Revisiting Flight (Myth of Separation)

Part ONE  -  Bird watching

                                                                                 Blue Jays:

   

                                                           come back to this:

separated by one heartbeat                      one 

heartbeat tactile                    a gasp

~a lifetime.

 I can sit,

 floor center and hold

 in my hands                 words, the uberspill from cupped-palmscattered around me.

to other eyes finding me here, just now, i must seem to have been 

searching for something -

torn my world asunder seeking,,,

futile.             futility

 ~ now 

defeated at the center ...

word scatter, 

spread seeds, the 

hand gestured

 release                           how a wrist spins length into opening fingers 

birds come in a phrase      unfinished

 FLIGHT

a triplicate triple felled - "shatter" - an incidental crash

pulling forth response upon encounter, 

then stopped.

speaking in unison - sharing the 

same thought

       same time. 

without intention.

you are not alone

I am not

 at peace with circumstance 

yet                                  

rest in it             the inevitable wrestle 

the tug of "if only" that moves thought and catch/resists time -

why                   didn't             i just

 leave before 

... too late

"your 'turn and run' muscles aren't firing properly." -

a physical therapist once told me this - yes really. 

travel each breath long,            long as a dream RECURRING IN A LIFE 

that is done.

fear's elaborate presentation -

a rolling whisperstretchingtight 

still stretching - remaining 

steely.                              startled into flight,

birds and parts of my own soul

respond to fear by reaching layers of wing across

the unknown            ........             holding there

without pattern in something wilder than chaos 

- unnamed and opening 

 into expanse -

ever shy of certainty un-coddled  

 locked down safe from safety

something in me

a capacity 

a rhythm

a line drawing and how again 

 the line's sometimes tangle

- momentum

ravels taut -             slowing, mottled irony - 

used light through overworked clarity; eyes adjust.

one becomes too used to the aged, 

dim daily din daily riveted to three steps ahead of

wherever the next footfall presents 

what this moment implies.

how to comport oneself through time's mine field   [?]       not a pessimistic question - just practical - just asking because sometimes times is like this: spinning dials dwelling in lost translations,                              from deeply grained to pristine surface.  

beneath simple speech, whatever the words, your dreamer-voice dreamy,    carrying otherworldly yearning; bones stretching past illusion into fine clear filament maneuvers, windows bending like sheets caught in earth's           warm breath hanging time's broken lines out to dry.    

 quiet webs built for beauty,                 not appetite's tight heartless threat, 

and wings             that don't stick to outdated journeys -  

there is no blood lust - just light - banded, filtered, carried on thin-plated sheets that reject reflection upon narcissus - ENOUGH. 

enough already.      already enough 

just now.    elegant thought 

without quest for knowledge. thought

 because sometimes thought just 

sets out  

and the wakened heart 

warily,

courageously

 follows.  

After aftershock after SHOCK after

 shock                                 

            shock after

a journey interrupted before much begun and then

same again, again seeking refuge -

bomb shelter itself, 

is the bomb.

the aftermath,

 where nothing adds up: 

they have habituated into using the word

trauma - this word does not help her - its tones ring dull.

she paces the length of speech,

sidelong glances past surface, to its vast

 lack. she loosens, streams into 

the gaps - before, during,

after ... expands.  

she's not spoken 

for weeks. 

 

silence, acutely exhausted. 

listen, nod, 

understand within a 

flat drop abandonment - 

herself of herself 

assuming form, lost

in the sound of 

sound.

                resuming deep study - subject:  the sky, reeducating herself on color and things 

before things had names, before 

the divisive unravel.  in the beginning of the end: word-ing - 

intellect-launched capacity to worship

itself.  cutting apart each

 moment 

in 

aphasia-like 

halts.  

there is no third person,

no different drum.

winds heavy with the scent of other lives,

leaking wet lavender brush fire - an arsonist's emotive pressure -

sore, inflamed and livid.  fast curves, stay focused on the yellow line.

somewhere, the elements collide and make 

rain made heavy with pulled down dust.

elevator drop-fail to catch itself - thunder shifts her heart to an anatomically 

unlikely location. 

in correct incorrect

- alleys full of couches without pillows, gutted appliances, dying plants 

and she grasps why some pretty things get ran dumbly

thrown away - lightening frames the inconsequential 

with reverence - this picture, here in the alley

 of her 

in an alley, gets missed by 

museum curators in the thick 

subzero.                                

warmer months, walking below a streetlight that flickers and dies - 

right as she's passing under.  does this happen to everyone 

or so often?   it's happened again and again ...

to happen.

the possibilities of taking one firm step towards 

any compass point leaves her spinning.

smoke odor, burning plastic, 

she walks through electricity towards anything carrying a pulse.

it is all carnival; there are men in

 shadow and she hears earth shifted by their feet.

no entrance to focus on, entranced, scattered energy,

all the places she's never been to, pulling. 

half sleepwalk, half-life, half empty - becoming another element, 

tasting salt - life giving. controlling the moon, the pressure 

of blood, a cliff eaten back, is still 

a cliff.  thoughts like and unlike this adrift and crashing against 

her stillness, in waves, their birth and aliveness,

 rich stores. moment initiates,

again, again.  

everything is always new. she is too tired to smile in the throes of her own madness 

and too polite to air its bright gloss tangles, all spit spark and greased slick TICKING.

she prefers incoherence, cacophony abstracted - this, she needs

so much. legs feel weak though they are

stronger than a man's - vocal chords sting with a song that has wanted inside her 

for longer than longing - soft and hoarse and filled still 

with ugly poetry men whisper to women 

who are lost.

she doesn't know why he touched her or his name -

 disconnected - a visitor to the hour

    un   frightened.

old memory. no safer from her than she is from it. 

un.  huge hands full of calluses that catch in her hair  

pinned down by the centrifugal force of 

her own awareness - coherent and calm and listening

to light burn out somewhere very far away 

but this streetlight, she was not there to see.

-   blood and ink - every writer tattoos this 

world. its flesh says only yes. 

even to the graffiti.

an utterance of night

that is curative - a salve murmur.   

the human perfume and chant in scent 

heard suddenly as if just delivered 

but vortexed in the old, old.  

ugly wax flowers fighting sunlight and steam 

- places where earthquakes occur daily - 

the rocks move more quickly - you can witness their breath

and direction - a willingness towards courage

to love - again - or just, in continuum: still and yet still. 

but travel only during nights 

without clouds - drink only one love's sweat and paint that likeness

in the sand - right on the fault line.  we all have them.  

she remembers this vow - she almost speaks - 

instead, closes her eyes.   

she's not spoken for weeks.  acute exhaustion 

in silence. she listens nods understands within 

flat drop abandonment - herself of

herself and how it assumes form studying 

the sky, reeducating herself on color and things before 

things 

had 

                               names ...

                                                                   

before 

the divisive 

unravel.  in the beginning of the end          cutting 

apart each

 moment 

in 

aphasia-like 

halts   ........  

Stuff the Cleaning Lady Thinks About ...

                                                             

                                                                                                                       

                                                              (Making Beds)

                                                                     not a poet not a poem - just

...thought quilts - lots of people collect scraps - scrap metal, bits of cloth, any scrap to fit a scrap book..

members of quilting bees save fabric swatches in  bags - my scraps are images, feeling tones,

moments of or from, then hunting past                     the material world;

the bag proper, is me, i suppose.  

writing, i grab at random, a handful, and  put them 

where they already actually are (together) sutured with scars sometimes, or

sometimes light; threads silky and fine - no matter what, they always

                             fit so easy.

in me, a wrinkled mess that in graced nano-second flash-inspiration, can be pulled taut, 

a fitted sheet - metaphors shift, tumble then settle back towards what is so vast, pointless

 and crucial,                          and so ascendant to a

thinking mind's splicing-ly specific topping and popping off topic-subject-word

one           at         a             time                                   logic is unreal somehow

tidily ugly amidst awestruck speechless everything all at once

don't mind me

 or my opinion

i am without drawn conclusion - drawing blanks, snapping open a blanket, smoothing 

a bumpy quilt aka comforter - (quite sew, for me) pulled up around my chin, i am not going out there,

 risking the divine, to debate or defend, fist on table, heart off-line,

                                                              ever again

                                                   (Dusting)

i don't believe in ghosts - he said - the dead desert us.

ghosts are among the living. (this to me, sounded so much

like statements of belief - like ghosts he could not see - but i said

nothing).                   yet even still, his words leave me deserted

and haunted.                   waking in the grey slivers at dawn's lead edge, to sweet

scented sharp warning: the shape of my mind and this day itself, are awry now and

from now on, strongly influence the shape of the moon, 

the moon the moon 

so much better than the sun,

 taking fierce light head on, to let me

look deep without fear, and wide eyed into its calm

 face. meanwhile, the first bird

long before dawn, somewhere between 3 and 2 a.m. folds itself open in and ode to

fractal patterns, reminding me that i am the green breath of a 

fallen forest which did make a sound in its falling, regardless of whom did

 or did not show up

to hear.

                                                                  ( [yes, she does do] Windows)

imagined absence beating back

illusion's persistence within cause/effect. enormous

moth hung at the window.

i hear only wing shuffle.

a deck of cards played 

in a gamble

at light's jawline.

my heart swarms there, held firm against the backdrop of "instead."

                                                      (Kitchen - wipe down stovetop, counters, sink)

thin-lidded, weak filter, eyes still feel you

 bright on the other side. 

 a glow -   out and far and to

and fro  from a cloud front

in backslide.

agile and weightless, thief-like anguish -

a flash temperature i can't

measure against my own skin, making itself 

clear as an "is not" is not there to touch, though

it does so touch me.  flowing slick, sibilant winter

entrained to the same soul same ol' silence, sown in

an in between that snuck through harvest time less

                              (Dishes - sink is below a window where she can see a factory)

few words in language, few that hold meaning to coax

unrest towards its fuller form: beauty - she asks much - but so gently, take care not to slip

by her request - an ash flicked off consciousness (like that) a pencil

lead feathered through soft paper, impressed and made right - just write

with greater speed than a hand can

longhand til the page lets loose innocuous flame

- sustaining itself yet unconsumed.

insurgent sensor

ship

in a base fog. the very ground lifts,

disperses, engages speech -

supple yet weak and loose-pivoting round through stifled inventions.

still, the lunar high pulse presses on - the first longing

to make it all last - silenced in and by its own

ineffable outpour it cannot edit or retrieve.

again abandoned again, left behind,

breathlessly leaning into the last breath where, i hope,

my ghost waits

and believes. 

onomatopoeia -

                                                 (ONOMATOTREEah)         

                                               

                                           

                                                        Traumnesia:

 a loss of recall, abandoned by all the shimmering echoes once left by life itself. . .                                                                       stranded, untethered in an ache for          

                                                          remembrance 

of what song(?),  once  carried in the heart, yet still uncontained, merging towards the tree line at the same point that the tree line moves back into my being, singing ... singing ....

 how one speaks to oneself:   aware of the participation with thoughts that rise too fast to be caught in words.                   my private lexicon.   recognized or no, every human has one ... part of what limits us to humanity ...

meanings, associated images scatter seed so softly - across sawdust or concrete -  growth nonetheless occurs - so swift, unconscious feeling tones below liminal lines - if pulled  together to produce some physical version of a book - a dictionary, "airy" indeed - mine, floating up out of the reader's hands and bidding or forbidding them to follow - come move through the world with me

                                                                       i will show you my language 

 ~words not defined with more words in endless tedium but defined with images -  things more often found in scrap books, or Lost and Tossed Antique Shops ....  

however,  even "cat" would not then simply have a picture of a cat - wish in a way it were that simple.

                                                                     it is not - not like that.     a tree would certainly not have a picture of a tree.  

but the word wisdom. 

there would be the tree.  having stated that words make poor tools for explaining or defining inner language, i now set out to use them towards explaining why i feel this is so

... a fool's errand.      

                                                       Defining Wisdom 

over the last year, the "wisdom tree" has become an  ungroomed forest tree with just a few limbs, maybe a couple,  fecund and foliaged, but most are bare: no longer growing or showing signs of new life. the whole of it still potent with a tender volition, it is clearly a life force - inclusive -shimmering with a silence that is and does what it does in love - at least that is what i see ... 

that's what i see and this is the pivotal point - how it does that - how it "knows" which branches to leave alone.   there are problems with that question in itself and why knowledge has NOTHING  to do with my dictionary's wisdom.           

                                    HOW TO DRAW A TREE

 recalling a favorite art class (and teacher) in college - on a warmer day nearing spring break, he sent us out to (wait for it...)  draw a tree.  the class scattered at distance for better perspective.  i sat with my knee resting on a big base root at the point it began its subterranean plunge. 

our teacher let us work for a couple hours, then gather to share what we'd done.   everyone else, and i mean every one - had a full drawing of the whole tree. lots of talented people in this class, so they were all very, very good .   mine was  ... i don't know .... it was nowhere near complete, and miniscule as compared to the whole; part of a part of a limb - i'd worked on one segment of a branch - striving to include every junction and crook  ~ following one, then going back and REALLY trying to be true to each unraveled, twining limb and its countless offshoots with each of those, same again,  sending out sending's ... from stick to twig to tendril.   thankfully, no leaves yet - imagine the vein schemes in every one of those  (and again, the root system with its mostly unseen implications)  -  i painstakingly over-describe what i went through in that couple of hours, intentionally,  i looked up synonyms (which I RARELY do but had few in my own recall)  for "branching out" and there aren't many that satifactorily invoke that thing trees do so well - the exponential tributary phenomenon. it occurs all over ... our bodies and the natural world - my drawing was an earnest attempt at the impossible, a pencil draft of possibility - looking back, i think too, i was drafting (most especially)  an image of the way my thinking mind presents thought itself. 

train of thought ...   not - no clear linear clean bullet train where word by word, one idea connects to the next in logical fashion and order, A pretty good metaphor for this - Lego blocks  -  clean fit  -    this to this - things make sense, yes yes that clicks for me - very satisfying -   

  

                                                           a problem: one place to fit one block (maybe two),  the Lego chosen is  not the only one that would have worked, though. we wish it so simple. it would be easier to be right. but there are so very many Legos  that also might have fit       

                              so we argue about this - which one the right one, well, the one i chose of course, and no other, ad infinitum, plus one .. that and not this, clickity click .. this and not that click clack - .

 and we surround ourselves with folks 

that agree with us                    

 because they are smart ...

like us 

and .... 

 - it's always already never  been Legos for me - the inherent ache in communicating via human speech - a grief built into its lack -            Legos cannot touch .... much.  not really.    "When you come to a fork in the road, take it (Yogi Berra)."    sage advice ... and humbling -  this conundrum, drumming my fingers at every fork with various varying prongs, pronging on and on .... 

                                          what rises to the surface, at a granular level - what word chosen in stark relief against that which is absent and must be left behind                                   as words must be one 

at a time. despite so many other possible directions in the might have been              

The Lego Solution does have its appeal - on the surface - a false comfort offered in  the age of reason - through its mechanisms we become logically "inoculated to mystery (Joseph Campbell)."  In my dictionary -years of acquired knowledge or learning or erudite scholarship or IQ or books read do not add up to wisdom 

... .... 

 French philosopher Derrida will not use the word KNOW unless he puts an x through it -Peter Attia (physician and researcher)  comments about research and the scientific method:  "no thought structure is right, but at particular times for particular people, they can be profoundly helpful .... until they quit working ...  (but) even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes." his skepticism might offend, but Ben Bikman PhD and many other care full researchers point out that science SHOULD be most skeptical, especially of one's own agenda and confirmation bias. We have lost this and  scientific enquiry has been largely replaced by consensus and science fiction.  

RESEARCH (versus)   INVESTIGATION (verses) 

 met so many people that "do their own research" by typing questions into their favorite search engine and clicking on a link they are predisposed to prefer.  This generally comforts them and reinforces their Lego pieces are the right ones. if they accidentally find something counter to this process, they can click again or talk to someone that agrees with them and will help them explain away any horrible encounter that may have rocked their certainty. 

whereas investigation requires an investment- it's time consuming, confusing and uncomfortable, if not painful (this might be a sign you are actually DOING it). it's likely to deconstruct some of your favorite Lego blocks down to bare boned false presumptions (those self evident truths we take as given to be correct but are often ... not).  investigation seeks asking unanswerable questions that open into more of the same and call one to wander into places where you listen to those people, once so disagreeable to your own sensibilities, and realize your beliefs were  lacking - missing something or maybe... yes ... ok.  you were wrong. you made a mistake ....     

i had a  counsellor that oh so gently corrected me in my word choices - when i said i had made a mistake and was wrong  -   she clucked her tongue and said a better way of putting that (espoused by more than one dharma teacher i've listened to)  is to say i was unskillful -

 i thought about that and well - a couple things - it could be something lost in translation to western culture, but i don't see this semantic shift as helpful (this probably deserves much more musing and elaboration -as does, about everything ... to my point - but  i will press on). Mis-take - what's your take on this?  ever been asked that?  what's your interpretation of .... something - and that is all we ever do as humans, and so. if you misinterpret. or mis understand - which is another thing we often do as humans - it is a mis-take.   i don't need flowery language to obscure this - it isn't a bad thing. i think it is quite skillful to say i was wrong. it was a mistake. 

i heard a story about Gandhi- i don't have the details, but he was at a huge conference and disagreed with someone about a line of text from a book they were discussing - they went back and forth - until someone provided the actual book so they could look it up. when it was revealed that Gandhi was incorrect, he started to laugh gleefully and say over and over, i'm  wrong, i'm wrong .....!!!

 a joyous event - i applaud such a gentle rebellion against hubris, and the unfortunate human stance that we could ever be "right."  being right is a fantastic way to stunt growth.  we risk dependence on it as more and more individual's habitually begin sentences with "I am a..." and then  identify with ideologies, labels, organizations - I am a democrat, nra member peta founder bra burner pacifist authority ... please see the sign in my yard and correlative bumper sticker .... gonna be hard to shift those beliefs if one's me maker is defined and infused by them.  

Lego my ego - a tree doesn't categorize or cling to any limb  - or judge its self as compared to its neighbor  - or perhaps even do the "self" thing at all - it's innate "wisdom" to know  which branches require attention so they will foster leaves and growth and which hold a dormant place in time at present time - still part of the whole, but inert in forward motion - archival somehow for the system - connected to a deeper ring in the trunk from a gone season.   

my mind's splatter paint ruminative tendency, heat lightening volleyed between memory and imagination - looking through its wild spinning schema  - towards them - the trees - how to hold an old branch without returning and tangling through its dormant intricacy - lost in replay  - all  the different reasons it's no longer in my present life. - neural branching beliefs and habits are tricky, those symbolizing relationship with others - particularly difficult - especially with those, now gone - by death or decision,  theirs or mine - i do not want them cut away -   there my be a place for bonsai or landscape services,  but not in my dictionary. not in my heart.

 - some of the most comforting, loving relationships i have currently are with beings (people and a dog)  that died some time ago. i still consult them and our connection is as good or better now than when they were alive - what about a branch like that?  still growing? just sketched in smoke, and only deeply past dusk - expansive where no one can see?  it still shapes me. 

 

                                           

                                                       Let go the Lego   

pushed far enough, most metaphors and verses start to break down.  left empty and open on wonder's doorstep and there is                                   - the branch  - in winter, full of dead leaves - how? the winds have gusted up to 70 mph amidst blizzard sub-zero, but still they 

did not let go.  

                                                   in mid-january, right after a cluster of yet more sub zero,   i noticed limbs - several - 

still in still semi-frigid, long shadow, holding already green buds - i broke one open because i couldn't believe -  it was not mummified from a past season, but fresh, sappy and bendy (and wishing i'd minded my own business and not done that).  what is that? my business?    maybe to share this, 

in a what ever way of some how, even with no one to listen - an awkward anonymous author setting  down word bunches, heart wrenched and run-on long towards  an ironic, silent offering ... a wordless, defining moment...  

  how many past times, passed by, unseeing, because we have the word "tree" blocking intimacy with   that being or phenomenon that has little to do with the word or concept (Legos tend to do what they are).    

                                                              the season of winter.   

 levels the playing field. not as a season of death, absence of life ...you simply can't tell - life might await anywhere in continuum -  is the branch without buds or leaves dead?    can it feel me here asking  - can it feel ...                                          WHAT IS THE      FEELING                         in feeling  from the inside out, without out or in - liberated from description and proclaiming.      then         saying, without script and reverence without scripture, scripting love and service without lip service                    questions not towards answer              questions branching into more of their own kind in kind  askance,               not toward eureka exclamation but a soft honor of possibility             humbled at the              anterior of what's possible  at all,                                                                                                                             and that most dear                       the  possible connection with a thought or another soul - as if i could ever be aloof to this, to you, whether you are here now or far gone, 

 those portrait lines retrace and skin scent rises ascendant, hidden fallen into the understory. 

if you are gone 

i will not fear you for that absence; 

 i will still sometimes call and recall you, aware there can be no voice on the wind to answer.  and in this i am fully human (humus - of the soil) and i don't know what to do 

 about that beautiful lively branch hacked away with a dull blade and a twisting fist.  how does wisdom carry this?  .

. 

                                     

                                                                  phantom limb syndrome

                                                                     2023 Christmas Tree

neverrmind  -forgetta bough dit -   what IS the nevermind - where is it - what is trapped or lost there - ?

  ~ hold the weight of absence with a strength that won't notice or complain about burden - 

                           dynamic memorial, without rumination -

                                       poet tree in motion -   . 

   

no recovering - just uncovering  

messages i sent to myself for so very long, refusing  to sign for delivery...   

every tip of every limb in its suchness, 

with or without a bud, in prophetic susurration - 'til hushed on the  weathered rim of unknowing,

                             whether it opens or not - suspended, ever in arrival 

                            upon a horizon of tender, intuitive brilliance, 

                       creating a collaborative netting to hold the moonlight secure, 

                                    yet free in its  sojourn  through NOW's vastness. 

 "  ....   who we are is how we mourn .... (line from past entry somewhere in this blog)."