Minus Island

“The audio haunting promise provides for even the smallest of sparrows
So long as the ghosts are clean and clearly showing through you
I’ve been helpful, metal man bides his time
In the sands on Minus Island
Everything is fine, your heart is working properly–
All my love and luck on the river Euphrates”

-Passage, ‘Johnny Walker’ excerpt, mix by DJ Krush

* * *

Stomach might be improving, finally. Dropped 5 pounds over the first night but it seems to be hanging there as my appetite slowly returns. Of course, I’m also catching what feels like a full-on winter cold as I type this. Wonderful.

Brady Quinn finally got his NFL career debut today on the final drive of the Browns before halftime when Derek Anderson went out with an injured thumb. He only played out that one drive, but it was still nice to finally see him get a chance to toss the ball. He went 3-for-8 for 45 yards if my memory serves. A decent drive, just fizzled in the red zone, but they got a field goal at least.

Reading a lot lately, it’s good to be doing it. Easy to get distracted by trivial things. Writing more soon, too, I hope. Time will tell.

Exciting times…new semester starts the 7th, same night as the BCS Championship Game. Do I hope the first night of class runs out early, or plan on leaving early anyway to make sure I don’t miss any of the game?

Open Road

For Her; she knows who and what she is…

(From ‘Song of the Open Road’, Walt Whitman)

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-
fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need
nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criti-
cisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

…

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imag-
inary lines,
GOing where I listm my own master totla and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the
holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and west are mine, and the north and south
are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

. . .

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied–he realizes hre what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love–if they are vacant of
you, you are vacant of them.

. . .

I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

* * *

<3

Winter Entries

(by Franz Wright – a favorite poem by my favorite poet, that seems necessary right now…)

Love no one, work, and don’t let the pack know
you’re wounded . . .

Stupid, disappointed strategies.

Hazel wind of dusk, I have lived so much.

Friendless eeriness of the new street —

The poem does not come, but its place is kept set.

* * *

Leaving late tomorrow (technically early Saturday) – 3:30am on a Greyhound to Ohio. Lima, specifically, and then another hour ride to Mainsville, just outside of Cincinnati.

Going with the g/f to visit her parents for the holiday, won’t be back until the 27th. They have wireless and all at the house they just build there and I’m staying in the crafts-room-turned-guest-room, so I will have internet access and all, but probably won’t be on much if at all until the later hours when everyone else retires to sleep and I (of course) am up for hours.

But anyway, if anyone needs anything pressing, please feel completely free to call / text me, I’ll answer / respond as often and soon as I can. If you don’t have my cell number and want it, drop a note or an e-mail (burning.chrome@gmail.com). A few friendly messages would be nice..going to be a long trip.

So anyway, I won’t be on as much, but I’ll be around. I hope everyone has a great holiday with their loved ones.

<3
RS

Tempest

Another semester over…didn’t fair too badly. Even managed a magical C- in Chemistry, which I was fully expecting to fail. A in senior seminar, A- in history, B in Spanish.

I’m anxious to get into and also out of the upcoming semester, already. Overall it should be a much more enjoyable semester than the previous one, mostly due to re-taking Poetry, and hoping that biology will be more manageable than chemistry. Mostly I just want to be done with Spanish, which is a constant, blind waving of arms in the darkness — at least that’s how it feels. I’ve managed to do well grade-wise thus far, though, so one more stunningly inept performance resulting in an acceptable grade is both desired and likely.

Leaving very early this Saturday for Lima, OH to visit the girlfriend’s parents for the holiday. All in all, I’d rather avoid the 3:30am bus ride and missing Christmas for the second year in a row with my own family, but these things are to be done. It is nice to get out of the area for a few days, a change of scenery (at least as much of a change as there can be from IN to OH), I’d just rather not have to take all the little annoyances of the trip as well. Oh well.

I should be at the meeting tomorrow night, looking forward to seeing everyone again…

Mind’s Eye

I’m sailing a great ship across a vast ocean-

Waves crashing….a sea gull’s cry near shore…

An angel with curved twists of hair, the color of glowing embers, lips the softness of the sigh of a newborn, it’s first night sleeping out in a new world…lying in a dreamless, always dreamless slumber, at my side.

I want a new world.

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.”

…this, and the firey angel, so far away.

"The Words…" (Mk. II) [A RANT FOR MYSELF]

[DISCLAIMER: Random post ahead. Unlikely to make sense. Just things that are in my head and need venting.]

* * * *

Or at least, ones that are taking me there. They are spoken to me, from so far away…

“What you think; what you write is beauty in its least appreciated form… But, words make or break a man, and my dear you make yourself with so many words.”

Spoken through a mouth of black feathers, plucked haphazard from ancient dark birds from a desert peninsula.

Spoken in a dead but beautiful language of truths, only.

Spoken and carried from a land of things that is substantial only enough to remind a select few it remains, but ethereal enough to always remain elusive…the beauty and completeness of things that is ever out of grasp…close enough to invoke so many authentic thoughts…emotions…yet always set aside by what feels to be a vast, insurmountable chasm – not bottomless nor endless, but never to be, it continues to seem, traveled.

* * *

I’m…so very tired of reacting..defending….dodging, escaping. Receiving what comes. Tired of being at the mercy of circumstance…fortune, luck, random causality..simple fucking geography. I scream to the sky, at no-one in particular: “Do I suit you, then, as a marionette? Is my dance…pleasing, enough? Are the strings I am so clearly attached to taut enough?”

"The Words That Took Us There…"

Or at least, ones that are taking me there. They are spoken to me, from so far away…

“What you think; what you write is beauty in its least appreciated form… But, words make or break a man, and my dear you make yourself with so many words.”

Feeling Political: A Poll

Directly inspired by the work Vince is doing over on his blog — replicated in extreme mediocrity.

Ryan is:

Quiet in the back and forgotten, like a book without a cover.
Wandering aimlessly through the blizzard, searching for new territory to settle.
Misunderstood like a crude pun over cocktails, resulting in dismissal.
An artist etching out that which moves, like a caveman about the hunt.
Temporary in this world, like the face of a lost loved one in a shape of a cloud.

Truly Winding Down

History final on Tuesday…Spanish Wednesday…senior research paper due by midnight on Thursday. It sounds like quite the overwhelming lot, but, really…nah. ‘Tis fine.

I’m feeling the weight of Winter coming on. I think I was intended to be a grizzly bear, meant to hibernate. I can feel my body and mind both slowing down, thickening with too many thoughts, not enough answers, trying to recognize hazy figures through the distance-fog effect of snow, hiding nothing…embracing the constant winter.

The Writer’s Meeting (Dinner/Party) was wonderful. Chris’s house is beautiful and relaxing. The food was good and welcomed, as was the wine. Conversation was equally enjoyable, as anything resembling intelligent communication has been an infrequent friend as of late…I’m feeling starved, even now.

It was nice to be among warm voices, for a change. Too much of my time is spent isolated; at least in every way that matters.

RS

Cycles

The afternoon smells like the
carpet of the first trailer we
slept in together redefining what
it means to lie together when
the going gets rough and the rough
starts growing going gone in a
moment you want to forget but
need to remember, embedded like glass
in his forehead point-two seconds after
the decision for collision that’s real
not television and your mother was
still drinking an hour before service
that needs no introduction, not to this
family of practiced leaps and dry-cleaned
grief yet they always manage to
get to sleep.

* * *

An odd piece that came out of nowhere…a sort of experiment in spoken work, stream of consciousness…it’s saying something important but I don’t know if it’s there yet. A start point, but everything is…

My apologies to all for missing the meeting today – rest assured I wanted very much to join (and of course it would happen that Talia made it today), but my on-and-off battle with this almost-illness caught up with me, along with a deep need (read: not desire) for sleep, and today was apparently the day.

I’m not sick-sick, really I’m not. Just drained enough I just couldn’t get out of my bed until I had to prepare to head to work. Tomorrow appears to be another busy day of errands and driving and walking, and I’m not up for that either, but it will need to be done.

I’ll see you all at the party next week! My excitement can’t come through text, but I truly am looking forward to a good time with fellow, friendly minds. I’ll try to bring something, though I don’t know what? My budget is tiny but I hate to mooch. We shall see.

Be well-

RS