I Don't Care

I don't care if this music comes from Europe or anywhere. Surely, music comes from nowhere but the heart? And the "heart" cannot be inside any geographical jurisdiction but some place else.

Robert Schumann's Fantasy in C (1836) rendered by Alicia de Larrocha:

Mirrors

"So many books, so little time."

Not enough time to read all them books.

Flip it.

People have managed to pen so many books, despite all the limitations of life, including time.

Flip it again.

If you don't have time to read those books, someone will in the future. So keep them. Keeping is reading; saving is sharing.

Egyptian Song

A bouquet of flowers stands on my head;

My head cannot nourish you, flowers

Let me bring you a vase, filled with the tears of everyone who has cried today.

Petunias

What a month, May -

The sunlight kills,

and the rapidly rising heart in the sky blocks my daylight vision,

but not my oneiric one:

Long live dreams, flirtatious and bright,

far in the Republic of Thought.

Defecation

Each step seems as if it were an irreversible step, now that I have finally come to terms with my own bestiality. I would like to adopt a more vegetative form of existence: leaves fall, new shoots will grow. But as it is, I cannot stop eating, and the eating never stops. And eating is moving.

Plottinus

Greenough sang:

"Let us do away with plots;

Plots mislead us

When they smile, they aren't smiling, really

When they look sad, we become completely their prey

I know

Life is plot-less

Only the flower pots are real.

Away from plots, I say

Because they mislead, breed hatred, misunderstanding

They hand out false hope as if it were free money

Like it was good music (or something. . .)

But no, I say no, I only care about franky-frank truths!

No more hanky-panky straight-looking but crooked lines, please. "

Accordingly, flowers flew and birds bloomed.

Confused as a Pie

Like on any other day, I ate a pie and I knew the pie was confused. Very confused. The dough was soft, but the creamy filling was so thick and dense, I knew the pie had been thinking very hard. First, the pie had to keep track of dates. It had to arrange the years and months, rearrange, and rearrange again. It knew that time, as a concept, was becoming no longer manageable. Then it had to think and think again about where it was going, but the choices that seemed available were: a) get eaten or b) rot. How it wished it could turn into a bird, or something. Devise a plan c. But the bird, too, could get eaten or be rotten, or both.

The pie sank into itself, like night falling on the ocean, and it stayed very quiet and still. Perhaps that was shortly after the journey to the oven.

When the sun hit the ocean and happy music began to fill the air, the pie was no longer there. It was there, but it was besides itself. It knew some digestive tract was going to find and eat it, but it hadn't been eaten yet, and so it was somehow hopeful that it would escape its fate. And in a way, it did. Right as I bit into the pie, the pie grew into a metallic flying saucer, a crazy U.F.O., zigzagging across the sky at amazing speeds. By disappearing into the clouds, it had handed on its confusion to me, the survivor. The confusion tasted very sweet in my mouth, and it has taken me months, years, to digest it. In a way, I will never digest it fully. It has left my digestive tract, to accumulate on the surface of my eyes, in my ears, on top of my head. And I am trying to share the fact that I have this confusion still left with me, handed to me by a simple pie, because I believe, or am actually certain, that there are other unassuming pie-eaters who, like I, spend restless nights, unable to sleep or fly, slowly enduring the sickening sweetness of confusion.

Midnight Chirpings

The human voices coming out of my headphones

Abandoned on a desk, away from my ears, at midnight

Sound like birds chirping on the street, in the sun.

Birds talk, I'm sure; they do not just chirp

But their speaking voices are simply inaudible to us humans.

Humans chirp, too, if one adopts a bird's ears.

Our voices are also inaudible outside of our limited,

Very limited circle, except as incomprehensible songs,

Repetitions, melodies, cries.

One can only hope that humans chirping are at least

Half as pleasant as the singing birds whose unmoving eyes

Glitter and turn into the wet stones that have sunk and come to rest

On a cold river bottom.

Headaches Return

Midori said, "What seems good long-term is bad short-term. What seems bad short-term is good long-term."

Potteri asked, "Wait, so what's long-term is always good?"

Midori replied, "Indeed what's long-term is always good. That's what 'long-term' really means...."

Midori then added, "The question is if one is able to withstand the loneliness that is associated with any long-term kaleidoscopes."

Potteri interjected, "What do you mean by long-term kaleidoscopes?"

Midori apologized, "Sorry, I use the word kaleidoscopes in place of other words, when I can't find any names for them. But in fact, I'd like pretty much everything to be a long-term kaleidoscope."

Potteri chanted: "To be good or not to be."

Midori went to bed.

Mark Twain said: "Be good and you will be lonely."

"Kaleidoscopes," Midori muttered in her sleep.

Loneliness seems good for a while, but is not sustainable. What's good always breaks down - but that is the short-term. In the long-term, what is broken is broken; what is not is not. Is change always bad? Yes, in the short-term. But in the long-term, change has a way of reappearing in the most unexpected places: oh gladness, fresh morning. It is not forgetting; it is remembering. I must begin wearing multiple watches, all hands pointing toward different hours in extra-temporal, inter-dimensional disunity.

Mouse and Wall

Sometimes the wall seems too high, too thick

VVVThicke like a neck

VVVVVVand long, too long

There is, I know, a mouse who lives

VVVin my tummy, a-going, a-growing

Like a sprout.

Someday the mouse

VVVwill nibble through the wall

The wall like cheese

VVVVVVoh sneeze

The wind blows, a-blows, ablaze

VVVThe sun smiles, Philosopher, the sun smiles

VVVOh yes, even if the sun isn't a person.