Tye Die, Round II

This is maybe my 4th batch of tie-dye, but second round of pictures.
The tie-dye itself was done sometime in September, but I'm only getting the pictures up now.

Like Children

Sometimes,

I think about how there is so much future out there
and so much change and so much uncertainty
...and it gets despairingly frighteningly unknown

but I guess I should try to remember that when I was 5, there was even more of it, about which I knew even less,
and I wasn't afraid then...
it was exciting.

It's been a long time from 5 'til now, filled with many different, interesting, transient things. I just have more of it to look forward to.

"Let's wipe away all of our expectations and wander around like children."
-郝鹿路
(my paraphrase...I shall have to check for the actual quote)

Duck Season

Finals Week.

I nearly lived in the library.



I took a mandatory break from book-staring-at to find some external, dynamic stimulation in the library lobby. After 10 minutes or so, I was walking back to my desk when one of my very tall friends from a nearby desk passed me going the opposite direction, grinning down at me from under his awning of dark hair. I slowed and stopped near him to imply "..What..?"

He hardly needed an invitation:

"Somebody just walked past swinging a dead duck!"

"What? a... duck?"

"A dead duck! Swinging it, like this!"

"What? ...in the library?"

"This duck falls off of the library... I didn't see it, but the people in the desk next to me saw it fall off the library past the window! And then this guy walks up and picks it up and walks off with it!"

"What? just now!"

He nods vigorously as we both enter the library lobby (I had joined his original trajectory). I'm still mentally reeling with collecting the images in some coherent conceptual basket when immediately before me at the circ desk, I see:




"Holy Cow! Is that the dead duck? How did it die? (Can I see it?)"

"Sure. My friend shot it."

My mind flashes back to someone requesting slingshots for shooting ducks off of the Steele's during freshman year. Someone is shooting ducks off the library?

"He SHOT it? With a gun?"

"Yeah, it's duck season. He just got back from Sauvie Island"

Oh. This is starting to make sense...
"How did it fall off the library?"

"Oh, well, he brought it back to give it to me on the 2nd floor, and I dropped it out my window..."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"I must cook it and eat it. I can't wait for finals to be over so I can eat this duck."

"...can I take a picture?"

"Sure."



A funny bit of trivia is that there was a guy who graduated last year that used to have loud arguments with the library circ(ulation) desk while tours were going through regarding demands for an explanation of why he couldn't take his duck into the library (he had a convincing-looking fake decoy-type duck). I told this story to the boy with the dead duck, and interestingly enough, I randomly met the boy-who-used-to-argue-about-his-fake-duck downtown and told him the story of how someone actually had an equally un-alive duck in the library.




When I went back into the bowels of the library, the talk of that row of desks was about how a dead duck had fallen off the roof and some guy had just walked up and carried it off, swinging it.

The part that's still a mystery to me is... how he managed to just drop it out of a 2nd story window...

Scent of Freshwater

In a High School Lit class, we read a lot of poetry and stories, including The Worn Path by Eudora Welty (for some reason, even with all of the stories we read, the phrase 'The Worn Path by Eudora Welty'' comes to mind far easier than the others).

(SPOILER ALERT! in this paragraph)
In the story as I remember it, an older negro woman named Phoenix Jackson (authors and the names they choose...) travels a difficult path through many obstacles to get to the pharmacy to buy some medication for her ailing grandson. In class, our teacher raised an ambiguity that none of us had considered: considering the type of medication and the duration of its purchase, our teacher severely suspected that the grandson had not survived his illness. Why then, did Phoenix continue to return to the pharmacy? We were a bit incredulous at the idea - if her grandson had in fact already succumbed to his illness, why would she go out of her way? ..spend her money? ..to buy an unnecessary drug? And why did they keep selling it to her?
Our teacher led us to consider her travel of the worn path as a ritual of her devotion to her grandson, and then phrased the question along the lines of - why would she continue traveling the difficult and unnecessary path when the object of her love and devotion was gone? It didn't make any sense.

We were high school students then, and silly with adolescence and inexperience. The story was kind of weird anyway.

Our teacher clarified,
Why would someone continue with such a method of demonstrating love?
we blinked at him.
Why do we partake in the ritualistic consumption of blood and flesh?
- a morbid non-sequiter for an instant,
but in a small, largely Catholic town, even the atheists know when you're talking about communion.
I don't remember how he said it, but I remember him bringing his hands and the theatrical twist of face near each other as he dramatically paced the room, every bit a professor in a high school box.

The room was silenced in the realization that the question we'd thought was nonsensical is actually applicable. The room was quiet as the thoughts drained from that concrete image to other areas of our brains.

I'm not sure that we'd answered the question, but he'd made his point.






Last week or so, my grandma, aunt, and mom sent me a fat envelope of good-ol' midwestern homemade chocolate-and-cereal-y bars with a Hello message and a newspaper clipping. The bars are cut into little squares. I shared some with my friends, because that is what one does with good things. But, I've kept the others to myself. I eat them now and then, but not when I'm hungry, because they are not just food, and not too quickly because I must ration their sustenance until I leave. They are medicine against the food of the dead. They were sent to me from far away - made in the same country I was - they are evidence of the promise that I have a home waiting to welcome me back, and that soon, I will be there myself.

Beginning of the End of a Beginning

In my psychological narrative,

6's are ends
7's, beginnings
8's are a ripening

This is the last month of a year of beginning.

A seed doesn't grow unless it falls and is buried, I suppose. In some metaphors, anyway.

Soon,

(posted 12 18 2007)

In which I turn around to find an unexpected slip of paper on my clipboard. I turn it over to find a most welcome note:

Memo to Self

I'm writing again

I use a pen because it lasts longer than pencil.
The only problem is that sometimes ink glides so clean and easily. I like the scratch of a pencil - the graphite grinding over subtle contours of the page - It's a friction I can feel that reminds me: I'm getting somewhere.

Even if I can't keep up,
friction means I am again moving.*

Hang in there



Thankyou, Mr. Olson.

UnCommon Conversation

Two days ago,

Our paths merged on the library stairway

tentative eye contact, then the common greeting
How're you doing?

(pause)
better

...yeah, that's how I feel, too

good. It's about time...

yeah, before was worse

I know... I felt like that for a while

It really sucked when it was worse!

But now is hopeful

yeah!

(pause for relieved and mutual-understanding laughter)

...wow, I'm really glad.. this has been -

- .. the best conversation I've had all day.

(grin)

bye

bye!



And we went again our separate ways through separate doors.

Approach the Brink

"Approach the brink serenely and accept the risk of melting into nothingness."
A butchered translation, no doubt, of the words of one of the greatest masters of any language the world has seen, but I still like it. I've many times in my life only been able to feel great and positive changes after doing the person-to-puddle trick. We're always held down by habits and modes that we didn't even intend to develop crowding out new and better manifestations of ourselves.
- E.B.M

Magic

the moon in her tent of pastel rainbow -
the rippled quilted clouds of her cloak drape over this globe of earth-
through the ripples in the cotton, I look up, agape at shining dots -
diamonds in the vast expanse of clear sea above her

Silver & Gold

(posted 12 18 2007)

On the Way Down

I'm kind of glad I didn't have my camera with me.

Yellow and Gray

I noticed that the gray day produced not a darkening, but a clarity,
the wash on which the watercolors perform.
A river of malleable west wind stirred the flocks of solid yellow tree wings and pressed them amid the black and white tree branches. Beyond, sliding atop the west-bound sheet of the gray sky water, the black, white, and yellow colors did not blend, but encircled and caressed one another.

my ears caught a whiff of descending violins



today is better.

"...strong in the broken places."

Quoted on PostSecret


The children the world almost breaks
become the adults who save it.

-attributed to Frank

Common Speech

As I walked to the library in the warm bubble of my coat,
between the cold foggy lamplight, there were no sharp corners, no chameleons, no fish. Sharp corners are hazardous and fish an intermediate. If you can make chameleons sprout by will, you're dreaming.
I hoped for a bounding white stag, which leads to reality, to at least blink across the corner of my vision.

I saw none of these, and I haven't replaced the chalk in my pocket.



Earlier,

We exchanged the common greetings, a hazardous task for us both.

"I'm getting stronger," I say, surprised at the manner of optimism in my own voice.
Do you know, I've died once already? Now, it can only make me stronger.

She hears it too.
"What?"

"It can't kill me, I'm getting stronger"
After so long, the disease is only in my lungs, which guard my heart. Daily, I cough it out, but still my heart is safe, unless it's also in my head, which renders judgment suspect.

"Oh,"
She pulls me in with her arms around my shoulders.
"I'm getting stronger," I protest ineffectively, without a change in voice.

"I know," she said,
not unlike a mother rocking a child waking from a bad dream.
"I know."

Liquid Gold

(Posted on 12 18 2007)

This was the light footprint coming through my window:



Outside I found

Leaf : The Dance

(posted 12.28.07)



Leaf Bids Farewell









How brave they are to dance the dance so gracefully

Exit: Oct '07

(Posted 12 18 2007)









(What does it say for my school when all day I was amused that people were wearing costumes, but only understood that it was Halloween when I saw my math professors dressed semi-formally?)

La carta nunca recibí

Yesterday,
despite checking my email periodically,
I never received this.




Subject: Hey!

There you are! I've been looking for you for so long. I'm sorry none
of my other emails got through. Turns out I was spelling your name
without the last e. I didn't remember how it should be spelled.
That's funny cuz usually ppul don't know how it's pronounced, eh?

Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye before I left. I'm currently
in Cork, India. It's been snowing a lot, but the bikes are still good
and the kittens haven't gotten rusty. I wish I could show you this
peach I've been sculpting.

The potatoes are all sprouting and they can't see very well yet.
There are no sad robots here. We are all nicely oiled humming
machines. I have not broken any teeth and most of the time we drink
red tea with lunch.

I do not miss our old home. I've just arrived but I feel like I'm
constantly arriving. It's not so bad you know, to forget. I
remembered you. I thought maybe you'd want to come. Oh, do tell me
how things are going there! I did not leave anything behind. I
didn't have anything to leave. It would be nice to see people again
though.

You can write in Chinese here, but no one remembers how to speak it.
A couple of the old men say they remember and they have meetings twice
a month. Nobody would mind. Beneath the grass, I think the ground
is made of sponges.

I do hope you can visit. You should make sure first that you don't
leave anything behind. And the old men would probably like to see
your Chinese book (Josh told me you're taking Chinese now). I miss
you and I hope I can still make you laugh. There are many things I
think you'd enjoy. Why don't you write more often? I would like to
read some of your stories.

Please meet me above Eliot circle at 9:10pm Thursday morning. Just
get on board the train. 98 Zephyr makes the trip a couple of times
every month. I'll be in the 48th passenger car, so don't train hop,
come find me! I'll probably bring my friend the Yeti. You should
bring your guitar. We'll it need to sing Wagon Wheel.
We're going home.


I don't know who will sign it. Maybe I'll just know. Maybe the poets
can tell me. Maybe it's whomever I was in the tavern with when this
drunkenness began.

I Had A Dream,

I say to you today dear friends, that in spite of my general inability to recall them,
that last night, I had a dream.

I had a dream,
that I returned to my homeland in Wisconsin to find the land covered in snow and the roads partially plowed.

I had a dream,
in which my family had, in my absence, acquired a system of transportation to suit the snowy weather. Ordinary bicycling was out of season.

Brothers and sisters,
I had a dream last night,
that the sensible alternative transportation was to adjust your bicycle by hitching a team of adorable sled kittens to the front fork. They were cuddly and soft. They work just like sled dogs, but they are much smaller.

It did not occur to me
until I had been awake for at least several minutes and was brushing my teeth in the bathroom, that a team of sled-kitties hitched to a bicycle is not a normal mode of transportation.

on Expectations

"He who forsakes what is there
for what there ought to be
pursues his own ruin."
(paraphrased by impression as best as I remember)

EDIT:
in which I am corrected:


"The way men live is so far removed from the way men ought to live
that he who forsakes what is for what ought to be pursues his ruin."

Actually a quote from Machiavelli. I think it's interesting because
it's blunt, but you can take it a couple ways. I'd like to think that
even if he's right, there are times when it's worth your ruin.
-ST

Lili's

The restaurant is on the corner of a block with space to eat outside at small round tables.

Indoors, it's like being inside of a very nice gift box or a giant petit-four. The place would be a great still-shot backdrop for a lighthearted cartoon.

The color of choice seems to be the spectrum of beige, from cream to chocolate with a hint of pink. Wide robin's-egg-blue stripes appear on the parts of the walls that don't have windows or circle mirrors, and the cabinets are what I'll call green tea with milk or cream olive forest green. The chairs are autumn-windfall-apple red.

Flowers, still-life russet-goldenrod fireworks lean silently against
each table's vase.

Quiet jazz (catch the trumpet?) from the radio matches the floor: vanilla cream and medium-brown outline paintings of kitchen utensils, each labeled with smooth curly-edge brushmanship.

A friend and I eat outside,
After much deliberation and indecision (so many good ideas), she orders the Tex Mex Breakfast, and I the Cornmeal Pancakes with Apple Compote and Caramel. They're so good that during the course of our meal, we switch plates twice.
Hers is some magical synthesis of beans/rice/salsa with a fried egg on top and ample guacamole served in a ceramic medium-dark blue bowl with a handle that makes it look as if it might have been raised with the saucepans.

I've never had cornmeal in pancakes before and I don't expect wheat to come anywhere near it anytime soon. Two slabs of pancake, served slightly off-center on a smooth white ceramic plate, were topped with an inviting pile of apple compote laced about with caramel. I think perhaps the best justice I can do to this pancake is again to list the ingredients:

*cornmeal pancakes
(Not grainy at all, but soft and very willing to separate when prompted by a fork)
*apple compote
little chips of apple in a little hill with cinnamon
*caramel
drizzled in an artistic entropic fashion.
Not too sweet to cover the cornmeal, not too much to make anything soggy, just enough to know that its there and mixing with the apple.





I know.. the flowers in these pictures are differently colored than I described... but that's because they use fresh flowers!

on the bullet-proof-ness of Ideas

i used to worry
that an idea could die out with a people

but there are so many of us
and though we often pretend to be unique and individual,
our thoughts are nothing special - as long as there are people, an idea will find someone to host it. Especially today, none of my thoughts are original. If all of the humans who think the same ideas as I were to perish in an Instant, the ideas would independently come to others, though perhaps they would use different words.

Today,
instead of feeling like a fountain or a spring which channels and gives shape to my meanings,
the ink from my pen draws little cages on my paper.

I peer down at ideas
bound to twisted black lines
-the page becomes a prison-
and wonder what I've done

Chuang Tzu

As quoted in Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler:

"Writing is that means by which the world values the Way, but writing is no more than words and words, too, have value. Meaning is what gives value to words, but meaning is dependent on something. What meaning depends on cannot be expressed in language, yet the world transmits writing because it values language. Although the world values writing, I for my part, do not think it worthy of being valued, because what is valued is not what is really valuable."

and

"A fish-trap is for catching fish; once you've caught the fish, you can forget the trap. A rabbit-snare is for catching rabbits; once you've caught the rabbit, you can forget about the snare. Words are for catching ideas: once you've caught the idea, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a person who knows how to forget about words so that I can have a few words with him?"

por cualquier otro 名字

me dijé,

انا pienso que aiza comprender mas idiomas para poder 听懂 他们 que las 說.

Pero a veces,
pienso que 我 想 是 un 人 differente.
Un otro lengua, otro 名字,
別 我.



Aiza 有 palabras de cada ala, con cada pluma, para volar ... nicht 知道.


没有 zhao3ta4che1 escaparé mit 漢字
Ich yao4 schreibe así
nadie me encontrará sin buscando.

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public

Two things discovered to me today, of which I am excited:

ASHOKA: Innovators for the Public
&
www.changemakers.net

It is Well

The howareyou?goodyourself?fine exchange has often bothered me.


We'd already exchanged formalities, but as he left, he half-turned back to say "Are you well?" his voice lifted at the end in statement of a question.

Several words caught at my throat.
He'd asked the right question.

"With my soul" I replied.

At last, it is the right answer.

10.03.2007

We must "resist the tetmptation to suppose that some miraculous and costly action can be the solution to all our problems."
-Somebody Else, (quoted by Eric Schlosser)

Also,

The original Reaxorz license expire(d/s) at midnight (depending on which midnight it is...)

and apparently to mark the ocassion...


A transmission:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-03-terror-exercise_N.htm

A terrorism drill is happening soon on the Steel Bridge. State
distraktion and annoyanke forces should be deployed to the scene.

Rekkomend:

1) Go to rektor and get decontamination suits, the tyvek ones, lots of them
2) get other good things and report to the bomb site to either klean up
or act as pieses of radioaktive kontamination whi4 kannot be removed.
3)enjoy yourselves

-melor

Theorem 10.01.07

An Approximation** of Excellence:
(And demonstration of proper ordering)


To mark one more year-cycle done,
Evaluate this one for fun:
Derive the expression
that's sure to impress on
you that he's the best, #(exp(2πi))!

As proof of his total integrity:
Evaluate, respect to dt,
today as the limit
with integrand dhim, that's
# (exp(2πi)) (+ C!)*

***



*to simplify, consider C= whatever is necessary
**Approximation only due to excessive use of bad math puns.
***I need a Mathematica screenshot as a demonstration, but that will not happen for a little while.

Frustrated, said 司馬遷

"I am frustrated," Sima Qian once said, "that my heart has that which it has not completely expressed."

"As a man who had suffered much, and who believed that all distinguished literature is born in suffering, the Han historian not only assembled and attempted to make sense from the abundant texts of the past, but also poured out sentiments from a heart shaped by a curious and traumatic series of personal events."

(Stephen Durrant, 1995)

A tribute to the Piano in three movements

Prelude



She had enthusiasm strung as though each passing moment were a landing felted hammer prompting it to sing, shining through her eyes in such a way that sometimes made me feel that I could see pieces of myself in her reflection.

I'd see her now and then, she was
that familiar tune that reenters your ears on occasion, unbidden, always welcome.

One day, I was playing, shaping sounds and volumes from the discrete set of keys before me. Finishing, I was surprised to hear, Oh, don't stop! Keep playing! The voice came from under the piano. I thought I'd heard a noise before, as though someone sliding under, but I didn't think they'd stay this long.

She peeked out and up at me like a baby bird.
Ah. I was glad that she was the one who'd been listening from below - I know that that's the best seat in the house: Under the piano.

That was last year. Today,
she showed me this poem:

First Movement

Under The Piano
by Ken Weisner
for Kit

There is nothing better than listening
to Debussy's Claire du Lune,
under your piano.
Students who are leaving you
go under their last day
and listen to you
play for them.
It's how you say goodbye.

The piano sits in the corner
of the small carpeted front room,
a Baldwin baby-grand
next to my Grandmother's 100-year-old
German side-table with lions' paws.
You have them dive right back there
into the dark corner
right beneath the bass strings. In a way,

a piano is a horrifying thing;
this black angel's coffin
could come thumping down
and kill someone.
You and a student rode it out there
during the big quake;
a bookshelf full of music
smashed the bench,
stopping inches from the keys.

When I arrived home yesterday,
you were playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G Minor.
I don't know why--I didn't even break stride--
just went right under
to close my eyes awhile
after a long day.

It's cozy, actually,
relaxing and warm
even for those who normally don't prefer the floor.
Oh, I love this part... a dramatic downward run:
descending diminished seventh chords in octaves
proclaim a minor key, some triumph in exile
turned sumptuous, modulating back now upward in thirds....

And though I am not your student
and you are not saying goodbye,
how good it is that you are playing now
for me! sprawled on the old carpet
appreciating every heady consonance
but also every jangly overtone
and percussive distortion,
the hilarious volume and vivid harmonics;
no, not even a kiss can do this.
And as in love,
even the mistakes are glorious,
blunt thunder.

And then when you go a long time without missing a note,
how marvelous--what a miracle--
transported by virtuosity
into the composer's heart, or is it your heart?
or is it my own?
Oh, terrible exile;
oh wonderful life!

And such a private place, sacred: the piano
filling the sky.
So what happens? The wonder
mixes with the love, music, and privacy
to form
shameless ecstasy,
a fortune so difficult to find these days
in nature, church, politics,
or even the theater.

It may not be God, but I feel loved
and you feel loved.
All the better because neither
the machine nor the interpreter
is perfect,
but the resulting chaos might be
the best thing in life.

And having married the piano player
so many stormy years ago,
now, without sentimentality but in
the presence of
Rachmaninoff--
so much meaning--
and hearing the wonderful sense
in the sound, mouth set in its slight smirk,
as usual slightly disappointed at the world...
I for once do the logical thing:
nothing--just lie there
and weep through the whole recap and coda,
silently, shamelessly, for the ecstasy of it.


Second Movement

Vivaldi's Sposa son disprezzata
by Ken Weisner


"il mio sposo, il mio amor,
la mia speranza."

In this song about a faithful wife
betrayed (che feci mai, what did I do),
I was astonished at how
the spare single verse and brief refrain
made one particular word
take flight within its vowel: sper-ahhhh-nza.

It flew!
In a six minute song, on the warm
current of grief, the soprano
soared again and again
a full thirty seconds
just on the updraft
of that one vowel,

as if the meaning of the song weren't grief at all,
but rather the possibility of
hope,
as if singing
were making, naming
her grief.

She was too good for him.
How freely and completely
she flew! Over and over,
veiled, yet soaring,
for as long as her breath would hold.

Third Movement

In Memorium
by Tracy Mehoke

There’s a boy at the piano
The piano that I love to coax a voice from
The piano that turns deft fingers
and minute internal tensions
into song

He’s playing the piano
And the air is thick with music
Not smoke
Music
In the SU
Everyone else hears it, too
The air is thick with our thoughts,
reading about images
and Lucretius
and swirling atoms and void
I’m not sure how acclimatized they are
to breathing atmospheric music
But I feel the music in my lungs
as if
my hands are the ones at the piano
and my arms are shaping it into
just the right size
to breathe out on the keys.

As if my wrists and fingertips
are pressed into the keys,
my palms conduct a symphony of levers
Before my eyes,
black and white
transforming into marble in my hands.

Breathing in, the music
is a radiantly churning cloud
Supporting on all sides.
From this height, I can see in

The last notes dissolve
The clouds drift away
and other conversations
become noticeable
as gradually
everyone remembers
their previous life
and wakes up from cloudy dreams.
The air thins
Now it’s just atoms and void
without the swirl
Now it smells
more like smoke

My head clears
And once again, I’m
within walls
with windows to see out
not a cloud, but a couch.
ba-da-
the door rests in its frame again


The piano is still,
a monument,
a nudging reminder
of something seen in dreams



Fin

Motion Sickness?

One option down:
My Watson Application was not approved.

If I pause for a moment to consider the possible forks of my future,

it is not the prospects that lead me on into uncharted territory:

- moving to pursue a Masters Degree
- teaching English or studying in a foreign country
- choosing some possible destinations and living out of my bicycle
- traveling to research something and write about it
- inventing my own low-budget Watson Year
- (grad school is a 'no' at this time)

The goals I set up, the many things I want to do, the process of attaining them are all far easier to deal with mentally than the prospect of not having an immediate direction to work towards.

I think,
that when I cannot see a possible future,
I get very unsettled and partially paralyzed.

All of the above options, with the time and effort they would require, seem more mentally/psychologically possible to me than an option that my Dad brought to my attention a few days ago: a well-paying job near home. It would probably be a good job. It interests me.

But the prospect of living - not at home, but just several hours north is incredibly daunting at this moment because my mind cannot imagine either the time or space components of this future.

I am just interested in the idea that I feel more agreeable to traveling solo around the world than staying still in someplace that is near, but not quite, home.

Perhaps I have an odd case of motion sickness
in which I feel ill if made to hold still.

I Can't See The Wind,

but I feel it.


Outside of the Red and Black Cafe
on its last open night at the 'old' location,

I find an old friend whom I've met but once before, at a cafe I've stopped at but once before (but this has been a day for serendipitously-timed encounters).

I told him about the many places I was trying to be at once.

He said to follow your heart
rather than an ever-changing wind

I said sometimes my heart was an ever changing wind.
Then realized, no


***

"Listen to your heart. It knows all things because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.

Why should I listen to my heart?

Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet.

You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow"
***


To others, I would be.

think I have a persistent, creeping fear that following my heart will take me far from here.

I have Tango class tonight.
And they were right:
for an instant, you know exactly where you are,
and it IS terrifying,
because all of everything is swirling except for you.
Because you know
Amid the rapid, constant change,
you know where you are.

***
I think I am beginning to understand this line from The Alchemist:

"Yes, that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold, and makes the gold return to the earth.

It's not love to be static or to see from a distance,... Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are."
***

A Paradox:
I constantly leave an old self behind
I constantly am becoming myself



...to be the wind...
can I ever be content to stay still? I am always leaving, always arriving -

The Future

It's out there.
And there is so much of it.

There's so much future! What am I going to do with it all?

This prospect is nearly staggering.

请写写， 谢谢

And,
no matter how many times I hear it in every literature-related class I take, no amount of the explanation Repetition is used for emphasis is nearly strong enough as

using it once
in some desperate effort to carry a significance securely to the reader.








It took me a while to understand why they repeated whole lines, he said

you mean the verses where the next is a copy of the previous but with one thing changed?

no, the entire line repeated.

word for word?

yes,
it was for emphasis, he said


It was for emphasis he said.

Now I know,
I thought
Now I know why he didn't care to read my writing.

Llena de Estrellas

from 9/17



谢谢，郝鹿路






9/18/07

"Don't Limit Yourself,"

he told me.

I guess that's what happens if you compare yourself to others, or to the way you think things should be done, or to the things you think you're capable of, for too long.

I shall try my best to take that advice.

I am trying to more consciously make full use of available resources.
I am relearning.

Today I feel like I have concluded an experiment.

Results:
I shall approximate the person I was before the experiment began,
but with much more experience.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have teleported a human into the future -
and with a gain of information.
Absolve yourself of doubts -
She was right the first time.

No more secrets

No!
Stop asking me!





What my computer doesn't know is that the content is already hard enough to understand.
How can we get anywhere by layering encryption?

No more secrets.

Driving Equilibrium

Often, my experience has been as though
embroiled in a series of a complex system of forces
working themselves out to equilibrium and
carrying me along.

I only think one move ahead, the Chess Player said,
But it's the best move

As the equation runs to completion, it's good to feel capable of floating, as best as you can, with what current processes demand.

You can't always be in control, this is a fact.
It is useful and reasonable to learn to be a good passenger.


But sometimes,
you get to take the wheel.
Sometimes, you have to take the wheel.

All you need to do to steer is know where you want to go (or get away from).

There is a time for all things.
And though it's useful (sometimes life-saving) to know how to take what is given,
-that's not the only thing-
learning to drive is an absolute must.



It's a book that says the [same] something as almost all the other books in the world say, continued the old man, It describes peoples' inability to choose their own Personal Legends and it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie. It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives became controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.

Silver and Green

I like this version of Acts 3

I'm trying to remember
(I can walk)
what that means.

Silver and Green
music and lyrics by Riley Armstrong

Take me to the gates of beautiful
Please I've got to go beg for money

No different than the day before you
See when your legs don't work, you've
Got to go beg for money

Until these two guys surprised me,
They talked I listened

Silver and green, we have none,
But what we have will see you walk again
However you've been until now leave it behind,
let these people see you walk again
Walk again

I've called this mat home for so long now
I'm afraid I might just be stuck right to it

But you say in this name there is healing power
It sounds crazy but for some reason I believe it

That very moment something changed
In me

Silver and green, I have none but what I have
led me to walk again
however I've been until now, leave it behind
tell everyone
I can walk again

Such stuff

I may revoke these statements, but for now,

We live off of dreams.

We don't live in reality.

If we did,
we wouldn't fall in love
we wouldn't be idealistic
we wouldn't be nostalgic

We live in our imagined hopes
(so rarely does the real world conform)

But as we dream,
And as we live on dreams,
we live on the hope that the things we imagine can someday be real,
(or that they were)
and the faith that the work we put in will be worth it.

And even as I say this,
I still feel attached
to the future I could imagine
(be it dim-lit and flickering from fear of watching)

Pear Monster

title="Yes, this is what I decided would be a good birthday gift">

ZigZag

(posted 1/05/08)

We started that Saturday, biking into the sunrise.

We ran off of windfall apples, lauraballs, peanut butter, blackberries, salal, chocolate, huckleberries, and something woodsorrell-esh.

We trudged endless switchbacks, inspected soft huckle-colored bear poop, and found the perfect overlook for sleeping on, just as the sun began creeping away giving our bowl of mountains a bright tangerine rim.







Awoke,
descended,
discovered downhill, both ways.

flew -

and later,
good food, good friends.

郝鹿路,生日快乐

鹅毛

千里送鹅毛，礼轻情谊重

Sing it Again

Thankyou God,

for remembering our stories
our songs
and singing them back to me.



I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do


That must be what stories are for.

As humans, we are unreliable vessels.

We leak, we shatter, we shake, we spill,

but,

Your skin
your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful -

if someone remembers the stories,
once we are fit to receive them again,
they have not been lost after all.

Interference

Gentlemen,

I become convinced,

we must interfere in one another's lives.

It is the only way.

Play World

From The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

"All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull as you say."

I think that I must yet sort out what is "reality" as far as I can.
Once I have all my illusions in order,
then I think I shall have a rightful peace to choose which world I shall live for.
And,
illusions being recognized and choice being made,
that world shall be real,
like a Velveteen Rabbit.

I used to be afraid that I'd find myself in real-world pit as dull as they say.

The Pamphlette

funding poll posters are out:





and here:
the Poster of the People



Other than this,
I have not been very impressed with Funding Poll posters.
(with the exception of Reedfat [picture pending])

Aging

(v)

The process of becoming inflexible



Also,
Walnuts are good for you.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

This is perhaps the first poem we read in my Junior Lit class,
and
one to which my arching mental tangents oft return
(appropriately so)
(and for a multitude of reasons)
.



A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begun.

Tango is good for me

It all boils down to a single moment when you know exactly where you are in the universe,
and it's terrifying


These were the instructor's words as I walked into the already assembled Tango class.

Tango is close
You can hear them with your skin

Tango is about presence
Don't lose yourself in the crowd

and focus
Be completely aware of your partner


For someone who has always tried to stand on her own two feet, tried not to get in the way of others, tried to carry her own weight, tried not to impose herself,
it takes some getting used to.

Tango is playing a game of distance,
of pushing back
resistance
culminating in a most definitely shared motion. slide

It seemed to me like a walking game of team tai chi.

It most certainly takes two.
And this is what I want to learn:
how to take two separate, present, individual energies
and compose their distinct forces into an experience,
an achievement
unattainable by one alone.


It seems that this requires
sharing weight
imposing oneself
taking another's space (ask first)
and trusting that such actions will be received and returned.

It's a balance of both self and other that I cannot yet manage except in extremes.

I'm decent as an individual. Or as a nothing.
As part of a team?
I have a lot to learn.

Time Travel

Last night/This morning,

We gathered for lunar eclipse and tea
(having considered that yelling and beating drums to scare off the beast devouring the moon would be inconsiderate of others' desires to sleep).



However,
when I woke up again,





Traveling back to the present was remarkably easy,
although perhaps I should've taken time to walk around and feel anachronistic first.

Once in the CoOp, Always in the CoOp

It was so good to hear the words I'd used
to verify community
spoken back to me in invitation

May I live in Interesting Times

One man's curse is another man's blessing I suppose.

Or,
perhaps it's just that once I see a future,
there doesn't seem to be any other possible way.

Conversation Topic

from Watership Down by Richard Adams

There were no more speeches. Rabbits have their own conventions and formalities, but these are few and short by human standards. If Hazel had been a human being he would have been expected to introduce his companions one by one and no doubt each would have been taken in charge as a guest by one of their hosts. In the great burrow, however, things happened differently. The rabbits mingled naturally. They did not talk for talking's sake, in the artificial manner that human beings - and sometimes even their dogs and cats - do. But this did not mean that they were not communicating; merely that they were not communicating by talking.

All over the burrow, both the newcomers and those who were at home were accustoming themselves to each other in their own way and their own time; getting to know what the strangers smelled like, how they moved, how they breathed, how they scratched, the feel of their rhythms and pulses. These were the topics and subjects of discussion, carried on without the need of speech.

To a greater extent than a human in a similar gathering, each rabbit, as he pursued his own fragment, was sensitive to the trend of the whole. After a time, all knew that the concourse was not going to turn sour or break up in a fight. Just as a battle begins in a state of equilibrium between the two sides, which gradually alters one way or the other until it is clear that the balance has tilted so far that the issue can no longer be in doubt - so this gathering of rabbits in the dark, beginning with hesitant approaches, silences, pauses, movements, crouchings side by side and all manner of tentative appraisals, slowly moved, like a hemisphere of the world into summer, to a warmer, brighter region of mutual liking and approval, until all felt sure that they had nothing to fear.

Once Upon a Number

from the Dedication of Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories by John Allen Paulos,

To that most astute philosopher, David Hume, who wrote, "I cannot but consider myself as a kind of resident or ambassador from the dominions of learning to those of conversation, and shall think it my constant duty to promote a good correspondence betwixt these two states, which have so great a dependence on each other."

Solo

Solamente quiero uno vida, por favor.

Más están demasiadas muchas - necesito a doblarlas junta.
No puedo continuar recoger los empiezos nuevos como esto- me tirarán a pedazos.

Uno está bastante, gracias.

In Perfect Silence

(Not long after discovering a watch reading 8/20 20:20)

We crept beneath our low-hung tarp
(well-trained, were we, to set camp amid rain)
to discover not rain -
but stars salting the dark blue breath of sky above us.

My first time backpacking,
and I understand now that the name is misleading. Before, I did not know why someone would want to walk outdoors with a backpack through varying terrain (the backpack seems to be the point of the name), except as some personal challenge.

Not only varying terrain, but weather as well,
and we certainly received more than our share of rain in a Northwest August landscape. At night, beneath the kitchen tarp, we huddled near constantly boiling water, continuously distributing recently warmed calories amongst each other to keep our fingers functioning properly. In the evenings, I wished for darkness so that I might crawl into a soon-to-be-warmed sleeping bag, leave the cold blowing wet outside, and lose the cold with my consciousness. In the mornings, I wished for light so that I might have an excuse to get up and stay up, rather than roll over to subconsciously stiffen my other side.

But the last day,
we picked ourselves up and hiked a slow, but steady 10 miles over the pass between the Three Sisters. The edges of the land were swallowed up in cloud. I could only passing-glance seek out the route we'd come by, because the wind and rain would not permit a longer gaze. We crossed the pass, sometimes over snow. I gathered a snowball to carry to the other side. Blue clouds amid a white sky began to show as we reached our campsite for that last evening. Hastily, we set up camp. By habit, we huddled under the tarp boiling water and serving food. By and by we engaged in rather astonishing depth of discussion.

If you could look one person in the eyes and tell them, 'I love you,' who would it be?

Finally, we remembered that it was not raining, that we might look outside, and even up.

There waiting, were the stars.




And this, I think, is backpacking:
The means for bringing such a group of people to such a place and in such a fashion,
that together we might spread our sleeping mats like a colony of caterpillars in a forest of black bristling pine, and looking up, appreciate our view of a clear be-starréd night, as seen beyond the ribcage of the earth.

The Biking

I nearly escaped tonight

Biking between the dorms and the apartments, I realized
I had lights,
a couple dollars in my pocket,
there are fruit trees and
it's warm tonight -
I don't even need a sleeping bag...

I could get pretty far

instead, I took a very long route home

but,..
we'll see how long my sense of responsibility holds out.

The Waking

by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Pseudo-Persephone

Yesterday, 8/6:

"It's like, a chocolate pomegranate thing," he said, intently applying teeth to the still some-frozen cold dome of chocolate.

plastic wrap lining a small bowl,
microwave-tempered chocolate shell filled with
freshly-picked blackberries (and more chocolate for structure),
set in shape by time and a freezing,
chocolate leaves and berries added at the end

I watched
the chocolate hull of the cake hemisphere gradually give way under white enameled pressure, revealing an interior of many cold juicy beads.

I built him a cake that won't leave anyone stranded in Hades

Ratatouille

(this post actually written several days after the indicated date)


Following this recipe, I produced an acceptable ratatouille.

Well, the ratatouille didn't give me any crazy childhood memories, as in, it didn't evoke any.

But I think it created one.

Now it will mean sunflowers bowing out of a pitcher
a table packed tight with dishes
in honor of a friend
who has not disappeared.

It will mean love and blackberries, french bread, olive oil, and rosemary,
a full table
so full
and admired by bowing sunflowers



I saw a field of yellow light in 5 nodding stalks.
How did you pick the whole field?
Thankyou.


Good food, Good friends, Good God...

Monks in the Garden

this is not from The Alchemist

I heard a story once about how

One day, as a monk tended to his garden in the monastery, two of his students approached with a question. They'd been discussing something and wanted to know what he would say about it. He paused and looked up from his spade.

"Master," they asked, "If you knew that you had only fifteen minutes left to live, what would you do?"

"This,"
he replied,
and went back to his gardening.

Drops of Oil in a Spoon

continued... from The Alchemist

"But before I go, I want to tell you a little story.

"A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.

"Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man's attention.

"The wise man listened attentively to the boy's explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn't have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours.

"Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,' said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. 'As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.'

"The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.

"'Well,' asked the wise man, 'did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?'

"The boy was embarassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.

"Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,' said the wise man. 'You cannot trust a man if you don't know his house.'

"Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.

"'But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?' asked the wise man.

"Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone.

"'Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you.' said the wisest of wise men. 'The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil in the spoon'."

The shepherd said nothing. He had understood the story the old king had told him. A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep.

PROLOGUE to The Alchemist

Translated by Clifford E. Landers

The Alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leaving through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus.

The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.

But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.

He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

"Why do you weep?" the goddesses asked.

"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.

"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."

"But... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.

"Who better than you to know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:

" weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."

"What a lovely story," the alchemist thought.