Another kind of magic

(first draft lost)

It's another kind of magic to gimpse when something already is and has been.

Perhaps
even more amazing than discovering that someone understands what you are trying to say
Is discovering that not only do they already know,
they've already told you.

I love the way gifts can be wrapped in time.
I love the way that time delivers gifts.

I am indebted to writers
for preserving an experience for others who recognize it to point at and agree
yes; with all my past and present, yes.

Anna and Berlin only had one night

He was right to remind us both that you cannot prolong such gifts.  You cannot preserve them.

But, you can bring something back.

I am building a memory palace.

The bus home in Portland and everything as it should be

That 1/2 hour on Pingjiang Lu as the city kindly met with me

The block in old town painted gleaming white with gratitude, gratitude, gratitude for a gift I didn't know I needed.

The brilliant embroidered 'mandala' (I abuse the term) I planted (and by 'planted', I mean 'chose to notice') flowering on the intersection where I saw the separate woven threads emerge from their knit pattern and combine.

I endeavor to be a sculpter of time

and of meaning

I do deeply appreciate whoever is writing my book

Bedtime story of the universe

Have you ever fallen in love with a star
and then realized that it's actually a constellation?

letter in notebook before bothering to finally look up character book reference

I wish

there was a kind of heaven
where someone would tell you an account of the work you've done in your life

so that you could see who you have been in mine.

If, on your deathbed,
you have a little time left after your life flashes before your eyes,
please ask someone to let you see my 2015
and you within it.


And how, no matter what happened next
I remembered and used the memories for the rest of my life.

Ask someone to show you the blazing floral embroidered mandala?

on Yongjia and Taiyuan Lu.

It's selfish I suppose
to see so much of the world in terms of myself
but by the law of mirrors, perhaps it must be so.

I enjoy the celebration
of finding so much recognizable self
in you.

Comforting;
the world, a bit less strange
when there's more of you in it.

The SuperHuman Achievement

(proceeding from Frankl's description of the human achievement as taking on a role of creator and artist of meaning itself)

(and, meaning "Super" not as in being better, but as being greater, more inclusive, transcending individual identity)

And further:

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.  No one can become fully aware of the essence of another human being unless he loves him.  by his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features of the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.  Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities.

By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true..."  

-Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning


When I was young, I asked God to see others the way He did, and through his love. This description sounds to me like an elegant and ultimate combination of the "God is Love" foundation of John wedded to the Paulo Coelho's description of love as enabling and transformative in "The Alchemist" - In a world where the only constant is change, and where love is what believes in and encourages that growth, then that is a thing, a characteristic, a vision worth aspiring to, leaning on like a cane, cultivating, embracing, and becoming.