Looks like the date is set, I'm not getting well, she thought but didn't say it. Not to us, not in so many words, or any words....
Sudden
Green arrives, and we'll See it as sudden If we Broke our ankle in snow, And hardly go out anymore....
Deploy
There are so many things to deploy. Flowers deploy pollen, tricking bees. Navies deploy battleships, tricking their enemy. Corporations deploy lawyers, tricking their customers. People deploy emotions, tricking others....
Condition
Some say the human condition is Our contract with death. But I've watched my dog Fear death and recoil in disgust. No, our curse is Being in the present While living for a future We believe May inevitably come....
Suns
It was a lot of wind for us, really, the day the wind came up. There were no grand meteorological explanations. No perfect storms. Just wind, blasting from the southeast, pushing over coolers on tables with eggs for sale. Slamming doors left ajar. Buddhists believe the world will end in a sequence of seven suns, each causing some specific, systematic failure of a vital life function on Earth. The seventh will consume everything....
Curt
Not really cutting someone off, but making sure they understand....
Pink
When I put on a pink shirt I immediately think I’m doing something bold, unexpected. Fuck you expected culture, I’m wearing pink. But really, it’s just light red. And I still look askance at people with mo-hawks or giant riser shoes. Silly fools, using their appearance to signal how they’re different. I should probably just always wear black....
Infection
Under a steel sky, snow falling Likely in April, as the garlic Struggles to push through soil Left on top of it months ago, We forget what we used to know. People used to get sick. They Used to get close to death. And the beer on the table Promises me a buzz, comfort And all the things I want. But what about the things That I know I don't want?...
Preservation
I once had occasion to eat mincemeat from a Ball jar processed eight years before my birth. The dubiousness with which I approached that experience says volumes about our ability to preserve things. Even preservation has it’s limits, you must agree. A ship, replaced board by board over five hundred years will, at some point not be an exercise in preservation, but change. The slow inevitability of change that causes mountains to fall and entire ecosystems to die....
Wind
Traveling ice that builds up on the bows of living organisms I didn’t see until just now, and I’m wondering now how trees got to be here. Certain species are moving. The North is warmer and they know and are moving. Closer to the warmth they go, but not the one here, covered in ice. It’s stuck, stoic, standing its ground. Water drawn up to dizzying heights, to each little branch until a thin paper-like sheet of living cells that turns sunlight into sugar receives exactly as much as it needs to do it’s work....
Sunk
It’s that sinking feeling you get, when all things being equal you’d just rather give up....
Garble
When sunk costs dig holes in your yard And rampant words stand vigil over your house, You will be done in your domain As his haven turned out all but the best of us....
Writing
Writing is a technology. Writing improves information density. Writing creates a moral hazard of intention. Writing remembers what we forget. Writing destroys relationships. Writing cannot replace thought. Writing is not often true....
Relationship
And in the end, we were just supposed to get our work done. But our work was hidden from us, so first we had to discover what our work was. Upon discovering where our work was, it turned out we had the wrong work in mind at the start and so we begin to plumb the depths of our found work. While plumbing, we resolve to do the right work this time....
Load
A wire carries can carry a certain load before the molecular bonds holding the material together are weighted down too much. Is it unreasonable, then, to imagine the tapestry of our lives, held together by invisible bonds, molecules of constitution. And is it not possible that our constitutional bonds carry a certain load? What are we do to when we need a wire to carry more load? Faced with the upper bounds of physical laws, we need more wires to share the load....
Sky
Today the winds shifted abruptly to come from the Northeast, which means cold, and snow, and clouds. The sky is a flat, slate gray with wisps of contrast ripped into it by the sheering of the win. They sky occupies half of our world view on any given day. Is it any wonder our moods should rise and fall by the contents?...
Parent
To be the parent node, or the source of life For something beyond what you yourself contain, Is a special position, in a world of relationship. The reason for existence for something so small, And the source of a desperate persistence in the world, Soon strong enough to declare itself independent. Of the source of life, only the parent knows How fragile the connection can feel sometimes— How tenuous the lines that draw the child node back....
Interfaces
If we were in a simulation, everything would be an interface. Modify this, get this response, adjust and modify the next things. If we were in a simulation, everything would be relative. Gravity would depend on the flow of time and light would bend and warp. If we were in a simulation we would be stuck waiting for the next step to run, unable to go forward at different rates, or ever backwards....
Flow
When everything appears to be flowing, You tear pages from the book and watch As they flutter to fall in the water. When everything falls apart around you You tear at your hair and think As life remains as it was when, Everything is flowing....
Seat
You knew a guest was in the house The seat would be up. Sometimes the door would be closed. Intimacy breeds familiarity, And a sense that what was hidden Behind the door was less a right Of all, than an expectation. We are unashamed, possibly even Impolite. But we always know When there's a guest in the house....
Flight
And to just lift off, leave Everything behind, a fancy Flight of. But It's not really possible. And leave just to lift off, Find yourself gone, a fancy Dinner party of. Or All your best friends. They would miss you. Most likely. They would wonder where You had lifted off to. A flight of fancy from a fancy dinner party. All expectation gone....
Rome
Fireworks at the colisseum. No. In the colisseum. Chinese tourists, roman candles, in the colisseum. From outside, over the wall. Can we remember everything in the past? Or are we doomed to repeat some things. Can we be doomed when repeation is how we learn? Roman candles, Chinese tourists, fireworks in the parking lot at the colisseum. This is not what I had expected....
Water
Rain doesn’t help us Remember the cause, the Animating factor. Rain only redistributes Colossal amounts of Caustic chemicals everywhere....
Soft
The taoists had it right. There is no strength without weakness, no wet without dry. Puffing up his chest, he stares through you, as though through staring he can destroy. But soon, enfilade and then off-guard the underbelly reveals insecurity that air cannot protect. All is soft in the middle....
Angry
Spend much time there myself. Depth charges primed, deployed, sinking, waiting, fury unleashed. Proximity and destruction raining shrapnel slowly sinking. No fire down here, just a shudder and ripping, tearing. Nothing to see. All contained by pressure. Crushing pressure, surrounding us all. Can’t decide which direction so it goes everywhere....
Fixable
Under what circumstance did we expect this would work? Days, numbered, slide past and not everything is repaired promptly. Some things are not fixable at all. Amazing, what we’ll carry with us, into the subway, the neighbor’s house, our last swim in the ocean. Scars from life. Some physical, some metaphysical, all a product of choice and circumstance....
Roughly
Understanding how everything goes together is, roughly, all that life requires of you....
Acadian
Diaspora in a compromised land, stretched by forces moving so slowly, slower than we can see but with evidence left everywhere. Culture accretes faster, but still imperceptible, reminding us that no one knows everything, or anything when it comes to that. When it comes to remembering how to live, how we survived the cataclysm, we depend on those who were lost once. We depend on those who knew enough to get us here....
Cold
Roadways clutter with debris of passing motorists and the cold draws the filth out, into a grim reflection of the gray, moistureless clouds above. Cold will descend, has descended, descends over the pine forests which stop only when they reach the sea, or we cut them back and till, plant and live. There is so little old growth forest left. In the cold, it seems impossible to have such an impact on so vast and inhospitable an expanse....
Thunder
The thunder rolls, and the lightnng strikes. Under a blanket of clouds, cropped tight to the ground, but not so tight to be fog, the thunder rolls. Gray permeates the sky and the thunder rolls. Scattered rain showers ruin a wedding celebration and the thunder rolls. Above the clouds the thunder rolls. The sun shines, and the rain is nothing but what we can imagine....
Seethe
And in the hour of need, surrounded by all our loved ones, even some we missed or had forgotten about, the sea roils and seethes with the fury that only the planet can command. In hubris, life clings to boats, tossed at once, and yet fettered to the spot, frozen, unable to move or suffer destruction. It thought itself invincible. But nothing was ever farther from the truth. Memory of this life fades and what’s left is another rock, slightly warmer than the rest....
Typing
It’s hard to understand what’s not understandable especially in light of what we never understood to begin with. The sound of the keys made a clicking noise that would have driven an average man crazy, but the lack of preconceptions in this case led to the clack, clack, clack, clack to a tap, tap, tap, tap to a drum beat driven into the heart of the most relevant moments of his life....
Le Guin
“If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly, Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.” Ursula K. Le Guin ...
Capacity
We have the capacity to find joy in all things. A negative attitude is worse than a tumor. The best of life can come from the worst of life....
Death
A stiff wind blows and snaps the reed in the canebrake. Gilgamesh is dead. And yet we persist. How do we persist? Why do we persist? The stories we tell ourselves are fabircations. The world tells only a single story. The story of all life, bending, arcing towards a darkness that knows nothing, that promises nothing. Only the great recycling of energy and mass. Heat and light and dust....
UPCs
The ability to reason about output, production or worth. If you id, catalog, organize you can gain insight, improvements or reaction. Understanding your universal product codes improves very little. Codes are tools of catagorization ensuring that everything is unique, trackable, known. All our products should be known. That is a universal goal of humanity....
Fail
By definition, seasons are temporal. There is no beginning but what we claim, and no end but what we decree. Earth’s oscilations, rotations and orbits provide consistency, but only inasmuch as we remember what came before. Life, our Earth, and each day is change. When drawn out a thousand, ten thousand years, do we have a right, or is it even reasonable, to expect anything to be stable?...
Color
As an article of faith, collaboration, coordination, we claim red comes before blue. Energy and rates of oscilation bounce around inside our eyes and our brain tells us how to feel. Embracing the abritrary and acknowledging the structure of the world serves to build resilience and ultimately to allow us to consume our mortality and live for others as we live for ourselves....
Preschool
Wow. What’s now? I’m not sure I like … don’t want food, no no. Under the table I think that’s where I, hey. Who took the piece. You. Give it back. I’m sad because he wont give it back and. Yes! I wonder if they have the minions game here. Can I play it? I don’t want to go home yet....
Consider
A torrent of wind and water and the blue disappears from the sky, leaving slate gray and silver streaks like knives cutting, deboning houses and slipping trees from sodden ground. And then nothing. Silence and the sun slips onto the surface for minutes, feeling like hours. Children, tempted to dance in the spitting rain scurry back behind boards over windows and the tempest slams sideways into the world again....
Haze
Before you begin, consider the atmosphere of the day. Take stock when the day is humid and hazy and the sun never seems to move beyond the burnt orange hue. Or is there not a cloud in sight, with not a drop of moisture in the air and a brilliant cerulean sky above you? Perhaps the mood is changeable with a brisk wind and clouds that seem to shift and move every minute....
Trees
Take a moment to hold a single, specific tree in your vision. Now turn away and try to visualize the same tree in your mind. Turn back to the tree and consider that the tree is alive. The tree is growing right now; pulling water from the ground. Return to holding the same tree tomorrow, and the next day....
Breathe
Before action, there is thought, and before thought there is breath. Breathe intentionally sometimes. In through your nose, and out through your mouth. Breathe. Take that thought in your head, picture it on a piece of paper, and let the paper fly away in a breeze, land in the river running past you, and disappear. Now do it with the next thought. And the next one. And breathe again....
Inverted
Imagine for a moment a tree. Hold the shape of it in your mind a moment. Consider where it draws its strength. The soil, moisture, minerals. Now imagine a human. Hold our shape in your mind. Consider where it draws it’s strength. An inverted tree? Not bound to the soil below, but to the heavens above. Inspiration striking like lightining and causing our passions to grow....
Assassin
What if we were indestructable? A blaze of light and ground shaking thunder tears through our awarness and then nothing for a moment; sleep by any other name. And we awake years later coming to understand our new surroundings. A roll of dice and oak tree woods and the ocean are replaced by alpine meadows and pine. Isolated from earlier experiences, how would we know? What choice do we have?...
Justice
Caught in the wire, with neither the agility or intelligence to free itself, the sheep suffocates. Justice lays over humans like the shepard to their flock, untangling us in moments of dread, and slaughtering us when our duty is fulfilled....