I know I'm not alone

People say I'm crazy,
doing what I'm doing
Well they give me all kinds of warnings
to save me from ruin.
When I say that I'm okay,
well they look at me kind of strange,
"Surely you're not happy now, you no longer play the games?"

People say I'm lazy,
dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice
designed to enlighten me,
When I tell them that I'm doing fine watching shadows on the wall,
"Don't you miss the bigtime boy, you're no longer on the ball?"

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go.

People ask me questions
lost in confusion,
Well I tell them there's no problem
only solutions.
Well they shake their heads and look at me as if I've lost my mind,
I tell them there's no hurry,
I'm just sitting here doing time.

I'm just sitting here watching the wheel go round and round
I really love to watch to them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go...

- Watchin' the Wheels, by John Lennon

summer peeks through split autumn

tumble-down redecorations, grass springing between
marble columns etched tired
boy girl enter space sacred, naive
laugh hand-holding, peace blankets place
nature sounds mix in sunshine
forming memories stretched past to future

real or fantastic less important now moment
encompass, path labyrinthine marked by
large oaks
disc flies unusual warmth drops from sky
October momentarily gracious,
hope feeds richly
on waterfalls shared music
their coexistence separate and together
forever

no choreograph helps bloom
four part cycle of annual crush to reinvent
is prime mover,
nestled in bed later
earth spinning unstoppable
while their hearts flood arteries with
fresh damp oxygen, in same room
rain room
sane room has drips rolling down panes
strolling down lanes their robust dreams
are fed, smiles crest silent on their lips
crash as benign waves
eroding and replacing beaches subconscious,
tender black sand reveals creation myth
touch volcano leftovers
underfoot soft encouragement
to travel onwards in cover
of luminescent night

(they hold hands in the dark, one taking the other before she falls asleep as well and they lie still in familiar, taken-for-granted sheets)

tangible hope

The low clouds today hold in a bit of warmth, keeping the day a few degrees above freezing. The grass remains a faint green with the rain, and a few leaves still decay along dusty curbs and lend the last remnants of autumn scent to the air. The shift is on towards winter, no turning back this year. Bicyclists bundle up, mittens make more appearances, large pots of soup become the choice for dinner, steaming things are appealing and comforting...

I felt the revolution today, within reach at the edge of my fingertips. It's a revolution of kindness, of sweetness - the smile of a girl selling organic apples at the market, the Turkish baker with a thick moustache who loves what he creates, the crowd of strangers in the densely used bookstore who are ready to offer suggestions and critical reviews, the offer of tea which stands open at all houses you visit, the pleasant durability and familiarity of red brick homes with raked yards, sunlight passing gently through large cold windows onto fleece blankets draped over our legs. It's a revolution not of the season, but of how we want to be.

It's scary yet liberating when we remember that we are the ones we're waiting for. We are responsible for our own happiness. We choose each day how to be, what to do, how to live, how much to work, how much to play, what to eat, how much to love and how much to fear. It's up to us to create a society that is not over-worked, drug-addicted, or sleep deprived. We need to practice kindness everyday - being kind to ourselves and each other. So often I forget, and I blame others for problems or hope for others to be our salvation. The world is only what we make of it, and each of our kind acts moves across the world like ripples on a lake or a beautiful figure skater on a frozen pond. We can be beautiful people with rich lives - sometimes we just need to take back the portions of our lives that we don't feel control over or move beyond the fear that keeps us from stepping up and doing things today that we were afraid of yesterday. We are acorns in the frozen loam waiting for spring, clippings of grapevines waiting to fill vats with crimson life, children learning to laugh and hug, old men whittling on the porch and keeping the neighborhood covered, lentils waiting to sprout in shallow loving water, the limitless echo of smiles that can move throughout all our lives if we all remember just a little more...

karma of empire, and our own (unrelated?) paths

Celebrity dance shows with glitter and rouge, serious-looking scientists talking about the eminent collapse of most of the world's fish stocks, and advertisements smearing and blaming political candidates fill the screens of three adjacent TVs at my gym. The images alight there like butterflies for me, curious and almost beautiful because of their sadness. I watch them while listening to music or the sound of my own heartbeat, as I'm not plugged in to the audio system that goes with them. Frivolity beyond the pale, an impending cultural and ecological crash, and chatter at a volume so negative it is hard to hear or even think about clearly. I guess you could call them choices of what to watch while you're exercising - I'm not sure what I would call them.

Some days I really feel like we're missing the point. I don't know quite what the point is, but my blind hands groping through life tell me that for the most part, we haven't found it yet. Sometimes, with my cold hands in the warm pits under a dog's legs, outside on a rainy November day, I can make out faint contours on the map that can lead us to joy and satisfaction. Often that's the best I can do, the best I have to offer. Moments, slices, cross-sections, whispers and smells, peripheral visions, a pointalist life of nuances and fleeting moments...

What do you see when the talking heads fade away? What do you want on a highway with no billboards? What do you eat in a farmer's market full of fresh foods? How do you travel to get beyond here and there? How do you live life without waiting for joy to come to you, while cultivating infinite patience?

Thanks for reading all my wonderings-out-loud. A few new folks recently said they've enjoyed reading my thoughts and that's always nice to hear. I'll keep on ruminating like a cow moving that grass down inside and back up again, and scribbling it on this electronic paper like an already fading jetstream in the sky.