When I run out of things to do, I like to watch funny stuff. Smiling is very magical. Releases little happies like opening a dam. Whoosh!
When I have nothing to do and I’m outdoors, I like to write. Sometimes it’s poetry. But I haven’t really written much in a long time, because it kind of became useless. But here’s something in my little book I bought in Portland:
When you are content,
you are ready to live.
Until then, you’re just an emotional pack of “yes” and “no” and “why?”
Just getting by.
You feed the beast of conflicts with ventilation
hidden under prepitation
waiting
for the solution
the end
to be content
(contented sigh)
become one again amongst
the living
(the normalcy of living)
and not just “getting by.”
I wrote that a while ago but it’s still very true — I have a lot of decisions to make right now. I worry I delay a few decisions though, like, ignore the fact that they are dilemmas I should probably be dealing with, and just hope they will work themselves out on their own.
Even some of the big decisions I’ve made internally — I’m terrible at carrying them through. Desire/words and action do not coincide well with a person like me who is in a perpetual state of confusion and protective ignorance (right hand ignores what the left is doing I call it)
Anyway. I like writing sometimes because it’s not really poetry, at least it doesn’t start out that way. When I don’t force it, the rhyming and rhythm just automatically come and then afterwards I read it and I’m like, hey, that’s a poem. It’s like magic. I’m not bragging at all, it’s just really cool for me because when I’m writing this stuff I’m in another state of consciousness — and I can tell this because when I go back later and read, it’s like reading someone else’s words. I have almost no memory of it. I love alternate states of concsciousness.
Another one:
My biggest mistake.
If you count all the wrong turns,
second guesses,
slapped foreheads,
missteps,
dead ends,
winces,
sighs,
and other such indications of regret…
by outward appearances you’d say
that was my biggest mistake.
But by this time, this time—
I’m standing at the window, through clear eyes
looking like some resolute pose in the movies,
the scene usually shot at early sunset,
a muted gold light rising.
Although I admittedly on darker days
have beat my sides like a primate in
frustration at my own apish instinct,
I know now, because by now, I’ve stopped others
on their own trek and seen in their prints the stumbles,
the futile attempts at clawing off the grammar errors
of their life’s essay
but if I ask about the red marks–
the question slides off like light rain,
shaken with a few shrugs.
And from my own experiences
with the fear of repeating the past,
I know — I KNOW that we stumble more
when we look back
(instead of at the horizon.)
So.
