There is Only Me
This is the time when I contemplate the past and worry of the future. In looking around me, I reach for the world, and I want to ask, “Why did you make me the way I am, World?”
Then, I realize there was only ever me, and the World surrounded me, but I was the one who created myself.
I look inside, and think of all the things I do. I look around to the World, and I wonder to myself. “Why do you make me the way I am when the World is that way, Me?”
I know how there was only ever me, and in knowing full well the truth, I start to ask myself, “Why am I the way I am?”
I grow bitter. Cold. And start to hate. There’s nothing in the world for me. There’s nowhere left for me to go. There’s nothing left for me to. And only me to wonder of me.
Then, I realize, there was only ever me.
Then, I realize, there is only me, only me who can open the door. The door which leads to the world.
And only I, only me, do stare at my own door, afraid to turn the key.
January 3, 2010 at 12:51 pm | Reflections | 2 comments
Refocus
I kept opening the doors and finding dead ends. That’s how I played it all out in my head. I realize now I never opened any doors, for I had kept them all shut.
A blurry camera does not take good pictures. But, we don’t call cameras blurry; we call pictures blurry.
I was always the one who made the work, but the work was itself.
I wrote a word on the wall. I wrote another word on the wall. In a few moments, I had my sentence. “I am about to open this door,” said the sentence. Paradoxically, I stared at the sentence I had created.
The sentence was not a lie. So long as it was constantly reread, the about-to-ness was renewed, and so I could reread forever that sentence which I had writ.
That sentence was not blurry. It was crisp to the edges and fully legible.
October 18, 2009 at 8:59 pm | Reflections | No comments
One Sitting
Start now, it says
Start now, not later.
I will start.
And I do.
And I still do.
And I keep do.
And I watch my watch,
Finally.
No worries, it lies,
The will is timeless.
Tomorrow I will start.
Tomorrow I do.
Tomorrow I don’t.
October 15, 2009 at 8:18 pm | Poetry | No comments
To Play With Words
To play with Words
is to never be bored,
to always have many friends,
friends who
You do not know,
not fully,
not surely.
explore, explore,
ask away,
spend the day
with Old Friends,
friends who never told
all they could do.
October 11, 2009 at 12:32 pm | Poetry | No comments
The Confessions of an Aspiring Artist
Beauty can be found in the simplest things in life. Art can be made of the most trivial little details of the world. Art can be made from life. The making of art gives meaning to all these things.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to say, being an artist. Everyone wants to feel important, like the things they do–or create–have significance
I constantly am in notice of small details. I remember the simple things in life. I eat a dinner and slowly chew. I stare in awe at the little black shadows formed where grains of white rice overlap. I am inspired to a pattern; there is an incredible balance in the rounded ellipses of the white rice and the concave deltas of the black shadows. They create patterns which are logical. They create patterns which are meaningless. They create the food of my thoughts for the next hour.
It’s always so easy to imagine yourself doing something which you never do. You never even try to do that thing you imagined. I imagined my self sketching the rice, savoring that moment when it was arranged on my plate in a way it would never be arranged in again. But, the thought was too absurd. I had been calmly eating dinner for an hour. I was supposed to be eating dinner, not staring at rice, not observing rice, not admiring rice.
Being an artist, it is in my nature to observe. Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places, they say. I walk around in a random small-town parking lot, the kind that isn’t very paved. I am always looking down, looking up, and looking around me when I walk. Sometimes I become self-conscious of my observation; no one else I see seems to move their head around as much when they walk. But I must take full use of my own eyes.
It is this way in this parking lot. I feel the bumps of the little rocks below me, and suddenly I am drawn to their attention more than the sparse cars, more than the placid sky, more than the little rustic castaway furniture store. I see these rocks are variegated in shades of gray. There are many grays. But, every few rocks there is a perfectly brown-orange one. I am in awe of the way these rocks are arranged. In an instant, I stare. In an instant, I think.
I look at the rocks around. The whole parking lot has these same rocks scattered about, but in a cursory scan, I feel that no other patch of this lot is arranged nearly to the perfection of the one I stand on. There are too-numerous brown-orange rocks clumped together. There are too-vast expanses of gray rocks. This chance deeply humbles me, and I muse my gratitude for the small things in life.
I have played through such scenes in their entirety, continually. I am never truly bored because I am always occupied. People around me see me standing frozen looking down at the ground. People around see me with a faraway gaze. Perhaps I waste my time. I am looking for something which is not there; a meaning to it all.
But I live for the novelty of seeing more rocks, and I am constantly creating the nature of my mind. I create the structure of my thoughts. I observe, and I remember. Anything that can make a mark can sketch. Life is a tool to draw a portrait of existence. And the making of art gives meaning to these things.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe, being an artist.
October 11, 2009 at 12:16 pm | Lifepost, Reflections | No comments
6 Minutes
6 minutes before I leave the computer to the world of elsewhere. In 6 minutes, I will type a blog article. In 6 minutes, I could have drawn a very quick sketch. In 6 minutes, I could have read one tenth of an hour long read or watched two 3-minute long music videos.
A minute has passed, and I am now in 5 minutes left to write. It is in five minutes that I can type my thoughts regarding life, love, passions, and the number 42. 5 minutes is enough time to do alot, but then it becomes 4 minutes.
And it is at the strike of 4 minutes left, counting down so very quickly, I look at what I have written and pause for a moment. I consider my next few words for the time is short.
In my pause, in my thoughts, another minute passed by and went. At three minutes left, I have more to say and do not know how I wish to say it. I want to stop and think, but the time is late. I realize that I could have, from the start, spent two minutes to organize my thoughts then the other four to write and refine my means of communicating them.
And thus begins the time when I have only two minutes left. I have wasted much time looking at the clock. I realize it is ticking, ticking, and every moment of my life may pass such that I will never forget the time I spent.
It has been said that the only thing you cannot recycle is wasted time. I cannot say I have wasted my time up until now, but I am left with one minute left. One final minute for words, and I realize that perhaps, if I spent all my little moments proficiently as I have not, I may find truer the worth of each minute.
6:00PM. The time is gone.
September 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Plans
The minute I get home, I
Will change.
The minute I get home, I
Will start.
This minute,
before I get home,
I prepare.
Oh, so much
to do in the now
to do in the then.
But
the minute I get home, I
Will.
Still.
September 5, 2009 at 10:20 pm | Poetry | No comments
For the Love of Autobiography
To write of past experiences in life is to strive to recollect those little beads of memory so as to string them into a necklace, idealized and molded to perfection beyond their first reception. Liquids are known for taking the shape of their container, and it is thus that these beads of memories are like dew droplets, lingering from the day before yet fragile to reshaping by the merest of touches.
There is an enchantment to collect them for their rare inspiring beauty, but if they must be reshaped by touch, it is then that the speaker’s job is to be deft and let an elegant grasp form these beads into a container worthy of their worth. Henceforth, these beads are strung into a necklace to tell a story, ongoing and personable of humanity.
In now that I speak, I recall the times I wrote of memory and know all too well that like the dew drop beads shaped by a writer’s hand, I fool myself to remember that which is more magical in essence. It is by this means that tact prevails, but it is also by this that what was born the eloquence of life becomes literature–or some combination of honesty, insight, and fascination at the past.
The autobiography is a magnificent form where the author adopts a pseudo-fictitious persona to judge and reflect upon his own life. Unlike the biography, objectiveness is a far-come goal, which only serves to heighten the depth of revelation at all truth in life. It is upon reading, writing, and appreciating the autobiography that the essence of all literature–in its power to give depth to existence–becomes clear. All literature is to some extent autobiographical as the experiences of its authors peak through.
So then if I were to choose to idly pass my time, I would dress my white pages in my own necklace of dewdrops though malformed the beads may be. My fashion is the pen as I experience the journey of the autobiography, giving facet to all loquacious squalor through the endless footage that is my own life. I will embrace this joy that my ink trails dare to embrace upon this article, and know well, the heart of reflection.
August 26, 2009 at 10:10 pm | Reflections | No comments
Inspiration
I had an epiphany today,
So suddenly I see,
Gifts of perception, giving way.
My edges are gone
and tree by tree
Leaves level to splatters
On this Monet sky.
Horizon is but a word,
Faded in memory,
for green becoming of blue,
and blue gorging on green.
Meaning is a cirrus-thin cloud,
Escaping reach yet
Ever so sweet; Let it flow
and squint your eyes.
To see like a blind man
Who still knows a blur
Is to understand the
Beauty of color. Neglected,
When from this world,
We found form.
If upon my own,
Of this canvased foresight
I tell. It is with
The vivid and livid, colors
I spill.
In leaves of paint splatter I say,
“I had an epiphany today…”
August 25, 2009 at 8:35 pm | Poetry | No comments