“I look up upon the budding leaves
I see the look of blooming stars”
notes… even in this dire time (at least here in NYC metro area, covid ground zero) this is still spring, life can be about perspective, from the smallest atom to the most massive objects in the universe, there is a line that connects all… the wonders of the universe are all at play right in front of us all the time from a moon to a lowly dime… keep that in mind, when you can.
sound, a transport device, a time travel mechanism at least in our memory response, something we all can account for, just now, I was listening to some random ambient on youtube and there was a background sound embedded, buried, a familiar sound, a pinpoint sound, crickets, like devious little natural metronomes, chiming, precise clockwork chirps provide context, surely this is not their true domain, a gloomy rainy cold day, the weather prognosticator already told the fortune of today, rain in spades, or some other suit, but that is the saying, anyway, that pill popped into my subconscious I was already to rue the day, to welcome the disappointment of my appointment with rain, the expected, expected to be understood and ground, I do love a good thunderstorm however, so my hopes were up for at least some rumble, some tussle of spark, a great reminder of nature’s power via rolling clouds of thunder sparked by bolts, yes, I do quite enjoy a good storm, as long as my power stays on, pampered human am I, all the while to watch the tempest from my safe box, admittedly, from comfort, but back to the crickets, I am transported from this somewhat lackluster day to a summer night, by a fire, in the mountains, or even just outside by a lake, but definitely summer, and most definitely night, when the all else of the world is faded, just the subtle crackle of collapsing embers, out past the flickers rising in the sky, the crickets, a constant sound, I could hear that sound in a blizzard and feel comfort, for at least a time, the power of sound to bring my mind somewhere else, sometimes a song, to a place, to a gathering, a party, a wedding, a celebration, I can feel the suit I’m wearing, the clanging of the formal wear, the shoes pound on a dance floor, or maybe just a time, alone sitting watching the waves come in, with a new album on my ipod, a dozen years ago, always connected to that beach, the clear waves of the Key’s lapping my feet, having the dock all to myself, like owning the world and stepping into the scene whenever I like, just a song, and I am there, and there are those who would argue about mystical things… take a listen…
notes… tomorrow will be day three back @ work for me, like, physically instead of remotely, at my office (Bergen County, NJ covid central ground zero in Jersey), granted there are only a few of us there, but I am dealing with all the same things in my head, my brother is helping this week taking care of my folks thankfully, the weather seems to be looking up, at least it wasn’t raining today, my bamboo is booming, as it always does this time of year (you would not believe how much can grow in a day), in my mind I look forward to when it fills out the entire corner of the house like an impenetrable forest fortress of green all year round, that will take years, and I hope for those, those years that is….
PS: found a Chinese restaurant tonight that was open ! yay! NY/NJ chinese take out is an essential thing, something we all (from this area) take pride in in some strange way, there is no way people here would blame them for the virus, I love cooking, but not every night (and only italian places seem open), there is something comforting in getting some wonton soup, shrimp and lobster sauce… and an eggroll, one of those little building blocks of normalcy I can add to the stack.
my love
I long to stare into your eyes
and never wish to escape
to hold your hand
your palm
flat to my heart, my skin
star to star
for my heart does pulse
only for you
my love,
mapped out upon the sky
so we may dance
eternally
among the stars
notes… simple sentiment is sometimes the cement… I may wax about science and the universe, string theory and things as such, but the great equalizer, is love… the greatest of these is love…
(sometimes stream of consciousness is just unfiltered observation, this is a translation of today)
a pair of geese fly over, I imagine married, one with a declarative honk, the other acknowledges grunt, and the sound I hear is “yes, dear”, and then they are gone (and yes they were socially distant).
staring at the tuning fork tree, because, well, it resembles a tuning fork, I am fixated on the view between the tines, what if that was all I ever knew, my universe, that little space was my entire world perceived, all the rest is apart from my view in that scenario, unknown to me, but yet, now, I can actually see beyond those tines, what I perceive to be all around, but what might I be actually missing inside the tines of my mind, I wonder, or be gracious for what I have seen, I ponder.
I project to talk with the breeze, not for answers, nor for a conversation, just to say thanks, for the wind is tireless at work, and sleeps only in the escape of space.
notes… went back to the office today, been nearly two months, my desk, well, it’s still mine, and no one stole my stash of hand sanitizer I had (bought way before the pandemic, a three pack at staples of like monster size and also clorox wipes), it was a strange thing, I felt apprehension at times, but those who have been doing this for weeks seemed more relaxed, I guess I will be the same in time, I must admit I am not comfortable at all there, even if we are running a skeleton crew (literally two) but our technicians are bringing back machines/parts from the city every day, that freaks me out, especially since this article today… those are all stores I know, and people I actually trained at some point, damn, it is still hot close here… but I made it I hope, tons of hand-washing, hand sanitizer, wipes, masks, all that, but every cough, every sneeze in the doors just flames that little flame somewhat… my good friend, a co-worker for 15 years, his wife has an auto immune disorder, a real rare one, and he seems ok with all this and she is good, so I guess I should be, but maybe my mind just does not work that way… but I am trying… and tonight was such a nice night it helped me drain out the doubt, a fallacy? perhaps, but damn it felt good…
contemplation.
sitting here, watching the last of the day drain out down into the horizon, everything becoming silhouette and shadow until all will be shadow soon save for the false lights, how all this now seems like three days, not just one which I ‘know’ it is, is this apprehension (fear ratchets), tension, anticipation, regularity creeping back in?
rewind.
I suppose this could have been a day I dialed up, weather wise, weather I would order a la carte of I could, a prescription filled if you would, this morning there was rain, the kind of rain I seek out on youtube for nightly comfort, heavy rain but not threatening, a gentle downpour if there ever was, and this was, no threat of wind whisking water into your window sill, so I open it further wide and tall, to invite in as much as the sound as possible, as good as my sound system is, there is no substitute for pure nature, you get used to the recorded sounds but somehow they are not the cradle in the arms that this is, I just want to curl up like cooked bacon wrapped in the blankets and imagine I am surrounded on all sides by the rain, the symphonic barrage, just hard enough collect in pools on the sidewalk quickly but not buckets bearing down on tin roofs like weighted bullets, no human sounds, no leaf blowers or lawn mowers, just this rain, this is the spring rain, you can almost hear the ground as a mouth soaking, slurping it all in, the thirsty roots, the shoots, the seeds, the spring, feeding on the energy from the clouds, nurturing, I could sleep and dream forever in these fields and this scene, the morning stretches out and feels like half a day, maybe, either way the rejuvenation is the same, and then my phone rang….
ah yes, still working, I grab a cup of coffee from my little magic pod thing, starbucks hazelnut (it was three dollars off at the store the other day man, who am I to complain), a thomas’ english muffin, toasted with faux butter (I do like it, I have to admit), I log on to my old desk PC (whom I haven’t seen in weeks or is it month’s now?), so I am at work (magically), not a bad commute these days, well, none actually, I can’t even recall the last time I filled up my car with gas, strange…
forward.
the rain petered out, as did the calls on my call board, and amazingly enough the sun is out, I almost do not recognize the sun these days (who are you?), apparently this was the first april in many a moon where the temperature did not crest 70 even once (in these parts), so maybe all the dreary feeling and dark air was not my imagination after all this impossible month, doldrums, doldrums man, definite doldrums have been beating on me internally but how quickly things spin and come round in an instant, the sun dancing and sparkling in the little pools, reflections bouncing, the fresh green of spring that much brighter, transformation, the birds employ to serenade this new beginning, a celebration, the uplift of souls on a wing, a song, just walking along my lawn soaking in as much as I can, turning my skin into a receptor of the energy of light, of life, wanting to spin like a top and never stop…
present. grind.
and the phone rang, am I repeating myself? or am I watching someone else? no, the call is for me, which makes sense being it rang on my phone, after all, my manager, well, one of them, one of the higher up muckity mucks, above me, at least, my services are needed at the office in the AM, is this how this weird fairy tale will end? I almost have forgotten the daily slog and grind of the past fifteen years, this seems like a foreign request, or even a flirt with death, or… I’m just not sure exactly what I am feeling, as I usually do I say ‘yes’, I rarely go against the flow at work unless I really have to, is that the best thing? probably not, but sometimes we are who we are regardless of who we would like to be wired like, so, pining away all this time to ‘get back to normal’, I have no idea what that is anymore, different pieces have been added to the puzzle the past few months, the recipe for normal is completely off, I am starting with fresh steps.
current. tonight.
so, sitting, trying to listen to the birds, somehow the human sounds have been creeping back in, my neighbor’s cars, his garage up and down, the slow hum of a freight train taking it’s damn time grind, traffic traveling on the main road in town just over a treeline in the bend of my street, car’s racing engines somewhere close, in the neighborhood I think, as night draws in, so I near the entrance to another chapter, at once – I used to think I was writing this tale, this book, but now? I feel just like a character waiting for the author to finish my story arc. and so, tomorrow I may find out…
notes… thanks for all eyeballs and likes and the like if you like, also, if you dig this post this is part of my ongoing Porch Project, a blog ? a diary? eh… sort of, it is what it is, so if you like this check out the whole darn thing (I try to keep it up to date you know)
if I could reach out my hand, as a receptacle, a device, a receiver, across the entire world, and touch all cultures, would I gain the answers? I imagine – I can out stretch my hand, more astral than physical mind you, outward, into the universe, as far as my imagination tethers or allows, for surely I can not imagine beyond my own imagination, even though the cosmos must probe past those regions I can not fathom, if I could reach out toward and into that infinity, even just for a glimpse of that all reality, what would I see? would that knowledge satisfy my human curiosity or make it billion fold explode, I wonder, all there is to see out there, in between the dead space, space, like death itself a web that holds us all in, a trap we can not escape, but life persists, even in the darkest of dark depths explored, and that is just here, on this one little sphere, I wish I could know more else, other worlds, other selves, surely life is out there, how could it only be here? if I only could outstretch my hand and touch the universe as a whole, I wish, and I dream it so.
singular mourning dove up on a wire, tiny silhouette painted against the grey shifting tide, coming storm, pays no mind, doves have distinct bodies, angular, familiar, kind of like a heart if you stare long enough, of course you would have to pop off it’s head, ‘what a morbid thought’. I thought, and so it is but I thought it anyway, not as if the bird was in any real danger, the wire is quite high, I could never reach it, plus I am afraid of heights, also, I don’t own a gun…
notes… hey, sometimes I am in a goofy mood, this would be one of those times… gallows humor is fine to swing on through at times, like this one
1)
here comes the sun, “cue the music my good man, make it so!” (hey, I have been watching Picard, slack me), and so by comparison this is a bounty, a parade, a glorious celebration, when not taking phone calls about windows computing pratfalls I venture outside to literally soak it in, the applied balm for what ills when stuck inside for days at a time, behind brooding clouds and held down by winds of lousy content, the rain is good for the green but perhaps not for the heart I think, maybe not the most scientific method, but in this, I must trust, something else – instinct.
2)
a single spider thread catches my eye, winking in the sunlight like a mirrored line, just one thread, not a web, a prelude to a night trap, and I can see the quarry, there is a small swarm of some type of insect milling about, haphazard to my eye but they know their own purpose, no doubt, a mild winter and a wet spring, there will be lots of bugs around this summer (pun intended if you catch my drift), but these winged fellows are not bothering me, so I can’t hate them for their relations, their pesky cousins and whatnot, we all have them after all, we choose our friends, not our families, I imagine insects are the same, can’t blame the fireflies for the mosquitoes, at least that seems unreasonable to me, it would be easy to parlay hate of one insect bite into a whole genus, and that would be unwise, besides, there is a chain in place, at least for now, a pecking order, or a picking at the buffet order, I imagine the spider putting on a bib, lining up a table, knife and fork in hand, ready for the bounty coming.
3)
the lower branches
the little ones, as I call them, finches and that sort to be clear, seem to love the bosom of the bottom branches of the bushes, especially the evergreens, the short ones, the stout ones, vertically challenged I believe is the ‘nome de acceptable’ (my term)… either way, it leads me to think of the lower branches, certainly not as much sunlight, not as easy to navigate than the outer reaches, protection from the rain perhaps, the sanctity of closed spaces, for three, four, more I see them, darting in and out like feathered laser beams, so exact, quick, manic seeming even, I wonder if I resemble that after three cups of coffee, or so I am told I can be high wired, these little ones, a maelstrom of fidgets, I imagine the lower branches appeal to their sense of security, or fear of heights? nah, that would be silly for a bird, not this one (me) but I should not transfer my human fears onto them, I take note of all the hierarchy, air and ground, what led each to such choices, noble patrolman, the robins, like guards, running back and forth on the grass, not bird-like at all, even squabbling over land claims with their own, blue jays seem undecided, maybe they just take the best of both land and wind, I see them scavenging on lawn and wing, the mourning doves content to feed on feeder scraps, easily spooked and fled, with their tell tale ‘coo coo’, nature has produced many successful designs, mine included, I just wonder which branch I would gravitate to, how about you?
4)
I can see the wind
what a strange thought, not literal, but yet not false, entirely, wind is sometimes a bludgeon, other times a feather swipe, today she is cascading, moving across in an unmarked mass leaving footprints across all the leaves, and there is where I can see her, flowing across the surface, as the branches bend and release, ever closer, I can see her approaching, and then in an instant she has rushed over me like water on an outcrop river rock, as I am not a natural thing with my feet roots not quite firmly planted like most everything else, I happen to be observing, an interloper of sorts, that is, and this is more of a gentle deliberate freight train, so behind in steps sisters the same, nearly the same bends and waves as I watch them approach, anticipating the moment of break upon my space, across my face, my hands, temporarily dousing the warm of sun, so you can be lullaby-ed again by rays in the next moment, ah the blessed sun, where have you been hiding all these days?
notes… well, a mixed bag incidentally, so am I, I must admit the muse seems more absent these days, maybe, but what do I know ? this was all written today in various forms and modes, things catch my eye, my pen is another thing, my pen… or this keyboard, sometimes it varies, lately it has been all freeform for the most part, stream of consciousness and the like, the poems seem faint and distant, I have a well I can draw from but man that all seems old, I like to post new, I have hundreds of pages of material, but after you move on and look back? it seems old, dated, there is really nothing like the immediate…
the procrastination meter, is running low, dare I say dangerously so, all the little things I let slip, “ah, I’ll do that tomorrow”, flip to next week, flip the calendar month, even then half a year, I am not the worst or best of the sort, just normal human affliction on that score, much like everyone I suppose, or I hope, but the lists, the things to do… are dwindling, quarantine is whittling away the idle me, even if I am working six days a week (thankfully) I still have way more time on my hands than I am used to, the daily commute, that commute that I used to so love loathing about (and spouting about here), is gone, distant, the only reminder the new-ish SUV parked out there napping next to my lawn, maybe twice a week I venture out to the store, no more, I honestly can’t recall the last time I filled up on gas, I guess my boss is saving on that, and the daily tolls to troll up the turnpike, at least two hours a day, time, like a lost precious locket, back in my pocket, I must admit, for the first week or two I did not do much with it, just a love affair with my snooze button, ten minutes per love tap, no need for the shower and looking proper, and no, I’m not one of those half naked to the mailbox guys, I do at least dress, just not sunday best, or wednesday worst, comfy tech-support-you-can’t-see-me-anyway clothing, but even still, the little things around the house started speaking to me, I mean I have no real excuse now, do I? damn logic… hard to argue with damn logic, all the things I told myself I would do, I have no choice but to do them, procrastination feeds greedily on a flash busy life, and I used to be moving top fuel speed all the time, but now? when days stretch into days into days, and the weather has been, well, gloomy would be slapping a nice smile on things not smiley, the odd sunny day seems like a dream sometimes, isn’t this supposed to be spring ? I’d ask for a refund but I lost the receipt for such things ages ago, besides, I hear there are no guarantees, warranties or exchanges, this ‘new normal’ so called is droning on and on, well, at least I am getting some things done, but I am not sure if I miss the comforting touch of past procrastination… a trade off to being back to normal, or maybe a lesson can be learned and merged…
PS: did I file my taxes yet ?
the wind, is an overture
roaring, under conductor,
like an inward ocean learned
cresting and breaking among the trees
I listen for the conversation creaks
as if, to contemplate them
but even foreign songs have a tell
and perhaps my earth memory is quelled,
a spring day that presents more like september
brilliant blue sky that belies the weather
bamboo leaves flipping spinning
like an old duck hand carved weather vane, tapping
flapping wings with might upward against the stream
and stops sudden, a moment, an exhale, perhaps
the sun, with effort, tries to warm the day
just enough for the brave , to peek out, to partake
even just for a split second, top heads poke, gingerly, above the bow,
I am swept into this sea –
this blend of seasons, a menagerie
the rise and fall, the beat and pulse
wishes drop like coins into mother’s well
the facade of the world surely around
invisible and faceless
in touch with such bounty.
notes… just a feel thing, a moment, trying to draw the reader into my experience, maybe successful, maybe not, brush strokes against the canvas of reality here in quarantine-ville, the music… starts a little slow, but kicks in around the 2 min mark….
Shades of My Garden 