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a candle for seeker, pt. 3
Jul. 15th, 2016 03:41 pmlotuses into the distance, stepping out into the water. seeker looks on from the water's edge, hands clasped, eyes finding no sure place to rest. today, seeker was intended to examine her wounds. today, seeker intended to have her wounds examined, but the day had another intention entirely so seeker looks out over the water from the water's edge, hands clasped, eyes glancing, anticipating, anticipating, anticipating: what?
on the water the pink blossoms seem to be moving, cluster to tangle, gathering and isolating, but she suspects this is a conspiracy of slight movements augmented by her expectations. the green mat of leaf, like where she'd exercise at the gym. the spiking center of louts, a woman's skirts obscenely upended, opening in upheaval, showing what was not necessarily intended to be seen.
instead of righting the matter, instead of making the scene submit to comfortable associations: a lotus's jewel, the meditator's courtyard, someplace to be for every place in being, seeker lights a flame at every flower's center and lofts skyward in offering toward the old white moon. stars and stars and stars and stars. a star field of lotuses, taking shapes and coding messages seeker hasn't yet learned to speak. from the edge of the water seeker guesses the ages of things. lotuses of the season, waters of eternity. ten thousand year stones in her pocket, smoothed to circles over the course of her lifetime.
there is seeker herself, at the water's edge, considering the ages of things. seeker is in her late thirties but she has also recently broke the seal of forty.
seeker is a hundred years old and she is not yet even nine.
seeker is a sixteen year old wander, barefoot and lost to a rhythm in her head.
seeker is twenty and alone in a strange new city, where the walking bridge brags a mortality rate and gas station owners ambition to be farms by virtue of a small lot of corn just off the pumps.
seeker hasn't even started to cultivate her life to such variables before she is twenty-two and needs to move back to her mother's house, where when last she resided things had arrived at a point where it became necessary to live among corn-farming gas stations.
seeker is ever an infant, gazing at the world as seeing it for the first time.
seeker is weary of the world, bent over herself and muttering, barely a scruff of white hair atop the shiny globe of her exposed scalp.
seeker is every age in one moment, because age does not matter to seeker so much, only those limitations her body and the law put on her activities.
seeker woke while it was still dark, her lover stirring as she climbed out of bed. he stirred then rolled on his back and fell back asleep with his mouth open, calling out to something unnameable and with a sigh, redacting it before that unnameable something got too close. seeker leans over him for a moment, pressing her lips to the damp considerations twitching through his brow even in sleep. seeker thinks. seeker seeks out other thinkers. she kisses her dear thinker’s forehead and holds until he turns away, quieting his breath and curling up on his side. we have such simple mechanisms in love, seeker thinks, and quietly leaves the room.
seeker goes out onto the balcony to look out over her latest strange city. here, no one is hiring and the awful hardness of strangers occasionally fills the sky with helicopters. here, a highway jaunt is to be expected in even a five minute commute and most of the time when she does drive, it's to the hospital. seeker is still seeker, though, eternally unaltered and worn smooth with daily tidal trauma; learning to walk and die in the same movement. in the distance a cluster of broadcast towers signal, blinking slow, pulsing long, casting small shadows even where seekers stands, miles away. there's something out there, she knows. there's something out there calling. there's something i need to find, she knows, the fire igniting her lotus.
she wonders what it could be.
on the water the pink blossoms seem to be moving, cluster to tangle, gathering and isolating, but she suspects this is a conspiracy of slight movements augmented by her expectations. the green mat of leaf, like where she'd exercise at the gym. the spiking center of louts, a woman's skirts obscenely upended, opening in upheaval, showing what was not necessarily intended to be seen.
instead of righting the matter, instead of making the scene submit to comfortable associations: a lotus's jewel, the meditator's courtyard, someplace to be for every place in being, seeker lights a flame at every flower's center and lofts skyward in offering toward the old white moon. stars and stars and stars and stars. a star field of lotuses, taking shapes and coding messages seeker hasn't yet learned to speak. from the edge of the water seeker guesses the ages of things. lotuses of the season, waters of eternity. ten thousand year stones in her pocket, smoothed to circles over the course of her lifetime.
there is seeker herself, at the water's edge, considering the ages of things. seeker is in her late thirties but she has also recently broke the seal of forty.
seeker is a hundred years old and she is not yet even nine.
seeker is a sixteen year old wander, barefoot and lost to a rhythm in her head.
seeker is twenty and alone in a strange new city, where the walking bridge brags a mortality rate and gas station owners ambition to be farms by virtue of a small lot of corn just off the pumps.
seeker hasn't even started to cultivate her life to such variables before she is twenty-two and needs to move back to her mother's house, where when last she resided things had arrived at a point where it became necessary to live among corn-farming gas stations.
seeker is ever an infant, gazing at the world as seeing it for the first time.
seeker is weary of the world, bent over herself and muttering, barely a scruff of white hair atop the shiny globe of her exposed scalp.
seeker is every age in one moment, because age does not matter to seeker so much, only those limitations her body and the law put on her activities.
seeker woke while it was still dark, her lover stirring as she climbed out of bed. he stirred then rolled on his back and fell back asleep with his mouth open, calling out to something unnameable and with a sigh, redacting it before that unnameable something got too close. seeker leans over him for a moment, pressing her lips to the damp considerations twitching through his brow even in sleep. seeker thinks. seeker seeks out other thinkers. she kisses her dear thinker’s forehead and holds until he turns away, quieting his breath and curling up on his side. we have such simple mechanisms in love, seeker thinks, and quietly leaves the room.
seeker goes out onto the balcony to look out over her latest strange city. here, no one is hiring and the awful hardness of strangers occasionally fills the sky with helicopters. here, a highway jaunt is to be expected in even a five minute commute and most of the time when she does drive, it's to the hospital. seeker is still seeker, though, eternally unaltered and worn smooth with daily tidal trauma; learning to walk and die in the same movement. in the distance a cluster of broadcast towers signal, blinking slow, pulsing long, casting small shadows even where seekers stands, miles away. there's something out there, she knows. there's something out there calling. there's something i need to find, she knows, the fire igniting her lotus.
she wonders what it could be.
a candle for seeker, pt. 2
Jun. 13th, 2016 08:44 pmseeker loves the darkness, seeker dresses in black. seeker writes poetry about death as a point of entry for understanding love. in seeker’s poetry, matters disintegrate. things fall apart. people forget who they are and do things so terrible they’ll never remember again. the abandoned selves in seeker’s poetry return to the earth: to be put to rest. to regenerate, reincarnate, flare up in the night with phoenix wings. the abandoned selves in seeker’s poetry emerge a new matter, strange to behold. off the page and off the map. in the unmapped places. in the places between. in those places we cannot anticipate, only navigate. only survive.
seeker fears such places, almost as much as she loves them. seeker loves the darkness so she dresses in black.
here is one story. here is one story told on the back of a pale boy’s hand. the subtle lift and loft of each minuscule bone, the tender rise and crackle of each joint. hands are all nuance and supposition, except when they are not. a theory of malleability. a theory of a pale boy’s hand. seeker sets upon a surface. she prepares to receive a new name for a previously unexamined matter.
seeker sleeps in the hallway outside of her room, but only when no one else is home. she does so believing that only through the acknowledgment that every residence is temporary may we glimpse what is eternal. on her bed, she puts flowers. a substantial tribute of flowers. stems and leaves and a flurry of petals fallen and recombined in abstract expressions of flowers that have fallen apart. stems and stamens and seed pods, what other flowers would seeker want? leaf matter, root matter, what’s the matter?
seeker is lying out her own wake. she dresses her second-to-last resting place, that place she will rest after she rests no more. seeker is no longer afraid of closing her eyes. she knows her every blink shatters the universe in some tiny way. she knows every unacknowledged end and beginning that quivers in the space hidden by every blink. the world that could exist in split hairs of not even seconds could be entirely different from the world that we hold our eyes open to, but we wouldn’t know it because our eyes are shut. what world exists in the split hairs of seconds, the places between?
forget it, the light is strange and the narrative unstable. instead, let us consider: why has seeker closed her eyes? she is tired and hungry. she wants to write poetry but fears it will never be read: by a dark girl, by a pale boy, by a woman dressed in fire or a man who lives in terror of a locked door. and yet what we have written is not something we can ever really read. and yet what we have written lines a reader’s understanding of us like adhesive contact paper at the bottom of the kitchen junk drawer. there’s so much more to it in every way in imagining. there’s so much more to it than any pale boy could know.
write the fire, write it fast, keep the language moving: seeker’s been burned by holding a line too long before. she gathers her treasures: roses and thorn bushes. books and marking ribbons. boxes shaped like hearts, agates cut into eggs. skulls and vertebra, a crumbling of leaves. a shell, a stone, a stick. a ring of keys. a diamond ring. a clasping ring of beads: black and blue, cobalt and turquoise, bleached-bone flecks of white. a stone with a hole worn through. a twisted lip of lotus stem. a red thread, a blue thread, a black thread. a pointed quartz included with tourmaline: seeker remembers every gift. broken wax seals and knotted thread cords. a dish filled with water. a small bottle of oil, another small bottle of oil. seeker loves the distilled essence of a single matter almost as much as the mysteries of combination. one energy into another, neroli absolute into lavender’s essence, clove spiking the bergamot.
intention augmented by other intentions. the unique signature of our personal desires: darkest blue, but only in glass or the very early morning. rose, but as red, darkest red, red as an expression of black, and that dark wine of fragrance hypnotizing the beloved. candles, beeswax and paraffin, carved with intention, etched by desire, dressed and redressed with blended oils, with holy oils, anointed in a line at the brow. seeker watches from the periphery that is her only home. she knows someone is waiting for her. she knows someone is calling for her. she knows someone somewhere is dreaming in darkness for her.
seeker fears such places, almost as much as she loves them. seeker loves the darkness so she dresses in black.
here is one story. here is one story told on the back of a pale boy’s hand. the subtle lift and loft of each minuscule bone, the tender rise and crackle of each joint. hands are all nuance and supposition, except when they are not. a theory of malleability. a theory of a pale boy’s hand. seeker sets upon a surface. she prepares to receive a new name for a previously unexamined matter.
seeker sleeps in the hallway outside of her room, but only when no one else is home. she does so believing that only through the acknowledgment that every residence is temporary may we glimpse what is eternal. on her bed, she puts flowers. a substantial tribute of flowers. stems and leaves and a flurry of petals fallen and recombined in abstract expressions of flowers that have fallen apart. stems and stamens and seed pods, what other flowers would seeker want? leaf matter, root matter, what’s the matter?
seeker is lying out her own wake. she dresses her second-to-last resting place, that place she will rest after she rests no more. seeker is no longer afraid of closing her eyes. she knows her every blink shatters the universe in some tiny way. she knows every unacknowledged end and beginning that quivers in the space hidden by every blink. the world that could exist in split hairs of not even seconds could be entirely different from the world that we hold our eyes open to, but we wouldn’t know it because our eyes are shut. what world exists in the split hairs of seconds, the places between?
forget it, the light is strange and the narrative unstable. instead, let us consider: why has seeker closed her eyes? she is tired and hungry. she wants to write poetry but fears it will never be read: by a dark girl, by a pale boy, by a woman dressed in fire or a man who lives in terror of a locked door. and yet what we have written is not something we can ever really read. and yet what we have written lines a reader’s understanding of us like adhesive contact paper at the bottom of the kitchen junk drawer. there’s so much more to it in every way in imagining. there’s so much more to it than any pale boy could know.
write the fire, write it fast, keep the language moving: seeker’s been burned by holding a line too long before. she gathers her treasures: roses and thorn bushes. books and marking ribbons. boxes shaped like hearts, agates cut into eggs. skulls and vertebra, a crumbling of leaves. a shell, a stone, a stick. a ring of keys. a diamond ring. a clasping ring of beads: black and blue, cobalt and turquoise, bleached-bone flecks of white. a stone with a hole worn through. a twisted lip of lotus stem. a red thread, a blue thread, a black thread. a pointed quartz included with tourmaline: seeker remembers every gift. broken wax seals and knotted thread cords. a dish filled with water. a small bottle of oil, another small bottle of oil. seeker loves the distilled essence of a single matter almost as much as the mysteries of combination. one energy into another, neroli absolute into lavender’s essence, clove spiking the bergamot.
intention augmented by other intentions. the unique signature of our personal desires: darkest blue, but only in glass or the very early morning. rose, but as red, darkest red, red as an expression of black, and that dark wine of fragrance hypnotizing the beloved. candles, beeswax and paraffin, carved with intention, etched by desire, dressed and redressed with blended oils, with holy oils, anointed in a line at the brow. seeker watches from the periphery that is her only home. she knows someone is waiting for her. she knows someone is calling for her. she knows someone somewhere is dreaming in darkness for her.
a candle for seeker, pt. 1
Jun. 10th, 2016 04:45 pmalone on the shore, seeker gathers up shells. alone on the shore, seeker gathers shells together, shells and coral and ocean-tumbled stones, smoothed into simple shapes, smoothed into pale colors, into colors that are only just there. seeker seeks seashells on the shore: walking along the tidewater’s perpetually shifting boundary, a place where things wash up to wash back out. such a beautiful analogy for seeker’s unconscious and yet what does she find? things are different near the ocean. the ocean peaks and recedes. the ocean has its own shape to reveal.
gathering shells in the hem of her gown, seeker looks out into the ocean and sees: how the nature of the water’s surface changes in the distance. how the sound of water changes with its volume. the ocean churns and rushes. the ocean is always on the move. seeker clacks and rattles her shells, herself an altar, herself an altered matter. herself the point where water, wind, stone, and flame conspire to manifest experience. but then again: and then what’s more: and then: and how:
ribbons and scarves. something about seeker is always trailing along. answers and questions: seeker often can’t be bothered to experience them in an examined variety of sequence. what do you know, what do you expect, what are you looking for?
seeker wants everything you would expect seeker to want. she wants to be beautiful. she wants to feel beautiful. she wants to share beauty. she wants to remember almost as much as she wants to be remembered. seeker wants to walk at the endlessly shifting tide line and believe there’s a reason she is there: a reason she is here: a matter being communicated: information that needs to be conveyed to her and needs to be conveyed to her in a meaningful way. her shells are colors of flesh. her shells are colors of teeth. her shells are the color of bone, of things stripped to their core essence, of things stripped to the elements of form: the elements of form, exposed to the elements: water and gravity, water and salt, the moon’s pull, the sun’s fade, tiny waters splashed and gathered in a clam shell’s flipped dish. gathering water and sand. gathering microbes and salt.
the ocean trails on about it like the ocean does. scarves and ribbons. always another inhale, always another expanding sigh, always another seeker looking out over the water wondering what it would be like: to look back over the water, to look back towards shore. to rise above, looking down into the sloshing shallows, the sandbar’s steady rise. sea creatures click and moan. sea creatures shimmy and undulate. seeker leaves the sea creatures their shells or the shells that could be theirs:
seeker only takes what is partial, what no longer constitutes shelter, what she can bring together incomplete to make into a new sort of whole. this is seeker’s purpose: bringing together what does not satisfy in a satisfying way. seeker finds the farthest flung pieces. seeker brings together what is broken and lost. broken and lost until seeker pieces it together in seeker’s distinct manner: what seeker is most often looking for is a new way of looking at something lost to our understanding of it: a new context, a new arrangement. a new use, a new way of thinking. seeker wants to show me there’s a place for everything and everything has its place: the snail shell broken and tossed over itself over and again over until every broken place slides smooth beneath the thumb, smooth beneath the thumb in spirals and twists: twisting into a kind of portal. a new break in reality. a place you did not know you could go. a place you did not know you could find yourself in. a place with no coordinates, no address, no zoning code: where you are when you are not really, or the place you’ve always been.
seeker wants to bring what is broken together. not to piece it together as it was. not even to remember it as it was: seeker sees her own reflection in what is broken and worn smooth, what is bleached lifeless and riddled with holes, what constitutes mystery, obstruction, revelation, and release.
the pleasures of what cannot be completed, the pleasures of what has already begun to break down: the pleasures of halfway lost, strange and scattering, already broken, already breaking down. seeker knows these things are not the only gift the ocean has to offer her but in this moment she is sustained by the gathering process. finding and gathering, observing and remembering. how observing calls memory. how memory calls. how memory calls.
gathering shells in the hem of her gown, seeker looks out into the ocean and sees: how the nature of the water’s surface changes in the distance. how the sound of water changes with its volume. the ocean churns and rushes. the ocean is always on the move. seeker clacks and rattles her shells, herself an altar, herself an altered matter. herself the point where water, wind, stone, and flame conspire to manifest experience. but then again: and then what’s more: and then: and how:
ribbons and scarves. something about seeker is always trailing along. answers and questions: seeker often can’t be bothered to experience them in an examined variety of sequence. what do you know, what do you expect, what are you looking for?
seeker wants everything you would expect seeker to want. she wants to be beautiful. she wants to feel beautiful. she wants to share beauty. she wants to remember almost as much as she wants to be remembered. seeker wants to walk at the endlessly shifting tide line and believe there’s a reason she is there: a reason she is here: a matter being communicated: information that needs to be conveyed to her and needs to be conveyed to her in a meaningful way. her shells are colors of flesh. her shells are colors of teeth. her shells are the color of bone, of things stripped to their core essence, of things stripped to the elements of form: the elements of form, exposed to the elements: water and gravity, water and salt, the moon’s pull, the sun’s fade, tiny waters splashed and gathered in a clam shell’s flipped dish. gathering water and sand. gathering microbes and salt.
the ocean trails on about it like the ocean does. scarves and ribbons. always another inhale, always another expanding sigh, always another seeker looking out over the water wondering what it would be like: to look back over the water, to look back towards shore. to rise above, looking down into the sloshing shallows, the sandbar’s steady rise. sea creatures click and moan. sea creatures shimmy and undulate. seeker leaves the sea creatures their shells or the shells that could be theirs:
seeker only takes what is partial, what no longer constitutes shelter, what she can bring together incomplete to make into a new sort of whole. this is seeker’s purpose: bringing together what does not satisfy in a satisfying way. seeker finds the farthest flung pieces. seeker brings together what is broken and lost. broken and lost until seeker pieces it together in seeker’s distinct manner: what seeker is most often looking for is a new way of looking at something lost to our understanding of it: a new context, a new arrangement. a new use, a new way of thinking. seeker wants to show me there’s a place for everything and everything has its place: the snail shell broken and tossed over itself over and again over until every broken place slides smooth beneath the thumb, smooth beneath the thumb in spirals and twists: twisting into a kind of portal. a new break in reality. a place you did not know you could go. a place you did not know you could find yourself in. a place with no coordinates, no address, no zoning code: where you are when you are not really, or the place you’ve always been.
seeker wants to bring what is broken together. not to piece it together as it was. not even to remember it as it was: seeker sees her own reflection in what is broken and worn smooth, what is bleached lifeless and riddled with holes, what constitutes mystery, obstruction, revelation, and release.
the pleasures of what cannot be completed, the pleasures of what has already begun to break down: the pleasures of halfway lost, strange and scattering, already broken, already breaking down. seeker knows these things are not the only gift the ocean has to offer her but in this moment she is sustained by the gathering process. finding and gathering, observing and remembering. how observing calls memory. how memory calls. how memory calls.
