Tag: belief systems

Zebras

Holidays / Holydays

Like herringbone, the concepts fit into a deepening pattern. Whether we wear it outside depends on the size of the bars, perhaps.

What I read is so different from what I hear in the marketplaces. I understand the concept of Agora now – going among the people to gather their thoughts & reality.

Of course, much of what is spoken is politics today. Once upon a time, I’m sure it was religion. Overall, it might be so much more amenable just to discuss recipes.

I still feel I’d like to solve everyone’s problems, resolve the discussions with “my” enlightenment & encourage polite discourse. My single venture at this resulted in total denial by listeners. “That’s got to be photoshopped.” “He never said that.” Not even a sliver of possibility was allowed. Everyone now follows the media’s aversion to research, I suppose. Yet I’m wiser to opt for speaking to like thinkers – while I can’t help but think how much benefit there would be even in basic courtesy among the rest.

Some while back I read that if the Founding Fathers had to debate the points in the Constitution now, we would have no such document.

Could Jefferson have conceived of WIFI? Washington, computers? I secretly smile when I read Trump “writes letters” to Kim Jong Un & Putin recommends his staffers use typewriters for important information.

What price technology? Does it make truth more reliable? Ah, there’s the age-old rub: What is Truth?

Disillusionment has ever lined the outer limits of speaking beliefs which will not seem to manifest. But now it occupies Center Stage.

If it’s more satisfying to identify as a zebra, well, we live in a time when you can simply do that.

Which leads us back to herringbone.

Owl Morning

I squint like a mouse

When I am the twitching tail of the cat set to hunt it.

I gaze at my life with a pauper’s hunger

While I live as a queen within it.

I have light, food, cash tucked in a blue sock

While I rattle the pig-bank to gauge my wealth.

This sums up what it is to be human

To live duality, even breathing in & out.

I cannot claim silence while music leaps from my pen

I cannot fear the words will disappear as they burble over the cookpot.

 There are horns from afar summoning me to war

Yet this has been a hard-fought peace to choose.

Let the winds of change breeze my bird’s nest hair

For all I have not done, more rises to accomplish.

As every day leads to every night

I gather up my life & wander on.

 

The owl wakes me again this darkling morning. She must have found my window alluring, yet there are no trees behind me at all. She sits, perhaps, on the crest of the warehouse roof, or upon a rung of the antenna tower. Her call is soft but urgent.

I protest: it’s too early! But I shift in my narrow bed & stretch my toes out straight. Would I climb with them to her perch if I could?

She has been silent up till now. She has eaten the mice in the storage yard; whence her eye fixed on my window to whoo-whoo to. She is calm, insistent, steady in her calls for me to waken.

But what will I do with such a cold morning? Too dark it is for even a streamer of dawn bringing light. I want to keep my eyes closed, listening. I cannot regather the shreds of sleep for wishing a dream. I rise & tuck my chill into a shawl.

I pad downstairs to a silent kitchen, flick on a nightlight. I pull everything out of the cabinets & begin to rearrange the contents by its sparse illumination. First, all the sauces are put together, the tuna stacked up. I take inventory to attend to restocking later: two cans of mismatched beans, a package of stiff spaghetti. I seek a pen & pad to make a list.

Dropping the emptied, crackling bags into the trash, I return to the counter to use up the last of my empty honey jars, a medium for the Farro, a small for the Panko, a large for the unsalted pistachios (how can everything end in an “o” this morning?)

I open boxes of teabags to place these into the big jug on the lazy susan. I pull out the frozen chicken to have it defrost by Sunday dinner.

I wet the sponge & blot the spills of grain. The coffee is ready now, its aromatic heat a blessing to a half-waked brain.

Last night I washed my laundry late. Returning upstairs, I fold & sort & in the sleepy darkness, put away the clothes. The dreams of my neighbors brush up against my silent walls. I feel their steady breaths over my feet, along the floor.

My house is tidy, tucked up & softly gleaming in the streetlamp’s outside glow. The owl has gone quiet, has her morning winged away?

I’ve made the bed but eye it in longing. As a meal unfinished, that last dream awaits.