Stars. :)

I have already shared this with a lot of people; but, just in case I have not shown due excitement, I want to share this.

This is the most awesome free software I am yet aware of.

That is all for today. Go explore.

seeing

I was a photographer once.

And once, I was the friend of a girl who could only see the stars. We left each other because I could not live in the dark while she was blind but for the stars.

I have always wished I could take photos exactly as I see them. But I cannot, you see, I cannot. I cannot make that glass eye record my interpretation. I could fit a world onto a blade of grass, but the camera does not see a world. It sees a blade of grass. I can manipulate the frame, the color, the light, the physical context; but that world is only there for those of us who do not need a camera to see these things. I cannot teach that glass eye to see.

It is often like that with people too.

I wish I could make that girl see herself the way I saw her, brilliant and all lit up with stars as if she herself were one of them. I can manipulate the pace, the tone, the words, our physical context; but that brilliant girl can only see the way she always has before. My eyes are as foreign as glass ones. She cannot see the world she herself carries within her.


It would seem, I cannot teach anything to see.

But I have to wonder, does that matter? I would like it to. But the fact is, I keep on seeing just as I have before. There are worlds I study, and those which I myself ignore. And I guess, if I give over teaching, I may be taught how to see.

9 of 10

I learned how to build home on the topography of my father’s emotions between wandering the woods and chocolate chip cookie making. He was a man still working through the rubble of his own upbringing and so he brought me up in the crowded space between his own tears. I learned to read him the way sailor’s read the stars, the clouds, and the sea. I learned to sail him like he was the only ocean I could ever love. I tried to learn the words that could bring us both home.

He taught me everything I know about emotions and feeling. “Don’t bottle them up and stuff them in.” he’d say, “They’ll always find you because they are not the sort of things that fade unless you face them.” So while he told me not to keep them in, I resolved to be better than that. I chose, instead, to keep them always out.

It took years for me to figure out  that short cuts are just longer ways to the same place for those who want to put off confrontation until it hits you from behind, knocks the wind out of you, and demands your silent attention. It may be the shortest distance between two places; but there are no places or paths for lessons like love, forgiveness, and getting over yourself. Those are long roads you have to walk yourself. Do not skip a step or you may miss it altogether.

It took me even longer to realize that sometimes the act of sorrow is all you have to give. There are no wrong ways to feel, just wrong ways to cope with the feeling. Still I forget and so I say again, there are no wrong ways to feel.

I have now been brought up as far as anyone else can bring me. I do not always feel the things I know. And I do not always understand the things I feel. And yet, the longer I spend trying to feel truth and questioning the why’s and the how’s of feeling, the more I stand by that statement. There are no wrong ways to feel... but my emotions are often malnourished, ignorant, and a little disconnected.

The struggle is to bring all of me into agreement. The struggle is to learn my own coastlines, correct my compass, and learn to sail a new sea. The struggle is to connect and educate all of my emotions in the hope that the daughter I do not yet know if I will have will never have to try so hard to ride my waves, weather my storms, and bring me home.

2 of 10 (yet unedited. forgive the haste.)

I have always loved the stars.
When I was not yet 3 times
around our star, the sun,
my parents packed up the car
and the kid.
We drove from south to north,
sleeping under the stars in sleeping bags,
tarps and, occasionally, the Honda.
And I, not yet 3,
could not imagine a more beautiful ceiling
or a more comfortable bedroom.
I was already in love,
already lovesick,
already hopelessly in over my head.
I have never really recovered from that.
Perhaps, I gave too much too fast
to my first love.
Years bring growth and tears
or else growth brings tears and years.
I have never really figured it out.
I still love roads, and traveling,
And always the stars.
Some years since,
many more travels around our star,
I have lost much love,
Loved and lost,
and found yet more love.
But I have never lost the stars.

I do not have to grow up
And I know it.
But I cannot keep the world young.

That, I realize, is what I really want.
It is a tragic case of miscommunication
Between cause and effect.

Digging in my heels will only make me
Terribly alone
--and covered in dirt.

Life is not ever one single thing,
That's just how our memory records it,
Editted and glamorized.

Instead, it is the quiet pounding
Of a thousand hearts
Headed hopefully home.

And every one of those hearts
Spins ever onward
At full tilt with our globe

As we race ever and always
Around the only star
That gets to rule and reign time itself.

We can stop all of the clocks
And break all of the alarms
But the world will never stay young.

Brilliant Archimedes wrote,
"Give me a place to stand,
And I will move the Earth."

But that is not the problem, is it?
Try to hold this Earth
Stationary.

Try to keep her still.
Yes, unwind all of the watches
And let us together lose track of time.

But neither you nor I can stop it.
And we will never be free
So long as we spin.

So shake the Earth from orbit,
If you can find a place
To stand so far away from home.

Or better yet,
Let us sail
Straight into the sun.

Let us make it explode
With all of the star light and wonder
Held in our own aging eyes.

There, in the dark of newly emptied space,
We will finally be free of time and change;
But we will also be left with no where to go.

done?

tell me of your coming and your going
tell me of your wishing and your passing
tell me of it all

sing me a song
or tell me a story

please, take my heart in hand
just fill my senses to overflowing
the way clearest dark takes up the stars

and moves aside
to let them puncture timid, trembling night.

yes, tell me
and when you finish,
fill the rest with ineffable silence.

It makes me happy that there are homes I can invade...and belong in after everyone who actually lives there leaves to do something else. I still think home is a very funny thing. It is a slippery thing, the importance of which is something too easily let go of. And somehow from here my brain catapults straight to the stars.

I do not understand what happens to me when I look up at the stars. I feel most myself then, and I wonder if it is supposed to work that way. And I wonder why it happens at all. I think it is something about feeling so small while still feeling safe. It is like all of the questions I have either in me or being asked of me get swallowed and either matched with their answers or rendered irrelevant and content to wait awhile longer for their answers.

Somehow that makes me feel at home. I like who I am there best.

Here are two semi related articles: 1. 2.