701-800
701-710
We try to manage our ambitious fears with drugs and idle thoughts where surrogate emotions loose the dopamine in flocks.
But then lose our shit again at the apocalyptic block of living day to day with no control or way to make it go away.
We pull together our unwilling dreams with expensive threads of loss while knowing lack of action multiplies the rising cost.
But impeded right away again by unambitious, stubborn thoughts that stones are stones and sticks and bones won’t let us be alone.
So watch another video and let us fade away in hope and analgesics.
711 - 720
Who am i without being any version of myself. The audacity of change. Creeping into alternate beings who are not me, at least not anymore. But they're still more me than anyone else. Where do i try to right size myself? Where am i most like me or me others see? No control and no guide to translate on the fly. Is the final accounting the only one that matters? Is everything built upon itself or overwriting all the older versions. Where do i end up if i stop paying attention. Who tallies it up. When, exactly, am i me.
721-730
"I don’t get to say this very often, so let me have a word.”
She takes a calming breath, closes her eyes softly. The pause charges the crowd in waves. The raucus partying, singing, screaming pop music held in check by a film of anticipation. They are here to be in her presence. This is a private moment for each of the 30,000 people here. They are rapt and holding their breath. What will she share? What secret will she whisper into the microphone? How will she enrich their lives?
“I really hate this town.”
And the crowd goes wild.
731-740
Reforming, reimagining, twisting, coalescing, recombining in a chrysalis. Phasing out of cellular walls, melting into organic stew. Blending, mixing, oozing out of preordained formation and into something new. Becoming again. Doing out of being undone. Softly crystallizing bone and structure. Complex organs emerging from orderless mass. Pulling and twining each tiny vessel. Rolling and remaking from a broken self. Divergent systems and purpuses emerging from inefficiency to perfection. A jumble of sticks and stones now forming a sphere. From vestigular chaos, angular confusion of limbs, spacial fractals back into oviform. Back to the urge to be as little as possible.
741-750
More than thirty years passed, the old farmer thought. He didn’t keep a tally. His children are doing most of the labor. He just handles the taxes, the cut delivered to the priest, duke, official, whoever’s whim they were bound to serve. His uncounted years ebbed and flowed in a thin band of colorful variation. Dry summers were warm tones. Wetter were cool. In the darkest blue seasons the river floods to the house. Still the sun always rose, balance maintained. The mysteries were always before him. But now something is wrong. He doesn’t recognize the color of the horizon.
751-760
It’s the wind in the trees, the chaos of bees.
She struggles how to to tie it all together.
It’s the tiny dry riverbeds after rain.
The persistent percussion of every door closing.
The release of sunlight in and off the leaves.
She hesitates, remembers the tools of breathing.
It’s all the things, discrete and interwoven.
But she doesn’t want everything, just some.
She sips her tea and pushes it all away.
But it's worse when everything's the same distance from her. She pulls it back in.
She wants to curate the crazy.
To be the chaos of her choosing.
761-770
1. We manipulate, but we never change human nature.
2. You have too many poet friends.
1. Our conversation isn’t about what i do or what you do in opposition. It’s about how, combined, we leave a wake of change.
2. You need to meet more arsonists.
1. They have control.
2. Who gave them self awareness? Fire? Curiosity?
1. And who gave them fear? Jealousy? Desire? Those are all tools for them to manipulate their world. We are a function of their existence. We are servants, not gods.
2. Poets first, now popes.
1. We enact only what they wish.
2. Then they wish for self destruction.
1. They might.
771-780
“Oh great mystic! Font of the ages! Auger of the will of nature's mysteries! I come to you after a grand journey of trials, humbled, raw, and simple. No longer the vaunted lord of a wealthy kingdom. No longer the privileged heir. No longer the itinerant saint or groveling monk. I come with the clouded eyes of a river flooded, knowing the impermanence of myself. Please, after my long journey, i sit in your presence with a simple question. Why do i continue?”
The great sage lets his ancient head tilt slightly, nods solemnly and utters the sacred answer, “Capers.”
781-790
I work to not confuse comfort with familiarity. They're cousins maybe, but not interchangeable. Discovery and curiosity are comforting to me. I feel good finding a new place to sit and write, a new beer to try, a new way to see. It’s not that i resist familiarity, but i'm cautious of the potential inertia. Maybe a low-level thrill junkie who, instead of jumping off mountains, gets just enough high from walking a new way home. There's not much i do that isn't wrapped in excessive psychology. Sorry, you asked why i avoid retracing my steps. I guess that's why.
791-800
In the tomb rests artifacts, momentos, totems to accompany the journey. Two tchotckes for the ferryman. Niches, shelves overflowing in dusty tokens of past lives. But so many not of this life. This is a resting accumulation of lives. The cactus is a cutting of a cutting of a cutting. The common dishes aren’t precious, but stand in a place of honored heirlooms, never used in this life and sparingly in every previous. But there are no more churches to accept these miracles. No more petitioners seek their power. There are only tired archeologists gently tagging items for the catalogue.