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Archive for April, 2012

I was in a bar dancing, and on the wall was a lovely picture of a sunset in which the light from the sun created a reflection on the ocean that looked like a bridge to eternity. The concept for this next story began thus.

I’ll be out of town next week. New story should be up on the 7th or so of May. Enjoy!

Forward

As I sat listening to the waves on the beach, staring at the rolling of the waves, experiencing my own breath in rhythm with the rest of life pulsing around me, I of course was thinking only of her. She was there before I could breathe, but it was when I looked at her, finally, that I could. And as I inhaled, and the waves rolled in, and I considered myself in unison with the rest of what created life, I thus considered that the thought of her created my ability to live; created a reason for me to harmonize with the song that was always playing.

Discordance was myself in relation to the rest before I realized I could modulate to coincide; I hated the distortion I created too much to notice that it was I creating it, and that if I concentrated even slightly, I could likewise attune as naturally I found myself dissident.

And now was the call of gulls, the in and out of the waves, the breath of the wind feeding the breath in my chest, which I sat silently observing as it served to paint the picture of her face in the place in me where life felt most complete. And as I opened my eyes the sun was descending, soon to be set. The rays touched water, and the closer down it came the longer the strip of light on the water from horizon ever-closer to where wave met sand.

Still above the water, the sun did reflect finally to the farthest bit of water in front of which I held my feet as the edge of the end of the wave reached out as far as it could to touch me. As a light-reflecting edge came millimeters away from my toes, I stepped forward to feel the cool of Mother Ocean, and, to my surprise, did not sink the fraction of a centimeter below the sea and into the sand, but stood upon the spot where light reflected on water. As wave rolled out I almost lost my balance as I was carried back toward the ocean on top of the tide across the sands below. And likewise I was rolled back out as the next waves broke forward. So, I took a step upon the light on the water.

Not knowing what else to do, I ran forward on the light, I could not believe it! Several feet into the ocean, upon the tops of the waves, I looked around. I squatted and felt the water beside me where light did not reflect as vividly and my hand passed into the water. Rising again I dipped there my toe into the water, then back onto the light. Looking out before me, I saw a strip of luminescence directly ahead leading on into the ocean, and seemingly straight toward the sun. I ran forward with joy in my heart.

A friend once told me he saw a rose in place of the sun during a sunset in which he began his sojourn away from his own objection to his life. Running forward, I thought I saw something similar as I ran somewhere as a natural continuation to a journey once begun from the air I found easily in my lungs where once it had not been before. After much running upon the light toward the object that sustained all life from itself unrepentantly, I decided to take my time and stroll upon the path laid before me. I did not know where this path would lead, I did not know how long I would be upon it. What I did know was how happy I was to move toward the light in a way apparently not offered often, and that I was blessed enough to experience such a thing for myself.

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As I was pondering what I wanted to write, it occured to me that I simply didn’t have the time to invest in the fullness of a thought if I wanted to sleep. So, here is a meditation in accordance . . .

A Short Story

Picking up his pen he considered his own imagination and the stories he wanted to tell. He reflected briefly on her smile, of course, that which motivated the breath in his lungs, let alone the lifting of his pen. Then he considered his idea for tales at the moment; entering a picture into eternity, a surrealistic rendition of illness, the beats of the drums he listened to in the background, the internal struggle between that which he found himself of and that which he wanted to be . . .

He decided on a prosaic poem that blurred the lines between that which would be created, that which might be created, all that had come before to create the possibilities, and the form itself the indecision in his mind took; he decided that a practice of any kind was superior to the atrophy of the possibility of what might be, even if nothing in particular was created as a result. Whether anyone would read he did not know, but decided that if he didn’t tell that story of his self, there may come a time when he would never give the opportunity for anymore to be read. He decided that in the moment of creating his self, in that moment others’ perceptions didn’t matter so much then as they would later, that if he were to give them a chance then, he must work as ever he could now.

So, he let his mind flow to the page free of the constraints of coherent story, and the energy needed to bind together a tale accordingly. He let his mind work unbound with his hands that his heart may have the opportunities to bind specificity to the minds of others in future tense. He breathed and thought of his breath, and its meaning; he thought that by his breath he’d rather make any effort toward what he’d have the energy to accomplish before long than waste the breath he was given by the grace of her recollection alone. He was grateful to type up next to nothing for his own sake, and perhaps the sake of anyone else even if by happenstance, than nothing at all.

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As the title suggests, this week, a quick dialogue about meaning in existence. Enjoy!

42

“Whatcha lookin’ for?”

“The meaning of life.”

“Oh, that’s easy, it’s 42.”

“Yeah sure; it’s easy if you know the question.”

“You mean what’s nine times six?”

“Look, I’m serious.”

“So am I; you haven’t found any meaning in your life?”

“What, personal meaning? That’s kind of vague isn’t it? I mean, what does that have to do with why I exist?”

“It doesn’t. It has to do with whether or not your life has meaning . . .”

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A simple little story in honor of the holiday.

April Fool

Ned lit up a cigar; it exploded. One of his teeth flew from his mouth and put the eye out of a man laughing hysterically at the other end of the room. Ned couldn’t help but laugh when the one-eyed man acquiesced to paying his dental bill without Ned even having to mention the word “litigation;” it was a word the man had already considered after being sent home once having the eye containing Ned’s tooth scraped out of his head. Ned, it seemed, had been an April victim, but not the fool of this prank.

The, now, one-eyed man had fancied himself something of an inventor, and after watching an old black-and-white movie mid-March, he figured he could put an old classic to practical use on the international day of jest. In, at least the cigar Ned had received, he clearly had over-shot the gun powder, and was more than a bit relieved that everyone else at the party had turned down the other cigars despite them all selling for more than five dollars a piece.

Three weeks after the party, an hour or two after writing Ned a check for the full amount of the dental work in relation to Ned’s front tooth, he sat before the New York Philharmonic’s rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture on PBS with a glass of scotch in one hand, and reached into his box of more-than-five dollar cigars with the other.

Even Ned did not laugh when he read the article on the front page of the town newspaper the next day. He just shook his head at the irony that the one-eyed man hadn’t thrown away the loaded cigars he had placed above the box of un-tampered cigars still unopened beneath it. The headline read, “Tragic April Fool,” and Ned was now grateful more so than ever that the fool never was he.

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