I struggle with my work
And feel sorry
For myself,
But then I see
A fallen leaf
In the soil
Of the potted plant
Atop our dresser
A construction worker
With dirt and sweat
On his shirt
Leaning over, exhausted
And I realize
I’m not the only one,
Which makes me feel
A little better
August 05, 2021 at 10:36AM
Moving fast and slow
I move
Without a thought for
What I’m doing
When it’s fast
In the middle of the day
And I’m working
Washing dishes
While my lunch is on the stove
To get back
To the desk
Faster
On weekends
I slow down a little
For my meals
And eat
Without doing anything else
At the same time
Or sleep
Without an alarm
It’s nice
Every once in a while
But I need that go
Fast
Multi-task
Most of the time
Fingers raking
Through my hair
In a sigh
With my eyes closed
Thinking to myself
What can I do
Exhaling
Over and over
Until I’ve got it
And get back to work
These scissors smell like they’ve told secrets to get here. Like there were barge men that needed bribing. Like this pair was part of a special pack at the factory that needed to go out right on time. They smell like the metal mined wasn’t enough and there’s still some poor miner there, mining for more. They smell like plastic that came from a big vat of plastic that has all since been molded into separate things and ended up elsewhere, individuated and useful in some capacity or another. These scissors smell like they are capable of cutting hair. They still smell like metal, though, and not like hair yet. Having not yet had the chance to actually cut hair, they reek of factory-made frustration. “Let us work!” they shout. Let us cut, and keep on cutting. Let us do whatever we were made for. Until we are broken and dead and gone and discarded. Let us work!
My heart sings off-key
For the half notes
That never got to whole
My hands beat a doldrum
Into the desk
Checking my watch
Every five minutes
Waiting for this day
To finally finish
So I can escape
To something else
Anything else
I can only whistle one tune
For so long
Until I forget the sound
Of all other tunes
And the hope of music
Becomes just
The senseless noise
Of that one tune
The dreamer is a night owl
The worker is an early bird
The realist is a businessman on lunch break
Prose:
At night, I have a bunch of dreams and ideas for things that I want to work on. Most of them I forget soon after I’ve thought of them. Some I remember in the morning. I write down a list of the ideas that can be realistically achieved in a short amount of time. By the end of the day, I’ve completed less than half of the items on the list. Then the night comes, and I dream up a whole new list.
Poetry:
At night I have
A hundred dreams
Hoping for more
Than I could ever
Possibly achieve
In the morning I wake
With a heart full of hope
And a rested body
To go about
Making my dreams
Into reality
Around noontime
I have settled
On one, more realistic
Out of the hundred
Dreams to work on
It is often difficult to remember after much time has passed why you decided to do what you are now doing. Even if you had written it down in clear detail in a note, that note may have been lost. So it becomes important to trust the decision-making process of your past self.
As an investor, when the market is going through turmoil or your view has become contrarian, you must trust the decision of your past self in order to continue holding your position, as long as your thesis has not been fundamentally broken.
In choosing projects to work on, jobs to take, or relationships to enter into – it is the same. Because you cannot constantly be re-evaluating your “why.” Once you have made a decision you must be focused on the “what” and the “how” entirely, in order to succeed. In every moment you are so focused on the execution of the task, you are trusting that your decision to enter into said task was, and continues to be, a correct one.
I go for a walk
At night
Slowly
Strolling
And see
So many things
That I miss
On my walk
To work
Rushing
In the morning
I get here, I “arrive”
Is the only way
I can describe it
Once I’ve had the right amount of coffee
And lasted through the brief period
At the onset
When I worry
I might have had too much
Giving my mind time to adjust
To a state it’s not used to
Like climbing a mountain
Huffing and puffing
Until you get to the top
And take deep breaths
As you see what you’ve climbed for
So it is sitting here
With my headphones in
And all that is happening
In the coffee shop around me
Is no different
Than a Wednesday
When I am rushing through
But today
On a Saturday
With some time to sit and think
It is all art
And curious to me
I get sick and congested
With my office life
Blowing old allergen air
Through the HVAC system
Suffocating in my desk chair
Shielding my eyes from the screen
As low as I can get the brightness
Eventually having to hold my breath
And barely escape on a Friday
When I can snort and hock a loogie
To finally take a deep breath
Of fresh weekend air
And say how I feel
Not holding my tongue
Only for profit
And what my boss allows
And stretch out
Of that ninety degree seated posture
People in my dreams tell me I look tired. I wake up and wonder if I am working too much. It is 4 AM so I try to go back to sleep. I sleep until 5 AM but then cannot sleep anymore. I wake up and get dressed while my girlfriend is still asleep. I fumble for my things in the dark. I step out of my apartment and start to walk on the sidewalks that are empty. I prefer it this way, but I do wonder if I am working too much.
I think only of production often times I can’t even access parts of my brain associated with pleasure from normal waking hours before something in my hunting cortex pushes a to-do list in front in part do to my being male and in other part due to making to-do lists in the first place about which I am encouraged to obsess over by various pressures so that when I wake up at three in the morning the order of things which I think about is I need to use the bathroom I am thirsty and then thirdly not but a few seconds after having had a drink the to-do list enters and working begins as soon as waking energy begins I realize this because the weekend before this Tuesday I was ill and forced to think only of my health and realize again what it is to live in the present and enjoy without planning for the future — for this reason, I was actually enjoying being sick as dreams inspired by idle reading returned to my sleeping hours and passive curious thoughts after hours of laying in bed and staring at the white ceiling and wondering only about what was slowing right then without energy to do anything more
Laying at home
On a workday
In a suburban
Part of the city
It is loud
In the morning
As everybody
Gets up
To catch the bus
And go downtown
Leaving me here
To lay
Come lunchtime
It grows quiet
i’m in the system
more so
than i’ve been before
standing still
sitting here
taking orders
jockeyed
with a horse
on either side
and one behind
so all that’s left
is forward
and fast
to sit still
and stay focused
with coffee
in my veins
is the test
of a mental task
wanting
to get physical
but needing
to look, count
and read things
i wait all week
for this one moment
on saturday morning
when the drone
of dribble from work
dies down
in my latent mind
cleansed by
a friday sleep
knowing there is no
office tomorrow
sitting down now
at a desk wherever
a coffee shop
to open my writing
and have all
flow forth
what was pent up
and refining itself
like a diamond under pressure
myself mining above
now descended
to the depths
to collect
i wonder about
optimizing
in the opposite direction,
for less
instead of more.
i wonder about
getting out of the city
and into the mountains.
i wonder about
tending to a garden
instead of
going to the grocery store.
i wonder about
spending my time
instead of
saving my money.
i wonder about
calculating how
to make a little last
instead of
how to make more.
i wonder if
i would get to the mountains,
and after a short period
of reprieve with less,
begin quickly again
to wonder about
having more.
I always have these thoughts walking to lunch on Monday after a hard morning having to reign in my weekend mind to work struggling to focus it first but eventually getting back into the routine and then finally at lunch getting back out when do you start Russian after just a brief period of being bottled
with the heat hot like it is i can’t sleep on an indian summer morning and have to get out closed tight from under the bed sheets baking in there so i can explode and spread out in the combustion and at least spread out of my skin that the sticky sheets close in
this morning has it like i know i need last night to do what is been planning to but without any energy left over after a long day so had to sleep but now up early at a quarter after four sitting at the edge of the bed wondering what place opens this early in this city so i can get out of the studio while baby is still sleeping and get to work
it makes me nervous
to fly
when i’ve work
unfinished
i tell baby
before i go
just in case
to publish everything
i’d honestly
rather stay
and not even sleep
until i finish
but i must relax
both because
there will be
what there will
and i have
no control
It’s like a diamond with the pressure from my work and the poetry gets crystallized in the middle when I thought it was all gone and was forcing it only getting out some that wasn’t really that good so it decided to take break which is when it was allowed to crystallize as it did in my subconscious and become more naturally those slightly less more quality coming from what I actually felt as opposed to what I attempted to manufactureAnd the pressure of being helpful so to stay energized and motivated working on something more of the world less creative but I have that energy mat by the equal and opposite reaction of art so the harder I work the more I create
awake and into the world remembering how things are especially around lunchtime when you are reminded you must eat and go to the sandwich shop to pay with dollars that you must have kept track of and seeing all the other people eating and doing other things that they’re supposed to getting into this world all day going back to the office and sitting at your desk and doing the job that you’re supposed to that you’ve done before so keeping on this track and almost going on auto pilotIt becoming easy to keep up with your routine and home at night to rest and then wake up when there’s a chance that it’s really all new having had some time to close your eyes and think of nothing so for getting partially what is usually done and more personally what it is that you were supposed to do and not yet being so hungry nor needing more rest so being able to get away from food and shelter for a short while and left off into a blank space where could creation really a curse for me running about and waving my arms and shouting gibberish throwing it all gets the campus words that made out rhyme and notes that may be definite are attached to a world that must make senseBut here is where creation happens created being that which is new and of course must crash land at times bringing nonsense back to the real world what other times you might bring it back and others will say oh yes why have we not had this before
it’ll never be enough i know now watching my friends make their money and remembering at one point in 2005 or earlier when i was about ten two dollars was a lot for what my brother and i could buy at the corner store but now in san francisco 2019 i believe more of the stories about greedy men seeing how more made is seamlessly spent and getting used to what can be afforded but not only that but more so seeing those around you (and especially those just slightly above you) forgetting that ten year old happy with a bag of candy
like this laying on my back and having it all pour out especially after days dark interspersed with tread wondering if this is it in the yard has gone like I always do fearing I have nothing to offer and will be me anymore or maybe just afraid of being worthless and unproductive and untalented really not mattering what identity Woodcalm for all identities being the same and melting into one another but really just the primal need coming through and this being what is requiring of the ego a certain consistent and persistent success whereas otherwise just to wake up and be even completely different wouldn’t matter just as the rest of the world does anyway and especially less apprehensive to become another and melt apathetically completely into the interest of anything else even unmotivated even for Survival even dying maybe and being all right with it because not coming from an ego needing so badly to live
goodness like a drug it comes to be so unexpectedly today just from having left work a little early and paying so much attention on the bus into the buildings on the walk to the bus especially and now back in the apartment laying on my back on the rug and looking at everything the off-white ceiling and the leaves outside the window blowing lightly all of it just as it is any day that I get home but on this day just a little earlier it all opens up and gives back to me the art and ability I so selfishly miss and fear to never have again when it’s gone so reflecting now while I have it on why it is that I miss it so much when I don’t interesting especially is the thought that it will never come back and believing so strongly that this is true even though for the last little while now so many times back-and-forth I thought this and it certainly does come back but I suppose the fear is Stuart still real that one time it won’t and then what will I be nothing maybe different maybe something else maybe I will be all right with that too I have been mostly all right with what I have become and suppose that I have become different things but really now thinking that this one is it and that I only have so much time and so many chances before I lose my mind or disintegrate or grow old or get killed suddenly so I want to rush all I had at once and really wish I could if I knew what it would take I think I might have the will to do it but just being in a body and mind that can’t I’m kept private and so have been taught patients as a result but still Hoping greedily for more time so that the limited mind and body I do have wind spread out can achieve what I otherwise would all at once
clearly everything is seen right now without much to distract just being allowed to be and having my eyes work and not so much noise that the few noises are heard clearly and loud and heavy eaten just enough and enough time passed since a small salad lunch that I’m not running to my next meal but also not passing out from hunger and so greatly satisfied all over and curious about what I am sensing is the perfect formula to just be talking into my phone and having it makes sense and also taking time to pause and let it play out what I am sensing and in this case mostly thinking just staring really at the art gallery wall the baby and I put up in the apartment but not really seeing the art mostly just eyes glazed over seeing the words in my mind and seeing isn’t the right sense but thinking is really the right verb which to me has been interesting lately as I have thought in most cases art is a matter of sensing but from my writing it is largely a matter of thinking which at times like these with isaac lost over has nothing to do with sensingYet thought is mostly nonsensical without senses that at one point informed the very structure and language of thought
let’s see if I can give you an example here of what it is two cents in the sea thought looking now up at the off-white drapes crumpled and connected buy black been screwed into the window cell and glass window surrounded by gray metal frame where just be on the glass is a branch of leaves that are about 6 inches wide and five or 6 inches tall blowing on their branch and occasionally pressing up against the glass window see that was site that I was sensing now if I switch to hearing I hear my own voice and close my eyes to make this easier hearing car is outside and a rustling that is rather pleasant that I cannot tell whether it is the cars or the leaves Rushleigh against each other blowing in the wind now a release of wind that sounds like brakes on the bus and the room of the electric engine in the door of the apartment building shutting heavy downstairs and now the bus taking off from the stop and hearing the chime on the phone that tells me my voice is stopped being recorded so opening my eyes and seeing again and switching to that sense thinking now of smell and taste which I have said before really aren’t strong senses artistically certainly taste is with the Colaneri arts and eating but just laying here with nothing to taste or eat my taste buds are mostly useless and tasting dry saliva nothingness in my mouth and my smell especially sensing less if I could just drive it it would be nothing this as well maybe clean I would describe it or like fabric or like air and feeling are yes I should’ve said feeling before taste and smell because it can be quite strong abstract I describe it like it often makes abstract painting make more sense to me whereas undefined things are seen with the round and rough sketches but nothing clear as you would see with site feeling now my hand my left pinky and ring finger against my abdomen and the palm and some against my lower ribs and my left foot on top of my right shin and my behind pressed against the rug slightly sore from laying in the same position for a little while and my elbow against the leg of our living room table and the fingers of my right hand holding my phone in front of my face in the back of my head also Preston gets the rug is similar to my behind and really quite a lot if I were to focus over a grade about a time I want my body is feeling just my body itself I imagineThis being sent as art
ver if you were to say my art leads to nonsense usually when I get a rush and have a lot to put down but then still the motivation stays well there’s nothing left and so results in me saying whatever comes to mind even though it doesn’t make sense and really just wanting the black great against the sky to keep going so the art doesn’t run out without much content referring back to what I said earlier about a body and mind only be able to do so much in a limited time but Pricing I’m not the last talking faster running almost out of breath and wanting the light to show like it does on the ceiling shadows really just waiting for baby to get home laying on the floor alone and all my poems out of me feeling better actually having gotten something down and leaving a legacy if in this moment I were to die which is a large part of what drives me I think to leave something if I die to make something while I’m here and preferring to leave this motivation is not so clear as to let them drive me and be human and normal without having to discover and explain everything because then as I have beforeJust getting a headache and then losing the motivation and that not being good for anyone
like a little space behind the mirror leaned up against the wall in the corner behind the radiator or dust bunnies collect and protected not so open these small spaces make me wonder of cloistered worlds where cat paws with scratch and food falling off the dinner table will get lost and marks on the wall unseen won’t get patched or painted over and light won’t shine as often if long enough turning to paint a different color
staying with an idea long enough or moving on to match our attention spans wondering what length is right between gravity and well explained so if it in the beholder that will read brilliance into one wordAnd otherwise is in patient won’t sit long enough to get anything out of it anyway and all around all story short and long playing out just depending on who is there to read them
The need to create constantly pressing on me but needing to relax and remember that what will happen well and creation happens always just by living a story is told in just by seeing a painting is painted and just by hearing music is made so all the time the heart is there and the only variable is not whether I create it but whether I am open to seeing and hearing it
wanting baby to come home so badly just sitting here talking to myself not realizing how much I miss her until now being able to hug her and talk to her and just hear her breathing or working or rolling over in bed and looking up to see her watching her live her not life as she normally does and being so interested in it and her being interested in mine and making comments and asking me things
So much art really all around just a matter of capturing it and sometimes having to decide between capturing it and just enjoying it
days
when i should
have stayed
and did
in fact
but wondering
frightfully
if i hadn’t
and quit
up and left
and couldn’t
have ended up
here
where
i like it so
and would have
certainly
pressed on
had i known
but could have
just as easily
not
not knowing
what
was at stake
laying
in the apartment
on the floor
during an odd
off hour
having left
work early
and waiting
for baby
to come home
left after a week worked hard in the car and my shoulders starting to relax a little as they do at least until a gradual tightening come sunday evening but just happy now to be headed out of downtown and back to where i spend my nights and the city has somehow kept the building under control and so is more natural to see the sky and easier to forget about what is other than a mono blue or white or even grey at the worst but even the fog on a rainy night i prefer much more just to sit inside and take time to boil water for tea and eat then steam or otherwise relax and spend time without having to get a return on the investment
it’s actually the work in the office all day focused on what has answers that crams my art into small pockets of time so it becomes less like a drip which spread out doesn’t pack a punch and so means nothing much in a concise enough form that can be read and impressed upon like a flood where if you let the good build up behind a dam and mingle together creating in your subconscious what comes forth all at once after work on the bus ride home scrambling to hold onto the rail with one hand and type the poem that’s been waiting all day on your phone with the other hand
at first
thinking
being creative
to do
something new
then
notched down
and in
to a groove
having worn
the same path
ceasing to think
and feeling less
human
more machine
give some of my
energy and love
to baby
and some
to my work
and even some
to strangers
remembering that
none of it
is mine to give
—i am returning it
to where
it came from
just staying
the same
for long enough
is enough
to be great
sometimes
waiting
for the plane
to board
back
to the city
and take
a car
to the office
and resume
the life
i was living
before
with so much on the line and one step meaning disaster you end up paranoid thinking you could lose it all at once especially when you’ve given up so much to get here but there’s really no other choice some level of commitment and sacrifice required to make progress so the cure is to come to terms with the possibility that you might lose it all up to and including your survival and when you can commit to the work and sacrifice without that attachment to what is gotten then you can really chug along unhindered
you get caught up
in thinking
what is worth it
with a working life
so on vacation
you’re thinking about
how much time
do i have to spend
back in the office
in order to make
as much
as this is worth
until you wonder
if you should
just spend
all your time
in the office
because nothing
is worth what
is required of you
to get it
funny that the time 4:21 means nothing on a saturday on vacation but on a weekday back in the city it means it’s almost time to go home
after so much time in the dark shadows of buildings and fog walking fast on sidewalks always getting somewhere most often to work crammed into the bus with everyone else doing the same and so feeling the same and so thinking nothing of it or of doing anything differently or least of all leaving but staying concentrated where a desk lamp or an office light makes clear the paper or computer screen to be focused on in contrast to the dark overcast often sunless and cold where the ocean water is freezing so even if you make it to the beach you stay on the rocky sand and still think about work because it’s really not that far away both in terms of space on the coast of town and in terms of time over a short weekend and all of this contributes to quite a lot of production and ego building and economic growth until you get on a plane because your girlfriend says it’s time for vacation and drive in the night so you can’t see up to a house in the mountains and fall asleep exhausted from the work week and stress of travel but then wake in the morning to find a different world where the sun sets higher and brighter and drive down to the ocean where the water isn’t as freezing and the sun not dressed in fog shines so that everything seems to be one and the ego is less of a concept not because of any spiritual realization but just because you can see a thing other than the brightness that melts it all together and makes you want to close your eyes so your not even seeing but just feeling the warmth of the sun and then before you know it laying back onto the sand with a smile on your face and waking up hours later well rested having forgotten everything you left in the foggy working city and thinking my god i could cancel my return flight and stay here with baby and let my landlord figure out what to do with my stuff and be like one of the beach bums that live in their cars that line the pch and haven’t moved for years
you’re not really living
left to the devices of systems
that move without you or not
and take your humanity
and cram it into inanimate processes
of production and eventually calcify
your joints to move in certain
mechanical ways you get out
and stretch and remember
what a human can do with
some open space and time
and now on the weekend wishing this
would remain and the week
and its system wouldn’t come again
for a fifth of the time with which was spent watching clocks counting the first four so much that when the fifth started all the time was spent remembering the four anyway a shame for the four were spent expecting the first so the only time they’re really wise when they handed some small point crossed over the four
come on over as it wanted to be my poetry dries up work having been so much recently and wanting really only to write but knowing money is needed for everything I have and so feeling this conflict at times honestly but not wanting to speak so honestly is this when trying to write poetry knowing that world is different but not being able to write anything else because this is what I am thinking ofAnd just hoping it will only take a night to get into the artistic flow of the weekend especially this weekend on the eve of the Fourth of July when we have a long weekend to really get into life outside of work which is the reason why we work now baby going to bed