Reflections

Be wary of great expectations.
-Charles Dickens

Forsaking hot cocoa for a giant mocha, the rooftops are dressed fine in the night's white dustings, skiffs of snow. A new year cold in its thousands of troops headed abroad, the impoverished bearing the yoke for the elite, & the continuance of measuring will against fluid realities. That I chip away diligently at aspects that bother me from varying angles doesn't cozen my comfort with who I've become overall. Sure, we're all capable of our moments. Touching phrases, delicious nights, enjoying the presence of fine company & wine, standing around bonfires chatting with interesting strangers as the shadows dance elegantly, dimly on the fir-stand a mere thirty feet away but we all have some sense of what we are capable of inside our own minds. As my age advances & the thin evidence of my impact courts me to greater heights my determination gets more steely & my heart grows warmer. This veracity to reach a level of precision & clarity hammering away at the abstract idea until form is unleashed from the shackles of poor imagination lurches back & forth in me with a lion's impatience before the pounce. My foreseen pounce is not to unleash more pestilence in a world wracked with insecurity, guilt, & goals which don't lead to sustainable happiness but to forge a green sword that cuts away the unnecessary & restores the fertility of behaviour with conscience.

That I might fall in love with a woman who is the right match, raise a family, & have a dog in a home that is off-the-grid, green, & made by my own hands with a writing desk & a fine array of fairy tales for bedtime stories for my child, for my wife, for the little creatures that might be listening through the windows & walls, for the ancestors who wanted nothing more than a fruitful evolution of the heritage they fed into better health.

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Fifteen months into my residence in Portland I am inheriting an open mic, working at a job that frustates me, on the brink of a major health kick, & newly furnished with a clippered head. The strip club across from my bus stop is closed, taking along with it the girl with the Alaskan Husky eyes whom I swapped uncomfortable glaces with. In the afternoon, while I waited for my transfer, once or twice a week I would watch her wait to be let in while men propositioned her as they attempted to be charming or lure her with money she would stare coldly at me with those glacial eyes awaiting judgement fixed on me the regular stranger standing across the street. I never meted out a denouncing expression although my heart hurt & my blood boiled a couple times when assholes overstepped their bounds but she could obviously take care of herself, her refusal to acknowledge them was expert.

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My friend Dave the socialist no longer visits me in my wine department. I must of offended him when I didn't show for a tentative hang-out time for the second turn in a row. Both times he adamantly insisted we meet at seven in the morning when it takes me an hour by bus to get out to the NW. Not only do I not drink corporate coffee (ironic that he does) but when I don't work at the butt crack of dawn I don't want to stand in the cold & run across town hours before my shift. A super nice guy although a tad repetitive. Each time he seemed to forget that he said the same exact thing to me the time before or maybe he thought that I had forgot what he said. Either way, when I finished his recycled statements for him he didn't tend to notice. I learned a fair amount from him about life, about books (altho some of them are muddled in the overly academic nonsense of scholars with inferiority/superiority complexes), & he was nice enough to work on trying to motivate me to seek better employment. Dave, if you're out there be well & play hot licks. Try some different bottles with your lady. Old comfort becomes false comfort if you don't open the mysterious petals.
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The Fountain was different than I expected it to be but still eternal. Syncronicity was in excellent effect even though not quite on the scale that she had when I went to see Before Sunset.
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Haven't been writing many poems as essay-immersion has been swamping the hours with research & free writes, outlining & bibliography-shaping. Still, I love the rough. My favorite Michelangelo sculptures are the ones he left unfinished where the bodies seem to be emerging from the stone.

The essay titles are as follows:

The Brain, Instrument/Repository of Change
Magic: an Essay on Realism
Blindness & Prophecy
Getting Cross: an Exploration of Judaic Traditions
The Fisher King
Eastern Religion Survey
A Refutation of Capitalist Principles
Privilege & Privation
Death & Transfigurations
Tapas: Practice, Prayer, Sacrifice, Living
Ruminations on the Meaning of Place
Formative Music
Play, Play, Play
Bardic Initiation: Lessons Through the Ages
Musings on Time, Space, & Light
Evolutionary Tract
The New Being

These sixteen beasts should keep me plenty busy until I go back to school. The rust has been WD40'd off with an environmentally sound soy solution & like a proud father I have let go at the right moment seeing my rebirth without training wheels. How skilled can I become at essay-writing? That remains to be seen. My general distaste for overly audacious authoritative voice will keep me personal & intimate where many would disapprove. Oh well. The challenge is good for those people. I'd lay down some of the bibliography here but I don't know to start it's so big but feel free to suggest interesting/enlightening books.
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Christmas was great fun. Between my nephew, my cousin's kids, & the kids of my family friends there was lots of laughter & wonder running around.
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Enough little thoughts.