after school special

this recess idea is good.
we both tend to get caught up in work,
and games can be a healthy distraction.
i understand the thrill of a new playmate,
and the rush of feeling muscle memory engage.

but why indulge a metaphor
that encourages us to act like children?
i feel like a friend from some geeky club
that you don’t want your cool friends to know about,
and frankly, i thought such bullshit was behind us both.

there will be no broken arms, and no detention.
i will not crash through the wall you’ve built, just to play along.
the ginger grip that could slide at any moment is distracting her.
it reinforces a mindset of external threats and competition.
you need to blow the whistle, and make the call yourself.

we met on the monkeybars of conscious evolution,
so i know that you’re aware of your predispositions,
and i will not be an accessory to the very crime you claim to want to transcend.
i will always be close; just lift the veil from the mirror.
when the recess bell rings, i will not be lost or won.

in extremis

if we are to believe
that we are not ourselves
when we are under the influence of chemicals
then we only exist
when we are starving and dehydrated
in a vacuum-sealed chamber
staring out into empty space
and the only thought we can lay claim to as wholly ours
before we blink out of existence
is something like
“why me?”

back and forth on an eastbound train

i dig the playful spirit
the words themselves are just gloss

all play is serious
when we stop thinking about it
and maybe even when we -
look i’m thinking too much
not loose enough

if it’s red rover we’re playing, you need to know who you’re asking for
am i kynthia am i stardust am i patty duke
i am all over the map today
crossing the country inside as well as out

riff raff skip around spinning in circles
i feel still
and i kind of want to embrace that
but didn’t i say i want to be moving?
i am moving whether i know it or not

the air is wet here
i can feel it through the window

velocity requires a direction, but not a destination
i suppose this is key
mortality is friction

i don’t feel lost
i feel tired
and a little bit muted
possibly a bit wary
but not of this
if anything, i want this time to stretch out…

but instead i closed my laptop and we both closed our eyes
and the moment flew past
like the trees outside the window

ok, back

there is a voice that is missing
from the current conversation about science,
and where our species is headed
(you know, the geeky stuff),
and it is the voice that remembers,
that every single one of us,
whatever cell we may be living in,
must lie awake at night `til sleep comes,
and wonder how it all fits together,
and the answers that we find,
be they primitive or finely-fashioned,
will determine how well we perform our function,
which may or may not be a datapoint yet, sir.

but it still counts.

coincidence is not rare

patterns are everywhere.
what is rare is for us to notice.

experience rushes by us, like a flood.
a few droplets are caught in the web of our memory, like dew.
we find patterns in these droplets, and the patterns repeat themselves, day after day, as long as our web stays the same shape.
over time, we begin to believe that our patterns are suggestive of the underlying nature of the universe.
and they are.
in a sense.
but only when placed alongside all the other patterns that cling to all the other webs.
then other patterns can emerge.
but it takes a long time for us to see those.
many generations must consider it to be valuable to record their memories before they are lost.

what the coincidences of our memory reveal to us in our own lifetime is therefore not objective truth, but a subjective sample set, and the sample we get offers clues about the nature of our own curiosities and desires.
after all, what we catch in our web is determined by the instincts that tell us how and where to spin it.

what i’m saying is, coincidence could also be called personality.

what is interaction design?

ideas are music.

digital devices are instruments.

interaction design is composition.

coding is performance.

implementation is a party.

success is getting people to dance.

the moth cycle 2 – wings and light

i believe in following hunches.

i think we are all keyed into something outside ourselves.
more accurately, i think we are all larger than we know, and sometimes invisible parts of ourselves collide with other people’s invisible parts on another plane, and we feel the reverberations of the impact.

sometimes it’s a chance collision with a stranger on both planes, and we apologize and chuckle and go on our way.

but sometimes, one plane is the brush of a lover’s hand, across our shoulder, as they roll over in sleep beside us, caught up in their own dream, but still drawing warmth and energy from our presence.

we wake up with a start, smile as we realize what happened, adjust our position, plant a soft kiss on our lover’s forehead, and go back to sleep.

meanwhile, on the other plane, someone we have never met spills coffee on our favorite shirt, and as we dab at the stain with a napkin and compose ourselves, our eyes meet, and there is a flash of recognition.

we stammer for a second, and for some reason, our anger evaporates, and we strike up a conversation about whatever enters our mind first, like mothwings or watermelon.

our course in life is charted in these moments, and not always in the direction we expect.

conversations play out differently on different planes.

sometimes one kiss on the forehead is enough for a whole lifetime of dreaming.

sometimes a lover on one plane is an enemy on another, so our instincts can mislead us, like a moth led into fire because it reminds her of the moon.

we must learn through the playful dance known as trial and error.

which is why i believe in following hunches.

and listening to the wind in the moonlight.

and learning by heart the stories of those who have already found the way.

the moth cycle 1 – silk and mist

on my birthday, i saw the last airbender
i think i’ll write a review tomorrow

first i want to share what i wrote when i got home
before going to sleep
after a day of musing on poetry
and the line between cliche and archetype
and the elements of the next dimension

first i riffed:
timebending
spacebending
wherebending
whenbending

which made me laugh and reminded me of nonsensical vocal warmups

then i got the first draft of this poem, which i edited a bit today before posting:

the fabric between universes is thin in some places
to find them we must stop looking
and simply let ourselves see
stop fighting
and resist resistance
let life in
and then out
and then back in again deeper
and then back out again until everything we carry with us
and call our own
dissolves into mist
a finer mist than we imagined was imaginable
and then still finer
so fine we have to close our eyes to see it
and open our skin
until we become a membrane
and the universe breathes
and our former attachments pass through us
like droplets of aloe squeezed from a strand of silk
they find every parched crack of our soul where the heated air of life has blown through without thinking of the consequences of its actions
and they linger playfully instead
making promises to stay
until we remember
that we have promises of our own to keep
that resistance is just the sleepy fog of morning
and attachment is the sweat within our blanket
we can let the fresh air in at any moment
our imagination expands once again
we become our eyes and we open
we pause
and blink
and look back for a moment
or a lifetime
back to when we had forgotten
that the fabric between universes is a cocoon of our own creation
holding us only until we are ready
to face the light
fall away from the husk
and fly
8

my birthday poem

a man sat at the corner of haight and ashbury with a typewriter and a sign.

the sign read: “Pick a topic. Pick a price. Get a poem.”

ambur and i consulted.

we offered: “corners, pickles, and the number 31. $7.”

the man thought, and began clacking away.

we sat on the stoop of the ben and jerry’s that currently thrives on the history of this corner in a less transient fashion.

less than ten minutes passed, during which time another patron came by and promised to return after eating dinner.

then i got a poem for my birthday.

thanks, lynn gentry.

best of luck.

A Pickle and 31, by Lynn Gentry

san francisco, 2010

I see a city divided, not by walls of brick, but by sheets of information.  The sheets are draped around buildings and bus stops, between cars, and over the entrances to underground tunnels.  The people on one side design the sheets to keep themselves comfortable, wrapping the lumpy mattress of their city in fresh linen in order to make it appear smooth and uniform, and allow them to not think about the filling.  The people on the other side live amidst the detritus of cast-off dreams.  The sheets are opaque to them, fluttering in breezes they can’t control, blocking a light they can’t really see, shielding them from view.  The people on both sides seem faint and ethereal to each other, except when a wind picks up, and children stop to poke their heads through the cracks, pointing at things they don’t recognize and asking awkward questions.  Then the sheets snap shut.  Voices are muffled in both directions, and the people on top are puzzled by the shifting lumps underneath them, unable to understand why they won’t just stay still and lie flat and let the sheets hide their rough edges.  They know it must be hot and crowded under there, when they stop to think about it.  But they rarely stop.  And they prefer to think about other things.  And they pull the sheets tighter.  Sometimes, when they get drunk, they jump on the bed.  And at night, they dream.