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.