Waiting for the moment...

And so begins another year. The passing of the stifling humidity of July, and the settling in of the August and September breezes. Strange, though, how this year I can't smell freshness in the wind. Or at least, it doesn't seem as present as it used to be. There's a kind of dust hanging about, the remnants of previous ages and times, that manages to cling to the air despite the wind, and layers of it settle ever so softly on my skin. It isn't a dust that itches. It's the kind that settles deep down to the bone and gives a feeling of pervasive weight.

I find myself wishing for October. I want to see the leaves fall, the crisp touch of the winter beginning to displace the dust and make it flake off into the earth. And in winter, I'll wrap my topcoat around me and don my fedora, and walk out among the flaking snow that keeps the dust in its place. I need the cold to feel warm again. I need this old ivy to die back so my feet can move. I need the solace of snowfall.

And how I wish (but what a faint idea it seems) that there would be another set of footsteps in the snow ahead. But that's a December dreaming, and meanwhile the sun falls from the leaves like rain, and the dust drifts along the currents of the air. The snow melts and dries before I even see it.

Timing

A season too soon and a week too late,
my fate to have timing a jester would scorn.
Should I mourn the lost meeting? The mere
searing thought of it, distraught with it,
What could I have got with it? At first there seems
That dream of oneness so complete,
a feat the loss of which should be enraging.

So engaging, that fantasy, but useless,
and just a little truthless, an easy deceit-
A retreat from the truth of what might have been,
had I been there a week before. The allure
of surety, at first so arresting despite
its tritely certain lack of certainty, has broken-
Spoken its insults and left instead
the broken treads of fate and chance.

Romance will fail without fruition,
and intuition in bliss ignores
the chores of rules and signals. Ideal love is fiction,
unheeding of friction until the wrong word,
an absurd little phrase, reveals the mistake.
And then the cake falls, a sweet confection,
on the surface perfection- but nothing remains.

Mundane seems true love by contrast-
A hand held fast over years, not days,
in so many ways like the building of bridges-
enriches not by reaching the goal;
the whole of the work is its own reward.

Toward this I hunger, not infatuation,
but salvation without a sure destination.
Such a creation takes more than a chance,
yet with chance it begins. And now I’m bereft,
through a theft by the calendar’s contempt,
of any attempt to reach for the vision.
Derision in such ironic coincidence,
Common sense criticizing my illogical treason-
A season too soon and a week too late,
My fate to have timing a jester would scorn.

Absolution

A phantasm yet, both met and obscured
Procured from past wishes.
Relish his wavering form,
Forlorn and huddled,
Puddled tears about his feet.
Greet those eyes with, what?
A shut triumphant mind,
To find solace in his grief?
Relief at the thought
That he’s sought the same
And gotten the pain he gave?

Or save us both perhaps:
The traps may fade eventually,
Potentially as we age,
One page to the next of the text unwritten,
Bitten but not inflicted
With the insipid seeds of retribution.

Absolution rests with the hands and the eyes,
Not to despise but to hold and to weep.

We keep too many things hidden,
Forbidding them to reveal our fragility,
That capability for love. Love and hate,
Two fates so easily mixed. If only
The lonely could see.

Escape in the Underground

The hesitated hush of my feet atop the ramp
The damp unwinding clamp of stair upon stair
Unaware, as passersby stare, that I’m slow in my step,
A broken flow to my step.
My thumb just leapt to the ‘Send.’
Should I descend?

A moment’s wait and he might reply,
But so then I will have halted my gait,
And just that weight upon the rest-
No, it must be best to remove my finger
No longer linger, and make the choice.
Deny his voice, deny its reach,
Deny the message of my speech.

Escape can be found in the underground,
Oh, yes it can be found, where the lack
Of the pack of digital distresses rings,
Sings its silent gloried gumption-
A non-function, the “No Signal” brightly lit,
And blessedly fit to give me a chance
To escape this useless, proofless romance.

Night Dance, or Momentary Intercession

Eyes, a hundred windows glancing
Shadows turning in succession
Each a gaze that lasts a moment
‘Till one turns and looks away

A solitary dancer standing smiling at the wall-
Eyes on fire, raptured, waiting ready for one rhythm

(Soap, cologne, the scent of sweat-
Each one brings a recollection,
Memory of a brief attraction
Brought on by a rhythm’s sway.)

DANCE WITH ME, you brief connection
Momentary intercession
Muscles flow with tight compression
Touch and taste this living clay!

Soon the sound becomes a silence,
Eyes and breath, then breath alone,
Eternal though it lasts a second
Giving in, the pressing skin
Ascending to a height unknown.

I Love the BBC

Yes, I do. Really. And not the crap BBC that they show in America, or the cheesy British shows from the early 80's that are still broadcast on latenight. Here there are five wonderful channels of publicly-funded television, and I love it.

I do admit there are some issues. I mean, the license fee is inequitable and not paying it is a criminal offence punishable by prison time. And yet watching television without commericals, with so much educational content, is so unbelievably refreshing.

The lead news story typically takes 5-6 minutes. If anyone is interviewed, they are given enough time for a complete answer, which actually lasts more than 10 seconds! For speeches, they'll allow a whole paragraph of material! You know what all of this means? There's an intelligent discourse where people are allowed to explain their reasoning and don't rely on gut-emotion responses. (Just thinking about Crossfire now makes me physically sick.)

Also, I was astounded to see that during prime time, every night, there is at least one hour-long documentary on each of the channels. And they're GOOD! This isn't the dumbed-down, dead fact reportage that you see in the States. The material is interesting, extremely well-edited, and provides some knowledge of real value. Well, at least on some channels (some of the documentaries are made to fulfill government requirements and really are questionable).

And finally, TV here is so much more sensible. Last night I was watching a show called Tribe where a British man goes and lives among African tribes for about a month each, trying to learn as much as he can about the culture through participating in it. He doesn't know the language going in, just enough basic customs to avoid being killed on contact (in the case of more violent peoples). Anyway, the show was just really intelligently done and very engaging. But of course there are some naked children running around and the women don't wear tops, and at one point the man takes part in a social ritual that involves his genitals. They don't focus the camera on him obviously, but there were one or two inadvertent flashes of frontal nudity. The editors realized that what was important was giving an accurate depiction of the culture and the man's experience with it rather than sanitise the whole thing. Good for them. Good for them.

One last comment- British children on TV are so much more articulate than their American counterparts. Really makes me wonder.

Upon Seeing the American Embassy in London

Surrounding it were giant concrete barriers. And I have to say, it made me feel foolish. Granted, the barriers have a valid point- a terrorist hitting a US embassy in London would kill two birds with one stone- but they represented so much more. At that moment I saw how ridiculously fear-oriented American society is, from our obsession with owning firearms to our foreign policy. Here in London guns are illegal and mace/pepper spray is considered a firearm. Yet you can venture pretty much anywhere in the city and feel relatively safe, provided you use common sense. I can't even imagine what must go through the minds of British folk visiting the US's capital for the first time and seeing so many gun-toting, fully armored police officers and concrete barriers around anything remotely important.

I'm not saying that security measures are a bad idea, given the sentiment about the US in the world today. But I do have to wonder just how much of the violence is a reflection of the policies we've used ourselves when supporting dictators and ignoring the populace. Shouldn't we have learned something from the Cold War? When you take measured steps toward peace, you CAN eventually reach it. But arming yourself to the teeth and walling yourself in is a gamble indeed.

Walk with me in the garden...

I feel so loved tonight.

It's a rare feeling for me. I know people love me, but usually it's just a feeling in the back of my mind. I think the only exception to that was this past February- one of my friends at the time remarked that I was more calm and at peace than he'd ever seen me. It may have only been meant to be a passing thing, but it was real while it was there.

But the point. I've had infatuations where temporary goodbyes seemed unbearable. But these have been the "goodbye, love"s of true friendship. I feel an incredible excitement at the time apart because getting back together with these friends will be fantastic. It's the kind of goodbye that feels wonderful because it isn't "When will I see you again" so much as "I will see you again, and it's only a matter of time."

A small part of me is also wistfully considering the people I wish would be included in that. That is, there are certain people that I feel an almost unconditional love for and I know it's reciprocated. But there are also certain friends that don't allow themselves to feel that kind of love, and I wish I could show it to them. How I wish I could! If only they could see how lonely they make themselves.

I can't love constructions. I can't love the mansions people build around their personalities to impress or mislead. The bigger the house, the emptier it is- unless you allow people inside and share it with them. I can only love friends who build a door in their home, whether of stone or thatch, a palace or a lean-to, so that the two of us might tend a garden in between. Friendships aren't about fortifications. They are about doorways and gardens.

Tonight, I feel that some beautiful flowers have been planted. I look forward to when they bloom again.

Hyacinths

"If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft,
And but two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell the one, and with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul."

-Attributed to the Gulistan of Moslih Eddin Saadi, a Persian poet 1184-1291

Pause

Life is just a little weird in that everything seems on pause until I leave for London. And with the things I have left to do, it's easy to forget that there are a lot of people I won't be seeing after next Wednesday. For a good five or six months anyway. That is particularly hard to deal with, though I've started to reconcile myself to it.

Once I do head home for the holidays, there I sit for about three weeks. Granted, it'll be good to relax. Yet part of me wishes I could spend three or four days at home, pack up my things, and ship off to London. I have this tingly feeling that once I arrive my life will experience some tremendous growth, but until then it's just suspense. An unbearably long tensing before the springboard, or gathering up energy like some plant about to send off a hundred offshoots in all directions. It just seems like until I get over there I'm going to be thinking more about the things I'll be missing. I want to arrive so I can get caught up in the things I'll be learning.

I think the closer the departure gets, the easier it will be. And then it's sailing into the deeper waters.

The Sound of a Rejection

The sound of a rejection on the unrelenting pavement:
Click, clock, click, echo once, twice, thrice
The soles are hard and made to dance
My soul was soft and trod upon
My mind is hot, cold, hot, click, clock, click
-A brisk trot, click, for if I relent my pace
Against the unrelenting pavement,
His steps will follow, brush, brush,
The crush of sandpaper with his touch
Brush clock click, brush clock click
Three-step waltz, pain is false,
So I must say to a slashing sashay,
A stumbling step, click, and he is gone clock
Click, clock, click, echo once, twice, thrice

Work and Weather

You know, it's an amazing thing to have free time. After spending the past year running almost nonstop, doing "productive" things probably 50-60 hours a week or more, I really begin to question the American work ethic. Looking at how I feel now with how I was feeling a month ago is interesting. A month ago, it was fun being occupied, but any opportunities I had for quiet reflection were overrun by thinking about what I had to do next. Now, I'll be walking to spend an hour or so practicing singing, and I'll suddenly notice the beautiful patterns the clouds are making, or how the leaves shimmer with the wind.

Part of it's the fall of course (it's much more visually interesting than the summer). But part of me is remembering larger considerations. Way back in high school I used to be a student hot air balloon pilot and I've found myself thinking back to that, right around sunset when the air starts to calm, or when a storm looks like it's coming in.

If you ever want to gain some perspective, consider the weather- a massive, complicated, interconnected pattern, beautiful in its unpredictability, that hovers over thousands of people at a time and affects them all at once. Ever perfect, always changing. It's a hard feeling to describe, watching the shift of something that large and unaffected by human concerns, but I find it peaceful.

Symmetry

In Kiss Me, Kate there was one moment where the show truly hit me. Opening night, backstage, waiting on the steps with everyone before the big entrance. Everyone was excited to put it in front of a real crowd, the buzz of the audience and the orchestra tuning covering our quiet chatter. I had gone through the entire rehearsal process for that moment- that feeling was why I was on stage.

Of Thee I Sing, on the other hand, never really hit me as a show while we were doing it. I think the lack of drama in the plot is what did that. We all came, had fun, put on a comedy, and left. It didn't feel so much like a show because our goal was to make the audience laugh, not feel. So my moment for this show happened afterward. Just after finishing strike, I went and washed my hands, and caught myself whistling a bit of "Love Is Sweeping the Country." I realized I probably wouldn't ever sing that song on stage again, and never with the same people. At that moment it hit me that I had done a show, and could be proud of what we had accomplished.

The symmetry of this is interesting. In the spring my justifying moment happened just as the show was about to begin, and in the fall it happened just after everything was over. Something about the balance of that feels right.

Part Two

If I didn't need any more proof that those recently written words were true:

It turns out that the title of Coehlo's book is a direct reference to the biblical passage: "On the banks of the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept. On the willows there, we hung up our harps." I hadn't known this, reading the title. So a song titled "On the willows there," of which I heard a few notes in the background, inspires me to write about how we should pay attention to details that capture our attention in poetry and music. And then the very book I'm reading, the book that is making me think deeper about these things, uses the same passage to capture its own meaning.

I can't tell you how much of a shock it was to have just finished writing that last entry and have the words from the song appear on the page. I sat there for a good minute just staring at them in unbelieving revelation. If this kind of thing doesn't tell me that I'm on the right track, I don't know what does.

Reminders, Part One

I'm sitting here having spent the day rediscovering a few things. I found my love of the library again as reading reserve material became enjoyable for the sheer peace and quiet of it. The feel of wandering among stacks of books, wondering what they would contain. Having at last finished my first comparison of translations of the Dao de Jing, I picked up another two copies to look at. And I also selected "By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept" by Paulo Coehlo. It's the first novel I've read by him- I was looking for "The Alchemist" but they only had the French, and similarly "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Marquez was only in Spanish. And now I sit reading it as Ryan plays music from Godspell in the background.
In one of those strange confluences of happenstance, the content of the novel and the music are awakening similar feelings in me. The novel floats through a dreamlike exploration of spirituality and love, simple yet interesting. And the memories I associate with both love and the music of Godspell have me feeling thoughtful.

I did that show my senior year of high school. I played Jesus, and though at first I wasn't sure what to think about that particular choice of casting, in the end it really wound up resonating with me. It reintroduced me to the idea that our understanding of God and spirituality should be about gentleness, love of others, and respect for the world. And that pure joy can result from these things. Our cast wasn't particularly religious; nor did we research the background of the show. But in one of those strange twists of fate, I began responding to the Jesus character. A good portion of the group were underclassmen and looked up to me, and I began to see them as younger siblings.

There is a song in the show titled "On the Willows," where Jesus says his farewell to the cast, knowing his foretold separation from them. Though they don't entirely understand, they have shared the meal with him and each share a fond moment from their friendship before lying down to sleep. The first few chords of that song began a moment ago, and though Ryan switched to another track, my breath caught. I can still remember that moment onstage, during our last performance. Soft blue lighting covered the set, except for a single spot on me. As the band continued softly behind us, the audience faded away as I began the farewells. I didn't need any inspiration for the tears that came to my eyes. In those moments I said my farewell to the days of high school and marked in my mind memories of friends, both on the stage and elsewhere, that would remain with me from then on. Hearing that song, I feel joy and sorrow, and remind myself to make new memories that will allow them to continue on.

I've made some beautiful memories in the past two years. Some are beginning to fade a little as the people in them move on. Yet every so often I'll read a passage in a book, or hear the refrain of a song, that makes me remember. It's good to pay attention to these things. They serve as a reminder to evaluate our present condition and whether we're happy with it. Do we have good memories that glow or make us wistful as much as the old? And if not, perhaps we should listen to the little voice carried within those words or notes that whispers our secret joys and paths to contentment.

Dao de Jing 71

"Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First you realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Sage is his own physician. He has healed himself of all knowing, and thus is truly whole." 71

The premise here is that acquired, systemized knowledge has its limits. When you go too long accepting teaching from others, you lose the ability to think outside the box. Every fact, no matter how big or small, has a set of underlying assumptions, whether scientific or cultural. Until you see the situation for its whole, you run the risk of assuming you have learned enough. This is why we see supposed experts throwing up their hands in the face of a backfired experiment, or shocked politicians at failed foreign policy initiatives. Assume you know enough, and chances are you've missed a fairly significant detail that could change the entire outcome.

This also, however, extends to a philosophical argument. Systemized knowledge is almost entirely based on language, and we often make the assumption that everything worth knowing can be put into words. Likewise, we assume that language is language, unvarying and giving us all the information we need for clear communication. Anyone experienced with translation knows just how false a statement that is. Language is based on shared cultural experience and has hidden assumptions of its own. But besides even translation issues, language can act as a limiting force. It muscles a concept into a few short sentences and modifiers, and we assume reading that sentence automatically gives us the concept.

In one translation I found an interesting accompaniment to this verse, taken from the Zhuangzi: "The fish trap is how you catch a fish. Having caught the fish, forget the trap. The snare is how you catch a rabbit. Having caught the rabbit, forget the snare. Words are how you capture meaning. Having caught the meaning, forget the words. Where am I going to find someone who has forgotten the words so that I can have a conversation with him?"

And for final consideration: Recognizing the limitation of words allows you to move beyond them. Cannot the same also be said of one's own limits? Does recognizing your limits allow you to transcend them?

Dao de Jing 70

"But if those who understand me are rare, I am to be highly prized." 70

'Nuff said.

Evolution

In the past month I've only had passing thoughts about relationships and friendships, and have more just been making sure I set aside some time for the people I know already. As always happens, friendships change, but for the most part I'm handling those that do pretty well. One of my best friends has been slowly growing apart, however, and is heading away from a while, so I sent off a simple letter reflecting on the past and present.

I still haven't gotten any kind of response, which I guess confirms my impressions that there won't be much effort to renew the friendship. More than a little sad, but for the most part I've accepted it. There's nothing I can do but remember the good times and move on with my life. I've tried for several months to keep it going, but when the other person doesn't reciprocate, it's only wishful thinking.

If circumstances bring it back into blossom, so be it, but for my part there isn't any more to do.

Sensual

Liquid bodies,
breathless lounging,
Leaning back on
black-lined linens.

Body white, the water body.
Beaded, sweated surface

Beating

How much of you is mine and then
how much of me is missing,
milling hotly through your mind?


Muscles unwind
Intertwined

Inkblot Test

Just took the inkblot test at tickle.com. Surprisingly accurate:

You are driven by a higher purpose than most people. You have a deeply-rooted desire to facilitate peacefulness in the world. Whether through subtle interactions with love ones, or through getting involved in social causes, it is important to you to influence the world.

You are driven by a desire to encourage others to think about the positive side of things instead of focusing on the negative. The reason your unconscious is consumed by this might stem from an innate fear of war and turmoil. Thus, to avoid that uncomfortable place for you, your unconscious seeks out the peace in your environment.

Usually, the thing that underlies this unconscious drive is a deep respect for humankind. You care about the future of the world, even beyond your own involvement in it. As a result, your personal integrity acts as a surrogate for your deeper drive toward peace and guides you in daily life towards decisions that are respectful toward yourself and others.