tone and mood

I sense tone and mood like others see color and hear music. Each room, moment by moment ebbing and flowing, a unique texture of energies, mingling, creating ripples unseen as root, forever reaching for water, nutrients. Every look, smile, frown, touch or non-touch alters what was into what is into what will be, endlessly into being, unfolding with no beginning, no end. So this battle wages of label upon what cannot be labelled, of pails holding the rushing river no more, of wave and ocean arguing as parent and child, ever unmindful that what appears is not what is. The eye, forever seeing, never sees itself directly and we know not by the great unity but by light and shadow upon an endless series of mirrors, each generation, a distortion of the one before.

Then there is the issue of noise. Used as shield, double-sided to protect to and from, them and us. Addictive these sonic walls, barriers, erected subconsciously to hide what is too direct to experience upon tender hearts and souls--silence. For upon this platform and this alone can we hear what beckons to be heard, forever tolling, patient, enduring as stone through time.

787. ecosystems

Everything you say matters. Each word a pebble in the cosmic lake. Each ripple lapping shore. The eye sees no change. But those few molecules washed from moor, taken from sun to shade, of root less rooted, of salamander quenched. They know. The universe is nothing if not a great accounting, endless pristine spreadsheets, forever calculating.

Don't believe me? Then run. Go. And when you can run no further, where are you?

You see Kyra, a thing cannot escape from itself. And there is only one thing. Only one universe.

_________

Von, you know what I could never reconcile? My parents. On the one hand, they understood this principle better than most. Their whole life was spent studying the minute changes of clime and climate and they knew the disastrous affects of even the smallest changes. And then, there was me. How could they not know of the ecosystem of me in their world? To see so clearly in one direction and be so blind in another. I think Papa spent his life trying to make amends, a father for the son, healing two in the act of one.

786. brush and canvas

On Papa's nightstand was a paintbrush, chestnut lacquered handle sprouting bristles never used. It was never not there as it was not ever used in the traditional way of oil and canvas. A reminder he had said. To know of the day as canvas and of our hand as brush; and too the night, that which started the day blank, would be of yellow or red or some combination thereof, always not blank, this creation creating, of life weaving as pen writing, as brush painting.

So each day began with sunrise, of light bringing color to life. This was the natural way of all things. Know it or not know it, what started blank would never finish blank. The halls of our life lined with the work of our hand, that brush, each day creating, touching, influencing light and dark, reacting or responding, holding or letting go.

When asked by Von of the brush upon her nightstand, ever present, she smiled and said, he lives within me still and not a day goes by I don't remember the brush of my grandfather upon my life. Then she paused before adding, and the brush of my own parents.

random scribbles

I live in two worlds. Three days there, four days here. Each is as different to the other as any two opposites and to know one is to see the other more clearly. Each is a creation of choice or choices, decisions made upon assumptions unasked, unspoken, these silent shadowy jail keepers. But I know this. One can choose to say good morning, or chose to remain silent. And likewise, one can value and honor relationship not by proxy or thought or blood, but by the law of the farm, as significant as the food upon our table and the water in our glasses. Each day we choose by the choices we make and by the choices we don't. Each day the root of relationship either grows deeper, stronger, or withers and retracts. There is no carry-over. No roll-over minutes. No compound interest. There is only dawn and dusk and all the choices we make, each day, between the two.

So I say to you, this day: Do you know what you chose? Do you know what you don't chose? By your hand the rudder of choice guides you down the river. By your action you say what cannot be said and you build the life you live, whether you know it or not.

__________

There is this issue of effort I refer to often. Or, as I like to say, effortlessness. As with all language, where each word by way of tone and definition and context can shoulder seventeen different meanings, miscommunication is ever present, especially in the medium of the written word. To speak of effortlessness is not to speak of no effort. The universe is nothing if not a constant flow of energy, always in motion, forever not still. So, one could say, always in effort. But there is the natural flow of life living and there is the unnatural flow of effort efforting. The two are not as brothers.

__________

And too, there is beauty. To speak of it is to miss it, to misunderstand it, to debase into language, into note and space, what has no separation. The river is not a train.

__________

I can remember acts of kindness visited upon me when I was seven years old. That is forty years ago; and still, they live within me, influence me, affect the fabric of my day. Acts of cruelty too, I remember, and they too live within my memory going on four decades, and before long, half a century. To think of what is within me, I find humbling. To think I have a choice, kindness or cruelty, each day. And to think, perhaps in forty years, some child, now an adult, will sit as I sit, and write as I write, of one or the other, planted so long ago, by my hand, my choice, today.

785. the universe is a lot older than you

Kyra: Papa, what do you want to do today?

Papa: Something new. Something different. Something I’ve never done before.

Kyra: Oooooh.

Papa: Our bodies grow old with time, but the mind is different. As long as we use it, challenge it, to our last breath, it will grow, expand, forever creating new neural pathways. It is, unlike the arm or leg, forever vibrant; but only as long as we water and sun the root and leaf.

_________

If there is a rhythm to the universe, you will know it not by effort, but the lack thereof. What is, is. Everything else, the unknown nightmare of illusion. And between the two, friction, pain. As one feels when holding desperately to a branch against the raging current. Let go, my dear one. Stop trying. The universe is a lot older than you. Trust it.

784. rounding the bend

They rounded the bend, the lake as coffee before the quiet rising sun. Trev sat upon a boulder and begin to write. Em stood behind, watching over his shoulder, occasionally kissing the top of his head. The cottage was a pastel blur from across the water and only the sound of birds accompanied the sound of his pen on paper, a sound Em had come to love, a sound unlike any other. When he finished, he tore the sheet from his notebook and handed it to her. With bowed head, she walked to the edge of the lake, soaking in the spaces between the words, swimming in his vision of present and future, of them as an us, of life blooming as only they knew it to bloom. She would later say, nothing was ever the same again.


I love you dearly. Miss you like crazy when you leave the room. Can think of nothing else but your arms, your lips, our home humming with activity, the energy positive as sun. I need to swim in your eyes and wade between your legs within that dewy blossom pink and red, tight and taut. I need to see your hair flow like rivers over the pillow as your cheeks arch before my kisses sweet. I want you in ways that would make you blush and take the words from your tongue and throw them out the window. I want you speechless of lip and expressive of face when you are asked of coffee, of us, of sheets that sing in morning light. Most of all, I want you pregnant. With our baby. I want to make you pregnant, to paint your world with colors you don't even know exist. I want you to know joy and happiness not as some occasion here and there, but as something abnormal by absence. I want you to know love, my love, as from a well everlasting, bottomless, of water cool and fresh on summer days. I want to walk us among maple leaves and stare upon the sky blue of winter to come, of autumn rustling, of hands held warm. I want your lips in the crisp of winter and your breath as plume upon me before bird and branch. I miss you. I want you. What more can I say.

love

Trev

783. just walking

Papa: What would you like to do today?

Kyra: Take a walk on the beach.

Papa: I’d like that. Anything else?

Kyra: Nope. Just you and I.

________

Em: We’ve been walking for close to an hour now and you’ve not said a word. What’s up?

Trev: Nothing’s up.

Em: Really?

Trev: You know, sometimes, I don’t want words between us. I just want your hand, your smile and the quiet of the two of us, walking, slowly.

__________

Yul: Hey Rog, want to go for a walk?

Rog: What for?

Yul: What do you mean “what for?”

Rog: Well, where are we going?

Yul: For a walk.

Rog: I know that.

Yul: No, I don’t think you do.

Puppies for Sale

I've posted this story before. Felt the need to do so again. Do you like the way I state the obvious? ;-)


A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell. He painted a sign advertising the pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of a little boy.

"Mister," he said, "I want to buy one of your puppies."

"Well," said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat of the back of his neck, "These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money."

The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer. "I've got 89 cents. Is that enough at least to take a look?"

"Sure," said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle. "Here, Dolly!" he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur. The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse.

Slowly another little fur ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then the little pup began awkwardly wobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up. "I want that one," the little boy said, quickly pointing to the runt.

The farmer knelt down at the boy's side and said, "Son, you don't want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would."

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers.

In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe. Looking back up at the farmer, he said, "You see, sir, I don't run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands."

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup. Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.

"How much?" asked the little boy. "No charge," answered the farmer, "There's no charge for love and understanding."

782. she cried, he left

Mairi had returned and her story filled the cottage through the night as if round a campfire. She had searched, village by village, town by town and he was nowhere to be found. Sitting in a small cafe one morning, he found her. They talked of what was and what was not and could never be. She cried. He left. And a cold wind seemed all that remained.

781. don't sigh me

Well, it is what it is and then it is what you think of it, said Trev.

What the hell does that mean? asked Em.

I think you think too much of things that were and things that never had a grounding beyond imagination.

Really? Is that what you think? You think my eyes deceived me? You think I don’t see what is not said between looks and touches?

No, I’m just saying there is nothing.

Look at me. I know nothing. Lived with nothing for a long time. And what I see, ain’t nothing.

Sigh.

Don’t sigh me.

780. upon the door, came a knock

They sat around the table and joined hands in silence, heads bowed, eyes closed. Ariel spoke the words of grace, her diminutive voice filled with a serenity and wisdom of word and tone beyond her eight summers. All were present save Mairi. Until, that is, upon the door, came a knock.

creation creating

To be in her arms is to be in the light of ten thousand suns, beyond heat, beyond radiation, absorbed seamlessly into the great solar wind, one again with the unfolding universe, one again with untethered being, someplace beyond you and I, this and that. Life wants to live. It wants to grow. And mostly, it wants to express through its greatest joy--creation. The purest act of life eternal.

growing together

The more we grow together, the more bitter each separation, the more poignant breathing one’s solitary air. We were not made to live alone. Sleep alone. Wake alone. You know. There is nothing natural about it.

upon the curve

She is my sun and with her the warmth of day. Without, the bitter cold wind of night. On the dark side, I know, I know somewhere that light is shinning, somewhere there are smiles, of hearts filled of her joy. So I run in place, my feet upon the earth, each step pushing, pulling rotation, to bring that light upon my horizon, see the sky lighten in mauve to pink, to know again what it is to breathe.

sigh

She is there and I am here. So don’t lecture me on hell.

BE THE ONE

779. attention

ed note: conversation between Kyra and Von, on the porch of the cottage

Papa used to take me into the woods at night. We didn’t camp. Just a long walk to a clearing where we would sit in total darkness and I would see his face only by the light of stars. Sometimes we would talk and his voice, as too mine, sounded so very different wrapped in that darkness, where the voice was for you and only you, where the only thing happening was union, connection, of one person to another. In that cocoon of night, wrapped in the heavy cloak of hushed fir, there was no multi-tasking. No talking while performing some other task. No clock of a to-do list ticking away the words. No eyes looking over your shoulder to the door or upon the desk to paper. In that place, there was just him and me, a grandfather and a granddaughter, talking.

The voice is different in that environment. Sacred. The way voice is in the great cathedrals. On some nights, of cloud, there were no stars and when Papa turned out the light, you could not see your hand in front of your face. So we sat without sight, as if with the switching off of the lamp, we had switched off our eyes, becoming blind as bats. The voice then becomes everything. The darkness is absolute. And the feeling is of sea, adrift on the great ocean. And that voice, his voice, was my tether, my belay--the words, his words, washing over me like warm waves and I floated on his stories, his lessons, his ability to paint with the tongue. Those nights, just the two of us, of attention so purely devoted of one to the other, were, then and now, as fingers in the soul, gently caressing, nourishing, healing.

As you know, Papa was one to show, not tell. Yet, on those nights, from the outside looking in, with sight taken by utter night, one would think all he had was tell. (Long pause)

But all the talking wasn’t telling, was it? asked Von.

No. The talking had nothing to do with talking. The stories told on those nights have faded, some forgotten. The lesson wasn’t in the words. It was in the act. Using the darkness to connect not person to person or grandparent to grandchild, but heart to heart and soul to soul. The power of that connection, of pure unadulterated attention paid and given, was as communion solemn, of grace bestowed, of love flowing as love can only flow as if when we sat, our two energies begin to flow, circular, from opposite directions. And at some point in the night, the circle connected and where there were two energies before, now, only one. I think he knew this. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And you know what?

What?

It didn’t have a damn thing to do with what was said.

778. this idea of get

Into the night, long after the talking had stopped and Von had retired, Kyra rocked and her mind drifted from Trev and Em, to Papa, to Hyneria:

Where there is energy, there is motion, movement. Where there is life, too, nothing stands still. The sun rises, then sets. Rivers flow. Flowers bloom, give of themselves before fade and fall, from soil to soil, so they might say. So place your face to the sky and the warmth you feel is real. Likewise, your hand in the river or your nose to the petal. These things you can trust, this natural order of motion, of life rising and falling, living and dying, the eternal circle of infinite loop, innocent as the skipping child. In this we believe; in this we align. For in the action we find not fiction or imagination, device or design. And know this, Kyra, life wants to live, to flow, to express that which comes naturally, before there is thought, before there is want and need, lust and desire, greed and gluttony. These things are added upon. Do not be deceived. They are not part. Not life living but rather something added, like a barnacle to a ship.

This too, you must learn. Where there is effort, there is misalignment. The sun does not strive nor the river pant. With effort is friction for what fits, fits effortlessly and it is by this shadow of things that we know, by the ease and peace of fit that mirrors the ease and peace of dawn and dusk. Many will tell you otherwise. They will point to what can be achieved, constructed, built. Accumulated. Be wary. What does not move is not life. What does not move of natural ease is outside the eternal movement. You have the gift. Others will see it. But more important my dear one, you must see it. You must know it. And I say to you, you know it not by effort, not by accumulation. You know it by the unlabored flow. Release yourself into this stream. Swim with the current. Leave behind this idea of get.

777. feels good

Von: You see what I see?

Kyra: I do.

Von: Feels good doesn’t it.

Kyra: Feels like home. But yes, feels good.


Von and Kyra are sitting on the porch when Von brings up the subject of Trev and Em. She tells him about the night of the fireflies with Papa back on Valla, of how Love (with a capital L) is not an idea but an energy, something that exists beyond the mind while also in the mind. It is both within and without. No separation. As Papa might say, electrons don’t orbit without it. This Love has a heat signature. It becomes a force multiplier. The atmosphere takes on a charge. Cells reproduce as if in joy amplified, of life living as water flows and fish swim. When this Love is present, the air is perfumed with its drug. Even the most jaded quaff.

776. happy

Em: Are you happy?

Trev: Yes.

beyond

I'm in a place beyond language.

775. Aborted 2: no map, no warning

Yul sighed, begin to tap her fingers, louder and louder, nail on wood. Rog ignored her, more omission than commission. He had done something, just what he didn’t know. But it was something. He started to speak, then stopped. Started again, stopped again. Every road looked the same and none of them familiar, none of them right. So he said nothing.

Their room, later, was as quiet as his mind was not. She laid with her back turned. He sat up searching for words that would never come. Wherever they were, he had no map and contrary to her version of events, no warning either.

returning to grace

She is not a place, mood or emotion. Nor is she past, present or future. Not language or morning or night. Neither sun, rain or mist. She is not the mountains or the ocean, not land or sky, shower or rainbow. She is neither the first thing I see, nor the last. Her lips are not honeyed, soft in life’s gravity, firm of intent. Her eyes hold not the world in all its spectrum reflected. She simply is. And when I drop all the filters and labels, when I put aside need and want, lust and desire, past and future, when I am able to simply be, she simply is; and everything else I can think to say or write or do distracts, distorts and takes me away from the simplicity of her being, from that place unlike any other place, where the energy is just life as I imagine life is in those first moments, just alive. So I feel a kinship with birth, newborns my brothers and sisters. And I hope and pray their journey back to grace takes a few less years than mine.

paleographic fingers

The day dawns hushed of wind and the lake mirror smooth in reflection, silent of thought. He sits bare of shirt, the shadow of muscle taut in youth, her paleographic fingers vestigial, as too her scent. She sleeps content of face washed in morning light, only breath heard between muted birds. Each breath, of them taken, of bed warm, of pillow embraced of his shape, perfumed of his hair. To each, these thoughts, held often in the quiet of sunset or the rising of cups, sometimes the movement of pot and pan, the placing of plates before silver gleaming of candlelight. To this place of peace, walking the greens, flowered paths in witnessed hue, those quiet feet in step, the small movement of fingers touching, of looks stolen, of smiles surrendered and kisses exchanged. There is an energy in love that attracts, a naturalness that defies, a fit without effort or plan; and known it is not in proclamation, in that distant, diluted language, but in what is neither heard nor seen as much as experienced beyond the thinking mind, a language of birth, lost in age, and rarely found again.

Her eyes open blue, among rivers of time as memory is released as flowers to the sea. Toes bare of what was, together are dipped in the cleansing of passing seconds and allowed to flow into minutes and hours, never held as much as swam, no more owned than one owns the ocean. And too upon sight, a smile not asked, expresses what cannot be taken but only given, a simple gesture that touches the envy of fingers. Soon, the sound of sheets, of cotton woven of other hands as some body of white parting in the quiet whisper of reach, of flesh still warm of sleep, still tender in want, need. There is leaning and parting and what was dry, now wet, what was missing, now joined, what was needed, as water to root, rained freely, one upon the other.

in the touch

In the touch, of knee or hand or lip, sometimes of eye or whisper and even too of silence, is life, of breath breathing, of lungs filling of sun rising, of dawn dawning the day in warm tones, the streets golden, leaves glittering like sea. There are sighs that feel like lapping waves in summer and caresses slow as feathered quill looping thoughts into place, of the wayward calf gently guided back home, of the light upon the porch burning as beacon the way. She is the water to my fish, the air to my bird and how I swim or fly without her is beyond my comprehension. The world becomes literal. Moments, so rare, are seen clearly and held precious, each a bubble swirling and floating kaleidoscopic whirlpools upon its rising sphere where dreams live in the gloss of an eye held in heart’s sight.

I have not written much of late for how does one write of what cannot be written, where the attempt falls as knees upon concrete and the hands bleed as labor swings the hammer unheard upon the nail not seen. She is the lumber of my world and everything is built upon a shared foundation, of walls that welcome and not exclude, of windows that hold the rain and smile the light of day, quietly, without fanfare, this natural movement of sunlight upon hardwood floor, upon the table with two cups and two chairs facing the garden, of life awakening and all is seen, sun and rain, as life living those irreplaceable moments, where magic happens in unspoken togetherness.

In this touch, as sun on the face in late afternoon, the glow of day exhaling the way to dusk, is warmth and nothing other. A place where smiles bloom as flowers, nourished above and below what is known, as roots grow deeper in a farmer’s rain, in fertile soil rich in all that is needed and nothing that is not. As the flower needs not wail or whine or jump and wave, too this expression of life in flower, in bloom, in the smile of petal hueing the day, need not attention called, or word written or voice calling.