I need a naked matador to battle my inner demons
Not a rodeo clown to distract the menacing hordes
Not a huntsman to track and shoot the raging beasts
Not a hypnotist to soothe and calm the crying monsters
My demons,
As much of me as my good Graces,
As my unfulfilled desires,
As my greatest fears,
Must be treated with the dignity
That even my warm heart deserves
My demons demand a worthy champion
Bold and unbounded with a relentless fervor
Wrought with terrible symmetry against all my foes,
Who shall stand in awe before her
As they are honorably and utterly vanquished
My eyes itch. They really itch. Which is weird because I’m not holding anything sharp and haven’t just chopped up a bunch of hot peppers, both of which tend to induce the irrational need to rub one’s eyes.
My eyes are so itchy I can barely keep them open to write this (which I am sure I’ll use as an excuse for all the typos). My hypersensitivity to physical sensations doesn’t help. I notice the tiniest things. I’m like the Princess and the Pea. The tiniest irregularity is noticed. From the most subtle misalignment of a sock to ants crawling all over my body. No wait, the ants thing isn’t really that subtle and must admit doesn’t happen too often but if it did I would super notice.
Maybe that’s why I get vertigo sometimes. Oversensitive and overwhelmed by visual sensations. I get vertigo when I’m driving, which if course means now no one will ever let me drive again. But seriously, I have never been in an accident. I usually get vertigo when I’m driving on those big sky roads where the parallel lines merge together or when the road is lined by trees. Maybe it’s a tunnel thing which leads to a claustrophobia and my brains inability to reconcile the conflicting notion of a wide open space feeling like an enclosed space. Does not compute.
So maybe all my troubles come down to hypersensitivity. The root cause. I don’t have vertigo. I don’t have claustrophobia. I don’t have allergies. Those are just symptoms. I have hypersensitivity. Well, great. What does one do about that?
I suppose you can dull the senses. We’re pretty sure there are drugs out there that do that. The problem with the drug solution is that it dulls everything, not discriminatory. I don’t think I want to be dulled that way.
I think maybe a better way is to apply calmness. Not relaxation, but calmness. Stillness in the face of the cacophony of life.
I think my calmness will come through meditation. Stilling the waters. My own calm within the storm. If I can’t be less sensitive perhaps I can at least be more controlled.
One ring may rule them all
But two will bind us together.
Commitments hard as diamonds,
Bound to an infallible ideal
Designed to reflect change and weather sieges,
Daily remind us of choices made that
Cannot be unmade.
Remind us that choices bow to the commitment
And commitments bow to the ideal.
Ideals as hard as diamonds,
Opaque walls that muffle
Sight and sound,
Warnings and calls,
Cannot be scratched or broken
Impervious to persistence.
Free will as hard as diamonds,
Last resource of the damned
Refuge of the evolved,
Hides beneath the ring and
Waits
For the hammer on the anvil.
Musings on a Sparrow
Sparrow in the mouse trap
A fairy bound to the ground by a goblin’s chain
Flutter, flutter, sputter
Capabilities of flight rendered useless
By a sprung clamp no amount of flapping
Could dislodge.
Who will set him free?
Who will defy the goblin captor?
Who will fight for his freedom?
I will. I will be his champion.
With broom and stick I approach the
Shackled sparrow.
“Shhh. It’s OK my sweetie” I say in my
Best Dr. Doolittle Voice with my palms
Gesturing downward. “Be still”
And he was still.
One, two, three the trap is flipped.
I see the bloody, trapped leg.
“Oh Honey be still one more second.”
One, two, three and the clamp is lifted.
Hesitation, then flight and freedom.
Who will set the sparrow free?
I will.
Musings on Sheep
Dreams of writing something dark and
Deep slip out of consciousness when
All that comes to mind are sheep.
The visit to the farm,
Sheep paintings on the wall.
Sheep everywhere. Sheep, sheep, sheep.
Ah, but we do a disservice to the sheep
Who distract us by being woolly and cute and
Sometimes bring us sleep.
They don’t talk about their past.
They don’t talk about it at all.
A forgotten piece of the capitalistic puzzle
When they displaced the yeoman from their fields,
Sending them unprepared into a world
That didn’t know what to do with them.
The curds and whey and wool of social upheaval,
Never have so many followers changed the world so
Unwittingly.
Who will be the sheep of tomorrow? Baaa!
Who will lead where they follow? Baaa!
Curds and whey and bleu sheep cheese
Will take me to the dark and deep
And I’ll change the world while I sleep.
This is hard to admit. I was in a mall the other day. The Mall. The Mall of America. The mall was very busy. Parking was stressful, really stressful. Rush hour traffic jam stress is mild compared to the atmosphere of full-on white-knuckle, predatory, winner-take-all Mall of America parking.
Walking into the sterile, cacophonic hive sent me immediately into sensory overload. How do people ingest all these sights and sounds and smells? About forty-five seconds and I was done with that.
In my defense I was there for a good reason. And fortunately the destination was almost empty, perhaps because it had some cultural significance.
A travelling Beatles exhibition centered around the Beatle’s 1965 concert in Minneapolis. The centerpiece of the exhibit was backstage photos taking by the bands tour manager, up close and personal. Fascinating, un-orchestrated.
The exhibit tried to place the concert ion the greater context of American Beatlemania, from the beginning of their first tour in 1964 to their last concert in San Francisco in 1966, a span of two and a half years. The Beatlemania explosion is beyond my comprehension.
The truly fascinating part of the exhibit was that the last third was devoted to Beatles merchandise. I can’t remotely remember it all but made the exhibit worth seeing. At least a thousand pieces of memorabilia. Trading cards, bubble bath, board games, record holders, pennants, coloring books, lunch boxes, wigs and so on. My favorites were some small dolls that had no resemblance at all to any of the Fab Four. The mop top wigs were your only clues.
The fascinating part was not that the memorabilia existed but how much existed, how much was produced. Remember it was only two and a half years between their first concert in America to their last concert ever. I cannot even fathom what that would look like in today’s world. Is it even possible?
Imagine a band going viral and staying viral for two and a half years. Imagine every doo-dad and novelty manufacturer expending all efforts to keep up with demand for band phone covers and wristbands and whatever. It would be kind of freaky.
I suppose boy bands could be considered mini-Beatlemania events though that seems rather blasphemous to ponder. Please don’t throw rocks at me.
So I learned two things: Never go to the Mall of America on a holiday and the Fab Four continues to fascinate me.
The paintings hanging on the coffee shop wall
Look at the line of empty chairs and say,
“You are empty.”
The chairs look back and reply,
“You are two dimensional.”
“You are functional.”
“You are superfluous.”
“You are used.”
“You are forgotten.”
“You are of this world.”
“You are not.”
“People gaze at me.”
“People sit on me.”
“Life imitates art.”
“Art imitates life.”
“Shall we agree to disagree?”
“Shall we take this out back?”
“Why so contentious?”
“Doesn’t art need conflict?”
“Doesn’t a chair need a body?”
“If art talks does anybody listen?”
“Not if no one is there.”
‘Someone is coming.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Then we shall see.”
You’re not getting to the things you want to get to. Whether they are a passion or a hobby or a great idea you’re just not getting to them. You want them to be a priority but you’re unable to … Continue reading →
I recently painted my office. I had to move all the books off the bookshelves and everything out of the room.
Furniture is starting to move back into the office. Book shelves first. Now the books. Now the organizing of the books.
I have a strong sense that I should organize the books. I like to keep it simple. Start with basic genres, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama. That’s as sophisticated as I get. Alphabetical within genre.
Half way through the sorting I begin to think that organizing all this really sucks: partially because I can barely remember the order in which the alphabet progresses and partially because I’d rather do anything in the world other than organize. I often think it would be preferable just to give the stuff away than to struggle with organizing.
I like things that are organized. I just don’t want to do it. I would have made a lousy librarian.
I just wonder why I dislike organizing so much. Maybe I don’t like it because I’m so bad at it and it takes way more mental energy than I think it should. But I really think it’s about time. Time spent doing anything but that, even if that something is doing nothing, or as I like to all it, just being, is time better spent.
Time is priority. Priority is time.
Or is it my minimalism? Less possessions less organizing. Or did the dislike of organizing create the minimalism? The chicken and the egg here. I suppose deep analysis of origins here isn’t entirely necessary.
I can purge almost anything but books. Good thing I acquire books at the rate I read, which is very slow.
I need a naked matador to battle my inner demons
Fortress of Dissolitude 