autumn tactics

Oh, but why? How a winter’s day by the Kamo can chill a man. No sun, no snow, just damp and stone. How else could the day be spent? But so much, so many things… how many do await in this old city for a traveller and a thinker? But money does not buy happiness, oh no. With money comes so much baggage, so much regret, like a city, not your own, but only belonging to someone else, now gone.

Gentle duck, fair fisher.

The heron finds meal for today. Waking water, tender sleeper; you will flow no matter how many lovers visit your shores. Silent reed, ragged grass; in your weathered arms the crane keeps her home.

Not skirts, not pavement, not dates made on a calendar; time walks by while I sit.

There is another force inside of me, it rests. It waits and sleeps, sleeps for the sunlight, sleeps for the cold, sleeps for the metallic verve to caress and stroke its latent kinetic.

Down into the ground, to a world of concerte and plastic, to a capillary of transit, a translucent valve into a pulsing network. The guards slide open and I step across to join the stream, and again I’m racing to a land of illusion.

Forests, mountains, and fields. Color blurs and the residual image of my footsteps melts across soil and brick. The noonday sun is enveloped like me, and both are made to move, cutting through nonlinear planes.

What need have I for a home? Why assign meaning to concepts best left vague? Already we’ve broken at so many junctions, two meters apart and gazing into different stars. The impermanence of everything is atmospheric, and the awareness of that humidity has already cast fates down in the sand. But freedom is movement in four dimensions, and from fifty miles above unchanged but here in the grass a number of paths can be cut.

So today I leave the hours and minutes behind, and only move; moving forward, moving up, moving still while the current runs circles in my mind. Snake, dart, jump, and devour. Tonight I’ll go looking for contrast in life once more.

life, reverbs, i am asleep, but here
no, floating nirvana
so lost in the crowds of a tunnel
notes casade, over and over, like the drops of a sweet waterfall
through heaven, into the ope and waiting eyes of the visionaries.

awake, dear children! this is the moment for your learning
so far, so far, you’ve come to recieve this, and now is the time when it will be given in generous helpings.

awash, awash, sweet lover.

I sat in the sand, huddled between the legs of smoking buddhas, while you drifted among the currents.

so fresh, so fresh, at last I was bathed in starlight

no, oh yes, reach into the places of me so often hidden, reach in and let them unlock all the doors I’ve shut around my self. you must have broguht me here for this purpose, for there really is no other.

then comes the echo, then comes the burning spirits to visit each tongue and mind with the fire of understanding. then we wait in waiting and stretch long unused muscles in eager anticipation of the union.

stretch, extend and release, deep in swirling fogs. there all things left hidden, will be found.

sweet life, saggy eyes. hello long road snaking through these hills.

somewhere beyond the stream of bleary incadescent lights a mind awaoke from an hour of fitful sleep and found its way into the passenger seat of my journey home.

talking about rent and picnics in the park, yawning with the grit of a night in a tent and gazing at the ocean, elbow deep in the sands left golden by mindful souls.

the rain broke and the fog burned off, but I was left nestled deep amidst a purple sea of experiences caught on the edge of my conscience.

an acoustic guitar and a soft voice, the middle seat and a cooler of spent bacchany; something tight was loosened to make me strong.

kangaroo

wheels and metal
wheels and metal and padded seats
why am I here
is this a break
how can I cull the noise from my life
separate the cream from the chaff
life is too grand to be taken asleep
but when will the fighting end?

…

tanuki

saffron and sunshine
need to release myself of my expectations?
自分の期待を捨てた方がいい？
long, long and light, flowing up over everything

…

kookaburra

I will be as the water, and the wind. I will fold myself into the world, taking invention and the dreams of men with me. I will be in the temples, behind the trees. I will be alive as a seeker, listening quietly and reflecting the sunshine as a placid lake. With passion I shall bake my bones and make a temple of my body. For soil from whence I came, and soil must be revered and returned as taken.

To take music and rhythm, building from the noble things created by man. A ship on the ocean and a sail in the air. Nimble sewn devices put together in science and driven out to the land. With patience and understanding grow my heart, then reach out calm to the night, breathily.

Known and unbidden, but pulled to the road as I was born, to be and true as possible, for all that I can find is immeasurable.

A path, on a path, moving forward; away and back again, two supple legs and a heart to guide them.

This is me as I am, as I was. I hope you can learn from it someday.

Do you remember those digital scales from AP physics and chemistry in high school? The ones that had the TARE button on them to reset with the current weight? But of course you were thinking “TARE? Stupid Oxford Metrics or whatever idiot science company in Connecticut…first of all it’s T-E-A-R, and second this has nothing to do with paper or assholes so why is this button on the scale? Why don’t they just say “ZERO” or “RESET”? Crumby moron eggheads failed English.”

I think that was a rather inefficient way of saying we’re moving on, so TARE a new page off in your mind before reading on in this blog.

Damn it, I forgot what I was going to write about. Oh yeah. Miles Davis. So there’s the jazz fanatics, the casual listeners, the idiots that put Kenny G on the Weather Channel local forecast, and there’s me. Yesterdays. It’s a good piece. I recommend you find it. And when you do, read the following poem aloud (and ideally have a glass of bourbon on ice with a steamy summer night). The man makes me think things. Lots of things. I miss writing.

Enjoy.

From Eight Years and Ten Thousand Miles, the early works of Steven Rorrer…

Yesterdays
Steven Rorrer

soft and dear your face
on the brim of my mind so late at night
how can I best describe
the way you hang around my thoughts

here every night at this time I drink alone
but you join me just the same
I wonder where you are; are you sleeping
or up late alone as well, sitting there with me