![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
more than this.
Apr. 27th, 2005 04:40 pmi woke up and the world outside was dark
all so quiet before the dawn
This morning's commute was a change-up. Instead of taking a short bus ride and a longer train ride, I opted for the longer bus ride all the way to the East, and then a train rumbling and shimmying south. There are industrial corridors and housing projects and enclaves of new developments. Sometimes the new stuff is yuppiedom in fresh brick and cookie cutter luxury. Other times, it's scattered site housing. The sun was bright. It's been coming on with a springy fierceness as of late. My bleary head can't quite make sense of it, even though I theoretically enjoy the hell out of it.
more than this
more than this
so much more than this
there is something else there
The world is wide and open, here on the train. The possibilities are dancing over the heads of the rigid, almost sour commuters around me. I can feel the lake to my left, and I can see humidity lifting out of the air as the sun rises.
I still get teary-eyed when I can see the skyline off in the distance. There was a moment on the bus, passing over a branch of the Chicago River, where I looked up and out and saw downtown sprawling away in its usual blue-grey manner, and there were clouds, heavy and well-defined, stretching in a line from East to West, the large cumulus formations dark and steely. The line touching the west end of the huddled skyscrapers gave the feeling of lift and size that seems so Midwestern to me. "Here there be cornfields, just follow the trail of clouds ..."
oh then it's alright
when with every day another bit falls away
oh but its still alright, alright, alright
and like words together we can make some sense
The solitude I literally, physically have in my life is not entirely unwelcome, although I've probably spent more than my fair share writing on paper about my reactions to it, and what it all Means. There is a new language, a new sense of moving, a feeling of self-protection, a re-defining of art and expression and independence. A measurement in hands, in horses, in centimeters, in seconds and minutes and entire months.
I was sent a book of poetry today by one of the players of Project Mu, and the poems have what she called an 'inevitability' about them that I find oddly comforting. It is what it is: this life. Even with its sadness and grime perceived betrayal wicked twists of logic angry words political sneakiness tantamount to utter frustration -- the poems contain the simple identification of a situation, without personal commentary (clinging, grasping) - that I find refreshing. Suddenly, you've given yourself the blank slate - an open world like a train car clattering along at 7:15 AM. Attach your perspective later, when your breath has slowed, and your heart stops hammering.
beyond the stars
with my head so full
so full of fractured pictures
and i'm all there
right next to you
This world is so much bigger than you and your experiences. You just have to do the best you can. Fingers flexed and curved around that chain you wear. Perfumed analogy; deliberate misunderstanding. Many many bodies pressed into an elevated train, each experience laden with light and with specific context. Too much for me to ever hold it all. Never to hold me, in wrecking Tokyo or in endless hours of jet-lagged insomnia thousands of miles from here, in mossy blue early morning or in monte cristos on a Sunday afternoon or in slow-dancing to "Sleepwalk" ... These days, I am gleaning the shine, incubating my reason. There is no way for you to ever get every last bit, to lay claim, to presume.
The very best tend not to, anyway.
more than this
more than this
more than this
more than this
all so quiet before the dawn
This morning's commute was a change-up. Instead of taking a short bus ride and a longer train ride, I opted for the longer bus ride all the way to the East, and then a train rumbling and shimmying south. There are industrial corridors and housing projects and enclaves of new developments. Sometimes the new stuff is yuppiedom in fresh brick and cookie cutter luxury. Other times, it's scattered site housing. The sun was bright. It's been coming on with a springy fierceness as of late. My bleary head can't quite make sense of it, even though I theoretically enjoy the hell out of it.
more than this
more than this
so much more than this
there is something else there
The world is wide and open, here on the train. The possibilities are dancing over the heads of the rigid, almost sour commuters around me. I can feel the lake to my left, and I can see humidity lifting out of the air as the sun rises.
I still get teary-eyed when I can see the skyline off in the distance. There was a moment on the bus, passing over a branch of the Chicago River, where I looked up and out and saw downtown sprawling away in its usual blue-grey manner, and there were clouds, heavy and well-defined, stretching in a line from East to West, the large cumulus formations dark and steely. The line touching the west end of the huddled skyscrapers gave the feeling of lift and size that seems so Midwestern to me. "Here there be cornfields, just follow the trail of clouds ..."
oh then it's alright
when with every day another bit falls away
oh but its still alright, alright, alright
and like words together we can make some sense
The solitude I literally, physically have in my life is not entirely unwelcome, although I've probably spent more than my fair share writing on paper about my reactions to it, and what it all Means. There is a new language, a new sense of moving, a feeling of self-protection, a re-defining of art and expression and independence. A measurement in hands, in horses, in centimeters, in seconds and minutes and entire months.
I was sent a book of poetry today by one of the players of Project Mu, and the poems have what she called an 'inevitability' about them that I find oddly comforting. It is what it is: this life. Even with its sadness and grime perceived betrayal wicked twists of logic angry words political sneakiness tantamount to utter frustration -- the poems contain the simple identification of a situation, without personal commentary (clinging, grasping) - that I find refreshing. Suddenly, you've given yourself the blank slate - an open world like a train car clattering along at 7:15 AM. Attach your perspective later, when your breath has slowed, and your heart stops hammering.
beyond the stars
with my head so full
so full of fractured pictures
and i'm all there
right next to you
This world is so much bigger than you and your experiences. You just have to do the best you can. Fingers flexed and curved around that chain you wear. Perfumed analogy; deliberate misunderstanding. Many many bodies pressed into an elevated train, each experience laden with light and with specific context. Too much for me to ever hold it all. Never to hold me, in wrecking Tokyo or in endless hours of jet-lagged insomnia thousands of miles from here, in mossy blue early morning or in monte cristos on a Sunday afternoon or in slow-dancing to "Sleepwalk" ... These days, I am gleaning the shine, incubating my reason. There is no way for you to ever get every last bit, to lay claim, to presume.
The very best tend not to, anyway.
more than this
more than this
more than this
more than this
