own perception and attitude about myself, it could be; why not? if that indeed is the case, it should not surprise me. nothing should surprise me anymore or at least that is what i would like to think...well some of the time anyway. i think i also like to change my mind; a lot! hah!

body schema

listless and restless are his fingers,
wanting to draw and scribble
something; some face to comfort
the fatigue drawn out under
the falling night sky and rising stars.

eager and craving are the sensations
coursing through the vessels, past
tissues hungry for blood, dying
for warmth promised for so long;
for touches promised like dreams.

tingling melodies are caressing
the thousands of tiny hairs rising
up from his skin, from the goose bumps.
body schema reaching its limit;
body's thirst for soulful company.

imagined liquor reaches his lips,
she swallows a thought, he is quenched.
momentarily dark and light are married;
a bond like glue between broken pieces;
a bond like halves of a fallen seed.

feb 21, 2007

silent ether

for Kat

leagues away and behind glass
she lies in his mind, half awake,
scared and restless;

through a window she imagines
him pulling a sharp quill
across parchment, ink bleeding

into pools becoming sad eyes.
letters becoming whispers –
if she could only hear his voice.

beneath a cyan lined cloud,
he stares at once warm tea
waiting for magic to appear;

painting into his retina
something akin to cold comfort
and sighs into silent ether.

feb 21, 2007