Older Musings

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"I don't have any work to do right now story" about America - June 10, 2010

Behind the third eye, she's the one I see at the bottom of a deep, dark well. She's tied to a chair, head down, gagged and unable to speak. Tired, weak and frail.

I drop eggs down the well at her. Not as a means of cruelty, but a metaphoric symbolism of new life being smashed all around her. The new life she'd be if she could be unchained and climb out of the well. I watch them ooze around her, on the chains and hope she smells life and death at once and the will arrives to bust free.

She's America, chained to everything. She's low, in the bottom of the well, just as we as people are continuously 'low' on something.

Low on Milk.
Low on Beer.
Low on Money.
Low on Interest.
Low on Clothing.

Slow to Action.

They drop eggs on us. Americans 'us' that is. Political writer's with their full bodied sarcasm more or less smash eggs on us, rather than drop and allow the realization of reluctance to emerge from self.

Will, low on will, we often prefer the shackles. "Guilty" we ask, "what can I do?" It's a perfunctory question as much as our futility is, as we drown out through our even more perfunctory mechanisms of the drowning.

What the hell are we supposed to do? Stop driving? Stop enjoying life? (the opposite spectrum persists as rambunctiously!) Stop eating. Stop wasting. STOP STOP STOP! Right, sure, yep, Uh Huh!

I beg to disagree at this exact moment in time with Billy Joel and recoil that "We 'DID' start the fire." Yes we did. We're humans, of course we did. We're all connected, of course we did. I'm quite certain the trees didn't interface with the sky and reckon it was time for sky scrapers and atomic bombs. The worms and ants weren't up in the lab building cars and swinging deals for oil.

I have no answers. But, I do wish to pose a thought, however potentially outlandish and ignorant it may come out. We can't go backwards. We can't suddenly decide we aren't going to need cars, electronics, or packaging. We did this to ourselves.

People make a living out of schmoozing others into buying their so very special products. In fact, people have to fly all around the country and the world just to perpetuate the sale of both the schmoozing and the product. Wasteful, Indeed! People commute hundreds of miles a day to make a living. Could many of them work from home, most likely! Urban cities are not equipped to handle an entire population of people in one state, nor would the amount of necessary public transportation for such a feat post a solution of any sort of merit.

All I'm saying is we caNNot go backwards. We've been 'growing,' 'building,' and 'evolving' since the dawn of time and I propose we stop dwelling on how despicable our lifestyle is and push forward. We have the capacity to unite and solve our issues with foresight and forward motion.

What's my point. I'm tired of all the bitching and complaining about how terrible our country is. yes, it most definitely borders on the consumer capital of the world; but if we can build and create all this crap, we can build and create better crap for a better (less crappy) world to come.

And that's the end of my ranting I don't have any work to do right now story.

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and that's my story of the fence and the ever unsubtle key - April 15, 2010

The fence. It stares. At me.

Not in an unfriendly way, more the way a squirrel would do as it peers behind it's freakishly tiny hands; hands full of nuts and shells, waiting, wondering, where will she go, what's she going to do. Do I keep eating? Do I move on.

No, the fence, it watches just the same. Admittedly, it's a small thorn, these holes in it, where Diva dog can escape, thorny, causing the occasional scrape.

I am as much a part of this culture where patch work is the answer, as I am actually it; itself, this patch work. With my make-shift barricade...oh yes, make shift:

A box of Summit Maibock fills one gap
A bag of ice melt another
A large board that may, or may not have, been a shelf at one time, the third

The hair tie I used to close the back gate? The landlord fixed that, and left behind the hair tie in plain view where I could find it. Funny.

BUT! It does the job, this patch work. In the process it pokes fun at me from not too far away, revealing what's hidden beneath this analogous and metaphorical conundrum. Really, what is my reluctance to fixing the fence, to fix me and my holes so Diva dog is safe and I am sane? I have no answers, only questions.

The key. The key you dare ask? Oh, so symbolic, will it ever yield in its loud cries and shrill statements? Ok, fine. I dropped the key, the THE key, but the extra key. I was headed out to go running, stopped to put my shoes on and dropped it. WAIT, not dropped, I let it slide right through the cracks of the stairway. I can peer through the tiny crack and see it, shining at me with the utmost clarity. Alas, I can't get down there and reaching the effing key.

Bite me irony. You don't evade me, nor am I immune to your unsubtle, humble atrocities.

And that's my story of the fence and the ever unsubtle key.

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Fear of the constancy of having and having not - March 23, 2010


Maybe there's a fixation on doing in the world, in contrast to being. Maybe we're taught to betray ourselves with the constant need to "be something," "have something," or "become something," to avoid the fact that we already are and to keep the cogs in motion and the obligation of the material realms ceaseless.

What would happen if everything "turned off" and we were "powerless," everyone; and I mean everyone at once? Would we choose to loot or help based on our previous notions of life, to avoid the existence of no light without sun and no noise without man or nature (being synonymous?) What would be the point though?

Fear that the constancy of having and having not would cease? Just thoughts...I wonder at the like of our early ancestry, their evolutionary process. What would they think of the now? Would the endless noise be tirelessly frightening in all its stigma?

An these thoughts still unanswerable as they are sprung from this notion of what to do with life? What to be when one grows up? The age old, nothing new question. But all the noise and opportune moments of wading into the currents of others drive us away from our own current within the vast universe.  The one where we need not peer at the depth marker before entering because the trust that one can flow is without fault, worry or caution. Oh yes, that one is drowned out by the traffic jam in the sea of living and the need to know, have and be 'something' or 'somebody.'

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Cafe Haus - March 14, 2010


Sitting at Kopplin's, finally, drinking Guatamalan coffee with cream and I sense a mirror to the right of me. I feel slightly anxious that I'm over there, likely revealing some form of unflattering angle or light of which I'd rather not be seen. Instead of looking I keep writing...feverishly...as though I were in mania, but not all at the same time. My eye catches the color blue in it's periphery, direction of the mirror.

I scan the room in search of this hue of blue instead still of looking in the mirror. There's no blue.

Caving in, I glance over to find, not a mirror, but a door, open 3/4 of the way, with a blue bag hanging on the handle. Behind it just shelves of stuff - coffee beans, cups and a broom and I ponder; wonder; how this slightly open door, with all its stuff is so synonymous with my anxiety of the mirror. The coffee beans jittering like the dangling unconscious bell in the brain. The stacks of cups waiting to be filled. The blue bag, the door.

All this to say, there's magic in the ordinary, of this I'm astutely aware. When the mirror is finally gone, it's just me. Who is me. Without the mirror.