VVG

One wonders if it were the flickering tail of the garret mouse--

That fluttered like the needle who could not find a point

Within the confused compass so jumpily out of joint--

Who sped around the dust and hues of your yellow house.

Or maybe it was the wafting smoke from a teeth-clenched pipe--

That rose like the charmer’s snake from his wicker basket

Or the smoky souls of recent ghosts from out of caskets--

That inspired the agitation of colour in swirls of strife.

Or was it a nameless deep down thing?  Sensation stirred

Upon the last vestige of soul for demand of expression

That scythed and sheaved through the fields of depression?

And above those black and circling swirl of birds

Tell in both sight and of sound even the struggle must die.

This with a fine tuned soul you could both see and hear

Despite the selfless desire to give a slice of an ear,

Amid the waving windy whispers of barley and rye.

For in your portrait, too, those colours of strife swirl round

A sure and steady head with blazing eyes and orange beard

That, like a burning sun, intensified what was feared.

And the same opaque but mutable waves can be found

Where the curling cypress stabs at a storming azure

Sky, a tempest that worked like Jupiter’s little spot,

A convulsive ocean more than merely a tiny dot.

To paint seemed not yet the port nor the final cure.

All is sturm and drang, sure felt within, seen without.

But the tempting need for tameness with a howling hush

Swept upon a surface with a flicker of a bristling brush,

Did simulate the swirling anguish yet brought it about.

Ghosts at the Door

At night I watch a line of ghosts walk past the door

In a steady stream of holographic gore.

The door is at a crack as a matter of course

And each glides by, a slivered sight where, perforce,

Each exsanguinous eye falls on me or else the floor.

They slide by in a row without howl, screech, or bark,

A chain of vapory light amidst the purpley dark.

I lay there prostrate on a cold dream-less bed

Where just a neck strains to lift a half- heavy head,

To spy this silent spectre gang sear cold on a mark

That is my already existing fathomless fear.

They burn in bloodless light with nothing but a mere

Glance that sets like an arrow at this timeless thing

Through the quiet screech of an infinite, noiseless din

Which, like each stare, is piercing and sharply clear.

Deaths foot it slowly and my ever smacking heart

Synchronizes to each silent step as they march,

And the tight and muted throbbing in my chest

Sounds the malingering dirge they feign to follow lest

No beating time create chaos and rend them apart.

Could all the ghosts of remembrance fill up a space?

Does time hold the memory for just such a place?

Yet it is time and a place that sets them one by one

Like dead ticks of the clock, like false beats of a drum,

As each eyes me, then the floor, then walks at a pace.

Sleek and shimmering, they seem all a silvery whole,

An amorphous humanity in an everlasting slow

But fleeting trek.  And I strain a brain to wonder why

I somehow sense a longing, a desire within each eye,

For each to find the flickering thought of what is a soul.

Elephant's and Chihuahua's: Speculation, Intuition, and the Ties that Bind

This is the deal. I was rollerblading in the house and I fell in the kitchen. I fell flat on my back and found myself incapable of getting myself back up. This no matter how hard I tried. I was, in a word, incapacitated.  Here’s the deal within a deal. I left my kitchen door open. It leads down the stairs and, ultimately, outside. I say ultimately but this really only takes on meaning if the door downstairs leading outside is open. I say ultimately only if these requirements are met. But it can lead outside assuming doors are open. If so, there is minor danger here for, if the downstairs door is open, a stray animal could easily make their way in to my kitchen from the outside in a streamlined manner (Yes, I do include the human animal).

If this sounds like an abstract worry, well, I am here to tell you today nebulous preoccupation became concrete reality. It did this in real time. You see, there is a dog, the neighbour’s dog, who loiters outside my home pretty regularly. I see him often. He sees me often. There is, if I'm being honest, felt tension. There has been for months. He is a Chihuahua. Yes. Do you now comprehend the preoccupation? My preoccupation? You now understand said tension, I should hope. I needed no other description other than his breed, I should think. I am glad we (you and I) understand each other this simply. I say simply as a matter of knowing confidently complexities can be reduced to simplicities. Sort of like when a very astute person can explain E=MC² to an unscientific mind in terms easily digestible. Actually, I don't even think I mean that. This is not the metaphor at all. It’s more like when two lovers understand each other with a simple glance. It is that shared understanding without explanation. Not that we are lovers. I just mean to use that as an analogy. We are like that. We are not that (You and I).

I know you know where this is going. Yes. The Chihuahua made his way upstairs. Yes. I have deemed him a gender. This is important. You’ll come to understand this in the most underwhelming way. At least, I mean the significance. He came waddling in through the threshold, the kitchen one, his four legs in a motion of blur making them one entity on top of that little body. He held his head high. I should have been more surprised than I was, but all I did was strain my neck and more so my eyeballs, to see him coming round the bend and I thought, not now, waddly, not right now. Yes, I used the adjective waddly.  He waddled. Some dogs do. This was not a first impression but the thought did come without forethought. I thought before how he waddled. I saw it during our encounters. I thought it many times. It stuck in my mind. I guess I just called it up, as it were, without thinking. It came in the heat of the situation. And I have quite the situation for you. You'll know what I mean. He ignored it. He ignored my angry plea. It's hard to tell if dogs like that actually think they’re as imperial as they act, because, god knows, he did appear imperial. Is it we just project it on them because of the behaviour we are familiar with but is something they are utterly unaware? I felt he thought he was imperial. I would say aloof.  I still can’t say he knew he was aloof. Can he be aloof without knowing it? Or knowing to put it in words? It is hard to say. Is he just working like a robot? Who knows? Despite this, there is some behavior that is not ambiguous. It may be debated whether intentional or not, but not ambiguous. It follows:

He walked over to me. He stopped at my head. I was in agony. He didn't care. Again, I'm assuming that. Again, maybe I'm projecting attitudes not there. All I have is behaviour. As to whether or not he cared stands in the same relationship as wondering whether or not he knew he was imperial. He may have only appeared to be indifferent to my pain. Never mind this. He stopped at my cranium. He looked to his left. Or my left. I was on the ground. My equilibrium was on the ground with me. It was incapacitated, like me. He looked to his side. He then looked down at me again but only for a second because, after looking that glance downward, directly after it without a seeming thoughtful intention, he proceeded humping my skull. He humped it. He humped it quickly. 

Now, you might not believe this but, I was less than shocked this was happening. I was more resigned than flabbergasted. It was all in an instant or it seemed like it much like his decision (or non-decision) to do it. I think now my mind could only be described as something like a Chihuahua humping. It worked ferociously but almost mechanically. That is to say, as if on autopilot. I remember thinking I should have been shocked but realizing, all too consciously, it not only was happening, but was perfectly possible. There was no surprise. It could all happen like this. All was needed was, doors needed to be open, Chihuahas needed to be loitering where they usually do, and I just needed to be debilitated on the floor.

The rest, no matter how queer or unbelievable, actually was believable. It felt too real. Also, too possible. But even this was not something going on in my brain. It was real. I thought of all this quickly. I mean to say, written down like this makes the thoughts appear labored but in fact they came in a flash. I was not really the author of them. It all just seemed to happen sans the benefit of reflection. It just flowed. Funny how the mind works like that. Quickly, I mean. He finished with me as rapidly as he started but before I could collect myself, I only managed to spy him slipping past the corner of the threshold from whence he came and was out the door again. Not so much as a by your leave. I could hear the little clips of dog talons tickle at each step until they ebbed out of earshot. Cheeky little bastard. He disappeared.

I got better. I gave up rollerblading in the house. I gave it up altogether. I slowed down. I haven’t been flat on my back again since then. Well, if we don’t count sleeping, but this too figures in things. I should say I hadn’t been supine in searing pain of my own making again. Not by the aid of rollerblades, anyway. But something strange happened to me, and I am certain it was a direct cause of that ‘mind fuck,’ that cranial copulation given me that little bastard Chihuaua. It stands to reason that it followed. It stands to reason in my mind, anyway. Ever since the shagging atop my head, an elephant has permeated my life. May be permeated is too strong a word.  I should say he shows up at weird times.

An example is, whenever I become hyper conscious of desiring to capture life in all its intuitive ‘elan vital,’ in its very movement without the inevitability of afterthought getting in the way, the elephant lumbers past causing my mind to reflect. He is always slow and lumbering. I love elephants but I get to wondering if the elephant is aware of this lumbering quality of his and, if so, does he do it on purpose? I like to think, no.  I don’t think he does and, in a moment of clarity, I realize I’m projecting again. Why should I think elephants or Chihuahuas have intentions toward me?  But, though I do think I’m right about this, I also hope I’m right as I don’t want the elephant doing that to me intentionally. I like liking him. I want to like him. I mean, I just really like elephants. He more than likely is not.  This is my objective feeling, anyway.  At least I think so.

Still, he’s now around often. Because of that strange shag given me by that dog---I’m almost sure of it---the elephant is now ubiquitous.  Again, maybe not quite ubiquitous.  Even if so, I must admit, like attempting to prove imperial intentions in a Chihuaha, this cause and effect is a hard thing to prove. This I must admit.  I admit maybe it just feels as if it could be the case but, like I say, it is only an assumption. I’m not so ignorant to know it can be assumed wrongly.  He is around. I should clarify the above. There is something in my psyche, though my psyche doesn’t know it, which seems pure, but only in the sense that my psyche does not know it. This is what makes it pure. I think when I become aware of the purity, it disappears and the wanting of it back again makes it burdensome. This is when the lovely elephant shows up. Once more, I don’t mind him. It’s just that, well, it is hard to explain. I’ll try to give an example.

One early morning I was awake and on my back (I told you I would be on my back again). I lay there on the couch in that sort of middle area between consciousness and non-consciousness. I should say more to the point that fuzziness of consciousness and the edge of not being conscious of the consciousness.  It’s all so damn paradoxical! Believe, me, I know! I lay there, eyes closed, hands clasped on chest like a corpse, when birds outside the window began to sing. There was something---I only say this now in hindsight---where I heard the birds sing but I felt I, the person inside my head, was not the one hearing it. It’s just, there was chirping and there was hearing.  In other words, (again, in hindsight) I just heard the birds without the necessity of being some sort of “I” aware of hearing it. I know who I am right now. But who was doing that listening? And besides, this purity, if it is such a thing, is weird precisely because it becomes a thing. The moment it became “something,” the elephant showed up. He was right there in the living room. Taking it all up, too.  I’m sure you can imagine.  Now here’s the thing (another thing). The moment he was there the bulk of him caused the chirping of the birds, the waves in which their sound traveled, to work around him. That’s just simple physics. The waves became slower. Well, may be in actual fact they traveled farther to get to my ear. I want to stop with this kind of talk as I don’t want to get in to the physics of it. I don’t know enough about it, if I’m being honest. I just know they have to travel around that great big hulk of a body. 

It seemed like it anyway. Yes. It felt like they took longer to get to my ear. And the waiting for the sound of the chirping in turn gave me little pockets of time to think. I suppose that in turn made me realize I was waiting for the chirping. It also made realize I liked it better when I didn’t wait for the chirping. So it gave me time to ponder my past state of mind, the one that didn’t even feel like a state at the time! Too much! It created a boat load of other thoughts, too, but I won’t go in to that. It seems we’d be circling down an eddy if I tried to reduce further and further.  Again, I don’t want to seem bitter. I don’t really think the elephant intentionally interrupted it. I think, in a way, it was my fault, in a sense. It seems to be when that desire got a hold of me to re-live that kind of purity, is when he showed up. I’ve said the same thing about the Chihuahua but, I guess this is another case of just witnessing cause and effect. I can only assume. But, truly, I didn’t mind when he showed up. I felt I’d learned something, though, if you were to ask me what it is right now, I might not be able to say. I did like looking at him.

Which reminds me, there was another time, quite different yet similar to the chirping incident, where the elephant showed up and I decided to drop what I was thinking and give him my attention. This is when I remembered that old Indian parable. You know the one? The one where the group of blind men goes up to an elephant and touches him and they all argue they’re touching a different thing. Apparently, it teaches us that a person can have different perceptions from another person. But, I personally don’t think this is all it teaches. I personally am pretty sure there’s something in there about an elephant being an elephant no matter what single perspective from one person. I might be wrong. That’s what I get, anyway. So, yes, while I had him there I decided to try it for myself. So that one day so much like the bird chirping incident, I waited till dark. I waited until night fell. It would be easier in the dark. I wanted to pretend I was blind. I did cover my eyes with an old scarf but I thought night time would help that along. So I did both. After blindfolding myself I walked up to the elephant very carefully and started stroking parts of the body. This is dangerous, to be sure. But, I did do it. I stroked his tail southward till I came to that little hairy tuft at the end. It was nice. I did the same to the trunk feeling the wrinkled ripples running horizontal across that heavy snout. I felt the side of his torso which was like some lumpy convex bulging submarine. I did it all. I did it all except the tusks. For some reason I held off from touching the tusks out of respect. It was fun. But, here’s the problem. I even hear you saying it. I just now described very well what I was touching. How was it anything like the parable if I can sit here now and tell you what I experienced?

Of course I could be just using my introspection but I remember at the time knowing it was an elephant. Blindfolding didn’t do the trick. Well, yes, like the blind men I also describe what I’m feeling, but I didn’t really learn anything. I think maybe I did a better job at describing but I think I just used more imagination than they did. That’s not a boast. Remember, I did steal their idea. I guess I just already knew the different parts of the elephant. All of him. All from tusk to toenail. I guess prior experience worked with me.  I suppose memory worked with me. Either way, I knew what I was touching. I’m sure of it.  I also got to thinking maybe it’s because I had no one to collaborate with in the exercise. After all, when you think about it, the parable has a bunch of blind men touching the elephant. They work in tandem. I had no one but myself to doubt.  I couldn’t possibly doubt myself. I mean, could I? I’ve seen an elephant before. I couldn’t possibly argue with myself. Imagine me telling me it might not be an elephant after all. There was no one here to tell me differently.  I guess what the blind men learn (by an outside source, mind you) is that they’re blind. I guess what I learned was that I kind of wished I was blind. It could have made it interesting. But, believe me, I don’t really want to be blind. So, as I was saying, the elephant was often there. He was there slowing things down and somewhat vexing me as he did slow things down but, at the same time, not minding it too much. I did learn things.

One last thing. Strangely, he was there in a dream, too. The elephant, I mean. Here’s the weird bit. So was that Chihuahua. This is where I should point out I was on my back again. Of course, in this way, in bed. Where else to dream? One night I dreamt I stood in my kitchen. I’m pretty sure I was content but, well, see, this is a problem already. This is, in a way, kind of like blindfolding myself and touching the elephant. Who do I consult in telling me I was content in the dream? I guess I consult myself right now. But, do I trust the “me” in the dream? Do I trust the “me” now? I guess I have no criteria but myself.  But, I will say, it seemed easier to say I was touching an elephant. No matter. I think I was content in my dream. I was in the kitchen (Jesus! Now who establishes that? We could go on and on!). Well, I’ll continue with it. I was in the kitchen probably looking out the window (at dragon’s flying over a lagoon of fire, or something) when in a sudden that Chihuahua was on my head again. The difference between this and the actual experience I described earlier was that I was standing up in the dream. That and, naturally, it was a dream. There was no aching either. But, there was annoyance. He worked away at the top of my head right there in my kitchen when the scene drastically changed in a flash to the hustle and bustle of a busy street. 

Yes, I was clothed. I almost feel that question upon me and I must answer it. Who wants a cliché when describing a dream?  All different kinds of people walked past me seemingly too busy to notice a Chihuahua humping the hell out of my skull. Everybody just walked by in a hurry, either singly, or in groups ignoring me. I just stood there taking it from this Chihuahua when all of a sudden another group walked toward me. They were all together and laughing and enjoying themselves. What I noticed within that group was an old lover of many years ago. It had been many years since we saw each other. I mean this truly. That thought was not part of the dream. In fact, I will admit, there have been times here and there throughout the years when I’ve closed my eyes and thought of her. There have even been times when I was in that state where the memories were like the chirping of birds. Anyway, in the dream I saw her and her laughing entourage moving my way. She might not have noticed me as she seemed preoccupied with her chums. This didn’t matter to me. I instantly became conscious of the wide waste of years since between us which caused in me a desire to give a good impression. This, especially as it had been so long. It was almost a matter of letting her know what I’d become. I was all right! I am different now. But these thoughts were overrun by the thought of my mussed hair.

The Chihuahua was making a hell of a state of it. I was worried she’d see me so disheveled and think the worst. She would see my hair and not just think the worst right then and there, but she would think the mussed hair was an indication of twenty years! I panicked that this could be the last time to make an impression and my hair was getting worked over like earth in a sandstorm. I tried desperately to fix it, matting it down, working on the part, but the more I did the more that Chihuahua worked at undoing it. The more he and I performed this ridiculous dance, the closer she got to us. The contentedness of the kitchen was now panic. I mean, I wanted to jump out of my skin. And the panic grew as she approached. However, when she was right up on me, the strangest thing happened. Just as she (or I) was within range that reliable old elephant passed between us, as slow and lumbering as he’s always been. He saved me from the embarrassment. He calmed my mind. But, it can never be this clean cut, can it? I’ll tell you it isn’t because I was also really saddened.  She and I did not get to see each other. It could have been the last time. I was torn between a terrible, deep and bottomless longing and the street level self-consciousness of superficial impressions.

Just as the scene went from kitchen to busy street, it in turn went from busy street to a vast and empty dessert. I was surrounded by sand all around. I was surrounded by nothing but sand. The Chihuahua was gone but I instinctively looked down and found myself staring in to a pool of water.  It was a little oasis in the middle of this entire nothingness. I saw my reflection in the pool of water. What I saw was myself with hair clean and tidy sort of like a child whose mother primps her boy on the day of his school picture. This made no impression on me. I looked upward again and saw the elephant in the distance. What I remember then at the moment of sighting him was a strange but intuitive thought that I knew he was an elephant. He was an elephant and nothing else, I told myself so. I remember thinking he is not the sky and he is not the sand, therefore he is an elephant. Just as quickly as I said this to myself he broke apart in to pieces. I was shocked and saddened. I was saddened that is, until I realized he was a cloud. It just dissipated in to other shapes.

I woke up not knowing what to think.  I thought to myself thoughts on the matter will come later. Well, I do remember immediately thinking one thing. It struck me that an elephant turning in to a cloud was not just the stuff of dreams. I mean, that could happen in the experiencing world, too. Just a weird thought on a weird subject. Though I often do think on the times the elephant showed up when he did, and I still often recall my mistaking him for a cloud, I really mull over my touching the elephant blindfolded. It all seemed so strange to come up with such an experiment on myself. I got to thinking how that was sort of like experimenting on your own thoughts. It’s like thinking while studying the thinking. It makes you just want to hear birds chirping. As it is, I now go about my daily life.  I often see that that Chihuahua and when I do, I think of all these things.

Self-Crowned King

I sat and shat and read my John Stuart 
Mill and read that he said that Monsieur 
Aurelius was a nice man in myriad ways 
Despite his attempt to keep Christians from 

Permeating his neighbourhoods. What may 
Seem now a crudeness was only a good man 
In the vital ways that transcend those 
Ethos usually ushered in by a new calendar. 

It makes sense to me while I sit and shit. 
Cold porcelain is never friendly to 
The back of warm thighs. But it may 
Aid in the ushering in of new thoughts. 

It has its utility in thoughts not to mention 
Those indispensable non-thoughts from the 
Other end. What is my utility now beyond 
The mere excretion which I only vaguely control? 

Would it be a mistake in category 
To say I have shit in my brains? The crudeness 
May be in the leaving it there. The usefulness 
Of it all may now be twofold; double 

Relief can work as one. I will lay the book at 
Bath's edge, thankful for it’s use, and proceed 
To relieve myself of wasteful thoughts. I will 
Be the throned philosopher-king as I sit and shit. 

Hyperion to a Satyr: A Lament

From my kitchen window I see on high,

Down low, a small and alabaster sprite

Whose concrete wings cannot flutter with a cry

But if wings could wipe tears, they might.

For he sits on top a sphere in the yard

With fists tucked under small and solid chin

And knees, as bounded and just as hard,

Steadies both like a shelled terrapin

With heavy load; he sits on top a hardened

World and I imagine he too weeps for

The dead.  Weighted stone will not be pardoned

And he and I seem same to the very core.

Strewn around him, and around his world,

Littered like an archaic battlefield,

Lie many deadened leaves defeated, curled

In a purgatorial wait for what they’ll yield.

And these very leaves will after some time

Decay and dissolve into a dirt grave

Where future man will go to seek and mine

And look for the blackened gold they’ve

Come to need.  He will dig and sift   

Unless no future need to run his hard

Engines. But I sit and sometimes wish

My own soft engine, as flawed and marred,

The cause of the ghost inside my vessel,

Might, in quicker time, seep back to earth

Entombed alive as if oathed by vestals.

But what future use who knows what worth?

But this is all folly, just another Hamlet act;

I will not make the move. I too am deemed

Haunted by a ghosted sight; also racked

By a regretful pain felt hard and keen.  

From a nameless cliff I see on high, down low

The rumbling, streamlined lines of a naval ship

Whose dead grey hue turns to smoke as it goes

While it’s soul rumbles under as it rips

Through indifferent seas.  And I on a wake

Lie lifeless in the stormiest reach

My own sail as torn as the heart it navigates

Thrown toward the shore of the loveliest beach.

Then I imagine my father with outstretched hand

Like the old Book's last fiery scene

With one foot in the water and one on land.

Atonement thirsts on the oases of dreams.

It has often been said death is not proud.

Nor would I fain to say he is even smug.

But while it’s I that’s full of fury and the sound,

Death took—and takes--with stony shrugs.

John Locke's Sock, or; Selfhood

Good ole empirical minded John Locke,

Though surely bound to task to make them match,

Held deep thoughts where, like a drawer, lay his socks.

His favourite one was prone to holes, though duly patched

As when a diabolical gap blank as minds grew.

He sewed it shut (or filled it?) with a different cloth

And his cherished sock, growing old, was made as new

And preserved as he desired it to be: As it was.

But our thoughts of what we deem same we upend

As material fades and begets anew.

And we wonder on it, again, then again,
And read in to our desire a hope it is true.

Shells over spirit, we are held fast by cells

That shed and repair like the lost limb of

Lazarus lizard, always fixing itself.

We are darned cloth, changelings enough

To wonder: are we preserved as we were?

And spirit, too, is mind fraying and unwinding.

But the illusory thread of thought is the allure

That we are always the same, invisible minding

Of memory like a favourite sock.
What makes me the same as a minute ago?
What changes in me at the strike of a clock?
Who will I be in an hour or so?

Is it this that holds hard and fast the seams

As time unravels the ‘self.’ Time gone wears thin.
Though as bare the threads of my memories of me,

I remember Tom so well but know I am not him.

I see no me that ponders now this very moment.
Is it a thing of the brain, and a soul attached?

Yet thoughts of now, and remembrance of when,

Seem a seamless whole, though duly patched.

What do You Mean?

One day I was stopped by a man. He 
Had the face of a Mexican bandit; 
Brown as tequila and as round as a 
Clock. Or maybe he was an Andean 

Herder of llamas who lamented the 
Heights. With the throaty voice of someone 
Who had eaten the worm and English 
So broken that no kings, horses, nor men 

Could mend it, he asked with a slight smile: 
"Please, what is time?" 
From soaring heights my genius came to ground 
To sweep up his query and write my answer 

In the sky. I replied: "Time, you see, is the 
Celestial movements of the firmament. The 
Shifting of the smoldering stars; the ebb 
And the flow of the sandy shores; the surge 

And receding of your Mind. Time is the 
Limitless limit. It is the pendulum 
Of your coyest lover's undulating heart. 
It is more but we haven’t time to say.” 

On the same day I met another man. 
He had a Socratic brow as heavy as 
The dome above that lent it the weight. 
His face and brow were etched with lines, engraved 

By his hours and days like a complex map 
To guide me to where he stood at the moment. 
With grave import he asked me the question: 
"What is time?" 

With just the smallest of thought, I replied: 
"Dear Sir, you obviously want to know 
The hour of the day. I can help you here. 
If you want to see one raise a wrist, 

You must learn the way it is asked. You must 
Rather ask 'What time is it?' It is just to 
Our form of living that you must abide; 
Just a tweak of the language." I said this 

With affection and care. I then walked on 
Admiring my two hats. The upturned 
Corners of my smile must have looked like 
The minute hand at ten and the hour on two. 

September 11, 2001 and a Mysterious Little Building

New Jerseyans will know what I mean.  What I mean is they will know what I mean geographically.  In the year 2001, I was working for a company in Clifton, New Jersey that was located just off one of the many exits off of Route 3.  The exit, and therefore the building, was on the side going east.  For those non-New Jersey types who might be curious, this route, when going east, leads directly to the Lincoln Tunnel bringing you as dry as a bone under the Hudson River and, inevitably, with frazzled nerves, into what I believe to be one of the greatest cities in the world.

On the morning of September 11th 2001 I was inside this little building just off good old Route 3.  I, along with two other diligent workers--earnest worker bees!--showed up a little earlier than the usual lemming-like crowd that would fall in yawningly at something like five minutes to nine.  What a beautiful morning!  Do you remember?  I hope I don’t state with untethered hyperbole that the morning was absolutely crystal clear.  One really thought one could see for my miles.  Add to this those little whispers of clouds and you had exquisiteness come alive!  It was exquisiteness directly projected through a large employee kitchen window, in a small building off of Route 3, in Clifton New Jersey.  What gorgeousness!  I mean in that rejuvenating of the spirit kind of way.  It really was transcending. Forgive my over indulgence but, I really do remember!  Truth be told, I was neither partaking in its rejuvenating charm nor was I enjoying the view from this particular employee kitchen window.  But, I would be using it as a projection screen in a matter of minutes.  And in a matter of minutes it would be projecting on me something less than exquisite.

You see, this window encompassed a whole wall and  looked directly eastward.  It overlooked a skyline roughly 6 miles away cut from the sky  and, on any given season of the year, could pass as a wide shot for the credits of a Woody Allan film—shot, of course-- at any time of the year.  This day was exquisite.  I’ve said that already. When looking out this window on such a September morning meant a luscious scattered  assemblage of trees on the Jersey side that managed to both vie for the sky’s attention in their intensity, but also obscure a good deal of Manhattan’s skyline.  Don’t get me wrong.  One could still work out different parts of this cityscape through the negative spaces of the trees. In fact, the amalgamation of trees and skyline made the whole all the more charming.  One would not have wished for lesser trees or more skyline.  It was a unified whole except---except those two incongruous twins lunging skyward over on the right side.  They seemed to stick out like a pair of sore thumbs!

It was when I sat having coffee with a colleague that we were interrupted by another colleague who, I shall just say, was prone to (I want to put it politely) “over-excitedness.”  On this morning he did not let down.  As if on cue, he came through in the form of racing around the corner shouting that there was something we just had to see.  We had to see it and we could, in fact, if we just made our way over to the employee kitchen window with him.  When we got the obligatory eye roll out of the way we concurred and did just that by following him through the halls and to said window.  Arriving at the window we did not need to be told where to set our gaze because on initial site we both saw one of those “sore thumbs” billowing smoke out of the top of it like a military man with perfect posture puffing out a contemplative ring of cigar smoke.  We were shocked to say the least.  I think here it might be important to remember that it was early.  So, when I tell you my over-eager colleague laughed at the fact that initial reports were saying one of those single engine Cessna planes had just accidentally flown into one of the twin towers, I’m hoping he can be partially forgiven.  Believe me when I tell you, as someone who does not always see things abstractly, (even from a distance) I was shocked that even this would be considered funny.  The irony mounts.  It is the kind I do not like.

We stood in absolute awe.  There is no demarcating line here.  It is one of those situations where sight and sound work together in a kind of double dream-like state. So, I cannot point to a particular moment when I realized what was going on.  Three of us stood at a window as the sight unfolded and the sound unfolded simultaneously as fragments of news that built together like a terrible crescendo.  One's ears were a cymbal and one’s eyes were another and they came crashing together to make your head ring. This was not a small Cessna.  This was light years from funny.  And, in those moments that seemed to freeze the nervous system in to a thousand hours while sight and sound still played upon them in real time, I shall never forget my colleague—a friend—ask like a curious child almost in a whisper what that strange small dot was coming seemingly closer to the building.  Before even his breath came to a halt after the last word, the small dot melted into the other building.  In seconds, it too was smoking.

By this time people came pouring in and the employee kitchen was beyond capacity.  They also brought news from the outside.  “We’re under attack,” I remember someone say almost to themselves while shaking an unbelieving head.  It all seemed simply confusing.  However, time and information melt away this confusion, but only a little.  Confusion mingles with reality.  It mingles with reality and it becomes a kind of buzzing noise that you want to stop for fear of slowly driving you mad.  But this buzzing can become an all too alarum bell; One that takes your nervous system out of its slumber by thawing it with one particular echoic din.  Mine was a scream.

Mine came less than an hour after first setting eyes on the sight.  Strangely, as the number of people swelled, the whole environment became quieter.  It was an eerie quiet.  We all watched as if collectively knowing what could happen but dared not say it.  Less than an hour later I stood there frozen in disbelief with more than a dozen other like-minded people.  It was then first tower crumbled before our eyes in a grey and dusty implosion. It was made all the more surreal in that it was noiseless.  But, the room was no longer noiseless. There was the scream.  A female employee standing next to me screamed that scream, one I had never heard before in my life.  The buildings came down simultaneously with the most natural, most primal scream I think my ears ever witnessed.  I am attempted here to amend that and say one my soul never witnessed.  I didn’t even twitch. It just served to melt my nervous system back to reality.  It went through every single fiber in my body almost peacefully before reaching something very deep that told me of the often tragedy of living.

I revisited that window several times afterward.  In fact, well into the next year.  But, what played upon my psyche was a little image that seemed to do nothing beyond poke my sub-consciousness.  I think now the reason why I it took that long to fully bore in to the consciousness was that the image was on the side where the towers no longer existed. But, I couldn’t help myself.  I finally looked in that direction. It was the outline of a small building off in the distance so far away that it appeared almost ghost-like in its smoky blue haze.   It seems like a mirage.  It stood alone and the mystery was in its solitary uniqueness as well as its distance.  But it was within sight. Even if I had to wonder if it actually did exist, it did nothing to take away from the piquancy it played upon me.  Even if it were of the imagination it did not lessen the impact of such a poignant little sight.  A little wispy smoke of a building.  I think, too, that it seemed to come out of nowhere as if it didn’t exist until then.  With further observation and some cold insight, I came to finally realize it was a building far off into the distance I had never seen before, nor could I see it because it had until then been obscured by the two buildings since gone.

Private Thoughts: Ideas on the Privacy of the Mind as Inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Have you often heard people say things like, “We could never know what she’s really thinking,” or, “Only he knows for himself,” perpetuating the belief that all thoughts are somehow private?  In some strange way, this is not true.  In a kind of manner of speaking we can be using the word ‘private’ here in another way.  We could, for example, be saying meaning that thoughts are private in a way that we might not outwardly share them. In this sense, we might just keep thoughts to ourselves. 

However, this sounds too simple and not the way philosophers like Wittgenstein meant it when challenged. We sometimes believe that thoughts are private, much like sensations like pain, as if no one else can have access to them, as if cordoned off from other people.  But even this is just metaphorical.  The fact is that a thought is no more accessible to yourself never mind anyone else.  We believe a thought is ‘inside’ us the way a brain is inside us but this is actually mistaking two categories.  Let me bring it back to a sensation like pain for a minute.  If I say I believe P has a gold tooth but I do not know it, this could become hidden from view. If I then say P has a toothache but I can never know it, this is not because it is inaccessible.  I can open his mouth and not ‘find’ toothache’ because there is nothing to find.  He is just having a sensation.  I am privy to it because he has told me or has exhibited pain behavior.  Whether he fakes it or not has nothing to do with whether the pain is private or not.  He does not own it, he merely has it.  But, what of these thoughts?

We very often think that our thoughts reside in the head or behind the eyes, or at least somewhere potentially private as if they could be locked away for our own consumption. It becomes like a private attic where you, and only you, have a magic access. These modes of thinking, as I stated above, are just figures of speech.  They are metaphors for something not literate.  If we open up someone’s head, we find no thoughts any more than we’d be expected to find a miniature city.  It is the same when we say we ‘hold’ someone in our heart or something is ‘buried’ deep down in the bosom of a heart (As a side note, and to highlight this metaphorical speak, we’ll compare it to a literate example; If two people have a cherished object that each wants to keep a secret from other people they might want to bury it as a way of preserving their object.  One person might bury it just six inches under the ground.  The other person might cherish his object so much so that he may go to the trouble of digging a hole twenty feet underground.  We could then say of the latter person that they really went to the greater lengths to keep his object a secret.  May be this is why we then go to great lengths with our metaphor when we say something is ‘buried’ deep down.) So we think thoughts are private things that, when desired, can be privy only to the person thinking them.   

However, this is a problem in a few ways one of which I’ll highlight here.  Often, as I said above, we think we can’t have access to a person’s mind which often lets a person off the hook when they play the personal card by saying things like, “You can never really know my real feelings” or, “Only I know how I really feel.”  But my contention is that we can and do in fact ‘know’ a person’s feelings if we are using the word ‘know’ as I think we’re using it.  To say we ‘know’ something on the way we normally use it does more than highlight a positive proposition.  To say we ‘know’ something also pertains to the possibility of not knowing something.  Can we say that of ourselves?  Can I speak of knowing something about myself like a pain or sensation while at the same time holding the corollary possibility of not knowing it?  These questions create a small but significant crack within our own minds as to the difference between ‘knowing’ our own feelings and simply ‘having’ them.

Imagine for a moment you just got your haircut and you meet a very good friend who knows you better than anyone.  Your friend then tells you she really like your new haircut.  It makes your face look nice.  Now, knowing this person as well as you do, imagine that though you were happy to hear these words from her, you are skeptical.  You seem to have an intuitive knowledge, through years of intimacy, of when your friend is lying.  It may be that their nose always wrinkled up at the moment or that they immediately look at the ground as a tell-tale sign, or it may just be a feeling.   You seem to instinctively know, may be through years sub-conscious practice, when they are not telling the truth.  In this case it is difficult because liking a haircut is just a matter of an opinion though one could still be lying about the opinion.  However, in a situation like this you may fall back on the notion that, in the end, your friend is really only the one who knows if  she is lying or not.  You cannot know her innermost feelings (remember, this is just a metaphor). But let’s try to jump the hurdle. 

Let’s further imagine that someone comes down from on high and grants you the possibility to get ‘inside’ your friends head so as to hear every thought that goes on inside it.  Of course, this would mean that you still have your own thoughts as a way of comprehending things, in this case hearing her thoughts and deciphering them.  So you have been granted access to her deepest thoughts (Again, deepest?).  May be weeks go by and you’ve been relegated to listening to all the gibberish and incomprehensible thoughts we all have just about every waking hour.  This person has had to deal with the torrent of white noise that seems to take place in seemingly every one’s head (never mind the embarrassing things that we do prefer to keep secret).  Yet weeks go by when finally your friend ‘thinks’ in her mind, “I really did like that haircut.”  You think that this, finally, is the proof you were waiting for all this time!  It must be true!  What then, if in another five minutes, you hear her ‘think’ the phrase,” No, I didn’t like the haircut.”  You are now witness to a cerebral tennis match.  Imagine this volleying goes on for days and days.  In this case, one might then be tempted to just wait to hear her say “I did like the haircut,” one last time then hastily  leave her thoughts and only then decide you have your answer.  But is this honest? What then are your criteria?  Is it that you think you finally have the truth?  Or is this just a case that you decided to take what you heard last and call that a truth?  Is this a case of now truly knowing what your friend was thinking? In the end, even with the ability to hear someone else’s thoughts, as in this case, the criteria you are left with is, “It is the last thing she said.” And even then you abandoned things at a certain point.

The above scenario is no different than thinking you’ve got to the truth if your friend said these things out loud.  It is still criteria you’ve had to base on an outward sense of knowing but not in some ‘inner’ sense, as if you went deep down to get your answer.  Remember, that to understand—or ‘know’—her mind, you still needed yours to comprehend what you were hearing in order to know. You still required your own cognitive process to understand what she was thinking.  It seems this leaves us with the notion that in order to know her inner most thoughts the way we would like we would then have to become our friend, meaning everything from atoms on up, in which case, as I mentioned above, you could no longer speak of ‘knowing’ but rather of having sensations.  You would just be having those thoughts without the benefit of what we might deem knowing or not knowing. You would become your friend, no longer comprehending in a third person kind of way, but you would be her. This is what I mean by knowing.  We always need outward criteria or proof (no matter how wrong) to know something in the world.  But we cannot do that with ourselves because we cannot then speak of knowing things but rather just having thoughts.  It’s almost as if someone asked if we were in pain and we told them we were not sure and we had to check:  “Wait a moment. Let me see. One minute, please. Ah! No, I was mistaken.  I’m not in pain.”  We don’t do this kind of thing in any meaningful way.  

If these ideas do anything, they may highlight the fact that we know things in the world about other people in a meaningful way by inferring outward appearances as a way of being right or wrong. In this way, we can meaningfully speak of knowing and not knowing in the world. It also reminds me of something said by the man that inspired all these thoughts, Ludwig Wittgenstein, when he surmised that the best picture of the human soul is the body.  It’s not as airy-fairy as some would like, but it speaks to something more intellectually honest than thinking it is two separate things.  At least we can be right or wrong.

Language Barriers

There are men who, upon their own

Reflection, feel prisoner’s in a
Room akin to the philosopher’s
Famous dictum; prisoner’s in a room
Alone celled in a walled brain where a
Door, lockless, stands potentially free,
But only in learning the ways to open it.
There stands a door not locked, the concealed
Symbol of a freedom not realized.
And the realization hides like an
Unfound key in the notion that the door
Must be pulled towards the room that holds them.
The door is as locked as an undeveloped
Sense is locked to learning new words.
And the word with no use is what holds fast
And keeps prisoner what should potentially be.
But the word can be a risen key, a
Skeleton key that shines and gleams  in
A dazzle of hieroglyphic wonder,
An alphabetic afterglow that dances
Upon an undeveloped sense like the
Flames that sway aloft sweet sainted heads.
But when the key is placed inside the lock
And nothing has shone, no opened sense
On which to wonder, it must not occur
The door is as open as an undeveloped
Sense and a word is not yet learned a word: push.

Amor et Infinitatem

Full felt fast is fire's desire,

Round and round and round again,

Hot turning like lively ashes atop a pyre.

In streamlined whip of unending spin

Love's flames lick no cornered edges tips

And fail to find an end, nor no finite wall.

Nowhere is there times hard held grip

But like the smooth sphere of a shiny ball 

Revealing no terrestrial marks,

Movement enshrouds illusory sight

Of no end or germinating spark;

Where there is no future or a past much like

The circling of two single snakes,

Convex things contoured north to south

Where each a link of chain, aligned, do take

The others taut tail within their mouth.

And so we walk in love from anywhere

Arched in infinite curves we do not see

And, though limitless, leaves a center bare.

It is when that finite space is filled we

Sense our time and take a nauseous turn.

And in the snuff of a mortal gust

We then know, within, it will fail to burn.

Love does not die but will go on without us.