perfidy

sailing to singularity
perfect regularity
of waves hitting hull
perfecting simplicity
elective duplicity
of ebb and flow
of wax and wane
excited yet dull
trailing my perfidy
no train so tame
eliciting energy
treacherous thinking
my ship is sinking
because I’m bereft
of the ability to
not see the hole
and knot the whole
inciting incendiary
wrecking my wake
thinking of what it will take
to push me onto port
i sort and sort
and a braille breeze
felt and not seen
is not enough
not enough
to capture
my destiny

Just Imagination

God is not dead. Then again, God was never alive to begin with. God exists in the realm of pure thought, a construct molded by millions of minds, split into infinite egos with each different set of thoughts used to temper its bounds. This is a natural occurrence. Everything in this universe tends to chaos, as should the concept of God. Ten of thousands of years before we were much simpler constructs. At that time we only needed the most basest of deities, such as the sun, the moon, and the absence of both.

As we become more complex beings, our beliefs folded out into more complex objects. We created many gods each an aspect of something more ethereal, something we could not just make from our hands experience with our physical senses. Even as we consolidated deities back into more central beings, we made them more complex. As the christian god has stated, I am not to be understood. So even as we fight to constrain the godhead, we make it more unfathomable. People of all faiths often speak of the mysteries of their chosen one or ones. God cannot be simple if it wants to encompass all that we have become.

Some faiths advocate moving toward unity.  This also is unattainable. Once a system becomes complex it does not tend back to simplicity. Things can be assembled into themes. A theme is a gathering of similar complexities. Themes help make sense of the chaos, making it appear simpler, but this is just an illusion. Things have not become simpler, we have just become complex enough ourselves to see patterns, which are just like themes.  Patterns are the physical manifestation of themes.

The Never Way

to the never way
i ever stray
with morning strands
of tired sunlight
in my hair
yet I’m not there
I’m still here
where silence stands
on shaky hands
my bigger plans
have gone away
i have no say
i have no say
and yet i go
on each day
to the never way
a step
a leap
an endless depth
a hill too steep
evening chill
and darkness soft
covers my path
stars aloft
have their say
they’ve never gone
the never way
I’m not there
I’m still here
and will remain
still the same

Spring

Spring

May has arrived in her finest green dress. I find this time of year to be the most heartening, a time of renewal. Life continues his dance with the world unabated and the wheel of fortune is high once again. It’s a good time, a point of reward for bearing the tough months of the year. Trees are flowering, birds are singing and the air is a heady mix of quickening vegetation.

The Dream

Last night I had a dream about my previous place of employment. It brought back all the feelings of frustration and inadequacy. In the dream I quit, much like I had in real life. That was the central point of it, quitting with no idea of where I would be or what I would do for a living. When I woke I realized that this is exactly what I did nearly two years ago. This was a big step for me.

There has been so much over the past two years for me to work through. I feel that I have matured a good bit in that I have come to accept what makes me and not what I would like to make of myself. I have discarded many of the bothersome emotions which had troubled me through most of my life. I understand that some of this comes from the medication I take, but they are not completely responsible for the whole of myself. How I chose to think and how I view the world around me and my part in it have come from careful thought and dedicated understanding.

The Blank Canvas

With the newest meds and my time in the institute, I felt I had been given a blank canvas. Before I was attempting to put new strokes on a surface already saturated with previous behaviors and ways of thinking. But with this beautiful blank surface, I could begin fresh. I hesitated, wanting to go back to the familiar patterns, the comforting colors. But I fought this urge. I wanted something new, something else to decorate my life. So I waited for these things to appear to me, waiting for a muse to guide my hand.

Return

I woke up this morning and though about the dream. I know I am not that man anymore. I am no longer unsure of myself. I no longer let an unbearable situation continue because I am afraid of an uncertain future. I no longer worry. I know that there will be beautiful May mornings to drink in as well as frigid January evenings that turn my head. That is life and I accept it. Sometimes questioning leads us nowhere. For no matter how we construct our reality, we inevitably have to bend to what is and what will be, the greater pattern of life and death to which we all are attached.

A Day of Sun, A Day of Rain

Yesterday was a day of sun. Jim and I went for the year’s first bike ride on Moraine State Park’s trail. The course is mostly level and very windy as it makes its way along the many brachiated inlets of lake Authur. After the ride we walked down to the dam and watched the water go from lake to creek. We also spotted trillium blooming along the hillsides. The apple trees were also beginning to bloom and I caught their cheerfully sweet scent from time to time.

Today is a day of rain. I woke today to the patter of drops on the roof. It has turned colder. I’m grateful for the rain because of all the plants we put in the past two Saturday mornings. They need the drink more than I need the sun. We were happy to have the sunshine throughout the weekend. Someday I will be movitvated enough to get the pictures of our yard from the camera to the computer and share them with all of you.

Crayolapalosa

Crayons hold a special place in my memory. I remember their slightly greasy feel, how they had a smell that always reminded me of school, and the waxy shine when placing a thick layer of color on a page. For some reason what I drew never matched what my imagination had sketched in my mind. In third grade I discovered concept art when I colored my front teeth different colors. No one appreciated my prodigious talent: they thought I had ate the crayons.

Here’s a bit of background on crayons, including Crayola’s 120 official color names.

Primary Colors

Pennsylvania seldom basks in the national spotlight when it comes to presidential party races, but this year we are being scrutinized from every angle. At least after today we can go back to being just another rust belt state. I haven’t voted yet, but I will after work. My pooling place is only a few minutes from my house so I’ll walk, making my civic duty a pleasant one. I don’t usually feel the bursting of pride some do from the ability to have a voice in my government. I am happy that I can do so, but feel that most of the time it doesn’t really matter. I think many feel this way. It doesn’t stop me from voting however. However insignificant my voice might be, it is still another to add to the chorus of assent, dissent or whatever bent it happens to take at the time.

More exciting for me today is American Idol. I am not ashamed to admit how much I enjoy the show. I watch a good measure of reality shows: Survivor, Hell’s Kitchen, Ultimate Fighter, Apprentice and The Amazing Race. Some have never lit my enthusiasm, such ones as Big Brother, Dancing with the Stars, or Project Runway. There was a time in my life where I would have considered these shows as counterproductive to my intellectual enhancement.  Now that I am older I realize that intellectual enhancement is vastly overrated. I’ve become more savvy about my deeper wants and needs and know that most times I enjoy being entertained more than informed most of the time.

I do however still watch Jeopardy.

Pole Sliding

We had a very enjoyable weekend. Friday night we visited the auto show. They had a traveling exhibition of the history of Harley Davidson and a number of their models out on display. Jim made sure he sat on every motorcycle. Saturday morning we spent in the yard, planting forsythias on the top of a steep hill in hopes of them one day making a privacy hedge between us and our next-door neighbors. Then we went to WANG that evening. Everything is greening up around our place and the shrubs and trees are nearly at full flower. I took some pictures of the view from our dining room deck and will put them up later this week. Yesterday I bought new sneakers. Yup, exciting stuff around here.. a far cry when I used to slide down brass poles.

Speaking of those, here’s a bit of history about pole sliding, though not the kind I did.

You and I

the sky is knitting into night
the moon shines down it’s silver light
and you and i go hand in hand
through an obscure hidden land

we sit beside the water’s edge
by flowers wild and unkempt hedge
and talk of things that make us glad
of things we’ve done and times we’ve had

we sing our song of endless love
of lives that fit just like a glove
for no one else can know our bliss
to be together just like this

around us dancing with the trees
comes a joyful errant breeze
i think it knows what we’re about
a lasting love without a doubt

we’ve let the years just pass us by
and never thought to wonder why
our love could be so good so strong
and firm against each thoughtless wrong

above us wheels a starry sight
we wish we may we wish we might
yet nothing we have left to pine
my wish is yours; your wish is mine

to kiss good morning every day
and never miss a chance to say
pleasant dreams and good night dear
and hold each other very near

Spring Peepers

April is a transition month where I live; a time when nature once again wakes. During its hours daylight lengthens and the landscape comes to life. On its first days the country side is sere and cold, but by the time May enters the trees are in full foliage and the fields are verdant. So many sights and sounds I associate with this time of year, one of the most distinctive being the arrival of the spring peepers. I find it to be a soothing sound, the combination of a thousand voices into a nocturnal chorus of love, each voice plying its love song deep into the night.

I remember twilit evenings as a teenager listening to them call after the birds had all settled for the night. There was a pond not far from my house, behind our pastures and down a dusty country road. During my most troubled times, I used to walk the fields and that road down to the pond, lost in thought about who I was, where I was going, and who I would eventually become. Winter’s chill often kept me from my pleasant routine, so when spring arrived, I took advantage of every warm, clear evening, usually to the detriment of my studies. I could not resist the purpling sky, the fertile damp smell of earth, and the chorus of frogs that inhabited the two small creeks that fed the pond.

The pond had been man made, built from a semicircular band of earth that kept the trickling bands of water from joining a larger stream further down the hill. It’s shape was unnaturally round and the banks steep. A dock stuck out from the water’s steep edges. A long while back someone had made this pond with the plans of placing a house nearby. Thankfully for me, those plans never materialized. And as years of neglect set in, nature reclaimed it, until it felt as if the pond had always existed. For me it had: over the course of my high school years I must have taken a few hundred walks along it’s grassy edge. Often I’d lay on the rough boards of the dock with my feet dangling over the edge and stare up at the sky, counting the stars as they broke through the dark heavens.

All the while the frogs called.

I’d think about a great many things on those walks. They are counted among some of the best memories of my post-adolescent time at home. And every year when I hear the frogs once again begin their serenades I still think of my pond and how magical nature seemed back then, and how even as it is over twenty years since I have taken that walk, I still find her just as magical today.