6 posts tagged “life”
He's quite certain that his parched throat, his squint means no disrespect to the sun.
Morning breaks and with comes the bravery of songbirds seeking food
It humbles him ... the wispy clouds... the brilliant blue.
The smells of the day make him reverent... the heat from the grass... the saturation of growth.
Why does he feels these measure so strongly... the rhythms of people around him...
What's so powerful?
Peers listen, but do they want to know... they care, but are they willing to allow...
For happenstance?
When they rest... when they finally square up and claim the ground they want...
How will they -- care for it...
Communicate about it...
Tend it...
Laugh over it...
Earn a living from it...
Give in to it...
Praise it or master it...
Cry on it...
Make love within it...
Breath their last breath lying there.
What repayment do they all make, he thinks, when the marketplace comes for its due?
Fire in the hearth and a place to make sighs... where the mind can linger from a depth within.
Help, he asks, to recognize that space for growth, for failure and more attempts, for rest and querying.
Help to speak to power as you would the feeble... and smile just the same.
See the sly boy's face...
Between the thicket of two pines...
Look up, see the sunshafts...
Busting through branches, through leaves and tangle...
Of maple fronting elm fronting maple...
Move and the whole damn show changes...
The light hops through new gaps... made for you only...
The boy is gone...
And what charges this display?
The hard and solid forms we know by name? Or the gaps in between?
---
See the sky beyond... on high, lines of snaky clouds...
Their bellies painted orange by the sinking sun...
The spaces between those misty, moving formations... they, they are the artists
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The boy runs with a bit of bark...
"It's rough," he says... the devil boy and his comments...
Yes, yes it is... see the grooves and the cuts of it...
The spaces animate the touch of it...
---
Water tumbling down our throats...
Filling then fleeing that otherwise empty pipe...
On warm days you feel the cool down to the core...
Now in tighter... beyond the discernment of the eye....
The space of our body cavity... of our gaps atom by atom...
What's our animator? Our place in it all?
Our space -- within and beside you.
---
What every composer knows - note by rest by note...
What the philosophers use as a rule to learn by...
What charges mother and newborn between the gaze...
The pause before uttering the truth...
The charged air between bodies attracting...
The knowing without the mind thinking...
The settled grass after the breeze dies...
We are not taking space as much as
We are space...
---
We are ruled by a vastness unnoticed...
See it... see space... offer up to it...
Lose it and regain it... ride on it...
Space creates the living... and, yes, suddenly death has purpose...
The exhale to the birth breath...
It's typical... it's cliche... and I love it.
Family on the Fourth.
Hey, if you want edgy... go read something else.
It was a gift... unexpected... and unaware you needed it until it was there.
The best kind of gift.
Lunchtime in downtown StP. The tension of a work morning at a terminal screen raised the anxiety level.
Where was the relief?
It came in the form of music.
Everywhere you turned the notes came at you - on a course to soothe.
From Mancini's Pink Panther theme to Brubeck's "Take Five" to Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower."
The songs were different but they all plucked the same chord within.
You found yourself noticing the friendly nods of the musicians to those who went by.
You smiled at their understated "thank you" as the passerbys dropped money into the plastic coffee can or the saxophone case.
It was a gift, by God.
A few bucks wasn't nearly enough in return.
Tell me if you uber-amateur musicians have this experience.
I pick up the old axe (well, it's a cheap Fender acoustic so maybe axe isn't the right word)... maybe pocket knife.
Anyway I pick up the guitar and start playing. The finger, lacking any sort of callouses, feel the burn of the strings. The buzz in the notes is, well, very apparent.
I kick into a song and immediately muff the chord change. Try again, the botch comes a little later. Progress.
Then I go for a little lead riff. Just a major scale, pick around it a bit, see what happens. It's going nowhere. I cring when I slide one fret too low. There's no spontaneity whatsoever.
So, to make myself feel better, I play a few of the old songs. "Roxanne" (that early Police tune) ... a couple of the easy Beatles tunes. Then I try "Hey, Hey, My, My" (the version with the Johnny Rotten lyrics, even though I'm not playing electric). I'm stunned as I can't even pull off the early note sequence.
I stop and look at my hands. Wonder what's going on in there. I want to blame the guitar (like the ballplayer looks at his glove as the ball runs through him).
Yeah, that's it ... blame the guitar. It's a piece of junk. No wonder I couldn't play well.
If crappy music is coming out of it... it must be a ... Chitar. (see left).
Yes... this is the reason why I can't play the music as I did as a 20-year-old, when I had time on my hands and practiced like a kid with nothing better to do.
It had nothing to do with me -- it was the damn guitar.
And then I looked at my hands again... and smirked. And played some more without judgment. It was fun and then the kids called.
I put it down and figured it would be August before the strings would be plucked again. Sound familiar?
Mr. Lucky's signs (written about in my last post) got me to thinking ...
Just what signs have you seen that stand out... that make you wonder... that say something more about who we are?
American Public Media, my employer, produces everything from news stories for the statewide Minnesota Public Radio network to national programs like Marketplace and Speaking of Faith.
And APM likes to reach out to the public for story ideas and angles. The effort - Public Insight Journalism - is where I toil. We do it a number of ways including survey forms on topics.
So how about this topic - what signs do you see in your day-to-day life that make you pause. We're looking for signs that give not only their overt message, but maybe tell us something more about our current state.
Mr. Lucky's sign surely says something more about our world (especially after the Supreme Court has begun changing gun rights)
So what about you? What are the signs with meaning in your life?
Why not share the story ... maybe to a large audience, and help us get at the state of our society through unique storytelling.
If you're game just click this link. The survey you'll see starts like this....
