wading along the shore
looking for shells
not sure what I might find
or what I am looking for
in sand the footsteps stretch
soft sandy trail
tracing my path
so others may know
my passage fades
within the writhing tide
memories erased
within the compass of time
and the moment-
I will turn
into those waves
to be swallowed
from whence I came
those trinkets that cause an instant memory jog or jump, instant time travel backwards to a specific happenstance or thought, these, are triggers.
here we are in the throes of summer, no, no, that doesn’t sound right, the grip of summer, no, neither, that isn’t quite it, does not convey the feel at all,
“here we are traversing the winding path through the baking jungle of summer”
(OK, I can live with that one).
summer rain. a trigger, in a couple of ways, let me explain if you will lend me your time.
the first- driving, driving home on the parkway, windows down (which in itself is part of the freedom of summer anyway), the pavement has been beaten flat with bombardment, rays of sunshine flagellating on the surface for all the day, the visual aspect of heat belly dances along the surface in the distance distorting the air itself, all the while this solar energy is soaking into the black sponge supporting all means of traffic, and then the break, a dark grey breach rolls in, like an instant the rain is unleashed but yet still with the sun not quite out of sight so the light bounces off the rain, showering the earth in a million rainbow shards, the mixture is almost confusing to the mind, rain and sun combined? how can this be, even today my jaded mind is always surprised by this, this I have seen one thousand times at least, then it hits me, this strange smell, intoxicating even if it should not be, there is this strange combination of asphalt, oil, dirt, grime and what not that is released into the atmosphere as the rain quenches audibly the scorched plains before me, almost like a garage but some how, dare I say, refreshing? I know, it may sound strange, but it is the instant trigger of summer road trip, maybe being stuck in a car for hours dulls the senses and this strange invasion of odor somehow seduces reason into being non reason, but that smell, somehow, invigorating, a sunny rain in the summer on a hot road.
the second– and I will stick with the theme, the little dots begin to overlap on the steps, faster now they overstep the next trying to outdo the first and last, until there is a thunderous downpour top to bottom straight down, the land has been wishing for this all day, green once wilted all around is starting to spring into shape and take a sip, no a gulp, no the rain is running in and out of their mouths of capacity overflow, finding new lakes and pools in the sidewalks bent, rolling in mini flash floods aside the curbs, the house gutters come alive like instant log flumes, there is so much rain in the air it commandeers the air itself, there is a smell to it, a presence of palpable odor, a musty mist of sorts, as if a drop has hit the hot earth and exploded into your direction like an aerosol bomb , over and again, the suspended rain is what fills your mouth and lungs now, you feel the bend and bough of the grass as the bath flashes over and relieves the yolk of the combined heat of the day, you can feel the oppression being washed away, I feel the same, you almost get used to the blanket of humidity, the heavy air on your shoulders, combined with a pharaoh of intense sun, there seems to no reprieve, sweat nearly keeps the beast at bay but in itself provides very little relief, but that rain, a cleansing time, off comes my hat to look skyward and let the drops wash the sweat from my face, is there ever a more clean feeling, than this? all time falls, I feel like a pure radiant soul in a waterfall…
first on the agenda… here is what I meant by this post, although this pic does not do it justice, this was what I was going for/saw except way more perfect….
Second order of business, find beauty where you may, seek it out, look for it all around you… so try this…
So… enlarge them, are these mountains? or a mountain lake… drone shots… or?
Third order of business, I ran across this in a note tucked away on my home PC in some obscure folder I forgot, something I wrote in a haste, and totally forgot about it, but I like it, it is kind of a mea culpa about me screwing up relationships… a simple thing, a sentiment, a true thing, my thing, so, I own it…
“I did not kill
two birds with a stone
I merely altered fate
and now we fly alone”
notes…. thanks to any and all looks, your time is measured and gone, as is mine. My hope is I expand your mind with my own and the opposite is the draw, my friends. and yeah I also do movie/media reviews if you didn’t totally dig into my blog…
the clouds seem strangely organized this evening (them over there, actual picture from my perspective, not some thing I pulled off the web as per usual, that’s Edison NJ sky proper right there), anyway, like I said, the sky was… like a peaceful battalion on a march in the same direction, an intersection, to a point, a pincer formation, all aligning, driving, aimed at the horizon falling, rows drawn and lined, movement deliberate by the minute they climb, chasing in slow motion that last nourishing drop of day’s light, as am I, ‘put down the phone’ I chide my own self to pry away, there was a time that bottomless whirlpool crutch never existed, ‘was I bored then?’, I can not remember all the minutia of the occupied minutes of how such time was spent, time, this time, take the time, perhaps ‘carpe diem’ is too big a bite, so seize a moment clutched fruit from a vine, trek from there, that point, a starting line, imagine being one of those clouds, not in a storm, in a picture frame perfect setting such as this now, moving above the troubles and baubles of the world so far below, cruising over the open seas, eyes to soak in all the globe memories, islands – that only tales visit, mountain tops – without the climb, rivers – that crack continents in half, and lakes – that are children of the very seas themselves, and then, even your back, your back brushing up against the very cosmos – and yet, still tethered to this earth, a line of life from your birth to the land, a product of the cycle of all life, floating water boats sailing the sky, so seize the moment, a moment, and become lost in an instant, become the words that create the stories in all that surrounds you, seize the moment.
notes… almost forgot, my Thoughts from the Porch is a thing, well, at least for me, and those who read me (waving furiously hello at you all, thanks), and to those uninitiated, this is an exercise in freeform, what? well, my version of stream of consciousness, I sit out on my porch and let the flow go, no, not like that, that would get me arrested man, I mean thought flow, letting the world come to me, or the reverse, or the muse uses me as she sees fit…. something like that… but as I like to say, thanks for the looks, the time, the dime, the comments (good or otherwise), and recipes involving really hot chiles…
tonight, out walking the dogs, I looked up, and discovered – the sky was a dream, maybe a combination even, all the right mix to sweep me off to paradise duty free, the heat of the day has sighed and gone off to sleep, the oppressive mass of humidity has retreated to some other port, I thought to myself “I wish I had all the money in the world to see this all the time”, the irony, here I was, viewing for free, noticing the same thing, not a perfectly clear sky, no, not a glowing soft moon, no, just enough stars for constellation fishing, a large swath of perfectly white clouds thrown across like cotton candy as a wind sock, with caves and nooks, all little pockets and playgrounds for the gods, a blue sky, yes, a blue sky at night, not the stunning azure of day mind you, more towards dark but still blue indeed, what I imagine the middle of the ocean looks like when no one is looking (but I suppose I will never know), the dogs seem oblivious, but they have access to a whole olfactory world I do not, my nose is free enough of allergies tonight to enjoy the subtle pine notes of the evergreens, a hint of treated water smell as my neighbor’s sprinklers go off and some wayward spray is blown my way, how can even a perfect picture encompass all this? the sights, the sounds, the smells, the experience, at least perhaps the photo can be a reminder, of these little slices, the devices left for us to discover, all laid out before us, to simply look… skyward and be thankful we are here.
sidewalks, walking the dog, literally, no cute metaphor there, I was caught to think of the pyramids and other ancient stone structures around the globe that have survived thousands of years, we kind of take such things for granted in some ways, that they are standing there -still- for almost all of our recorded history (and before if you think of Stonehenge or Carnac), but look around at our modern creations, at the ravages, the destruction, the never ending erosion of time and the tentacles thereof by design, our ‘advanced’ minds thwarted, walking my dog along the sidewalk in my neighborhood, at one time this was a perfect path, now a twisted path or upended like a funhouse, just some odd 50 years ago (give or take), this was a perfectly laid plan in a perfectly made place, a new suburb measured to the letter to absorb the masses flooding out into the plains (ok, New Jersey) from the city centers, lines, dimes, all perfectly aligned, everything planned out and planted about, until time got a slight hold and caused a quiet riot, under root, slowly challenging the ordered mind that set this all about, really- no contest, time has all the time in the world and more, how many repairs has this little road of 50 houses seen, agents of season quietly (and sometimes not so) banging on the surface with the relent of never ending bending weather, and the tread of the back and forth lives, cars, carving paths along the curves just like old footpaths, subtle cracks in the curbs, become valleys once more disturbed, floods, drought, glaring sun, the bitter grip of cold, how does anything ever get really old and not just broken in this environment? Well, we have not surely learned… the pyramids remain, but all in this hemisphere is fading…
notes…. got my thrash roots, my metal roots, no apologies, anthrax are local good dudes who made good, and damn they were and are fun… and the piece ? damn, seriously walking the new dog it dawned on me how flawed the perfect planning of this neighborhood was, so smart we are and nature breaks it in less than a generation…
past when I usually spy the sun, still well before she dips below the actual horizon, not just mine, like a star guiding a wayward journey on a moonless night, there I was in the perfect position, by luck, by providence, by circumstance, a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper maybe coriander, all of these, there I stand, staring into the spiral center of a leaf field collage, nearly as dense as the night sky on the round, simply replace black with dark green shadows, but a crack, no a cranny, a nook, a little big hole of just enough, for the sun to shine through, somewhat lens flare diffused, this was not the swelling noon globe I am used to, sometimes I will catch glimpses of this theme in a window, a peek, a wink, but maybe the trees were swaying then, never quite this still, this perfect a portal, a north star buried in a mass of green leaves arranged so perfectly like a tight bouquet with a brilliant diamond in the center, little moments like these provide blocks to build inner strength, reinforce the walls of the good of the world, that hope, the individuality, I had been starring there standing for a while now, completely lost out of my body swept out into the ocean of the anomaly, and as fast as such times are, the circumstance for my chance was gone, but I was there, I was there for the experience of the moment, I was there.
Sometimes I flip through some old stuff, and find lines or short works, or incomplete thoughts, and I post them in the quiet moments of weekends, perhaps you like them, or they help inspire, to me they are snapshots, ideas lost, or just something the moment has passed on, and with that, so here they are…
(1)
she ruffles my brow
as only she knows how
(2)
do I trust the path of crows
for they are mischievous sprites
do I stay the path I go
and risk the safety of never light
(3)
I looked up, and I thought:
“could I die under this sky?”
and yes, I could, I would, maybe not the radiant blue you are thinking of, but layered textures like purposefully settled sand, layers of slightly not the same shade but related, surely I do not want to go, but if this was the end I might not mind.
(4)
all of the circles of sand
when will they end
(5)
I see
rolling hills
of sand
from which wind blows
shifting landscape
yet remains the same
a one note
chameleon
notes… hey, always a chance to push my fave vocalist right now (doug pinnick is my all time fave along with tori amos)
an unremarkable
rainy day
the pond
in the park
over there
a lone figure
sits on the bench
centered
I can not read
their story from here
so I move on
notes… I say it every time I write a piece like this, haiku is great as a script, I don’t like the restraint but I love the feel, intent and compaction, no bones to throw @ those who are haiku advocates, Basho is amazing, he embodied his poems, but I am not Basho, so interpret for yourself.
given the prospect of being blind or deaf, I would not choose either, I can not imagine the world as other, I suspect it would be ‘better’ to be born that way then to know of the fruit and then be denied it’s sweet taste, how often do we ponder the good graces of the basics, sight, and more specifically color, something we all take for granted (not wagging a finger, myself charged guilty aside from moments of clarity such as this), just the idea of color is an amazing thing when you stop to wonder on it for a moment, and the mere spectrum we see is just a hint, a shadow really, of all the color actually out there, I suppose we do not tend to think of X-ray, infrared, ultraviolet and microwaves as ‘colors’ but they are in wave form just the same as ROYGBIV, but they are not recognized by our eyes by design, who knows what the future may bring if we leave this earthly thing, or become more bionic than human… maybe someone will be painting in microwave one day (and heating din din at the same time)…
holding a prism and breaking light into a rainbow swath of ingredients, a hidden cascade locked in every light, except when the rain and sun meet, we marvel at those natural rainbows but what is color? visible light, if you look at a strawberry, it is not actually red, the surface of the berry is merely reflecting red light, absorbing the rest, that is what your eyes cast and catch, so therefore “strawberries are red” even when they are not, color is simply an interpretation of what an object is sending back to your optical receptors, but these calculations, happenings, actualities, we process millions in a daily breeze with no effort, just the sheer idea of color shows the sheer wonder of our creation and ability to sample the world provided around us, truly amazing, a palate built for our exact imaginations…
Shades of My Garden 