You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka 



you will know you have learned when you know you can never learn

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.” 
― Hermann Hesse

santa barbara, ca

an old man wakes this morning
just as he has every other morning
of his short life

he folds a towel over his arm
and prepares coffee before 
scuttling out to the porch

where he will sit and watch
the sun rise solemnly over the acres
of land his body has worked

every day of his life 

or is it the sun that wakes

just as it has every other morning
of this man's life and many more
who scuttles over brim of the earth

to peek at generations of fresh
eyes and withered hands and full
hearts rising to their tasks

small wins in furtive forms

“You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.” 
― Annie Proulx



life is a game of 
inches, precariously 
holding us aloft

yoga night

“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.” 

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

ready.  fire.  aim.   

our mind's phonograph needles tap clandestine

hopes in our spines while our necks crane slightly 

forward and trigger our eyelids like painted 

garage doors to shut.  our mouths purse in half-smile 

half-wince gestures. accordingly sinews of every muscle 

pull and wrap like roots of a great tree. we concentrate

to listen because we have to hear, we must hear 

this. this is a falling off, a breathless cliff dive.  we are neither

here nor there.  we are so intent upon the present 

that we are cast as bystanders to our own 

inner swan dive along rocky cliffs. these words 

must be uttered, this noise must pass. we all 

must hear.  so that after great effort, our spines wrinkle 

back together like exhausted accordions, our heads

lean on our partner’s shoulders, our hands droop like flower 

bulbs and we are spent, but content, for we heard 

what we had to hear.  deep breath.  ---

re-disovered objects

i've moved from boston to california.  and from california back to boston.  

i've come and left and come back again.  

and so it is with this virtual space.  i'm making a new commitment to curious abstractions for the time being.  i will try and post frequently (maybe once a day).  and see how it goes.

what is a curious abstraction you ask and why the couch?

a friend of mine once had to leave mexico city last second and was not able to keep all of her belongings - pictures, generations-old family pieces, etc.  solution?  she built a fake wall in her apartment and put all of the things she could not take behind it.  

she has never yet returned.  but her possessions remain there waiting for her.  

hello couch.  i am back to pass notes under the generous fibers of your being once again.  

thanks for the space.

cheers,
fresh