Farewell Spring

Posted on July 13th, 2010 by george.
Categories: poetry, life, epiphany, enlightenment.

The words I do not utter
The thoughts I do not voice
The photos I don’t take
For taking is thievery
The memories I’ll never share
And the ones I let slip
The moments I refuse to tarnish with my speech
These are the most important to me
For the greatest things in life
Are ineffable, indescribable, transcendent
And attempting to capture them
Is futile
They will always elude you
And you will rob yourself
Of that moment
That deep breath
That knowing smile
That ever-so-delicate
Truth
It is only by letting go
That we can begin to grasp

2 comments.

Oprah interviews Dwight

Posted on March 10th, 2009 by george.
Categories: life, society, enlightenment, prayer, video.

I am getting chills…chills…listening to Oprah’s interview of Rainn Wilson, better known as Dwight Schrute on the Office.  To hear Oprah, vanguard of American opinion, the billionaire African American woman with a direct line into living rooms across the country, mention the Baha’i House of Worship in Chicago in reverent tones sent a shiver down my spine.  Do yourself a favor and tune in to this funny, enlightening, and uplifting interview about acting, Chicago, the Baha’i Faith, art as prayer, service to humanity as our highest calling, and the meaning of soul pancake.

4 comments.

Pale blue dot

Posted on January 30th, 2009 by george.
Categories: technology, synthesis, space, future, life, music, society, environment, epiphany, enlightenment, film.

Didn’t think I was gonna get a post up in January, didja?  HA!  That’ll show ya.

Here’s a month’s worth of hope in one short film.  Watch it full screen.

2 comments.

Alnilam

Posted on November 7th, 2008 by george.
Categories: poetry, history, space, life, epiphany, enlightenment.

No light from any star on high
Can ever reach your earthbound eye
Unless it travels ‘cross the sky
Through time for you to see it

For time is just a form of space
As poets past have long embraced
So every photon starts a race
The moment its star frees it

The race is won when through the air
It strikes your eye while standing there
Its maker’s beauty brought to bear
The journey done at last

The sky of now you’ll never see
From here unto eternity
For stars in your reality
Are from the distant past

Indeed the closest star to us
Past twenty trillion miles must
Ring out its light in hope and trust
In four years it will shimmer

Watch it sparkle watch it dance
Think of how it took the chance
That in the future you might glance
Above and see it glimmer

So when you take in constellations
Think of ancient men and nations
Of firmament’s eternal patience
In shedding all its light

And know you’re watching history
That stars aren’t where they seem to be
And some have even gone to sleep
In that unending night

2 comments.

T-bone Burnett

Posted on September 23rd, 2008 by george.
Categories: travel, life, friends, photography, health, epiphany, enlightenment, coincidence.

Blue Willie
On the way to the movies tonight, Willie and I stopped to pick up Tony at the nursery where he works.  As we pulled out of the driveway, we stopped, then had to make a three-point turn to go back and close the gate.  The movie was starting in ten minutes, so Willie sped off but quickly got behind slower traffic.  This was good, considering the cop sitting by the side of the road.  “Which way do you think we should go?” he asked.  “Take 95,” I replied, “It’ll be about five minutes faster than all the red lights on Fiske.”  He made a right turn, and we carried on with our conversation about how happiness is a choice; that you must be content with your life exactly as it is, that true joy can never be derived from material things.  Lacey twittered about being frustrated, stuck in hellish traffic in Houston in the wake of Hurricane Ike.  I remember saying a Remover of Difficulties for her as Willie went on about how he wouldn’t be upset if his house burned down.  We were on SR-520 approaching the I-95 overpass to turn south on the highway, when, to quote They Might Be Giants, “then came a knock on the door which was odd and the picture abruptly changed.”
The truck that hit us
Suddenly everything was moving in slow motion as I realized we’d been broadsided by a big yellow truck.  I hadn’t seen it coming; luckily Willie was paying attention and had swerved to the right at the last moment.  This kept us from plowing head-on into the oncoming Ford F-250.  Instead, he t-boned us.  I remember a sharp jolt, then watching the world slide past the windshield as we swung through 270 degrees.  “Is everyone alright?” I asked when we came to a stop.  Grunts in the affirmative.  “Willie, do you want me to call 911?”  “Yeah,” he replied as he jumped out to check on the other driver, whose airbag had deployed.  I tried to take stock of myself as I dialed the number.  Within 30 seconds the nice lady had all the information she needed, and a minute later the sheriff arrived, followed by the paramedics, a truck full of firemen, and a state trooper.  As it turns out, the other driver was within 50 feet of his destination; he was a construction worker working on the surface of the on-ramp.  We were swarmed with men in hardhats, his colleagues snapping photos and asking us if we were ok and what happened.  It added to the official nature of the scene, to be sure.

We weren’t visibly injured, so we called Rene to come pick us up while Willie got GEICO to tow his mangled truck.  Rene dropped Tony off, then drove us to my place, where we picked up my car and drove ourselves to the ER.  We were taken to the back before we even finished filling out our forms (how quick is that?).  The nurses and doctors were very kind, even joked around with us.  Willie and I got the same diagnosis and prescriptions, along with the directive to take a couple days off work to rest and recover.

It dawned on me as I took a hot shower just now that I said the Tablet of Ahmad on the way into work this morning.  I find myself pondering now just how dangerous cars can be.  Interestingly enough, my friend Christy had the exact same accident in the exact same intersection last year, except she plowed into the person who pulled in front of her and totalled her friend’s brand new car (she was designated driver).  You’d think by now they’d install a green left-turn arrow.

As I drove home from work today, I saw a motorcycle pop a wheelie and get up to a buck and change on my street.  I remember thinking about how cool that was.  Nothing like a little wake up call to make you appreciate the unforgiving brutality of momentum, and savor each new moment you’re granted that much more.

State trooper

19 comments.

Nine slices, five seeds

Posted on September 11th, 2008 by george.
Categories: history, synthesis, future, life, music, love, epiphany, enlightenment.

Over the past few days I have been listening to Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief” on the commute to and from work.  It strikes me that when I first played this album on the stereo, kicking back in my 70’s-era chartreuse La-Z-Boy (oh, how I miss that chair), looking out my bay window on the streetlights of Laurel Avenue, atop the ridge of Fort Sanders in arguably one of the most coveted properties for students at the University of Tennessee, surrounded by meticulously-tended gardens and rosebushes too often robbed of their blooms by passersby, that I didn’t like it.  It’s strange to have adored “Kid A” and “Amnesiac,” coming so hot on the heels of yet such a departure from Radiohead’s timeless masterwork “OK Computer,” only to have “Thief” stick in my craw.  At the time, I couldn’t place why it didn’t resonate; I’ve since heard that it was “thrown together” on a short schedule, and suffered from what some say is a lack of polish compared to previous efforts.  I now realize, after having “In Rainbows” wear ruts into my soul, pressing its melodies into the fiber of my being, rivaling the majesty of what to this point was my favorite album, that “Hail to the Thief” suffered only from lack of context.  It was simply ahead of its time; too raw, even though it was finished and complete, like a bridge suspended across a chasm whose far side has only now seen the tectonic plates of time grind past each other, lofting the perfect cliff into place under what seemed a terminus hanging in dead air.  The bridge to nowhere now emerges as a grand paean to the future as told by authors of the past, a gathering together of the sine wave of repeating history, a needle and thread through the wrinkled fabric of this collective consciousness, drawing tight the crevices to be filled with the golden light of meaning.

 

  

It dawns on me now that my love for this group of musicians was tied to the future more than I could imagine, their prescience wholly overshadowing my own, a hand reaching down and transcending the dimension of time, their glowing ladders of song rising out of the misty and dark swirls of this material world to the ethereal flights of the spirit.  I see too, now, that I have not yet fully appreciated my time in the city of my education, the lessons I learned in and outside the classroom, the mistakes I made and the choices I got right that have led me to this day, this moment, these words spilling forth over the banks of my stream, tumbling down white over the rocks of fortune.  Even for all its gray skies and cold nights, its mists and trials, its mazes and morasses, worn desks and defaced walls, I see that I loved that city, my time there, the people I shared it with, the sunshine they reflected that pierced the hazy air.  The rainbow arcs high and bright over the sapling of my existence now; for all their deep and abiding knowledge of past predicting future, I cannot recall a band that’s been through the hourglass that has enjoyed such lofty greatness for so long, or excelled so magnificently so late in their glorious career.

 

P.S. I’m getting married.

 

10 comments.

The overview effect

Posted on July 1st, 2008 by george.
Categories: synthesis, space, future, life, music, love, society, environment, fun, epiphany, enlightenment, humor, film, video, youtube.

5 comments.

One human family

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 by george.
Categories: technology, synthesis, space, future, death, life, enlightenment, serendipity, coincidence, numbers.

Arthur C. Clarke, one of my most exalted heroes, has passed to the next world.  There is no way I could ever pay proper respect to his spirit or legacy, so I’ll let him speak for himself.

Rest in peace, Mr. Clarke, immersed in everlasting joy and assured in your new, infinite knowledge that all your wishes are true, and will come true for us.
You like coincidences?  Check out my most recent flickr photo, which I posted before leaving for Mexico and have left up for nearly a week.  I have read 2001:  A Space Odyssey, and 2010:  Odyssey Two, but until today I did not know that the second sequel was entitled 2061:  Odyssey Three.  Third book’s the chardm, as they say.

P.S. This is my third visit to Mexico.

7 comments.

Alhambra

Posted on February 16th, 2008 by george.
Categories: poetry, synthesis, future, life, epiphany, enlightenment, serendipity, dreams, numbers.

the dust of far-off deserts
sparkles
after noon
while breezes waft
the redolence
of five-star blooms
shafts of leaning light
dance through
camphor trees
her shadowed arches
find me
down on bended knee
her marble pillars
soaring
toward heaven’s sky
from paradise four rivers
meet
with burbled sighs
relax your fretted ceilings
in the sun
and wind
let the sweet call of the nightingale
calm your soul
within
my truss your raven tresses
combed with honey
sweet
your words inside my spirit
carved
in filigree
now stretch my copper heartstrings
cross your
silver face
and fill with song this darksome
and once empty
space
thirteen vermillion towers
look upon your
life
and whisper to the lions
tales of
man and wife
existence stretched before me
like a growing
elm
crimson ark with
Holy Mariner
at the helm
each quanta forking out
an ungrown
tender shoot
a life of unknown branches
with you
at the root
and though the tree is younger
now
than it will be
your liquid silver quickens
every limb
of me
now from the court of maidens
comes a lilted
cry
an audience of angels
softly drawing
nigh
without a word
she bends
into her graceful dance
and lights aflame the veils
concealing
her advance
in arc and pattern
weaving
flowered tapestries
she draws upon the
lifeblood
from the roots so deep
with gathering momentum
she spins wild
and free
and melds his art and science
into
unity
from the Garden of the Architect
a breath
exhales
and scatters far the ashes
of the last lost
veil
the lover sees his children
in the maiden’s
sway
now overflows his heart
with
arabesque pensées
even unto his autumn
he sees red
and gold
and alloyed with his copper
stories
not yet told
for soon they may set sail
upon a sea
of song
and manifest what only
God
knew all along
the lily brims with waters
from the wise man’s
sea
and let loose are the lovers
that their seas may
meet
now overflow his tears
onto life’s golden
shore
to set in motion waves
above the
coral floor
the emerald sea now surges
casting forth
her pearl
the twain restored to one
now
and through all the worlds

7 comments.

Las nubes

Posted on February 12th, 2008 by george.
Categories: poetry, travel, synthesis, space, future, life, photography, love, epiphany, enlightenment, prayer, serendipity, coincidence, numbers.

Helix
low clouds drift over
her plunging arcs
helices adorn
her pure crystalline slopes
under the watchful eye
of the sliver of a crescent moon
Twin contrails
twin contrails cut across the sky
as they carve their way
through the forest
deeper into the heart
of the valley below
Through the forest
the great granite monolith
reigns regal over the valley
as the traveler departs the shores
of the great salt lake
both their heads in the clouds
Great salt lake
the hawk prays on detachment
in solitude above the clouds
that at the peak of the mountain
he should find his other wing
attached to an angel
Signs point to yes
he cannot cast his eyes
upon anything but signs
he is enveloped in assurance
his threading path is lit
by luminous rays
do you love me from the smallest ant
to the littlest loud?
su corazón pregunta
you mean cloud, he says
si, nube, she replies
James and Caytlin
do you like strawberries?
asks the little girl
after the traveler is diverted
from his prayers
I love strawberries, he responds
two women engaged in conversation
not a word of English between them
halt their cascade of Spanish to repeat
a single word foretold:
cloud
eleven arrives
to carry the weary traveler home
his head in the radio
as he reaches
mile marker 43
out of the corner of his eye
flow tears of certitude
leaving tracks on his cheeks
and crystals on the dry lakebed
of his heart
soft whimpers escape his lips
and with them his doubt
as the tortoise shell of his heart melts
and the delicate blossom of love
unfolds
everything in the universe
every slice of time and space
every cause and effect
has led to this moment
numbers themselves were created
to add up to this love
exit 52 leads him home
he walks out to check the mail
but on the way to the box
stoops to pick up
an empty cup
standing up his eyes rise
and fix their gaze on a star
the brightest setareh in the sky
shining in brilliant splendor
as the clouds march by
he looks to his hand
as his disbelief evaporates
and in its stead he finds
16 ounces of truth
straight from the mountain top
Mountain top

5 comments.

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