I am no transformative flow of river

"Its language is inadequate for the rapid complex syntheses achieved by the minor hemisphere." -- Jerre Levy and R. W. Sperry, 1968

"Our brains are double, each half with its own way of knowing, its own way of perceiving external reality. In a manner of speaking, each of us has two minds..." Betty Edwards, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 1999

I am still, an underground lake, but the experience flows through me. Ripples charge the surface til the water absorbs the movement without a trace.

Reading this chapter of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain explains why I've observed the most beautiful autumn I can remember, but I can't translate any of it into creativity.

For all the hours here that move too slow

A song I love, whose lyrics I would hope to never be true, now rings clearly and insistent as a clock in the market square chiming twelve noon. I'm not sure that I can ever listen to it again.

Moments of Heaven

This has been the most beautiful season I can remember; no other autumn comes close. We had more sun than we've any right to in the month of October, and November is always the month in which to pay. The beauty has rendered me speechless. My brain is too busy trying to fit all that my eyes funnel in, and the visual never even gets translated into words.

Lately I've been mindful of my daily moments of heaven. Usually once a day (more often on weekends) a few things come together and result in a delicious, fleeting bliss. Today's moment of heaven happened as I drove home from work. It was warm out, so I had the car windows down, and as I waited for the highway meter a New Order song began, and as I accelerated with one arm out the window, singing, the rushing air traveled all the way up the sleeve of my trenchcoat. At the first breezy tickle, I knew: windows down, the full fall air, the song, the singing. The elements come together, and recognizing the confluence is the cherry on top.

Inevitably, the parts that make the whole begin to peel away, and the sublime is lost. But having that moment, appreciating it in its presence, and diligently awaiting the next one-- the present is suddenly more in the present, a sensation entirely new to me.

The weight of time

This morning was so many days ago that I can't keep count. I'm aging in syncopated rhythm, the heartbeat of an insomniac racehorse five years past its prime.

Control top

I don't like the attention. I think I know why. I am guarded-- cautious-- and I like to maintain control. That's why I can never let loose at parties, why I'm often the stick-in-the-mud. I'm cautious. I like to be reasonably certain how things will turn out.

Sometimes I hate this about myself, and I rebel. I think that I will let go and have fun. It's not enjoyable though. It never is. It's not me.

I think of it as a familial saddle, with each generation leap-frogging. We look after those before us, we challenge those ahead of us. I will keep my head down and do my job.

The sighs of miles

I thought I had the words. I thought I had them because this morning while riding my bike from the train station to work, I found myself enjoying the very act of breathing. The air felt late and thoroughly warmed through, a twang of diesel and cut grass wafting through like hot sauce that purifies and elevates the flavors of the entire meal.

The rest of the world moved mechanically by like a well-tuned, slow-turned music box. I could even hear the tinkling notes through the cotton air. As timeless as it felt, it ended abruptly when I went inside the office building.

Maybe I've accepted autumn.

I'm going to go hit "Publish" on some old draft entries that only contain a sentence or two. There's some fiction mixed up in here, words written just for their joy at being seated next to one another. This entry isn't one of them, but they're in here. In case you wondered.

Autumnal panic

I used to think that I could pick out my favorite lyrics from songs and rearrange them and come up with the most beautiful poem imaginable.

alonetime

Alone in the kitchen. Erik just left for PAX in Seattle, and my dad will leave Port Angeles any time now to drive the five hour journey to my house. The radio is set to the jazz station and Kenard is snuggled up to the laptop, obscuring the left side of the screen.

There are so many versions of heaven on this earth. This is one. Last night at the Doug Fir, watching the lead singer of !!! move in a shameless heartfelt body-jerking dance while performing All My Heroes Are Weirdos. Finding a dead snake floating in the lake at work, with Hanna. At least, that was heavenly until she touched it and we found another dead snake in the water. Then I worried about Hanna getting sick and snakes being targeted by poison. Back down to earth.

But here I am, listening to jazz, stringing rocks on wire for my latest modular jewelry idea. The only thing missing is coffee, and I'm about to head to the farmers' market to sniff fruit and caress plants-- that favorite beverage of yours and mine can't be far behind.

I still find pieces of you in places I thought I'd locked you out of long ago, even while we were still together. How did you wend your way in? It must've been one of those times, your hurricane winds blew right through me. I could never stand your gale force, and being knocked over, chipped, you were right there.

Night in the garden

This dark heart of mine, crouching in wait, overflows in the rain with its scent of the earth. Waiting for answers before questions can be given over-- the lock to make the key turn in writhing anticipation.

I used to fear reaching my hands into the unknown black spaces beneath rocks, leaves, and wood. Naked fingers are drawn to the tangled puff of spiderweb and sudden cold slime of snails. Time spent closer, face pressed to the ground, has cured my hands of their exploratory apprehension. Every rock is turned and all secrets are baked away in the white smoke of the sun. I know all corners of the garden and each leaf-leaned nook.

Now though, these night visitors-- the raccoons-- fill me with dread each morning I wake to find undersides turned under again.

these thoughts I must not think of

I am wound up. Not wounded-- wound. Why are those heteronyms?

At any rate, I usually think of myself as invisible. Certainly in public I try to not speak out or stand out, to blend into the background and observe the surroundings. I've been told conflicting opinions as to my effectiveness on this front, but the point is that I keep to myself and I'm rather shy.

Tonight while I was out for a run in the conditions I most dislike-- hot, dry, sunny, windy. I was thinking about people I used to know. When I saw one running towards me (although his hair was the wrong color). I shouted at him, stopping, perhaps jumping to give impact to the name. I shouted til he had to forcefully respond that he wasn't who I thought he was. Oh. I moved on, embarrassed. And my mind locked onto the interaction, repeating every detail.

Why did I think that was my friend? It's like I expected that my brain could conjure him up. Normally when I see someone I might now, I remain quiet out of fear of intrusion. What pushed me to act, when it was more than likely I'd be wrong?

Welcome to the real world

I still can't believe what she said to me. I know why... but, really, why?

She's mad that I've been absent for weeks.

It's like she hardly knows me after all of these years, although she is now one of my oldest friends. She doesn't understand that I can't contact her every single day, and I don't understand how she could need so much contact. It's the kind of cycle that breaks down before it can rebuild; an eclipse marring the otherwise perfect 365 day calendar. All of the other years— most of them— are fine.

She thinks that I am punishing her by not calling, and when she tries to punish me by also not calling, I don't notice. I am the insensitive one, and she is doubly punished. So she lashed out to let me know.

Even with this logicked map, it still hurts. Her words echo in the corners. It feels like a shared sentiment. Everyone waits, watches, assumes that this is not it— the end, result, reason. Call it what you will, the end does not justify the means: the means is all.

Where we are, where we stand, we chose. Persevere.

Rage incident at the Doug Fir

From the journal, 7 June 2008.

Doug Fir has the uncanny ability to terrify me with its opportune people-watching. Regardless of ridiculousness, anything seen on more than two people per evening will indeed become a [fashion] trend. Tonight it is fanny packs. No, sadly I am not joking. Thick, contoured belts with pouches. I've seen three, so it is upon us.

I am asymptotically reaching a freak-out point. I knew-- I f*ing knew-- that she'd be here. I've thought about the possibility for months. I thought I saw her in the [back bar] corner. That, and I'm coming off such a bliss full week. There is no yin but there's a yang; no shadow without light; no day but for night. [ed note: I didn't mean to make that rhyme]

Lest I lay it on too thick, I'm sitting here hating on a troupe of hippy girls. I thought that I had gotten over this particular prejudice & embraced the dirt, but there is... something... about these particular specimens-- which means that my rage at the east coast version is deep and justified.

time ponderance

I am lying on the couch, watching the leaves of the ninebark jitter in the wind in the golden light from the sun that's finally appeared at just about the last moment possible. If the sun's arc slowed to infinity, I could watch this dance forever. I can't tell if it's because I'm so tired that everything becomes hypnotizing, or if the movement of leaves is always a fascinating thing. I suspect the latter.

I tell myself I'll take time for this-- some day, I will. Time to watch the clouds take lingering leave of the West Hills, with arms outstretch in goodbye. Time to mete the westbound morning bridge traffic, to make sure that everyone makes it back to the eastside before sundown. Time to poke a stick and my camera into every hole from missing squares of purple sidewalk glass in all of Old Town.

I'll have time to finish thoughts and ponder the last dream I had. Time, even, to see every episode of Dr Who from its start til present day.

From my journal, written in the back of the car during the drive from Port Angeles to Crescent Lake.

Deep in the secret heart of me unfinished stories from the past bubble and simmer. The ones I don't often tell and rarely pick to examine. So many of them now are dim from dust. Distant tales of nearly a decade past in a city on the other side of the world, starring a character I hardly recognize, as myself.

Ringed mares

Dreams of the outer band of my wedding ring wearing through, of outrunning tsunamis by climbing up a hill to Powell's but getting abducted as slaves by aliens, of a favorite carnival ride abandoned for fifteen years and infested with horror freak puppies. These are my dreams by night, as I slowly ebb the energy it takes to focus a tired mind awash

dreamstate of silence

The other day I wished for leafdreams back, and since then I've had vivid dreams which I've remembered almost every morning. There is no solace in the memories of these near-lucid bloodbaths. Some nights I am chased by ruthless bands of assassins. Two nights I've been back at my father's house, more realistic in its details than my cube at work in the waking world.

The other night I was there, petting my first two cats. I said to my dad, "I was two when we got Dora-- that means she's 27 now!" He nodded and agreed, but she didn't seem as though she felt particularly old. She rolled onto her back and I rubbed her belly, which was dark in the dream, but white in life.

Last night I planned and executed a plot to kill fifty guards and escape the prison camp in which I and about a dozen other people were trapped. At the end of the dream, as with the cars-running-into-the-house dream of the other night, it was utterly silent and empty.

I wished so hard for a return to inspiration last time that I had nightmares.

Transcript of last night's nightmare

I was at my dad's house; I had brought D over there for some reason.

My dad and mom were there, in the dining room-- I think I was standing talking to them while D went upstairs to use the bathroom.

Through the back windows I saw a car plummet off a cliff (not there in real life) and then continue driving towards the house.

It stopped right before colliding with the house, and my dad ran out to check to see if the driver was okay, but I tried to stop him. I went upstairs to call the police or something. I told D to stay hidden in the bathroom.

As I was reaching for the phone in my old bedroom (on the 2nd floor) I saw a HUGE two-storey tall triple-segmented truck come around the corner onto the block.

It kept turning, about to hit the house, but it turned around the side of the house and that's when I realized that the cab (with 5 or 6 burly men) was at the height of my room, so when they crashed through the side of the house I dropped the phone and ran down the stairs, but both of my parents were gone.

Everyone (of my friends/family) were gone, and I started to realize that I should just go with the men rather than run and have the men tear apart the house and find D. And that's when I woke up.

This morning tears sat like stones in my throat, weighing down my head with sadness for the ugliness here. The hideous crush of concrete, smoke, and so many ugly buildings snuggled into each other's personal space. There is no personal space, no time to be alone, no wide open vistas.

Time breaks

I'm still recovering, although from something other than the five-week cold or the death cold. Those, thankfully, are over. Now it's one red, irritated, itchy eye, my lower back acting up (it only responds to red wine. Really.), and a sore throat. Will I ever be well again? I think it's been seven weeks total, and it has robbed me of some of my basest pleasures-- the taste of food, the sweetness of exhaustion from digging in the dirt, and the satisfying ring of words clicking into place.

Quite a few scenes have moved me recently-- the purple shock of first magnolia blossoms, rain seen flung like the sheerest silk scarf far across the Willamette Valley, the sweet solo of the first spring birdsong. But in experiencing these things with my senses so crippled, no words well up. I remember fewer details. Time rolls on without me. And that is why I started taking Airborne, EmergenC, a multivitamin, and some more targeted vitamins. I'm tired of a half-life, and ready for my synesthesia back.

The sound

With this cold I've had over the past four weeks, I have lost fluency with my words. The already tenuous tendrils between my everflowing mind and the outside world of reality were washed away in the tidal floods of mucus filling my sinuses. With my smell, taste, and hearing dulled, the whole sensory package seemed to take a break. It's been forever. I'm nearly there.

The story I've wanted to tell, for weeks now, is of awaking in bed one morning without opening my eyes. I had time to sleep in because it was one of those odd holidays that few people get, so I feigned sleep, deeply aware of my head on the pillow and the blankets holding in my sleep-heat. Because of this not-fully-conscious state, I was able to hear the sounds clearly-- the sounds I always hear in my ears, which normally I filter out enough to completely ignore. I listened and thought about it, as I haven't really ever tried to describe it.

They were metal sounds, only in my left ear-- the ear against the pillow. Quick and short, but in unhurried and random intervals. I think if I heard those sounds in real life they would grate, but the subtly shifting patterns were oddly comforting. I listened for twenty minutes before finally stirring and rising out of bed. I had previously described the sound as a wailing alarm, but that's not it at all. It comes and goes in endless layers, which give a siren-effect when hidden by the normal noise of everyday life. But with this cocooning cold I've been able to hear more details in the sound, to concentrate on its complexity. I'm familiarized with it, and that's something good that's come from this otherwise frustrating and drawn-out illness.

sleeping in

I had a strange morning-- something happened that is generally considered to be common, but which I have only experienced a few times in my life.

My alarm didn't go off. Actually, two alarms didn't go off.

One alarm clock is supposed to mimic the gradual brightening of the sunrise, and help to make waking up less painful. I don't always use that one, as the interface is particularly obscure and it runs fast. Right now it's nine minutes fast, and in another month it'll be up to ten. Even its speeding up is totally random, since it got up to quite a few minutes fast soon after I reset it, but now that it's at nine minutes fast, it seems almost set in its ways.

Given my basic understanding of this clock, it's no surprise that it didn't work-- regardless of the fact that I made sure to turn it on. And I'm sure that I turned it on, because when I went to bed last night I saw that my main clock was blank.

I've waited for this day for years. The clock was given to me by my mom, one of the times I visited her in England. She was appalled that I didn't have a travel clock, and it had been given to her uncle by my dad, apparently swag from a conference. So it had already passed through at least three hands before me, and it didn't seem to be a particularly well-made thing. But it was simple, with few features, and extremely reliable.

It was my main clock for the past nine years. Nine years, and who knows how many countries. If a dead battery doesn't seem like a big deal, that's because you assume it can be changed. This clock is so cheaply made that its watch battery is hidden deep inside, with no apparent access. This really feels like the end of an era, although maybe it's the dumbed-down-edness of my cold-addled brain.

Untitled Blog Entry #24

Skeletons of trees stand in a line,
a boneyard along the path.
Each points to the sky like unfurled paisley
and rocks slowly in their own time
As if the wind were merely a suggestion.

I can almost draw the lines

During my run today, plugged in and stripped down to a tshirt by the time I hit the Nature Park trail, I looked up and my tipped head seemed to slide my senses together. The sun, when it comes out here in winter, is dazzling and physical and disorienting and it hits everything at once. As I turned the corner on the path, I couldn't feel the headphones-- the music seemed internal. Sun struck through moss high in skinny trees and lichen abandoned on the ground-- a surrounding of great green glowing life. Even through slow-motion drips of slushy rain, the sun's touch made my skin warm and I had the sudden impulse to lift my arms for its embrace to wrap around my waist and pull me closer. I wanted to remove clothes to let the sun-touch in.

This is the effect of the return of forgotten sunlight. It floods your veins and shakes you loose from reality's one dimension.

After this run, walking back to my desk, a private song plays in my ears as my long earrings tinkle like a metallic brook with each step I take. I turn my ears and then eyes up to the heartbeat thump of wings pushing air aside as geese swoop overhead in a textbook V formation. Tattoos patch the wet concrete where leaves have given up their ghosts. Each ginger lift of a foot is a a sensation I can't dull on its path up my nervous system to my brain.

Am I a simpleton to be so stunned? These corporeal pleasures are the only stories I have to share. Everything else wilts in comparison.

a quiet dark place is all we need

The other day I kept driving through these themed scenes of exquisite beauty, the kind of trite urban images that catch on the edge of your consciousness until you see them, oddly, three times in a row and on the third time finally slow down to watch.

At the time I made a note of it, to write about later, here. But then I felt a little self-conscious-- after all, one of the repeated scenes was the trapped breeze-dance of a solitary plastic bag. Is everyone sick of that after the movie? It still affects me, although maybe it was just the particular day.

we'll cut our bodies free from the tethers of this scene

Listening to a favorite album from the year 2003, I began to feel restless deep inside as the music stirred body memories and made me painfully aware that I've lived here in the same zipcode for just over five years. Except for the house into which I was born, I haven't lived in any one place for more than a year and a half. A decade-long stretch of moving around suited me just fine; I always knew when it was time to leave.

oneaday

I've been writing much more often over at my everyday photo journal, but it's incredibly mundane. I feel like I've sunk deep into the couch cushions, snuggled close with my man and cats, and stuffed my face with plentiful, hot, home-cooked meals. It's the most cozy hibernation a hairless ape could hope for, but it's not been particularly good for my creative output. Rather, the seemingly minor task of taking one photo and writing one sentence each day has taken quite a lot more energy than I anticipated. I've written far more than one sentence most days, but it's more of a diary of daily goings-on; perhaps a separate, more creatively charged single sentence journal is a good idea.

nobody has to know

Crunch of gravel, and ice-rain falling through the bamboo rakes zen lines through the path in front of my footsteps. Walking across the wooden bridge at night, pink snow-sky overhead, I'm chanting the words I don't want to forget, unable to see passing faces for the back-lit glow from glass buildings.

This morning, dark mirror image, I chanted "Jabba the Hutt" to myself over and over, to try to remember the dream from which I awoke.

This morning it didn't work, but this evening it did.

Sound waves, star waves

There's a connection through radio, when you realize that someone in a distant location hears the same sounds as you at the same moment, experiences the same sensory input, reacts with a similar recognition. Thus radio transcends earthly broadcast to heavenly status-- it's a locale for lovers' trysts, like wishing on the same star or looking up at the same moon in the sky.

On the way to work, driving over the Hawthorne Bridge where it carries you over the train tracks (east side), and a small cloud puff rising from underneath gives a moment's warning before the whir of the horn, directly below, permeates the bridge structure, my car, my bones. The pleasing magic of the Doppler Effect as I swing past the tracks and over the water.

On the way home from work, small patches of low cloud break the unseasonably smooth blue, two lights in the sky send cylindrical beams ahead of an airplane that meanders ponderously onward like a friendly, celestial manta ray.

Cast vitriol and stones

(From a Vandaveer song I just heard on WOXY, a lovely turn of phrase that stuck to my mind's ear)

Watching drippy drops form and fall from skeletal branches just outside the odd, low window in the yoga room. Everything in that room darkened to my mind as the rain lines slowed into focus.

Oh leaf dreams

Stir in my chest, the ache in a short breeze plucks at the top. When I slowly turn to look, I will close my eyes and breathe deeply instead. The smell of earth, dark and heavy, waits for my hands and heart, waits for the collapse of leaf-veins and all of the between parts. With an ear to the ground, you can share the dark secret and giggle with the rest of the roots lifting their arms to the sky in supplicating green blades. I won't give up, but in my sleep I will dream of giving in and returning to the tree.