I'm pretty sure I could live a full life at the center of a book.

So I found some prime real estate prospects for myself.

You've won me over Bookmans...largest used-book retailer in Arizona you [bats lashes].

...all too human

This is just fantastic. The BBC recaps human history for us humans in one minute using stop motion, paper-craft, and clay. Enjoy.

BBC Knowledge - Honk If You're Human

Paradise, Lost

"As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the watery gleam appeared
Bending to look on me, I started back,
It started back, but pleas'd I soon returned,
Pleas'd it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love; there I had fixt
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest,
What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self ..."

-Milton, Paradise Lost 4:460

Looking for a love which suits you is like looking into a lake and becoming fixated on a phantom. In this scenario it is only themselves one is in love with, it is narcissism at some of it's finest - for it comes with cloak and dagger; posing as our ultimate unity with desire and truth, whilst stabbing our true paradise to death.

The only love I've witnessed which works is conscious, and does not seek it's own self. Love which is curious as a child is curious - a point which resonates like a hammer in all my thinking. It reminds me of 1Corinthians 13:5 and of Mathew 18:1-3.

"self-seeking" to be understood also as seeking the reflection of one's humor, one's interests, one's goals - one's whole self, and with this as the gauge, then surely any water would appear mildly, or grossly, polluted. "Turn and become like children" to be understood also as the acceptance of a child's love. Staggeringly free, for it doesn't even enjoy loving, it is not conscious enough of itself to think thusly.

As maturity brings awareness of self, and that awareness is informed by the circumstances a child is raised with - which is to say impacting his or her confidence, values, humor, etc. the child often becomes obscured and lost within the construct of their budding self-awareness.

To truly "fall in love" then - and we may say, 'to become able' to take that fall - is to incorporate the learned behaviors of adulthood with the inherent exuberance of 'child-likeness'; which is to say, to marry one's mind with one's heart.

Dude.

Click it. Get a tea.

Click this.

Boo

I seriously have no idea how to translate what...whatever this feeling in me is.

It started, singing to Robert Devir

If you click and enlarge the image you'll see what's highlighted. I also enjoy what's directly below what is highlighted.

Getting a call from a friend following this was very cool, and it not being the first time was very cool as well. My music gives me something besides my diaries to bestow to my children and grand children - should I have them.

Letting them know, once there was a world before they ever were conscious- and further, that their father, or bald and laughing grand-father, was doing things in that world.

I love it.

Thanks Juliet.

Tune in to hear an interview, some live songs, and some songs off the album this Wednesday after 8 pm on 91.3 WYSO - to stream it out of town you may also use this link -

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wyso/arts.artsmain?action=viewArticle&sid=16&id=1713149&pid=25

Alma Mater

slip

Travelling across the universe, searching for those who see a bloody sun covered in dirt; he plugs in his electric guitar and the sound stings the back of every peasant's throat.

He's laughing; it sounds like he needs a haircut. He's frightening those who want his blood. He's laughing with well-fed mosquitoes.

The sounds of crows and hawks fill the hallways. One picks at an eye, the other an ear.

No one moves the laughing mouth.

Lookin' back I see a kid who was just afraid, hungry, and old before his time

When I was a younger man lookin' for my pot of gold
Everywhere I turned the doors were closin'
It took every ounce of faith I had to keep on keepin' on
And still I felt like I was only losin'

I refused then like I do now to let anybody tie me down
And I lost a few good friends along the way
I was raised up poor and I wanted more
And maybe I'm a little too proud
In lookin' back I see a kid who was just
Afraid, hungry and old before his time

Through the years I've known my share of broken hearted fools
And those who couldn't choose a path worth taking
There's nothin' in the world so sad as talking to a man
Who never knew his life was his for making

Ain't it about time you realize? It's not worth keepin' score
You win some, you lose some and you let it go
What's the use of stacking on every failure another stone
Till you find you've spent your whole damn life
Building walls, lonely and old before your time

It took so long to see
That truth was all around me

Now the wren has gone to roost and the sky is turnin' gold
And like the sky my soul is also turnin'
Turnin' from the past, at last and all I've left behind
Could it be that I am finally learnin'?

Learnin' I'm deserving of love and the peaceful heart
I won't tear myself apart no more for tryin'
I'm tired of lyin' to myself, tryin' to buy what can't be bought
It's not livin' that you're doin' if it feels like dyin
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time
It's only cryin, growin' old before your time

"Old Before Your Time"

- Ray Lamontagne, 'God Willing & The Creek Don't Rise'

Halloween Approaches!

This upcoming birthday, 28, has been significant for me since I was 15. It is like a rite of initiation is complete; as if my heart is much more free to beat, beat, beat. As with all people, many things intruded upon my person during my impressionable young years - sirens which seduced my family into inviting wolves inside; and though I have been blessed to choke many of these malicious and ignorant sirens to death or near - some of them, only Time is going to take away.

This upcoming birthday is a particularly significant sirens' death sentence. Though I tried choking her with great care and effort - she who sang revelrously whilst torturing a young mans heart till it screamed in his head - I never did kill her. Her siren voice would draw me close and then whisper a snakes threat, always shaking me till I became numb; but this Halloween my dear friends, I will watch Time draw near this particularly annoying sirens voice - and slit open her throat for me.

"There's a whole in the world like a great black pit and it's filled with people who are filled with shit, and the vermin of the world who inhabit it - they all deserve to die!"

Rose into Silence