Hanging On

Fall’s colors in Autumn 2014 are obstinate.

They stubbornly refuse early-frost realities

And make for conclusion-busting thoughts

That would have us thinking of Decline.

 

(With thanks to Peter Smagorinsky for the accompanying photograph)

Kaleidoscope Memories

A kaleidoscope of beautiful memories surrounds us. Life changes. We adapt. We move onward, but we never forget the beautiful images of our past and present lives. Maybe this process keeps us from the death Nin describes.

The process of becoming, the current of life, passed down to me, as forever, kaleidoscope memories. 

Forever memories, kaleidoscope memories pulsing through our lives to help us (re)construct what we know. 

Change is inevitable and can be a beautiful part of life, but a mind is a terrible thing to lose. Then it doesn't matter how happy we are, and the change isn't so beautiful. (Or is it? You decide.)

The forever memories, the kaleidoscope memories . . . they help. Even though the voice on the other end of the phone hesitates to recognize your own. 

Nonetheless, the journey continues through the current that moves and connects all of us. 
 

 

Welcome to my 'hood

Do you know who you are? Well, in a world of rules (dad) and complications (mom), it seems that you must have the right percentage to be accepted. Some sort of mathematical equation and lab work defines you, or so they (powers) say. Yet, just as many believe "Sure books can guide you, but your heart defines you." 

Do you know who you are? Well, I'm still navigating that journey. Hoi toide keeps this vessel moving onward. Nonetheless, my family members have all had quite the journey to new lands and new places. Upper NE to the OBX (& that's just on mom's side since we're still working on dad's (we've found connections to ATL though; small world? I digress . . . )). Once Grandpa swam the Croaton Sound until they'd call from shore that he was too far out . . . or the ferry picked him up. We all keep swimming and searching for the answers, don't we? 

Do you know who you are? Well, maybe. But I know where I'm from. Welcome to my 'hood. Chicahauk Trail: where we "live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air." 

Do you know who you are? Well, slowly but surely we all hope to celebrate the intricacies of our past, present, and future . . . to etch them in history forever . . . to remember, to become . . . together in ways that maybe only we and our heart defines us. 

Through my wanderlust perhaps, just maybe, I will. 

WSM 650

It’s Saturday night

WSM 650 style.

 

Should be dancin’

Or at least clappin’…

 

But no, here I sit

Screen glaring at me.

 

“Write!” it says

“What?” I ask.

 

Another chapter intro?

Another grant proposal?

 

Okay, THIS Saturday night

But no more. 

Dirt-Track Racing Roots

Canandaigua Motorsports Park on a Saturday night in upstate New York 

The place to be with Grandpa and Daddy and maybe a cousin or two.

 

Settle into the rusting bleacher seats, a squashed hotdog and bun half devoured

When motors rev and fumes fill the lungs, time to hold Daddy's hand: It's starting!

 

Jump from the stands, race to the fence, and wish you were one of the drivers

Speeding by (crashing even) in the dust-swirled air that is stock-car racing of my youth.

 

But Saturday night, August 10, 2014, the lights went out on this childhood dream 

"Tony Stewart just hit that guy!" someone shouts. The investigation starts. I will not believe.

I Am Country

Goldens red; red clay pond.

Sunday afternoon; country folk I am one.

 

Rains pour; soggy white bread.

Picnic pig roast; country folk I am too.

 

No-where Road; for no-where near.

Fiddles rising; haze descending country style.

 

DONNed tramps on trains. 

Source:

Time and Dreams

"If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable . . ." The echoes of Eliot's words resonate with me tonight as I sit here thinking about the whirlwind of life and all that is becoming. A good reminder, especially when we really pause and think about being thankful for all that we have, having reciprocity in our relationships, and simply living life.

Unredeemable time means that I must be (eternally) present in every second; yet, the past -- from the good and the bad -- wails, never forgotten, embodied somewhere deep down inside. The future -- my dreams -- reminding me of the (present) work it took to achieve . . . the future reminding me that I continue to become within the whirlwind. 

In a space in which all time "becomes," it's hard to pinpoint one "being." The continuous flow of life, as I've noted before, leads us to explore as we take advantage of time past, present, and future. All becoming, but we can't forget the being (the past) from where we come or where we are going (becoming). Thus, becoming (unredeemable) + being (eternally present) = inseparable (?) (complementary, partners, always in flux). [Not to mention all those before me who paved the way for themselves, perhaps unknowingly creating a path that I continue down today (but I digress as that's for another post to come).]

The journey continues with all that is "real" (and "real" in our dreams). The future awaits, after all, right now. [sweetdreams]

Trains and Bluegrass

Today a train bears his name: NED, no more, no less. 

NED vibrates with each passing rail, punctuated by the rattle-bang of bumping cars and the plaintive wail of memories Ned-the-Person no longer hears. 

A longing wail that touches me deep inside—like ol’ time bluegrass still does.  

Does something happen to your insides when the late night whistle of a train interrupts your dream state?  When the watched landscape that you know to be real transforms into something else? Becoming what has been, will be, and is when you awake? 

 

On Swimming in Muddy Rivers: Be/coming

There’s all sorts of songs and poems and stories about rivers.  They’re mighty forces.  They’re places of change and rebirth.  Baptism.  Chaos.  Beauty.  Becoming and renewing Being.  Life and Death and Life again.  Jump in with me for a few minutes... 

 

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Let's Fly a Kite

 

Before* I write, i have to ask myself if i want to remember or become [note (*): before indicates a continuality. Before exists, but only as a part of maybe middle and after and during et cetera. Just to be claro].  If I opt to remember, then I will write of things I believe myself to have been.  Some still picture froze in my consciousness “n”.  A static image, that while i believe it to be static, it too is in flux.  What I am ceases to be as it becomes from omen to omen (m,t:m,).  

 

Before* (remember?)  I continue, I feel the need to dissipate the ‘I’.  ‘I’ signifies the organic, at least to i.  i also must dissipate.  I must be expressed as some hybrid of ‘we’ and ‘I’. wIe perhaps.  What was once I* [] is now the organic (my flesh), the technological (my computer), and whatever else*, jabberingawaytogivedistancefor [note(*): whatever else might include the music i’m listening to, this beer, that candle (O fuck off, the representation is in your mind, dear friend), these feelings of doubt and inevitable progression, that is: Becoming.

 

And then I lean back into this modern couch. A real piece of americana, without nostalgia. it’s IKEA, and  lovely. I’m plugged in completely.  I even have my display inverted (negative) to compliment the dark.    And this state.     This space.          Funny this space shit. And thank you for the word itself.  Where would we be without shit.  Especially bullshit, the greatest shit of all.


 

ii

 

satie and the grey but brilliantly loving* tentacles of the dada spirit [note(*): loving can either mean whatever you, dear reader, want it to, or the spirit of playful chaos and De-structions, con lento].  

 

what if we only looked at the blending of dabs the  Impressionists made.  Perhaps that is where our existence lies. This kite is becoming tired. The wind died. But we will keep this        .

 

Green grass, a little dry, but alive.  Leaves crunch and smell of earth.  nothing sneaks.  

 

It is lovely to be ignorant enough to mix what the experts swear cannot be mixed.  If we refuse the discourse of impossibility, then we transcend.  We can mix as we see fit.  our assemblage is open <full stop>.

 

All that is studied melts into the air. Chronic becoming. While we here, academia is clever prison for would be radicals, resisters, revolutionaries.

 

Tired. But not to bed. To the television. To the plants. To the baking.  To avoidance.  To the villanelle.

 

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Let's Go Exploring

Yes, let's go exploring (and not be boxed in)! The reason I love the ocean is that no matter when one comes back to it, it's always different. Always. 

Do I remember or become in this space of 3lectric? Maybe a bit of both? The ocean reminds me of the constant flux of my exploration and becoming, as do my random notes scattered in old notebooks, books, pdfs, pictures that talk about remixing and becoming in ways that didn't quite make sense to me until now (well, kinda. those thoughts still exploring and pushing boundaries). 

The motion of our lives keeps pushing us onward: away from what we've known, through what we know, and into the realm of what's to come. Reminding us of how we are connected today in many ways that can be liberating and limiting. We reinvent ourselves daily within these connections. And the pounding we take along the way (like the waves on the shore) remind us of the journey, the process of becoming, we call life. 

I don't want to remain; I want to explore. 

Elberton

       Elberton, Georgia: Granite Capital of the World is 100% pure, unadulterated motion in an American South.  Donna lived here once, still does sometimes—though it’s not her home and likely never will be in any conventional sense of the word.  It’s homey without being a home, this country town of 100% pure, unadulterated motion. Trains in motion dwarfing cars, houses, and people in motion, some of whom are more committed to forward motion than others, whether in gait or deed. 

       Elberton, the stop Ned chose on a cold January morning in a year he had long since forgotten, has not forgotten him. A headstone engraved with a country boy, suitcase in hand and dog not far behind, begs the question, “Who is he, where is he going, and why?” Enough that he was, is no more, but may become—though not necessarily in that order or even in human form. In fact, just this morning, I ran into Ned on my way out of Dunkin’ Donuts at the corner of Milledge and Prince in Athens, Georgia. He held the door for me, a kind act that I returned by giving his dog a good chunk of my donut while taking a second whiff of Ned’s bacon-scented coat—a pleasant scent no matter what time of day. I wondered, could it be the same coat he had worn the morning he left Aunt Em’s and Uncle Phil’s farmhouse to hop a train to some unknown exit?

       I think so.  Kind-hearted Aunt Em took in overnight boarders—what some of her less generous neighbor folk called tramps—gave them a clean mat to sleep on in the milk-house and greeted them the next morning with a bowl of oatmeal covered in cream and topped with maple syrup from the farmer down the road. On special occasions, like the day of Ned’s and Donna’s first encounter, Aunt Em slid a small strip of bacon from a recent hog slaughtering to a spot just below the oatmeal’s lumpy crust. Savoring the salty add-on, the two of us looked up approvingly from our bowls to catch Aunt Em’s waiting eyes. Then, with a quick wave of her arm, she shooed us through the ill-fitting farmhouse door, hung a school lunch pail over my arm, and gave Ned quick directions for the next safe house 30 miles away.