Stiff

(Warning: blog contains nonsense.  Literalists are advised to skip the italics.)

Is rhythm, like art, only a perception, a thing only observed and made sense of by conscious mind.  Often, its thought has the basis of nature, but maybe nature has nothing to say of it, maybe there is nothing to be said in the absence of us.  We only see the point of the wheel returning to its start, when in all this time the wheel has been traveling and we hardly thought to notice.  Rhythm of the wheels, rhythm of the chords, rhythm of the careening world.

Sorted up and holding forth, nothing but a loose strand here dangling like a tart, poor dear.  How she hardly knew herself when the world took a dive.  Paid me out in spades, when the ticket was cashed.  I did love her look, that storied air of misbegotten confidence that had swelled up into a tumor from all the winks and curdled grins of men with sick-smelling breath.  Tumble, kid, take your chance.  Sometimes I'd make a beggar of myself because she'd expect it.

You little quiet creature, thinking up a memory of myself in a winter coat, the glass breaking underfoot, the tree bending under the snow, the snap of a book spine, the burning of a paper mill, the creatures running in the heat of the fire.  What a wonder you in the five o'clock, the sun at your back, the light through the curtain, the angel dance, and that perfect union, wondering through it all why the light was never quite right as though it were a memory I was misinterpreting.

- - -

I'm growing stiff in this box I call an office.  A man shouldn't be able to feel his tail bone, but there's no way to write without sitting, without being still, and without absolute quiet.  These are days, when my discomfort is so raw, that it feeds back into my senses, sharpens them.  I can hear each leave tumbling along the road outside, the clinking of christmas lights in the wind, little pattering of cat paws on hardwood, even the hum of the computer, usually by persistence ignored, drums at the thin bubble of my focus.  

If I could by movement, write, I'd be in heaven and I think there would be a massive breakthrough in the craft from all the other giants out there.  If we could turn our motion into words . . . odd, thought, that, but isn't there inspiration in just walking?  The way it quiets the mind, humbles the ego, sharpens down the blunt force of consciousness into creation.  Or riding a bike, dancing, driving, flying, fucking.  Any of that, I'd prefer right now over damned chair.

I'm almost warmed up, now.  Sometimes my brain just feels like an old v8 with a dirty air filter . . . attached to a crank start . . . on a muddy Jeep Willy with a crate of medical supplies, three wheels spinning in a mud bog somewhere in near Naples.  Oh, brother, this is going to be a interesting day of writing.