spring?

On a yellowing couch
With glass-filtered light streaming over my shoulders,
Outside sap begins its migration upwards
From ground to tip top branches, while
Water moves in an opposite stream
Dripping from every rooftop
From every canopy branch,
Down to the ground into puddles
That wave into pools into streams
Into lakes into rivers into oceans
Into steam into clouds into rain
Into ground again.
Pools of light melt into pools of
Water, which gushes now from everywhere
Into every crevice of the earth,
Returning to some
Primordial wellspring of everlasting life
Where soon it will reignite the flames of the living
As green shoots sneak through soil --
The first sign of spring to come.

Light warms and performs cardiopulmonary
Resuscitation on every
Struggling, suffocating being
Whose wind tunnels have long been frozen
Motionless, stilted by winter's all-
Encompassing blanket.
Vivacity bursts
From every nook and cranny,

Except for here.
Somehow, I remain still
Diaphragm caught between breaths
Still hibernating
Still waiting.

The light takes a little longer
To reach through these walls,
To twirl through my mass of hair
That shields my brain
From all possible incoming inspiration.
Sunshine warms the space around me
Warms my fleshy body
While I still feel the chill freezing deep in my bones.
I sit here shivering
As life blossoms around me:
Me, the last remaining stalagmite
That radiates ice and does not absorb heat;
Me, the naked tree
With absent buds in a field of springing life-pulse;

Me, the stubborn soul
That will not be reborn.

glistening world

A waning moon vision of this crystallizing world
Obscures as my eyelashes red rover snow flakes
Inward, and I just glimpse
How the falling bits of whiteness driftingly brake
On branches and leaves, then
Cling to vinyl siding, and
Perch on the bird feeder.
The unbuzzing swarm tornadoes around me,
Dizzying my oneness with their multitude, while
One brave crystal approaches and joins itself to my shoulder
Neither melting to my body temperature
Nor remaining whole itself
It fuses on to me, and
While the cold north wind blows and
Sets all in motion,
My snowflake hesitates, I steady,
Rooted firmly to the wool of my coat,
Before deciding to leap
Back to the air behind me
Caught again in the whirling dervish
Of funnelling wind.

And just in that glorious airborne moment,
The gusts seem to slow, and
Air catches flakes,
Cradling them in cool, wavering fingertips
That push a pause button on time, inviting
Bright rays of light to
Shine through the icy bits
(Give us a glimpse of their radiance), and
Glitter the world with stardust in
Sparks of gold that glint
In our eyes,
Between us, and then return,
Reabsorbed into the sun.

We (The unmoved
too stolid to be pushed about by pesky winds
and forthright motions of nature)
are held at bay
In the same motionlessness that
Halts the bursts of breezes
And freezes the already frozen,
We stop and gaze,
Enchanted
By the magic of the world
Transfixed
For a moment. We stride on the gust,
Just above ground level,
Our impenetrable, thick-soled shoes
Holding back for just a second from
Compacting and crunching the
Tiny bits of wonder into
Solid,
Still magical earth
Again.

is it winter yet?

The sky is white today.

You know this color white:
It's the color of a sky heavy with condensation,
but without the purple and blue tones that signify
a spring drizzle, or
a summer rainstorm.
It's the kind of white that often
Serves as a backdrop on holiday greeting cards,
Reminding us of
The Good Old Days,
When we didn't know about global warming,
And the white purity of snow was a testament to
The purity of suburbia --
One Mom and one Dad,
A Son and a Daughter
All happily existing in a cozy Christian household,
Where choruses of "Gee Whiz" and "Honey, I'm home,"
Shone through the haze of repression.

The Good Old Days still exist in memory, of course, as a
Fantastic Ideal that, in the winter time, propels most of us to
Cautiously peek out the window when the sky is white,
As it is today, so that we can
Subconsciously wish for that greeting card image, so that we can
Hope for a reappearance of the perfection of the lives we "remember"
which smell like oven-fresh chocolate chip cookies
And radiate fireplace warmth
From the Good Old Days that might never have been.

We don't have holiday seasons like that anymore.
The purity of snow melts under the pressure of
Global warming and
Pollution, and
A white Christmas
(like those we remember)
Is easily tainted for those who believe in Purity
Today, by
Diversity and all Deviations, no matter how
Minute they may seem to the rest of
Us.

The rest of us take change in stride.
We forget about Red and Green and a
Baby with wise Men, while
January and February blow in and remind us of
The true meaning of Winter
On days like Today.
Today,
The sky is heavy with the reminder of snow, and
Instead of Christmas,
Reflected in the whiteness is myself
In elementary school,
And I am filled with the excitement of an oncoming
Snow Day.

I am laying in the snow,
Layers of water-resistant, insulating materials
Guarding my fragile skin from the freezing
Ground and ice beneath me.
I am lying Here in the snow,
Or Here, even
After making a snow angel, or
After running away from a
Particularly well-aimed snowball, or
After an exhilarating slide
Down a slick slope,
Hearing and feeling
My heart
Pumping fast,
Aware of the
Expansion and
Deflation of my
Belly
With every passing breath.

I am lying here forever
With no pause for concern
About why it is particularly cold this year
Or why the snow will melt tomorrow
In a day that feels like Spring,
When bulbs planted a few months ago begin to shoot up
Only to freeze a few days later
As the temperature of the air
Swings hard and fast like a pendulum,
Propelled back and forth to extremes
As we tinker with the farthest reaches of creation.
I lie on the cold blanket, unthinking the cycles of nature and
My place in the world; grateful instead simply for the snow,
For how it means that I don't have to give that
Oral Presentation in class today, and how
I get to skip a day of Gym this week.
Mmm, I breathe,
This is good.

Today parades my favorite color white. It is
The color of Hope
The color of Relief
The color of Bliss.

***

How I long sometimes for those ignorant days and
Hungrily instead
Sit by my double-paned window, waiting for the pendulum
To swing back from the oncoming spring, waiting for the
First specks of whiteness to fall from the sky, that will
Shorten the distance between floor and ceiling,
As I drink liquid warmth
And pretend
That the only thing
Which separates
Me
And the
Feeling of uninhibited
Joyfulness,
Free from anxiety
And all the worldly pressures
Of Oral Presentations
Of a gym class of awkwardly confident adolescents
Of how it is to be an almost-adult
In the midst of a quarter-life crisis,
Is a few ice crystals
And a pair of snow pants.

communing

Dome of
Ocean waves overhead
(Swimming through
Layer and layer of
Fluffy whispy cottony poufs
And a ceiling of
A giant's quilted
Quicker picker upper.
Blue all around
Interrupted only by
Golden rays
Reaching to us,
No barriers to distract
To detract
From the radiant warmth.
Enticing cloud ceiling
Becoming a carpet of
Sand dunes,
Rippling against us
With the direction of wind.
Flying through to the sun,
Past time
Ever onward,
Quickly
Into the future)
And we wave back.

turn, turn, turn

Today's white sky seems to lessen the contrast
Between the naked trees and
(The oranges and yellows still clinging to branches, and
The orangey-browns and yellow-y browns that
Gave into the wind and now
Suffer the consequences, and rest on)
The fading vibrancy of green grass.

Without obvious sunlight,
The entire spectrum of the outside world
Fades into shades of browns and whites,
And with the pale backdrop of sky presiding over all,
It feels more like winter than it has yet this season.
Single rays of golden light
Poke through the packed ceiling,
And for a few moments,
The orange leaves regain a bit of their glory, and the
Bare trees seem to stand a little taller in a regal way.
But without that sun,
The feeling changes.
Hibernation mode sets in, and
I want to wrap myself in some warm fabric while
Pouring a gentle stream of steaming hot
Elixir
Through my body,
Bringing color into my lips and cheeks,
And pushing the black and white into the farthest
Depths of my mind.

what is it about age?

In just a few weeks, that once-a-year day will pop on the calendar to remind me that another 365 day cycle has passed and that I should now identify as being of a different age. My intellectual brain registers this fact just fine, but the rest of me, not afraid of growing older, has a difficult time categorizing myself in a different age bracket. Why is it that when I'm sitting at a dinner table, having a great conversation with a man twice my age, feeling like the two of us are meeting on common ground and discussing pertinent subjects to us both (us both belonging to the same adult world thoughts of jobs and money and housing), why is it that I look across the table at the fifteen-year-old across the way and feel as though he's my peer? I feel like I'm an ageless soul residing in some body that still feels like a teenager body. I feel like i'm seen as a teenager (though I'm not), and I feel like I act like a teenager (though I don't). So I'm sitting there, looking out of eye sockets in an unfamiliar body, feeling not like people aren't seeing me or understanding me...feeling not like I'm screaming and no one is listening...just feeling strange. It's strange to be human. Now it strikes me that perhaps I was experiencing a reminder that we are spirits having a human experience in this lifetime, though not in a bad way. It's interesting, for sure, and certainly gave me reason to pause...

Actually, maybe this is more of the case that I don't want to grow up; I don't want to have to identify with the "adult world." Oh god, I don't want to be one of those old, old people who still think they're hip teenagers! Well, not that I've ever in my life considered myself "hip" or "a teenager," but still... Yikes.

then again...

When journalling, I tend to feel as though everything I write must be monumental, even if only in the earthy, poetic sense, and I want this to be a forum for thought -- random, ridiculous thoughts, included. The sky is always listening to the big and the small, and here's some of the small:

So I recently developed a liking for coffee. After years of detesting the bitter brown watery mess, I realized that, like wine, dark chocolate, beer, cheese, and a number of other foods and drinks, there are certain ingestibles that take a while to like, and only once you've tried enough of them to realize what you like and what you don't like do you begin to understand the subtlety of flavor, the depth of expression that tiny sips and bites of such things can contain.

Coffee is my most recent undertaking. I decided that I actually like coffee if it's GOOD coffee, and by "good," I mean that I don't need to add all sorts of sugar and cream to make it drinkable. I also decided that to truly appreciate coffee, I need to understand it by being able to make it. After grossness dripped down from my coffee pot during my first 5 tries, I invested in a french press, read as much as I could online about how others used french presses, bought some coffee beans, and had a go. And what happened? An entire world of difference happened, that's for sure. My first cup, which was thick -- I hadn't yet mastered the coffee grounds to water ratio -- and had bits of bean towards the bottom of the cup, actually had FLAVOR! Flavor that had a surprising amount of depth and texture! amazing. Since then, I've been playing with water temperature, amount of coffee, amount of water, steeping time, etc. and I just wanted to write to say that I just made a cup of coffee that I'm really proud of. fresh grounds in the bottom of the press, about a teaspoon of brown sugar (could have done without this) and a half teaspoon of cocoa. Now that was some good stuff.

I love drinking this because I can't drink it fast. Implied in the taste and warmth of coffee is the way that it makes me take a sip at a time, letting it slide down my throat, down down down 'till I can feel it in my belly. It helps me to slow down, to breathe. Amazing how food and drink can work such magic.

Maybe this blog will turn into an epic ode to that which nourishes my body, mind, and soul.



mmm

take me apart

These days,
the autumn sky is a
particular kind of
bright blue against
flaming oranges and yellows
of the setting sun trees,
and it reaches forever,
illimitably upwards,
beyond the scope of my
imagination until I wonder
if actually this ceiling
was painted by an ethereal
michaelangelo once upon a time, and
like the leaves whose lives end
in a glorious burst of color,
perhaps the sky
too becomes
more brilliant
with each passing, dying day.
"There's always the sky,"
sings Dar in my ear, "let it hear what you're saying --
for all that you are saying."
Yes, indeed.
How many times
have i turned
to no one in particular
to express an
ineffable something,
only to discover
that the sky was actually listening,
glistening in whatever
hazy blue, cloudy white, graying storm, diamond-studded, blackish blue, magnificent depth mood it was in
in that particular season
at that particular time?
And how many times
have I stretched my neck
upward and backward
to breathe it all in
and, unconsciously, taken
a life-breath that has
restored my confidence in myself, the world, and all of life?

There's always the sky,
and I want to
let it hear
what I'm saying,
for all that I'm saying.

So here I go.
Tune in for the
sporatic random ramblings
of
a not-quite-poet,
not-quite-writer,
not-quite-dreamer,
not-quite-philosopher,
lover of the world,
who aspires to be
everything and nothing,
and wants to let it show.

this is winter in san francisco

Everyday I stride confidently beyond the shelter of my four walls, and with the jarring clang of the front gate that disturbs the quiet of the early morning birdsong and muffled sounds of distant traffic, I am ushered into the world, feeling as out of place in my surroundings as the scraping metal on metal is against the backdrop of seagulls on rising sun.

In January, I tread the concrete waves before my doorstep, always with my next step in mind as I carefully anticipate the dodging of the rotting trees strewn about the sidewalk that have suddenly become devoid of their merely temporary Christmas spirit. Yesterday’s treasure is today’s trash, indeed, and the branches that once so majestically cradled twinkling lights and floating orbs of cheer are no longer so respected, as the same branches, now splintered and cracked under the weight of uncaring passersby, are naked twigs that, were they a bit smaller, would be tossed in the trash can beneath (on a good day) half-eaten sandwiches, food wrappers, and wads of tasteless chewing gum. Sprigs of evergreen now gently flow in rivers of urine towards the all-welcoming sewer, where they meet their final resting place among cigarette butts, used condoms, and everything else that a matter of hours have turned from gold to garbage.

In February, I walk on, and my steps slow before quickening as I approach a small pile of children’s clothing, lying limply across the line between sidewalk and lawn, as if the garments were simply dropped and then forgotten about in the distractedness of daily living. Yellow ducks and socks the color of Pepto-Bismol are streaked with dirt, wet with morning dew and other liquids whose smell is more discernable than their color. Just a few steps away, the outer shell of a cereal box lies flattened beside the YEILD sign, walked over almost too many times to decipher the Lucky Charms logo that brings a hope and normality to the dismal scene.

In January and February, the warmth of December abruptly packs itself away until next year, and the remnants of the tender season make the unfeeling present all the more bleak.

But look up.

Below, the drains are clogged with yesterday’s magic and the forgotten material comforts of childhood, and above, the sky is pink with the rising sun of tomorrow. Uninterrupted oceans of sky stretch infinitely upward and outward, brightening the smile of the charmed, torn leprechaun, adding a sense of quaintness, even, to the entire scene.

**

On a Saturday morning, I spot two oranges swimming in the pools of last night’s rainfall, caught in the crook of the curb as cars speed off in search of supermarket oranges, oranges that are picked up out of a bin and placed in fresh plastic bags by manicured hands that have convinced themselves that sterility implies cleanliness and healthiness. But the fluorescence of grocery store overhead lighting is nothing compared to the golden rays that glint off the wet rinds of these twin pieces of fruit. In the sparkling light, I am tempted to have a second breakfast, right there on the side of the highway.

Ah, tricks of the light. Deceiving.

But I march on, passing it all by.

My instinct is to cradle the rejected corpse of a tree, to give it over to a bed of compost and let the world turn the rotting bark into decomposing life. My instinct is to pause to care for the discarded yellow ducks and the fading pink promise of warm feet, and to reconstruct the cereal box to make it able to contain the inner plastic chamber of marshmallow and grain; but these are not my goods to care for. Someone threw them out, I say to myself, perhaps. Perhaps? But perhaps not. Perhaps my small picture of the story is not all of the story. Perhaps there is a tree heaven that some kind soul has provided transport to. And perhaps the clothes will be retrieved later – they were dropped and no one has yet had time to collect them; perhaps the owner became unexpectedly infatuated with the wholegrain and marshmallow experience of the lilting cartoon character and left the miniature pieces of cloth to reach the miniature candy pot of gold at the end of the painted rainbow.

Trash? To some, perhaps. But to others, it is all still treasure. To someone, it is all still treasure. And these oranges are someone else’s breakfast.