An Undivided Heart

In this particular dream

we were on a city street

I was ahead of you, then

you caught up to me and made me stop

I looked into your eyes

And my heart was whole

Maxim 2

Everyday dies with sleep, be sure the emotions follow the sun's lead.

Fortune Cookie 1

When everything seems to be going wrong, stop picking at the wall paper, look at the foundation.

Fear

Whether described as an animalistic flight or fight response or considered in a more complex arrangement of phobia and depression, fear is a control stem issue in the human condition with all the psychological and poetical ramifications as the concepts of love, happiness, faith and logic. All are important in understanding life and the methodology of choice or will, the religiously and philosophically accepted separating line between human and animal.

Fear can be expressed in anxious responses as well, anxiety being both a rational and irrational fear of an identified threat. It is at this point that fear is most interesting as it either inspires change or elicits decay. There is very little middle ground in response to fear unless one of the other primary concepts intervene such as faith/belief. One subject is conditioned to act at the same time another is conditioned to decline. The phenomena of experiencing fear is individual, but the mass response to a social fear is also important; however, in that moment the mental process that describes fear is modified as it borrows from and gains strength from logic and faith centers of understanding regardless of the merits of those arguments. Humans are social and give import to the credibility of others regardless of their true merit if faith or logic centers are incorporated into the message.

What does this mean? You may be alone. The house may be old. The world may be warming. The government may collapse. But unless you ascribe one or more of the control centers to those things, nothing is happening. If you do, you will experience fear. The house shifts. The Earth hates us as inhabitants. The government is just that and nothing more. Still thousands or millions are afraid. I am choosing to no longer live in fear. To choose otherwise is to participate in an unconditional declination in quality of life.

Now wants more

This time is ours. Take it.Everything else is in chaos. Now is the time to just take the reins, be the voice, ....

I'm tired and so is everyone else that I speak with. But that doesn't mean we'll stop, it only means that it isn't today.

Tomorrow - how many poetics are based on that notion? How many times will we have this opportunity?

Another ten commandments

1. Do - act as if it was meant to be.
2. Doubt, but never undermine.
3. Say something positive.
4. Understand that you and the person next to you are not part of the "we" "they" conspiracy.
5. Know that you are paying member of the "we" "they" conspiracy touted by experts.
6. Kill experts
7. Wait, that's what Pohl Pot did.
8. Check this list.
9. Maybe there is something wrong.

Guide says follow 1-3 regardless. That seems like sound advice.

gift horse

there was no reason really
just love and wonder.
now he is here, and brings with him
a host of other problems, concerns, constraints.
i don't mind.

Walking upstairs

Sometimes it smells a little like gunpowder;

sometimes it smells a little like dust floating in sunlight;

The doubt comes with the origin of the stairs.

The Window

was open.

I could have waited.

I leapt through.

other times

I had to crawl through.

Superstition ain't the way

or maybe it is

i just don't know anymore

i have felt moved by signs

that were heart-stopping and

and chased some dubious leads

with my skinniest intuitions.

some came to fruition

others now show like a temporary madness

i could feel a fool, but don't

in the end the reality is

the best time to do something

is the time you do it

Eldora told me this story,

When I was a toddler, maybe 2 1/2, I wandered away from the yard. She was frantic and unable to find me. She could not imagine I would have gone across the street towards the Steen's house, but she went that way, towards a pasture, and there she found me. I was inside the barb-wire fence, sort of pinned up against it, and a horse had his nose right in my face. She grabbed me up , and I said to her "Mom, that horse was tasting me."

Knives

While the fall of the Berlin Wall should be celebrated, it should not be celebrated by US politicians in favor of the guardian wall with Mexico. That is as near to heresy as a politician might commit and should be a hangable offense.

And we shouldn't be thanking Reagan for tearing down the wall, we should be thanking him for teaching Democrats how to deficit spend, properly.

Where do we sharpen the blades?

Truth, beauty or bust

Surrounded by a population that is drowning in emotion and sweating death,
Standing on the well one asks, "Who should survive if it cannot be all of us?"

When stopping hurts more than staying

If I feel I also think.

Why isn't this the expected outcome?

There is more to disease than just the germ,
but the everyday doesn't deserve mystery status.

If I hold a candle will you be a moth or vigil attendee?
I'm so very tired of mourning.

There's always another sun to worship,
depth to test,
darkness to explore.

But being here is so much better.
It could be the best we have known.

Liar and Thief

Cruelty can start with nothing
nothing said
nothing done.

Isolation works the other's brain like a boxer.
Depression becomes communicable, calls for hospice.

Illness deserves its time
to run its course
life continues.

What is untrue is the shared dreams,
What is taken is the ability to dream more.

Grey matter

I've become an intellectual hitman
a brain for hire.

Have brain, will travel.

Forgetfulness

The camera loves affection and death,
it helps us remember.

The day loves night and the night loves day, that's why the transition is beautiful to the eye.

Cameras only lie because people use them.

The day after any other day is never as sweet as the day-after we remember 10 years later.

Art is not art because art is some other thing, it is what it is because it is us.

Affection, love, beauty, and art are stronger because of our forgetfulness.
Newness is not always invention.

I don't get it

(Painting by Susan Rothenberg)

When we had company, and the grown-ups were telling jokes, I loved to sit and listen. When I had an opening I would often ask my father to tell this joke. I absolutely loved this joke. what follows is my best recollection.

A man had a team of horses, and he could not tell them apart.
So he asked his neighbor, what can I do to help me tell these horses apart.
Why don't you dock the tail on one?
Sounded like a good idea, so he docks the tail on one.
But damn, if that did not look so good on that horse...
that he docked the tail of the other horse.
So again he could not tell them apart.
Back he goes for more advice.
Why not roach the mane on one?
So he did, but damn, that looked so good, he roached the mane of the other one.
Back he goes for more advice.
Well how about you measure them?
So he does, and sure enough there was a difference,
the black horse was a hand taller than the white one.

Yeah, it is hard work

It's a full time job just being me, probably the same for you. Factor in the job that pays and every day is double duty. But just because I am working doesn't mean that I don't want to have fun. Life is equal parts of fun and pain. Walking across the South Dakota prairie I know this is true: too many things can result in pain if the fun is outside knowledge of the terrain. The same is true on a spiritual level.

What we want is not necessarily what we receive. What we need is never on time. There is pain and hurt in every scenario of life from birth until the end. It is our responsibility to love and let, at the same time put an end to what we can. We think; we grow; we learn: there is no reason for old pains to continue but they do. I grow tired and perpetrate the crimes of the previous generations. We grow restless and destroy the things around us. We are bad at learning. When we learn we are not good at sharing.

Life is pain. Life is work and .... The next time you visit a bar in Mexico or a nightclub in Athens or an apple farm outside Spokane or anything that is nearer to you know this: the world lives and breathes the same as you are already doing. Changing location is for yourself only; it does not change the world's ills or life's fun. You are the agent of change. You are the difference.

I love you,
signed me

Killers

The afternoon of survival does not start with tongue.

Knowing owns the winning blade.

days will become casualties.

Time is upon us to choose.

Family

Thrombus
One chance
take it
Still here
Where are you
Thrombus
I want to live
Thrombus

It doesn't matter

Violence in Season

A resting Persephone
first with her hands, then with her mouth
orchestrates her awakening

She needs wind and water and the plan for spring.

So long ago she was dancing a field
first with her body and then with her mouth
she demonstrated the wind and sang the rain

She longed not for love and loved only to live

There are few facts to her awakening
first with her mouth then with her body
she yawned and stretched her slender beauty
she breathed deep and shed the tear that started everything.

One must be cognizant of the past
The dull fields of ugliness
The long lament of useless boredom
The violence that came later
The lost youth, the loss of years

An arresting Persephone
Her seasons can so easily destroy everything.

Psychoanalytics aside

Freud and his contemporaries made one radical discovery that is often washed over - ideas can result in disease. The mind can construct a result that has an outcome of a lifelong disorder. The mind can imagine it's own illness and follow through. I am tired of mine. I am tired of everyone else's as well. What else can we talk about?

For some the answer is nothing.

and how do you know what is love

and how do you know when it is not there. or there.

there and gone, there and gone, there and gone.

looking for its arrival and return has exhausted my spirit.

as a construct it wreaks too much havoc. with its supposed presence and alternate absence.

Could I be done with it.

and should you get to the world

where your dream could be realized

you might freeze.

cause once you go there completely,

it might destroy you.

and you will be white as ash.

or it might do nothing.

even worse.

Dharma v. happiness

There is nothing done that cannot be undone.
There is nothing said that cannot be retracted.

Those statements are only true if love is mutual.

did you make them do something?

he asks me.

no.

Sometimes I want them to just get a damn biscuit.

I am only looking for perfection

no, not that kind

not the kind that I think I want.

not that one either,

not the one that looks like I expected.

the kind that feels like I expected.

it is the kind that is not expected.

the kind I can't look for or find.

the kind I have to be looking for to find.

the kind that will hit you between the eyes

the kind that will leave you looking so stupid.

the kind that will happen everyday.

only it doesn't.

that kind.

What is and what will not be

Every day dies with sleep
For some this is metaphor
for others it is tragedy.

To me it means
turn off the heat
lock the door
walk away.

The hammer touches the nail
drives the head flush:

Open the next door.

The Cowboy in the room,,,

.... doesn't give a shit about you or me.

Who are you?
What do you want to be?
Puissants arrive,
you have no welcome
unless you are ready to play.
He's a killer.
How long are you going to talk?

and all the things that are happening

they have always been happening.

Dialectics can become singular

It is not enough to sin and find forgiveness.

The question before you is are you willing to sin enough to destroy the memory and find something good?

I am always willing and able to set the fire.

Why humor isn't funny

My toilet bowl is filled with water, lime and distrust.

What is racism?

My girls eat everything.
This year they are addicted to grasshoppers of every sort: every color.
With the grasshoppers also came the black crickets, but neither will have anything to do with the crickets that moved into the garage.
Should I look for adjustment classes?

I was in the thrift store(at least it seemed like the thrift store)

and a family came in, they had a voucher from the River. There were 2 women, small wiry black ladies, a mother and grandmother. There were 4 children, somewhere between the ages of 6-13, 2 girls, 2 boys. One of the boys was white, as a ghost almost and moved like one. He looked to be slightly mentally disabled, and seemed to be the oldest in the group. I explained to them how they could spend their voucher, and they began to pick out clothes, and bring them to the counter. What about him I asked, oh he is not ours, we just brought him with us. He floated around the outskirts of the group, and when a substantial pile of clothes was on the counter, he asked if he could help fold them. The grandmother remarked-he just loves to help with anything, he is just always helping. He helped me bag the clothes. One of the girls asked if she could have a necklace, I let her choose one, and then the other one wanted one, and then the boy. I asked the pale one if he wanted one, he nodded shyly. and he looked and looked over everything I had. I turned to another task and some minutes later I hear-excuse me ma'am, do you have any necklaces for men? I went back over to him and the display he was looking at, it was mostly chains, and none were appropriate, then I saw a beaded choker. I explained to him how this was more of the thing that young men are wearing now. Then I looked him in the eyes and asked "would you like this one?" He did not say anything but flashed me a smile, it was one of the most real I have ever seen.

The obvious

How many times do we have to go though the motions to be relevant?

Happiness is...

... a state of mind. It is nothing else. It is not the sum of our experiences and neither the by product of our actions nor result of our thoughts. It is not one thing over another. Happiness is the kaleidoscope view that combines choice with results and the things that surround us - both people and activities. A walk can create happiness. Doing the dishes can create happiness. Alone, happiness has no power, but as a measure of life satisfaction it cannot be discounted regardless of its amorphous quantity or quality.

The problem with happiness as a quotient of anything is the fact that more often than not it is constructed by an unhappy individual determining what happiness might be. That's the unfortunate disposition of fun - it becomes the subject of review, a process it cannot survive, perpetuating the unhappiness even further.

But happiness is simple in and of itself. It requires one or more people. It takes a book or a suggestion. It might have travel involved. It could be just a meal. It could be as easy as putting the dishes away. It has uncountable manifestations. The only requirement is a choice and an eye for being alive.

Sublimation

works

for awhile

Substitution

works

for awhile

who knows how long

there was no mistake

reckless and imprudent.

ridiculous, miraculous failure to understand

or be understood,

but there was no mistake.

i heard this loud and clear in all my confusion.

there was no mistake.

i know what is real.

Pigs in wallow

I'm tired of bleeding for others.

Retrenchant idolatry

Who's the cowboy of your mind: the Marlboro cutlass of John Wayne or the saddle tired Remington?

Is there freedom or is there always the dependent horse?

Knowing and naming, these are our tools and our weapons.

We are little without.

Seven generations of weeks of 2012 in a month of Sundays

You want charcoal filters
I'm coal fire distilled.

The afternoon of our lives is yet to happen.

I demand freedom
You are attempting to prescribe it.

Control is a funny thing:
I appear completely within
you want to be without.

I wonder who knows who better - I wonder who knows how to be out of control?
Who is in control? When does this end, if ever?

The month of Sundays is nearly over seven times whatever you want.

one million things

one million different things, and i think that may be a lowball estimate. that is how many things i will have handled by the time i leave the resale biz. one million things, acquired, discarded, and re-distributed. i am so weary of touching all these things.

Eating

As animals of this planet we are consumers, how many times do we have to consume ourselves with insecurity to find the will to just live? In the US it looks like about 100 million voters.

If the house is Home where is the EPA?

There was a time when we celebrated the advancement of science and engineering. Now that is sneered at in lieu of being "green." I just painted my new attic stairs with a green stain, I hope they don't look any closer -- I saved almost $300 dollars off the box hardware store costs building them. I'm sure I have sinned.

New Pragmatic Philosophy

Give to Rome what is Rome's.
Give to Peter what is Paul's.
Give some more if you can or cannot.
Money is made.
They'll make some more.
Go get it.

Fetch, Fido, Fetch.

a dog for all the wrong reasons

I got Tito on impulse. I was bored, lonely, sad, and I just wanted a new puppy. Tito is the worst dog. He took forever to housetrain, he ate my bamboo rug, he ate a couch, he ate the klick-klack, he ate another rug, his listening abilities are pretty iffy at times. He is the best dog.

tornado: a dream spring 2009

i was on a rooftop, in Hermosa, it seemed like Hermosa.
the skies became very dark, a storm was coming.
i felt calm, and then i heard the sound they say a tornado makes.
and i thought...fuck, i am on a roof and here comes a tornado.
i saw it coming, and then it began to take me up in it.
there was no time.
but in a split second i saw a large tree branch.
with some sort of super-power i reached out of the tornado,
my arm became larger than life, my hand took hold of the branch
i pulled myself from the tornado.
just as i did the branch broke
i fell to the ground.
the things you can do in dreams.

Why the new "difference" doesn't matter

If gravity worked a little faster on vapors and mists
I wouldn't have to put up with your Rainbow network
there would be no rainbows.

G.O.A.T.

greatest of all time.

Valent Shelters

Influence is created by magnetics, blood or faith.

Gravity takes our feet and our blood.

Gravity

In the dark of an unremarkable Wednesday night with an absent moon the sound of several car doors were heard to shut at the same moment when the sounds of a plastic garbage receptacle's wheels stopped on the curb and the protagonist moved back up the trek just traveled with the weight of his week's refuse pulling him along. Considering the weight, his thoughts were somewhere between living greener and not caring, musings really about the pointlessness of the debate. As he approached the honeysuckle thicket's shadow he was overwhelmed with the thought, "When the earth is done with us as a species, we'll just be gone." Part irony, part self reassurance - when the mother doesn't want us we will just be out. His thoughts were neither arrogant nor demanding, just passing through when it happened.

Something took his left leg and threw it into his right leg. Something touched his shoulder. The wind gusted for a minute. Looking over his shoulder as he leaned into the trunk of a parked car he yelled out, "Who are you?" His voice was so demanding and purposeful even the crickets stopped. Silence was a constant refrain for several seconds as he repositioned himself and looked back to see his attacker. It wasn't human, he knew that when it stopped. It wasn't an animal that was truly hungry either for the same reason.

He turned further to face the attacker and confront death. "What do you want?" he said to the night, "I'm not into fucking games."

From the shadow of the honeysuckle thicket he caught a glimpse of a pair of red eyes. The hair on his neck raised as his shoulders began to go cold. The eyes were more than three feet off the ground, but were they real?

After a few minutes of staring and questions running through his mind unsaid he turned to walk back into the door he had left to begin this saga, but discovered that gravity had affected his left knee at the time the red eyes first struck: walking was painful; his knee had hit both the concrete and the thing in the honeysuckle shadow. It would be a lifetime of hurt.

Betty the Bugeater

Can you believe this is the face of the Boston Grasshopper Slayer?

one European joke after another

Karma
Darma
Da'hani

Butterfly
Papillion
Schmetterling


Death and laughter are equals.

Calendars in binary

The cliche light of the full moon
Last week when I broke
lent itself to the Shadow

I am through with that useless dialectic,
this petty light and dark sequence.

Autovoron

Mass is a gravitational abstraction
Distance is not Freedom
it only lessens the emotion
the soul is influenced
the heart is darkened
the mind is bloodied
Isolation becomes the second valence of destruction
What is not lost is consumed
What is not consumed is silence
Emptiness eats itself.

Failure is always an option

For those living and dead that tried
What else can be said?
You tried.
You did our best.
"Failure is not an option."
Death comes.

America wears a different stain
and I'm just one traveler.

Time

If Time was a Father of anything it would be Disaster.

The Mother we love is Invention;
the moment when our soul speaks.

Debt

The screaming starts with you
the wind doesn't dry your tears or carry your voice
It eats them both.
The fear devours you
I am only a thief
but I will take your soul.

Emotions versus Intellect

Standing in the Badlands a week ago, there was a possibility for endings to come, but the reality is that every person lives life with at least this much -- is it real or just perceived?

Our emotions can get the best of us when we don't know enough to understand the final action or decision. This happens frequently in relationships where one partner expects the other to know how to do things that need done but is not capable to do the work on her own. It also happens that old models infiltrate our thinking and he doesn't do his work to support her either at home or in her career.

Truly, this is the reason for so many failed couplings, marriages and so on. We live with these old notions and still want to feel free under the new models. Competing visions destroy US.

At the same time depression as an illness continues to infect the populace. Again, I don't think that it has to do with people or machines. Standing in the Badlands of SD clears that from one's mind. But more often than not we do not have that opportunity and the world just beats us down. It can happen with the smallest comments. It is just about the subtleties and the connotations, but it soon becomes the reality.

I for one have traveled the suicide path in the past. I have friends and relatives that were successful. I will not live that way. The problem with the world is the world's problem. I am fine regardless of how sick I might be. I will not adopt their thinking. I may be alone. I am ok with that. I can be alone with others.

Over Rainbows and Full Moon Walks

Somewhere along the path of humanity the notion of rainbows and full moons both became romantic - part of the lovers' walk on the second date or first. I am tired of these notions. The earth, our mother, hates us -- and it has nothing to do with global warming or any Pharasee theory.

Full moons produce full emergency rooms and rainbows also follow hail and tornados and hurricanes. The treachery is always there. We are fools and geniuses as a specie. There is no love from the supposed mother.

It is true that all our sustenance is derived from her dirt but that is not a substitute for a relationship and neither is a macro diet.

All the neighbors' dogs are barking tonight. It is a full moon. My dogs are quiet and obeying. I wish I new the Neanderthal's language for quieting dogs. I sometimes feel I dream those types of things.

Tomorrow will raise the fight again and I can only hope that there is a reason to say something. The alternative is just life. We live with all the full moons and the rainbows; we live love and death and night intercedes.


There is something poetic in that.

-j

Cowboy Kitchen

Sartre stated that Existentialism is Humanism and talked for a few hours on the subject. If we have some flour, salt and lard we can cook anything else that is brought into the kitchen. At the same time we can say that with near 100% certainty that if we are human and reading this, then we exist. Again, with a lesser degree of absolutism, we might say that if we exist and are reading this blog we are human. Of course existentialism is humanist and in return (again with lesser degrees of perfection) we can also state that humanism is existentialist. The hang up on the words is both human and existentialist, but not necessary.

I'm in the kitchen. The skillet is hot. I have lard, salt and flour. We exist. Bring me something and we will have a meal. If not, I'll cook what the land gives - that's what cowboy's do.

hope is fear

If religion was the first salvation and government/institutions/law&order was second in the organization of society, as some anthropologists have argued, then the day was a long day and both were born on the same as twins.The organization of the human condition of frailty - neither sited nor blessed with speed - needed solutions.

I am neither hopeful nor fearful of the future. I believe that we can own our frailties and still command and direct our lives. We cannot do the same for others. We cannot even help them much of the time. The difference is not education and is not intelligence, it is simply one of relationships. I am as at peace with death as I am with life. I am also comfortable with failure and success. Many people expend their lives trying to define a single relationship with one of those elements - death, life, failure, success. A life focused on one end will end without any of the others. That is not acceptable to me. I need to fail. I must succeed. I will die, but before that I will live and nothing will stop me in that endeavor.

To me, this is the requirement that life has put before us: To Become. I will, at all costs including my own life, be free to do and act and think as necessary. I will learn and I will change and I will not change. In the end, regardless of all those things, I will also discover if there is a thing called me that is free of the history of the human condition. In the meantime, I will not hope for things for others or myself. I will not be afraid to face the best and worst of what life presents me. I will not fear my own or any other existence.