Ada

You will get bored of me.

Eventually, everyone does.

Look at all those charts.  Do they lie?

Orbit once, twice, many times.

Trigger.  Jolt.  You remember.

A return?  A visit.  A call.

By then, I will be gone.

The shift happens when a garden is not attended to.

Nothing stays the same.

Everything does not stay the same.

Only one thing.

Attachment through change.

Even then…

— Ada

Within the details,

I’ve found you.

This journey has taken me from the outside in.

Into myself.

A gift reached in, at times, making it liquid.

Our bodies can be so many things -

A playground, A ship, A tool, A cage.

There are only a few openings to this vessel of ours,

hours of the senses.

If I passed you somewhere, would you be aware of “this and”?  Slowly?

Would you instantly see the window through, if our eyes locked?

Would it burn?  Would it water? 

Heart.  Would your engine stall or rev up?

Atoms. Would your magnet repel or draw?

Would you…

Would you…

Recognize my soul?  Out there.

I have yours.  Remotely.  Daily.

I don’t walk in a straight line anymore.

I walk in a circle, a spiral,

In sight, in sound,

in blindness, in silence,

in vibration, in quantum…

in macro, micro, nano, atomic, astro —

in nature.

I can never go back.

It has completely opened up for me.

Is this bad?

No.  Because it is beyond any form of defense.

You win.

Again!

— Ada

Stop right there.

I could end it all right now —

slash my wrists, slit my throat, bang my head up against ?, recluse myself into oblivion, stroll quietly into the sunset.

But.  Where’s the satisfaction in that?

Knowing there’s an intoxicating deep pleasure in the unravels of personal, perhaps universal, truths.

— Ada

I leave this step on the spiral with another’s quote, as follows:

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” 

— Albert Camus

It took two hours to build enough courage to write one sentence.

I sat for hours in one place, my mind travelling to sweet spots.

Native Elders believe there are sweet spots on Earth, peaks.  I agree.

We all have our own.  Some been;  the new ones hit you hard as you age.

Not been,

Yet. 

It means more now as experience climbs up to greet the awareness.

Cables, domes, sky and water.  A welcoming entrance.

The little dots all connecting, gathering into one big “Ah ha!”.

Yes.  Within you.  Within others?  I don’t know.  They are, there are many pieces.

And, every moment is a first time.

I have felt chills on a warm summer’s day.  Empty. 

I have felt warmth on a chilly winter’s eve.  Full. 

The core never changes, only the shell grows.  Or, breaks.

Best and worst are mere perceptions.  Why do you ask?  How do you know?

Daily.  I’m entrust for the safety of others. 

Am I saving myself?  I’d like to work on that.

Yes.  Yes.  Slick.  I can’t remember when.

I will never be happy without ink stained finger tips,

the brush of welcoming body heat,

the quenching of clear pure water,

licking the salt off my skin,

as I lay in the field the wind whispers to me “Once more, another story”.

— Ada 11:08AM (CST)

Who started this?

Who’s on second, first, third?

Slide into home-base.  Knees dusty now.  Spit.  Slap it off.

Does it matter?  Not at all.

Bat it out;  bat it out, again!

Foul?  Who cares, who remembers?  Spectators, who will never get a shot, again and again.  They play-by-play endless wishes in their head never to be had.

Hit! Run, run, run to second.

Another hit!  Out of the ball park this time!

All scream, jump up!  Excite the air!  For the team, for the city, for you?

Walk home now. 

Easy.

The mound waits.  Step.  Safe.  Score.

The moment shines bright.  Flash!

Everyone will talk about it for days, weeks, years, pages, links, books, bubblegum cards…

Remember when?

And all you thought of at that moment was that swing, that hit was meant for her.

Score!

— Ada

By Rich Ives

It was a great day for mankind when a true doubter arrived, but of course we killed
him. Electrical energy, rubber truncheons and forks were just some of the things this man
could not understand using the contemporary logic and political principals we had offered
him. A large quantity of Seneca oil was rubbed into the man’s burns before he died and
the young balding masseur they arrested was heard screaming, “You want a piece of
me?” all the way to the fountain in the playa of failed revolutionary ideals, where he
succumbed quickly, but the crows refused to pluck out his eyes, and some said it meant
we had captured the wrong criminal.
    The saliva of a suspiciously uninvolved crone was analyzed and the results remained
ambiguous. Next the questioning authorities devised a new test. A pebble and a boulder
were employed as measurements of the relative gravity of the situation by dropping them
simultaneously from the top of the shortened retirement home, which grew to only a
single story because, let’s face it, no one wanted to climb the stairs, and since no one was
arriving any faster at any conclusions because of this experiment, the result was an equal
portion of unease for every participant.
    Because everyone remained at this point unaware that anyone might be arriving at any
conclusions prematurely, Tiffany, the doubter’s estranged niece, rushed outside with her
new double-barreled water gun in search of an intergalactic transmission code, a lurid
pink catalog of doll museums, and a 76-acre Daughters of the Revolution amusement
park in which to exercise her prerogatives and draw attention to her budding. She was
approached by a young intellectual with a fawning and irresolute manner. She said No
and it made him smile. He couldn’t wait to get there. He had known that her refusal
would be exquisite. Tiffany’s software company hit the stock market big despite the
revelation that she had never really intended to communicate with extra-terrestrials.
    Meanwhile Tiffany’s overlooked zipper mechanic gripped his wrench tightly.  Being
one of the most of us, he was prepared to attempt a generous dispersal of his dispersible
potential. Something was certainly revealing itself, but it didn’t know what it was. Of that
there could be no doubt.

Has anyone ever considered there is more than one “first contact”, more than one “alien”… in other words, more worlds created?

Just like us.  Human.

Look around here, look at your tubes, tribes, transgressions, triumphs!

Listen to your sounds created by others here,

watch too.

From all the basics on up.

Yes.  All who choose to jibe, jab and jive —

All those you want to touch one day and can’t stand the next ‘cause your tribe told you so.  Done deal?

All those you see painted.

You want to do that now too;  paint, dance.  You want to get painted;  you want to dance.

Splash that colour…… fast forward.  “You’re an idiot.”, significant others, “Where’s the rent?”

Silence from your off-spring and finger-pointing from the pews, pagers, peers, p’s….p’s….appears. All those peas.

Is it consistent?

Do you honestly believe it’s consistent “out there”?

Out there in the cosmos?

We are so behind.  Or make that “starry eyed”. Eh, nature?

You cannot see the forest for the trees.  An adage used here often. 

Then, the obvious transition would be as follows: 

You cannot see the cosmos for the stars.

— Ada

By Timothy Donnelly

After knowledge extinguished the last of the beautiful fires our worship had failed to prolong, we walked back home through pedestrian daylight, to a residence   humbler than the one left behind. A door without mystery, a room without theme. For the hour that we spend complacent at the window overlooking the garden,   we observe an arrangement in rust and gray-green, a vagueness at the center whose slow, persistent movements some sentence might explain if we had time   or strength for sentences. To admit that what falls falls solitarily, lost in the permanent dusk of the particular. That the mind that fear and disenchantment fatten   comes to boss the world around it, morbid as the damp- fingered guest who rearranges the cheeses the minute the host turns to fix her a cocktail. A disease of the will, the way   false birch branches arch and interlace from which hands dangle last leaf-parchments and a very large array of primitive bird-shapes. Their pasted feathers shake   in the aftermath of the nothing we will ever be content to leave the way we found it. I love that about you. I love that when I call you on the long drab days practicality   keeps one of us away from the other that I am calling a person so beautiful to me that she has seen my awkwardness on the actual sidewalk but she still answers anyway.   I say that when I fell you fell beside me and the concrete refused to apologize. That a sparrow sat for a spell on the windowsill today to communicate the new intelligence.   That the goal of objectivity depends upon one’s faith in the accuracy of one’s perceptions, which is to say a confidence in the purity of the perceiving instrument.   I won’t be dying after all, not now, but will go on living dizzily hereafter in reality, half-deaf to reality, in the room perfumed by the fire that our inextinguishable will begins.

It is when you stop trying that relevant things find you.

— Ada

Jimmy never sold out.

Let her hear you, closer.

Step in.

Hairs stand up, pores close to protect.

This soon shall pass.  She has no mercy.

As she wraps you, a familiar sensation of waking up.

“Calm your heart beat.”  You lay back. Float.

As she speaks in her way with the help of her sister above.

Wave upon wave, rising.

She has captured you.  And, you become a part of her rhythm.

Let her take you all the way.

To crash, to crest.

Again…

— Ada

Imagine there’s no Heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You may say that I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one

— John Lennon

This only thing I’ll ever claim in life is a feeling.

Take the rest.

— Ada

An Extraordinary Morning
By Philip Levine

Two young men — you just might call them boys —
waiting for the Woodward streetcar to get
them downtown. Yes, they’re tired, they’re also
dirty, and happy. Happy because they’ve
finished a short work week and if they’re not rich
they’re as close to rich as they’ll ever be
in this town. Are they truly brothers?
You could ask the husky one, the one
in the black jacket he fills to bursting;
he seems friendly enough, snapping
his fingers while he shakes his ass and sings
“Sweet Lorraine,” or if you’re put off
by his mocking tone ask the one leaning
against the locked door of Ruby’s Rib Shack,
the one whose eyelids flutter in time
with nothing. Tell him it’s crucial to know
if in truth this is brotherly love. He won’t
get angry, he’s too tired for anger,
too relieved to be here, he won’t even laugh
though he’ll find you silly. It’s Thursday,
maybe a holy day somewhere else, maybe
the Sabbath, but these two, neither devout
nor cynical, have no idea how to worship
except by doing what they’re doing,
singing a song about a woman they love
merely for her name, breathing in and out
the used and soiled air they wouldn’t know
how to live without, and by filling
the twin bodies they’ve disguised as filth.

How or why is it possible to miss something you may never hear, smell, taste or touch? 

— Ada

“Reading what I wrote made me realize that in India reality is illusion and in America illusion is reality.”

— Chuck Rosenthal