poetry

2021/8/30 #poetry I have at times been so overcome with a sort of appreciation for art that I feel as if everything else has also been affected. That the world in all its vastness has also stopped to receive the impact. A moment of openness, of reaching for what elevated element enables this encounter with the sublime so as to grasp it myself and have use of it in my own creations. Perhaps it does impact everything. If everything is integrally connected at a fundamental level then when I'm affected so is the rest of it to some degree. Perhaps it is just a feeling, an impetus to share. As an impulse it works better when it doesn't reach so deep. Being speechless and awestruck makes me hardly fit to point attention to anything.

2021/8/29 #poetry I do enjoy watching the fog. There's an excitement to it. It comes in and annihilates things. I watch and wonder, will that building be removed, will that other be erased? Will I? Sometimes there's an effect of diffusing the lights in the buildings so instead you see globulous hills with fires pitched about. Then candles, and nothing. It all stays trapped, that light, and the whole mass of gassy fluff glows. A big city-sized glow ball.

2021/8/27 #poetry How can sitting in front of a computer screen all day make you feel like you've run a marathon? I'm sure I didn't run at all, pretty much just sitting mostly. I don't have the first clue as to what could be so exhausting about that. I haven't heard anyone talking about how concentrating too much can kill you. Perhaps I just wasn't listening though. There's hope, I can nap, sleep, rest, rejuvenate and get back to what I was so busy with. Live to run another day. Sit-run. Just sit. Sit and look at a screen. Pretty screen. Lots and lots of colored lights. Millions actually. And each one tells a story. Well, together they tell a story. Story after story after story. After story. More stories to come too. Millions of them actually. It's not hard to see why so many people stare at these screens for so much of their short uncomfortable lives. There are better things for me to do, I know. I do them sometimes too. I do. I do I do. But, you see, the screen is easier to get to. Easier to focus on for long enough that my day goes by and I can enjoy the satisfaction of having it over and done with. Most days are wonderful, full of interesting and enticing things to learn and see. That could be part of the problem, if I'm not presented with something interesting then I'm apt to go looking for one and the fastest way to find one is to turn on a screen. Bam, instant distraction from any manner of life problem. Vision problems excepted. Also headaches. I've heard those can be aggravated by light and noise. But for everything else there's a specific pattern of blinking pixels that can be guaranteed to distract from that specific problem. Even the problem of feeling like you've been staring at a screen for too long.

2021/8/24 #poetry A quiet flutter of leaves as the breeze rolled through. The sound would start gently and fade out again slowly after a half a minute or so. There would be lots of silence in between. Perhaps you've heard about the landscape shimmering as the heat rises off on a still day? Well that's because it does. It adds a sense of unreality to everything. Makes it hard to think about doing anything other than just staring out over it. You'd break the stillness, it would be out of place.

2021/8/23 #poetry This time I'll do it. Really, no false starts, no backpedaling, and no rationalizing about why I didn't act after the fact. I'll just do it. Ok, I'm going to digress here and go off on a tangent. There is a brand that I'm sure your familiar with that has capitalized that last phrase that I used. They use it as both as an advertising slogan and in their logos and have even made it a product all on its own. It is a very powerful mantra and really gets to the heart of a big part of the human experience so I see why they would run with it after discovering it but I resent that they are squatting on it and holding this mental real estate with so many people and deeply linking this amazing mantra with capitalism. It's a darn shame it is. Idioms shouldn't get to have trademarks. But despite all that, just do it I will. I may have fear, I may feel unsure, but I will proceed regardless. The only thing that has stopped me before was uncertainty but I will begin this time knowing that completing my part will be a foregone conclusion, irrespective of the final outcome. I will reach with my mind into the future and see quite clearly that if I don't act this time, I will have to confront the same situation again and again until I do. That therefore if I do delay the inevitable it is only to my detriment because I can not avoid it entirely. Eventually I must and that kairos is today.

2021/8/21 #poetry Hopefully, by the time you find this, night will already have fallen. It will be simple, then, for you to go out and look at the Moon. You won't be the only one doing it. That's the thing. The Moon has had more visual attention placed on it than any other person, place, or thing in all of Earth's history. Even before humans existed and long after they've passed, that satellite will continue to attract the eyes of many many trillions of creatures. Some people can't see, it's true, but most can and for them the Moon is the one sight that hardly anyone has missed. We share it like nothing else. Not even the Sun has the draw of the Moon, most won't watch the Sun for very long. It's what the Sun does that's so enthralling, the colors that it casts about the sky as it rises or sets. The warmth it generates and drops upon us. The sights it allows us to see, such as the Moon. The Moon though, with the Moon it is what it is that makes it so interesting. A disk, a dome, or a crescent of light. Softly glowing but still bright enough to let you see. Whatever you see though, under that strange light, always draws your gaze back to the Moon itself, as if you don't really trust it, or feel it's trying to trick you. You have to check. Looking at the Moon with no other thing to do seems to be a perfectly fine occupation. There's no reason to feel a need for anything more. It works, always, no maintenance required. Balancing the active it just reflects, and allows you to too.

2021/8/20 #poetry Awfully fine to spend my time dallying about with books and articles. Anything I'd like to understand, to think about, to muse on. Anything I'd like to give me a laugh or to make me sigh in wonder or beauty. Truths and fictions available both, opinions too, piled to the moon. Why don't I make a plan about what I'll study? It would detract from the freedom. The electronic requests I can make are so easily fulfilled that I can't imagine limiting their scope. I take in anything that could expand my world, anything that could sharpen my discernment. I sometimes loose hope that I'll finish some trail of interest I started previous to the one that I'm on, but that doesn't seem to matter as I've no true goal. With this way of meandering and swooping around the spaces of our collective minds I sometimes find a new way to understand my self or my purpose. A jewel, something I never could have sought. Am I really growing? I don't keep track, per se, so it it hard to tell. I'm always changed but perhaps not much. It's at the very least a welcome distraction and a fine way to spend some time.

2021/8/19 #poetry If you could not operate an internet connected touchscreen mobile computer, how would you feel? Frustrated at times. You'd certainly have a tough time when you tried to use one. Free and unconcerned most of the time. You just wouldn't need to think about it. It wouldn't be inconvenient once you were used to it. You would find that it was actually less of a burden since you never had to worry about upgrade costs, data migration, disposal, software updates, losing it, breaking it, forgetting your passcode, if it's cool or not to use it in the bathroom, all that would go away entirely. You could just live your life, connecting with physical things, people, your own thoughts, and confining digital things to a desktop or make them into someone else's business. It would probably be nice to not have any responsibilities that required you to be beholden to such an object. It would filter away any false friends that wouldn't make the effort to connect with you by more conventional means. It would save energy, and your time. Life could be simpler. Your sense of reality could be more pronounced. If only you could not use an internet connected touchscreen mobile computer.

2021/8/18 #poetry The light seemed to curve over the edge of the rock, turning downward as it fell into the water. In the air, white-grey flecks lit up in the spill of beams. Some flying, some floating, some falling. The new day had yet to warm up, and many tiny winged creatures were yet safe from the larger beasts that lived in the heat. Higher above, dancing mists start to tumble faster as the light pierces them. Their edges merging into the surrounding air as they boil away. New stronger flows of wind begin to buffet them, to fold them. The clouds capitulate, uncaring, used to constant change.

2021/8/16 #poetry Today I exchanged the old for the new It's been quite a while and was certainly due I held on so long that the fabric wore through Then I held on some more while all the holes grew The time to move on was past, that I knew I had to throw out, but it's tough for me to That things must change is always true Good thing my supply still contains a few Moving on, starting fresh, can be nice too

brainstorms that didn't make the cut: You can't avoid swallowing after you chew You can't eat more food without going poo And so it is with me and you