So many memories. Some I still remember. Others I have forgotten. I was sitting at my desk, and I was reminded of the neighborhood pool. It wasn’t my neighborhood. It was the neighborhood where the girl I had a crush on lived. I had just started to drive. I can feel the wet cement under my bare feet. I can feel the painted gate in my hand. I had to wait there for her to come over to unlock it for me. Only residents of the neighborhood had keys. I had my shirt off and a beach towel hanging on my neck. It’s been years since I’ve remembered this memory. So real for me still. So many lives I’ve lived.
Month: August 2022
Seeing sound
I hear lights she
Says as she’s
Too high how
Do you hear
Lights I ask I
Don’t know
She replies I
Just do
August 26, 2022 at 11:28PM
Still new
The world is more or less
Known to me now the
First times are fewer and
The doors are all open
Walked through
The house is full of
Memories but it still seems
So empty without a
Newborn learning to crawl
It’s all a reminder of
What’s already known but
Of course there is
Always more and
That’s all I’ve left
Is to search for what’s
Still new
August 24, 2022 at 01:34PM
Morning
Waiting for the water to boil
With my hands in my pockets
The sun shines through the wi Dow
I wonder about what else to do
For thirty seconds but I
Stand right here instead of
Going off to fuss with whatever else
Close my eyes and let
The sun shine on my face
August 20, 2022 at 07:51AM
Abbreviated pontification on how everyone is an artist
*Upload original audio file from Otter as part of the Substack post for this one.
The barrier of stage performance. Yeah, like the there’s a scale of formality. It’s like the very formal is the, you know, the tall stage. Lots people in attendance. Very little crowd interaction.
Middle is like open mic, you know, here’s a microphone. The stage might not be elevated, maybe some little crowd interaction.
And so at what point do these artistic performances just bleed into real life? At what point is somebody in real life being an artist? Or a comedian? Are they a model? Are they a dancer are they a poet? Just living their everyday life.
Like that guy right here, he’s a comedian.
When you go to an open mic as I okay, this person has microphone or they’re gonna do are okay.
Different modes of regarding material reality
It is what it is. There’s too much to be considered. The crowd walks by. Everyone is going to the next show. Every individual is different. All the same, all human beings, but each different. Different in appearance—height, facial bone structure. Different personality—memories, mental contents.
And when we all get together, there are moments when we are all the same. When the band comes on to play and the beat of the bass drum moves all of us in the same rhythm. we are the same in our response to the rhythmic pattern of that sound. It is like we all remember we are the same when we dance together
We get to see our bodies reacting to the sound in the same ways and we look at each other and we smile and we nod our heads and we say silently, “Ah, yes, I remember. We are the same.”
But then there are moments when we stand apart. And we look at each other only with our eyes. And then, of course, there are differences.
You can start to see how things are different with your eyes so quickly. Things look different, of course, but that is only one way of regarding things—with your eyes. If you close your eyes and reach out and touch something, that is a different way of regarding things.
How would we define, structure, categorize things if we could only regard things with a sense of touch or even with a sense of feeling—with a sense that isn’t physical at all, with a sense that is just that gut reaction, that visceral way things make you feel.
How would our language change? How would our companies change? How would all of the structures we’ve built around this lived experience change? Just based on how we process sensory input in the first place.
Ephemeralness as a quality of beauty
As the crowd was trampling through the forest, there was a moment I saw under our feet.
It was broken branches, a pine cone, pine needles—all clustered together, arranged just so, as a portrait, as a sculpture, as a work of art.
I wish I could have taken a step back, crossed my arms, and considered the work longer. With my chin on my chest, leaning my head to the side, I could have walked slowly in a circle around it to see all the angles.
But it was on the forest floor, being trampled underneath so many steps of the crowd pushing forward to get through a narrow passing between two trees.
And it occurs to me now that it was special for that very reason, that even if I wanted to stop and consider it—crouch down, cross my arms, look at it—I couldn’t have. The extended period of appreciation was forbidden me because the crowd was moving too fast and pushing me forward. I couldn’t stop. I had only that quick glance.
So it was beautiful for two reasons. First, it was beautiful like any other art that appeals pleasantly to the sense of sight. Second, it was beautiful because it was forbidden. It was rare. It was a moment that passed. I couldn’t have stopped and considered it because the crowd, like the march of time, was pushing me along.
Perhaps this is why a young woman is beautiful. Why her body is a work of art. Because she is beautiful in the first way, of course. But also because she is transitory, ephemeral—like a flower that will wilt, like any other organic part of natural life that is born, grows up, grows old, and eventually passes away.
>>>
is too young to be considered beautiful. For a period of time, during childhood during infancy still growing at that stage not yet ready to be revealed. But then there is the moment of revealing when the high school girl can wear the crop top when she starts going out to the football game and night.
Yet it is transitory like that cluster of broken branches and pine leaves on the forest floor. I cannot stand there and consider it forever. Just like the young girl will grow old. Her skin will wrinkle. It is temporary and it is beautiful for that reason.
ORIGINAL:
As the crowd was trampling through the forest, there was a moment I saw under our feet.
It was broken branches, a pine cone, pine needles—all clustered together as a portrait, as a sculpture, as a work of art.
I wish I could have taken a step back, crossed my arms, and considered had it not been on the forest floor, being trampled underneath so many steps of the crowd pushing forward just to get through that point, just to step over just to get past and it was special for that very reason that even if I wanted to stop and consider it crouched down, cross my arms. Look at it. I couldn’t have it was forbidden me because the crowd was moving too fast and pushing me forward I couldn’t stop. So it was beautiful art for two reasons. One that it was beautiful. Like any other art that it looked beautiful that it appeal to the senses of my sight. But the second reason was that it was beautiful was that it was forbidden. It was rare. It was a moment that passed. I couldn’t have stopped
and considered it because the crowd was pushing me along. And it was beautiful for that second tragic reason as well.
Perhaps this is why a young woman is beautiful. Why her body is a work of art. Because it is beautiful in that moment. Yes, of course.
But also because it is transitory ephemeral, like a flower that will wilt
like any other organic part of natural life that is born
is too young to be considered beautiful. For a period of time, during childhood during infancy still growing at that stage not yet ready to be revealed. But then there is the moment of revealing when the high school girl can wear the crop top when she starts going out to the football game and night. Yet it is transitory like that cluster of broken branches and pine leaves on the forest floor. I cannot stand there and consider it forever. Just like the young girl will grow old. Her skin will wrinkle. It is temporary and it is beautiful for that reason
The advice of the old man
The irony of it all is the advice the old Parisian man gives you at the cafe by the park as you sip rose and eat macaroons is the same advice you’ll be giving to another young man a generation later but this time you’ll pay for the bill because you’re older with more money and more wisdom but the irony remains that the advice never makes sense until your old yourself and you’ve lived it and by then you’re the old man and you want to give the advice to one younger than you and so it goes, generation to generation, time to time, learning the lesson of how to love just in time to die.
August 06, 2022 at 09:40PM
It all dances
It all intersects as I learn about meter of poetry and the rhythm of language at my desk in the morning and dance to the bass beats from the speakers at night the sound stops coming from the speakers and I keep dancing as I’ve gotten that sense of the rhythm in my soul the rhythm that all of life dances along with even when it doesn’t know it even when the business man walking to walk doesn’t know that his steps land on the sidewalk in a rhythm and the whole city dances as the office workers type on keys on their individual keyboards but it’s all in accordance with the same rhythm as the stressed and unstressed syllables that I’m learning about in my poetry education as the in breath and out breath in yoga it all dances sometimes faster sometimes slower sometimes faster sometimes slower it all dances.
August 06, 2022 at 09:18PM
Untitled note
Where is the art in this moment
August 06, 2022 at 07:36PM
The comedian
The man at the table is a comedian all of a sudden as he started talking and I started laughing and then all of a sudden he was more than just a man he became the comedian and I was his audience with the privilege of more than just having an everyday conversation with an everyday man at an everyday table the occasion took on a moreness that I would usually buy tickets to be part of.
The duality of the universe in a hand holding a shoulder
Even the tension with which I hold her shoulder is yet another example of the duality of the universe that is ever in balance as I squeeze tighter and she either feels a pleasure from that or says ow that hurts there is the balance of my bony structured muscular hand being supportive or being harmful a weapon
It’s more about the structure or the lack thereof in how hard I squeeze I can flex that hand and tighten the muscles and hold harder or I can release and let go and sometimes she wants that hand holding her squeezing together supporting but sometimes she wants me to hold her more softly even step back and regard her in her own right without any of my structure
August 06, 2022 at 04:53PM
Never in the middle
It all strives to stay in
the middle while
either end the
higher and the
lower lure
the center to either
side so nobody can ever
go along steady it’s
always too low too
slow too calm too
sad or too fast too
much too anxious too
busy and
so we go
back and forth but
at least in that going
there’s something steady
August 04, 2022 at 06:35PM