some travel south...

(instance)

lying outside,
naked.

on a towel, on a chair, on a wooden deck atop cool soil.
reading, and being read, by the sun, and near it too.
its moving away from me now, away from all of us.

i cover up and go inside.
this is familiar.
i find the computer and a cat that purrs
i find nothing at all
and i write about that.

i feel the love of the people i know.
they've always felt much farther then they do now,
and i don't know why, but this moving in is pulling them nearer.
we're magnets, and i don't mind.

Riding someone else's kite-string

"To find pleasure in life, make the most out of spring."

It doesn't matter who said that, it could have been multiple people. Convergent minds, divergent times. It seems to be the way things are. Ideas that function like kites floating whimsically above us. It could be any of us to grab that kite string, only we have to be looking, if not for it than at least for something. So, it seems the best ideas belong to us all and it matters less who said what, but more who believes what.

I'd like to believe in this quote. It's such an allowing metaphor, and one that isn't limited to the rerun image of spring as the glossy, green glow of rebirth or the flowering pungency of new life (although such pleasing comparisons undoubtedly apply here too). But maybe any moment can be spring-like? That's what the zen/be here now-movement has always been about hasn't it? Recognizing, that any moment is, potentially, spring rising up; honoring the intrinsic nature of the moment as it is, and just allowing it to be. I so like the straight advice in this quote. To find pleasure in life, make the most out of life's pleasures. Allowing that to dictate my days would make the rest seem easy.

Beginnings are for the birds...

...so I hope the birds like beginnings.

And I bet they do, first flights and whatnot:

Spreading wings, topping steeples, crapping on church bells; the beginning of bird-dom would seem exhilerating. But I'd venture to say it's difficult for them too. Taking that first chickish step outside the nest and hoping your wings are strong enough to keep you afloat or at least that the branches are soft enough to break your fall. Of course... this is just a blog. Just...a blog. "Just" in the way that anything is just anything else. But also "just" in the way that it's just not that simple, even...when you use the word "just" to make it seem so.

But! Pushing past fits and starts now (and further defering my own writing, I know). Here's the eloquent Ranier Maria Rilke, whom I'm using to validate my own leerishness in starting all of this off.

And it goes...

"It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning."

Hmm. Dead men always seem to be the smartest. But what would it be like to honor the wisdom in the living?

And not even the loudest of the living, but the quietest, the smallest, the most unnoticeable livers of all? What if we knew the stories of the people we didn't know? And what if in knowing those stories, we knew ourselves more?

What if in knowing ourselves more, we loved ourselves more? And what if in loving ourselves more we loved life more? How would we act then? If living was an act of love? If we really lived for LOVE?

What if the people that had the most to offer, were the people that thought they didn't have anything to offer at all? And what if you knew, that all of this living was just singing eachother's breath?

"you first!"

[...thus enters Pablo Neruda and, in perfect recitation, grants me the space of a witness and relieves the self-made pressure of post #1]

Poetry

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face,
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.