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. 

Letting Go

(from Banksy's Wall and Piece)

To walk into a brick-and-mortar bookstore and peruse its aisles while losing all track of time is the perfect escape from a mind that is constantly running in circles.  And I'm spent on running in circles--so spent.  Instead, I rather run my fingers along the spines of Fiction and Literature as I imagine a different identity for the person who stares at me with such terrified wonder in mirrors, in rivers, in puddles that gather at my feet.  

When I stand among large volumes and quantities of books, I feel like I am being granted the opportunity to transform into somebody else--someone whose life is not a dull shadow of an overbearing human condition.  I get to become a creature whose thoughts and philosophical insight render a greater impact on those whom she will never chance to meet, than on those whom she already has met.

The need to depart from the self-infatuating routine of healing a hurting heart was beyond description today.  Quite frankly, dealing with a mind as neurotic as my own is exhausting.  How many times can a person go over the same damn questions in her mind knowing full well she won't be getting the answers for which her soul yearns?  

I decided to remedy this infliction by losing myself in rows and columns of hardcovers, paperbacks, biographies, classics, and poetry--everything that would allow me to become anything and anyone else aside from who I am actually.  

I rustled through pages of black print and absorbed stills of richly colored imagery.  Gradually, I made my way to the shelves of art books.  Thumbing through the finite selection, I came across Banksy's Wall and Piece.  I picked up the book in part because Banksy was an artist who came up in conversation with Mister Houdini.  I also picked up the book in part because I had yet to understand the intrigue surrounding the graffiti street artist.  Truth be told, I had my reservations about Banksy.  I couldn't come to terms with how a painter like Vincent van Gogh, who worked endlessly to offer this world an unparalleled passion and perspective, was so greatly under-appreciated while he was alive, and yet Banksy could be so well received while he is still breathing and living on the same earth that the former once traversed.  

After reading some of Banksy's statements and going through some of his work, I grew a new understanding of and appreciation for who he is as an artist and his choice of medium.  What really won me over was the above image and words.  Seriously, they are the perfect summation of my life in the most recent weeks.  It is as if God threw this book on my lap and said, "Open it; there's something in there for you."  

Indeed, there really was. 

Thanks Banksy.

--

The Weight of Lightness

"The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, 

the more real and truthful they become. 

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be

lighter than air . . . and become only half real, his movements as

free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose?  Weight or lightness?"

(page 5, chapter 2)

Excerpt from current reading.