First to Last

CRASH!

A smooth star is born

squalling amongst the din of cynicism

struck down

by gravity's majesty

It falls to earth

quickly reaching terminal

BANG!

A jagged star dies

scoured by debris

screaming obscenities

to whoever will listen

Someday, I will be killed by thoughts too mutinous to exist.
Betrayed by my own neurons. This I see bearing down.
Frozen in the headlights.
No escape, no escape for heathen children. No escape at all for me.
Rotting on the vine for all to see.
Rotting inside and clawing outward
Spitting at the same-same gawkers in vain
They come to watch me writhe and wither
Drought bringers outnumber the water bearers by far these days
Stealing a little piece each in their grubby hands
I feel the holes and gouges they create
Where I've started to turn to dust and blow away
A cold wind calls them out with dull pain
that sometimes spikes white hot and burns
A forest down to the soil

Wingtip to Wingtip

Blast off from the hilltop
A tiny speck in the western sky beckons
With glimmering eyes of gold it calls
Together we rally to it's standard
Hands clasped and hearts together in cadence

This strange ship is old, but that is
Only a veneer, peeling off like lizard scales
It reveals new growth beneath the aged skin
The old, criscrossed with scars and wrinkles
The new, smooth as an infinite possibility

The dove and the owl take flight
Wingtip to wingtip, vanishing to the west

Tiny Goliaths

This past weekend, Jackie, myself, and a few other tribe members gathered at the cottage in Rindge. We welcomed a new tribe cat to the cotage. It was one of the first weekends in a looooong time that was sunny and warm(for the most part. As per our usual, she and I dragged the mattress out to the upstairs screen porch to sleep "outside". The rain came the first night were there. Alternating between soft rains pattering against the roof, and angry wind driven drops that almost thudded on the very same roof, it was amazing sleeping conditions. In the morning, after we had risen and had our breakfast, something made me pull out my new camera. it's quite tiny, about the size of a credit card, and maybe 5x as thick. Despite it's small stature though, I discovered that it packs a rather large punch. Upon examining the front porch, I discovered a number of insects that had run afoul of the rains, and were now the perfect subjects for my photography.

The very first thing I found was the best find of the weekend, in my opinion. Scanning the railing inside the screen, I found this girl. She was barely alive, just a twitch every so often, thus she was an excellent subject. I even posed her with a pencil tip(colorful in the animal world often means poisonous. Better safe than sorry, even though she was mostly dead.

What a beautiful animal, though. I spent a good two hours taking pictures of this one, fiddling madly with the camera settings to find the best effect. Being that I know a bit more about cameras than the target audience, I turned off everything automatic and adjusted settings as I went. I think it came out good. I'd have liked to have sharper focus, but with a point and shoot and a subject about the size of a tic-tac, it came out ok. I eventually went in search of other tiny goliaths, but I came back to this spider a few more times.



I'll have to be on the prowl for shit like this more often, now that I know what I can do with this particular tool. I can't tell you how many spiders I find, even in the city. Now I'm gonna actively look for them. I wanna find a black widow and get some really great macros. Those big ass garden spiders would likely be nice subjects too.




I really like the fact that even though she was dead, her body still had the elasticity to pose. I had trouble getting her to "face" me, since there was no force holding her body up besides the natural tension of the legs.






I found a few other interesting bugs. This guy was hanging onto a green tarp out back by the entrance to the woods

I believe it's called a capricorn beetle, but I seem to remember them being much more colorful. He sat still for me while I snapped a bunch of shots, then I think he got bored with me. Once he flew away, I only had to search for a minute before I came across another creature I'd been hunting.





I'd found a few daddy long legs along the trek, but they are quite difficult to capture on photo. If you get too close, they bolt. I'd attempted to shoot three at this point, all unsuccessfully. They saw my eye in their sky and scuttled to safety into places where I could not follow. This one seemed unafraid at first, allowing me to snap a few shots before she bolted under a shingle.

This poor fellow was the last really cool shot I found. I'd quit my hunt for subjects and gone in search of food for lunch. While putting away my camera, I spied this ant mashed into the rug by one of our gigantic feet. He learned a valuable lesson, though a bit too late. Humans are fickle creatures, especially when you trespass in their peaceful cottage and eat the walls. We killed a bunch of his kind over the weekend, and they still kept coming. I guess there's something to be said for tenacity.


Another great time at the cottage finished, some great shots taken, we packed up and went home to our dull lives, looking forward to the next gathering...

Goodbye, little cottage. Goodbye cottage air and cottage sleep.

Goodbye bedroom on the porch with slightly rearranged mattress space.

Goodbye strange passage of time, slow then fast and back again in an ever changing pattern.

Goodbye refuge from everything ugly and noisy in the world.

Goodbye rain drums and peaceful whispers alike, both lulling me to better sleep than anywhere else

Goodbye old soul trees. I saw you exhale into the rising sun after the rains came and went

Goodbye red squirrel that captured my love's heart so adorably in the day's early light. Twice.

Goodbye Tribe. Change flows inexorably towards us this year. The die will be cast soon.

Goodbye, little cottage.

Rain, Rain. Stay and Play

Rainy days, Rainy days. Beautiful rainy days. The kind of day that drenches any part of you that strays from under the octagon canopy of an umbrella. The people caught without umbrellas are soaked through all their clothing. Every so often, a beautiful woman will get caught in a white blouse and be topless for a short time, topless while a sea of hungry eyes gawk at her poor nipples.

(No, you jackals. I didn't take her picture. She had enough assholes looking at her)

The rain ebbs and flows all day long, sometimes. It has a rhythm to it. A smell. If you're with it, you can play along. Pay attention, and the rain will tell you when to move, and when to hide from it's anger. It will tell you when it's in a bad mood, or a sweet one.


But no one wants to listen to the rain around the Yawkey building. No one wants to learn her ways. I think, maybe that they are afraid they'll melt like bad acting and green pancake makeup. Dismal, they say about the rain. Ugly, they label her. How dare she make them put away their phones. How dare she make them wear plastic clothes and big ugly boots. How dare she take away their face-paint and hair spray.

No one wants to dance in the rain. But I do.

Masks

For the first time in a long time, the sun was shining bright when I left for work this morning. It's been overcast and rainy for the majority of the last month, weather that I enjoy immensely. I've always been a rainy day kinda person. Jackie thinks I have a light sensitivity, and I'm inclined to agree. I hate bright sunlight. And the bright morning seems wrong for what's happening. After a long, happy weekend, america is going back to work. Dreary stuff. A few people may enjoy their jobs, but most of us do not. I do what I do because if I don't, the corporations will starve me to death, not because I enjoy it. I hate having a job.

People who listen to me rail against the concept of a job often decide that I'm lazy, or inept, or some combination of the two. If they watched me at any job, that theory would quickly dissolve. I work my ass off, and I'm good at what I do. Often much better at it than the people above me on the corporate totem pole. When I try to, I excel at a job. So why then, do I hate them so much? I'm sure it's at least in part the "living on another's schedule" aspect of it. I dislike the idea that my time belongs to someone else. The worst part of being a grownup is spending the lion's share of my waking hours away from what/who I care about, doing repetetive tasks for people I have no connection to. But that's not the reason I hate having a job. I can deal with boredom, with repetition and small disappointments. I pondered the answer to this question fopr a long time.

Masks. That's why I hate working a job. It's not the work, or the people, or the boredom, or the pointlessness of the job. It's the fact that I have to wear a mask. If I let even a sliver of my true self peek out from behind the mask, someone has an issue with it. Always. Right back to primary school. Every time I say what I really think, or do what I really want, someone's waiting to tell me that my true impulse is wrong wrong wrong. I distinctly remember recieving a report card in the sixth or seventh grade that had "Does not conform" written in red ink in the notes to the parent section. I've inadverdently offended more people than I can count just by forgetting to filter myself. I don't set out to be abrasive or discourteous, I just somehow am. I still don't understand how people have been offended by some things. I literally lack the ability to recognize that what I'm saying may rub people the wrong way. So I wear a mask. All the time. Try editing EVERY WORD that comes out of your mouth for a day. A week. A month, or a year. A lifetime. It becomes quite exhausting. Every second with people who don't make me wear a mask is worth more than any amount of riches to me. Worth their weight in gold. They are the only reason I'm still here. Someday, maybe, I'll find a way to toss that mask in the river and skip away happily.

Anyway, I've reached the Yawkey building. Time to stuff myself way down deep under the surface, slip on that ugly plastic mask, and go to work. Wish me luck.

I did have something to say but...

So here I find myself, sequestered in my bathroom, sitting on the hard plastic toilet seat that is quickly making my ass go numb. I came in here a while ago to smoke a bowl(mission accomplished), and I had a few great ideas for stuff to write. Luckily for me, I'd suspected that this very thing might occur, and had the presence of mind to leave my video games in the other room and bring a laptop. When I write, I spend a lot of time formulating and constructing my ideas before I touch a single page.Once I'm done, words pour out in a torrrent. Somehow, I even type faster. During this time, I REALLY can't think about anything else.

All was good,though. I positively fulminating with energy. I'd had some great ideas about how to start this project, great kickoffs to this blog-thing which I've invited you to. And then She happened. Of course you know who I'm talking about. Someone knocked on the door, and demanded my attention. Demanded my attention for things I don't really care about right now. At all. It's not an "I'm being a dick" thing. It's much more of a "During this process, my brain shifts frequency and focuses differently than normal" It's a fragile state, this creativity. It takes only a minute to drag someone out of their creative space. Which was exactly what this girl has done to me. Like I said, I'm absolutely not trying to be a dick. I  UNDERSTAND that other humans sometimes do that to me. Especially this particular human. Nonetheless, each time it happens, I have an infinite moment of sadness as I watch the gossamer strands of my ideas float away from my grasping fingertips, mostly gone forever.

Now I'm gonna go talk to that girl. She obviously has things to discuss that are important to her. Thanks for letting me vent.