Building Bridges

This time I choose. I am awake

to the arched cacophony  inside my soul.

Lately I’ve seen them,

the bridges that span

the length of my river,

suite of connections,

chosen unconsciously,

perfectly honed.

This is the place

my quantum constructs:

my external interface,

harmonic filters

that stretch between

the banks of duality.

My soul flows under,

between and most gorgeously,

flexibly, silkenly,

power directed

by exquisite arches,

superimposed

on each other to weave

the most intricate pleasure of living.

Romancing Alone

I am always surprised about people's definition of romance. Perhaps we are all in thrall to the Valentine card makers, or we just don't see beyond the "significant other" we choose. Yes, love is romantic. But the reason is it romantic is that it implies risk - will she love me if, will he love me as much if I, can I commit to a relationship with. . . it is about how much you risk by giving your heart.

For me, there is nothing more romantic than roaming a new city, relying on my own reflexes, enticing my own instincts. What will I do in a situation that I can't imagine? How will I respond to the beauty of Venice or the antiquities of Prague or the history of Paris? Is the moon different in Seville than Minneapolis? Would the people in Oxford care that I don't have a PhD?

Romance is the most open, sensual, seeking soul's mode when the answers are not pat. When you don't know what will happen; when the rules are unclear. When the road runs forward beneath your feet and you follow to see what will happen, the sun on your face and the moon behind your shoulder. Forward to new experience that will satisfy your need to know, your need to learn, and your need to expand your universe.  This beyond all is the stuff of my dreams.

Dreaming Disaster

I have had several dreams where reality was explicitly a joke, a scam, a seeming reality created for different purposes, as in The Sting where one man’s reality is created to get his money, as in the Matrix where humans were all scammed for the money. Always such dreams have me believing I am in big trouble that generates great emotion, and in the end there is the relief and even comedy of it all being a game after all. These out-of-time dreams seem very familiar to me, an old joke I had forgotten, great relief at understanding the truth again that reality is not what we think it is. We are not what we seem. 

The last time I had such a dream of adventure, it was about separation from my daughter. She and I were secret agents or some such, running from the bad guys and playing Indiana Jones through a big mechanical building with a huge pool. I showed her tricks and she showed me tricks and we outran the bullets together. It was high fun.

More recently I dreamed a big party that I was giving in our home. It was me giving it -  and everyone from my whole life seemed to be invited. The House (that didn't look like my house but was) was done to the nines with a huge pyre in the middle of the living room upon which were dozens of stones that were being heated to the right temp for the big finale, not that I knew what that was going to be! The pyre was made of a huge pile of interesting stuff, stuff collected presumably by me throughout my life. The walls were also covered with stuff, interesting and lovely stuff, and I was decorating the few blank spaces with my friend. Worried that the hot stones would fire up too soon, I asked my son and his heavy metal band friends, dressed in their robes, to carefully remove them to the yard until we needed to put them back later at a certain time for the big grand finale. They were doing that while enormous numbers of people were arriving and milling, and I told my closest friends that I had a big surprise for them, and we would sneak out while the boys were busy with their task and have a look at it.

Out we went and drove in a car to a futuristic looking entrance to a new party experience, a trip aboard a monster space ship to a place off the earth. There were men in space suits at the entrance, selling us on the experience, and we took the tour with many others. Outside the space ship, there was another, huger device, like a gigantic moving dock made of oval-shaped pods and put together like molecules that gravitated around the ship.  Once on board the space ship, huge and something like a dirigible inside, there came pouring in all the people from our party. They had followed us, except for the boys who were left tending the stones. We had a great time for a while and watched the giant pod thing through the windows, when there was some kind of awful emergency and people panicked, smoke and flame everywhere. My decorating friend and I tried to get ourselves home only to find that most of the tourists had fled ahead of us and had taken all the cars – there was no way home for 33 of us – I counted our people among the others stuck there, and anxiety levels began to rise. There was no way off the ship and we were going to miss the big grand finale at my party. The tension was extremely strong being locked in a space ship away from the earth, the proportions as in a disaster movie. 

Then, one of our group had been skulking around investigating and discovered by falling through a window that the whole off-the-earth thing was a hoax, that they had manipulated gravity so that it felt like we were somewhere else but that in truth you could just walk outside and leave, go back through the main entrance. That the whole experience was misdirection, even though the devices were magnificent. Like Star Wars magnificent. Like Las Vegas magnificent.

I woke up during the last part of this dream and began to think about it to remember it, so I never got back to my party, never found out what the big finale was. But the coherence of the dream seemed to be significant – I thought it would make a great movie, the moral of which would be to examine your assumptions (which were sold to us by the people marketing the ride) when disaster strikes. Perhaps it only seems like disaster, while the quantum world continues to move in greased grooves.

 

Happy Birthday Emma Jayne

I am baking a birthday cake for my granddaughter this morning. Silver Fox asked me how many birthday cakes do I think I have baked and you know, the number is vast! Another thing to admire about growing older - the size of your portfolio:) Happy Birthday Emma Jayne!!!

Glitter Dome

Each time I wake in this vast museum

I’m gobsmacked, amazed, dazed and driven

to choose from the endless aisles of artifacts.

Curator once again of a life.

Arranged by time, the room that I am

currently born to is rife with beauties,

full of action, only a fraction

of which I can use, can choose.

Ships for relations, buildings to decorate,

lovely prizes of music and art,

and climate and context and sadness and passion

to walk this road through time.

As babies we wake here and gape overwhelmed,

grabbing by handfuls what twinkles and shines,

eyes fixed shortsighted on glamour or show,

disarmed by confusion and mute.

Toddlers at least have themes or memes

to cloak with experience, dress with time,

artifacts suited to sort out futures,

stories that tell your direction

Each new day brings a golden perspective

gained from the diorama you built

from the last room you woke in, focus bespoken

by treasures as far as the eye could see.

Not that it matters. Every artifact

gives up its history, enhances your story,

fills your exhibit with lessons of value

your thirsty soul rolls into wisdom.

Taking Time

Sometimes in the pulling and hauling

I must be still, not planning, not weighing,

not saying my choices from internal voices

but scanning instead the incoming wavelengths,

the fruits of my labors returning their flavors

for my fabulation and pleasure.

No pressure to move, to achieve, to decide;

a place to inhale and react to each scent

with full focus, savoring silver cords,

sounding my bells, rounding my eyes 

at incoming corners, far away

from the many paths not yet travelled.

This is my time to refresh, restore,

revisit the reasons I move down those paths

with exhausting passion: sifting my options,

planting incentives, inventing the future,

setting directions sponged up in the stillness

that gathers my core of intent.