A leg, a breeze, or something hackneyed, a chirp, a leg in the breeze. We wait months for this moment of rebirth, of spring's return from the dead, and it comes not with circumstance, but with accidental intent. The first community boaters of the year are on the Charles River, and it hits, that spring has been with us for a week and a half. A birthday gift that arrives late, a nice memory we think actually happened.
That's the trick of the season, though: spring never died at all. It just found a place to settle down, take a rest, and show up like a lost child who wasn't lost at all, just playing hide-and-seek.
And we, the victims of this prank? We're pissed off and we're angry and we're embarrassed that we fell for it again. Then, as an innocent leg passes on a dangerous breeze as a lovely devil chirps, we're thankful to live through a horrible season of silence so that the next, the joy of words, awakes.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Rodomontade
"In 1990 mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which operates America's unmanned interplanetary space probes, noticed something odd happen to a Jupiter-bound craft, Galileo. As it was flung around the Earth in what is known as a slingshot manoeuvre, Galileo picked up more velocity than expected. Not much. Four millimetres a second, to be precise."--"Wanted: Einstein Jr," The Economist
The article went on to note that some scientists that monitored JPL's other unmanned craft, regardless of mission, are reporting the same phenomenon--a slight change in speed, unexplained by gravity, inertia, or any of the known forces of the universe. A craft should be going at X speed, and something, some thing, it knocks what was once perfection and predictability subtly out of place. Just like Einstein did to Newton, and Newton did to the Bible. Who will do this to Einstein and his physics?
Four millimeters, whether faster or slower, matters. But my thoughts are more terrestrial, as children are ever more a part of a once-solo life, and thoughts of the next one to come will surely make time much more of a challenging thing than a incidental no thing. Will I notice seconds that are wasted, or minutes that expire without a connection to my kin?
My dad is the one who brought me back to earth, from a recent visit we had. Words with my father, a means of transportation, takes me back just a bit, back to times when time just was a space between other things. It felt nice to remember not being beholden to time, and appreciating that now, for fleeting moments only, can I waste moments without consequence.
My dad has gone home. The past returns, the future is very near. And as my past becomes intertwined with fog and falsity, I'm reminded of words I am sure to write some time in my seventy-sixth year:
I close every time you open,
opening only as you close.
It is this, much more than years, that has aged me.
This is a consequence of being sublunar.
At this point, those like me (there are too many)
have endured extortion for years and,
life-sentence prisoners starting to enjoy the attention of a beating,
we’re beginning to understand our crimes.
But just as the energy is exhausted.
What a horrible machine we are,
this sophisticated, cruel design assembled on the cheap,
unable to handle full occupancy and a full tank.
Loaded up, it doesn’t go far; filled with fuel, unshared elevation.
And so, life: enough to go halfway with some one for an adequate ride.
Enough. Thank the world for epiphantic instants (there are too few)
when consequences aren’t ignored, but embraced and brought along.
Gas it up, seat the world, it all burns.
What a ride
Ha: Would I have explained this fifty years ago?
Obscurity used to be so cool.
At a certain point, though, brilliance is a waste of time.
Or too tiring? At least to this thief.
I stole my own wisdom years ago, and now I reach back for my summer.
How real is any season from the past?
I’m too evolutionarily beautiful to care,
content that the world celebrates my beaux-zeaux art
in unanimous silence
just like my greatest day at the end of a millennium
when NASA put my initials on Mars.
The article went on to note that some scientists that monitored JPL's other unmanned craft, regardless of mission, are reporting the same phenomenon--a slight change in speed, unexplained by gravity, inertia, or any of the known forces of the universe. A craft should be going at X speed, and something, some thing, it knocks what was once perfection and predictability subtly out of place. Just like Einstein did to Newton, and Newton did to the Bible. Who will do this to Einstein and his physics?
Four millimeters, whether faster or slower, matters. But my thoughts are more terrestrial, as children are ever more a part of a once-solo life, and thoughts of the next one to come will surely make time much more of a challenging thing than a incidental no thing. Will I notice seconds that are wasted, or minutes that expire without a connection to my kin?
My dad is the one who brought me back to earth, from a recent visit we had. Words with my father, a means of transportation, takes me back just a bit, back to times when time just was a space between other things. It felt nice to remember not being beholden to time, and appreciating that now, for fleeting moments only, can I waste moments without consequence.
My dad has gone home. The past returns, the future is very near. And as my past becomes intertwined with fog and falsity, I'm reminded of words I am sure to write some time in my seventy-sixth year:
I close every time you open,
opening only as you close.
It is this, much more than years, that has aged me.
This is a consequence of being sublunar.
At this point, those like me (there are too many)
have endured extortion for years and,
life-sentence prisoners starting to enjoy the attention of a beating,
we’re beginning to understand our crimes.
But just as the energy is exhausted.
What a horrible machine we are,
this sophisticated, cruel design assembled on the cheap,
unable to handle full occupancy and a full tank.
Loaded up, it doesn’t go far; filled with fuel, unshared elevation.
And so, life: enough to go halfway with some one for an adequate ride.
Enough. Thank the world for epiphantic instants (there are too few)
when consequences aren’t ignored, but embraced and brought along.
Gas it up, seat the world, it all burns.
What a ride
Ha: Would I have explained this fifty years ago?
Obscurity used to be so cool.
At a certain point, though, brilliance is a waste of time.
Or too tiring? At least to this thief.
I stole my own wisdom years ago, and now I reach back for my summer.
How real is any season from the past?
I’m too evolutionarily beautiful to care,
content that the world celebrates my beaux-zeaux art
in unanimous silence
just like my greatest day at the end of a millennium
when NASA put my initials on Mars.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
21 weeks: formation
She's next to me, most of her asleep except for our baby, who for the first time I feel moving against the contours of my hand. Like any fool I assume the pre-infant knows that I am his father and that he is reaching out to me, or pressing into me for comfort. Maybe he is trying to kick me away from his peace, or protect his living incubator, his mother.
This moment is happening and I have no answers. No answers: the title of the journey that is starting. As we buy a crib and talk to friends about names and fight over something nonexistent because hormones and antihormones flare up like epic Greek conflicts, the reality of what her belly means affects me more each day, each waking night. And there are no answers. What will his laugh sound like? What will make him laugh? Which play will become his favorite? What stupidity will he learn from? Which women and men will bring him joy, and which suffering? Will he embrace one of our many cultures, or go his own way? Will he, in times of need, go to his mother, his father, both, or an empty neither? Who will his heroes be? Who will change the course of his life? Are they people I know? Is it she? Is it me? Or is it someone I will never know?
To owe gratitude without being able to repay it: may that be the harshest pain I need know in this lifetime. My person has left this earth, and did so prematurely (he was for so long 12 years older than me, but now it is less). I know my pain. May life work out in such a way that I never know my dad's pain for the same loss.
This moment is happening and I have no answers. No answers: the title of the journey that is starting. As we buy a crib and talk to friends about names and fight over something nonexistent because hormones and antihormones flare up like epic Greek conflicts, the reality of what her belly means affects me more each day, each waking night. And there are no answers. What will his laugh sound like? What will make him laugh? Which play will become his favorite? What stupidity will he learn from? Which women and men will bring him joy, and which suffering? Will he embrace one of our many cultures, or go his own way? Will he, in times of need, go to his mother, his father, both, or an empty neither? Who will his heroes be? Who will change the course of his life? Are they people I know? Is it she? Is it me? Or is it someone I will never know?
To owe gratitude without being able to repay it: may that be the harshest pain I need know in this lifetime. My person has left this earth, and did so prematurely (he was for so long 12 years older than me, but now it is less). I know my pain. May life work out in such a way that I never know my dad's pain for the same loss.
7w2d: Flicker
His heart, I saw it flicker. Seeing a heart beat without sound is how things go in early gestation. I didn't even notice until afterwards, when so much is obvious. The ultrasound imaging, so cloudy, such a Rorschach test with guidance. But when the lens discovered that cavern of life amid so much gray, and the enormous centimeter within, our lives changed, predictably and wonderfully. There he was, real and protected and visibly alive, a flickering pulse lighting the screen and everything inside me.
Though he was seven weeks and two days into existence, I was created that day. On this first day of a new world, I have such hopes to never miss a thing, and be ready with the words to somehow capture observations, weaknesses, exaggerations, hopes, tears, silliness, and wonder at this common miracle, this uncommon joy, this unique and universal sense of creation and the responsibility that carries.
Though he was seven weeks and two days into existence, I was created that day. On this first day of a new world, I have such hopes to never miss a thing, and be ready with the words to somehow capture observations, weaknesses, exaggerations, hopes, tears, silliness, and wonder at this common miracle, this uncommon joy, this unique and universal sense of creation and the responsibility that carries.
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