Rules to Live by

Rule #1: Don't ask first.

If there isn't a rule against it, you're not technically doing anything wrong.

Rule #2: (If there is a rule against it,)

Don't get caught. If you're never caught, there can be no problem with rule-breaking.

Rule #3: (If caught,)

Don't act guilty. If you proceed by subtly (not explicitly) asserting that you are, in fact, in the right, you can almost always make your accusor question his/her authority to persecute.

Following these rules, it is advisable to atone subtly for any offense in trivial, non-related ways. This convinces everyone of your good character.

A Walk in the Woods

Night slipped
Down her throat in soft, meager drops
And she was thirsty.
She walked alone, but
The setting sun's pink shroud (reflected
On the path, reflected
In the trees,
Defined in dark silhouette
On the looking-glass
Puddles in the road)
Knew her name,
And the blue ferns
On her simple dress
Knew the blue of her
Gray eyes.
The cold air whispered
The forest, which burned
Her ears. As she walked,
She remembered:
Silence is fatal,
More than a sudden noise.
She stopped singing.
As her feet grew heavy with wet,
With the mud of November,
She forgot that she was alive
And only watched the stillness
Of the swamps and the ferns and the
Endless trees-
The only thing that moved was her,
And the thorns which caught her dress
Freed her, while the unseen branches
And spiders' webs opened her to the night.
Life is only now.
You can't buy the future by investing
Any number of drawn-out days,
But we can't break free
Of comfort.
She walked forever through the sea of ferns
And was home by dinnertime.

LIVE NOW.

There's nothing more to life than living it, as fully as possible.

We sell our freedom daily to the future because we think that by investing the present, we can create future freedoms.

If only there were no tomorrow to consider.

Freedom cannot be bought with all the time in the world- freedom is time, is life, and it will never be so easy to be young as it is right now.

I want to LIVE FREELY- money and education as USELESS to the most integral, necessary part of life: LIVING. Society aims at freedom but keeps us from ever being free.

Colleges

There were long days of summer, there are short days of frustration with deadlines fast approaching. The time between was survival.

"For the benefit of Mr. Kite, there will be a show tonight on trampoline..."

I have spent six hours today trying to reach a goal that doesn't really exist.

"Please keep your response to 500 words or less."
If I have 250 words, does that make me very concise? No, it makes my essay tenuous, because I could not express enough adulation for a school or for myself in so few words to be truly committed to the cause.

"And of course, Henry the horse will dance the waltz..."

I doesn't really matter, I'll get in somewhere. Some of these places have rolling admission policies, so I could wait quite a long time to turn them in. Of course, then I won't get scholarships, and that would be a problem. Do Canadian schools work with the National Merit folks?

"It's gonna be the future soon..."

If I fill up with too much nameless emotion, I have to go and do something. I ran around the trail a few times. If I run fast enough, sometimes I can leave myself behind. As I feel the toxins leaving my body, a smile creeps across my face.

"...it's already here."

When I started walking, I looked around and remembered that I was running in circles. I was jogging up the same hill I cleared yesterday. It was so pointless that I started running again, and the sunlight broke cruelly through the boughs of the trees to cast the light fantastic across a brilliant world of duplicity.

"You want a piece of my heart, you better start from the start.."

Around the swamp, I decided to stop running circles and try something else. I climbed a tree until I remembered that the branches just get smaller. The view was lovely and unsatisfyingly familiar. The branches were rotten, so I had to be very careful to climb down, as a foot holds more weight right off than does a hand. If only there were somewhere I hadn't yet explored.

I'm reading several books at the moment:
The Qu'ran
The Bible
The Fountainhead
The Blue and Brown Books
Double Helix
Something Wicked This Way Comes
I feel like I could learn so much more if school took up less time and I didn't have to worry about the future all the time. I would have done something real by now if I weren't so busy with everything I've been asked to do.

When I came down from the tree, I didn't go back around the loop again. I turned around outright and walked straight into the painful sunlight, because at least this way I wasn't pretending to run away again.

"Write about something you are passionate about."

"Please keep your response to less than 300 words."

Dinner

I sat there, in the restaurant,
between a college girl
and a marine
across from three little girls
and one tired one.

Behind me, they talked about the Game
and the Fish
and the Elections
and none of them heard a word of what they said
distracted by the art on the walls.

In the bathroom, I heard a girl
(my age, more or less)
learn bulimia from her friend-
"You just have to put it
 a little further toward the back of your throat,"
she said.
Washing my hands, I watched my sister in the mirror.
She looked at me with a question, and I-
I didn't know how to answer,
so I simply dried my hands.

I sat back down on the booth seat
(the little girls climbed back and forth over the tops of the seats and under the table as the tired one looked on
and sighed).

I took a child's menu and the three crayons
red
blue
yellow
the blue one broke
but underneath my hands, I had an excuse
to ignore the world.

The food came after a while.
I made a paper airplane and an origami crane from my crayon-artwork
I blew the straw wrapper at a little girl, who laughed.

We ate, the whole family together.
I ate, embarrassed to be hungry in the face of
Dinner.

Mornings

sometimes the weight of sunlight overcomes morning's spiderwebs they stretch break and for a brief and moment (shining) free- fly in the breeze (wherewereyouthen)

......... ....... o........

I like to run

barefoot

at night.

I like the feel of darkness

caressing my bare legs

as cool seeps from the earth

to billow my skirt behind me.

The wind of motion lifts the edge of my hem

and I run,

unshod feet just touching the ground to

discover a place I'll never

see

but will know intimately

just for a moment.

Philosophy of the Self

It is important to recognize the distinction between a projected self and an internal self. This is not, it is important to note, the same as the difference between a person and a persona, because a persona implies acting, whereas the projected self is most commonly simply a distorted version of a person's true (or rather, self-defined) self. Once a person recognizes his/her projected self, he/she can create a more honest projection: who they choose to be viewed as, and say: see me as I am, not as who you once thought I was.

Progress is a cyclical endeavor.

Theory: Progress is a cyclical endeavor.

Explication: Relationally, a mental event occurs, followed (validated by) a physical event, which sparks an emotional response which, in turn, leads to further mental events.

Corrolary: Many mental events may occur, but they, for cause and by effect of a lack of physical follow-through must necessarily be unimportant and may therefore pass disregarded.

Corrolary: No mental event can directly spark an emotional response. Love comes not of thoughts, but of physical reality in combination with thought. A presence, therefore, is necessary for emotion.

Definition: This may be expanded to include speech in physical events. A physical event is here more broad, including any event outside of one's thoughts, for only through physical means can external events be internalized.

To be Alive

There is no joy or pain or sorrow. There is only being Alive and every day becoming a little more Alive and knowing the truth of the world by simply Being and that truth is sorrow and pain and all feeling but mostly Joy because to live, to feel is beautiful beyond all books and thoughts and memories and all there can ever be is experience and each moment more beautiful and memorable because each moment is another of life, but also a moment of Being, more Alive than the last.

Hands

It was very odd

and wonderful

and freeing

to confine my consciousness to

hands

your hand, inching closer

clenching and unclenching

nervous, I think

my hand edging over, upwards

towards

your hand, resolved, I think

drifting lower

my hand, moving

(would-be casual) up to

contact:

your pinky, drifting over, across

my fingers, turning

my hand, turning over

until my fingers crept

and your fingers wrapped

with unprecedented boldness

into one another’s palms.

Walden

I think there are few ways to read Walden well.
I read and walk, a brisk pace around the wooded trail. I likely juxtapose well with the simple nature of the woods, in my skirt and long black coat, reading as I cross by the swamp on the wood-chipped trail, but really, it's the air, the motion of walking to make me focus, or maybe focus less.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

Billy Joel's "My Life" on my mp3 player as I read about the despair Thoreau, an educated man, has for those with farms, doomed to work. As he sat and watched his pond, I wonder if he considered the meditation of exertion? It can slow the mind until the thoughts appear more clearly. His writing is dense, with a rapidly churning flow. Perhaps he should have walked faster, or thought more slowly.

"It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live."

What a delicious irony.
If I looked up from this book, which despairs of the little time people take for their world, I could absorb the forest, finally green in more than slal and fir, with cedar mixed in.

"I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous."

The trilliums are blooming. They are white, perfect trinities by the side of the path.
Is that a frivolity?
It makes me glad.
I sometimes wonder that we can try so hard to be deep-thinking, but it is difficult to say. Perhaps he was hoping that we would leave the frivolities of our lives, such as philosophical books, and see the flowers at our feet.
Is this a statement or a cleverly phrased ambiguity?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

A man who would not talk of himself if he knew anyone else is scarce in a position to generalize, but I suppose we all do.
Who will despair of our lives if we do not?
Oh. Right.

Forest Musings

1.
There is something inexpressibly simple of the forest
and of hard work.

2.
It was our new wheelbarrow's virgin voyage.
It may be a while before I am used to the bright teal of this one.
The old orange one was so well-loved, but though the handles were polished wood from use, the body of the barrow was cracked through.
I went out with a pitchfork and a rake to dress the trails in wood chips.

3.
I know these trails so well. I have walked and run every centimeter of them, barrowed logs and brush and children over them.
I have run these trails with my eyes closed, barefoot in the dark.
I am a part of these woods.

4.
Chopping wood is an emotional thing.
There is a savage joy in the clean cleave of a sharp axe through cedar.
Determination when it doesn't split, but sticks around the axe head, and must be swung back, axe and log together, over the shoulder, and in a clean sweep, down onto the chopping block.
Frustration in those too heavy to lift. Anger in the removal of the blade from the stuck wood, hitting the end with a piece of kindling wood to make the axe fall out. Craftiness in the placement of the maul. Satisfaction in the bludgeoning of the maul with an iron mallet, until the impossible task is achieved and the round is cloven through.
Power and joy in the knowledge of strength.

5.
Sometimes I sing-
A song I know
A song I knew
A song that never was before
As thoughts flow through my lips
Sweet, or strong, or lonely
But always clear in the frigid air.

6.
I get so caught up sometimes
I think of anything-
It's freeing, the silence of the woods
Or the expression of my voice
I can think forever
Or not, for once.
And then I turn around
And the wheelbarrow is full of wood chips
So I stand the pitchfork in the pile
And turn to a load just a little too full
And nearly tip it over trying to move it

7.
It's hard work, you know.
The axe is heavy, and the pickaxe much heavier.
Sometimes I have to run to get the wheelbarrow up a hill, because I know that if I stop, I will tip it over trying to start it up again, so I strain the muscles in my legs and shove the load up the hill with force alone.

8.
It's a thing to be proud of.
I end tired, a little less keen to write reports and essays, or puzzle some problem out of math.
It just seems to trivial, too frivolous.
Chopping wood, doing real, honest work:
That is real.
I am proud of the blisters on my hands, the callouses, the nicks from hatchet blades that scar my fingers.
I made them doing hard work.
I know that it was good.

9.
Some people never find themselves.
In a moment, I know where I am found.
For $8 an hour, the benefits are pretty good.

Epiphany

I was out running today, with headphones on, and settled into the rhythm: even breathing, steady footfalls, and on my fifth or sixth song. Suddenly, a branch knocked my headphones off, and all I could hear was my own breath and my footfalls on the muddy path. It was amazing how quickly I became aware of my surroundings: the trees on either side, covered in snow, the puddle ahead... how's that for a metaphor?

Anyway, I was just thinking about life. Fratello (a rather painfully obvious pseudonym, especially if you know Italian) was talking to me about how much different it is to be 18: no more Boy Scouts, college apps turned in, legality, etc. Then he turned back to the computer to work on homework, literally and metaphorically putting the headphones back on. I mean, he hasn't graduated yet, and there are still IB exams.

I wonder what it'll be like to lose the routine? Not college, because that's pretty much structured, too. I guess by then most people get jobs, are in relationships, etc. and the structure continues.

Wow, now I'm disillusioned. I guess that's how people like Alexander Supertramp come about (if you haven't read Into the Wild, go read it).

What kind of person finds metaphors in real life, anyway? They aren't intentional, placed by the author (well, unless you want to get all religious..).
It becomes apparent that IB has eaten my soul.

Philosophy is no cure for insomnia.

I always get the best ideas when I'm trying hardest not to think.
Now, what does that say about me?

I wish I could be wild all the time
like I sometimes let myself be.

Not wild so much as impulsive.
It's just more fun.

Instead, I retreat into
Sarcasm, the retreat of those inclined to condescension
In unfamiliar territory
Which is nearly everywhere, these days.

It's odd to be so worldly and naive.

Experiment

1.
How do you capture a moment?
It's time, you know. It's hard to hold on to well.
Words don't work, but they're better than
I don't know, maybe they're just

I like words. They work for me.


2.
Well, working for is so
It's so confining
So much of one working for the other
Like one controlling.
They work for me
I work for them
We cooperate. It's not really work, because
It just works.

3.
What's wrong with time moving on?
People try to capture moments
(as though time could be ensnared, like a beast)
But sometimes they're so
They capture the moment instead of living it
Until maybe the moment was never there
But for the captured proof.

4.
We live in the present because
The future's not here yet
And it's really hard to go back
And anyway, the past is only so interesting.

5.
I still like to look at photographs
Of things I've done.

6.
What I'm writing now- words-
Am I trying to catch a moment?
No, it's just a thought.

Much better. I'll put it in a cage so I can look at it
And poke my finger through the bars
And hope it doesn't bite.

7.
It's not capturing.
Sure, that's what people say
But it's just documentation
For a bureaucratic God.
God needs proof? Not omnipresent, I guess.
Or perhaps the proof is for someone else.
Anyway, capturing's not it at all.
It's just the word we use.
Words.
And here I thought words and I were getting along so well.
Perhaps I'll put them in the cage too, and then we'll see which one captures the other:
Ideas, or their expression?