this morning my eyes were narrow on the wrinkles of an old page, lines and smudges.. notes in the spaces, scribbles and mania...
black hair. too long. white shirt. dingy gray jeans. dirty white tennis shoes. two bags full on a picnic bench type table in front of a University computer library--if a place without books can still be called a library. back to the man. or is he a boy? not sure, his back is to me. brown sachel or suitcase looking thing that looks like worn leather, but can't be genuine, sitting to his immediate left--of course, there isn't room to his right, he's virtually blocked himself in--a smaller, new black and purple tote bag on the table, mouth agape at the foot of the man's left elbow. the boy, or young man, his yawning supplicants surrounding him, and his too long hair sits hunched over an unseen textbook. the bottom of a white socked foot slips out of his loose-laced sneaker, they've become like slip-on pumps or tattered bedroom slippers--at least that's what it seems they've become under this man's care. forehead and face in hands. hands gripping hair, frustrated. there is a logo at his back that makes me think he's a computer person. he does not face me, but the exercise makes me bold enough to take a seat at a facing table, to get a better view. and now, i really see. he wears glasses but has taken them off, put them aside, of course his eyes must be tired. his hands simultaneously hold his head up, his eyes open and his too long hair away from his face. he has a mustache. dark hair, black hair, lightly pigmented--he must be cold. what might he be reading? god who cares. the way he's sitting you'd think it was tenth week and on the cusp of the funal weekend. you can almost hear him, to himself. there's no time, there's just no time anymore, just no time. unmoved by the mild commotion of the passionate couple at his back and the scratching of my jumping pen. he looks like the kind of man, or boy, to take naps in the fetal position. i think he had hoped that this very spot would afford better chance for him to concentrate. yes, i think, hes drawn to the outdoors much more than he likes to admit--though that bit may in fact be more myself than him. projection, you see, sometimes calls for this. but going back to him again i see now again that computers are going to be his livlihood because it is what he does well. it is what is now, fast, immediate--and perhaps in that way this makes him present, or to at least appear present, in his own life. feeling he can only be innovative, important and responsive to the incandescent beaming of his rectangle screen. he wishes he were reading whitman perhaps or instead of the dry material lying like a cloudy-eyed cadaver. his own eyes are tired, they sting a little from over-use and, of course, from the cold he hadn't quite expected of this california life. he reamins hovering over the book with a half-crazed look spreading across the backdrop of his face. he goes unnoticed. only on the verge of snapping into an erratic fit. he wants to quit but he can't. he wants to close the book, walk over to the snack kiosk and buy a hot cup of something that will inevitably burn the tip of his tongue. get him, in the middle of the woods someday, camping alone because no one elses school/work schedule matches his. get him, sweating in the tent the whole time out on account of the ghost stories he'd read to himself by ity-bity-book-light. get him, crying into the krylon material the very first night. sobbing over undercooked pasta for one.
but then again, maybe thats all just me and my imagination?
anyway i found the whole thing to be rather uninteresting because my description was uninteresting because I am uninteresting. you see? uninteresting and not a writer so i should just resign myself to really becoming an editor. because those who can't do, or in this case write (anything vibrant and marvelous), edit.
gah! i can't even be clear enough in my insults to myself!
start over again. i'm going to start over again because i must.. because i'm compelled to it somehow. only this time i will blindfold myself from man and train my eyes on something for which i'd only really begun to see when i took Professor Yip's course on landscape poetry. i always had trouble concentrating just on the scene of nature before me. i always had to make my way through so much nonsense from the physical form. it was always such a challenge. but i love challenge, so here i shall attempt to let fly my cares and sink myself back into the seeing eye.
photographed by adlaw
so much begins with me here, looking out, saddled with an inability to move with immediacy to that kind of beauty which is abundant and humbling. my mind must first go through the unattractive stumbling of searching for the right words, the appropriate meaning, the perfect setting, the inspired mood. i feel its all rubbish, that way of getting close and speaking of--? fleeting life? no. i rise too far above myself now. keep calm, i say, keep calm and look carefully, fall forward unashamed of the fall.you see, mahogany, i'm told is here. this is a photograph of a place in the world where that type of wood is grown--protected perhaps.
and so when i think of it, other concepts come to mind. strength, elegance, durability. but the concepts cannot touch the dark wood or the firm roots that hold--so perfect, enviably.
a flat gray road intrudes on the scene. a small highway, yet unpeopled when the snap is taken, lying as a rigid reminder of fixed paths that must or that will come and go--advancing and retreating always in unseen directions. the trees leaves and colors cannot know, the roots cannot know.....
just as quickly as it came, the connection is snapped in two. i've lost my mood and my concentration and now whats left is excuses or the rest of the day. i really must wake up earlier. i'd get more done that way.
that is all for now.. until later.. when theres a better opportunity to sort it all through.
17:16 - Thursday, Apr. 21, 2005
Recent entries:
oday.html">the 3 month countdown begins - 05 May 2018
anothrburst.html">another burst - this used to be my playground
newlife.html">begin at the beginning. - 10 April 2008
moody.html">a blanket for a bad mood under the sun. - 25 March 2007
emilludwig.html">...kissing a fool... - 05 December 2006
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