youth.

- Walt Whitman.

from eric.

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, ...but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them...” annie dillard

life through verse and language comes into a focus that experience alone can let slip away. the savoring and the reflecting moment gives each breath its due.

Joe Pug.

Joe Pug - "Hymn 101" from This is What We Imagine on Vimeo.

A Forest Hymn by William Cullen Bryant

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me---the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die---but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses----ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch enemy Death---yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant's throne---the sepulchre,
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seemed
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks
Around them;---and there have been holy men
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.
But let me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink
And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou
Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods
And drowns the village; when, at thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities---who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad unchained elements to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of the works
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

wind.

even the breeze,

light as a hello kiss,

comes to a halt. and the air is still.

no sound.

and suddenly we hear our own heartbeat in our ears

and notice our breathing.

I have grown weary of myself.

i love my sister.

from an email today, after I sent her a link to the Library of Congress' flickr account, with hundreds of color photos from the 30's and 40's:

"thanks for the lead. interesting photo collection thanks to the library of congress - after looking at these photos i find that regardless of place, style, shoe or shirt, body movement or pose, human expression is profoundly found around the eyes. the wrinkles and the youth always tell us the same thing - we despair, joy, and stare - our eye is ultimately in search and longing for that which is real. everyone's looking for god.

which is why we must be careful where we stare.

rj."

Circumnavigate Intentionality.

Today, we met a man who lives in a van.

Owns his own business, surfing lessons, for 20 years.

a white van, clean and large, deliberate so as not to attract attention.

He counts money three times a year.

He looks 33 but said he is 43.

And reminded us that, while 33 is the universal age of enlightenment,

he is hoping 44 is the new 33.

Though he seemed pretty enlightened to me.

"Exchange profit for Intentionality as highest purpose," he said.

"And you will be living, not waiting to live."

How many people in this world are toiling. dirt on their hands that they hate.

not for love of hard work or purpose, but for love of a dream that is not a dream.

love of the Jones' life that is not real. love of a degree that does not nourish.

man's love of formula, pattern, and machine. we do it to ourselves.

Though I do not think that love is wrong,

I am certain that the machine is there to be overcome. We must have her,

so that in her shadow, we can find our own movement. moving away.

Not rejection, but enlightenment. Not a cop out, run out, fleeing, but inspiration, education, and character.

I learned a lot from my conversation with this man.

He invited my family to his 40 foot sail boat in Costa Rica.

He starts sailing around the world in September, and wants us to join him

for a month, any month.

With his 22 year old skipper. Learn to sail. Work. Jib. Mast.

Rebekah will go.

I just might.

Franklin Road Academy

There was no coming to it

or a moment in 7th grade

when something shifted

and the eyes began to turn

the expectation.

the everyone waiting, leaning in to hear what I said next

did next, chose next

that you are brighter. noticed. watched.

that is never welcomed with words

or clear thought, (no.. repelled),

but only that blood feeling of worth

of course I did not notice right away.

i just felt part of something. a community of good friends.

until the disparity was pointed out,

by those who knew nothing of attention or artificial light.

in teenage years where we discover

the length of our arms and the pitch

the strange village of school decides and you decide

who you are to be.

a man. behind the microphone.

mine, the house that fills

the phone that rings,

the after prom

those young hearts fire even then, that fight without words to be seen,

and then there are words,

and confuse friendship with an answer to their lonely pink hearts,

and offense is egg shell path,

and manipulate, just to have your attention,

and hurt you, just to have your attention,

and hurt themselves,

and all is carried in the fingers-crossed promise of youth

that this young kingship will not be the end...

but you, the one,

you did not ask,

but they will decide you did,

must live the stage and shape the vision they dream for them.

or else be a comforting conversation

in the years to come

to mediocrity,

'see, even he settled down, after all.'

If I am.

If I were more attractive,

the smiles I attract and

the exchanges she engaged would be

colored by, 'why?'

and my boldness in openness

and open arms long held hugs

would confuse the loneliness in her, or him

instead of a moments repose and a deep healing breath

in arms that just want to hold for love's sake

or a sharing of the true heart, not

flooded by the hunger of animals.

If I were smarter,

I would be lonely.

If I were stronger,

I'd like to be stronger,

but I fear the too-welcome shadow that waits to tell

'who cares about your best?'

'tell me... no one.'

'be better than him, or him, be better than'

'and take care he sees'

there is a gift in the unfantastic.

one less fight.

If I were funnier,

I'd trade the moments where

soil was prime to turn and till

for applause and rich laughter

that grows nothing except

more invitations to dinner.

If I had a girl friend,

I do not know.

Both miracles and chaos.

I say impossible. how weak.

If I was married,

my history could not

have been what it was

and I would not be what I am

and what I am may prove to be important

or not

but I am not married.

though whoever that person is, listen:

I do not know.

If my family was perfect,

I have not met one.

And the pain I have experienced is not unlike others,

the fracture of form is clear,

but the love and honesty is rich and budding,

and my pain is the same as your pain.

If I were more determined,

If I saw the truth clearer,

If I saw without these frames,

I would love more,

draw more,

write more,

seek more,

talk less,

talk more,

hold more,

carry less,

think less,

reflect more,

and gasp, and die, and

dust is dust

and rest.

but i fit right in.

I hold behind my back

like playground fingers crossed

a secret.

this is not my degree

this is not my family

my child

she is not mine

not raised in the sun

without sweat or fear,

this is not my pavement

and this bank I do not visit.

i know the stories

that built the railroad

the sadness loss and swept

i know the switch back snake

of this economy, dusting away footprints.

i do not belong,

but I am here

dressed in plain clothes,

a spy for a society of one

an audience

that applauds my secret dance

that approves my conformity.

Our culture has truckled to the times — to the senses. It is not manworthy. If the vast and the spiritual are omitted, so are the practical and the moral. It does not make us brave or free. We teach boys to be such men as we are. We do not teach them to aspire to be all they can. We do not give them a training as if we believed in their noble nature. We scarce educate their bodies. We do not train the eye and the hand. We exercise their understandings to the apprehension and comparison of some facts, to a skill in numbers, in words; we aim to make accountants, attorneys, engineers; but not to make able, earnest, great-hearted men. The great object of Education should be commensurate with the object of life. It should be a moral one; to teach self-trust: to inspire the youthful man with an interest in himself; with a curiosity touching his own nature; to acquaint him with the resources of his mind, and to teach him that there is all his strength, and to inflame him with a piety towards the Grand Mind in which he lives. Thus would education conspire with the Divine Providence. A man is a little thing whilst he works by and for himself, but, when he gives voice to the rules of love and justice, is godlike, his word is current in all countries; and all men, though his enemies, are made is friends and obey it as their own.

— R.W. Emerson

capacity.

i have too many friends.

or at least, i know too many people that, taken in isolation, excite my heart with friendship, interest, commonality, adventure, etc.

i don't know how to celebrate the individual, every one of these islands of intrigue.

i don't know how to love the light in each ambition, each discovery, the

little or great skirmishes between self and purpose,

the insecurity of each identity, and the brilliant shine of infrequent revelation

and not be overwhelmed.

or mocked for the volume.

Shy letters.

Chapter 4 of East of Eden speaks of Charles' letters to Adam. Charles, a strong, perfectly athletic man of few words, broken by his father's love of Adam, writes to his brother off in the military. Steinbeck writes, "As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself."

I am drawn to people who home inside their heads. It is my hunger to understand maybe. Or my love of what is different and mystery. I hope I never fully understand them. I wonder if they understand me.
But I have seen this truth of Steinbeck's words before.

Chapter 3.

The final moments of Chapter 3, of East of Eden... wrench my heart.  

Adam's mother, not his real mother, cleaning his wounds.  Inflicted by his brother Charles in a rage that his father loved Adam more.   And his mother speaks of Adam's never ending love for his brother.   The brother that beat him.  The brother that pitied him with love in his superior strength.  And yet their father loved Adam more.  More than the strong perfect son.  And the ache of the mother, believing that she 'knows' Charles because of his secret gifts.  And she stares at Charles' face for a betrayal of those gifts.  The ache. 

I only retell because it spills from my fingers, I cannot get enough.  

Intro to Virginibus Puerisque:

My dear William Ernest Henley: 

We are all busy in this world building Towers of Babel; and the child of our imaginations is always a changeling when it comes from nurse.  This is not only true in the greatest, as of wars and folios, but in the least also, like the trifling volume in your hand. 

Thus I began to write these papers with a definite end... I was to state temperately the beliefs of youth as opposed to the contentions of age; to go over all the field where the two differ, and produce at last a little volume of special pleadings which I might call, without misnomer, "Life at Twenty-five."  But times kept changing, and I shared in the change.  I clung hard to that entrancing age; but, with the best will, no man can be twenty-five forever.  The old ruddy convictions deserted me, and, along with them, the style that fits their presentation and defense.   I saw, and indeed my friends informed me, that the game was up.  A good part of the volume would answer to the long-projected title; but the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest.  

It is good to have been young in youth, and, as years go on, to grow older.  Many are already old before they are through their teens; but to travel deliberately through one's ages is to get the heart out of a liberal education.  Times change, opinions vary to their opposite, and still this world appears a brave gymnasium, full of sea-bathing, and horse exercise, and bracing, many virtues; and what can be more encouraging than to find the friend who was welcome at one age, still welcome to another?  Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another.  

These papers are like milestones on the way-side of my life; and, as I look back in memory, there is hardly a stage of that distance but I see you present with advice, reproof, or praise.  Meanwhile, many things have changed, you and I among the rest; but I hope that our sympathy, founded on the love of our art, and nourished by mutual assistance, shall survive these little revolutions undiminished, and, with God's help, unite us to the end.

R.L.Stevenson.  

______

I am so grateful that, even at 26, I feel that I have friends for the journey.  - JJ

don't know who said it, wish it was me.

"If you just look at all that already exists in your life, all that you already have: unlimited air to breathe, ample lighting to see, music to hear, books to read, stars to dream by, trees to gaze at, floors to dance on, friends to laugh with, enemies to befriend, strangers to meet, woods to walk through, beaches to comb, rocks to scale, rains to cleanse you, rivers to float you, animals to comfort you, you do have to admit, there's more of it than you could ever, ever, ever spend, but try anyway."

For Annie. by Edgar Allen Poe

My friend Margie put this on a present for our dear friend Geoff.  I just can't stop reading it. 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 
I stand amid the roar 
Of a surf-tormented shore, 
And I hold within my hand 
Grains of the golden sand — 
How few! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep, 

While I weep — while I weep! 
Oh, God! can I not grasp 
Them with a tighter clasp? 
Oh, God! can I not save 
One from the pitiless wave? 
Is all that I see or seem 
But a dream within a dream?

When You Are Old.

this poem is about love... maybe love that wasn't received.  a love that Yeats thought was richer than the love she did receive, and forever held that against her.  I'm not sure.  But the ache of time and loss resound from it, and therefore, Jed loves it. 

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,	5
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled	10
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. w.b.yeats

Purpose Capital.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

to wear my body out, to ravish my mind into mush, completely devoted to sacrificial and heavenminded love.  i want to i want to i want to.  

let's see if i can quiet the puppeteer that turns my glance to weaker lovers, to cheaper meals and bad wine for the hasty lust to be drunk.  

To Unlearn.

The layers of living/loving life are coming through to me as a peeling away, an unlearning. 

Unlearning the American Dream. 

Unlearning the formulas of family security in suburban quarantine.

Unlearning the reasons why people are given value. 

And what excites me, is that this revealed wisdom of living and seeing through the veil

is confirmed in the Gospel. 

What is the Gospel but an Unlearning of our desires, haunts, and secret motives?  What is the Gospel but an ancient recording of what my heart is screaming all around me.  

The Wind, The City, and The Forest.

i am a two faced man

the hand built home down dirt road lost

and the color can in hand down alleys angeles los 

the drive or canopied walk to Talk with no phone

but the nervous quake at being alone 

the challenge to throw the keyboard and paper green

but wait in line for the five second new touch screen 

the heaven is home and mystery hold for purity's promise

yet hunger in shadows for immediate fill and long doubting thomas.

the books that I read and verse that I pen

is for my own joy or the eyes of men.

I am a two faced man. 

And the one informs the other

and tempers the shrill sounds of a 

commitment neither is willing to make. 

and each longs to be free of the other

or to be overcome.

Sent this to OP the day before The Rescue.

Building a statue of dreams and youth,
with bone and muscle, film and tooth,
to breathe a chance of changing glaciers,
driving the river to a new ocean,
to turn the timid boy to face her
and drink the dreamer danger potion.

Your aching joints are trembling past
the crested ridge of wind-torn mast,
and pride is swelling as mourning dawns,
the passing spring of first born voice,
that dared to shout for throats ripped gone,
and threat a victory rejoiced,

a lasting ache to hold it close
for self was pinned and but a ghost,
forget it not the purposed road,
that moved you through a sunset load,
and fear will creep that self's return,
will wake the dark you did unlearn,

but hold the ache as close as bone,
and seek the wonder in his tone,
and see as badges tired legs,
and see as honor nesting eggs,
that long to crack and cry and leap
from high above and touch the sheep,

for God is bold and lavish more,
for writing this into his score:
with names inscribed with roars of Lion,
a silly dreamer and Orion.

November & June.

It is after The Rescue... one of the most incredible weeks/experiences of my life. I have yet to really reflect on it. That will come.

For now, here is a poem I wrote in the van driving back to SD.. staring at wild canyons and friends that humble me... and i was just day dreaming about longing, and the purity of unrequited or separated love...

______


November and June can never meet
This side of eternity.
They are wholly in love,
I think, but they do not know
the other exists except by rumor.
Time is the murder of their
Flirtatious meeting.
But he does not know how
They pass poetry addressed to the other
they hope is there,
Written on the leaves and
carved in the seeds beneath the sleeping soil.

Reflect.

Like a pool or a lawyer and his degree from a school

or the carpenter and his tool

or a junky and his fuel

Expect

nothing you can't hold with your own mind

or can't do on your own time

or is not one of a kind

Reflect

Self, others, cultures, pockets, purposes, exchange

Change, the words, the silence, the strange

Or a forgotten shooting range.

- O.P.