breadtoy

Ooh, breadtoy, breadtoy!  I have to take it up from the floor and onto the bed, so that I can cover the sheets all with crumbs!

I will bat it and whack it and bite it and gnaw it and thwack it from here over to there!  I shall hit it with left paw, and hit it with right, and poke it under the blanket it and snag it right back!  I will jump at it, pounce on it, paw at it, look confused by it, snack on it a bit, and then leap away!

I will rip it to bits, and then chase them all around!  And then forget some bits completely, and leave them to be found later.

I will hook a bit in my paw, and go nonf-nonf-nonf with my mouth, predator teeth trying to chew.   I will claw up your foot, friend, when my battle comes too near, and I will swish my tail with the perplexity of it all.

I will back-hop and back-hop, great four-paw springs in the air.  And then I will get lazy for a while, and attack while reclining.

Now, between two paws, over my mouth, it is mine, finally earned to be mine.  Munch munch, hunch hunch.  It is mine, all mine....

20130927

you lose your grip
when you've got no back
the wall behind you has crumbled
the ground is all dug up
and they tell you
just push forward
forward
ever on
eat up
and
dig in

speak song, walk dance

Other languages sound musical to us; our own does not.

This is because every language has a song to it---a consistent range of melodies and rhythms that together make up the everyday music of how we speak to each other.

Our own everyday song is just that: so familiar that it sounds like nothing at all.  Like water to a fish, or air to a human.

What this means is that we are all always singing.  A song that we share with fellow speakers of our language (or dialect, etc.), even as we always perform it in our own distinct style.

In the same way, how we each walk, our specific gait, is a dance.  We choose this dance for a variety of reasons---a mixing of the purely physical (our body-specific mechanics) with the emotional (how we feel about ourselves and how we want to be seen).

The proverb "If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing..." is not floofy optimism.  It is a statement of fact.  Ordinary speech is already a song; ordinary walking is already a dance. 

Both lay the foundations of how we sing and dance in the more familiar sense.  And both bring out what is inside, whether we want it or not.

So: in walking and talking, we find already the seeds of these arts, and a better understanding of ourselves.

what i think about science today

Science is about useful narratives. Those that are backed up with lotsa numbers and/or clear testability/falsifiability are all well and good, but any narrative is worth listening to if it helps us see what we haven't seen before. That doesn't mean we shouldn't demand the sharper-edged claims as much as possible, but nor does it mean that we should miss out on more imaginative approaches just because they don't always immediately offer open-and-shut testability. Often if we give them a chance, they will in fact do so in the end, just a few further exploratory steps down the line. The best intellectual efforts are those that understand and respect not just the value of rigor, but also the unlimited potential of an ever-generous curiosity. That's science to me.

20120430 | bits and pieces

another pill of chinese medicine
that tastes like smoke

standing out here in the sun
looking back at all those years
that slammed me up against the wall of my own limits
nose bloodied, missing a few teeth

and worsened for all the grey slow times
letting chance after breathing chance pass

and here
and now
in the light and the wind

is another opening day

20120323

we use the old to handle the new

this is how ancient languages (and most all languages are ancient)
handle the new modern world

this is how we all handle new information
in conversations: new, buffered via the old and familiar

this is how a learner handles a new language,
improvising towards the new
with whatever is old to them, familiar to them, easy to them, readily
used by them.

this is how we use the old to handle the new,
the familiar to handle the novel.

[it is your family, your elders, showing you how to go out into the bigger world of the unknown]

20120312

i'm tired of songs of the dead.

i don't live in elegy
i want the past for the future

i want the different for its help,
not its difference.

i want to recover the spark,
not the ash.

tasty as they are,
i don't want to slave in the kitchen,
cooking up jams and preserves

find me out in the garden,
replanting disused seeds
and drinking in
that crisp green growth

made and remade
of each day's new rain and sun

find me there.