filling the Gap

concrete jungles
they wrap and swarm
hovering over the earth
with just enough seperation
to seperate us

the Approaching Winter

Sun trickles through the frayed strings of a dream catcher in front a window
Feathers hang and shutter, beckoning my view
And the trees now shake
Swaying wider with bare arms
Bending further
And further still

Autumn passes quickly
I chase the sun near the end of the day
Running from the shifting shadows
Taking what I can
To follow the forest’s lead
In preparation of the upcoming cold
I chase the sun near the end of the day
Not yet ready to behold
the fettered might of winter’s harshness ready to unfold.

putting together pieces of a trip to ny

Note: So, this is the beginning of a mess of scribblings and thoughts during this country boy's first visit to big ole New York City. Oh me...where to begin...I suppose here, but I promise things will get better, and far less screechy preachy...thank you for your patience, sit back, and enjoy the ride. thank you for flying fathom usa.


Great buildings reach to heaven
but few use the staircases anymore
sprawling out and up progress shows itself proudly
these gravestones of forgotten days
the epitaths to the wild
the constant is change
mechanical wolves and misconstrued reality now hunt
in the shadows of daylight
canopy of concrete
great trees of metal and we are the fauna
crawling inside
what and who does that make the hungry woodpecker?

The Woodpecker must be capitalism then, picking off the unfortunate victims of the system like squirmy grubs, stabbed by the jackhammer beak, swallowed by the immensity of learning yo place in the new hierarchy of balance sheets and man. How does it feel to live in the age of unreason? To have no control. Forced into a system you may not agree with, one you will be chastised for even insinuating it has flaws, for after all, that is not very patriotic and one quickly starts sounding like a communist pig instead of a capitalist one.

My worries are only worries, inherent problems I see, but who am I but a simple country boy, what do I know of existence on that scale of things? What does Liberty even mean anymore? We are free, but are we really free? I feel rather confined, blocked in, suffocated, as if very narrow paths were my only option and I'm unsure if I am even content with those. How do we break free, make a new level playing field, and even out this eschewed distribution of choices and options.

Have we already gone too far? It is difficult to say what history will say about this age, and perhaps it and we still teeter on the tipping point, the future still undecided but there is an air that a choice will be made in the near future, one with massive ripples unlike anything witnessed in quite some time, perhaps occurring within 4 years or less, and the gears are a mess, so let us pray our hearts are pure and we remind ourselves of the power of ingenuity and chance in the infinite canvas that is we powerful people on this fragile living spacecraft.



The night is long
but our dream is longer
~Haitian proverb

moments drift, moments slip

Balloons rise to nowhere out of a young child’s grasping grip
Like these thoughts floating into the abyss of an absent mind’s chaotic trip
But where do they go and will they ever return
Recycled in the incinerator of what must be a finite sponge of thought
Late at night we pray that great lost epiphany will somehow float back to our mind
And fill the aching gap it forever left behind.

A goobye to the carefree summer

These sweet summer days
slowly grow and surely glow
as the leaves and blades of grass
in their world so far below

a soft caressing breeze
songs of the aviators
serenity whispers nearby
we are a peaceful people
living
cognizant and appreciative
of the gift surrounding us
sustaining us
embedded upon us
Living the dream
this stream of consciousness
is flowing, the lifeblood
the river
we drink it but do we see it?
we need it but do we bleed it?

Sit amongst the leaves and blades of grass
amongst the trees
listen to their stories

these sweet summer days
paradise wrapped in a dream
wonderment surrounds us
and we abidingly smile in awe.

Mountains make us believe in gravity
depth and height
they remind us
our spectrum of acceptance is short
and our field of vision is not within sight

We rumble loudly
mountains humbly stand tall
saying nothing
letting the landscape sing on its own
Solid, aspiring
always hopeful when reaching for the top
let us learn from our mountainous counterparts
its hard to hear time on that scale
knowing nothing of transience
the apex of life on this planet
somewhat literally
in more ways than one
rolling and folding
blanket of our foundation
our ground
yet so few seem grounded
For in substance we walk not on the mountain
but in the mountain.

fractal swirls and caverns shape us

Swirls and caverns
Echos and chants
These endless sponges of mass interact

Lightning snaps
feel the hydrogen convert
thoughts manifest
from axons to action
cut yourself off to be cut on
cut in to the hand of thought
precious bodies to protect
the jewel of our massive intellect
the energy behind beauty
as well as our binding pendulum

But there is an answer to the madness
somewhere in the swirls and caverns
echos and chants
where these endless sponges of mass interact.

Reflections on Reflection, another rant with some high notes

some notes from my journal the other day...



We're back at Wing Gap for Week 2, but right now we are at Delaware Water Gap listening to jazz again at the Deer Head Inn. The grooves are coming and the blues are flowing. Exhaustion is setting in, and tomorrow I will be a rock crusher by morning and a road warrior by night traveling all the way on blasted 81 for over 7 hours to see my baby for her birthday in Blacksburg. She and dog fish head await me. She is enough and the dog is an added bonus. Nearly broke my right thumb today as Harry and I turned over a monster rock and he was one oomph ahead of me, causing the rock to pivot and crash on my thumb since I could not hold all its weight being smack downed by the unforgiving lover of gravity. It won't stop bleeding, but the nail may not be lost luckily.


A week later the nail remains, as do I, forever stuck to this body, at least for now. We are back at Twin Lakes, next to Bear Mountain in Ny. Two screech owls are talking across the water. They are conversing. Fish randomly jump up for a bug and subtly I float back and forth, up and down with undulating water on this small floating dock. Getting aligned with the rhythm. All is very calm but I can hear the road not far away in the faint distant, and these people drive like they've got places to go. Fast and aggressive.

I am losing light fast and rain is coming.

It is crew midnight, 9 pm. Me es muy tired from crushing rock and carrying rock, and I am content in my tent.

Insects sing in resonating echoes, answered rhythmically by other echoing chants. The chant of night. Forest acoustics come alive in a different way, a nocturne indeed. It is fitting for the end of our day: tired, finished, done for the time being. The nocturnal lullaby that in all its darkness is refreshing, very fitting sounds to finish the revolution's orchestra preparing us for the break of dawn. At which time the alluring aubade is born.

The answer is in front of us, it always has been, and always will, and we will continue to overlook it.



What is reflection but seeing yourself in nature, a part of it, part of this fragile ticking biological system, and realizing your place in it at that time in your existence. Seeing the truth in everything. The pieces fit. As ripples roll across a lake and slowly out of sight, clarity rolls over me like a wave of enlightenment, fulfillment, and righteousness. Nature is spiritual without a doubt, for its beauty and reflective tendencies, as well as its place as a piece, like us, of the Creator, our God.

Reflection is integral to growth, part of a balanced diet. This special time is sacred, for it is yours, and it is you in control of your life at that moment. Which brings up the concern of why is modern life cutting down so much on time for reflection. Could our large brain power be for more than being caught up in the material and intellectual culture of the fruits of our intellect? We can’t fit reflection into our schedules. That is without a doubt, insane, and sad that so many are in that boat for whatever reason: personal, victim of the system, one of the doomed generation, ignorant, frivolous, flagellate, enmity, whatever blemish puts them on that ship of fools, I feel for.

Reflection reminds me who I am. Not seeing my reflection literally, which can be mindful when its been a week, but internal reflection really reveals ourselves to ourself. We learn what we always know and sometimes, just sometimes, we even surprise ourselves. These are cherished events that increase in frequency and amplitude upon further reflection, meditation, and slow calm hikes in the woods, anywhere but preferably mountainous. Life is much too short for distress. We should demand better of ourselves and friends and family. We must push ourselves, for that is the most important part of learning about reflection and seeing a glimpse of what we have the potential to become. To push ourselves is to truly be alive, making the most of life, a raw rare thing of thoughtless beauty, the highest level and hardest to achieve.

Going beyond one's comforts teaches us to adapt, to acclimate quickly, and that my friends, is a valuable skill to have in this day and age, believe you me. It will only get more extreme, the magnitude of swift changes while we live in the hypersonic times of exponential growth while it lasts. We need thinkers, innovators, teachers, farmers, organizers, politicians, businessmen and woman, and whole communities that reflect and actually care for all of the above. We should all ask ourselves who and what do we care for? We should say, all of the above. In toto. All or nothing. Nothing is lonely, trust me.

All is a wondrous thing to see.

It is time for a change of the societal mythos. Call it evolution of self preservation, call it trendy, whatever you may it is time. Society's mindset is about to adapt to an ever changing world out of necessity. If our hypersonic rise in the last century wasn't enough to vibrate our cerebrums and frontal lobes into confusion and chaos we better get our ducks in a row and hunker down for the next wave. Anyone who has been on a rollercoaster knows this sensation when the next corkscrew approaches. Mental preparation is integral to healthy change when moving at these rates. It's too easy to become detached otherwise, as is easily apparent now in our detachment from nature and all that has branched from it as the agrarian reform and wilderness generation passed away to urban sprawl and suburbia, seemingly in a blink of time's eye, and in the process we lost so much knowledge and experience we are left little to do these days except watch television and read and write blogs.



We can be all that our dreams desire, but we must act, we must sacrifice, and we must be determined. Nothing good comes easy on this scale of things, this magnitude of mental stability, flexibility, and vulnerability to environmental cursors and energies surrounding the present spatial strata of terra firma. Feeling off of, feeling into, or connecting to nature, however you prefer to look at it at the time, it can be empowering and a catalyst for results from reflection. For some this is not possible. They are not wired this way. For others it is an extreme sensory overload. And for some it is invigorating, refreshing, and spiritual. And for many it is unfamiliar.

It is something special to feel small. To feel not insignificant, for everything is significant and nothing is random, but to feel your size in relation to creation and feeling the immensity of your surroundings itch at our atavistic yearnings, spiritual sutras, days forgotten. It is humbling and empowering.

These primordial reflections remind me I am alive.

Nature is the great reflection contrivance, the great reflector. What we see from other animals, plants, any interesting observation normally reveals something about ourselves as well. Its not egocentric but teachable moments. It’s all related, it’s biocentric. These universal themes exist at all levels in all things. Everything is interconnected. He or she who goes to the woods to learn about some species, especially for extended periods, oftentimes learns more about themselves in the end than their subject. It is the nature of nature. The nurture of nature. The never ending awe and complexity of nature, our one and only home.

These primordial reflections caress the coals of this inner fire, stirring my soul and reminding me the meaning of this transient existence. These primordial reflections remind me I am alive and that truth, love, and beauty is all we need to trust and all we need to surround our hearts with to have a worthwhile, enjoyable, and lasting life.

These primordial reflections are the flames of being, flickering and glowing, exposing and showing us glimpses of what could be. They are the fires of the mind, finally visualized as opposed to the smoldering haze of mediocrity. There is a purity present there that is a rare thing indeed, hard to grasp, hard to reach, but there nonetheless, always right in front of us, waiting to be realized, waiting to be felt.