There's this great expanse of sky all around. An atmosphere of understanding and an undeniable, unending amount of truth. There's just enough misleading done by an enemy at once within and without, pacing up and down the miles of earth, to distract from and upset the balance of harmony instilled by a trust and honest belief in God to lead to discontent if ideas of this world are whole-heartedly entertained. Sometimes I paint my face up in illusions of money and lust and gluttony so perfectly that I forget to count the blessing as numerous as the stars hanging above;

Glorious light through old blinds on a clear morning, my mother's smile, my father's firm embrace given upon departure, Conrad taking time out of his schedule to exchange a few words on the telephone, a man offering his blessing from down the highways of telephone wires suspended over fields and city streets to close out a long work day, and the promise of faithfulness and ceaseless forgiveness.

Sometimes it's helpful to take stock of the things that bring even the smallest amount of joy into life that seems to be an endless walk towards nothingness. It's becoming rather apparent that all things have purpose and everyone has a part to play. It's about time to get into character.

Jagged barbed wire perched on top of cold chain link fences all against a back drop of bare, grey trees is, for some, reason to lose hope. The visual can tug it right out of you. It's also a reminder, though, that in a matter of time those same trees will again burst with new life and overshadow the presence of the fences that stand before them.

...and one day we'll be evergreens.

Oh my I miss you. I’m here on my back again, laying in the same tall grass and watching the same stars cycle overhead, my eyes following blinking lights across the sky, my mind traveling faster than my feet ever will.

It’s been forty long years. Our house is the same, I left it just as you did darling. It’s quieter, and lonelier, I can’t deny.

I think of when we were first married, when the you posed a question of loyalty, half turned to the kitchen window and waving a spatula for emphasis. You asked me if I thought of you while I was away, if you were ever and always in my thoughts. I caught you around the waist, the morning sun catching all your hairs in a dance of flame and shimmer, I showered endearments and playful tones of love.

Our cabin, my cabin you made ours, every quilt and ornament and decoration and corner a piece of your eye and mind.

Our little one, who was so close yet never was. I hated myself then, hated myself for you, hated the weak blood and poor genetics I had dared to contribute to you, hated the mortality of former generations that kept her from being yours.

You would laugh at me now darling, an old man talking to flowers and dustballs and hummingbirds. Bartholomew is an old man as well, we two sputter and hiss at each other, me with my clumsy feet and him with his claws, the house our rivaled respected domain, keeping peace only in the memory of you. He doesn’t let me near your reading robe, many nights I’ve told myself I couldn’t bear the sight of it, and many nights his eyes have warned me that I had better. I’m glad he’s there, fighting for your memory when I don’t have the strength.

It won’t be long now, you can tell the Old Man to keep his eyes off you, I’ll be there soon. He gave you to me once, maybe he’ll be kind enough to do it again. I rejoice at the pains in the knees, I laugh at the hanging in my chest. It means I’m coming to you darling, it means I’m coming home.

In din of crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,

May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing the curlews,

Hearing the horizons endure.

- ted hughes, the horses -

There are few things that grip the pit of my stomach like the strike of bared branches against November blue, that hard-eyed crew-cut autumn blue that draws color out sharp and breaths out soft.

In those branches is the epitome of a season that for all its sweet is the most bitter, in which every leaf is tipping gold because it's on the downward turn - the season in which I remember that we're eternal.

Because you see this concept of time, it's something our bodies understand. Our bodies understand it because they belong to it, to the clay world transience. They move within its determinations and along its grooves with unflinching and inevitable obedience from first fertilized egg to last taken breath.

But our souls, they know better, and are never fully reconciled to this unnatural constraint. The sense of injustice, of loss, of poignancy in grasping at a full moment just as it's slipped away - the autumn ache -

it's the eternal within us arching its back against the temporal around us.

(and in that knowing, it becomes less of loss and more of hope.)

pick a picture

1.

or

2.

?

[dipping my lens into the study of color as a concept,

so please let me know the why behind the which!]

one million footnotes

A daily pre-twitter conceived blog, each entry a single line, described by the author as:

"Footnotes to a nonexistent book, a series of observations, a novel without the plot, the autobiography of an imagination, linked poetry of the everyday world, an impossible goal."

Excerpts:





"He considered the varieties of vanilla ice cream he could buy and wondered if the closer something was to nothing the more variety it encompassed. "






"A long enough hug, and the heat moved between them. "






"He spilled the pencils like ink all over the page. "






"It had been forty years since he'd seen a live raccoon cross a road, and this one wasn't attached to a leash. "

belief and explanatory reports

"I guess we're all, or most of us, the wards of the nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn't explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn't explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were more interested in what is than in why it is. So many old and lovely things are stored in the worlds's attic, because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out."

"The Winter of Our Discontent"

-Steinbeck

Humor

"Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence, it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is 'mean,' but if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer 'mean' but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful -- unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke."

adjusts reading glasses...

... peers over them enthusiastically around table, folds hands and begins brightly:


well hello boys! I'm so glad to see that Taylor Coleman has joined us today and -


checks notes, furrows brow


- Leon ... Willabee.


Conrad wriggles in seat with delight, jabs at Taylor with elbow - Taylor attempts to subtly distance himself with long, contemplative sip of coffee.


I'm pretty sure I've already laid out this blog for at least Taylor, if not both of you.


Conrad yawns noisily. Ali glares, corrects herself, resumes with strained cheer


Basically, it's a practical manifestation of an idea sparked by Conrad's hypothetical scenario of "communal living with a positive purpose," and fueled by the creative energy generated while sharing and discussing projects with Taylor.


Taylor beams. Conrad flicks paperclip at Ali's glasses.

What I had in mind for the tortoise was a place where we can share

• Inspiration: anything which sparks you - passage, quote, article, link, photograph, art, artist, author, concept, anything
• Ideas: whether a broad, general creative idea or an idea for a very specific project
• Projects: sharing the progress of a project, the actual project-in-progress, or the completed product

Basically, a creative catch-all: somewhere where we can not only archive our own inspirations, ideas, and creations, but where we can also open them to others and receive/generate thoughtful feedback.

Every post will automatically have the author's name at the bottom and, if we all use the same labels when creating a post [e.g. IDEA, INSPIRATION, or CREATION] then we can quickly find everything within a given category using the label module on the home page's right hand.

Any thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Concerns?

Ali looks up - realizes Taylor is texting and Conrad has quietly slipped under the table to nap on his backpack. Rubs bridge of nose wearily, sighs.

Beginning of "A Long Walk"

Three faces suspended within the panes of three unwashed windows looked out upon a burning hayfield. The flames crept nearer to the quaint home. Smoke billowed high, blotting out all but mere remnants of the sun.

A mass of gnats hummed over a pool of stagnant water to the left of the doomed structure. The dog, an old, shaggy, golden lab, drank from the puddle and retreated beneath the porch while the barn cat lept from branch to branch in the uppermost regions of a stand of trees behind the house. The youngest of the three children in the home, Benjamin, stared wide-eyed as the flames grew closer, consuming the dry alfalfa. He bit his lower lip to stifle his sobs. Tears rolled gently down his smooth, sun burned cheeks and he quickly hid his face from his older brother to his left who looked on defiantly at the rapidly approaching fire.

The boy's sister, Hope, sat patiently and looked at the back door suggestively, drawing their gaze away from the fire. They all rose slowly, painfully, and walked quietly out of the house. The dog followed faithfully as the flames weakened and swallowed the comfort of their home...