tylrlsl

slowing the measurements of time; a prayer for longer days.

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a year from today we hoped to feel older, to feel quieter and slower. not in an unhealthy way, rather in an inching onward that can only come through a year of growing. imagine having a year of rooting into a breath, into a comfort, into a seeking.

i like people most that enjoy slow growth, the people who don’t pray to the speed of light, but are mystified by the slower speed of sound. i belong to the people whom know not what to do with immediate satisfaction; the initial flash of lightning holds no mystery to its slower sonic counterpart.

me and my people are best fit with a kind of idle breath, one that is best enjoyed in the quiet observation of seeing the winter’s snow burn off and drip down icicles from the sides of cliffs, into puddles and pools, into brooks and streams, rivers and lakes, and blue oceans.

why should we not just drive up and down six miles of mountain roads for a whole year? why can’t we stop off and buy bubblegum fireworks and make no immediate plans to pop them? We should just enjoy the time, not it’s measurements. i will make no haste towards tomorrow or the next year, i cannot help its arrival anymore than we can live again our yesterdays.

but me and my people cannot help but feel impatient in our reverences. we can be left wanting and unyielding to desires of skin and sense. we cannot help but stoke the fires of speed and of immediacy. we want to hear a year’s worth of pipe organ and drums in mere seconds; music only to be lost within the percussion of our momentary breathing, because time’s measurements are insatiable.

rather we should seek to plug our ears and stand under a running shower and hear the water over our heads as loud as our swelling lungs. we should see to resting our heads on stomachs of loved ones and listen to the quickness of a vibrato digestion, as it’s spontaneity is to be marveled. we should revel in the sublime renewal of perennial spring flowers, of the comforts of a hot sun on pale winter skin. we shall learn to play and hear and make, and learn from our eyes through our hands. soon enough, our visions of music will come without instrument or musician, without measure. and before we know it, a year will feel like a breath, and a breath a year, and the hardened sciences of time will vanish.

spirits renewed and stripped of time’s varnish, me and my people will live long our days.

excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’

‘I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mind, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.’

spiritual hunches succumb to the will of deductive reasonings based in science; i am losing my intuition.

if god were a stone

if god were made of stone,
it would sink like a smelly fat man.
god would wreak of trolls and damp.
confined to an underground cavern,
the god stone would be a fossil.

if god were made of stone,
it would attract others like it.
‘round and around the god stones would go,
heavy and crystalline,
and frozen in orbit.

perhaps god is hidden in the asteroid belt,
awaiting it’s turn to collide and careen out of control.
god could break free from its place,
streaking away to wherever it pleases.
perhaps god is already here,
buried and awaiting discovery.

and what if god splashed into the sea?
would it float? No!
god stones can’t swim.
god really would sink like a smelly fat man!
falling to the dark ocean bed,
god would plunge to the bottom of the tub.

god would split under the weight of the water,
and over time, be compressed into a larger stone.
crushed into the bedrock below it,
and further into a tectonic plate,
god would gain momentum.

god would slowly travel for years,
to a ridge where a new underwater mountain was being made.
pulverized and lit on fire,
god would be made into magma,
finding itself lost in a swirling lava lamp.

exploding into the open air,
god would leap with a molten joy.
it would ooze out into every direction
until god found a new resting place.
it would cool and solidify more porous.
maybe now god can float.

if god were a stone,
it would not be made into a hollywood film.
it would not win any awards,
for it’s awe-inspiring and daring portrayal of itself.
no one would notice if god were a stone,
for a stone’s life is too slow and uneventful.

if god were a stone,
no one would care, except me.
i would keep god in my pocket and rub it for good luck.