Wednesday, May 25, 2011

People-Synesthesia

We are colors. Not the tone of our skin. More like an aura. A color that follows us as we live.

If you know somebody's color, your vision of them will snap to a quick focus. Misjudge someone's color/character and you will never discover how the two of you reflect.

I am green.

Inspiration: James Stewart Polshek, architect, who said, "...those guys were dividing up the world into whites and grays. I said, I’m not white or gray. I’m pink, and I’m not going to be part of this, and I wasn’t."
Soundtrack: Prefab Sprout, "Green Isaac"
Alternate spelling: For this piece I prefer "colours."
Thanks to: Summit County Historical Society

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Only Athena

A sentence, perfection, Pallas Athena from the head of her creator...
But a paragraph is pushing it.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Quality of life

He wore a paper bag over his head indoors
To keep him in and keep out mirrors
The straws that crush the broken back
Intrinsic, extrinsic, insular, extroversion
Hedonic rush
The daily grind
Even as I'm writing I'm disappearing 

It takes me several hours to accept reflections
Give me several years to set a pace

I demand consistent improvement from my television but (because?) I see none in myself
If I didn't sleep I wouldn't reset...but eventually I'd just end.
These days are white-out over red pen, a palimpsest of indecision and deletion
Finding the right word is the worst reward.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Existentialist sect

Monotonous monks in meditative exercise
Gray footfall upon Penrose steps
Life's sentence of frozen quiescence or
Transcendence in endless ascent and descent?
Banal is impossible is banal is impossible 
Behavior etched, repetition pressed
This isn't what I was expecting

I resist the Flow

I (now) resist the Flow. I feel its shivering beginnings, and I clench where I used to secrete. I tell myself that I'll never be able to achieve that for which I strive. Not with the stammers of speech, nor the ingots of text. Not with printing press blocks, nor with HTML bits. There is no secret to be found. There is no congregation to be saved. It is not art. It is impotence, all the more pathetic for its presumed bombast.
No, it's not Flow I'm in now, it's something else. So what is it? An attempt to reclaim the euphoric modes employed in the past?---out of desperation or even (Could it be? Please, no) hope?  
I'm fairly sure it's better than the alternative.
It might be growing up.

The odds

Here's the problem: Wandering minds wander towards unhappiness (or away from happiness?) but also, simultaneously, towards inspiration. You may stumble across one on the way towards the other, or carry one on your back as you trek in the direction of its opposite, but within the realm of psychological states their territory is adjacent. This is why so many people have pointed out the correlation between creativity and depression. It's not a question of causation but of limitation: Given a finite number of mental/emotional moods on the road to somewhere else, we are bound to meet (come into the company of) either the High or the Low. This present moment is the Middle. One step in either direction invites the flip of a coin.
The issue is that we believe a coin has two sides, and must always proclaim Heads or Tails. We forget that a physical coin---with its shape, mass, and form in three dimensions---bursts beyond the abstraction of probability. We forget about that bit in the middle. That numinous realm, within the spin of which we fervidly circle, is where we spend most of our time, until, under the impression that it all can only ever be One or The Other, we throw all our weight against an arbitrary side, hoping to topple it and yield the definitive. But certainty can never be achieved, only imagined. Finality is a mirage. If a coin holds within it (is charged with) a perfect 50-50 probability, then any one coin toss means nothing. We will always have both Heads and Tails. Flipping Heads and then stopping does not eliminate the future yielding of Tails.
In other words, whether standstill or wandering, we are only tossing coins.
But I'm already contradicting myself, because I was trying to say that Duality was an Illusion.
I'm wandering again.

Friday, May 6, 2011

the unpainted

If a painted man escapes his frame, he loses everything. Outside the context of his paint-world, undefined by adjacent shapes and shades of flattened pigment two dimensions becoming three, he is shallow, he is by definition without depth. He has no essence. He is disappearance. Apparition. The laws of counterfeit perspective cast no shadows against the reality, past the prison of the rectilinear.

Monday, May 2, 2011

beforecast

         _    -    _
     (     the calm      )
  (    before the     )
(BRAlNST0RM)
 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 
   \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
    \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
     \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
      \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
       \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
        \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
         \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \
          \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \        

Sunday, May 1, 2011

"GettinG Old" Is An abbreViatioN For
"gettiNg tiRed oF thE saMe oLd Shit"