Loathe to bear witness on the heels of man, a wretched body and salty lips poured forth air and life. From a stubborn trumpet did La Vi En Rose issue with bright timbre amidst its sullen ilk, SS, GI. Lightly, the somber melody hovered as god above the void, between sea and surf, and there was death surrounding her. And she said "Let darkness be separate from light," and darkness and light did not comply, and turmoil was unfettered. And the trumpeter saw this, and he was grim.

The sands off Normandy will never polish a reflection and now weakly sputter through hour-glass and the riddled bodies of crude's allure. Germanic for Arabic, but things have changed and things are more sinister. A slick chokes the life from ancient seas and from the sands it's dwelt for centuries, the honor from a uniform, and from a race of men a tepid peace.

It seems queer that an artist should move to squelch, rather than nurture, the waylay flashes of joy that, on occasion, shoot up from the stony soil of one's melancholy. "Surely, this sliver of silver cannot compliment my brooding landscape, not if I should be considered seriously." Always on the cusp of a freshly bled heart, youthful rendezvous with a flickering muse have suggested that inspiration and "true art" is only successfully tapped within the deepest reaches of the deepest self-scrutiny of the deepest pain. But this is as convincing as the divining dowser, oneself, and their witching rod with which one marks a spot to plunge. Hark! Yonder! A surface stream! Dam it, and damn the dark, and cup your hands in a pool in which there is no heartache, at least not today, for only the fool will scoff.

It dances on and in your features, and a sentence - a word - that you held just below your lip peeks over and out at me. "I never said that." So you didn't, and in that you said something.

A curious thing, dark and never admitted. The passing Spring breeze, and the joyous things it carries (new love, celebration, jubilation) provokes thing's bristles. Good tidings often greet cynicism, or for thing. Thing retreats, smokes, broods. Often only within a dizzying inebriation that thing will shuck its guards, darkness tips and pouring from its mouth the inadmissible things once held fast in sobriety.

Dangerous momentum on a wave of spirits; the secret thoughts have manifested - no longer aether - they parade in the spaces between our faces and the lulls in pleasant conversation! Ah! Trite they may be! But thing, is there nothing that escapes your unforgiving gaze? A cold scrutiny. And ah! God! The shock when it turned on yourself!

Now it's thing that lies helpless in Athena's temple, cast in salt gazing upon Sodom. Cry not, Lot.

I was speaking to someone about children. He'd gone on about how children are not but a blank slate, clean parchment waiting for the swirling stains of paternal, or some other, knowledge. My wife disagreed, mentioning something about how there is "a spark" within a child, that they are more than simple, or poorly, worded copies, of copies, of copies, etc.

I'm not sure where I sit on this debate, though it's certainly not with the former.

Somehow this reminded me of a discussion I had with a different friend, I believe about Lacan. Though I've never read Lacan, and whether the ideas I have of Lacanian thought are even remotely on point, that conversation has gone to seed. The notion that it is not within us but, rather, lies intertwined in all of our actions, our interactions, a sunset, our favorite chair, the way the air smells, a breeze - that we are not it, but that we are nothing without it, has blown my short and curlies back.

That was poorly written.

Just a beautiful thought. I imagine strings, or veins (synapses?), shooting out from each of us in every direction, and from every thing, and as I walk, or sit, or breathe, I am constantly brushing into another set of strings from an innumerable amount of things that make that moment, and that moment is me...

...ah fuck it. This all to say, "We're not blank slates." Time to go read some Lacan.

How quick your weight presses forcefully.
The heaviness of mediocrity.
Or is it lightness with which you dress your plea?
To draw me and to stem my flee?

And greatness is a dull heart ache.
And great the steps too afraid to take.
But such a throbbing will not abate.
Anyone whom their lives they stake.

For the trees where underneath respite.
Limbs in winds will bend and sigh.
And at once the cicadas come alive.
To pry the crust from your foggy eyes.

And greatness is a dull heart ache.
And great the steps too afraid to take.
But such a throbbing will not abate.
Anyone whom their lives they stake.

But a quick too many years have passed.
Having been caught in the looking glass.
Our gaze has laid not but on the past.
These thoughts for naught we see at last.

And greatness is a dull heart ache.
And great the steps too afraid to take.
And blasé is the breath that waits.
And meanders in each moments wake.

Having just finished reading Steinbeck's East of Eden my thoughts seem to meander on the character “Tom Hamilton.” More or less, Tom is portrayed as one who struggles with and within himself; he teeters on the edge of greatness and of great mediocrity, either of which frightens and shoos him into a hiding place within himself. What I enjoy about Tom is Steinbeck’s portrayal of how one may be ‘great’, how one can grasp that potential, but how one is often too afraid to; whether it’s the work that goes into greatness, or the greatness itself, most of us will abscond the pursuit for fear of it. Halfway through the novel Tom ends up killing himself. Timshel. I often find myself questioning what it means to be great. I find that that is often all I do, question. I imagine there’s an almost inherent odium for mediocrity, yet we’re so easily beguiled by it and this is an enormously frightening thing; we carelessly spend our precious time. Though not quite squandering, it’s as if we eat and neglect to taste, or just fuck to placate a base sense. Creature comforts, a cerebral anesthetic? Ah, timshel, may I? Will I?