Birthday ramblings

There is a nostalgia for something we have never known

in the way the world warms slowly.

In the brightly lit luminance of spring,

we imagine sea side shacks

where we lived in our imagined past,

plaster peeling off its deranged interiors,

our feet buried and scratched in sand.

Maybe it is longing pushing at our delirious emotions?

A childhood reality restored, a place we can appreciate

the simple aesthetics of being,

where a years passing is a glorious event,

where longing is littered with chocolate and festivities

and simple skylines absorb our astonished eyes for hours.

Whatever it is,

That epic pull bringing speckled imprints

on my calloused hands - is welcome,

the long shadows tilting towards me,

the small green sprouts reaching above the frosted dirt

for a taste of momentary air.

I am so tired of dignity. Why do we so desperately scramble for this tediously convoluted idea of molding ourselves to other's expectations, even people we care nothing for? Not that dignity is all bad, or bad at all, only it can become such a subjective arbiter of well being that is also so very universally held. Maybe dignity is the wrong word even, but I am going to stick with that word and choose to believe that it can be understood for the concept I have in my head.

I say this probably because I feel rather nostalgic for childhood. It was much easier to become excited about events and things, unfettered as children are by the "uncoolness" factor of such excitement. I miss climbing the dirt mounds of our developing, but not yet developed, neighborhood, unconcerned with my undignified dusty dirt stains. I used to revel in wearing certain things, shockingly bummish as many of those things were, comfortable in my hand-me-down stretch pants and baggy t-shirts. Now I wear muted colors, not exactly fashionable still, but not unfashionable anyways. I succumb to expectations on a regular basis where just a few years (or so) ago I would not even realize the expectations. I miss the ignorance of childhood in many ways and the freedom that that ignorance held. Or if nothing else, I miss the kinds of expectations of childhood, expectations to play and to be rather undignified.

Life

Life irrepressible gathers to meet us

Arms spread, weeping words,

And we sit, weary eyed and disconcerted,

Staring stupidly at the strange vision.

Head bent listening to the chatter

of an accumulation of sounds:

the indecipherable murmur of a million voices,

the shuffle of two million feet,

clicks, slurs, falsetto laughs

blurring into a mechanical whole,

people pressing towards intricate images

sated by white wine and their own sophistical savvy.

Eyes drawn fervently round,

land locked in the sea of faces

you lapse into thought, unfettered by time

in the glorious anonymity of the crowd.

White washed walls linger in your brain

beige blemishes obscuring the calm clean,

and a hesitant memory; street corners

heavy with nostalgia, rain stained, quiet.

You are obese with longing,

gorged on the hallucination of contentment.

You walk past darkened alleys

swept into a persistent dream,

the bauble that is the white moon blurred

by the streaked film of clouds,

vacant hooked doorways looming,

the hint of unknowable secrets

collecting at your elbows,

and then a wine glass shatters

and you return to muted reality, disappointed.

Good ol' G.K.

Here is a fairly lengthy quote from The Everlasting Man from the chapter on man and mythologies that I must share.

"Now the first fact is that the most simple people have the most subtle ideas. Everybody ought to know that, for everybody has been a child. Ignorant as a child is, he knows more than he can say and feels not only atmospheres but fine shades. And in this matter there are several fine shades. Nobody understands it who has not had what can only be called the ache of the artist to find some sense and some story in the beautiful things he sees; his hunger for secrets and his anger at any tower or tree escaping with its tale untold. He feels that nothing is perfect unless it is personal. Without that the blind unconscious beauty of the world stands in its garden like a headless statue. One need only be a very minor poet to have wrestled with the tower or the tree until it spoke like a titan or a dryad . . . Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there; something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; the imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up."

I love you Chesterton.