bleak and bright

Strange dreams and scratching noises, the back screen door slamming, hoping that the engine revving outside my window isn't my car being driven off, wondering what that noise is in the stairwell, waking up to find a kitchen knife in the middle of the floor, I need to get out of here, and despite sea changes not so rich and strange, I am reminded of the love that I am surrounded by and that I'm not as stuck as I sometimes feel, that there are ways to survive and still live.

So I got introverted in the woods, taking paths arbitrarily based on bodies of water and groves of pine and birch.



The sun was fading ever so slowly and the golden light filtered down into the valley.



My mom used to take us here when we were kids to go hiking, and then me and one of the guy friends came up here late one night to climb the stairs of the overlook and it was so dark we could barely see each other and the forest was alive in ways that reminded me of childhood fairy tales.





I felt euphoric in the solitude, fragments of verse and hymn echoing, that though the wrong is oft so strong God is the ruler yet.



I never used to care that much about getting out to the woods, in part not having transportation for so long but I crave it now. Maybe it's living in a place of concrete and rust, needing green, needing the canopy of trees, and the inverse reflecting of the waters, a place that still feels primeval even with the roads on each side and the light pollution that obscures the stars. There is beauty even in the trees stripped of leaves, the peeling bark, the eroding cliffs adorned with ferns, the marshy lowlands. Here it is easier to get alone, to feel small in a way that's not crushing and strangely beautiful.

as the wind blows a dead leaf

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.



What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose



Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.



There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.



So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.



Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.



Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.




For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.




In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
but all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

pink haze and silver water

I left my car at home and walked the neighborhood, stopping by the corner store to get coffee, walking the dog, going back and forth past the smoke of charcoal grills and running kids and someone playing Rihanna's entire back catalog all afternoon, called up my art partner and neighbor to walk down to the beach.

Everyone was out in various states of undress, swimming out to where it's deeper, showing off tattoos and tanlines, playing chess at the tables, eating ice cream and carving sandcastles and turtles named Ronnie in the sand. We stepped over washed up sticks and cracked red plastic cups, halves of tampons and broken toys and I took off my flip-flops to walk where the waves break.

If it wasn't so big and I had a car that wasn't small, I would have dragged home the pair of trees that grew together, uprooted, and washed upon the shore, stripped clean of bark and bleached bone white. The intricate corona of roots not turned around and made visible and the twisting of trunks kissed by aquamarine waves and resting on the crushed mosaic of countless zebra mussels still stays with me.

rivers and trees

Home and drowsy, looking forward to longer days and walks to the lake.

It was a day of movement, of driving to the hometown for coffee with my mom and sister, checking up on my great uncle because he hadn't answered the phone and we wanted to be sure he was still alive.

Randal will be pleased to know that not all the suburban crackers think they're pretty fly for a white guy as the radio of the couple riding the bright yellow rice rocket turning the corner on Renwood was distinctly blaring (in a manner most tinny), the sounds of vintage Black Sabbath.

Me and my friend and her dog went out and wandered in the woods of Tinker's Creek, where neither of us anticipated the wetness of flooded riverbanks and melted snow, but we pressed on through the muck, working our way through mud and melting snow and drooping trees feeling like it was Narnia when the weather stopped being always winter and never Christmas. The river was swollen and brown and smelled lovely "even though it's probably sewage" as she says, but the power of the water rushing over rocks, wearing down the sides of cliffs and the lichen covered walls.

Up on top of the steep hills was a plan punctuated by trees, of water half frozen, pools like voids in the snow, stark profiles of trees and wild grass, fire hydrants, concrete slabs from homes never built, now reclaimed as wetland.

It feels like something of a Bradbury novel, a future where civilization has been wiped clean, with only remnants of a past that look arcane in the wildness, as we step from one clump of grass to another, looking for paths back down into the ravine that dead end and we let the dog run down the hill as we feel our way from tree branch to tree branch, root to root, seeking ground that won't give way as we make our way down the hill.

We walk along the river, our feet cold and clothes dirty, but full of celebration at the thaw, at the stark beauty of empty trees and the endless shades of brown and gray like the rust and stone of our city.

I'm reminded of this part of the Four Quartets that is more beautiful than anything that will ever come from my hand.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
The only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
The sea is the land's edge also, the granite,
Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
Its hints of earlier and other creation:
The starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale's backbone;
The pools where it offers to our curiosity
The more delicate algae and the sea anemone.
It tosses up our losses, the torn seine,
The shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar
And the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices.
The salt is on the briar rose,
The fog is in the fir trees.
The sea howl
And the sea yelp, are different voices
Often together heard: the whine in the rigging,
The menace and caress of wave that breaks on water,
The distant rote in the granite teeth,
And the wailing warning form the approaching headland
Are all sea voices, and the heaving groaner
Rounded homewards, and the seagull:
And under the oppression of the silent fog
The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers, older
Than time counted by anxious worried women
Lying awake, calculating the future,
Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
Whem time stops and time is never ending;
And the ground swell, that is and was from the beginning,
Clangs
The bell.

what the thunder said...

When I was a kid, my dad and I used to watch the storms come in.

There is that smell that the air gets when rain is coming, as the wind picks up and the clouds begin to move more quickly. We would set up lawn chairs in the garage and drink Coca-Cola and watch the rain, admire the lightning, and listen to the crack of thunder.

I don't have a garage to watch storms in anymore, but I did get to catch the one last night, standing in the doorway of the apartment looking up at the sky as the sirens pulsed down the street behind me, feeling a sense of awe.

memoria

This weekend...

Watched the 3rd quarter of the Cavs game with the guys downstairs, got depressed, decided to spend all night painting, found out they won the next morning. Did some basic grocery shopping between the West Side Market and La Boricana, which is the best store ever because they have Coca-Cola in glass bottles, beer from Namibia (that I haven't tried), Goya everything, and foods I don't know how to cook and really good plantains and tamarind candy.

One of the ladies shopping there took a look at the contents of my basket and was surprised that I cook Latin food, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really don't know what I'm doing, I just kind of mash everything together until it tastes good.

ESL class was cancelled so we picked up Muk and drove out to Whipps Ledges in Hinckley singing along to the Fugees and had a good time just being out in the middle of nature surrounded by huge rocks and lots of trees and vines that we tried to swing from.





It was such a chill weekend spent with good people... did a Saturday night drive to good tunes after the hiking, friends from Ethiopian church made us amazing food and coffee Sunday night, visited my grandparents, gave a friend of mine a crash course in driver's ed in the empty West Side Market parking lot using cardboard boxes and old beer cans as markers before heading up to Edgewater to walk along the beach. I know Edgewater's dirty and everything but it doesn't bother me at all.

Kent came up to the station this morning to play his demo and hang out and while my setlist is pretty scattershot, it was super fun, and evidently my incessant playing of Amadou & Mariam has won them some new fans. My playlist was too jumbled this morning but I can tell you that I played the Clash, the Pixies, Lupe Fiasco, Beck, and Massive Attack.

Someone at the station discovered this gem, the only album by the All Sports Band, which includes the cut "Turn This Game Around," which we dedicated to Lebron James. It sounds like the cover looks, bad 80's rock with guitar solos and lines like "I'll protect you from evil / with my heart of steel."



Not surprisingly, at least 2 of the band members are from our fair city though this is the first I've heard of them probably because we don't want to own up to this.