Saturday, July 31, 2010

It's All Relative, July 31, 2010

What of the size of an airplane versus the giant glowing ball of fire in the sky known as our sun? The comparison seems preposterous. Yet since I have lived here, it's happened on multiple occasions that I hear the hollow seashell roar of jet engines and for a moment, all the intensity of heat and light energy pouring down directly from that burning star ceases. One relatively tiny object has huge impact, if only for a millisecond, when it finds its way to the right place relative to other objects or beings in the universe... Such profound observations yielded from living in the desolate weed-tangled sidewalks and cement forest near the airport of a major modern industrial port city.

All this comes in on a morning when I discover an opportunity that's been keeping my logistical and planful hopes alive here has been indefinitely cast out into the future. What I see in this world is beautiful, is tortuous, is synchronous, is curious and tricky and beguiling. How am I to go about the work of translating the flood of images that enter me with a sunset? The creatures that are formed out of moving shapes made by piles of stones in the fading light. The complete transmuting and changing nature of all that surrounds us. The incredible distance that my shadow grows in height in the time it takes me to stroll up a hill with the setting sun broiling into an ocean of endless sea and clouds at my back. The glitter-studded hillsides that are banks of windows reflecting that golden moment, clinging to the hillsides that will surely shrug them off at the next cataclysmic buckling of earth that is inevitable for this area.

How are we so culturally blinded? How am I so busily concerned with the menial details of my life, that all this speculation over the accumulation of meaningless scraps of green paper vastly overwhelms motivation to see through attempting to capture the truth of mutability and impermanence of all things?

Sunday, July 18, 2010

City Life Flow Notes, July 13

These days, sometimes "Good morning" means 2 o'clock in the afternoon breakfast. Staying awake til the wee hours, staying in bed late. I have this deep association of productivity as money-making which I'm still trying to break...I expend so much energy with or without pay. Paying attention to where the flow goes. Are these the pathways I choose for myself when I step back, perch high on a branch to gain perspective?

I've climbed trees as long as I can remember, scrambled up their branches, hugging trunks with my clinging limbs, them scratching me up and me not caring because this elevated view is worth it, is perfect. The trees are harder to find here, in this particular stretch of land I inhabit. More present are the screech of the Bart on its raised rails on one side and the lurching rumble of the railroad on the other. Human voices calling to each other or peels of laughter falling in through skylights and high windows.

Remembering the roots that spread beneath this concrete jungle.