Tuna Meat & Poetry

For every morning that breaks, I take a moment to say a prayer.  Daylight can oft feel insufferable.  It is as though the warmth of the sun warrants the feeling of guilt and the question of whether or not one is deserving of it.  The reassurance of eventual deliverance from the woes that beset every inch of my clay body tempers faintly the depression.  After I transition from bed to shower to a hot oatmeal breakfast, I brave the unpredictable city weather for a couple of hours and step out for some solitude and quiet time.  I roam the earth's natural delights like a nymph who roams through her forests, mountains, and meadows.  To attempt to describe the experience of gazing into the vast openness of land, sea, and sky would be to shortchange it.  The experience is beyond the limpness of mortal words.  Count it among the few unadulterated blessings with which we humans are granted during our finite time traveling through this delicate life before proceeding to eternity.

There are moments where I catch myself not moving, merely standing still, contemplating my portion in this temporary world.  I am convinced my place is somewhere in the vanishing distances--where the sun melts into the ocean and the days are met with simplicity, the nights wrapped in innocence.  

I reach for my Moleskine.  Numerous thoughts to jot, infinite feelings to process.  It can be that my days know no lengths and my nights know no mornings.  Tis the grand act of removing oneself from the realm of consciousness in return for becoming a poetic writer, a honest painter.  I wish not to be another lemming in this play of perpetual feigning.  To cave into the desires of normality would be to deny the truth of my very being.  So I cast my lot among the outsiders, refuse the temptation of thirty shekels, and continue this walk alongside the cliffs of societal treason.

---

This entry was inspired by the nineteenth-century American poet, Emily Dickinson.  Reclusive and prolific, her life and works are worth reading.  There are few individuals to whom I automatically feel a connection; she is one of them.  The themes in her writings are consistent with my own.  I came across The Gorgeous Nothings during my trip to the bookstore, and I must say, Dickinson's envelope poems are hauntingly heartfelt.