yes — Paper.wf

2021/12/16 #poetry To find a spot so wretchedly comfortable that nothing other than growing roots will suffice. This is a dangerous tendency that we carry. Once you've found a nice little cozy pad, everything outside of it seems impossibly far away. Too cold and harsh to dare to brave. Or too hot and suffocating to bear to encounter. Once your body is perfectly held, as if suspended in air, not a mote of effort expelled, you'll find that you'll have trouble summoning it when you should. Why bother, each muscle cries, the needs of the mind can't compete with the needs of the body, all met and holding on to perfect satisfaction. When this bed, or chair, or grass in the sun is all you feel you've ever known, and it's hard to tell if you remain awake or have drifted into dream, you'll learn to crave this feeling, seeking it again and again, wondering how anything could disturb the perfect harmony of the world you breathe in.

2021/12/15 Ants like sugar. They found an uncapped grinder bottle of cinnamon sugar on the spice shelf. No other spice was touched. The ants like to keep things neat. They clean up after themselves. They clean up after everyone. As long as it's edible, they clean it away. They like order. They stay in their little lines, even when they don't make sense anymore. They like to follow along. The boundary of the nervous system of an ant is somewhat permeable. Some of the information exchange happens outside their bodies. They pick up chemicals with their feet that guide their actions. They leave down chemical trails for other ants to react to. They share a mind this way. The foods and acids and other poisons they encounter have similar effects as these marker trails. They too are direct stimuli that operate the mind of an ant. The ant is very much a part of its environment. We humans are too. We are permeable in the same ways. We may not have as many senses but ours too are acted upon by what what we call the outside and it directly effects our minds. Our nervous systems may be more complex and have more activity inside relative to outside by far, but the outside does still work us almost as easily as it does an ant. We have more capacity to learn to overcome specific reactions, we do this a lot. Still, this learning happens for the most part one at a time for each reaction we design to overcome and new experiences can always catch us without this preparation. Our behaviors themselves are also much more complex and so it is sometimes harder to tell when a chemical signal from a tree has changed our behavior. We call it subtle, though that is only because of what we are focusing on when we observe it. Our minds are shared as well, our social activity seems to take up the largest share of our brains resources. This independence that we consider so often is hardly there at all. What we wear, and how we talk, and what we eat, and how we think as well as what, are all almost completely dependent on our social and physical environment. We also like sugar.

2021/12/14 #poetry As long as you can use the language with zest, your poetry will always be the best.

First you take the bus to the train, then the tram to the aeroplane. Up you go fast and far, then down and one more leg by car. Once you're there you exclaim: 'All this way and I feel the same! Wherever I've gone I'm here and I'm me, none of this movement has helped me just be. No rushing around, not hither nor yon, is taking away the distress I want gone. I feel unease, not much but it's there, and the more I attack it the deeper it spears. Even with everything money can buy. Still underneath even when I get high. I've tried really hard, I've had therapy, but nothing and no one has set my mind free. Meditation is better than not, but can't seem to get me as far as I'd thought. Long walks by the shore, a hike in the trees, only can spare me a moment of ease. I want it now and I want it forever, is this doomed to be a fruitless endeavor?' Fear not my friend, I've been there, I know. Believe me when I say there's more to the show. You can find your peace, you can keep it too. The big secret is that there's nothing to do. As you've plainly found you can't escape you. Your feelings are feelings but the meaning's not true. You made that part up or you learned what was told but the ideas and labels are too much to hold. They pull you apart, as you very well know. These are the things that you have to let go. The story you tell of what the feeling means is what bothers your mind and itches your jeans. It's just a sensation, it moves and it changes. The reaction you have when you feel it ranges. If you go looking for one you'll find it no sweat, the one you imagine is the one that you'll get. Think of a time you were sad and you'll find you can feel it now, it pops up in your mind. So focus on what you are looking for not the thing that you'd rather just be forgot. Reframe that buzzing in your chest, call it excitement instead of unrest. Look where you're heading, not where you've been. There's not much more to it so go on, begin.

2021/12/13 #poetry I do realize that others may be better at some things than I am. Some things that I like to do. I still like to do them. My doing is not the same. Perhaps comparison is not possible. Even if that is the case comparison is inevitable. Reassert that it is not a competition. The urge to seem more capable remains. An argument for why my work is superior constructs itself in my head. Effortlessly. Should the work itself be so easy, it would be a very different game.

2021/12/12 #poetry The cold of the morning is more than I am used to. I've had well insulated and heated accommodations for pretty much my entire life up to now. It isn't anywhere near freezing and I need the warmest clothes I own to feel comfortable. Typing with gloves is not as easy. Something about it though is really enlivening. I think I feel more real, that the true world is touching me through the many barriers of artifice we have erected.

2021/12/11 Hey, in your own singsong way leave a silly message and make my day. Oh? How interesting. Excuse me whilst I note that down. Yes, I wouldn't want to forget this. Go on: Hold on, let me grab something to record your number with, OK, I'm ready: This machine will record your voice. Quite amazing is it not? Go ahead, give it a try! This message was recorded on the eleventh of December in the year twenty-thousand-and-twenty-one. By the time you hear this, well actually no, I think you are the one that has a message for me. I'm somewhere else right now, so, yeaahhh Help I'm trapped in a voicemail box! Wait, no, I'm not read... New voicemail day can be entertaining

2021/12/10 Here you are, in your room. Amazing that you have one of your own isn't it? Your own private room that is yours alone. What you may do here is up to you. Keep it clean, or not. Keep it warm, or not. Invite company, or not. Why you think it is so much a benefit to have a separate rather than a shared space is somewhat of a mystery. I suppose it is just what you are used to. Were you to have your needs met without such a distinct boundary of personal space I'm sure you would get used to that fairly quickly. Seems easier in our society's current diversity of interest and schedule to separate space rather than coordinate its use. I tend to think the negative effects are rather large in comparison to the positive convenience. Maybe one day I'll get to find out.

2021/12/9 #poetry Surprise hike, some woods to walk through, stairs along the trail. Sun low, weather cool, a moment on a swing. No plan, time to wander, sometimes it's fun getting lost.

2021/12/8 He breathed a heavy sigh. Dunk donk clonk went the keys on the keyboard. They weren't the nicest keys. He had a better keyboard but it was put away. 'This is fun', he thought, 'I like typing and I like the feedback loop of reexpressing my current doings and beings as written words. It slows me down. Sucking the remnants of dinner off his teeth he pondered the next thing he'd write. 'I'll need to clean that pen soon'. 'I really spent a lot of time watching things this week.' 'Good thing I don't have much else to do.' The memories of the past few days played through his mind. He felt warm and appreciated how he'd got the fireplace working today for the first time. He was ready for the meeting he was about to start and felt that he was done here.

2021/12/7 #poetry It's been 3 weeks and I haven't needed to finish unpacking. Could be expected. Most people own many things that they don't use. I guess it's time for me to say goodbye to most of that stuff. Well, I mean, not just talk to it but actually get rid of it. Toss it overboard, into the simmering stir of others lives. Take what I took. Feel that you may make interesting experiences from them as I did. Maybe you won't let those possibilities go to waste. Desire actualized. Either way, I won't be the one to need to carry it, store it, clean it, and eventually get rid of it once I've already got rid of it. You can enjoy it or regret it in my stead. I'll pass the responsibility. Have fun!