Saturday, November 30, 2013

Mindy Gledhill - Anchor

Came across this song on a random blog the other day. I heard it/watched the video ages ago when I found a newspaper article about Mindy.
The first time I watched it, I was terribly inspired to go around wearing dress-up wings all the time, but that never happened, *snerk* I did once, though; I found a pair of old wings I made for a Halloween costume then handed down to my little sister and just wore them one day. Can't remember whether that was before or after I saw this music video though...

You know how kids will go around wearing the funniest things in public, like tiaras, spiderman costumes, fairy wings and capes? I think that'd be kinda fun, just whenever you feel like it, pretending to be someone else, or perhaps, becoming a truer self. Why be so boring and normal all of the time? 

Friday, November 29, 2013

October Fly on the Porch

Oh look at how beautiful they all are,
why come down when I can watch, detached,
unobserved and alone.
But they're absolutely lovely, and yeah, I want to be them-
all and everything,
And here I am,
watching,
seeing,
Wrapping my heart around them,
wings behind my ears like fingers and hands.
Wry smile, silly,
Maybe someday I will break in half, I don't know,
I swear I'm not torn,
just a little too expansive sometimes, and terribly ADD.

Dancing Around the Nothing (Not entirely sure I'm all here sometimes, but the funny thing is, that doesn't bother me)

Can I be the water,
or even the wind between my fingers?
Would existence be any easier then?
Not that it's terribly uncomfortable, just,
sometimes it doesn't fit me,
or I don't fit it.

Can I be the rain on my nose,
can I be the breeze skipping through the leaves?
Can I be the ground underneath my feet?
Or perhaps nothing but the motion of
my longboard curving from side to side?
Can I be the sound of life whispering
from every atom of every cell of every stone?
Can I be the act of seeing and doing
purposefully in true faith?
Can I be your voice and your eyes and your hands?

It's just that I kinda want to be everything,
but who's to say I'm not already,
or that I haven't already been many times before,
and that's why it's all here inside of me,
responding to the light of everything outside.

And this is all so very soft, but I don't want to be always or only a jagged edge--
because I'm not.


I imagine that someday it'll all make sense,
it'll all come together,
I'll have the ability to really understand and communicate it all,
I'll finally see the overarching plot to, maybe, everything, but now
I look back, and I can see a series of arches, then to there, then to here, there to here
Beginning, middle, end of something eternally. 

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Photo essay of a sort

(Click on the last three to make them bigger. One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to get a template that's friendlier with photographs...)








Namaste y mae govannen to every and all


  • Beauty in everyday life, spontaneous and immediate. If you wait, it will always come, heartbreaking and eye-opening. I am always a little bit less blind than I was before. 
  • Yo, my best friend and love.
  • My lovely, still growing family.
  • Every single one of my siblings, adopted, blood, and soul-relatives.
  • All of my friends, which usually translates into siblings.
  • Fantastic food and teamwork.
  • Snow.
  • Music, musicians, and musical instruments. Also, the music of the natural world in all senses.
  • Memory. 
  • Writing.
  • Doctor Who, in all of it's complexity and simplicity, intertwined duality. Funny, beautiful, heartbreaking.
  • Enlightenment and transcendence, the unattainable, ever-won quest and weave. 
  • Emotion and expression, creativity and god.
  • Skin.
  • The space between the ears, all at once infinite and perfectly encapsulated. 
  • Life, always

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Follow the numbers

Looks like somebody got a hold of some chalk... (Not me, I just followed the numbers)



Two-headed Poem

(To explain the title, love, I once read that when writing a poem, it can emerge as two intertwined poems, and you must then work to separate them from each other. I haven't actually experienced this phenomenon much, there have been a couple cases, but this is the first that seemed distinctly so. As it is, I decided that I'd break that rule, I'd let this poem stay siamese-twin, and try to further twist and weave it, and so I did; what you shall read presently, is two-headed, dualistic, two concepts in my head right now that seem to play off of each other, separate but entirely related.)








I.
Mmm,
The complexities of language, 
Crashing waves beneath floating papers, 
Cobwebs and spindly plants.

II.
The refinement of her expressions,
Intricate and infinite; 
A testament that everything communicates; 
It is we who must choose to listen.

III.
Looking beyond, between, underneath, 
All of the winding tendrils around written words, how wondrous, 
More wondrous still, how you can nearly read her thoughts 
from the positioning of her eyebrows and ears. 

IV.
They all have different voices, 
You know, 
Mountain peak and ocean depth, 
Short bark and long drawl, lilting or singsong. 
And their voices are no different, loud quiet infinite--
Like ours 

Character Sketch

He smokes smarties and swears like a sailor.
Dark, dark eyes under a mop of blond hair,
insolent swagger even though he's not yet old enough for a learner's permit.
Thinks he knows all the girls, but they haven't even started looking at him.

Takes pride in petty, childish theft; silly boy, don't you know you won't ever have to grow up?


Even under all of this crustiness, he says please and thank you
with sincere gratitude,
Pure heart under pretentious bluster,
pretty song flowing from a clogged stream bed. 

Friday, November 22, 2013

Perfect Harmony, But I Can't See The Moments They Choose Not To Reveal

Look at them:
they're so pretty.
Seem to know where they're going,
but maybe it's nothing but an oily surface
that reflects back light.

Look at their dance:
intricate and simple steps.
Seem to know what they're doing,
but maybe it's a pattern that's all made up
only in their heads, and maybe that's perfectly wonderful.

Look at them sing:
all the words fit together, rhyme and reason.
Not a note out of place,
but I guess I still haven't learned to properly improvise,
and there is music underneath that which I can hear. 

Seasonal Affective Disorder maybe? But that too would feel like theft and misalignment. None of it matters anyway.

So basically, it feels like almost nothing I'm doing with my life lately is actually getting me anywhere. Don't know where it is I hope to go, exactly, but I'm feeling terribly stagnant and impotent.
I don't feel like I'm really learning anything well.

What do I have to give to people? Life as connection and network; but I don't know how to do that really. I'm not really woven into life, I don't really feel like I fit; I am jangling, dissonant.
I keep skipping days, or rather, living through them as through a dream, something to get me somewhere else I already am. I don't know... Can't really explain. And I guess that's what I figure my purpose is, explain the unexplainable, but does it even matter? Even if it matters not to anyone else, is it enough that it seems to matter to me?
I'm getting nowhere, and yeah, it feels like I ought to be getting somewhere, but I don't know how. I've got suspicions, but not much more than that, and I don't want to look at them too hard.
Trapped and stuck in all of these things I thought I didn't have to deal with anymore, or even yet. Somebody keeps saying that it is so easy to get out of it all, to move past it all, but here I am, futile and strung up.
Maybe I keep looking outside of myself too much, but I learn from the patterns of others. I'm kinda lost, and maybe it's just the weather, but I don't know. I'm so quick to adopt the things in others that I think fit in me, but I still feel like that's a little invalid, a little untrue. I'm so colorless, it seems, but that doesn't sound true either. Looks like I'm looking for truth, even though I thought I'd decided against that long ago. I decided to search for love and compassion rather than truth. Truth is so subjective.
Chasing my own tail and spinning off after the tails of others.
I don't really believe in this world, I guess that's why I don't fit. Where do I fit? It doesn't seem like I really fit here anymore, but even that is transitory.
Nothing's the right color. But that doesn't seem to matter either. I feel so autistic. But nobody believes that either, and probably they're right. Yeah, still stuck halfway between my feelings and others' sayings. So many dang directions...
Isn't it weird that you can live in your own body and head 24 hours a day, and still you don't understand yourself entirely? You don't know where everything inside you comes from or why? But it never works for me to just surf over it all, I have to experience it, dips and crescendos. I'm so torn still, still don't know why. Still don't know why. Thought I was getting closer, and maybe I am, but I really don't know. It's like nothing I do matters, and in one way, I don't care, but in another, it's driving me nuts. Sometimes I wonder if I'm one of those nineteen to twenty-one year olds who's going to spiral off into nothing in a fantastic display of insanity, but even that is nothing but idle curiosity, though I admit I have a morbid and self-effacing side I don't like to indulge often but still it comes up, all self-satisfied and smug every once in a while. Sometimes it's kinda perversely pleasurable to stare into the void, eyes wide and glittering.
Is it possible to be objective about oneself? I guess that's something I'm trying to figure out, but even that annoys my sometimes. I don't like being removed from myself and my feelings. I kinda have a tendency, it seems, to run away from that which makes me uncomfortable, but something always yanks me back, and now I am tiredly resigned to just going through whatever it is I have to. 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Between the ears

Tiny person walks -
breeze of thought swaying, swirling;
tightrope within skull



(When it will not do
to wax lengthy,
Haiku)

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Hands

The last time I ate pomegranate,
I stained one bead on my wooden bracelet pink.
Later, I took it off, so i could better hold your hands
and tickle you.
Somehow my sister got a hold of it,
twirling it in her hands and stretching the elastic.
You took it from her, stretched it over your hand,
(almost the same size as mine)
and you held it out to me.
I slipped my hand through,
A perfect space within a circle of fingers
and cup of palm.

2nd Draft of "Oh gods alive", better flow


Oh gods alive,
      the beauty and sadness of all...
The heady soup of my nature,
        Earth and sky,
        stone and ether,
made from each other,
The figure eight of eternity;
Don't you see?

Perfect imperfection,
              I can feel it deep
              deep swirling in my head,
              my ribcage;
that universe of universes
        and song-filled black hole
        just the depth, the depth of it-
Counter-clockwise
                as energy goes, a black hole,
But perhaps in name only,
       could a black hole accept, create,
       or give back rapture?

       Heady head,
       grounded heart,
       deep gut.
Ha, I am matrix,
Woven weaving
Twined, my dear,
Nothing but something
               sculpted around other things,
To see, you must confront
      what seems like emptiness,
      but never ever is.
God is empty space
         that we try to put form and substance to,
Then missing the point entirely:
Masked and cloaked and idolized,
               Perhaps we do the same to ourselves...

I worship
  the all in, 
everything:
        I want to swallow, and have swallowed the sun,
        And I have been swallowed in return

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Excavation

Isn't it weird? This year is almost over, I have less than a month left to be eighteen, even though I'm still seventeen and mostly four and seven and sometimes forty. But this year, this strange, interesting, beautiful, bounteous, change-filled and growth-laden year, it's almost all over, vapor slipping through my fingers once again. The years are getting shorter, the ratio of year to years lived becoming more and more unequal.
Four years upon this blog, sculpted and shaped and forgotten and remembered...

Did you know that words don't stick? It seems like they used to, but now they often don't, and I can't figure out why. Perpetually perplexed, haha. (She smiles wryly) We'll pretend that we are perfectly comfortable in ourselves in this world, shoved against everything far too tightly. But there's space, right?
There's space inside. and sometimes, far too much space outside, a different angle on everything. Too many questions and not enough answers.
Re-pacing every fixed point in my past life, re-treading the old dirt paths of experience. Oh I am here again, and this is what I did then. This is now, here I am now, again (breath floating off into the spiral extended from heart). The ghosts of the past sliding by, more translucent every go around, but still there, ethereal as they are. Now is nothing but an old sheet thrown over an invisible shape, though. But whenever I say "so it is", never again will it be. That's why words won't stick; in their way, they are solid, implastic; strange as that sounds, but the way words are formed-- casting butterflies in concrete so that movement and flight crash dead to the ground.
To say that I am contradiction is to give out only a small amount of information, but if someone caught that and held it and looked at it long and hard, they would see the universe swirling in every hole, and they would, I think, understand at some point.
Woven tightly around self and time and every discovery in people and other nouns. Wound tightly and loosely around the years, even as they slip by, evading every grasp. Grasp loosely, I suppose, and they will comply, tattooing my skin and heart as they wave farewell from the edge of void and eternity. 

Spiral Galaxy

Supernova without purpose,
     empty energy expelled into further emptiness.
In the midst;
Ecstasy.
Afterwards, nothing (             )

Casting off the shell,
 underneath raw and electric--
biological meta-crisis, to thieve from another's mouth.

Hm now, how now,
How much was the universe edited before
it came to be,
was released unbridled in all of its fury,
    chaos,
beauty and order?
Or was she, he, they,
    am edited at all?

Meaninglessly meaningful
 wonderings,
 all that seems human,
 sent out naked and barely born,
or cultivated with immense care,
 it makes no difference.
Who is it they're trying to reach?

Behind my words, no thing.

Objectivity,
       god,
       life.
Sputter and fizzle away into line and space

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Voice

Man, nothing will come to me today. Can't seem to write anything well, neither poetry, essay, nor stream-of-consciousness. Nothing will really fit together, and I'm dissatisfied with all of my drafts and writing ideas at the moment. I want to write, but it doesn't come out very well, I'm still not complete or clear, I've got shallow-digging dis-ease (as our friend G would call it) and ADD in some form today. Don't know what to do, and what I want to do, I think I should do something else instead. At least I finally practiced guitar today -I want to learn; I want to learn how play guitar, drive, write, be with people, and just generally apply myself. I can be fierce and focussed, but I guess I don't fixate much. --Even that isn't true though, I like to think I'm not obsessive, but when I really look into and at myself, I am totally obsessed. I am so so so redundant, but, balance. It's hard to talk of balance, though, it's so easy to fall into duality and polar opposites and untruths. Juggling differently colored balls from hand to hand and back again. Why keep them moving though? Can't they just be? I'd like to think they're not even separate; the yin and yang symbol, though overused, is beautifully fitting; two things as inseparable, interconnected one. -That's pretty cool, and in some ways it simplifies things, and in others, complicates. But you know, this world is more than one dimension, and to look at any one thing differently, the whole web shifts. Nothing is just surface, or just depth; no one is only one thing. I dislike referring to people as occupations because it seems to dehumanize them. I'm not even a "writer", I'm Amoniel, but that doesn't quite cover it either, I'm this thing that takes form around, I'm this that changes shape constantly, that never fits into the world the same way for longer than right now. Yes, I fall into shallow-digging dis-ease every once in a while, but even that is not how I work always. --I want to dive deep deep into the world, life, the universe, -it sounds silly, and I don't always want that, but -everything. I love stained fingers and dirt and all of the marks life and time leaves on us, scars are beautiful; wrinkles, freckles, and moles, absolutely lovely. I love to get paint on my hands and graphite all over my fingertips and face. I love calluses and rough hands, tough feet. I don't want to be perfect, I want to be alive. I am life's canvas, my own canvas, the canvas and paper of others, mirror and imprint. When I get firewood with my family, I like to see the scratches on my arms from the hard work of loading and carrying and unloading, and I like to watch all of the marks fade away. All of these things that fix and flow us in time, now then tomorrow. I want to dig deep into my own soul and examine it intently, and I want to do the same with others. I'm looking looking finding the thread that ties and unwinds all things. Maybe it has a name, maybe it doesn't, but I seem to be able to find and talk with and about it just fine without a name, and even with an imperfect name. The imperfect name reminds me that it won't fit forever, I think; that I know it all and I know nothing, and everything fits perfectly. 
I said I couldn't write today, but perhaps I was trying too hard. And now I have found my flow, my track; my voice. 

Friday, November 8, 2013

If my Drivers Ed class was written as poetry, maybe then I could absorb it and actually remember...

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Oh gods alive,

Oh gods alive,
the beauty and sadness of all...
The heady soup of my nature,
Earth and sky,
stone and ether,
made from each other,
The figure eight of eternity;
Don't you see?

Perfect imperfection,
I can feel it deep
deep swirling in my head,
my ribcage;
that universe of universes
and song-filled black hole
just the depth, the depth of it-
Counter-clockwise
as energy goes, a black hole,
But perhaps in name only,
could a black hole accept, create,
or give back rapture?

Heady head,
grounded heart,
deep gut.
Ha, I am matrix,
Woven weaving
Twined, my dear,
Nothing but something
sculpted around other things,
To see, you must confront
what seems like emptiness,
but never ever is.
God is empty space
which we try to put form and substance to,
Then missing the point entirely:
Masked and cloaked and idolized,
Perhaps we do the same to ourselves...

I worship
the all in,
everything:
I want to swallow, and have swallowed the sun,
And I have been swallowed in return

Liebster Award

A while back I got a lovely comment from from Mary at Cogitational Counterpoints nominating me for the Liebster award, which is kinda fun and totally unexpected :) Thank you Mary, for reading and the nomination :)
If you've been nominated or would like to nominate somebody, all you have to do is follow the below set of rules:



  1. Link back to the blogger who nominated you.
  2. Give 11 random facts about yourself.
  3. Answer the 11 questions set by the person who nominated you.
  4. Nominate 11 other bloggers who have a small following.
  5. Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
  6. Tell your nominees, on their own blog, that you have nominated them.
11 Random Facts About Me:
  1. I dislike long sleeves, and nearly always roll or push them up.
  2. I miss my dog terribly since he died last January.
  3. Lately, I enjoy doing things that terrify me, I've been able to push past fear in the past couple of years, and I've found that I enjoy the things that are difficult for me all the more fiercely once I've somewhat mastered them. Take guitar tuning, for example, once a vast unknowable unknown, now one of my favorite things about practicing the guitar. 
  4. I love writing and receiving letters, though I'm not very good at actually writing and sending them in a timely manner. 
  5. The San Rafael Swell is my happy place.
  6. I have no idea how to go about getting ready for Christmas this year, I haven't got a thing done and it's not much longer until December arrives.
  7. The movie Inception was quite the spiritual and enlightening experience for me.
  8. Right now I'm wearing my favorite blue sweater which will quite soon probably fall apart, as it is getting fairly threadbare in places. 
  9. I say I have no expectations, I think I have no expectations, but I'm quite open to the possibility that I might. I still maintain that relationship is organic and a thing of space rather than just bonds. 
  10. I love deep and thoughtful documentaries like Kumare, I Am, and The Nature Of Existence. 
  11. Life is terribly interesting to me, adventure, people, discovery. This outlook does tend to ebb and flow though, as all things do. I'm not sure balance is stillness so much as wave, pattern and resonance.


The 11 Questions That The Person Who Nominated Me Asked:
  1. What is your favorite past time?
I don't really have any one favorite past time, I'm kinda scattered all over the place. I love hanging out with my friends and family, reading, writing, playing guitar. Hiking, whatever. I love doing everything, and it is all my favorite :)
        
        2. Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?
Both, yin and yang. Not opposite, but intertwined.

        3. What's your ultimate goal in life?
Enlightenment and deep relationship.

        4. What is the last thing you bought via online shopping?
Light Martin acoustic guitar strings. I'm awesome because I can break a string tuning down...

        5. How did you get started using blogspot?
I got sick of how much I was on facebook in 2009, so I created this blog with the help of my dad to sort of experiment with for a week of abstinence from fb. 

        6. Do you have a favorite film, and if so, what is it?
Far too many favorites, and perhaps all because I have learned or can learn something from them.

          7. What's your preferred fall outfit?
Jeans and a sweater over a t shirt, maybe a hat.

        8. What's your biggest accomplishment to date?
I don't really believe in that. I just live. 
        
        9. Who inspires you the most?
Yo
        10. The best show on television right now is:
Doctor Who :) (That's basically the only thing I watch right now that's ongoing and current, though.)


I don't think I shall nominate anyone else, if someone wants to nominate themselves from me, that'd be great, haha :) Just let me know and I'll come up with some questions :]
Thanks again Mary, you're a sweetheart.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Heartsong

Curled tight over my guitar 
An ache in my wrist as our hearts sing to each other.
Resonance; two songs into one. 

Life from my breath into your curved body,
Condensation underneath my lips.
Our song is not always perfect, 
But it is always beautiful. 

I did not shape you, 
But I am shaping you 
And it seems you are shaping me

Monday, November 4, 2013

A selection of Sunbeams, The SUN magazine issue 237

"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. "
Henry David Thoreau

"Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself."
Dean Inge 

"Whatever our point of view or frame of reference, the world is richer and more amazing than we realize. All frames of reference are limited. All points of view can be supplemented by further experience under new and various conditions."
Donald Granger 

"Both class and race survive education, and neither should. What is education then? If it doesn't help a human being to recognize that humanity is humanity, what is it for? So you can make a bigger salary than other people?"
Beah Richards 

"In the late 1600s the finest instruments originated from three rural families whose workshops were side by side in the Italian village of Cremona. First were the Amatis, and outside their shop hung a sign: "The best violins in all Italy." Not to be outdone, their next-door-neighbors, the family Guarnerius, hung a bolder sign proclaiming: "The Best Violins In All The World!" At the end of the street was the workshop of Anton Stradivarius, and on its front door was a simple notice which read: "The best violins on the block." "
Freda Bright 

"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them."
Benjamin Jowett

We are complete on our own, but together we are more complete.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Cracks of Gold: right now


Where am I right now? I’m not writing about where I want to be, or where I’m headed, but where I am right now. So often I write about where I want to be, but instead of that helping me move forward, I just feel lost and helpless.
Right now, I am lost; right now I can see a tiny light, but I can’t seem to feel a pathway. I’m blindfolded; enough that everything is hazy and unsure, but not so I don’t know I am blindfolded. I am numb; finger and toe and heart-blind. I am deaf; hearing but snatches of sound and song. I am dumb; half-communicating with incomplete words and fluttering hand gestures. I am aware of so many perceived limitations, but I am also aware of what might be, beyond all of this veil and insulation.
All is but impression on me, and I have fractional confidence. I am an imperfect mirror, reflecting wobbly, watery images of others, and myself, but reflecting non-the-less.
I am in a chrysalis, but I can’t tell if I, butterfly, am emerging; or even if this, also, is nothing but a reflection of someone else.

I can sense patterns; but when you’re in the middle of a pattern, yourself, with other people, it is so hard to stick to that pattern sense, and to have confidence in it. It is so hard to sense that pattern truly, objectively, and not reason yourself out of what you do really understand. The pattern of my days lately seems to be the only pattern I can see without having to feel, without becoming lost in emotions and the avoidance thereof. Mornings are lost in melancholy and a certain sort of moping and ennui; afternoons are merely lost; evenings terrifying and stressful (seems like that’s mostly just when I try really hard to wrest back control, though.); and the night finally relaxes into pieces of the puzzle settling in and temporary comfort.

Today, this afternoon, is lost and wandering; raw, drained, and dry. I really don’t feel terrible though, because I finally shook off sentimentality for a time, albeit ennui is not entirely gone. Maybe I am sick in heart.
Still I manage to find puzzle pieces, and still I manage to stick them, if only temporarily, to their places in life.
Why all of this writing of where we’re going, or where we should be? Jonathon Livingston Seagull, how beautiful in its idealism and teaching, but I can hardly see myself there. Did Richard Bach ever reach the point his characters traveled? Did he even mean or strive to? Did he find any of what he was looking for, and did he learn to practice it?
I keep finding small pieces in small places; small answers in short books. We look for answers in other people and their works, but they don’t even seem to be where they say it is possible to go. Maybe all they mean to create is beautiful metaphor and nothing else. I have yet to actually meet anyone who truly loves or flies or heals with their bare hands. Only healing with herbs and heart, loving at all, and flying in mind and spirit. Isn’t any of that, imperfect as it seems to be, still miraculous?
Don’t we find something in the search, don’t we come to understanding as we share? I don’t believe in disregarding wisdom in a great person -or any person- because they’ve done something stupid or bad in their lives. Wisdom is wisdom, and we are all so complex and flawed, beautiful in our imperfection, beautiful in our strife and struggle. We can come to some sort of completion, some sort of wholeness, in sharing.

To finally answer my first question of where I am right now; Estoy pero aqui, curled up writing on my bed, wandering life and my own heart and mind.