the rub and the task

"It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day the doors of dark Death stand open. But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - that is the rub, the task."

- Virgil, from "The Aeneid"

bones of light

storypeople from yesterday:

I remember we sat in the swing on the front porch & as the dusk came on us like a song, dark throated & sweet, he told me about the beginning when we had bones of light & hair that burned like the sun & I asked what happened then? & I felt him floating there in the soft dark & finally he said we forgot & I said I never would, but sometimes I do & I understand now why he put his arm around me & said nothing more.

"The old wound, if stricken, is sorest,

The old hope is hardest to be lost..."

-Elizabeth Barret Browning, in "The Cry of the Children"

impressionist sky

Texas sky is usually of the school of realism, like the Jan van Eyck Arnolfini Portrait, or maybe a Vermeer, if the sky could be a portrait.

But lately it's as if the whole sky has been painted by an impressionist. But not in a Monet kind of way where there are broad brush strokes and pastel colors and his essence flowing through his brush onto the canvas in some expression of the reality that passes through his and becomes paint. It's more like someone has shifted the paradigm again, just as they did in the 19th century, when real became impression.

Some great painter in the Texas sky has changed the convex and concave of the lens through which I see the sky in such a way that all of the clouds have extra fluff around their edges and they stretch across the endless sky in some great panorama that takes full seconds to move through in a 360 degree rotation. But I could spend hours looking at that one place he says because it's my favorite part of the sky. The colors seem softer as if that same painter has placed an invisible film over the lens, just like how it all seems a bit hazy, as if the fine brush was switched for the flat one.

It's actually humidity, but I like to think of it as a painter as I stare at the soft sunset going down and the crescent of red becoming a shimmering point and then disappearing.

What if the sky was a Dada painting one day? That'd be a trip.

Steve Jobs on "How to Live Before You Die"

Follow this link, and follow your heart?

tin man

Best lyric I've heard in a very long time:

The Stable Song by Gregory Alan Isakov

Now I've been crazy, couldn't you tell?

I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell

Now I'm covered up in straw, belly up on the table

Well I drank and sang, and I passed in the stable

That tall grass grows high and brown

Well I dragged you straight in the muddy ground

And you sent me back to where I roam

Well I cursed and I cried, but now I know

Now I know

And I ran back to that hollow again

The moon was just a sliver back then

And I ached for my heart like some tin man

When it came, oh it beat and it boiled and it rang

Oh, it's ringing

Ring like crazy, ring like hell

Turn me back into that wild haired gale

Ring like silver, ring like gold

Turn these diamonds straight back into coal

Turn these diamonds straight back into coal

there's currently a one-way ticket from dallas to nairobi for $800.

melville said true places are never found on a map, and tolkien said all who wander are not lost and i guess that means i should just GO.

i need it.

"a person susceptible to wanderlust is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation." -pico iyer

weird

razzledazzle

coffee shop in which i grew up. you know, the one with the paintings i've wanted for five years on the walls, the ones no one would buy but for me they're all blues and oil drips and swirls that have sat on those red brick walls since early high school when we sat across from one another and heard the swell season for the first time on the radio. the one with the loft, where we all gathered round the leather couch that seemed to swallow our youthful joys of senior year, when we felt on top of the world. the one where we climbed the red ladder up above the city and watched the sun go down, dropping like a rock does into a river 700 feet below, where it disappears in the distance as you wait breathlessly for the pop that you'll never hear in the roar.

walk in today. older now. smile at the girl behind the counter who seems to get lost behind it, like she's lost behind a lot of tall counters, quiet and scared. order the frappuccino for old time's sake, the one i always got just 'cuz it tastes good. sit in the same chair meredith used to sit in and do her crosswords, when we were all in love with her. high school boys in uniforms, getting ready to conquer the world, our only way to show individualism being the shoes on our feet.

put my head down underneath the blue painting of nothing really that i always saw as oceans deeper than could be painted. headphones on my ears, ones i pulled out of the closet for the first time in a long time. i put them away because i wanted to hear. but now i dug for them and put them on because i wanted to hear again. and i opened the soft leather book in front of me and wrote,

"i'm coming alive again in sherman, texas, and it's a funny thing and i think it's ironic, because of how many times i left to do just that."

don't give up on me, i'm about to come alive.

in my ears that song, and i smiled and thought about the arbitrariness of that phrase, coming alive, and how i'm always searching for it, and saying it, and trying to feel it, whatever it is today. and i pulled off one side of the headphones because a little boy came in with grandma to get the non-caffeine frappaccino, smile from ear to ear and tapping his feet impatiently while she made it, wishing he could watch her over the same tall counter too tall for him. the type of kid who cuts his hair short because it sticks straight up out of his head too big for his body. and he's got a goofy grin, with a crooked tooth, like travis had in fifth grade and tried to cover up with a scowl. one of his socks was lime green, and the other a neon blue.

and behind me, the old man who lost his wife three years ago and told me everything i needed to know about his car insurance plan, and his brother who is lazy, and how he used to paint until his wife died, which was why he knew oil was more expensive than acrylic, and how those oil paintings on the wall must have taken forever to dry, and he just wouldn't stop talking because when he slowed, tears drifted into his 61 year old eyes of the memories that he don't ever forget, because his high school teacher told him he had a memory like a steel trap.

he called the boy over to him and pointed with a chubby finger to the same painting i've stared at for five years, the one that rachael always loved, and he told the boy, "do you see the dragon? it's right there, in the corner. i think that's a dragon." and as grandma smiled after realizing he wasn't going to hurt grandson, little boy's confused "who the hell are you" look turns to one of realization as he sees it too and he says, "whoa. yeah. it's right there. and there's its fire. whoa."

there's its fire.

then his drink was ready, and he and grandma leave and he waves goodbye to the old man whose two sisters are both bipolar, and one of them sometimes is manic and one time he was manic after his wife died and six men tried to keep him down and he threw one against a brick wall without even trying and broke his wrist but didn't mean to and they sent him to behavioral counseling and he stuttered as he tried to speed up, still blinking away that pesky wet corner. and as he waves back, the tears creep back into the corners of his dark brown eyes, from under the ball cap above the beard that hasn't been touched since his wife died, next to the white hair with streaks of deep brown leaving slowly, as if they won't go until he remembers that he is alive and there is time left, like she would have wanted.

that he is alive and there is time left.

i get up to leave, and as i go, he says thank you for your time, sir, and i think, no. no. thank you. i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry.

i wave goodbye, and say, "i think you should paint again." and he says, "you think so?"and i say, "yes sir, i think so. i think it would be good." and because he just couldn't stop talking, he shows me his readers' digest trinket on his bag, the one that is a tape measure and a pen at the same time, since you always need a tape measure when you're writing. you know. and he just didn't want me to go. "i think you should paint again."

"Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth."
-Madeleine L'Engle

and jonsi sings me home. and jonsi sang us home from california across those flat lands on that highway i've driven too many times for my soul to handle in the past three months. capers said sometimes we move too fast for our soul in the middle of the cold, light-filled LA night, on that steel landing above traction avenue when we talked about the beauty of love that doesn't last, but leaves as quickly and as beautifully as it came.

jonsi sang us home, and in his lilting, flying high voice, he started throwing off those shutters all over my heart, that had begun to break in the midst of sheer light-filled days of presence in those those mountains, days when the tension between peace and war within myself opened my eyes again, if only because it hurt.

"because what you give up violently you are forever bound to."

but this coming back to life, that i'm starting to feel in sherman, tx, even if it hurts, is coming from this:

Go sing, too loud
Make your voice break – Sing it out
Go scream, do shout
Make an earthquake…

You wish fire would die and turn colder
You wish your love could see you grow older
We should always know that we can do anything

Go drum, do go out
Make your hands ache – Play it out
Go march through a crowd
Make your day break…

You wish silence, released noise in tremors
You wish, I know it, surrender to summer
We should always know that we can do everything

Go do, you’ll know how to
Just let yourself, fall into landslide

Go do, you’ll know how to
Just let yourself, give into low tide

Go do!

Tie strings to clouds
Make your own lake – Let it flow
Throw seeds to sprout
Make your own break – Let them grow

Let them grow (Endless summers)
Let them grow (Endless summers)

(Go do endless summers)

You will survive, we’ll never stop wonders
You and sunrise will never fall under

You will survive, we’ll never stop wonders
You and sunrise will never fall under
We should always know that we can do anything

Go do!

go do. when was the last time you went? screamed from the top of some great heights. stood in front of the wind and let it blow everything out of you, back far behind. ran on the beach with sand making it hurt to hold hands, as you pulled each other down into surf that was endless and bottomless like the way you looked into each others' eyes. bought a one-way plane ticket. stared deep into space, with the universe spinning above you, pulling you up and up by centrifugal force of the cosmos. or watched that first point of light that means the sun, it rises. it rises again, i promise you, and you gotta hold fast to the break of daylight. when was the last time you jumped over, or fell under? when you believed that we can do anything, and then did... when you felt your hope and fire rise up and out of you like a volcano, erupting and spilling all over you, leaving you breathless and sure and free to go and do and be all that you are.

i don't think we should listen when they tell us we should do this list of things now, so we can have time and money to go and do later. the same people who told us we can do anything are trying to fit us into cubicles. no. go.

i believe that hope and fire will give us wings.

here's my hand, i've been wanting you to grab it and come along.

"i wonder if i'm allowed ever to see

i wonder if i'm allowed ever to be free

i wonder if i'm allowed just ever to be"

only because

we all want to say this to somebody, sometime. and we should.

"don't give up on me, i'm about to come alive."

train. with all their cliches:

"In every frame upon our wall
Lies a face that's seen it all
Through ups and downs and then more downs
We helped each other off of the ground
No one knows what we've been through
Making it ain't making it without you

Maybe I'm not but you're all I got left to believe in
Don't give up on me
I'm about to come alive
And I know that it's been hard
And it's been a long time coming
Don't give up on me
I'm about to come alive."