Luna Gardens

 

Earth floated over Luna Gardens 

like a blue marble on black velvet.  

The artificially augmented sunlight 

filled every corner of this verdant space

surrounded by the bluish-green glow 

of hermetically sealed glass and steel.

But the rocks were real and the plants

had crossed space as sleeping seeds

only to awaken & grow in their new home 

to gift oxygen to their fellow travelers.

It was a home away from home where 

symbiosis sustained life in cooperation

(not competition which had become 

the bane of those unfortunate earthlings).

***

Escape Velocity

 

What is the 

escape velocity 

of an 

Angelic Being?

What is the 

needed veracity 

for a blind 

man unseeing?

It is the 

certainty of Faith.

Of knowing 

and being known.

It is the

conquering of fear

when all 

else have flown.

***

The Incubator

 

The unconscious mind is 

an incubator of ideas that

form and float to the level

of consciousness through

dreams and free roaming 

thoughts that call it out.

***

Liminal Limitations

 

I stand at the door that leads to the liminal space of life.

It is a finite space between two doors: birth and death.

It is a mysterious maze with what seems to be too many

possibilities, the terror of choice charging every particle.

It is no wonder so many barrel through the black door 

prematurely to escape the burden of living & choosing.

But I think it is important to choose life in all its liminal 

limitations, looking for love in the cracks and crevices.

***

Looking

> One looking forward - One looking back <

A mix of anticipation and regret. 

A fear of squandered potential.

Time has told and will tell.

***

Becoming Human

Can you remain human in a rigid thought system?  I would say that it makes it much more difficult and, at the very least, it stunts your spiritual growth.  I believe it is important to understand this because everything “evil” is connected to dehumanization in some form or manner.

It seems to me the hallmark of such a system is being stuck in an adolescent or even pre-adolescent stage of development where immaturity and insecurity demand things be either black or white.  When things begin to bleed into grayishness anxiety arises and can be seen as an existential threat rather than what it really is: growing pains.  It is the process of coming into the realness-of-what-is which isn’t mindful of our biases, feelings, or skewed psychological needs.

The good news, in my estimation, is that reality bends the arc of suffering towards healing and that love underlies it all.  If you touch a hot stove it will burn you.  If you drink bleach it will make you sick.  If we become aware of how unhealthy certain things are we have the opportunity to choose differently and grow.

So, that is the challenge.  Begin with some reflection in a kind of humble self-appraisal, not assuming you are right but understanding that you are broken and in need of healing.  If you can begin to peek behind this curtain it becomes possible to bring others along side and say “Look back here!  What do you see?”  It is a shared journey we are all on after all.

***

Sleep

 

Sleep is like putting yourself in a timeout 

when 

the world wants to take more than it should.

Maybe that is why I love it so much.

Not to mention the mystical powers it 

bestows

allowing me to play music I otherwise

can’t or float and then fly into a dark sky.

Sleep is sometimes called “the little death”

whereby

you escape an overwhelming world but

only for a very short period of time.

“To die, to sleep - to sleep perchance to 

dream. 

Ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep 

of death what dreams may come.”

(Shakespeare always says it best)

***

Me & Vadim

 

Me and Vadim 

American and Frenchman 

somewhere in Bratislava.

Steely stare.

So much hair!

Self aware.

Young and tireless

rolling cigarettes as

is the European way.

At a Peter Gabriel concert

(ten dollars for a ticket!)

in the summer of 1994.

***

Throwing Shade

 

Something I’ve noticed in these recent weeks of Spring as my hostas have emerged and flowers bloomed is that something has fundamentally changed with my five decorative bushes that line the space between my front porch and short sidewalk.  

I planted them five years ago when we first moved here and they have remained a faded bluish green with no change in size.  Some years there have been troubling beigey-brown patches where some of the bristles had dried up and died, or nearly so.

This year about early to mid-May I saw something that surprised me.  They were actually a bit bigger this year and more startling was the fact that there was new growth around the tops sprigging out in new directions with a light yellowish-green tint.

It’s Jennifer who figured out the huge oak tree had been shading so much of the front yard that not enough sun was getting to them.  And now that I look around I see other plants are benefiting from the lack of the large shadow canopy of the oak.

And boy did I mourn the loss of that magnificent tree!  But now I’m wondering if I’m overly shadowing my children in my need to soak in the sun and somehow depriving them of sustenance by way of being over-directive?  It’s a thought.

***

Mr. Squirrel & the Apocalypse

Oh Mr. Squirrel, perched on the ledge
eyeing me as my dog is going potty.
You’re surely braver than you should be
but maybe you’ve seen this ritual before.

Charming chartreuse chair, I’ll sit in this
unlikely nook thinking my quiet thoughts
about what was, what is, and is to come
(apocalyptic, but in the restorative sense).

A new Heaven and a new Earth as I was
told as a child by my well meaning parents
on the edge of a small town by a corn field
that stretched out into a fecund forever.

***

The Orange Bracelet

 

It had been on my wrist for a solid four to five months, but today it finally gave up the ghost at the gym, completely worn through.

It was an orange braided bracelet about the circumference of a thin spaghetti noodle, or “pasghetti” as she used to call it.

She made it by weaving colored thread in a technique that gave it evenly spaced stylized knots, a lovely bit of spontaneity.

I wore it in the sun and in the rain, in the shower and while planting flowers.  Time and wear wore it out, faded and tattered.

But I couldn’t bring myself to take it off until it fell off of its own frazzled accord.  It was her’s to give but mine to cherish and protect.

Now I am no longer bound by the bracelet.  I miss the connecting thread beautifully spun between our hearts, father and daughter.

***

I am a Mountain to Some

 

I am a mountain to some.  Towering over the landscape as they look up at my craggy nose and elongated face.  Never mind I am not talking about people, awed or not.  I am sitting under a tree in a foldable chair at my daughter’s field hockey practice on a Monday night.

I felt self-important for nearly a moment.  What I did not tell you was that those to whom I am a mountain are the bugs that suddenly found my appearance baffling but not unwelcome.  There were several of the same kind, tiny and green, but then an ant and others as well.

I swept them all off with an initial burst of disdain.  But now I feel bad.  They are just curious about this outsized interloper who has set himself in the place where they live and strive to survive.  Oh, now one is crawling straight down my screen.  I’ll try to ignore him.

And a bird is pecking around not five feet away.  It is ignoring me if I remain still and hill-like.  I am not quite mountainous to this significantly larger creature who eats bugs.  Maybe it is envious its meal has chosen me as a refuge.  It’s nice to feel the breeze blowing.

***

TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO

 

I bought this book at our local library’s used book sale in a state of pure nostalgia for my childhood in the 70’s and early 80’s.  Comic books and SciFi/Fantasy paperbacks were my primary source of entertainment as a kid.  They telescoped me out to the far reaches of the universe and then microscoped me in to the equally wondrous innerverse as I stood between the two in a kind of nexus of awe and wonder.

In was an active process of the imagination and required some work on the front end when I first started reading and I had to have a dictionary at my elbow to learn new words I’d never heard spoken or seen written on a page before.  I was exercising my brain muscle in the most thrilling of ways, eventually becoming all gain and no pain.

In this regard I do feel a bit sorry for kids these days who have had these stories heaped upon them but in a passive mode of taking in an image that is already created for them and spoon fed through a TV, laptop, iPad, or smart phone.  It appears the phones have been the ones to become “smarter” in this context.

But here is “To Your Scattered Bodies Go” by Philip Jose Farmer.  What a title!  I’d read some of his books as a kid but not this particular one or any of them in his Riverworld series for that matter, though that series was definitely on my TBR list before my interests began to change in my late teens.  This copy was $1.25!  That was money a kid could get his hands on by scouring ditches and dumpsters for empty coke bottles the grocery store would give you a dime a piece for.  And that back page with books listed for sale as low as 75 cents!  It even gives you the publisher’s address at the bottom in case you can’t find it locally and they will mail you a copy from New York City if you add 25 extra cents.  

Yes, that odd underutilized institution known as “The Post Office”.  Nothing electronic about it.  Just pen, paper, and stamps to buy these things along with pranks, gag gifts, and magic tricks that I loved (like fake doggy doo, X-ray glasses, the fly in an ice cube, a dog whistle, “snappy” gum that actually snaps unsuspecting fingers, etc).  As I made more money going into my early to mid-teen years I had to become familiar with where to get money orders and how to fill them out.  The days of sending cash had passed and I was growing up with more expensive interests, even if that mostly just meant buying hardback books instead of paperback books or comics.

A legacy of all of this is that even now when I visit a website I am not interested in playing the video to see what information is being conveyed.  I prefer to read it in the article itself or as the transcription.  My brain wants to see the words and actively work out the meaning at its own pace and leisure.  It shows my age perhaps but I am at an age where that doesn’t matter to me anymore.

***