Tuesday, January 06, 2004

posted by: copernicus on 1/06/2004 02:30:00 AM
BEHOLD!!!
RANDOM QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Life breaks everyone,
but those who survive
are strong in the broken places."-My favorite Ernest Hemmingway line-

===========================
I thought it was shitty out when it was raining ice. Actually I love winter, but the current temperature is 2 Degrees Farenheit with a wind chill of -15, and that is a little ridiculous. The night I wrote my last post I went outside to get in my car and meet friends for dinner. I stepped out the door and slid down the sidewalk like stocking feet on linoleum. My car was also coated in 1/4 inch of solid ice, and icesicles hung from the undercarraige and bumpers, kissing the ground and anchoring my car. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK. I look both ways down the block and see my neighbors in gloves, hoods and heavy coats swinging away at their windshields with ice-scrapers. Clouds of white smoke vent from their faces with every swing. I ski over to the drivers door and insert my key. I can turn the key, so the lock isn't frozen, but the door is as I pull and nothing happens. I smack the door's edge with the side of my fist and a crack forms in the ice about 7 inches long. CRACK-CRACK-CRACK. I don't think I'll be on time for dinner. I beat the edge of the door all the way around and prepared to make another attempt. I pulled on the handle sharply, and as my feet started sliding towards the car the seal was broken and the door came open. I started her, cranked up the defroster and grabbed my ice-scraper. 3 good swings at the windshield and only a dime-size chunk out of the ice.
It was 45 minutes and 2 broken ice-scrapers later when I finally left my house.
===========================
A POEM

I had a tough time choosing my first submission, but here it goes.

Tortoise

Sitting at my desk, with the bay behind the glass
I'm wondering what I'm doing here, sitting on my ass
Stanley's lying at my feet, while I search for the proper words
To convey a feeling that's ambiguous, and trapped among a herd
I can almost see it in there, as other thoughts stampede by
I can only glimpse it through a hurricane, of ideas and dragonflies
But I can feel it's presence, it's desire to be unearthed
And I think it's nature is profound, for this time is not the first
I've known this feeling in my past, on more than 1 occasion
And when it finally revealed itself, it bestowed awe and elation.

A few times a year this happens to me, while stuck in some frustration
A sentence appears in my head, that obliterates a misperception
Each time this happens it wipes away, some foundation of assumption
That I've been using as a cornerstone, without the realization
That all our thoughts are based on words, and their arrangement in our minds
And that words like "belief" and "certitude" hypnotize and blind
So I don't know what's coming, but I can feel it's on it's way
And it will open a circuit in my head, and that will clear the way
For another misperception, a little clearer than the last
That will someday wither under analysis, and be chuckled off into the past
I love this tortoise in my head, I'd be quite blind without her
She knows only perseverance, while all I want is hunger.

06-03-00
Miami
===========================

AN ESSAY ON RELATIVITY

Time is only relative.

Time is an integral structure that governs our preconceived models of thought and communication.

These models we use are based on days, years, hours and seconds which are all points of reference on the path of our planet around our sun, the cycle repeated with each "year" long orbit.

However, this model breaks down and is inapplicable once we leave the terra, much less the solar system.

Watching a Star Trek movie, I had an occurrence of visualization where I realized that the planet and orbit that we choose to base our essential models on is only one.

In another solar system our models wouldn't work, for every planet orbits at a different speed, length, rotation and frequency.
Their hours, seconds, years and days would consist of a different idea of time by being longer, shorter or something else.

If you were on a spaceship that had left terrestrial orbit, time would be irrelevant, as you would have no sunrises, sunsets, seasons or celestial orbit to follow
(This assumes recognition that we are part of a galactic orbit, but it takes so long for our galaxy to rotate-200,000,000 years-that we don't notice it. Unless of course we traveled outside of our own galaxy).

Therefore, we would have to take our model of time with us into space to function as we have programmed ourselves to do.

We think and refer to everything in terms of our own planet's orbit and rotation, so if we were communicating with other life, we could not speak in terms of time with them for their models would be different than ours.

And if we communicated with something whose existence never needed such a model to function in the first place, time; which we have kept such good track of and schedule our lives, our technology, our realities and our deaths by, would seem a confusing and archaic thought process to our new acquaintances.

Time would be a useless distraction.

So while my planet, in the 1,998th orbit since Pope Gregory decided to revise the system so that everyone would be forced to think of Christ everyday,
10 hours and 51 minutes into the 5th rotation of our rock that will rotate 360 more times before starting the 1,999th orbit,
it seems as if the walls, houses, jobs, clocks, lives, thought processes laden with dogma, social structure and rampant models of variance and absurdity are just a hallucination; a translucent film which I can see through and past as I gaze off of this rock and into the galaxy that I rotate in.

01-05-1998
Denver, Colorado
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AND IN RESPONSE TO "...the lowdown on Molly Ahern" of 01/04/04, I publicize something personal:

Loyalty

Sitting at my desk
With the bay behind the glass
I'm wondering what I'm doing here
Sitting on my ass
It's been so long since I tapped in to my soul and let it flow
JUMPSTART
I'll force the words at first
Then let my fingers go
I used to think that I stopped writing
'cause my soul needed to rest
but now it's like my soul stopped breathing
and there's cobwebs in my chest
was I a fraud?
What happened to that tender boy that changed?
When his whole world came apart
And he found himself deranged
He found himself surrounded
By the friends he thought he knew
But now he saw with clearer eyes
And his opinion of them grew
In each old friend could now be seen
A bright and burning coal
In each old friend could now be seen
A persevering soul
He drew them close so they could feed
Off each other's vibes
And when they found this nourishment
Each soul absorbed and thrived
But then each friend was bleeding
For they had been attacked
By life
By death
But they survived
For they had each other's backs
They dragged each other off to wait
For scabs and the itch of healing
With ugly scars and callouses
They stumbled blindly, reeling
But they were all still breathing
This they knew for sure
But only because their love
Was for one another pure
They had only each other to thank
For this opportunity to survive
They had only each other
In everything
And they were still alive.

When they finally healed
They thanked each other
And walked away
From life, from death from everything
They each went their own way
3 years later I'm sitting here
Writing to you now
With just one here to feed my soul
All I can ask is how
How did my mind which grew to be
What it was back then
End up 2000 miles away
Away from my best friends?
"best friends"-that's completely useless
It does not touch the truth
"I STAND ALONE WITHOUT BELIEFS
THE ONLY TRUTH I KNOW IS YOU"
Paul Simon had it right
When he wrote "Kathy's song"
But ever since I ran away
I have been all wrong
My throat's so dry here
It’s cracking and flaking off
But when I made it home to you
Saturation, not even a cough
New circuits were opened in my mind
In those insane years
They needed fuel to operate
Friend's laughter and their tears
Now I know why I've stopped breathing
Since I've been down here
Most of those circuits have shriveled up
'cause the rest of you aren't near
Don't think that I am homesick
Because it is not that
I am in fact malnourished
On this concrete path
I painted my eyes so I could find
The landscape I desired
Instead of doing the fucking work
Because I was so tired
I'm trying to find some thinner now
So I can scrape it off
I love you
But I've got to go
'cause I'm about to cough.

03-27-00
Miami
===========================
Thank you Molly.