Curiousty Killed the Cat

We past corridors, your slick smooth

Gait sliding easily along

While I tapped my impatience

Behind you.

The marvels behind locked

And frosted doors grinned in

Their secret hidings.

I wanted to peer under their

Dusty doorframes

And fractured hinges to the cold

Marble swirls of their guarded floors.

But each moment I stooped,

Head bend at an unsightly angle

Hand and cheek burnt frozen

And stretched,

Took you further up and further absent

Till your fading beauty could

Only be glimpsed through

Slitted and focused eyes.

Fickle Peace

There is no telling with peace.

It steals into the brain quietly,

nothing so intrusive and blatant

as doorbells or invitations.

Instead it slips coolly through the cracked window

with the fresh air and smell of approaching fall,

the musty browns and crisp oranges.

It lingers as long as you take no notice,

filling in your routine gestures

with its simple mulberry glow.

Yet, when gawked at it bends and flees

taking the draft of autumn's brisk air along.

The doors that have been slowly creaking open

slam.

And you avert your gaze,

hoping it will be fooled into believing

that you never looked, but it won't.

And you will, instead, survive

by moving aimlessly around the house,

shutters closed and locked waiting

for your brain to stop spinning and leave room

for the soft return of fickle peace.

Clearness

by Richard Wilbur

There is a poignancy in all things clear,

In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning.

Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water

We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.

And feel so when the snow for all its softness

Tumbles in adamant forms, turning and turning

Its perfect faces, littering on our sight

The heirs and types of timeless dynasties.

In pine-woods once that huge precision of leaves

Amazed my eyes and closed them down a dream.

I lost to mind the usual southern river,

Mud, mist, the plushy sound of the oar,

And pondering north through lifted veils of gulls,

Through sharpening calls, and blue clearings of steam,

I came and anchored by a fabulous town

Immaculate, high, and never found before.

This was the town of my mind's exacted vision

Where truths fell from the bells like a jackpot of dimes,

And the people's voices, carrying over the water,

Sang in the ear as clear and sweet as birds.

But this was Thule of the mind's worst vanity;

Nor could I tell the burden of those clear chimes;

And the fog fell, and the stainless voices faded;

I had not understood their lovely words.

Kindle woes

For some reason I don't like the idea of kindles. Its hard for me to pinpoint reasons, logical reasons that is, but there it stands. I liked this...

"Kill Your Kindle"

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=7478

On self, randomness and a desire to blog.

Caution: Aimlessness ahead.

I often wonder what compels people to blog, to write their thoughts down onto a blank screen where there is a chance that others will see (a higher or lower chance depending on the person writing). I often wonder why I blog. What is this urge? Honestly, I have nothing very significant to say at this moment and the only reason I'm typing is from an impulse to type.

Maybe blogging is just a desire to be published without the hassle of actually writing something worth publishing. I mean, that crazy button down on the left side of the screen saying "PUBLISH POST" is a pretty compelling feature. All the sudden I feel much more important than I did 5 minutes ago with a simple click of a mouse (or whatever the thing on laptops is called.... a leech, maybe, since its attached)

Maybe its just a desire for connection. I don't know who all reads these posts. I know of two people. I would not be surprised if they were the only two. If we throw our thoughts out there, though, who knows who will stumble upon them and convey sympathy with our strange mind (now our has turned into I, the royal plural) and then maybe we will feel some kind of moments peace, a somehow realization that we are partially understood.

I don't know. Though, come to think of it, I understand some people's blogging tendencies: the ones that have an agenda, a thought they want to circulate, a product. I, however, have no such thing, unless the product is myself. I would expand but I'm not sure I want to enter that realm. Even if it is truth.

Somehow, for me at least, I think blogging is a way to work at being okay with myself, as silly as this sounds. I'm beginning to realize the intricacies of the differences of me from others, or of others from others. The second sentence relates to first, I swear. More than realization of differences, I am beginning to see the beauty. I want to refrain from sounding cheesy t.v. show on you, but I think there is some truth to the fact that we must learn to be happy with ourselves (not too happy, maybe, we are a fallen people, but I don't want to complicate this more than I must). At least happy in our uniqueness and okay with the way our mind works, okay enough to put one's insignificant rambling thoughts out there. I'm reminded of a lovely line from Phoebe in Wonderland that states

"At a certain point in your life, probably when too much of it has gone by, you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are. Especially for everything that made you so different from all the other 'awful' normals. And you will say to yourself, 'But I am this person.' And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love."

Though maybe that has gone too far away from my original intent of what I was trying to say, which is merely that I am finding the complexities of what sets people apart fascinating, even what sets me apart, for I feel as though I'm discovering new arenas of myself all the time. Maybe this is the intent of blogging after all, to show others how strange and unique you are. Maybe it is to show yourself and convince yourself that its okay to be this person.

Wow, I'm pretty sure none of this made a whole lot of sense, but I wanted to type, and I wanted to push that shiny orange button. So, I'm sorry, Dad and Abby, for the stream of conscious type typing that has occurred here. If you actually have read this far all I can say is, I am truly loved.

Obscured

Head poised against the cold

she sighed with wonder lost,

her blue faded coat and soft

scraggly scarf of muted hues

were dulled against the backdrop

of vibrant staccato sounds.

Once lost amid the scuffle

of overpowering shades

-there was no escape from

the neon greens or the blush

of fuchsia's greedy grasp -

and covert amid the torrent

she was never seen again.

Her faint untidy figure

misplaced among the rubble

of a brightly blaring scope.

Indolence swept by my fading figure

as I laid my head to rest

among the charcoal lilies of a dying season.

People will scatter my ashes, I thought,

In shadowed places where moss

will smother me while I'm dead.

These thoughts, morbid as they were,

stemmed from a conversation held

between two elderly men

each gambling their lives to the other -

if you die first, so on and so forth.

Yet, I thought, what was this incessant churning?

The mind's willing knowledge out of dust,

willing control out of desperation,

or a tightly held hold on activity

when action is past pursuing?

So, instead, in passivity and peace,

I laid my fate down

In the scarred ruins of autumn

and prayed for the sun to shine

on my upturned face.

Again

Again, I fear, light clashes with

pale hues and dark contrasting blots

that hit the corners of the eye

and wrinkle them open and shut.

The lashes sweep, filtering away

the dingy dusty molecules

that crane their bodies for entrance.

Cataracts menacingly block,

the black blotches upon the crystalline

lens that shield and defile the world

from my intent piercing gaze.

They hunger to envelop

my whole being in their dusky balance.

Their persistent energies

mask meaning's intent,

hold back the curtain of reason

to allow insanity's reign.

At times I desire their entrance

to shield my eyes from beauty

to wrap me in the blanket of night.

Other times I fear their hauntings,

the slow imprints clouding my face

in a glassy sheen.

And still other times

indifference whisks away these thoughts

these wondering shadows

and ghost like ruminations.

Ambiguity and indecision

My thoughts spin and twirl. If they were not so annoying I might be able to appreciate their minimalist ballet.

I live in a world of grey, wishing for some obvious colors to hit my eyes, some vivid reds and distinctive greens. I pray for some blatant signs, the writing on the wall in neon lights, but instead get choices and decisions, not either, seemingly, right or wrong. I am a passive person. I can not say whether this is good or bad, it is both and neither. Yet in this passivity I am anxious, one of the many conundrums of my specific personality. I keep coming up against the problem of trust. Sometimes I mistake lack of preference for trust, but am quickly proven wrong. I am indecisive. I say this as someone who labors over the decision of whether or not to buy a four dollar shirt. It is hard to trust when we realize our fallibility. It is near impossible to believe that even when we blunder we are in more capable hands. But where, where on earth, is the line between responsibility and providence, action and faith?

I feel the weight of ambiguity, the vagueness of the lines around me. I wish to sharpen the image.

Nostalgia

Memory hems us in,

makes us crash upon the shores

of dull imagination

with overused metaphors

the only way to explain

our feeble thoughts

and steep sins.

Malicious weather.

As I went outside for a run today I felt the chill of eeriness rise into my being. The very movement of leaves behind me sounded like the rustle of a follower. The sky looked dark and blank with the wind moving every unfastened object to make them scrape and whistle around me. I felt as though I had stepped directly into a short story by Poe. Nature seems malicious today.

It is amazing to me how much the weather can affect people's moods, or at least my mood. Its not even the simple sadness versus happiness of rainy and sunny, instead there seems to be all kinds of differing levels of weather related moods. Fall, in general, is nostalgic. The crisp colors of death remind me of the various deaths in my life. The deaths of various homes, various moments. Fall reminds me of apple cider Saturday and of the winding roads of Gosling Marsh, or Files Cross or even Winebrenner. And where rain can be sad, it can also be cozy and comforting, or dark and sinister. I have a theory that this must depend on the level of wind, the temperature and the time of day, or whether or not it is merely rain, or also storm.

As it stands, today is of the eerie variety. The ominousness of the hazy clouds feels like a portent of doom with the smugness of their streaked gray sides.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping is very possibly one of my favorite books ever. I feel as though I can say this with assurance as I have read it several times now. Last night I picked it up expecting to read a chapter or two and found myself rereading it all in one sitting. I think the appeal of this book for me has a lot to do with affirmation of myself. I see myself in the reclusive Ruthie who narrates and her slightly insane aunt, Sylvie. It is also just a beautifully written book, though one of my favorite parts is not necessarily because of the poetic language, but a sentiment I share and think about in all those awkward social circumstances where small talk, or talk at all, is expected. It is when Lucille, Ruthie's younger and less awkward sister and her are walking together:

"I'm talking to you," Lucille said.

"I didn't hear you."

"Well, why don't you keep up with me? Then we could talk."

"What about?"

"What do other people talk about?"

I had often wondered.

"How was it possible to endure the losses one accumulated just by living? Sentiment based on fact was the most grievous sort, she thought, for the only escape from it was to shrug off the fact - that babies died, say, or that people lost lands they loved, that youth aged, love faded, everybody ended in graves, and nothing would ever again be the same. She pounded herself to tears with these melancholy truths, as if to ensure that she would not betray herself by forgetting them - which, however, she knew full well that she would, as all other grown persons have done, to their manifestly improved mental balance."

Annie Dillard The Living

1872-1928

Dust lined, our lives now mean a name, a date,

A wishing only, the stiff cloistered wait.

Bent ivy curls around our plaques, our years

A sordid stone now only tells, our fears

Now realized in the blank cruel earth, our names

Whispered in swift soft spoken words: the shame

Of the living. Longing to pronounce for them

Their muffled, misread sighs, we have attempted

To raise our loose long limbs, but know instead

That we can only dream. Our lives’ been read

A hundred times, at least, by our unfocused

Re-telling. He was once a schemer, shushed

By life’s strange misplaced harm. And once his hands

Were warm and pulsed with hope, but years by sands

And fate rubbed raw, have stolen his lust for life.

His last large scheme: the dates that match his wife’s.

She, soft and fragile, would laugh always about

Nothing, yet realizing the brevity

Would soon grow faint with chuckles and unspent gaiety.

And you, the living, cannot cry for her.

The cinders only on your face can purge

The pride of being still the brief ones here.

I think that this poem stemmed from reading The Living. Well... that and poetry class.

A Severe Mercy and why C.S. Lewis is not over-rated

Though he did not write this book...

I've just finished A Severe Mercy probably meaning I shouldn't give my opinion about it right now since most books I just finish for the first time somehow manage to be "amazing," (at least for an hour or two) however I must tentatively state that I love this book. I don't think I'll have to take that back. There is a kind of beauty in grief that this book portrays, especially when viewed in the light of eternity.

I am often fed up with Christian views of grief and sorrow. These views often seem so full of condescension. I am reminded of Jane Kenyon's poem "Having it out with Melancholy" and the 3rd section:

"Suggestion From a Friend"

You wouldn't be so depressed

if you really believed in God

This seems to be too often the attitude, yet doesn't seem so with Vanauken. There is an admittance of grief and sorrow and all the perils of finitude in his book, yet a glorious hope even in, or even especially in this grief. It seems to be in the times of death and darkness, when we must come up against the smallness of this world, that we realize our desire for more, well... more. I am reminded of another quote, the lovely and ridiculously famous C.S. Lewis quote which so poignantly says "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." Which reminds me of the oh-so-not-over-ratedness of Lewis whose most overused quotes can still touch one even after the millionth time heard.

Maybe what I loved about this book was its focus on beauty and time. I am left reminded of why I love the arts. There is a holy yearning that no theory seems able to penetrate. It is there in everyday living, but sometimes it takes a splash of paint, dissonance and resolution, or "black squiggles on white paper" to remind us of this longing, this unexplainable hope that must be found in God and love and eternity and Jesus. I also loved this book because I was reminded of this beauty, the beauty of my faith, especially as it touches me on a more than emotional level. Vanauken's story is a story of scholars and thinkers. It can be hard for me, in the midst of all the cheesiness of some Christians, to let myself be caught up in the beauty of my faith, but it is there, the honest to God, awe-inspiring beauty, and I am thankful for books like A Severe Mercy for reminding me of this - whether or not I'll continue to find the book itself amazing after time and more readings.

Blank Verse

Ascetic silence penetrates in the

Upheaval of monotony, the kind

That makes our eyes clasp shut, or if agape,

The tendons strained against the turbulence

Of being. Hands embrace insipid air.

Still in this posture held, this oneness felt,

We look more fully toward where we've drifted,

Where through the currents of community

Our persons stayed or silently absconded.

Where might we be if our plot had turned a bend,

A different life donned on the empty shell

Of our personalities? Would we be here,

The cold air of October bitterly

Misting our faces, feet turned pale and numb?

What piece or point of us is truly ours?

What if we wrapped the soft down of home and care

Of family around us permanently,

Or in destitution, no home to draw

Us from the abyss of depair, the edge of light,

Who would we be in that particular place?

Does fate abound, the individual leave,

The mind then useless in the cave of the skull?

When do we get to choose the player played

On our blank body, and when must we resign

Ourselves to circumstance and other's whims?

Where are we in the din that shapes our breath?

Because I am currently cold.

I had almost forgotten the sharpness of the cold or the way it seems to permeate more fully than even the hotness of middle summer. My house is intensely frigid. Colder than the outside where the sun can at least get in. I have found myself these past days fleeing to the outside to sit in the pockets of sunlight to let the rays take away the edge of approaching winter. I don't want to rant about the cold, but I am not exactly looking forward to winter.

I like the idea of winter, the snow, the holidays, the blankets and scarves and thick woolen bits of clothing. Yet I find the actualization of winter mainly cold. Cold and dark. I find myself at the beginning of Autumn exclaiming that it is my favorite season, but then I realize that Autumn leads to Winter and Winter feels a lot like death.

Trust and knowledge

My mind cannot wrap around the whole of life. This may sound obvious. It is, in fact, obvious, yet each time I tell myself this, swearing I'll give up trying to curl my brain around the intricacies of life, surrender certain knowledges to the abyss of untried thoughts, I hesitate. I selfishly want every ounce of understanding I can attain in this lifetime. I want every truth that rears its ugly head and even every idea posing as truth. I don't think this is a particularly healthy desire, at least if one is attempting to cope in the world, especially considering how impossible this is, both the knowing and the coping.

I'm impatient, on top of this, with my desire. I search the minds of those around me for the shards of understandings they have acquired. I poke them, trying to let them keep their thoughts for their own, but desperately wanting them to give them up to me. I unfold wrinkles in my knowing to discover I've bunched things into knots in the process. Yet, despite this, I'm still hopelessly ignorant. I don't want to wait for time to tell, to teach.

I grow angry with knowledge, useless as if so often is. I threaten to throw it out, but its an idle threat. I love the mind's churning as it rattles my brain into anxiety. I want it to grow thick like butter, to gain richness in the painful shaking. I'm not sure why. I wish I could live in peace with the unknown, with uncertainty. So much of life feels uncertain, unstable. Each piece of understanding feels like a three legged chair. There is always something missing from the equation and I don't think that in this lifetime we can know everything in the fullness of knowing, but this frustrates me to no end.

Trust is not an easy attribute.

The Stoic's Sonnet

There is a mite of melancholy hue

In the incandescent rooms of gladness.

The acrid air of imminent newness

Impregnate with the musk of finitude.

Even in the loud crisp colors of love

People meander with a swaying limp

A desperate glaze in heightened sight; an imp’s

Mischievous ready stance – the hint of fear.

It might be best to stay untouched, intact,

To hold your poise against the curve of life,

The stoic’s stance, the cautious balance act,

Free from the spikes and falls of every strife.

Though it might be nice, it remains a sham,

A wish only, an irremediable plan.

Momentum pushes us forward.

I have often wondered how it is that people can handle life, somehow pushing forward against each ever tightening nerve. It seems we all have something to complain and weep over either silently in the dark of night, or blatantly, standing on toes for height, for volume, breathing through the belly.

Maybe we can't manage it after all. Manage being a slippery word when it comes to life. We all seem like clowns, falling over our feet, getting water squirted in our faces by flowers pinned to our other clown brother's vests. Maybe it is the sheer momentum of existence that keeps us living and not our ability to cope with what life throws at us.

We should just stand still if we desire any ease. Not try to "kick against the goads." Let life pull us along, it will anyways, and practice our balance. Things will still happen to us then, but it won't be our fault, not entirely. Then we might just be willing to let each breath in be a victory, each exhale an act of triumph.

Wallace.

I'm no good at starting blogs. I'm just not. So, instead of a horribly painful explanation of why I am trying again to blog I am just going to start with (probably) my favorite poem, at least my favorite poem currently, and the reason I've picked the name for this blog.

The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

The time of year has grown indifferent.

Mildew of summer and deepening snow

Are both alike in the routine I know.

I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices

Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,

Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls

The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian ..

Perhaps, if summer ever came to rest

And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed

Through days like oceans in obsidian

Horizons full of night's midsummer blaze;

Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate

Through all its purples to the final slate.

Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;

One might in turn become less diffident-

Out of such mildew plucking neater mould

And spouting new orations of the cold.

One might. One might. But time will not relent.

-Wallace Stevens