Maureen And Her Baby

In March of 2010, I sat beside the bed of my aunt Maureen, holding her limp hand, still warm with life, tears streaming down my eyes. "Go ahead, you can say what you want to her," my Aunt Cathy softly suggested. "She won't respond, but she can definitely hear you." I tried not to cry too much, not to let all my emotion come flooding out. "I love you," I barely squeaked out, choking on my words. "It's okay." My sister and brother stood behind me, both tearful, my sister rubbing my shoulders. Aunt Maureen lay on her side, her face half buried into her pillow. The last time I had seen her, she had looked somewhat normal; now she seemed a shell of her former self, her body thinned and deteriorated, crippled by cancer. Her hair was mangled and twisted. She breathed oxygen into her nose through clear tubes, making a faint sighing noise each time she gently exhaled. How could this happen? So quickly? I quickly realized how fragile our bodies really are; simply vehicles for our inner selves. I had a conversation with my aunt Maureen that day, though I was the only who spoke audibly. I felt her closed eyes, the wrinkles that had developed across her face, the warmth of the blood flowing through her body, speaking to me. She knew those who loved her were with her, and would always be. And she said to me, "I love you too."

Eight months later, I was in my aunt Maureen's house, celebrating thanksgiving with her husband, her sons and daughters, her grandchildren, her nieces and nephews. Her son, Brian, and his wife Ricca had named their newly born baby 'Maureen' in honor of his mother. I sat on the floor the morning after thanksgiving, feeling delirious due to lack of sleep (long story). And in came Brian and Ricca, with their son Brody and baby Maureen. I turned towards Maureen in her tiny little baby carrier, holding my hand out. Her eye instantly caught mine, and her small fingers slowly wrapped around mine, warm with life and smooth with youth. She gurgled and spit, incomprehensible babbles that somehow translated perfectly and were understood by my senses. I smiled, knowing for sure that my aunt Maureen had a hand in guiding this child to life; it was her baby, the next soul that had been designated to flourish in aunt Maureen's wake. A beautiful head of healthy black hair covered Maureen's head, which I ran my fingers through and marveled at the beauty of life. This death, and this birth. It all had meaning, and it was all a part of me and my soul. Thank creation for that.

The Door Gods

Joni and the Dream. Who knows what the future holds?

18th... 26th...30th...

In order to see it, you've got to believe it. I do.

Eight Albums Of Note

Ice Worlds

These two will spend most of their lives wandering alone through the frozen landscape.

The Last Normal Year

--- "Humans have minds which constantly struggle, learn and adjust to their environment in an effort to survive and thrive. The patterns of survival become part of the mind itself and are known to the sentient human and his associates as personality. This is the ego, the self with which we identify. But because this phenomenon is organically based, it ceases to exist when the material body dies. The Urantia Papers propose that there also exists a fragment of the Creator — a pure spirit — which, because it has no environmental challenges, has no personality. They call this entity the Thought Adjuster and it is similar to our concept of “soul”. The goal of human existence is then to transfer our personality to the Adjuster so that we can survive physical death and continue eternity in the Universe as personalized spirits. This is achieved by living according to patterns of behavior and thought which make our personality compatible with the evolving personality of the Creator. If we achieve fusion with our Adjuster we will be assigned to other duties in the realm — perhaps serving as guardians for other material beings who are attempting to fuse. The whole scheme of life is devoted to serving the Creator and helping to evolve the grand personality of the Creator spirit — in essence, making the word become flesh."

--- "Above everything stands one force alone. We call it the CREATION. It regulates the laws over all–the life and death of everything in the universe, because it is everything in the universe. Real spirituality comes from the understanding of the laws of nature—the natural working of cause and effect—each contributing to, and sharing with all. When you indulge in ritual and ceremony real spirit pines away until it is gone. A spiritually developed being, as a part of creation, acknowledges creation in all things, even the smallest microbe, and leading a creative life causes fears and doubts to vanish like rain before the sun…wisdom is the mark of a human who has recognized the existence of his spirit and works with it according to the Creational laws. By creative thinking man acquires knowledge and wisdom and a sense of unlimited strength, which unbinds him from the limitations of convention and dogma… One can never identify God separately from creation because God itself is a part of it."

--- "Transcendence is commonly associated with the rising sun (and thus the compass direction of east), an ascension to the boundless emptiness of space, a journey into the upperworld, a union with the light - conversing with angels or the ascended masters."

--- "The soul path is often associated with the setting sun (and thus the direction of west), the descent to our earthly roots, into the wildness of the soil and the soul, a journey into the underworld, a voyage into the darkness or shadow as in the apparent destination of the sun as it sinks below the western horizon."

--- "This was my life and these were my friends
This was my process, in an occidental course
Right back to myself

These were my parents, firing truth
Fingers through sleeves about my youth
“Run and don’t look back”

Chasing the setting sun
They burn our eyes out, one by one
Oh God, the killing’s done

I must stay to see this end
The very last letter I could send
Would say
“For this time I’ve loved you!”

--- November 18th, 2010 --- November 22nd, 2010 --- November 26th, 2010 ---

Dark Mechanic

He knelt at the rusty hanger door, cloak brushing against the mud. He pressed his ear ever so gently against the metal, listening for signs of movement within the warehouse. The sky was bright yellow and fading into a mustardy hue, and as large shadows developed across the area, he disappeared along the dark side of the structure.

But suddenly he was all too visible. A blinding light swept across the perimeter and he was knocked off his feet. A deafening explosion shook the ground as the wall of the warehouse blew outward with incredible force. He covered his head with his arms, protecting himself from the fireball that followed, laced with plasma-colored cords of lightning. As the ranger felt the heat across his back, fire burning through his cloak, he was suddenly shocked into a contorted, rigid position. A stray lighting cord had shot through his spine and caused him to convulse further and further into the dirt.

The ranger, still in searing pain, turned and looked through the mass of smoke as it sifted through the large blasted facade. There were several clanks in succession, footsteps of something large and hulking, something menacing and ruthless. The smoke cleared, and the largest battle suit the ranger had ever seen stepped through the rubble, bright white eyes glowing in the now black evening.

A wave of realization came over him. "The Dark Mechanic..."

The Skeleton (Occident-Prone)

The way that we are and the way that we could have been have intertwined
And the weight of their world, and the gravity of all this loss, is crashing down
Well, what if I hadn't set this plan into motion?
Preoccupied with broken continents and boiling oceans?



................................................... When a Hunting Knife is All I Care to Save, Each and Every Life Will Fall Beneath the Blade..........................................................

Song I Ever Heard

I love South Africa

Six - Shooter

I. Personal Myth

Where does the day go after the adventure is through? We faced the bluffs and the breakers, dried in the sun and cracked in the sands. Bring me somewhere green, somewhere lush, where life overruns life and I will be fed back into the earth. There's enough to explore, and enough to breathe. Your beauty and your cheekbones cause me to cry, but my tears are my strength. I am the only one inside, and the only one who sees you. When the world ends, I will be the only one who leaves.



II. Habit of Dirt

Wine is poured out of the glass and into the soil. Sour and sweet into the eyes, splitting the joyful. All of the children are here with me, clutching their dresses and caps with bony fingers. After these few years, this isolated time, their presence still lingers. Amongst the leaves and the vines and the corpses of swine, the pigs who knew not of the human soul. Is this a prison or the kingdom of a god? Where would most benefit the kids that I once knew? The weeds and the weather and the woe is all the world sees now. Let's go behind the scenes.



III. Lobotomy To - Go

You are my avatar. You remove my mind and feed me screamers. I adore your winks and your spindly legs, the segments of your body impossibly connected with arrogance. I remember when I first met you! I spilled out of the saloon with six-shooters blaring, kicking and screaming as you dragged me around. Stop, you horse-drawn carriage! Stop, you insignificant midwife! Stop, you filthy peddler! The Blackness is here, standing amongst you! All drop at once. All the sands and structures fall away. The sky skitters away. Laughing, you toss me up and my stomach turns over. The spinal cord is out and the vertebrae are constricting wrists like hand cuffs. This is my new life and my new death; I have to forget about all of my loves and all of my children.



IV. The Western Gothic Epic

I was present on the day that Theodore Roosevelt and Susan Atkins married. They tied the knot and leapt straight into the deep end. He became so well read after that day, building castles with stone blocks as large as cities; once he had read how to do something, he would spring into action like a giddy schoolboy. She slowly faded away from him, her fantasies taking over, and as is inevitable, atrocity followed. She wasted away in the dark hues and drowned in the cries of an unborn child, while he broke through the ceiling into heavens of bright red, yellow, and violet. They divorced, as everyone expected. I met with Susan one October day, and she kicked around the leaves, sobbing. She said, "I regret this life so much." I never met Theodore, because he died suddenly in a freak zeppelin accident, in the spring of 2079. Sources say that when the fires finally died out at the crash site, there was a large black spot in the shape of a human heart burned into the ground where his body had been. The very same year, when the last Native American on Earth passed away, I attended the joint funeral; Susan was there, arms around all my loves and all my children. The whole country was there at the ceremony, and we all stood around the six-foot hole in the ground as the earth shook and fissures opened up, exasperated and angry. That year a mountain was formed in Ohio. Nobody knows how or why it happened, but it became the largest mountain in the world, spanning from Indiana to Pennsylvania and climbing to the upper reaches of our atmosphere. Ms. Atkins made it her mission to scale this peak, but disappeared from memory two years short of reaching the summit. Sometimes I travel there to her grave, 908,000 feet up, and start to cry. Crying is not the best idea at that altitude, as I'm sure you can imagine, and every time I just barely manage to get off the peak without suffocating. I used to think the world was going to end in 2012; I can't believe I was ever that naive!



V. Championing the Earth's Faults

Let's stay in bed all day. I just want to feel you next to me; can you believe yourself for leaving me? Everything is so sleek in this facility! White washed walls, black steel flowing, reflections in every peripheral glance! But now I have to leave on this ship, and it breaks my heart to know that you're not going to make it. You ride a motorbike to the top of this forested hill and I can honestly say that I've never seen you sexier. On the verge of death, all hope lost and fishtailing the dirt into the face of oblivion. I have to go now, though. The council demands it. Maybe one day in the future you will find me with your ghost hair glinting, in a time when I have become a ruthless tyrant slaying everyone in my wake, like the swine that I am. But for now, all I want to do is cry and kiss you, cry and kiss you. "I do love you." "I love you too. Goodnight."


VI. I Admit the Mosaic

Is not a mosaic all we really ever have to offer? A snapshot of the mind and yet another; never truly knowing what you want, or what you feel. Some people, some moments, some events feel important. But one merely has to wave their hand into the curtain to see that it easily folds and reveals The Blackness behind. My avatar crawls with my loves on its back and my children in its arms! So, I will play in the weeds. I will bask in the weather. I will welcome the woe. I am simply me, born free and waiting for hope. Let's go behind the scenes! Let's go behind the leaves!

Traffic Patterns

We were walking on the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday and I realized how beautiful and mesmerizing the flow of cars was on either side of the pedestrian walkway. I think Sufjan Stevens had picked up on this sort of magical feeling when he wrote the BQE and composed an amazing film to match the music. It's amazing to see beauty in the most unlikely places.

I'm Obsessed With Death

Now, what are your concerns?

Well, I mean, I like life, so... if you're obsessed with death... that's just sort of a clash right there.

Sah-No-Dai

Staff, Faculty and Students:

Good morning, this is Jay Hickey from the Department of Human Resources and it is 5:15 am, on Wednesday, February 10, 2010.

The following information pertains to the STORRS campus. Staff and Students at the regional campuses and Law School should check with their appropriate designees for the status of their campus.

Due to inclement weather, all morning, afternoon and evening classes are cancelled. Classes will resume tomorrow morning, Thursday, February 11, 2010 as scheduled.

All “Emergency Support Services” are required to report as scheduled. “Non-Emergency Support Services” are not required to report to work today, Wednesday, February 10, 2010.

Please continue to check the website, voicemail or the media for any changes to this announcement.

Please drive safely. Thank you.

It's The Word

You ain't artsier than me, cus you speak real soft and you drink chai tea.

Adventure - ING

When I think of a passion fruit
The juices are powerful
Roiling outward through the cracks
In my concrete mind
You said they tasted bitter
But loved the taste of brine

You could live on the underside of the vessel
Your hair pulled by the tide
And as I sliced your father open
The sea was opened wide
Swallowed you whole
Wallow no more

You could never expect this
A shot, a duck, a miss
And as much as daring is charisma
Save me a ration when you get there
And as much as trying ends in dying
Save me the image of living

Big Red Machine

I was thinking today about the music I will be listening to when I have children. I love so much of the music that my parents listened to when I was little, and it blows my mind to think that I'll be able to share the beauty of my favorite music with my kids. Sometimes I get the feeling that my parents don't quite appreciate things like that as much as I do; the fact that their son has absorbed and loved and experienced and shared the sounds they grew up with.

I think I appreciate and feel much about certain things in life like this, but never articulate those inner thoughts. I guess in this blog I could try to do that.