The wind and rain have seasons where they will work their ways; They wear us down, eventually, But it is no disgrace To live the years, and show the years, for as time goes, we follow -- And there's a peace that comes at last, when we are still and hollow
The day has come; I wander off to think. My purpose has been accidental, and A change is coming; I am on the brink Of being somewhere I don't don't understand. The years like track that's led me to this place. December coming, ghostly falls the snow: Do I keep going, with no place to go? My markers gone, and I cannot retrace The signs I used follow ere the days I worked. Employment's supposed to be phase, And not identity, and yet I find I stumble now, and wander, cold and blind. Where it all leads I really cannot say, Or what will come, now finally comes the day.
she said
i love
and so should you
he said
i think
i understand
they went
into the written blue
and came
to know the bad and true
he asked
should we
or couldn't we?
she shook her head
but silently
the programmatic answer came
no one to love
someone
to blame
The world is a plurality, The stories many, varied; But we are busy people, anxious, Put upon and harried -- And so we simplify our lives By screening our own show; We do not see the pictures, we Replace with what we know, As though our lives are every life, And we, the peak, the summit -- That story we apply to life, Instead of learning From it
Eight years old, looking around a brand new restaurant. All around the high walls are watercolor paintings. Sailboats in summer. Horses running in winter.
Nobody has to teach us to love drawings and paintings, we just do. Showing what we see, using only our hands, is kind of an amazing thing.
Loving color, loving the light. Because colors are every form of it.
The delight we take in drawings, in paintings, in greeting cards, in comics, in animations goes back to the fundamental us. For as children, our natural response to seeing the world is to want to reproduce it.
Humans play thoughtlessly upon the edge of great waters, even the one called “death”.
Twenty-three years old, though, and while everything was done thoughtlessly, those waters had, frankly, come to look pretty inviting.
January morning, bitter cold, a storm due in. Walking, walking, mile after mile. Another year ahead, another seemingly pointless year. Thinking, at least, things couldn’t get worse.
Things can almost always get worse.
But for a day, a few hours, an agreement was reached with that large ocean: that while there is a season we have to go in, that season had not yet arrived.
At age thirteen, not much makes sense, so the young heart clings to traditions, where meaning is felt, and does not therefore need to be explained.
Often, all the adults see is the confusion, which manifests itself in discontent and anger, and not the clinging, or the searching, or the questions, most of which are unexpressed, and indeed, are inexpressible. But around traditions, people can unite, even if none of them are aware that is what is going on. Because family is very often what happens when nobody is paying attention.
Singing around a piano. Old songs and new. Parents & siblings, melody & harmony, lights & wrapped gifts, hopes & worries, all unknown to each other. At age thirteen, not much makes sense, but traditions help, because emotions are labyrinths, and secrets are like canyons. But music, like other shared things, can say everything you need, often without trying to say any particular thing.
Grew up in Florida, rarely even seen snow. Twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, working in Florida, sent for a two week class in Ohio. In December.
Started snowing the day after arrival. Walking around on the weekend, cutting across fields through snow, headed towards town. Ice on the roads, ice in eyebrows and on eyelashes, ice all over three layers of jackets.
Finally get to town, walking up to a shopping square. Nineteen eighty-four was the year; the only similarity to Orwell was that everything looked like nineteen forty-eight. 1940’s Christmas music being played through the parking lot speakers; lights across the icy window displays in all the brightly lit stores. Looking like Christmas always looked in magazine illustrations, breath steaming the air.
Wandering, exploring, wondering, marveling. Seeing as through the eyes of a child: all things new, most things beautiful. Alone.
Milestones. Rites of passage. Things that mean everything, but to only one. Finding new meaning in the season without the benefit of company.
My life is unremarkable and also unbelievable; a type of business in which I have nothing but receivables that never really get received. A kind of endless spinning, in which I languish in one spot and try to claim I'm winning
