how q found contentment

Sydney_1988_016 by pierre wayser

it is night. just that. nothing more or else to it. it is somewhat humid. somewhere a light is green, somewhere red. i love these periods in life where i achieve a (sort of) dissociation from principles, and beliefs, and dogmas, and ideas, and things; so that people become only people. who do things. for reasons i don't really care about. and we are good people because we are good people - not because of reticent religious anxiety, not because of fear love hope IOU dogma afterlife spiritual-growth nothing nothing. yes means yes. no is no. up has a meaning and so does down. sometimes these are confused and that's fine too, just because you can't spot where violet turns to red in a rainbow doesn't mean there's no rainbow. from time to time, i subconsciously (i wish i knew how to do it on command!) manage to take a large figurative box. in it i place (first and foremost) god. then i take his silly principles, his ideas, his mumbo jumbos and i put them all in there. next i take hope fate Adelaide deceit love friendship loyalty membership childhood lust fraternity memory coolness intelligence pride Haifa eyes that are yellow and blue and honey-colored Los Angeles the future and i put them all in. i sail it away and i'm somehow left being just myself. i find myself doing good things for no sake at all. sometimes i disagree with a thing i do think want. i bypass the usual excursions into self-loathing, and merely shrug it off. good things happen somedays. other days bad things. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to terrible people. there is no divinely rewarding god upstairs. there is no spiritual karmic law (at least not in this world). i sigh a breath of relief that i have at last discovered that things happen. thoughts happen. actions are not predetermined by playing juvenile hypothetical games... or those interview-exam what-would-you-do's. no one knows what you'll do. i can't get mad, i can't really get anything. i float through life a little hazy. like the edge has been taken off. i can't find a 90 degree angle anywhere (and i'm pleased someone put all the sharp objects away). sounds are sometimes near, sometimes far. all this i seem to have learnt from hammers and nails and sheets of gyprock and cans of paint and my tender bruised lily hands. they have hardened. there are bruises all over them, and the knuckles are worn, and i can sense a strange strength in my body (similar, but distinctly different from the feel of working out regularly). (also there is no aesthetic reward, it is my body's secret from me the strenth it has found in its lower back). it seems to have come from angles that align and others that don't. it seems to have come from the realization that standing staring at it won't get it done. it seems to have come from measuring the boards incorrectly three times and there's nothing you can do about it but measure again. and my thumb has a jigsaw shaped gash that reminds me of barbed-wire and world war two. it probably needs stitches but i avoid taking it in because i feel spring's latest bud may find its way out from there. like if i'm patient, and work quietly a whole new me will grow out of my cut. i nurse it and care for it and it still retains its vintage glamour - it's what's left of the war, a heritage of sorts. right is right and wrong is wrong. sometimes right is wrong and wrong is right. no one cares. monday manages to fit into tuesday without any assistance from me. i just have to do the next thing. stay on task. will my elbow up, and leave the falling motion to gravity. there's a sharpness to my palm, heat from the friction of the mallet's handle rubbing for an hour. the skin peeling away after sawing for 40 minutes. time ticks on. this board (being cut longitudinally) is testing the age of my skin. the atlas of my patience. i continue to listen to the sound of little teeth wearing at once-were-trees, and watching sawdust fill the room like an evil yellow-colored snow, and keep grinding into like the thrusts of lovemaking, or the pains of labor, or the simple gentle truth of a magic gyro that converts self-negativity into a positive self-harm. i feel i am improving my body. making it stronger, so it can hold longer. so i can touch women and my hands will feel like brick walls and not like tulip petals. (one having failed, perhaps the other will succeed). there is nothing i want. nothing i am. nothing i was. nothing i can(not) fathom. i think slow, desultory thoughts that go from nowhere to nowhere. i have dissociated myself from meaning. nothing makes sense, and what's even better: nothing needs to. (because it does). when i don't question, things simply exist in a content here-we-are.ness that makes intuitive sense that defies.shuns.ignores.elevates questioning. i understand everything by turning the other way. my blurred vision is the clearest one i've found.

i don't know anything.
i care about nothing.

i wish it could always be this way.

titles, fragments and lines from things i may one day write

the far bank, 

delicious.you: i won't wake you up,

(or at least:

i'll whisper it in your ear while you sleep, 

__(it will sound like carnations, wednesday mornings, autumn-grey,

in silence we made perfect sense

(transverse a fog of dreams, a universe of static-noise, you'll see me at the far (bank) end)

skin, __my

and the nature of particulate matter defines what we can)and(not run away from, 

simply: the reality of particular matter: or all matter(s) as we understand it.them

so come then, come: then, & (all of now):

yours. 

(everything) + me

as you wanted. 

______________________(and we are just breakable breakable breakable girls and boys.

idea

möwen, die gräfin

the child dreams another invention into creation. that's 13 this month alone. in those rare moments he sits, not speaking, staring away, I hear the sound of wind as his mind buzzes through itself, beyond itself, to an undiscovered world, and returns with its little token. pocket knives with high energy laser ("light amplification by means of stimulated emission radiation" he reminds me) beams. two sided photo cameras so you can capture yourself and your object simultaneously, a contraption to untune pianos, a levitation wheelchair, a peaceful world.


*___*___*

q falls asleep listening to Ravel.
it is warm, but it rains anyway.
he can hear it against the window softly.
the fan too, a rhythmic chug.
the lights are morphing into clouds and daffodils and static noise.

in a moment nothing will matter.

5 images of contentment

Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties

____Chopin








water fills the room, nikola tamindzic

____1.
the math and physics club
prepares you for just about any calculation
__(except not needing one.)


____2.
i feel soo far from you.all.everything
(a distance not measured in times or lengths)
(a slowly blurring dream, coming apart at the edges)
(slowly losing weight like a punctured tire
__or the elderly skin of a deflating balloon)

"i can turn right or left, makes no difference"

____(he smiles)
i feel soo free.


____3.
the air abuts my skin perfectly, a perfect join
(i can't tell one from the other)
and my internal movements flutter away
like aquatic bubbles,
and i can't speak, and would rather not anyway:
i am soo close to the moon, one quick move
and it'll spring away.


____4.
besides me a couple gropes for something to talk about.
opposite, a table full of too-attractive young girls scheming.
(a father and daughter walk past, the father gesturing wildly
with the hand not in hers) (they almost bump into a bevy
of tourists too interested in uninteresting things).
an odd family of alone-mother and children, all with a
characteristic swollen noise, sit and people watch, while drinking
identical slushies. they stare at me sitting
by myself. uncoupled. unfriended. unfamilied.
and i delight in my hour of wordless solace.


____5.
later later, right now think about this:



____(ah, so refreshing)

naiveties I can't.won't give up, a List:

____1. that 10 years after, when my future.wife and i have discussed everything, we will sit in complete quiet and carry, in eloquent silence, that conversation that won't end.

____2. that in the very darkest parts of the very deepest oceans, terrifying giant squid still exist that can snap submarines so easily into two.

____3. that my future.baby.boys will be born with a genetically pre-programmed predisposition for neckties.

____4. in those alone moments when i sometimes think of you, and know nothing about you-now, and where you are and what doing and who with, but i whisper a little prayer into the car window or wall or bedsheet besides me and hope the universe is kind to you, i hope that is enough, and if you think of me, i hope it is in the same way.

____5. though i've never discovered it, that there is a better place.

____6. time left to myself weathers off the rough edges.

____7. people prefer honesty. the world needs more.

____8. a good (wo)man in a bad system is still better than a bad (wo)man in a bad system. in other words: our actions do matter.

____9. that i will see most of you again.

____10. there is a building somewhere that eventually i will call 'home' (and mean it) (and i'll be there long enough to have a cat.dog called Archmides... or Plutarch. or Wordsworth. or Humbert Humbert) who will sit on my lap quietly and ponder in cat.dog-analogous terms: that there is always time.room for beauty and beautiful things.

____11. closing my eyes when i run is almost the same thing as flying.

____12. when i make love my soul slips out of my body and into hers like two clouds coalescing.

____13. picking the right tie for an occasion ensures things will go fine.

____14. i'm ok. i'm enough.

____(15. next time things will go better)

____16. it's crucial that i learn more 'stuff'. i don't know why, it's just important that i do.

____17. everything i need to know about life is encrypted into the sound-patterns of falling rain. if i listen long enough i'll learn to decode it, and it'll tell me everything.

____18. 2008 wasn't all my fault. some of these things just needed to happen. in other words:

____19. there is a God. (S)he mostly likes me, is merciful and just in a combination that is individual to each soul in ways i cannot fathom. that my life is a meaningful rat-race-exercise: and i'm doing ok at it (so far).

____20. my future.baby.girls will look beautiful(delicious) in their dance(ballet) tutus (and will not grow up to resent me for all the pictures i took of them dressed that way)

____21. eventually, (in the end) it will all be ok.

____22. precise, accurate communication improves all relationships.

____23. when i meet her, we'll work the rest out.

____24. i'm not as alone as i (usually) feel

____25. writing things down helps. my writing's not that bad. (even if it never gets published - except in Gol and Anjie's books: thanks guys!!)

____26. synergy was a way cool word that's now irredeemably tarnished by self-help catch-phrases and DIY BEST SMALL-BUSINESS MANAGER IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER(EVER!) books.

____27. she appreciated the novel i wrote her. she hasn't thrown it out. she still has it somewhere, crammed and hidden. it means some(any)thing to her. that is enough. i'll be happy with some(any)thing.

____28. the reason i feel closer to god when i listen to Bach, Brahms, Arvo Part, Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone etc. is because i am.

____29. dance is self-exorcism.

____30. my sister is god's gift to m family - for which we owe everything we are. eventually, the real her will be unwrapped, and i'll be able to measure her wingspan properly. i'm convinced that that moment will make this life posthumously worth it.

____31. no one will complain that half of my funeral will involve people siting silently in their seats listening to music i'll have chosen in advance - things everyone should hear once before they die.

____32. love is not everything. but it's reason enough.

Things Ashtree C(Sh)ould Write About, a List

untitled, shesaskeleton

____1. there is dust everywhere. when i walk my skin is covered in a thin film of white. i am a moonwalker. a dustmite. a limestone creation. sometime soon this dust will coalesce into a moon in my own backyard. (gravity always wins the day). do you know anything about my new moon?

____2. dance danse danz

____3. this morning when i woke up, at 7:23am, i stood waiting for the water filter to notice my cup and fill it. i was holding 15 tissues because my eyes are watering, my nose is running, my face is numb and my sneezes via butterfly effect are altering the course of light rays coming from distant supernovas) i heard next door, the early-rising children already laughing and running (on imagined grass my imagination colored a perfect green), through the intervening walls and fences, their sound was muffled. a sort of high-pitched gigglaughter that sounded as though it was moving with definite precision from one place to another (i think living room to trampoline outside). i was overjoyed for reasons that did not make themselves known to me.

____4. there is water here:

________all these pieces, black and swift
________are moving through themselves

____5. - why are you not where i am?
__ ___- what does that mean?, what kind of question is that?
__ ___- maybe it was rhetorical i don't know.
__ __ _- don't say things you dont' know.
____ _- distance is a bitch.
__ _ __- yeah. ____(what kind?
__ _ __- huh?
__ _ __- what kind of distance?
__ _ __- how many kinds are there?
__ _ __- [she smiles sadly]

____6. New York. (which has become soo many intangible things in my head, for reasons i am cognizant of) (and which scares and thrills me) (and has all the illusion of the other trophies that gather dust in boxes)

____7. (I'm always happy)
yeah, but the baseline for you is like 7-8, so we want you to feel 9-10. if you're a 6 we worry. whereas with me, a 6 is like the best day ever.

____8. funerals. i attended one on friday too. i wore my grandfather's tie. i felt selfish because i couldn't concentrate on who i was supposed to be praying for (i didn't know him, i know his family, and they cried alot). and i had no seat, so i concentrated on my shoes in front of me, and felt the back of my suit stretching (which i didn't like). i felt beads of sweat from the consistent sun. i wiped them always right to left (in hopes of not disturbing the part in my hair). there was a young woman who looked very familiar standing to my left who kept staring at me when i looked away. more crying from somewhere inside the chapel. god i'm thirsty. i'm intimately conscious of the contours of the soles of my feet. i feel a centimeter above the ground. is that enough?, i don't know. (i check my watch again, it keeps going, on and on, but i know once it's all done, we'll wish we'd had a little more time)

____9. but this doesn't make any sense. why is everything about you, how can i write about you?
you don't. write for yourself. we all experience the same things anyway. just with different names, and different dates and the trains i remember have yellow handrails and your car is silver and trees sound almost the same everywhere. see?

____10. who? ____what?

________(yes, exactly)

notes

1. quick quick, before i fall asleep, let's just get this all over and done with, i'm zoning out already, god i'm tired
   
2. and the cat, damned cat; i really have to stop going over there, i always leave an hour later panting for breath and unable to see straight and i drive home with the windows down gasping and gasping and watery eyes barely open
3. on the mud we danced. i was exhausted, it had been a long day, but stepping into the crowd, some russia-doll-hidden, younger, brighter-redder-eyed me woke. i dance with my eyes closed, a habit from my methamphetamine days when with eyes open my mind would rush to analyze.think.scrutinize.ponder.reassess.judge.conceptualize, and so i found, eyes closed, i was lost in a cocoon no one could penetrate. a strange sensation of movement outside yourself that you can sense but not see, your own movements that release energy.worry.stress.angst.fear without your having to see them, or be embarrassed for them- the catharsis from yourself, and of course, the movement, that in the dark (and soo loud, soo loud, louder please, yes, louder still, still louder, i don't want to feel my heart beat for a while) manages to illuminate all those parts of your body that hidden and jammed-in cannot usually hear. covered in sweat and up to knees in mud, and lost and found and trampled and 
4. Destroy Everything You Touch (, today, destroy me, this way,) 
   and as the vocoders wore off, i opened my eyes and thought, no no no no no no, i'm not ready, not back yet, no no no no, and Richard said: it's ok q. at least now you remember who you are. we'll be back soon. (that was two days ago) (i'm scratchy under my neck and i have the music in my car on too loud, trying to regain that sense of music as a physical entity that vibrates through my body - and animates me, and loosens me up, and reminds me i'm 25 and not (as commonly believed) 55. 
   (the title of the blog post that was to deal with this thoroughly was to be called: the man like... or; how q managed orgasm and regained his youth. (needless to say, fatigue and lack of time have prevented me from writing it)
5. i have alot of good writing ideas. but when i have them i don't have time to notate them. later (like now) i'm too tired. (quick quick quick, your eyes are getting scratchier by the second)
6. this damed house won't build itself. my hands are sore, and  i am constantly fingering the bruises on my palms. the slices at my fingertips are the worst. they're almost invisible but they sting hardest. there is only sawdust and plaster in the air to breathe. i am turning slowly into a masonry-man.  when it happens, someone remember to plant a tree besides me ok?
7. finally, i can recall what a life you're happy to be living looks like.
   (now i'm dead-anxious to start constructing it)