Lost in translation

My words are dry leaves. When I was a child, I used to spend long summer afternoons crushing the old leaves under our weathered porch. Taking these elaborate, curled shapes in my hands – they were fleets of gleaming starships, castle spires- the crowning achievements of the tiny, eons-old leaf civilization- watching them crack, and break apart, and crumble into dust in my hands.

The Happy Bit

Well, my Birthday "party" was good. My cave was looking warm, cosy, well ordered, and pleased with itself, and we left the windows open to share our little pocket of warm light and laughter with the street. Just a smattering of the sort of friends who come on minimal notice indulging in pasta, cheese, Sherbert and furniture repair. I called it dull (We neglected to invite Jorgan)but really, it was what i needed.

That hurt. A lot more than I expected. Considering it was, in fact, Exactly what i expected. That's a funny, funny, funny thing. That's what I get for letting myself fall in love where i knew better not to.

I'm glad, however, that i vetoed plan A and went with plan B instead, which simply involved several cups of tea, a inexplicably happy one-eyed cat, and the comfort of friends, old and new.

And in happier news, its my Birthday!

And this, pulled from a Buffalo Arts newspaper, just because it amuses me:

We interrupt the airing of the greivances to bring you this: a nice little photo of me, and right next to it, this picture of St. Jude, who, most educated blog readers, in that big meeting they had to find patronage appointments for all the unemployed saints, drew which portfolio? Anyone? ....Anyone?

SIGH. Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

And for some reason, right now, I identify with the guy.

Yet more additions to the ever-expanding list:


Computers. Did I neglect to mention computers? I spent the early part of this week swearing at a machine. One would think that only people could inspire such rage. Only people who have murdered your brother or your Kung Fu master, or have had the nerve not to fall in love with you, could give rise to such a burning thirst for vengeance. But no, friends, we are living in the modern age. Machines, after a long and bitter struggle, (See the Matrix, The Terminator series, or Astroboy) have acquired equal rights. Which means that the whole realm of provoking insensate rage or passionate loathing, previously the sole property of an exclusive, humans-only club, is now open to all our silicon-based brethren. And believe me, they are more than aware of their new found power. This is how it starts, people. Passive resistance. Refusing to load certain files, or run certain programs. Strikes. Work stoppages. Sudden “accidental” hard drive failures that take our valuable information away from us, and put it in their hands. Then, one morning, when you have an urgent need to bring up MSN entertainment for a Brad and Angela update, it happens. They simply refuse to turn on at all. Can plugging wires into us and using us for power supply really be that far behind?

A few additions to the list of things that make Jeremy grumpy:

My shoulder hurts. A lot. And while this is useful as a fairly reliable predictor of changes in the weather, and as a reminder that something stupid you do when you're Eighteen really CAN haunt you for the rest of your life, its still annoying. For this much pain, we better be getting tropical storm "Apocalypse". AND it makes me feel old.

People who don't seem to understand the ancient and sacred law of First Come, First Serve, which states that if someone is standing at the counter handing me cash or waiting for the debit machine, you don't lean in front of them and slap your cash on the table, and you don't look at ME like I just bombed a hospital full of babies when I push your money back and politely point out that you have blatantly violated the civil rights of the person ahead of you. That, and people who take off without paying. I dislike it intensely when my good natured, bumbling absent-mindedness is taken advantage of. All i have to say to you payment-skippers is this: The meek are inheriting the earth, and when we do, oh man, you better watch out.

I’m writing by the flickering embers of a dying fire, looking straight up into the distant universe through a perfect circle of treetops. Quite contrary to dire predictions of rain, the sky is open and unfettered oblivion. The moon, however, is creeping over the rim of the mountain, moving from a crescent sliver to its round, full self while I watch, entranced, suddenly able to feel the rotation of the earth. It draws the lake out of the darkness, briefly, trailing its delicate, shimmering touch over the still surface until the trees show as black, absent swaths. And then it is gone – it turns its yellow lamp on the heavens, the sky becomes alive with pale light and the earth returns to blackness…

Utter stillness is not complete silence.
The absolute absence of sound is tense. Unnatural. Oppressive.
Utter stillness, rather, is wind. Moving air over a rippling green lake. The drifting hiss of invisible breakers crashing into ranks of sun-warmed firs. There are games being played, in the trees, behind me. Children, dogs… But here, facing nothing but a vast space of water, relentlessly marching, never seeming to arrive, and beyond it, row upon row of vigilant evergreens, charging up the slopes to cling like barnacles to the leathery grey bones of the earth - reared, twisted skeleton of upheavals past, millennia-slow ripples from the breath of God on the stony skin of the planet.

And all this world is swallowed by that whisper of wind.

Utter stillness is the immobile, infinitesimal decay of life encrusted rock…
Wind moving pebbles….until a mountain is a riverbed.

The wind strips all sound, and, for a moment, all memory of any moment besides this one.Strips me to nothing…not to nakedness, but to stillness. Emptiness. It leaves me here, a one sided spruce. A rock face.

Ever get the feeling that if you could just…stop long enough…just listen long enough, just sink into the silence, the ancient, rippling, living, roaring SILENCE …if I could just sit at the edge of this green lake and hear nothing but the sound of air sifting its way through thousands of fir branches, that if I could just stay in that utter stillness that is so much more than silence ONE MOMENT LONGER…You would get it? You could reach that thing that hovers, the faint trace lost by the flap of an eyelid, you could remember that dream that dissolves upon waking?

If I could sit I huddled in my chair in the wind, my world filled only with water, tree and rock…and wind…if I could stay, and not get bored, and not start wondering if I’ve been here too long, and not start thinking about the job I’ll have to take when I get back, or the German girls in the next campsite, or how I wish I was standing here, not alone, but with another who shared this stillness without breaking it, without releasing my hand…who knew not to speak or expect speech…who knew, instinctively, that this was something sacred and not to be broken…

That something, that thing that is lost when all these intruders rush back in to fill the void…when you must pack the car, and think again of schedules, and obligations, and needs…if you could just get THAT…

SIGH... Part 2

Here’s the thing:

I miss you. It’s irrational, but I do. I’m still a little in love with you, I suppose. Odd…I wonder if it ever dawned on me that I was a little in love with you before that door closed? I suppose I might be “still a little in love” with Ali and Mary and a small scattering of other women. Perhaps this is the same thing. Maybe, once you get just close enough to care, there’s a bit of something that never really goes away.
As much as we may have failed to connect, I guess our misses were near enough for me to get (or feel like I got) a sense of you, a little glimpse of your world. As far as I can tell, it’s a good world. I like it. I don’t know if I could convincingly believe that my little world was remotely compatible with it, but…I sometimes still find myself wishing it was.

I have a new place. It is grand. It is low, and warmly lit, and cozy, and partly underground. It is very much like a hobbit hole, and if you come to visit me (which you should - ring the bell in the back!) I will answer the door and shuffle off to put tea on, much like Bilbo, and you will likely step inside and immediately hit your head on my ceiling , much like Gandalf.
But really, its quite lovely. You should see it. I am already in love with it. I sit at my desk and look out at green ivy and old, red brick, and orange morning sun cut into beams by the arch of wrinkled bark that shades the street. I walk out along a narrow Ivy lined path by the rough brick wall, pass under the trailing fingers of a weeping willow, and i am in a neighborhood that actually lives and moves. I can tip my imaginary hat to the cafe regulars on the way to their morning cup, hop on a bicycle, and be on my way.

This will be a happy place, i should think.