The White Whale

         And Ahab sought him restlessly, one creature in self defense that gored him, gored him, gored him. No matter the spears that stuck from the side of the great white porcupine, no matter the wounds incurred for no reason other than a whale steak or a vat of oil, he deserved to die in anger for the self-defense he rightfully took.
         It was then that the voice of reason was so direly needed. Starbuck, Ishmael. But, their voices were the dust on a distant shore. Only too clearly was that evident in tatters and ruin. A great white porcupine is a ferocious foe when backed into a corner, especially when he has done nothing wrong. And, even those that know better will lay broken over the shark filled sea if they stand with those that don't. What about the innocent lives, they ask. What about the innocent lives echos the great white.
         If captain Ahab were anything he would be a gangsta'. Fighting off a wrong that he invented. How dare they hurt his brother for trying to hurt that innocent! How dare they! Morals aside, they are looking for some reason for bloodshed. As a whale Moby Dick already had reason to be harvested, Ahab turned it into a reason to be hunted. Ahab gave him a character. Ahab gave him transcendence.
          What made the white whale stream from the deep in legend and story? Not the whale. Oh no. It was the man who spun the tale. It was the man that called him forth, labeled and mythed. The man who made the monster.

Importune life

       Sufjan Stevens sang the words "I can see a lot of light in you," to the pleasure of all. Was he speaking to a child? A woman? The vague helps us use it in our own way. Creativity helps in taking something and finding meaning for it, like this song. We can all be artificers of the arts. Of course, what is it we are drawing? We are taking something and making it work in life for us. "I can see a lot of life in you."
       I have been reading books and playing games and watching movies and attending plays and thinking about it all for a very long time. My guess is that, for the most part, so have all of you (No vague here, you know exactly who I am talking to). The point being: is all this introversion, all this absorption and sorting, all this time inside of our heads merely something to pass the evenings or are we using it. Using it like the intellectual food it is. Or, do we reduce it all to a mere bag of brainy potato chips? Not that some of these methods don't at times only provide potato chips. And, not that potato chips aren't bad once in a while. But really.
         What we see is an age when potato chips are what anyone wants outside of work. TV is full of supply and demand, and the people demand BBQ, Ranch, Sour cream and onion, and just potato-y, potato chips. Plenty of flavors to choose. Perhaps if they, you, I, look at the back of the bag--or even just inside of it--something of health could indeed be taken from everything around us (if we dare) as it must be in a world of intellect. In order to find the nutrition we must first be looking for it. This is getting harder in a world where less and less actual substance is being introduced into our favorite forms of interpretive entertainment. Mmm. Harlequins. Soaps. First person shooters. Catchy broad-way hits (as long as it sounds good). It is getting harder to find anything of value without adding it ourselves, and even then under layers of symbolic babble we know there is nothing much. A crumb. Probably from a potato chip. This is why I raise the cry.
       This is why I raise the cry to importune life. Demand it so that somebody can supply it. Bring me more Miyazakis, Shakespeares, Psychonauts, and Ella Enchanteds. Maybe then I can have a three course meal of cosmopolitan tastes, but until that day--and as of always--I go through the carefully stored stocks of time to find the canned fruits of another season.

To see by

           I wear glasses to see by. I want to bring the world into my eyes. Without them (my glasses) I drink deep in a blurry picture. Something you can't quite put your finger on. A flavor you can't quite make out. How dissatisfying! Almost wonderful. Why settle for almost?
           I can see every detail with a piece of glass and two hundred dollars.In the middle ages I would never have been able to be an astrologer or marksman. Today I could fly an airplane or become an astronaut. In the modern day even our most natural defects are addressable. The Uncureable trembles. I mean this far beyond the physical. Intellect is as easily tapped as a keyboard. Advice has never been more freely given in any field. God has never been closer. I can see three steeples from the Provo Mall. I can read anything I want and watch any act performed from nearly ANYwhere. And do I feel powerful? There are days when I feel incompetent. The strange psychology of an age when our adversary tempts us to do nothing. Nothing when the limitless potential of all has never before been tapped on Earth in so many ways. Nothing, when there are more ways to make a living and prove useful to an evolutionary and unifiably civilized society. This is an age where nothing may be the greatest danger any of us face.
            The most wonderful thing about glasses is that once owned I could see things in a way I had forgotten I ever knew; in such a clarity that I was suddenly aware of things I wouldn't have noticed without them. All I had to do was be willing to try it. Make an appointment. Spend the money. Put them on. New worlds to be seen. So simply astounding.  Take the leap. Put on the new perspective for just one day. Stop myself from doing things the normal way for just one breath. See how it expands the mind. See how it deepens the contrast. Learn how it may clarify the world, or maybe how it won't. But learn something. Try something. May I run into the impossible, the new, the idea, at least once every day for the rest of my life.
        

We seem

          We seem. Callous. Unworthy of thought or remorse. Just one more person who will slip in our life of eighty-plus years. A face in a crowd that won't surround me for longer than two seconds, one hour, maybe four years of schooling. Feel no compulsion to apologize for what will only be remembered for at least an hour more. Time let it all slip away. Slip into a stream of fading memories. After all we can only see one memory at a time. We are only frail humans with frail eyes and frail thoughts.
          Thinking! thinking such faults! Look again. One more person is one more Godling. One more tumultuous storm of life that will change the world it strikes. You and they may forget. May allow yourselves to because this is life. This is time. This is human. But we are not. We are an excuse for a humans on a limited-time-only earth experience lease. We are eternal. We will spend an eternity thinking over everything we could have done, should have done. Perhaps would have. We will have an eternity to do things, but even the doing of things will not compensate for an eternity of thought when we are not limited to this earthly weakness. When we can do everything at the same moment, and that moment is eternity, will we be different? Will we be a virtuous harmonic? Remember what we seem to be. Remember we seem not what we are. We are not always what we seem.

Livid

       The term "went up like a marshmallow" is very descriptive. If applied to a person this describes not only a single event, but the state of the subject involved. For instance: "The Rock went up like a Marshmallow," would state that the famous action movie hero was feeling particularly squishy that day when he started on fire. If this sentence was applied to plans the plans would be seen as particularly sugary and sticky before they erupted into flames. The marshmallow had become livid. Deformed with fiery rage. Sticky, sweet, slightly crispy. Flammable. Most angry people go up like Marshmallows, just less sweetly.

        Other things respond to the heat in different ways. Everything can melt. Some things become harder, other things become fertile. Pinecones open to seed in one last sacrificial redemption. Grow children! Grow from my distress! A felicitous way to respond to the fires in life. We all face them. But, do we all become more delicious? Gooier? When the heat transforms what shape do we take?

         I would be a glass to see through when the heat is on. A glass that elaborates the truth and shows how things truly are. The most beautiful grains of sand.

Organic We

     Solemnly we enter a building, silently we glance. A whisper in the lobby is a shout in the eternities. Seeing her then on time and aware I found a piece of me was taken, that piece that was for one person. We walk past registrars and workers in white. Angels they are. or they seemed (to be). So kind, to direct me. A palace of gems in roses.We walked out as higher love. The elven king. The Eve, princess. Vines of the colored sea, a more colorful vibe. Festive reception most colorful rainbow in thy dance, and voice (I need).
     We leave a world of white angels and suddenly the world is sharper color. Orange and yellow and purple jumping. Sherbet polka-dots. Life brings it out and two amplify it. The color looks right on everyone, on everything, on me, on you.
     A light shining so bright, it shines through my heart bright red like any window. We can be inside and out all at the same time. We open up to the pendulum of gabe. A crimson hue..with turquoise more turquoise than it's name. This! This is bigger than love itself. An eternal creation, I believe we've been for years, and the veil only makes us forget, but we remember so fully with the feeling we feel.  And God's pure words and innocence and giggles and smiles make me free from it. In this we must remember to keep God with us always..and we will be free.
  

Little widgets

   I open up the sky and see the distant stars. Every night. They fly without wings. Combustible. THey say we pass through solar systems all the time, but we don't even wave. Maybe we should all wave at the stars.
   People often fail to acknowledge the grand little things. They never seem to make the splash that the boulders do. The pebbles of the sky next to our large empty rocks. Lifeless silver.
   Where do you hide when you can't find the Sun? Find skipping rocks across the sky. Streaming into the unknown we go and we fall into orbit, fall around the world without landing. We end up in the middle of the night sky if you look right, but only if you look right.
   Dream a little with me. Find a little space for yourself beside me. Yes, beside me with yourself. And let me see it. Come to my place and I will look into yours. If you can just find stillness. Still-point, then you could learn as much about yourself as I know. And I don't know as much as you could. If you find that point where you can wave to the stars. Where you could just stop for a moment and realize that there is nothing better for you to do then to exist as what you are, before burning into action. Erupting into Color. Causing growth on some distant planet far away.