tense

You will hear a voice you wanted to hear, but it isn't that voice. You see a face you wanted to see, but it won't be that face. You mouthed the wish you wish. You wish it and it will be but it isn't, until it will be, and it was.

bugs

Bugger, these bugs are good at bugging. Even with the windows shut, they find their way into chase the light, to bleed and bite, to do whatever bugs might. They try my best intentions not to kill.

I've found that even the most bitter and hateful people seem to lighten up around me. I must appeal to their better angels. Listening helps, but I haven't yet figured out a way to negate the hatefulness.

Here is another Tim Fite song that makes me feel better.

unafraid

Another song I've been listening to a lot: Because I Was Scared

I'm not scared to share it with no one in particular, or sing along with it at odd hours. The neighbors may be scared to hear me.

moonlit

No need to hang a picture there, where the moonlight makes art in shifting colors, art taken from shadow— the window and fire escape. Its clean lines crossed and a blurred diagonal— a reflection of a reflection— is more perfection than anything a hand could paint.

out of sequence

Imagine everything you experience, or could, suddenly freed from the trap of sequence. All sense— future, present and past tense— sensed together, all at once. How would you make sense of it? That's the dream I had.

It could be how information in a multiverse actually presents itself. An Artificial Intelligence, not needing to rely on sequential thought, might be able to process such an over-abundance of data. Not my over-tired mind with its over-active imagination.

honeysuckle

The honeysuckle sweetness thickening the air entreats: within this wood, today could be lifetimes, it could be all yesterdays and tomorrows.

this stone

This stone isn't precious. It isn't, though it is to me. I swallowed it years ago now. It doesn't shine, glint or glimmer. Its colors are muted grays and browns. It sings soft, comforting songs, about lost places it hasn't been and will never go. I can't sell it, but I would share it, if you asked me to show it.

cheer up

I have been listening to this song quite a lot lately: Radio Cure by Wilco

My mind isn't filled with silvery stars, but it is crowded with snippets of lyrics, and the randomness I see on my walks. Today's trek had more than its share of strangeness:

• A park filled with Amish
• A sobbing young woman climbing the sidewalk by the Peabody
• Clutches of Heavy Metal fans everywhere downtown
• Bridesmaids dressed in Orioles' orange parading by the ballpark
• A man wearing full catcher's gear in its parking lot
• A giant thumbprint, or what looked like one, formed by the glue left where a traffic sign had been removed from an overpass

Cheer up honey, I hope you can. There is something wrong with me.

reach

I don't want to box with god (well, maybe I do sometimes), but my arms are still too short, and they're tired from constantly reaching out. God's arms may be longer, and tireless, and more adept at boxing, but they don't reach very far, and they don't lift much. So, I rely on others. Others are always reaching too, but not for me.

happenstance

These things I see repeating, could be. They could be repeating themselves to draw something to my attention. Or it could be I'm looking for them, to convince myself of something else.

I hear the speaking of the same word many times. I see a bird, a starling, twitch its wings. It sings out the same notes to its neighbors.

I feel the pink softness in the same petals pulled from the same droopy flowers. I see the same bright minutes stand beside the same white hours, before they jump away.

I watch it blur by me, the same branded symbol on the same make of car. I feel the same jar's worth of air disturbed by the same swarm of gnats and their thimbleful of wings beating.

None of it is real, and yet it's all happened many times before. No part of it could possibly come to be, but it all lives together right now and everywhere.

I'll walk where the lights take me, sometimes, following the greens so I don't have to stop. Or I'll walk where I want to go, ignoring the lights and daring the cars.

I'll put two words together, because they rhyme, or they don't, and suddenly I'll find myself at the end of a passage, which says something insightful, or it says nothing with any meaning whatsoever.

in between

It's these in-between places. The pauses in between phrases our spun orb hums. The gaps between made-up catches it's whistled. There our when's are unlatched and misled.

foolishness

Waiting the way I wait, and I wait, awaiting more waiting, may make this wait, or waiting, a fool's game. But wait, some fools are wise to the surprise that comes when the wait is no longer waiting, and it finds at its end, one smile waiting for it, and a look that unlocks a kingdom.

what's given; what goes

What's given is, it's not given. Or it's not given long, but it is blessed (and that's 1 syllable and 2). 

It's not long at all before it's taken back. No, it's not taken; it goes back. Yes it goes, and it leaves that blessing behind.

this dream

This dream is a memory that couldn't happen. These dreams are. They were a sadness that will not come. All of my dreaming will be a happiness that didn't awaken.

steps

Today I walked approximately 9 miles, though it was over five total trips. A two-mile walk has gotten to be pretty routine for me.

In between stepping out, I read a New Yorker article about "treadmill desks" that you can use to walk at low speeds while working. It sounds funny, but it's supposed to be much better for you than sitting (and I know how bad sitting can be).

I also read a very short article about "life-editing"; living in a single room that can be configured to meet different needs. For example, changing it into a bedroom, office or dining room by using Murphy beds, sliding dividers and pull-out surfaces. Building-wide common areas (such as a professional kitchen) and shared resources (eg., power tools) play a role too. As an aside, it mentioned that people used to walk much more, and those walks became opportunities to socialize with neighbors.

Maybe others will swing around to these ideas. On my walks around town now, I can go long stretches without seeing anyone, and most people I do see have just gotten out of a car. I feel out of step with people in a lot of ways, but maybe I'm just a step ahead of them.

noise

The noise comes. Unwanted, it thrums and rushes. It shouts in unwise whooshes. It pushes doubt, nonsense and lies, as the day's expectations unravel.

in place

A dull day under a dull gray sky. My only real accomplishment was spinning 31 miles on a stationary bike. Symbolic of the motion without movement in my life.

silence

The silence is questioning. Silent, it asks me. It searches me silently for solutions I can't yet speak. I haven't yet spoken.

persistence

The stink bug believes. It must believe. A bulb is the sun, the ceiling its sky. Over and over again, it collides against a hard white that in the "wild" gives way. A bug doesn't learn. It persists, both in success and failure.

It can't stop. It won't stop until it falls damaged or exhausted. Then I'll cup it, and put it outside, back where the ceiling knows forgiveness. You see, I have a little bug in me.

dust

To be again, back to dust, back up to starry dust, to glittering float, apart and a part of everything particulate, and no part to any some in particular.

never. yes, never

Today wasn't a good day. I'll summarize it thus: I've booked way too much time on the selfless side of the ledger.

I've lived enough years, and my remaining time is too valuable to be given away too easily. I have knowledge. I have wisdom. I have talents. I'm happy to share them with the right people, for the right cause. I will never again be, however, just a body to fill a slot and engage in mindless activity.

They who say such things, say, never say never. This is a never I'll say with absolute certainty.

eine kleine

I'm inclined, night. Music is shadow. Light is a bent line. Absence rests in between, a second or a lifetime.

nada

I've got nothing today. Zip, zilch, zero. I worked from 9 till 9, with a short break to buy groceries and make dinner. The neighbors did have a jam session going with period instruments, which was fun to listen to.

Right now, I'm trying to watch a hockey game, but the complete and utter insipidness of the advertisements tends to twitch my finger onto the off button. I'll probably read a little before I drift off to dream more dreams about someone who I don't want to dream about. My sleeping mind never lacks for material, but it can be rather predictable.

visitors

115 years ago today, Anthony Palisi, better known to me and mine as Grandpa, was born in New York. Our family trip to visit him and Grandma Rose up in Armonk is a favorite childhood memory. They would later move next door to us in Maryland, and I got to spend several months living with them during my senior year of high school. He was a sweet man, and I miss him and Grandma.

Last night I was visited by a mouse, one of the various critters that seem to pass through the apartment from time to time (mostly insects and spiders). I generally let them be, or try to guide them outside, if I can. They're just doing what they were designed to, so who am I to hold it against them.

Outside my apartment today, while shooting the breeze again with Bob, a little dog named Amber came over to say hello. She was exceptionally sweet, and insisted (with some irresistible whimpers) on being pet. Not all visits or visitors are created equal.

these are the minutes

These are the minutes. The ghosts of lived yesterdays haunt. Their haunts hum circles colorless. They ply the black with a plea that's forget us.

this is the hour

This is the hour. The ghosts of tomorrows never born come. They come with their chorus of voices. They come and they sing silence and darkness.

Sunday mysticism

There are songs I love so much, that when I listen to them, I don't just want to sing along, I want to dissolve into them and float away with them wherever it is played songs go. Into the Mystic is one such song, and I listened to it many times today. No need for church or mediation, as long as I can have this music in my life.

love is in the glare

I admit that drivers often piss me off. They generally ignore the fundamental principle that a pedestrian always has the right of way. Throw in the fact that I'm doing the planet a favor by choosing to walk rather than drive, and their sense of entitlement becomes even harder to bear.

It's understandable, we live in a society where, thanks to nonstop automobile and fuel industry propaganda, car ownership is associated with personal freedom and economic mobility. There's also a mania that seems to grip people when they get behind the wheel, replacing common sense with an overwhelming need to hurry wherever they're going.

I buck that bs. If you nose your car into an intersection to try to intimidate me into waiting for you to turn, I'll slow down my stride (which is usually pretty snappy) and glare back at you with eyes that say, "F*ck you, you're going to have to wait."

I did that today, while wearing a shirt that spells out L-O-V-E rather prominently. It might have passed for ironic, or it might have diminished the message a wee bit.

In other news, there was a wedding in the park across from my apartment this afternoon. Real love, or that brand of love we call real, was in the air, and it didn't smell at all like exhaust.

all in a day's walk

Today I made a conscious effort to clock out at a reasonable hour and enjoy some down time. For me, down time means outside time, away from the magic boxes at which I make a living. There's magic outside the boxes too, and it's real, and it's scary, because I know when I find it, or more likely it me, I won't be prepared for it.

I do go look for it, and looking means walking. Walking, this evening, I took the road less traveled, at least by me. Unfortunately it took me too. Consciously or unconsciously I ended up someplace I both wanted and didn't want to be. The not wanting proved stronger, and I hurried away, back to the apartment.

Bob from the building was sitting out front, as he often is, and I listened to his stories and his jokes, while life's rich pageant passed us by. I can't say this place is wholly home yet, but it's becoming home. It's where I am and where I feel I have to be, at this moment, for the real and scary magic I know is out there to find me.

in_onsequential

The "C" has worn off the c-key on my keyboard. It's still a c-key, producing Cs without complaint, even though it has no "C" to mark it.

I don't seem to be marking time the way I used too. I know it's passing. I see the digits on my clocks change.  I see the sun rise and fall. Yet, time has gotten progressively more compressed, collapsing more and more back onto itself. I can only guess that's what it does, until it and I reach the point where it won't pass, or everything will pass, all at once into something I can't define. At least not while I'm limited by this human brain.

Right now, I still count it, and it still counts. I don't count down. I count up. I count the time that's passed since. Since what? Mostly since sadness, I guess. A sadness that's its own plural. It too will leave me, or I'll leave it. Not yet. Not soon. It will still be here, even while I hide it. Just like that "C" that's left the face of my key, while it keeps on making Cs.

life rips itself off

it's a little hard to describe this, but lately i've noticed that life likes to rip itself off. the same way the Flintstones was a ripoff of the Honeymooners. or Apocalypse Now was a ripoff of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. homage would be a kinder word, and a classier one.

are there patterns that follow us? do circumstances keep recurring in our lives? the same plots and outcomes, but with different names and faces attached?

some theorize the universe/universes is/are constantly expanding and collapsing back in on itself/themselves; cycles of birth and death, and the everything in between. could there be small variations within those repetitions, whenever they re-play out?

and are our lives microcosms of those cycles? do our own births and deaths, and the everything in-betweens, repeat into infinity; a program caught in a loop; a loop that's become the program.

i walk down the street and i see an older man i know standing there with his cane, as if he's been waiting for me, as if it's pre-ordained we run into each other. i've met another man with a cane in much the same way but in a previous life, in a previous city. i'll likely encounter yet another when i move on wherever i'm meant to move on to next.

is this the universe giving me a chance to repeat these scenarios until i get them right, whatever right is? i don't know, but being aware of these patterns doesn't make me want to break free of them. it makes me want to improve on how i've handled them. and yes, that's me ripping off the movie Groundhog Day, but there's no shame in paying homage to anything involving Bill Murray.

cancel that coincidence

for me, coincidence has always been the reddest herring. it's no coincidence that the phrase "there are no coincidences" is oft-repeated. our minds find connections wherever they can, and quite often the associations they make are as real as they are imagined. we write this life as a story. we love stories. we live stories. we are our stories.

our stories give us comfort. they make sense of a senseless world. one thing flows from another, even if it doesn't. effects have causes. actions, reactions, equal and opposite, and the opposite, when we tell it, will sound made up.

life (read work) has been a bit hectic for me lately. i literally tossed and turned in the night just thinking of all the things i had to do today. was it a coincidence that a couple appointments got canceled today to ease the burden a little, at least for a day? it's happened a few times recently, things "working out" that way, in the end.

i'll tell myself this, it wasn't a coincidence, and i'll thank the invisible power that is yet isn't. i'll likely curse it tomorrow again, when too much life (read work) comes flowing back upon me, in an unexpected and overwhelming wave of randomness.

multi-versing and the music binge

i have become a music binger. some folks might down a quart of ice cream in one sitting. i over-consume bands' album collections. i spent a few weeks listening to all things Bowie, again and again, then Time Fite, and lately it's been Wilco. what next? perhaps Radiohead or back another time to Elvis Costello. it could be a rut, or it could be my returning to the comforts of things long-loved, to compensate for things long-lost.

i set a personal best for "conversations" held simultaneously tonight, composing an email while answering a text, in the midst of a chat session, while also on a Google hangout. yes, i might be overdoing the multi-tasking, or i have too many competitors for my attention. such is the nature of my virtually ultra-connected but fragmented life. broken and yet appealingly sparkly.

Flirt those bad dreams away

i have weird dreams. i have sad dreams. i even have angry dreams, but i don't often have scary/bad dreams. last night i had two; not grade-a horrifics, but pulse enhancers.

a vague accounting of a dream is like poorly retelling a joke, it never pays off. so, i'll only say this: one dream included a storm of horizontally flying thick, black drops, which was a neat visual.

donning my amateur dream-interpreter's cap, i'd say they both centered on the fear of being driven/pushed into an impending unknown. when isn't the future unknown? only when all of its quantum possibilities collapse into an observable present. my lesson learned, though it may be unwise to take lessons from dreams, is to dread less and accept more, especially when it comes to circumstances i can't control.

one thing i can control is a "flirt pole." i learned how to use one today during my sunday morning shift walking dogs at BARCS. what's a flirt pole? it's basically a piece of pvc pipe with a string at one end. the string attaches to a tug-toy. you swing the pole around while standing on a platform to get the dogs to chase the toy. it's pretty cool, and Cosby, the particular dog we exercised with it, loved it.

as i get more experience working with the dogs, i hope to be able to do a lot more of these activities. it's one possible future popping in and out of view, and with some dedication i'll collapse that puppy.

What now?

not poetry. i'm pretty much done with that for a while. there's still plenty of it to find on the interwebs, so go seek it.

if not poetry, what? randomness, which is to say life. no one may read it, and that's okay. i'll record stuff here, and see what evolves. back to the way-back then, mr. peabody, when blogs were 'blogs (short for web logs) and designed for journaling. off we go.

there is some festival going on in my hood. a flower fest of greenery getting with an official title i don't know. it seems to be drawing in mostly folks who don't live in the city and otherwise ignore it on the weekends. of course they're choking the streets with their automobiles, and the atmosphere with the filth those belch. i'm sure it's worth it so they can prettify the homesteads out in the vast suburban expanses.

i read this today: our drone delusion. nothing really that i didn't know, but plenty that most americans like to pretend doesn't happen. does anyone still remember that directive ford signed in the seventies to outlaw political assassinations, or the various topplings and killings that the cia perpetrated abroad before that (and probably after)? probably not. now it's not spy craft but drones that we use to dispatch folks, and they might as well be called that because of the humming these beasts force many americans into so they can ignore the stories about the death and suffering we cause overseas.

i did go out for a nice walk. i like walking in this city, despite it (and its steeped in car culture) not encouraging me to do so. it has monstrously snaky, multi-level expressways that dominate the landscape and try to intimidate my pedestrianism, but i'm undauntable at this point.

once i got past the flower stalls, the sidewalks were pretty much person-less. i went up to the bolton hill neighborhood, which is a couple miles north. there was a statue of a guy named watson in a civil war era uniform there, with mortars and balls at the ready below him. i'm sure he did something stirring on the battlefield and was worth commemorating, but we do too much celebrating of those who are skilled in killing, and i'm not going to bother looking him up. he'll live on in my mind as an unassociated hunk of metal; well-formed, but meaningless. that's one better than this post.