In a patch of Deccan wetlands, I see the cattails of my Hoosier youth. Half a world away, and nature grants me continuity that culture can't provide. I am transported to my youth by a common landscape. Indiana -- India, names almost the same, but ever so different... except the cattails.
a rocky monolith, jutting from the sea, is smashed by waves. overgrown with moss & gnarled trees. battered brutally & unrelentingly, and yet unchanged & unmoved. birds confidently settle upon the rocks & take off again, leisurely.
victory in the palm of the hand (specifically, the winged, laurel-bearing Nike -- goddess who personifies victory) it's a bit on the nose as is the bent front leg as if standing on the chest of a vanquished foe as is the looming, nothing says victory like looming (unless you're a weaver) but victory is never so unambiguously glorious as it's mythologized
nine miles down an old dirt road that runs the valley, the road disappearing before the pass, fading into a footpath, and then into a vague notion in a rare turn of events, i can see - but not hear - the whitewater that's running back toward from whence i came, and then on to a sea in some distant country i sit on a grassy hilltop, feeling i'm far enough down the road to be at peace
arrayed in pairs, mythical guardians stand aside a stone staircase the tourists seem undissuaded by the figures - be they freakish, grotesque, or mean the most dismaying of them may be the ones with a warm, polite grin... and a lion's body
Today, I read about an anthropologist who was living among an isolated tribe, [as anthropologists tend to do] a tribe who believed that twins weren't really people, and that twin babies should be left to die of neglect. This anthropologist, like all good anthropologists, was trained to respect indigenous beliefs and to not go mucking around and breaking the "Prime Directive" [well, that term is from Star Trek, but good anthropologists have similar directives -- or, at least, proclivities -- i.e. to be objective, and - to the degree one can't be - to recognize one's biases and try to note the role they might play.] This anthropologist was doing a grand job of being an anthropologist, until a woman in the tribe had twins...
My brain is an angry sac of neurons: hot wired / electrified. Sizzling synapses ready to snap and spew seedy scenes upon this world. But no one hears a scream in the dark void of a barren mind: though the scream radiates outward as a painful wave of unknown origin & purpose, a tremor in the fabric of us
Do you feel unease, walking in tall grass? Visceral tension? A primal impression from a time when a wounded beast [on its belly, & with labored breath] retained enough energy for one last lurch to impale its hunter? A raspy groan or bloody burble, and the jerky wave of the grass might be all the warning one got before The End.
Being lost is underrated. Overblown: devastating? But you've not seen what I've seen: a world that I could not have known, had the signs not been overgrown. And had I not ventured beyond boundary lines, and tried my very best to find some ancient item - long lost to time. Stumbling, weary, but wanting more; I wandered, knocking door-to-door. But none could tell me where I was, because they couldn't see me from above. All they knew was that I was "here," and so, it was as I had feared. Because I'd left to get away from here, in search of some magic where -- an unknown "there," far from here.
i walked the rutted road in failing daylight & wondered what I might find when it turned to night & milky moonlight would be the only means to see & i hear the relentless chirp of a bullfrog that can't be seen because it's everywhere to my non-directional ears but still i look for it & i step into a puddle & my sock is squishy with each left step & i go home
Tiger Riding for Beginners 