An I Believe Speech

I believe first and foremost in my own humanity and respect everybody's humanity above any label they have been given. I believe that everybody varies from one another enough to justify a nuanced understanding of how they need support, and how they'd like to experience life and how they can undergo change if they'd like to. I understand I don't have to be loyal to people, especially if they cause you harm, but I also can't see anybody as a problem above and beyond their inherent worth as a person. Not bigger than nature's or the law's worth in them. Your problems are always less than you, and an infinite amount of solutions exist within you. But they will be corrected over time, at a plodding pace, and it turns out your habits are going to mean more than anything. Are you going to be kind? That is the question that sits atop everything. That question sits atop the structure of many other questions, such as, are you going to take care of your body? do you know how to care for your mind? Are you interested in being awake? Can you rest at night? Kindness is determined by both your habits and your ability to tune in with what's important. And this ripens on a vine over time. You more often have feelings like, "I get it!" "Or this is going to happen and I'm going to react this one way, but there will be a next moment and one after that, so just get through it hot stuff." When you can say that to yourself you have gotten a good deal closer to sincere kindness. Not like those people who are just kind because they can't stand being seen in this life as being anything but kind. Well, everybody starts off there, but kindness doesn't end that way. There are never two instances of the same kindness -- it is wholly unique. It is a nutrient that will start to run through people, and age them in ways with all sorts of pleasant variables. how they notice stuff, or how well they sense the needs of other people. It's like when you're a teenager and you first start to notice how much people talk about objects. Sometimes if there is something wrong with them, adults will sit around, for example, a sprinkler watering a sidewalk, and try to attribute some history to it. How this happened, what the intelligence of the guy was, and depending who you're with, make reference to his ethnicity. If it's all guys you would have a better chance of hearing about the ethnicity of said guy who made a very controlled decision to point a thing spraying water on to the cement and in to the gutter for the next 45 minutes. And he said yes and signed off on watering the sidewalk before the city council. Everybody jeered and it made the next day's blogosphere. Maybe you should just take a picture and put it on social media. Hashtag it the best and hope for the viral outrage of six hundred thousand people who could be doing something so much better with their lives at that moment. I mean, we all do it. But kind people do less and less of that kind of stuff. They have nothing to be afraid of and so they go outside. 

Single Life Spans

"Right now I’m just spreading seeds. Some may sow and many will not." He told his friends such.  With Wisdom. Loudly. And his therapist too. Lonesomely. She understood. Actually.

Secretly, he thought, "I'm a withering seed, somewhere out there, underground and quite probably in my own backyard. A seed that just isn’t taking to life." Well, last night contained a happy sprout who descended hither to have a talk with a seed and its leaking life.

She informs him in a supremely private space that she is taking to life. She is indescribably bright. She dances and smiles often. And then she gives the losing seed a really big cuddle about the hard truth. That he isn’t quite taking.

She says she is flattered. She says he is sweet. She notes the scent of plum in his dry humor and his ability to dance so no one feels comfortable. The causes for thinking so. For being nice.

“I’m already married," she says.

"You're a rare bird. I'm glad I asked."

The dying seed will receive instructions in an email about what to do with his decomposing matter. Compost and pension plans. In a few generations time, the seed will take its experience of not taking to life and dare to become a big thing and a beautiful thing. That will touch the sky, as sentimentalism would have it. All humans will rejoice in its presence. It shall run $3.95 at the local drug store. Just you wait.

I really hate to tell you the ending so impulsively, but this seems like the right time: We win. We are all butterflies aging faster than rocks, but slower than single life spans. We're spasming and breaking up. Waiting to get nature's number done on us. It's a cocoon we don't even know about yet.

Crawling for now, we're getting together. Maybe not owning the day, but definitely the night. Like last night. A big win.

I can actually dance. I can actually hear no.

The night was 74 degrees. No jackets needed. You can either wear pants or shorts. Dirty sneakers or hiking sandles. I never know how to spell sandles right. And you might never be uncomfortable on a night like this. But I tend to think that I will. And when I dance, I hope that you might be too.

And let's not hold back. It will take the damages of war the same amount of years to heal as it took to fight the fucking thing. This is a simple and hard truth that most people don't want to face. That is because it might take another human history for people to altogether stop killing each other. I'm talking about taking to life. In just two-hundred thousand years.

This is the type of news that has to be broken to you by a dancing underground smiling sprout. After delivering the hard news, with shiny whites, she will add that it should start today. The not killing. Starting today.

Her lips look firm and her voice sounds the same. And I leak and I crawl and all no's become yes. "Just you wait."

Stolen excerpt from my own Sunday E-mail

...There's a magical spot I visited this morning, and do nearly every day. It's a nestled away stretch of the creek I live by. It's really city territory, but there's this tucked away spot where sometimes a homeless person will find and hide out in for a week or two, or the rich homeowners will take their dogs for a month or two but then get out of the routine because they can't stick to it. You have to pass under this long sagging tree branch shaped like an arch way to access it. I'm not kidding. It's sharp cuts in rock enabling channels of runoff water to gather in a long deep pool at the end. In drought it gets still and nasty. Even at its grossest, you see a turtle climb out of there on to a log or rock. For a few weeks this summer there were about a thousand tadpoles in there working toward toadhood. It took one big rainstorm and only about a few dozen made it and turned into these tiny toadlets, smaller than the pad of my thumb. I put one on there and possibly altered the course of that little guy's life forever. But animals seem to get over traumatic events better than people. You know what I mean? There's also train tracks that run along this neighborhood and they are the perfect distance where you can hear the train whistle clearly. Any louder would be a disturbance, but it's at a distance that feels soothing. I've been going for eight years, but in a routine way for two or three. 

This morning it was flowing something fiercely magical. I vaguely remember some three in the morning thunder crashes last night. It was a restless sleep and it was all mossy and drippy at the creek this morning. It got me alert. I get to visit with my head there. And then listen to it and trying to slowly ease out of it. Sometimes I gather around some other point of pain or passion in my body. Sometimes my chest just wells up with something personal. When it rains the night before it's easier to leave my head because you can concentrate on the sounds of water flowing by. It feels drippier. Like I said, it was flowing fierce this morning. Sometimes I open my eyes while sitting there and I imagine that the rock face underneath the water is what's moving and that the water is perfectly still. Doing that helps me levitate. Then I get up and say thanks and sprint back home. When I'm running I pretend like there's a hawk chasing me, a vulture circling me, or a crow guiding me somewhere, depending on the day. I've seen all these types of birds there before and they have stayed with me. I know them well by now. I usually go to the creek after a jog so I'm good to go for sprinting--in running shoes and red basketball shorts. When I get back home I proceed to sink into Conor Jensen's life again, but it feels sweeter.

Fishy and the Kosmos

This time he is trying to guide his thinking away from, “I got one.” Casting last bait, and wondering means how—enduring visions of her getaway on a loop. 

Because together they might come, but she will go like late day sun, if thinking like the fisherman who caught one too full of fight to stay.

Before him, he ties together, is this lovely creation “not far off from me.” Two creatures that see with eyes of a “striking blue,” and so are often told. And two that hold regard for wonder, and sing its praise slightly off-key.

She had once said her fake fingernails made her feel pretty and so now he wants to be one. Same time she offered up a nibble at dusk, when the blue eyes met. But soon another nibble in the weeds would obscure her look, slightly suggestive of maroon.

Sure as sun sets, red toenails sink into she-says smelly shoes. She told him she digs hands and how he touched each time with two. In secret he knows of his tendency to forget what hands are for. Not just entangling and untangling; in these matters, they are intended for much more. 

Disguised as a goodbye wrapped with caress, at last Fishy's hook hold wriggles undone. And off she swims, for the sinking sun, for the coming light, her eyes transposed with full moons. His memory of  absorbs her waves trailing behind; that refeeling of her long slither go. 

Thoughts fight back as they please while the moon takes the path of least resistance—how the celestial crows fly. Slumping shoreside, the man's eyes fix on the water's moment to moment uncertainty.

The mood is constant but with a chance. 

He summons the tenacity to consider if ever that fishy rose to surface, and lost fight in these two salved hands, then soft-lit circles might ripple out perfect. Like rulings made by moon. 

So the Kosmos be.

Break Up Song

Here is the sheet music to the tune I can’t hum. A composition of your
personality missed, sounding with mine. The traits that make our fates. I
sound this out not in sorrow, nor in hopeful revival, but as the recognition I want
to not fail at making again. Our harmony, which once existed.

I imagine your light fingers on my shoulder, at the ready.
Digits strumming reminders that I am the song.
I am its source. Guts attached from the neck, sinew strung across the belly.

Vibrations flooding my chest, carefully arranged with capacity for hearts.
All finished by glazed-over male hips and coarse-haired bowlegs that splay
into feet—with longish toes. Though not as long as yours.

The details in design are no longer this song. If we were to address the untended
to parts, they would appear to be just that: untended to. We own separate
kidneys and livers for sorting this out. Bendable skeletons house each of our vitals.
Each needing separate resting spots and separate vitamin bottles.

And yet, it's the tune of each other that can't play apart. Nor quite together.
A disparate sound. Driving the mind. And it needs attention.
Constant and careful. 

Our song could swell, or: admiration may not rehearse that day.
But it's just like they say—without pressure, there are no diamonds.

Day 57

Ammo-ninity. N. an expression for preemptively assuming protection of private information and thoughts, due to it being a more crushing blow for said information to be broadcast publicly and nobody batting an eye, or really much giving a shit.

Darkly toned tales and figures represent me, namelessly drowning in a sea. Which when drank up, leaves others still thirsty—maybe too aplenty in drops of not-enough? Social security numbers and salty pasts? Brothers and sisters, all you gotta do is ask. Preferences and credit scores, take’m, they're yours...and to say it all to you, salt and pepper girl, nothing would free me more. Because all—and I mean all—interpretations of me and my secrecy, took a giving axe to some growth-like identity. Right now, I’m looking clear at it. As is, it should burn pretty well, a nice and fresh split. So what’s the cost of restored sincerity? Like if a repairman existed and spent his Saturdays in the shop and on-call? How much is it to repair and mend and reclaim me as whole? Well, the cost is giving over these types of tidbits, I've found. Because what I have to offer--if I’m not beyond repair--well, there's an inexhaustible amount to go around. And, by and large baby, it’s a solid seed in fertile ground—potentially, even a wise tree. Wise enough to play its strength as a sway with the breeze. It’s just about a sprout and I want it all yours, because you got the one thing I need. You got a mind and the pipes to tell me you appreciate me. Perhaps just maybe you’re doing night duty on-call? Oh ok, I totally get it, just trust I understand what you say, and let me hang up this phone ok? Your tones of voice dial-up fragile insides, and I hear inconvenience in what you don’t say. With a proud and tall capital I. It’s fine, I can keep moving on, and truth is, it’s not like it’s just me. I mean, feeling ok’s always purchasable from the almighty He, and a bit of that lonesome tv. Make yourself comfy in the imagination land of my Ammo-ninity.