ellipses of meaning

I’ve lost my sense of smell due to a concussion and temporal bone skull fracture. There is little chance it is coming back (about 15% according to studies & 5% according to my doctor). It’s sad and surprising to lose something you had never once even imagined losing. Not being able to smell the sweet skin of another human being, coffee brewing or the sultry smell of deadening leaves this fall has caused some slight mourning, but…

The sound of birds and the sight of sunshine have never been so beautiful. I’ve come to this clear point where I’ve strengthened my belief, as a sort of clichéd aesthete, in the harmony and pristine beauty that lie in the heart of melancholy. I have been researching anosmia, and discovered that the poet William Wordsworth was anosmic, and he was still a highly sensual writer.

“The human mind is capable of excitement without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this.” -William Wordsworth

And the result is to become closer to my goal of equanimity. Be sober and meditate, my friends.

In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, “Look at me…I’m tall, and I’m straight, and I’m handsome. Look at you…you’re all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you.” And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, “Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest.” So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.”

-Tom Waits

Next time you feel like you are missing someone, alone, eating breakfast and drinking coffee;

staring out the window into the sunlight leaking through the trees, shining all around

you might find,

it isn’t anyone in particular

The moment of longing is simply a memory,

of a memory,

of a memory that will 

fade away into

a new face,

a new time…

and a different window, breakfast table, and back yard.

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”    -Pearl S. Buck

Creation involves much more than just making material objects, in other words, to create is not simply to make something physically tangible. To me, ideas are a creation unto themselves. Observations and inferences create ideas and discover patterns, much like Descartes described the essence of an idea as being formed as the pinnacle evidence of human cognition. As we write an idea down, share it with someone, or work on presenting an image of it in an artistic form, musically or visually, we are finding resolution within ourselves for that idea.

She died, lying in an open field, the breeze caressing her thighs beneath a droopy willow.

The last movement she made was gliding her arm under her neck as the sunlight shifted in and out through the branches, gleaming on her pale-coloured skin. Amidst the cloudy scent of lilacs her last breath was a gasp of choking laughter, which filtered eternally through the breeze…

She moved, back and forth through

Their overlapping realities

In the moonlight, whispered

Slowly

Lips; succinctly

Voice sucking through

The brain fog,

Peeling the skin away, Said

I wish I weren’t a masochist, then,

I could have a chance at happiness, That were

Not simply imaginary; And who cares-

What happened next.

At some point I give up on counting what day is what day is what time where. 

You know… you open your door, shoving the rug out of the way with your feet, hesitantly tipping through the drafty hallway. The second door comes open with a gust of wind, and the outside is utterly vacant and bleak. Not a soul in sight, a car or two scattered along the road unevenly, doors swung open. Not a sign of life in sight. You plunge through the snow, a determined march, smashing them with a vengeance, roll some snow into a ball and throw it against a street sign *clang*, the metal sound reverberates in echoes between the sidings of the seemingly derelict houses. “Where is everybody?” You’ll wonder… couple blocks down, the wine store has been broken into, shards of glass buried under the snow, sharp little edges poking up over the surface.

Sit on your porch for awhile comfortably, some old rickety chair, down feather jacket left hanging on an arched, wooden coat hanger by the doorway. Taking huge pulls off the cigarette, with your breath and the exhaled smoke, cloudy all around. White, crisp and clear….piles of snow on mailboxes, fluffy pillows bending naked branches to the ground. Snow trees, that’s what they’re called. That’s what was decided.

 ”Where is everybody???”

…

The quiet is good…the quiet is nice,

Walking along, the birds whistle a harmony contrasting to the rustling of the crispy leaves freeing themselves from damp crevices in trees rough, darkly textured trunks

Yes, the white ceiling looks nice above my bed, the wind howls a gentle moaaaning whisper, the radiator clanks…”what is that?”

Watching the silent form of the doorway in the dark. Ohhh, of course, a shifting, settling part of the house finally finding its place.

The clock ticks and tocks a gentle sway and the plastic sheeting on the window crinkles that annoying crackle as it sucks itself two and fro against the window pane.

A train blows haaard a horn in the far far distance, its the quietest loud noise everr heard.

The quiet is a music all its own, at night the fan rattles a scream to blast it all away

The quiet is good, the quiet is nice, but the quiet is sure to make you mad.