Grasshopper

Once upon a time there was a grasshopper that could jump really high. One day he jumped so high that he landed on the very top of a tree. Then he decided to jump again and jumped so high that he landed on a cloud after which he jumped really high again and landed on the moon. Very impressed with himself he decided to jump as high as he could. He jumped so high that he landed on mars where he found a peanut butter and jelly (grape) sandwich. The peanut butter and jelly (grape) sandwich was 8 times his body weight but he ate the whole thing. Feeling very stuffed he decided not to jump again and lived out the rest of his days on mars, which is how the rumor started that there are grasshoppers on mars.

what he saw

Never one to arbitrarily throw out a good piece of plastic, he thoughtlessly threw the empty aspirin bottle into his back pack and didn’t give any more thought to it for several months. Upon the passing of several months he found himself needing to empty out the contents of his back pack at an airport security checkpoint one day on his way to a vacation destination of his choice. He was surprised to see the empty aspirin bottle because he hadn’t remembered packing it and he hadn’t remembered throwing it in their several months earlier. The security guards looked at the bottle and then looked at him suspiciously and then looked at each other with resignation. They turned their attention back to him and simultaneously asked him to open the bottle, which seemed strange to him because it was clearly empty. Indeed, the bottle was made with clear plastic only partially obscured by the paper used to brand which ever brand of aspirin it was that he had bought however long ago he bought it. But, always one to oblige burdenless requests he went ahead and pushed down on the cap whilst giving it a good twist to bypass the child safety feature. And as expected, the bottle opened with ease and it was as empty with the cap off as it was with the cap on. He placed the bottle and cap in the outstretched and upturned palm of the security guard to his left who grasped the bottle after emptying the cap into his other hand and brought the bottle to his right eye while squinting his left eye shut thereby allowing him to peer through the uncapped bottle. The bottom of the bottle faced his field of view and he focused on the clear bottom and then looked through until he could see out the open end that was obstructed by the other security guard’s eye that was in turn looking through the bottle from the other end. In an instant their singular eyes mutually focused on each other. The guard peering through the open end of the bottle suddenly noticed that his sight was quickened and carried through the clear plastic bottom and was carried through the empty container and also carried through the others guards eye transporting his own consciousness into the body and mind of the other security guard. Suddenly he was aware of everything about the security guard that there ever was to be aware of from his entire history, to his motivations and intentions and his feelings and insecurities about everything and everyone he ever experienced including some disturbing and also some euphoric experiences some of which disgusted him and other of which pleased him. The only thing he did not know was whether the security guard might be experiencing a reciprocal event within his own body and mind and that very thought contracted his own consciousness because he, like most people, had some private moments he didn’t want to share with any stranger even if he had suddenly become aware of that stranger’s most private moments together with his public and even mundane and routine daily events. And with that contraction of consciousness his sight within the guard’s being and life retreated and he was only left with the memory of as much of another person’s lifetime that one could remember under such circumstances. Realizing this strange moment was over he stared blankly for a moment through the empty bottle a few milliseconds more until he realized the guards were eyeing him and not the bottle any longer. They asked in unison if he was alright to which he replied with a stammer that he was. They followed up by asking if he was sure he was alright to which he gave a confident response that he was and which response dissipated any further reason for suspicion so they let him go on his way. And while on his way to the airplane terminal and on his way through the skies and while vacationing at the destination of his choosing and even upon return and for the rest of his life he reflected on that moment and everything he could remember from his experience that conveyed to him the things and intimate details about the life and existence of another human to a degree he never realized possible and never experienced again and that caused him to never look at an empty aspirin bottle the same way ever again. 

may not make sense, may not care

Conversant transistor merchant jumpers cram mouthfuls of potato jam where their mainstream monocles filter out combined moments of genius testers.  Never so ambulatory as when the music infuses and so it’s a horrible death to sit at a desk all day long, chained by porcupine tentacles and breathy landscape drum circles. Still, he got up and walked away, left it that way forever although it followed him, trailing not far behind, but he never looked back and didn’t succumb. The gravity was real, especially in the evenings but it was something else in the mornings and so he tried to fly by singing his wings into being fantastic under the awnings of Brooklyn salesmen wearing lipstick and gorgeous smiles, grinning ear to ear, causing the initiated to fear what might be hiding behind the façade, the showcase windows, into the shadows but something lurking within called him in and he was never ever seen again. 

no time for muffin funk

While the muffins may have been a little over four days old and left out in a sweaty plastic bag in the waning heat of summer’s end, he didn’t expect that the muffins would develop the funk. He opened the bag and took out a muffin with his mouth agape, ready to taste it. When his mouth closed over and bit down, he at first suspected and then as he chew, he knew, his muffins had fallen victim to the muffin funk. But he didn’t want to believe it so he took another bite and found himself engaged in some kind of battle in his mind nearly willing himself to not notice the funk, as if he could manage to impose the lie he was telling himself on the remainder of the muffin and the other muffins in the bag, curing them of the muffin funk and restoring his world to the balance that had possessed it before this discovery he was attempting to unknow. He took a third bite and was almost there, almost believed that there was no funk, that all the muffins were just perfectly fine but finally, his rational mind powered through the story he was telling himself bursting open the imaginary damn he had constructed in his mind, protecting himself from the knowledge of the funk causing his mind to undeniably flood with the sensory experience of the funk. Almost involuntarily he put the muffin back in the bag and then determinedly he threw the whole bag of muffins in the garbage, disgusted at the waste and the commitment to a change of plans that put him face to face with the unknown when he didn’t have time for new inventions. Rather than think of something new, he simply took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and considered that having foregone the time to chew the muffin, he found himself with a little extra time to think that morning.

and the Gods made humans

In all of the Universe and possible and probable and likely imagined and unimaginable existence, the Gods were unlike any others and they made a lot of stuff taking great care in their designs to the point of a kind of fastidiousness that might be annoying amongst mere mortals but for Gods it was rather secondary to their nature and they had a lot of patience being perfect beings like they were. The Gods had many unique designs among them and some even ventured to say that every design of each living creature both plant and animal and even human and non-human, even from living to non-living, was unique just like the snowflakes they were so fond of. Sure, there were similarities and in some instances the same raw materials would be found in any amount of any given samples of this and that but the arrangement of those materials and subsequent emergent properties all presented uniqueness upon uniqueness in quite stunning fashion; although, most Gods were pretty careful not to let it go to their heads (and were privately displeased when some Gods did let it go to their heads but they were too perfectly polite to ever confront such issues of such little consequence which were assuredly of little consequence because, uniquely amidst all the entirety of all existence, the Gods were quite perfectly self-critical and were very efficient in self-chastisement, with special care not to be shameful, which they found a rather ugly phenomena, so that they might self-correct and not be prideful so that they could eventually continue on in their perfection.) But the Universe was a funny thing and in its totality saw fit to include an occasional weakness amongst perfection so that perfect might be truly perfect rather than perfectly boring and thus the Universe limited the Gods in their ability to discern the future and as a compliment to this weakness the Universe introduced variability from the very beginning of its self-existence and was thereby eternally entertained in its observations of all the on goings that could possibly ever happen. And it was because of the Gods’ inability to accurately perceive the future in a predictive manner and because they did not know of the details of the randomness that the Universe introduced that the Gods were constantly trying to match their unique creations to the ideal circumstances so that their creations might achieve what they conceived of as perfection in both their creations and the context of their creations according to the Gods’ own perceptions. When they matched creations to circumstances well, wonderful things would happen and would often be replicated, which is one of the reasons why so many planets and solar systems were eventually created and continued to be created, they had such fun with those things and marveled at all the different colors of the planets. Other things were replicated often such as clouds and the aforementioned snowflakes as well as geological patterns. Nebulas were a favorite past time among many and so were black holes, although, they were often lost. Occasional accidents occurred such as errant meteorites crashing into planets but that also kept things interesting to the Gods, which is exactly why the Universe introduced randomness. Amongst all of the designs they created, the designs of life were the most fickle and temporary and amongst the designs of life, humans were even more difficult to match to ideal circumstances. Many Gods were confounded by humans’ seemingly unpredictable responses to what the humans encountered during their existence. Some of their responses were surprisingly amazing such as the pyramids and they were even more so amazed by the depths of compassion that the humans would occasionally display. But disappointingly, the humans caused a lot of problems and in turn created a lot of stupid things as well such as bottled water. But generally, the Gods marveled at how the humans employed the unique features that the Gods installed within them which led the Gods to continue to develop the uniqueness of their human designs. They just couldn’t figure out why some of the unique features were used in such unintended ways so as to yield amazingness or horribleness and more and more that some of the most unique designs among the humans were unrecognized and lost to obscurity. Try as they might to match such unique humans to the ideal circumstances where such uniqueness could be employed to miraculous effect, other humans would just screw it all up causing the Gods creations to languish and eventually perish having never been realized to the fullest potential, which potential even the Gods were not sure of but of which they hoped to learn. Thus is was that many of the unique features they built into the humans were wasted by a lack of available circumstances that would showcase such special features. Still, the Gods tried and tried and unknowingly struggled against the weakness the Universe gave them (unknowingly because they didn’t realize the Universe could have made them fully omniscient knowing the beginning from the end but simply chose not to on a whim one day) and the Universe observed and observed taking notice of the evolutionary trajectory of the Gods as they continued to try and learn how best to match their creations to circumstances. The Gods lamented wasted opportunities, especially those they saw amongst their human designs but they also triumphed at human successes and even surprises, which gave them the passion to keep on trying and was the motivation that ultimately propelled the Gods to learn more and more of the science of matching their creations to circumstances, but on the balance the Gods felt that humans mostly lost their opportunities and achieved such a small fraction of their fullest potential, which if they were to achieve, the Gods knew, would be most glorious. As a result, the Gods agreed to only experiment with human designs on one sole planet until they understood better how to effectively match the humans to circumstances that would allow them to fully develop their potential. Meanwhile, the Universe chuckled because only it realized what the cause of the Gods befuddlement was regarding the humans, which was the randomness it had introduced into all of creation, which randomness the Universe was interested to see caused unintended consequences that not even it would have predicted. But that was what was most interesting to the Universe even if it was to some degree at the Gods’ expense, but the Universe, being as omniscient as it was, knew that the Gods had a pretty good sense of humor. 

such fluffy cows

The cows looked so fluffy against cobalt blue skies of afternoon summer sunshine floating there in a stop motion kind of silent gaze as if my world might be paused just like theirs. Their legs just dangled there, obviously theirs, but somehow they seemed so unnatural, so protruding there as if I could reach up and grab their legs but even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach I reached up anyways and just as I expected, their legs were so far away. So I laid back and watched their utters, also dangling there in midair underneath the cows but not as far down as their legs and I noticed they were milking themselves giving birth to baby clouds that would float away and matured into new cows eventually so fluffy just like the others and they too became so still and tranquil. And it was one of those days where there were a lot of fluffy cows floating there piled on top of each other giving birth to one another and the sunlight was still able to shine amidst the back drop of cobalt blue skies. It was such a pretty sight that I just continued to sit back and lay there and I watched the fluffy cows float by as still as could be, without a sound, seeming to stop time and entertain me. 

something personal

I sometimes miss those rainy dreary days when I’d wake up early in the morning to grey cloud filtered light, barely able to see the paper of my journal in which I’d write and I’d listen to the same music over and over again because it explained exactly how down I felt in anticipation of facing every inevitable bad day that I knew would always be the same, dragging me lower and lower nearly towards an inescapable fate. As horrible as those days were, I felt so real in the mornings contemplating what had become and where I was and what I wished for with just enough hope that someday a difference would come. My children, just babies then, would come and sit on my lap as I listened and thought and wrote sad things, sipping yerba mate that helped me hang on while I held on to them and the rare feeling in my world that felt right. By the time the first was older, the second came and sat on my lap just the same and I wrote more sad things in that same place under the grey cloud filtered light again as if the sun never shined but in those eyes, asking again to be held and content in that moment to be held by me is a feeling I can still remember and how right it felt. 

finding a porpoise

On a rather boring day of a boring week in the middle of his boring life he decided he needed to do something different and so he additionally decided he needed to look for a porpoise because he heard they were plentiful in the seas but in all actuality he had never seen one in the wild. He considered his options for porpoise searching and wondered if he would need apparatuses such as rafts or row boats or motor boats. He had none of those things and began to feel his hopes of finding a porpoise drift away much like a school of porpoises swimming off in the sunset at hypersonic speeds, because he knew porpoises were fast. He resolved not to lose all hope and ran to the beach and striped off his shirt and pants and shoes and socks and ran and dove into the waves and swam out towards the horizon in search of a porpoise. In his excitement and enthusiasm he didn’t anticipate his body’s need to recover from the exertion he compelled himself towards so he stopped for what he thought would be a brief moment to catch his breath, but his mind took a brief assessment determining that his body was fatigued and relayed a message to his consciousness to take the appropriate measures. Upon the appearance of thoughts to find a place to rest he looked around himself for the shore because he knew he would need to swim back but was disheartened when he realized it was beyond sight. His mind began sending rapid fire messages to his consciousness to do something to give himself some rest, which caused a slight panic within him but he willed himself to slow down his thoughts and floated on his back while he tried to put himself in a state of mind where he could find a solution to his predicament. The shifts of waves and currents caused him to struggle and exert further energy and effort continuing to tire him when what he wanted was rest, but still he tried until he realized that in that moment what he wanted more than anything was to live. He realized he had forgotten all about finding a porpoise but he began to remember his quest to find one and thought about how his search brought him into his current circumstances. As his focus began to shift from holding onto life to finding a porpoise, his body slowed down and relaxed and sank down to the point that his face was all that remained above water, just barely able to breath, tasting drops of salty water and licking his lips. He didn’t realize it but he was compelled to only one or the other. As he thought about his desire to find a porpoise, he forgot about holding on to his life and he stopped trying. Without trying, he soon slipped under and succumbed to the weight of his exhausted body. Instinctively he held his breath and a panic began to build for search of a way to breath but then the thought of porpoises again filled his mind and he smiled underwater and it was the last thing he ever thought.

even fish hate mondays

the greed

It had been decided long ago in ancient tombs as they buried their dead, in the embryonic days of time, to forge a mechanism by which they could maintain power for themselves and their kind. They realized that desire was as strong as anything they could create on their own and so they wrapped their intentions in the folds of the fresh milky white flesh of desire and cooked their creation in the darkest hollows of the earth from where their predecessors first crawled prior to the dawn of humanity’s birth. They marveled at their creation and called it greed and were taken with its appearance because it was infinite black, knowing no limits, able to continuously devour without satisfaction and they placed it in the unsuspecting hearts of nascent people who misunderstood the greed to simply be a moral justification from beyond their own minds. The last of the ancient ones eventually died knowing the knowledge of their hand in the creation of the greed would be buried in their own tombs but they also knew that the greed had been buried in the hearts of so many and that it would go on spreading to others without end because the greed was without end and the people who carried it were largely lacking in the ability of self-reflection or at least that ultimate bit of self-reflection that allows one to admit that they might be wrong. While the greed went on to corrupt humanity’s interactions, causing distrust, fear and destruction, it also went on to propel humanity to great feats of civilization and technological wonder causing humanity to also marvel at itself and sacrifice forethought of consequence in favor of seemingly ever greater achievement. The ancient ones looked on from beyond the tombs where their bodies were buried with quickened vision, unencumbered by their previously finite minds, and they looked on with a fullness of vision they hadn’t previously possessed. They were pleased to observe that the blackness of greed had spread to so many in such diverse ways from the innocent and well intentioned to the most hardened and gluttonous but ultimately only advantaging an elite few who they longingly admired and originally intended as its beneficiaries. They were eventually also surprised to see a light that they had never noticed during their living days and whereas the greed was infinitely black, the light shone infinitely within as well but also radiated infinitely out and beyond itself forever, sharing a brilliance beyond anything they had ever thought to desire and it shared itself freely with all who were willing to see it or who happened to find themselves within its warmth and shine. It even displaced the greed where ever it came into contact with the greed. The only place it did not shine was within the darkest shadows of greed where some purposefully withdrew not wanting to ever know anything other than the familiarity afforded by the blackness of the greed. The ancient ones who created the greed were among those lost in the shadows, the only difference between themselves and the living being that they could observe the light as well as the dark and be conscious that the light existed and further conscious that they had never experienced the light in their lifetime. Still possessed, not only of the darkness but also of an innate desire to experience the unexperienced, their satisfaction of the accomplishment of greed soon began to share space within the realm of their own desire with the curiosity and wonder of what the light might be and they wondered what it might be like to experience the light. Their satisfaction of the greed continually diminished in the light replaced with a dissatisfaction for their inability to know the light and the tombs that forever possessed their bodies seemed also to forever enclose their existence in such small dark confines as they had not anticipated and which saddened them as infinitely as the greed they created. 

memories

They were syrupy memories that kind of oozed down his brain slowly and seeped down deeply causing him to occasionally stop whatever it was he was doing and pay attention to each detail that made itself apparent in all dimensions of sight, sound, feeling and significance. Those dimensions coalesced together and aged so finely that they eventually began to glow causing a paralysis within him as he savored these old memories of friendships long deceased.  Maybe those memories wouldn’t be so disruptive if they didn’t stand in such contrast to the watered down future that became the daily routine of his life. He wasn’t even sure if it really was his life that was so watered down or if it was just the future in general and whether those old friends were living watered down lives as well.  He wondered where they were and whether their memories where nearly as thick and syrupy but while he might wonder he really didn’t want to know so he never attempted to contact them. Maybe they weren’t living as some diluted version of their younger selves and knowing that would place the blame squarely on himself for the choices he made that ultimately didn’t follow the trajectory he had begun so long ago. In the back of his mind he might actually know that the blame was his but that was too painful a truth to bring into his conscience; although, he also wondered where he went wrong. What bad advice didn’t he think through and adopted as his own because of a blind faith assumption that people knew what they were talking about? He could think of a few but it all felt too late to do anything about. He could throw out those assumptions now and in part he already did, which is why he knew he went wrong somewhere but there were too many consequences piled on top of consequences that he had to sort through before he could ever be free and from the bottom he was looking up from, it all seemed too far away to try to do anything about so he went on living his watered down life, watered down every day just a little more.  

the best ceviche in the world

All he really wanted was the best ceviche in the world but instead he somehow ended up with piles and piles of the unwanted detritus from circumstantial consequences. Eventually it got to the point where he felt so cluttered with stuff he never even asked for or wanted that he began indiscriminately hauling thing after thing to the curb where it piled high and was obviously visible to any passersby. When he finally finished carrying the stuff out he noticed a sense of vacancy that he looked forward to enjoying. He looked at the pile of stuff and it seemed like more stuff than he had ever remembered taking possession of, as if it had expanded and multiplied once out in the open. He had hoped that people would want his unwanted things and would take them from the pile to keep as their own. He left the pile alone for a while and eventually wandered back to see if anything had been taken and to his satisfaction he noticed the pile had somewhat diminished and he felt a further satisfaction that maybe other people could use the things he wanted to get rid of. Eventually everything was gone except for some scattered papers that he thought he should pick up and put in the garbage. He picked up a few of the papers and noticed an unfamiliar bowl of average size that appeared to having something in it. He picked it up and examined it looking at it, smelling it and eventually tasting whatever it was in the bowl and it was exactly what it he thought it might be. It was ceviche and from what he could tell, and to his surprise, it was the best ceviche in the world.

the generation of the destruction

Not everyone of the generation of the destruction clung to the memory of how things were. Many people did and they were miserable because they could not adapt to the new reality but there were others who hadn’t been served well by the false notions of progress and superficial happiness of consumption that was unreasonable and unsustainable. There were some who celebrated the destruction because there were aware of the lies and had always struggled against them but their efforts seemed futile until the destruction. The destruction was the great revealer of what was important and what wasn’t. Subsequent to the destruction, it was necessary to build a new foundation of principals and security. Those who experienced the freedom offered by the destruction adapted well and quickly found meaning as they engaged to establish the new foundation. They also felt a sense of satisfaction in their accomplishments as opposed to a sense of loss for what had been destroyed. For many, the destruction lifted a burden from their shoulders and cleared their schedules that previously kept them from what was truly important. Those that were saddened were the same who had been, prior to the destruction, preoccupied with avoiding the emptiness of the world they had built, incorrectly believing that they needed to continue to build and build and build upon what they already built so that they could outpace the emptiness not realizing that no matter how much they filled the world with their ideas that it would still be empty. Their ideas were an insatiable cancer that caused the emptiness and so the emptiness grew until the peak of emptiness was reached, the peak beyond which it could be sustained and the destruction naturally emerged as a consequence. Eventually, those people succumbed to the secondary destruction, which was more subtle in that those people eventually just disappeared. They couldn’t reconcile what the destruction revealed about themselves with what they wanted to believe. Before they could create their own truths by merely wanting to believe, but ultimately, the truth of the destruction arrived and dealt a justice that was truly blind and also cruel and without mercy because it didn't care about anything and just was. Mostly those that were willing to face an uncertain future remained together with those that were always uncertain. They simply focused on what could be done in the moment finding that they stumbled upon many moments of peaceful happiness along the way and they found that sufficient to continue on. 

wishes and honesty

Halfhearted attempts at recognition to simply appease rather than appreciate what he offered in revealing sincerity was all he could gather for an audience. He accepted their insincerity in return hoping he was wrong but all along feeling that they never really look at what came from his heart. He was willing to give it all but it didn’t seem to matter and so he wondered if everything he had to give really wasn’t that much in the end. He was as sure of his mediocracy as he was at their insincerity, a nagging truth that he could avoid but which colored the backdrop of everything. He looked for the nothingness of black velvet but the uncomfortable glimmer was always there illuminating and casting shadows. That’s just how it was he determined, some were and some weren’t and he just wasn’t. He just wanted to be but wanting to be only amounts to wishes and wishes were as ordinary as most people including himself so he wondered why he even bothered to try. He wondered if it would just be better to exorcise his wishes and replace them with the acceptance of his limitations. Save his time and energy for the indentured work that always called and from which there was no release and wish only for numbness from the aches and pains that graceless service offered. He would appease the Gods just like everyone had appeased him. Halfhearted attempts at the life they destined for him regardless of whatever sincerity they offered. 

the shape of sound

He watched the sounds dance across the water as they gently kissed its mirrored surface ever so slightly, not even causing a ripple and in the same instant, lifting off to then ripple through the air until reaching his ears. One after another and sometimes multiple sounds at once arrived to his ears sounding so right to him, repeating the same dance over and over that he was watching them perform so elegantly. The beauty of the sounds and connection between what he saw and heard placed him in a space where he simply fell into an order unlike he ever experienced before and all he could think to himself to describe the sensation was that everything felt so right to him unlike ever before. He relaxed and his body relaxed and his muscled and bones relaxed and his mind relaxed letting go of so much he didn’t need to hold onto. The more he relaxed, the more he observed the dance of the sounds across the water and the sounds that reached his ears and he began to further observe the nature of this phenomena whereby together this interaction between what he saw and heard created a wholeness that was as real as any shape he ever witnessed yet as intangible as anything that never existed. This dichotomy inspired a desire within him to perceive this intangible shape of sound between his hands so that he might grasp both the feeling and meaning, so that he might further experience the sensation to where he felt he was being led so that he might understand a new mystery he hadn’t known before. He reached his hands outward imagining he could hold the sounds like he would hold a ball or sphere of some kind. Just as he felt his hands were in the right place he could almost sense the shape that he was trying to feel but he could also sense that it was slipping between his fingers and wasn’t quite there as he moved his hands closer together and then drawing them apart trying to find where and what the shape was. Anticipation built and seemed to gather on the tips of his fingers as he felt so close to grasping the shape but then bordering on frustration when he couldn’t feel what he thought he should be able feel. Before he actually became frustrated, he broke his hands from their place, bending his elbow and motioning his arm so that he could run one of his hands through his hair. He didn’t realize that as his fingers moved towards him, they traced invisible canals through the air in which the sounds fell, following along the paths of his fingers eventually running through his hair just like his fingers, between strands and along the skin of his scalp. The sounds awakened new sensations that at first he didn’t realize were caused by the sounds but as his scalp and hair could feel a sense of the shape he was seeking to feel he connected the feeling to the sounds he was observing. He ran his fingers through his hair again causing additional canals to open and they also filled with sounds multiplying the sounds that began to entangle like tendrils in his hair and follow every motion of his fingers. Everywhere his hands moved, the sounds would follow, moment by moment continually increasing the paths for the sound to follow, touching him and connecting him to their elusive shape. An intensity began to build and he touched his hands to his chest and the sounds followed; moving his hand up along his neck and jaw and the sounds followed; touching his face and then moving his hand over his mouth, pressed against his lips in an astonishment at what he was feeling and the sounds followed. He tried again to grasp what it was that he was feeling, moving his hands to try and hold the shape he thought the sounds embodied as the sounds began to encircle him. Concentrating on the shape, his lips parted and his mouth opened unknowingly inviting the sounds inside him. Dancing across his body and through his hair until they kissed his lips much like they kissed the water, with barely a disturbance, and then making their way in his mouth and down his throat further and further in. He felt something familiar stir within him, as if he might locate the shape inside of himself. He inhaled taking more sounds in. He swallowed, taking them further within himself and then exhaled breathing them out through his mouth and nostrils. The sounds were then coursing from the water in a steady stream towards him, wrapping around his body like thousands of rivers all converging over his mouth and flowing inside of him, filling him until he was wholly filled with the sounds and then they flowed out of him, a pattern repeating over and over until he was barely distinguishable from mass of sounds that seemed to be burying him. As he filled more and more with the sounds, they overflowed until they began to come out of his mouth and nostrils and eyes and carried with them his sight as far as the sounds would travel. He was able to see what the sounds could see and he felt the sounds barely kiss the surface of the mirrored water so gently as not to even cause a ripple and it was the most perfect moment he ever experienced, watching the sounds dance across the water until they danced across his skin and filled him, then carrying his sight to also dance across the water together with the sound. His hands outstretched further, grasping at the shape and it was in that moment he felt it but it was more than he anticipated feeling and it was larger than his hands could hold, the weight of the shape overflowing into his arms and like a wave they overcame his body and his whole body felt and discerned the shape and the shape was beyond what his body could sense but his sight extended his senses allowing him to comprehend the nature of the shape and he felt so satisfied at its understanding. In moments upon such understanding the sounds began to recede and withdrew themselves from within him and his finite sight was restored and his senses again confined within the skin of his body and they no longer danced across the water. He could no longer feel the shape of sound but it was imprinted upon his mind and whether he could feel it or not, he knew the shape of sound forever after. 

the great minds

He often observed the great minds as they floated here and there and he always observed the great minds with heightened curiosity whenever they would coalesce together at their randomly regular occurrence of the gathering of the great minds, a formal meeting with no particular schedule where the great minds would discuss stuff. He wondered what made them great instead of being like all the other minds and he wondered what made them any different than himself. One day he was watching them float single file down the hallway one by one as they entered the conference room for one of their gatherings and he had the idea to simply get in line. He figured if he just acted like he knew what he was doing, no one would notice and as it turned out, it worked. He soon found himself in the conference room with the great minds and he took a place towards the back of the room where he might float unnoticed. He could hardly believe he was about to witness what the great minds were about to discuss and he listened so intently. After the discussions began he waited for the truly great thoughts and ideas to be shared. As time moved on his anticipation increased and he could hardly wait to hear what he could only imagine would be so amazing but upon the precipice of what he thought would be the delivery of something truly amazing from the great minds the attention suddenly turned to him as one of the great minds intoned in an observing manner that their new guest hadn’t shared anything yet and that they would very much like to hear from him. After his initial astonishment that he had been discovered and not thrown out he began to stammer and stutter not knowing what to say. He searched but there were no thoughts to form the basis of words to speak. As he was about to form the thought to simply float out as fast as he could float, a voice came out from among the great minds asking him again what he thought. He was surprised to find that the voice was sincere and in that sincerity he found it within him to lose focus on his astonishment and relax so that his thoughts could form and he could share them. He wasn’t sure if the great minds were waiting to laugh at him or expel him from their gathering but after he finished sharing his thoughts on the matter he heard comments of agreement and new thoughts shared that were built upon his thoughts. He listened and listened as the discussion ensued without further acknowledgement of his presence in the room and he realized that not only did they not throw him out, as he would have thought, but that they weren’t ignoring him either. Rather, they continued on with the meeting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened which he realized was because they accepted him. Eventually, the meeting ended and the minds began to float out in single file just as they had entered and he wondered why the great minds weren’t upset with him for attending their gathering uninvited. Deep in these thoughts, the mind in front of him interrupted him and said, “It’s always nice when someone new decides to come in.”

Radioactive Man

meaningful or less

He was feeling so miscellaneous for a Tuesday in June and so he laid his head down to think about a thing or two and what he ended up thinking was that maybe what he thought was meaningful about life was not actually meaningful at all. In reality, this wasn’t the first time he thought that and the reoccurring nature of this thought made him think about the nature of such reoccurrences and he wondered if the reoccurrences spoke to the truthfulness of what reoccurred. A fear gripped him deeply because he had lived for so long with the meaning that he felt was so deeply a part of the universe and he wondered what was deeper, the fear in his heart of the possible meaninglessness of life or the meaning he felt he always knew. He tried to reach down within himself to feel which was deeper and he began to feel some things with a particularity he hadn’t felt before until he felt the edges of something that he didn’t quite understand whether it was his fear or the meaning. He felt and felt some more until he discerned that it was a spherical mass of a certain impenetrability. If he had to guess, he would have guessed that it would have fit in the palm of his hand but would not have disappeared in his own grip and it was in that moment that he realized this was the thing that the fear had gripped but that what he needed to understand was within the sphere and he wondered how to penetrate the sphere to learn of its contents. Was it empty or was it the meaning that he cherished? Time passed and he pondered this matter with weight and intensity and a hope to find his way in and eventually realizing that he was gripping this sphere more tightly than the fear had ever griped it and he realized the fear had been displaced by his own tight grip. This realization astonished him and in a reactive way, he let loose his grip. No longer gripping the sphere, which was also no longer griped with fear, it seemed at peace and relaxed and he also felt at peace and relaxed and in that moment, the sphere itself seemed to disappear yet what occupied it remained and what remained was a spherical space that was empty but empty in way that he had never considered empty could be because it was infinite and invited him to reach further within always going further into the infinite space and he realized that both this invitation and infinity was in fact the meaning that went beyond all fears and meaninglessness that he might ever be imagined. 

the armchair

Back when we had a variety of furniture to sit on and plenty of things to do, nobody really paid much attention attention to what we were sitting on. Days might go by without sitting in an armchair and I can only recall ever finally sitting in one out of random availability more than conscious choice. I guess I just took it for granted that I could always sit in an armchair anytime I wanted and never really thought of sitting in one as a luxury of leisure. But eventually everything changed and we were forced to leave to where we find ourselves now, strangers in a foreign place not entirely welcomed other than to be welcomed as visitors, temporary people that others need not get to know or invest in because our status will never be quite the same as everyone else’s.  We’re fortunate that we were given a place to live and some places to go to occupy our time but we’re acutely self-aware that something is amiss and as a result we can’t quite fall into the invisible routines that so easily evaporate our time by some mystical passage that we never notice until it’s gone and we fall in beds to sleep the night away.  Then again, I’m not sure that was good or bad...but anyways. It’s different when you have to consciously spend each hour without those routines causing an abundance of time to pile up in a day and it’s best not to think of the weeks of incalculable time ahead that you would never know how to spend if you really did think about it knowing you’ll only be left with your memories of what was and what was includes your dreams of what could have been. Still, you end up thinking a lot about those things when you have so much time for nothing. When we arrived here all we had was an empty room and we slept on the floor, which made our nights restless adding to our empty hours. Eventually we found mattresses and they were quite a luxury after having slept on the floor for so many nights but surprisingly they faded into the background quickly and even became ordinary as our only pieces of furniture to sit on and do the things that we once had other furniture for such as tables and chairs and stools and benches and even armchairs. Eventually, someone brought home an arm chair they found somewhere and that never became ordinary rather it was amongst our most coveted of our very few possessions. It wasn't much in comparison to armchairs  from our past life and in all honesty it was kind of dirty but we easily overlooked such details because while beds are better than nothing to sit on, they lacked things I never realized were so important such as back support when you want to sit up. As it turned out, beds were most comfortable when you wanted to lay down on them but you don’t always want to lay down. I’m not sure where we got the armchair but there it was one day and we all commented regularly how lucky we were to have it even if it cramped the little space we had. But with only one arm chair and too little room for too many people, it became quite a sought after piece of furniture and we ended up quarreling over what was fair and who got to sit in it next or who got to sit in it longer. When you finally did get your chance you always wondered how long you had before someone else would complain until you gave up and got out. That’s why someone came up with the idea of the schedule. We could count on the schedule for a reserved time to have the armchair all to ourselves and that gave us some peace of mind while we sat in it and the peace of mind coupled with a slight luxury gave birth to a freedom of mind I had never felt before. And so it became that our prescribed times to sit in a chair, which had once been a punishment, were now looked forward to and served as moments of individual healing from the collective heartbreak we had suffered. I once would not have known how to spend my time in a chair but then I came to look forward to it and absorbed each minute I sat their relishing each thought I had in that chair. Somehow everything was different in that moment. It was as if being stripped of everything I once knew and then given this one moment to look forward to wound my mind up so tightly that once I eventually sat in the chair my mind let loose and things came out of I didn’t know were there.  Thoughts and energies and powers to create and even when I finally allowed myself, hope. I was able to wonder how I might ever resurrect any hope I had ever hoped for and for some reason in those moments in that chair I could do that when everywhere else I was just reminded of who I wasn’t anymore. In that chair I was able to imagine who I might become.  

fire