“every breath erodes from within every exhale mere life spent like sand grinding finely against the sphinx’s claws taming out the fierce over time rounding down the paws, enticing yet another sleep under blankets of coming sand inducing that slumber until I succumb waiting, to be discovered again”
notes… wrote this way back in July of last year, revisited tonight, I liked it then, like it more now… maybe I should not be such a stubborn ass and revisit work, but I am who I am, so this one is a rewrite, I like it like I like all my new work, even though this is old work, I am sure the shine will wear off, it always does, something like a curse…
music, the link above is Carbon Based Lifeforms, ambient space type music, I love it, I must confess, so that is all.. have a nice sunday, I think I will be out in the wilderness tomorrow, in the wilds of new jersey, yes they exist, maybe just off a roadway but damn we have some lovely parks, I am sure of it….
“even without the palpable perception the noose is present, this will be the end of all of this, a silence in the wind, set to hang set to swing in judgment, for we are all given a certain length and to what lengths do we go for more – rope.”
notes: instead of being morbid, or moribund, let me share a story of life, I was sitting on my porch the other night, whipped out the old acoustic guitar, boy am I out of practice, and lack of callous, but I suppose I have been playing for 20 years now or so… so I can dazzle with some riffs but I know I am not up to par compared to those who bang on the drums all day, anyway, so I was just riffing around on some blues (easy stuff) and some other riffs I know (mostly old metallica), I’m behind my japanese maple, kind of hidden, one of the neighborhood deer sauntered up, slowly, I tried to be still, but would hit a chord now and again as the deer grazed, the deer was not afraid… mostly confused… I would strum a chord or play a note and the the poor deer just looked, tilted it’s head as if to say.. what the hell is that? I can imagine this suburban deer has heard many things, cars, garbage cans, barking dogs, but the strum on an acoustic guitar from 4 feet away ? doubtful… and clean notes of picking sunday bloody sunday ? nah… after a what seemed like a long time (a few minutes) the deer casually disappeared across the street into my neighbor’s yard which has tons of trees… I don’t know what my expectations are from such encounters… well, actually I do, I hope to convey to the animal that I am no threat, it’s stupid honestly, but honest, a wild animal is not going to understand me… but I put the vibe out there anyway…
music… something a little nerdy musically tonight (a lesson in genre perhaps?), sometimes called “math rock“, that’s not fair, but neither is life, so, basically to me math rock describes music that is not quite “progressive” but yet is definitely not mainstream, virtuoso level playing that is mind bending as a player but if you just listen… there is a space between classical and rock and jazz… I think this is it…
…this poem originally written 4.30, looked over and revised tonight… added punctuation and some words… I always promise to tell you all when I write stuff… why? honesty, does it matter? nah…. but yes… to me….
“I wear a carved jade stone
I can not feel the hands
of the mark of the creator
just what has been left behind
from that act of creation
this does not mean
this piece
was not meant
for me.“
notes… this is personal haiku for me, not the form but the feel and function of what I understand haiku to be, the staccato nature, a question and a truth, is that not haiku? and I literally wear my toki or my manaia daily… I connect to the sea faring way of the maori tradition, not by religion but by spirit if that makes sense… it does to me, at least.
“the cross-thatchety bush“ a once noble grace older than the dirt rooted in twisted by yarns plated by thorns no matter the season the original curmudgeon like a lair, a cave darkness spun under the branches a still shot tornado in spiral dimensions a barren pit under of lost things, souls, dreams balls of sport most of all all fallen prey unto this trap this entrance to the seven levels themselves a land of deep dark despairs that no one dares reach into that space even the thought of such will scrape your knuckle bare – if you are lucky, even the squirrels shy the rabbits, do not lurk they will not thump in that domain for the lure of safety is a silent siren’s song and like on to those rocks where upon wrecks are wrought so to is the fate to those who tempt to tame that gate that has no lock and so does remain untouched the cross-thatchety bush.
notes… the genesis of this might be very local, is there that yard, that place that would swallow toys or balls ? somewhere you could just not go? physically or just by reputation? I had such places growing up, places where a baseball or an orange hockey ball would go… and it would just be considered “gone”, many years later when those areas were cleared out, by progress, or landscaping, you would find them, all those old frisbees, golf balls, baseballs, deflated basketballs or footballs and all sorts of things… so I was commenting on that, and also some higher level stuff… which you can figure out for yourself, just wanted to explain the genesis of this particular piece, which I wrote on 6.22, and to be honest this is verbatim, just as I wrote it, no edits at all…
“dearest firefly, so you have returned I might call you a beacon but know not who you signal a lighthouse perhaps? but we are miles from any shores perhaps you are a flare but I see no alarm in any part of the land, are you just a flash in the pantheon of your winged kind an oddity among your brethren as you sway and dip and climb, where have you been all this time? only to return in your love of the sweat humid nights of summer, I suppose you are a wiser being than I for your pick of season seems that of an inspired mind, I do not know your purpose or even your fate my little floating lantern you seem to exist for only beholder’s sake, good night, my sweet darling of light. sincerely, also musing”
written on the porch tonight, side story, my town is mostly being re-populated by asians, chinese and indian, I don’t care, I actually find it interesting, so anyway, most are cold and walk by as if I am not there, journal in hand, barefoot walking on my lawn, but there is this one chinese family, the little girl (5-6 years old?) is in the “hello” phase, she says hello to pretty much everything, my car, the mailbox, me (multiple times), it infects her father to do the same, at least with humans like me, I can’t tell you how enlightening it is, how a child just breaks down all walls with a simple hello protocol, it makes me smile, regardless of how the day would like to grind me into a nub… is it weird to sit out in front of your house and observe ? I don’t know, I don’t care, it is what I do, especially lately, we are all passengers on this plane headed for the same destination anyway…
with the eyebrows of an elder scolding, he froze there like a thousand years of evolution ingrained in this moment of instinct, he thinks survival, mama bird was not as impressed, and she dive bombed my head, I tried explaining to her that I was the least of her worries, but alas, my mocking-speak is not what it once was, she clearly did not understand, so I left the little one, to fate.
oh yeah, details… this is in the back of my office, the other day, just a photo from my phone, I really need to bring my SLR around and get crazy shots when I can, but I still like this one… thoughts, likes, follows, and the like are all appreciated, if you read this far then I guess I did an OK job on this post at least…
“inside the serpent’s mouth lies the serpent’s tongue a servant’s master the sum of none the more you bleed the more you believe so come grasp this dirt to know the cold dead feel a mantle of skin on an oceanic ball of magma induction into loop into destruction for the renewal of the temporal rise. non est chao per universum iussit”
notes… one of those that just came to me in some weird way, the muse, inspiration, whatever you may call it… I am hinting at plate tectonics here as well… I am a bit of a science wonk after all… and the latin ? nah, if you want to know search it out…
how would I know if I am hallucinating right, now, or dreaming, or is this my mind interpreting the stimulus around me as best as this evolved design can handle, I suspect there are mathematical equations in the leaves, calculable variables in the way each blade of grass has sprung – and not sprung, am I really seeing this the same as you, on a physical level? how can I ever know, I wonder if I might borrow your eyes, ears and tongue someday, to experience the world truly by the only true thing, comparison, how do I know something is “more” green of I have not seen the other green, or many green.
I wear glasses, does it make the world clearer, or alter my designed perception as extracted from the DNA pod of my mother’s womb, all those year’s ago, was I meant to see the world near-sighted all this time, so my imagination of far things would be, just that, imagination, why is there higher value in rote homogenization? or should we embrace what makes us less perfect or same average in pursuit of our own perception of this reality? a unique perspective from a seemingly similar vessel.
I stare deeply at a flower, it is not moving, but -it -is, at some basis, there are millions of particles that make up one petal, and they are in petal in perpetual motion, I just can not see this movement, so, in this we assume the whole as solid based on observation, or at least our perception of solid, not concerned that we are definitely not seeing what is actually going on, the reverse would be true if we were a speck on the moon, looking down at the earth, no idea about the billions of humans moving about, but surely that micro world is vivid and alive, not dead as it looks from this above, so perspective, time, location determine which version of the world we see and to what extent, as it spins blindly under our feet.
so, am I hallucinating?
I’ll never know…
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com
notes: My SSD died on my incredibly fancy laptop yesterday, left me in a lurch as I was on call for work today, the irony is that I wanted an SSD for a few reasons: reliability, space and cost, in short, not to be totally tech nerd, SSDs have no moving parts, so in theory they should have less risk of failure than standard hard drives, offer plenty of space in a small form (they basically look just like memory chips), and also cost less, so a $120 part halted my whole operation, it is warrantied no doubt but still the computer is only just over a year old, and it has barely left the house, serves me right for always coveting an alienware PC (now owned by Dell really), I guess being an old school PC guy (my first computer was an apple 2C fer crissake), alienware was always this thing, I have built my own desktops for some years now, I should have stuck with that… although I have to say all the bells and whistles on my alienware laptop are pretty damn cool… and the 17 inch screen is super nice (4K), so, today I dropped $600 on an acer nitro 5, pretty nice, I’ll keep it until my front line laptop is back up, and probably give the acer to my niece or nephew as random gift, have I gotten into that before ? I like to buy them things, not ever on their birthdays, I don’t do that, I buy things when I think about them, and I tell them so, does it matter ? I don’t know… but I have grown tired of the usual a long time ago, so I do what I want for the most part these days, or at least I am telling myself that, true happiness might break some eggs, the world, and life will surely go on…
if ever there was a day, a day to ride the light from dusk ’til dawn, today would be that day, and so it was, and so I did, I would love to tell you it was some great plan of mine, some great scheme, but I would be lying, just the random circumstance of life forcing my hand, would I be droll if I still said “this was a long day”…
that would be both empirically accurate and anecdotally emphatic, because of the way it felt and this is, truly the longest day of the year by actual time measure, but other yardsticks poked their rule-y heads up this day, I had a store to open on the East Side, New York City that is, waking up at 5am to get a jump, showered, the dog walked, rye toast in tow, in the car by 5thirty, cruising, the sun not rising, at least visibly, only rain clouds writing the morning forecast on the canvas out before me, and then, then the faucet opens, full tilt, pouring, all of a sudden my dreams of beating the traffic become being the traffic, I get over the bridge and onto the FDR, I can not say what the “F” stood for this morning but it certainly was not Franklin…
so the freeway was doing it’s best impression of a parking lot, so to have a shot at being on time I hopped off on Park Avenue, making sure to avoid the guy with the sign in the middle of said FDR (a very common occurrence), cut across, 40 blocks down, all the while the rain beguiling me with change of pace, a constant game with my wipers engaged at the right speed, so I arrive, sort of on time, I must admit I scoped out a local coffee joint to try, so I loaded up on a latte, got over to the store grand opening, pouring, pouring rain, a grand total of ten customers in two hours, does not make the time fly I tell you, so the time passes, mostly all goes well, that chore doused, store secure on their own now, noon, around the corner I walk into the parking garage, slap down $38 buckaroos for 5 hours of parking, a guy drives up next to me standing, and rolls down his window “hey, I will only be an hour”
I don’t recall wearing my garage attendant uniform, I look down and check anyway, nope, not today, besides I am holding a mouse and keyboard, not exactly common garage guy fare, from my experience at least, so I cheerfully offer to take the car off his hands (a spankin’ new mercedes sedan no doubt), it would be a nice upgrade after all, he realizes his mistake, and is very apologetic, I wasn’t offended anyway, with that charade passed I make my way back to HQ in jersey knowing there is a pile of files waiting for me to wade through and down, unfortunately, I am quite right about that pile, except little fires keep popping up and I am brigaded to those tasks while the pile grins at me, gleeful, for it knows it has gained a temporary stay of execution, the governor’s call has come in, for today, at least, admittedly the time passes faster in this bowl of hectic, I hardly notice the rain has hopped on a cruise out to sea and given way to delightful golden rays, six o’clock rolls around, predictably, right at 6, I figure over 12 hours is quite enough off this already…
Photo by David Skyrius on Pexels.com
so here I sit, the day has turned about, this morning was like a dreary monday dragging and now I am leaped to an ending friday, a perfect 70 out, truly a tale of 2 sittings, the sun is slowly sinking, the wind is warmly chilling, two baby jack rabbits are grazing, even the usual rambunctious crowd of local birds are just listening, I look out, at this familiar scene, I loosen up my mind, my body, I let my limbs drop limp, I look out and pretend I am a leaf on one of my trees subject to whim, letting the breeze rock me back and forth, to and fro, swaying, filling my sail as the wind sees fit, setting my compass to none, just letting the ocean of air wash over me in waves, with each moment draining away my worldly cares, whisking away the baggage from earlier in this day, as the curtains close, on this, the longest day… the solstice, from dawn to dusk witness, the solstice.
notes… (porch series) I write these posts in a certain way, I scribble them down in one of my notebooks, try to figure out my horrid handwriting (best done if I type it in the night I write frankly), these are pretty close to rough drafts, one drafts, one take, whatever you might like to label it, I edit it a bit as I post, but that is it… pretty raw, just the way I work these days, I wish I could just run a cable into my mind for you and give you a remote and let you drive… but this is the best I got at the moment, so enjoy, and thanks for the eyes, I appreciate one look, any look, 1 million looks would be nice, but would it make my post any better or any worse ? nah… and I am cool with that, thanks.
Shades of My Garden 