Petals Streaming
I await the promise of new fruit
where blossoms die
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Friday, September 17, 2004
In Gentle Rain, Life's Seasons
Life’s Seasons
__________________________________
Resting in darkness,
Dust with no memory.
I wait within the void.
In gentle rain,
I rejoice.
Summers promised meadows are still ahead.
Endless warmth,
I grow into my skin.
I believe I am immortal.
Leaves falling,
I reflect, but a moment.
For winter threatens me not.
Snow swirls,
Wind invades my shirt collar.
Winter has overtaken me.
Resting in darkness,
Must even my memories
come to dust, again.
"Oh shut me up . . . . . Please!"
A friend of mine wrote me in one of her recent Emails.......
Which I readily spotted as one of those tests...which can not be passed, a task with no joy for a successful completion. Very similar, it appears, to a question which should never be answered or even contemplated. One of those, "do these pants make me look fat", test questions that are asked at times...just to keep you on your toes.
How does one shut a woman up? Let me emphatically state that I don't view the "need to shut a woman up" as a universal need applying to any woman. However, given the premise that a particular woman, as in this case, desires shutting up, and in point of fact has requested it, rather emphatically........("Oh shut me up . . . . . Please!")......Well I am confronted with a conundrum on several levels. Is this anything that I would even consider doing? Does this jive with my sensitive guy of the 2000s side? Have I ever been in the presence of a woman that I wished would shut up? Well hell yeah......But, we come again to the notion of circumstantial values, the need of the moment. Are there any moral absolutes? A very difficult question to answer today as much as it was in pre-politically correct times. Can one argue that the ten commandments are moral absolutes, or are they preferred pathways through a wasteland of self promoting early human thugs lost to the control of their bicameral minds. Thinking that their thoughts were, in fact, the voice of God directing their actions. Made more confusing by the apparent redundancy of the human brain, which may have been even more pronounced in ancient times. As the left brain spoke to the right brain, many Greek soldiers in pleated leather skirts, with metal accessories, their loins girded and wearing the latest in laced up open toed footwear...may have had some serious confusion regards their sexual preferences let alone their mental identity and moral values. Men should not display their naked feet in public, you know. But I digress. So, as the left and right sides of the brain agreed upon their respective tasks and humans began to hear one voice in their head they had a need to fuel the voice with the correct guidance. Which means, I guess, that the first ones to figure out that they could actually control the voice legislated the stories (generated religious dogma) it should repeat and morality was born. Now in those times the voice in the head of most men was probably talking about getting laid about 95 % of the time and food about 3 % of the time...etc, etc, so they really didn't have the time to waste listening to other men speaking or asking directions.... let alone converse with, uh, ...I mean listen to women. Talking was not too useful as every man was just listening to that novel new voice in his head. Not much has actually changed today. I mean give or take a few percentage points. So that the actual activity of listening to a voice outside one's head, particularly a woman's voice may actually be distracting men from their most important task which is..... thinking about women..... within the bounds of a narrow context of repetitive behavioral patterns. Most likely genetically encoded by some supreme being with a very unusual sense of humor. Hence those other genetic wonders, male pattern baldness, nose and ear hair, athletes foot.... ((flatulence actually being one genetic trait that men have adapted as a means of non-verbal communication, competition, bonding, and amusement)) ........ I mean just what functions do those things have in the general scheme of things. Life....The Genetic riff, as it were, generated during some divinely inspired jam and reverberating through space that, having not been heard clearly by human males, but striking a resonance with and now embodied by human females cries endlessly to be heard through the voices of women. You just can not shut them up. They are planning the future of the human race....And by God they just have to talk about it.
Which I readily spotted as one of those tests...which can not be passed, a task with no joy for a successful completion. Very similar, it appears, to a question which should never be answered or even contemplated. One of those, "do these pants make me look fat", test questions that are asked at times...just to keep you on your toes.
How does one shut a woman up? Let me emphatically state that I don't view the "need to shut a woman up" as a universal need applying to any woman. However, given the premise that a particular woman, as in this case, desires shutting up, and in point of fact has requested it, rather emphatically........("Oh shut me up . . . . . Please!")......Well I am confronted with a conundrum on several levels. Is this anything that I would even consider doing? Does this jive with my sensitive guy of the 2000s side? Have I ever been in the presence of a woman that I wished would shut up? Well hell yeah......But, we come again to the notion of circumstantial values, the need of the moment. Are there any moral absolutes? A very difficult question to answer today as much as it was in pre-politically correct times. Can one argue that the ten commandments are moral absolutes, or are they preferred pathways through a wasteland of self promoting early human thugs lost to the control of their bicameral minds. Thinking that their thoughts were, in fact, the voice of God directing their actions. Made more confusing by the apparent redundancy of the human brain, which may have been even more pronounced in ancient times. As the left brain spoke to the right brain, many Greek soldiers in pleated leather skirts, with metal accessories, their loins girded and wearing the latest in laced up open toed footwear...may have had some serious confusion regards their sexual preferences let alone their mental identity and moral values. Men should not display their naked feet in public, you know. But I digress. So, as the left and right sides of the brain agreed upon their respective tasks and humans began to hear one voice in their head they had a need to fuel the voice with the correct guidance. Which means, I guess, that the first ones to figure out that they could actually control the voice legislated the stories (generated religious dogma) it should repeat and morality was born. Now in those times the voice in the head of most men was probably talking about getting laid about 95 % of the time and food about 3 % of the time...etc, etc, so they really didn't have the time to waste listening to other men speaking or asking directions.... let alone converse with, uh, ...I mean listen to women. Talking was not too useful as every man was just listening to that novel new voice in his head. Not much has actually changed today. I mean give or take a few percentage points. So that the actual activity of listening to a voice outside one's head, particularly a woman's voice may actually be distracting men from their most important task which is..... thinking about women..... within the bounds of a narrow context of repetitive behavioral patterns. Most likely genetically encoded by some supreme being with a very unusual sense of humor. Hence those other genetic wonders, male pattern baldness, nose and ear hair, athletes foot.... ((flatulence actually being one genetic trait that men have adapted as a means of non-verbal communication, competition, bonding, and amusement)) ........ I mean just what functions do those things have in the general scheme of things. Life....The Genetic riff, as it were, generated during some divinely inspired jam and reverberating through space that, having not been heard clearly by human males, but striking a resonance with and now embodied by human females cries endlessly to be heard through the voices of women. You just can not shut them up. They are planning the future of the human race....And by God they just have to talk about it.
Contemplating Seattle
I had crab cakes, with eggs Benedict, for breakfast in Seattle last weekend. They were browned, crunchy, breaded crab cakes with a wonderful texture like mashed potatoes inside; topped with poached eggs with those warm liquid yolks. And a pretty good, sort of nutty creamy, coffee in one of those oversize round china mugs. You know the type. You're tempted to wrap your hands around them for the comforting warmth rather than try to hold them by the handle. And in fact they are so large and bulky that you find using the handle to be uncomfortable. But the mug has got this edge that does not quite fit your lips. So you end up dribbling coffee down the mug where it dries and leaves these little tracks accusing you of being a bit sloppy, so that when you look at the mug later after it dries, you think, "I would not drink from that cold dirty mug". Or, worse yet, the coffee dribbles down your chin, the wet trickle heading for shirt or lap, and you are only a deft swipe with a napkin away from being apparently unable to even feed yourself. And you are embarrassed that as an adult you still can't drink from an awkward yet strangely comforting and at the same time, frustrating mug. This reminds me in many ways of my past marriage... Except that the waitress will always refill the mug with warmth if I ask, and with the right timing, I can enjoy the coffee and leave before the mug goes cold in my hands. Breakfast was free, the chef covered my bill, they, (the eggs) were late, because of some kind of mis-communication with the waitress. I left her a $10 tip. Feeling guilty, my favorite pastime, I left to walk over the Fremont Ave Bridge...
You know, where that life size bus stop sculpture is. The bridge superstructure is just a big curved gear rack; there is a fixed pinion gear arrangement on each side of the structure, and on both shores. The bridge halves pivot at the shoreline to lift their cantilevered ends above the channel and let the taller masted ships go by. Arguably, an anachronism, as the Highway Bridge towers overhead just a few hundred feet away. But this old bridge is as alive as its modern replacement is dead. People drive across it’s back feeling for the shudder and listening to the whine as their tires bite into the metal deck. As they pass they see the familiar metal vertebra coated thickly with chipped green paint. Below them the bridge decking has grown shiny with the polishing of their passing tires. As comforting as a parent who does not age. And they listen for the bridge to sing to them, and are reassured by the familiar song and the gentle rocking. I have chosen to come this way, they think.
I ordered a fresh pot of tea at the coffee shop down the street from the bridge. Sat upstairs by the window and watched the traffic go by below as it queued up for the bridge. From the angle I was at, I could not see any faces, just the drivers and passengers from the shoulders down. I found myself trying to interpret complex relationships from momentary out of context views of body language. Ha, another good description of my marriage.
I realized, sitting there, that I was slowly losing substance. In the years since the end of my marriage I had become as invisible to other people as I had been to my then wife. Or maybe I always was, but had just now come to understand it. In airports I was something that handed over a boarding pass and filled a seat, handed over cash and bought a sandwich, occupied a parking spot, was ahead or behind one of the visible people in line. It suddenly occurred to me that my absence was more apparent, in many instances, than my presence. I'd imploded my existence. I'm now a crater in the ether. Walk too close to me and experience deja vu.
You know, where that life size bus stop sculpture is. The bridge superstructure is just a big curved gear rack; there is a fixed pinion gear arrangement on each side of the structure, and on both shores. The bridge halves pivot at the shoreline to lift their cantilevered ends above the channel and let the taller masted ships go by. Arguably, an anachronism, as the Highway Bridge towers overhead just a few hundred feet away. But this old bridge is as alive as its modern replacement is dead. People drive across it’s back feeling for the shudder and listening to the whine as their tires bite into the metal deck. As they pass they see the familiar metal vertebra coated thickly with chipped green paint. Below them the bridge decking has grown shiny with the polishing of their passing tires. As comforting as a parent who does not age. And they listen for the bridge to sing to them, and are reassured by the familiar song and the gentle rocking. I have chosen to come this way, they think.
I ordered a fresh pot of tea at the coffee shop down the street from the bridge. Sat upstairs by the window and watched the traffic go by below as it queued up for the bridge. From the angle I was at, I could not see any faces, just the drivers and passengers from the shoulders down. I found myself trying to interpret complex relationships from momentary out of context views of body language. Ha, another good description of my marriage.
I realized, sitting there, that I was slowly losing substance. In the years since the end of my marriage I had become as invisible to other people as I had been to my then wife. Or maybe I always was, but had just now come to understand it. In airports I was something that handed over a boarding pass and filled a seat, handed over cash and bought a sandwich, occupied a parking spot, was ahead or behind one of the visible people in line. It suddenly occurred to me that my absence was more apparent, in many instances, than my presence. I'd imploded my existence. I'm now a crater in the ether. Walk too close to me and experience deja vu.
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