There is a bit of mystery that shrouds everything we touch, mystery in socks and waffle house signs. There are many reasons to feel this; the awareness that so much of our ordinary day is surrounded in other's random decisions, the thought that we ourselves could merely be the product of a right thought at a right time. It is either the mystery of randomness or a deeper mystery, the mystery of providence. Either way we are befuddled in ideas too big for our bodies, encircled by paradoxes and illogical conclusions that are the most logical conclusion we can make, tainted by the supernatural in every seemingly slight event and entity.

Honestly

I have no strength for anger.

I sit placidly idling time

curious for the way people stand,

tense, feet set wide, arms barring

chests that swell in defiance.

Sneaking around the stalwart figures

I glance rigid backs, curved necks

arching up, bulging calves and bony elbows,

but then a certain weakness underlies

the left shoulder, a snag here,

a bit crooked and bending down.

Smoothing my rumpled pride I lean

against the palm of my hand,

blood rushing into my thumb's knuckle

and trace the downward dash with my eyes

and (sadly) smile.

confusion

"It is thus writ in heaven that any critic who has not given up will remain to some degree confused." -Wayne C. Booth

This pretty much sums up my thoughts, not just on criticism, but on life in general. There are so many avenues we could explore, but can only haltingly explain, especially when we try to take into account the full entirety of what we know or could know (not even to mention what we can't know.) If our words and thoughts do not become muddled it so often seems that it is because we have oversimplified and abandoned many legitimate ways of looking at something.

Of course I do feel a deep kinship with France (a novelist) as Booth explains Paul West to view him (though I have read nothing of either France or West.) France is explained as a man who has "nothing coherent to say," or someone who tries "to reconcile high intellectual ambitions with an impossibly cluttered mind." So it is possible that my mind is more cluttered than most. I can be a pack rat. Though, to be fair to myself, probably most of us can feel this way, at least occasionally. There is so many thoughts to sort through of so many people on so many issues that even people with well organized minds will have to check all kinds of drawers and folders to collect the necessary knowledge.

Layers of color hold me,

the lustrous combinations,

flecks of light violet and yellow

or dark white and teal blotches,

shadows stretching lanky grey people

upon the speckled asphalt.

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.