Whither the Weather?


http://www.myshutterspace.com/photo/photo/listForContributor?screenName=1ea593jf2vjum

Dark horizon forbidding
All but those relieved by a respite from the sun
Yet there amid the cloaking ceiling
A sunflower offers a different version of that one
Who shines so brightly into every hidden space
Finding out much that goes against my taste
Its eye within me; its eye without
Makes my eyes feel tired, and brain casts about
For that darkening roil to come to my aid once again
So I can breathe easily; lungs no longer made of clay
The perfect pair of opposites in which I can play
Sunflowers and the deep thrumming blackening day
A challenged, yet perfect, near-monochromatic holiday.

'Kept Swept' Adept


http://www.travelpod.com/travel-photo/ecsflemings/10/1257182775/05-woman-sweeping-with-stick-broom.jpg/tpod.html


Looking out the back onto the leaf- and twig-strewn deck
I was thinking about what makes two people different from one another
One person I know would hurry out there and sweep it off
Before the day gets off to its real start.
The other will get it someday, as a special treat or newly found diversion

This made me think of mornings along the little rural street in India
Where I spent most of my time there.
Every day, as I imagine happens in villages throughout the land,
While the sun is making its best effort to climb over the horizon,
Women come out and sweep the street, with brooms made
From dried and gathered long grasses.

The streets are made of settled reddish earth,
Kicked with similar symmetry into motion by the unified combing
Of the untidy into the neat and orderly.
Once again the earth lays still in tight, patterned lines.

That got me thinking of M. Night Shyamalan,
And I don't think it's because of his ancestral home.

His "Last Airbender" is coming out soon, and like I do
Every time he has a release I get very excited because I know
That I will love it, even should the rest of the world hate it,
As they did with, 'The Lady in the Water' or 'The Happening.'

At this moment, however, I was thinking of, 'The Village,'
Where, as with Beowulf's enclave against the Forest,
The lights were kept on all night in the Great Hall
And the trees cut down to make farmland and a
Safe, orderly world of Humans, which can be defended
Against the chaos in the larger, mysterious world
Out There.

*teensy spoiler alert*

The Elders of  'The Village' attempt to do this through
Elaborate methods of their own, for a reason only
They can justify.
It's always done for survival of some sort, be it
Literal or figurative.
Physical or Psychological
Community or Individual

It's also interesting to me how, yet again, a
Collaborative effort to stave off chaos and the unknown,
Such as sweeping one's deck of a morning,
Can turn into a competitive event such as
Who has the nicest, most well-kept lawns

Where do I lie on the continuums
Of tidy collaborator or competitor
To forest/clutter/chaos/unknown
Adventurer or team player?

I may not be able to keep the outside tidy,
But in my own introverted and even obsessive way,
Inside my inner walls and mind,
I can see the daily attempts to work with the chaos
And usually in less conscious form, to
Struggle against it so that it can be tamed.

For the moment.

"I Shall Be Free" Rawk


http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/


"I shall be free...
I shall be free...
I shall be free... free...
free of (some of) those voices inside me.
I shall be free...
I shall be free."

The Smashing Pumpkins

Oh, and.... speaking of voices:  ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276842251&sr=8-1
"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"
by Julian Jaynes
Oh so derided at times, AND still a fascinating read and theory.

What Can It Be Now?

by Mazzelh


Lurking round the corner
Barely out of sight
The people feel it coming
And hasten to take flight

There's nothing to fear the others say
Even though it comes clearer with each passing day

Hearing it breathing in the white noise around
And fancy it walking through the night streets of town

Only one can stand up to this shadow
The one inside, whom others don't know
Coax it, quiet down, hear it within
Before heading out to face yourself
When the moon is a crescent and both sides can win.

So Much More Under the Bed


It's been a while since this song, message, and video
Were out and about on a daily basis.
But it's never gone completely out of mind for me.

Fair's fair, and it's a little blurry who 'they' are anymore,
That doesn't stop all of us from feeling it,
Something inside - a niggling sense that something
Just isn't quite right.

How conscious of it each of us might be at any given moment
It's there.
What are we going to do about it.
What - and where - is our real circle of influence....
Alone? Together?

"Live together or die alone," as 'Jack' said years ago
We may all die alone in some sense,
But he did have a point he was trying to make,
So let's allow the folks to speak... or sing...
And try to listen.... or at least hear.

***Putting out one burning bed at a time...***

Home

Yep: Home and Brautigan and Turtle Balconies on my mind.
East coast, west coast, flying planes between
Lobster, Pasta, Ice Cream Sundaes, and tea, just fine

""Home Again Home Again Like a Turtle To His Balcony"

 
Home again home again like a turtle to his balcony
     and you know where that's at.

First Published

"A Taste of the Taste of Brautigan." California Living 16 May 1971: 7-10.
The magazine of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle.

Introduction reads:
Richard Brautigan, an Aquarian born in Tacoma, Washington, January 30, 1935, has grown from an unknown poet of the Haight Ashbury during the days of the Flower Children, to one of the country's leading writers—in less than ten years. Among his works, widely read and discussed on college campuses—as well as in the general mainstream— are (novels) Trout Fishing in America, A Confederate General from Big Sur and (poetry) The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster and Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt.

Featured seven poems by Brautigan: "They Are Really Having Fun," "We Meet. We Try. Nothing Happens, But," "Home Again Home Again Like a Turtle To His Balcony," "You Will Have Unreal Recollections of Me," "Finding Is Losing Something Else," "Impasse," and "Homage to Charles Atlas."

Photographs, including one of Brautigan by Edmund Shea. "

http://www.brautigan.net/mercury.html

 

Remembering Seattle Kind of Day (part one)


http://www.komonews.com/weather/blog/18872774.html

Seattle thoughts stream through my mind in their watery wending ways
Washing ashore, rolling in, falling down amid moist ferns and natural trillium bouquets
I'm a rainy day gray-loving Seattle girl at heart; The New Yorker in me allows space.
Little did I know when I moved out in 1981 that my heart would forever
Be stretched in two, separated by the Continental Divide and culture, space
Luckily technology stepped up with newer ways to keep in touch
Things barely imaginable back in the early 60's World's Fair
A video telephone; who ARE you kidding; and now? Just look!


http://www.djibnet.com/photo/pacific+northwest/discovery-park-lighthouse-404294499.html

As quickly as I came, 22 years later needs must leave
It isn't possible to keep storms from taking their toll on mortal frame
From time to time, and one must go to root; the family helps out; forever grateful.
And does the chasm go away? Nah. Now it's friends and connections
Important to keep: People who knew me when: I taught, changed marital status;
Faced flood, fire, earthquake, hurricanes; mandatory evacuation, now all are
Remembered fondly.

It's the area where I lived on the perfect piece of land.
Even when I had to leave the 'river runs through it,'
'Cathedral of trees,' I made it a mission for my mind
To memorize that beloved 5 acres to the smallest detail
So I could carry it round with me as long as memory held.

Each time I'm now a visitor, returning, more directions and geography forgotten
Life washes away that which is not essential when mental roads
Do not lead there often enough.
The difficulty of erasure does not affect my consciously,
Meticulously copied place inside though
The two Seattles... and me.

On To Other Things

It's a song-sharing kind of day today.
With myself, so that means with you too.
You know the songs you have but haven't listened to?
They're around - on your computer or player or....?
Discovered today that it's worth dipping into those
Every so often.

Nice change of pace from other free-floating stuff
Rattling round the mind cage.

A friend had recommended the band, "Monsters of Folk"
And it turns out that when I got the album there were
A couple of songs I'd left out in my listening.
I'm a sucker for old-time quick picking and this one
Is great for that, imo.

My favorite line had to do with the twins - giving
'One my Ego and one my Id.'
My mind  immediately spun into story land on that
One line - trying to imagine how those two ...erm...
Girls or guys might get along, what their wake-up
Rituals might be, difficulties in communication,
Aid rendered, promises unkept, plots foiled...etc.
Fun stuff.

Whoops - back in the mind again, I see.
Tricksy bear.

I think there might be one or more coming along soon.
From somebody, somehow.... sometime.

Touch Ground; Via Sky

We are freedom

We are light

We are birds taking flight

There is nowhere we have not seen

No one we haven’t been… born to serenely

Try, to eke our truth from within/out the sky

I wish you could see what my eyes have seen

Over thousands of lifetimes

Through challenges and sight grown dim


 

I wish the best for you my child

My friend, my brother, my pyre-lighter

Thanking you always I set the world ablaze

With chalk and dust and glowing haze

I kiss your feet and rise on tiptoes to reach

The brow wherein all that knows can breach

The heavens and where the seas shall know no

dangers held in the real, the known, the full-on world. 


 

You are sleeping now. Awake! Give me your hand.

There, now you see ~ it has always been your land.

Beauty. Freedom. Light. Truth

These are yours and the only cost

Is to open, open, awake and open your eyes.