Observation #14, 11/8

Theme: I don't have class today, therefore a quick haiku:

I attended school
to better my craft and skill
oh god NaNo why

Observation #13, 11/6: Home

(Theme: Loss & Gain)

It’s the little things, maybe even the littlest things. The songs that make me think of the movies that make me think of you. The smell of a certain something cooking. A casual mention of one of your favorite books in an overheard conversation. Cutting open a pomegranate and remembering that time when the juice turned my fingers black under the fluorescents and we stood there in Rite-Aid, puzzling over what could have turned my cuticles so dark, laughing aloud with the joy of recognition when I realized. Hearing the words I most needed to hear and getting weepy, even though we were in the car.

I might have lost everything at the time, but I gained you back.

Observation #12.2, 11/2: I use my adrenaline to clean up my own mess, fix computers, and write poetry

I was woken from a dream

of pilot whales so large

they could be seen from the highway

great humps the shape of the hills

around them, clusters of barnacles

the size of cities, and on one

a huge, gleaming eye –

luminous, glass-smooth

globe amidst the turbulence of water,

the landscape roiling with the plunge and gyrate

of hulking bodies –

by an unprovoked Heraclean nosebleed

that spattered the bathroom sink

brighter than stills in horror films as I scrabbled for tissue

which I would promptly bleed through:

on its end, a cherry of clotted blood

round and bright, gleaming

like the whale’s eye looking

at me from across the orchards and farm lands

he had wrecked.

Observation 12.1, 11/1: Saruman of Many Colors

(Theme: Gain, Plagiarism edition)

But oh! The things we could accomplish together! For are we not of a high and ancient order, most excellent in the Earth? Are we not young in our wisdom and strong in our seniority? Are we not the conquerors and scholars, having eyes that see both far and deep? Are we not young Gods in old bodies, sent to shepherd the sheep and conduct the song the world sings? Are we not invincible, perfect, immortal?

The guest who has escaped from the roof thinks twice before he comes back in by the door.

Observation #12, 11/1

(Theme: Gain)

The things I vow to take from this day:

1. The warmth of the sun on my face as it passes through glass, how it arcs over my forehead and cheekbones, igniting my hair, plunging my philtrum into shadow.

2. Every shifting shade of blue that crosses the sky between varying grades of cloud.

3. The green of the pine branches behind the red blush of deciduous behind the white froth of fall flowers behind the course grey rust-streaked face of dry stone.

4. The stark, clean white of birch bark.

5. The shiver of the canopy.

6. Meandering trails no one is meant to walk between fallen trunks and peaty wetlands, the light on the surface of the lake.

7. The lift of leaves in small circles, stirring, settling – the wind is dancing.

8. The promise of words and quiet and the steam rising in curls: herbal smoke from sacred spells and mugs of tea.

9. The warmth of a hand in mine.

Observation #11, 11/1

(Theme: Loss)

We are always writing about loss.

I am withering, I am vanishing, I lost my voice when I was twenty, I lost my hearing when I was five, I lost my sight when I was seventeen, I lost my leg in the war, I lost my arm in the accident, I lost my dog, my parents, my brother, my lover, the family inheritance.

We have lost everything.

I lose things.

I lose things in the way that you do, sudden, without warning and I am pursued by that abruptness, that paralytic shock that somehow, something is missing. I am haunted by how smooth and silent loss creeps in. I fear it.

I fear that one day it will find my parents and they will be a hole in my heart I fear that my lover will die far, far from me too far for me to see or hear or hold her hand and I fear that it will come and render me useless, finally immobile, unable to give anything to a dying world from a perpetually dying hand

too soon, too soon

Survey Now Officially CLOSED!

Thank you so much to those who chose to participate in the Music in your Experience survey, which is no longer taking official submissions. However, if it opens up a forum of discussion or you want to answer some of the questions for the sake of it, please feel free. I would love to talk to everybody about music all the time. :)

Cheers!