Rain sidles up in a commanding cloud -- early -- And so it waits in its cloud, like the awkward party guest who sits in his car, waiting to be fashionably late, but - not having decoded what "on-time" really means - arrives early, nevertheless.
I walked a snowy street, quietly as the falling snow, a snow that melted under foot, not one that crunched - compacting. Everything was deadened by that not-so-cold snow, a snow that swallowed sound, a snow that would have shunned light -- had there been any to shun. But it was night, and I was walking in the snow.
I walked beside the river, the river that rolled through town, a town I thought had been a dream, a dream replayed night after night, nights that flowed like that river, the river that rolled through town.
I saw a silhouette in the moonlight, a man who plodded snow that glowed moonlight. I was mesmerized by the vagabond -- a night-owl nomad moving by moonlight. What'd take me out into that night's cruel cold, seeing only what shone in the moonlight? A deadly urgent case must be afoot, a riddle solved solely in harsh moonlight. But maybe there's no beauty like the moon, and maybe no light flatters like moonlight. If so, the cold must be some puny stakes against the milky glow of brisk moonlight. And so I pull on boots and tug a hat to venture out amongst the pale moonlight. And seeing night as did that wanderer, I know the virtue life finds in moonlight.
An anvil crawls across the sky, of soft shape but steel gray, and I wonder when to expect the inbound tempest fray? When comes the lightening and thunder, the shaking window sills, the neck hairs standing upon end -- herald of lightening chills? Will it pass by rumbling distant or strike the local spire? Will it rain so hard that it puts out its own blazing fires?
panting, i sit on a rock, beside the trail, watching porters pass loaded with logs and plywood -- followed by cows, and goats, and...
I feel it coming, cyborg days -- locked into the machine. My program playing out the code of some new subroutine. To know it can all be dialed in, with such fine precision, the love and loathing that provide the root of all decision. And will I be a mindless drone on a robotic ride, seeing life like Doctor Jekyll while living as Mister Hyde?
Dear Sister, Kim Yo-Jong, won't have to wait long. She'll take power easy as you please, if her brother keeps eating wheels of cheese.
I stare at the flowing river, and, for a moment, it seems still, as the world whips into a wild ride of vertigo, leading me to question all I believe about the still & the moving. Everything that's still is spinning, orbiting, and expanding Everyone who's still is a seven-jetted space monkey on a rocket ride.
They say hands are the hardest human part to artistically render -- to draw or sculpt or paint, causing artists to hide hands, or at least to not replace them when an earthquake or inept movers break them off. I believe them. The perfect curve is not easily attained, all those random crenulations and creases, the lumps and knuckle nubs, the veins and blemishes, all that is necessary to convey life -- be it a hard, hammer-wielding hand, or the soft suppleness of an unworked hand. Straight digits can create an uncanny valley as surely as does a rubberized face. Emotion is expressed through hands, as through faces. I heard that the straightened fingers of Olympia's left hand caused quite a controversy when Manet presented the painting, causing almost as much of a stir as the fact that she was an ashen, syphilitic prostitute. In Dream Yoga, we do reality checks with our hands, looking at the hand, looking away, flipping it over, and then looking at it once more. Doing this whenever one sees anything strange or suspect. It trains the brain, which - in sleep - shuts down its suspicious bits, to take note of the nonsensical. If you're awake, you just see your same old [underestimated] hand. If you're asleep, you won't see five perfectly curved fingers, you might see an expansive fractal pattern, or a cloven, bifurcated, mitt. Even our sleeping brain can't keep track of five wriggling little digits. No wonder they give artists such fits.
