national symbol

The maple leaf isn’t here for me. The world sees red, white, red leaf, white, red. I see white, grey, blues, greens, wet, fresh, cold, wind, shrubs, fences, barbwire. Black asphalt and yellow lines, porous cracked concrete and birch. There are less evergreens here than in the west, but there are no maple trees in the west.

The flag can be white. Snow is white after a snowfall. Or it’s yellow or melted neon blue and green salt, or grey, or in piles. It’s white while it’s falling. It’s snow while it’s falling. White and snow, adjective and noun. Humans touch everything, even before its in reach. Name it means to understand it, or it means to own it, or it means it belongs to me. You name things that belong to you. You didn’t name God. God chose his own name, and he didn’t even need to use vowels.

I only notice maple leaves when they’ve already fallen. Life seeping out. Leaves are so dramatic. A human dies, and either there is blood everywhere or they just die on their back and the blood pools into the back of the brain, the back of the arms and legs, the heels, marinates the spine. But pretty soon they’re just white and maybe blue and then grey.

 A leaf waits for the wind, and then sets herself onto a gust. This is the start of her death. But maybe it’s the start of just when she’s about to live. She floats maybe to a branch, or maybe she sits comfortably on other exhausted leaves. She’s probably lying on her back laughing, bliss, warm laughter, warm savasana glow. She would probably be cold, but she flushes. Her life was for that. Her life was to let go. She flushes either yellow or red or orange (colour depends on whether your printer is RYB colour or more fancy with cyan and magenta). Some flush before even falling, but even the thought of love can make your cheeks blush.

Dry dead leaves on sidewalks and patios. Leaf blowers throwing resting corpses into the air again. Some maniac saying, do it again do it again, but not on my lawn! Crazy eyes and this awful grin.

The less stupid ones are less spectacle but no less noise. Sucked into a bag on their back, set in clear blue bags with neat knots and arranged appropriately on the curb. Maybe a nod to the neighbour, Sherry…Shirley, Claire? Smiles and the same thoughts about the weather and then one says to the other, life, with rolling eyes, and other says, tell me about it.

What they really mean is I wish I would’ve stayed in bed one more minute so that this awkward moment didn’t have to happen and please god do not tell me about it or life or you or, please let this be over with and I’ll make sure to look out my window next time to only take my recycling out when you’ve already set yours onto the curb.

Showdown, ladies at windows, sitting on piano benches.

What they really mean is, how did they get here.

They blinked and all of a sudden it all smelled like liquid makeup and potpourri and vinegar.

There were boys who tied their own bowties and drank their whisky from mason jars. And boys in overalls and trucks that smelled like dust. And gravel roads and wheat fields and canola fields and fences and flowers and spring dresses.

The toilet smells like bleach and antibacterial wipes.

Maple leaf filter

mesh aperture < 2µ

This wasn’t going to be a work of fiction.

Reality in context. 

I can’t be convinced that we live the same reality. Or certainly, what our minds have tailored as our realities are quite different. That’s almost my difficulty.

Your reality disturbs mine. I’m not sure if you know of mine.

I can’t call yours a reality, I’ll call these tailored versions worlds...reality is with elements of truth, and yours can’t be a truth. 

It’s disposable on an earth of finite, it’s selfish in a species evolved from community. It’s quick to decide, too quick to judge. It’s temporary. Not holistic. 

Hold this image. Everyone walks in a mesh sphere. It’s part of how we tailor our reality. Not everything passes through. Almonds in cheesecloth, only milk, warm from the blender passes through. You don’t like almonds you say. More marzipan for me. 

I live in a mesh too. It’s difficult to know from the inside what’s not passing through.

A mesh, sometimes it’s ignorance, choosing to be blind, naivety?  

Calloused fingertips, he doesn’t know the sometimes silk, sometimes velvet , always fragile skin of a petal. An open palm. A sensitive touch, sensitive to touch. Maybe it’s better without that. Wouldn’t make it a day in new york, too much touch. Too many shoulders.

My mesh sometimes sees what your mesh ignores. Whatever doesn’t make it in trails behind.

Slugs of inconvenient truths.

These left-overs don’t make it into so many meshes! Everyone makes them you say, part of the simpler landscape.

I can’t unsee the recyclable pepsi can in the trash. I’m not even convinced recycling is a viable solution for waste. But I’m certain it’s better than the trash.

I’m more certain that no thought was given to it any such way.

At least it wasn’t on the street! But you’ve been trained to know that that’s wrong. Those living in meshes like yours sometimes have plights of interest. Littering, they say, Not in my backyard!

While coughing through exhaust fumes and billowing clouds of black smoke [The word billowing there seems forced...but it gives a thick round feeling to the clouds, like warm tar].

Does a tree make a sound if no one is there to hear it? The answer is no.

And anyways, no one’s around. And really, it doesn’t make any difference.

She throws the sandwich wrapper on the sidewalk...but if anyone did see, it looked like she didn’t notice. She dropped it they say, she was going to throw it out.

passing through sieves, almost.

paradox

I once heard this variation on a quote: The shortest distance between two people is a story.

There are seven billion people on earth.

Every person needs to have access to clean drinking water and sanitation, and adequate food.

There are eight billion people on earth.

Every person needs to have access to clean drinking water and sanitation, and adequate food.

WHILE world=true THEN #i.e. if the environment sustaining us is still viable, if she’s breathing

x = people on earth

print( “There are ” x “ billion people on earth.”)

#!!URGET: print("Every person needs to have access to clean drinking water and sanitation, and adequate food.")

#“Every increase in food production is answered by an increase in population somewhere.”
#Ishmael, Daniel Quinn

x = x + more #don’t worry, this is temporary, population control remember? condoms

Do we need to stop producing enough food?

We’ve pushed the limits of population capacity with agricultural advancements and technologies, but we’ve only pushed the limits...we haven’t extended their limits to infinity…

so at one point the limit comes, and technology can’t create something from nothing…

so, it seems, we stop population growth now, or when the environment that sustains us (and that which sustains so many other forms of life) is too fragile to adapt to a previous resilience.

Privileged white boy! Racist! Bomb his Ivory tower!

That’s actually what I’m calling myself when I think these thoughts. Guilt wraps herself around my heart and contracts. At least, she says, you’ll have a pain in your chest if you think like this.

But,

I couldn’t possibly agree with not being in accord in the first millenium development goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

But that can’t be the solution. Because the problem will still come (/is still here).

But restraining from that solution is no solution.

There’s something missing. A paradox. With this set of axioms there’s only an end, no possible sustainability.

It’s our culture, agriculture? the story we’re playing out. But I’m not sure of an alternative. I’m in the same falling ship, trying to get a birds eye view.

A new set of axioms.

smile. life.

What day is it?
The 23rd.
We're getting there, aren't we?

To death, was the first thing I thought.

Where else could she mean? September? The end of summer? To cold weather probably.
The earth ship, it moves towards seasons. Rotating and spinning make less sense

And then what when we get there? What changes?

In fall everything changes. But that's probably not what she meant.
Well,
we're getting there. Wherever she's going and wherever I'm going, we're getting there.

post-yoga

a thunder moon (appropriately with summer showers, lightning and thunder)
a long walk with headphones instead of shoes
a yoga class
another yoga class
and veggie burgers served in compostable wrappers
(with an organic beer)

day = good

sunset in the central Himalayas.

fog

i was slow at adding today. double-digit numbers. second nature. look at the numbers and expect the sum. instead i had to look at the two numbers, and construct the sum. like fumbling while walking a dry mouth in speech or tripping over thoughts.
it's difficult to follow instructions, i keep referring to the same page, did i read it right? Or to memorize a password of letters and numbers. not easy.
like i can't multitask think.
is it the
infection? treatment? exhaustion? distraction?
my mind in fog.

early fog in the central Himalayas. 

plain

my mind is usually a dangerous place to be in.

thoughts flying every which way, voices speaking over other voices, busy and loud. 

and i like that, and i like in yoga and in breath when that all clears and its just me in yoga and in breath.

the past few weeks have been quiet. but not yoga (and post-yoga) quiet. 

without drive to investigate to probe to dive. 

it seems instead that that would all be very exhausting.

and that’s how i know i’m ill.

because this hunt for anything, this curiousness that i follow, is quiet. or blank. or rot. 

not helped by the sterility of this week’s hospitals and needles and IV

mind on a me-normal day