Two Poems

Drinking tap water from a Ball Brand 'Mason' jar:

Lines on the side. 

6oz it so happens. 

Exactly. 

Natural tremble holding it, gazing.

Water level shifts in this cylinder - circle

into ovals, constant variation with the tilt.

Breath rippling this mirror.

Peering through layers of transparent reflections - the room light, The molded bumps on the jar bottom, the mottled surface of the jar wall, fingerprints on the side. The water surface wiggling.

Rolling water, sliding back into itself, beads left behind.

Tilted upward now, a little river left in the glass valley bottom; breath fogging the canopy of heaven.

Path of words 

Melodic. Clear sliding

Glass. Gifted synthesizers

Keening. Artificial brightness 

In curled bulbs. I lost

Awareness -

Of neck pain.

Fascinating new trends in youth perception!

Today my younger brother told me that purchasing that FamilyForce5 CD mere weeks ago was something he shouldn't have done.
“Oh?” said I, interested to hear his reasoning. Had he found them to be too noisy and vapid?
No such luck. While he still liked them, he figured it would be better for him to sell his recent purchase, “because if I look hard, all the same songs are on youtube.”
Thats it folks. For the sorts of young persons today who haven't the permission or discretionary income to get ipods and itune cards, youtube is the media library. The key is that its free. And convenient!
I told my brother that it used to be people would buy albums even when they already knew all the songs and had them in other formats. Just to own the real physical representation, I said.
“Thats stupid.” he rejoined.
I let it go, sitting back in my free hand-me-down stuffed chair, and musing on what the free content business model is doing to todays youth. He has none of the concepts of property and trade value that an older person approaches the internet with. The only limit to his consumption of free items is knowledge of how to get them. Things like music which he perceives to be identical across various media are equal products, so only the most easy to get are worthy. What's most noteworthy is that for him, online items have as much worth as physical ones. He reveres virtual reality ego items and arguments for the investment of his precious life minutes on lasting physical things go unheeded. With no preference for the values of previous generations, how will these kids operate when they age to the point of making important business decisions? For them, there's hardly a reason not to go for the free stuff.
While there will be plenty of individual exceptions as other generations impress on those they care about, the collective impulse will be one to watch, if their first thought is to choose free stuff so long as its convenient. How will that impulse be played against by marketing departments, and business model makers? What companies will gain power, and what sorts of people will be running them? Could virtual items and relationships be valued to the point of being acceptable wages?
Only time will tell, but until then, beware!

Borders of awareness

With a ripping sore throat I walked to the store. I thought about driving since I have a vehicle again, but there is no reason for using the speed and sit-down comfort of a car when the short walk is so much better for my mind and body. The extra time propelled by steps clears the head. I managed to not buy doughnuts this time. They would have been unhelpful for a painful throat and snotty nose. I was there to get citrus. The limes looked interesting but I don't know what to make of them that doesn't involve lots of sugar. Oranges where sacked with a discount that equaled $1.37/lb, but I didn't think I wanted to eat nine pounds of them. At the checkout line I had three grapefruits, a cantaloupe, a cheap tin of water chestnuts and at an uncomfortable $2, the biggest available green Bell pepper. For a twelve lane Albertsons, there are only two lit up with a string of shoppers eyeing whichever lane they didn't choose. I got to stand and listen to people complain quietly as everyone stared at the magazines, candy and the TV displays that play ads all the time. The first tier of magazines featured lascivious celebrities and sexual how-to articles. The next tier of magazines claim to contain even more photos of overweight celebrities and details about their destructive relationships. There seems to be a progression to this: Get famous for being pretty and doing something or other, (some combination of living in LA, being pretty, knowing other celebrities, and possibly acting on TV). Get interviewed a lot while you are youthful, spend your money with carefree abandon. Then get old and let your life fall apart, since you where too busy being wild and famous to learn responsibility. Then the same in-group of news mongers that made you famous get to make money by reporting how miserable your middle age is.

Something I continually rediscover about grocery store magazine racks is what surprising things can be seen when you look away from the mass of checkout isle consumables. Above these checkout stands is a big flat surface that says 'thanks for shopping'. I had never seen it before. There are painted wooden wall hangings depicting food and some stylized pillars that flank the store name. Beyond the checkout stands, there is a wall of windows, that has a huge panoramic view of the parking lot, which is full of medium-small leafy green trees. It's actually almost impressive. I've seen this phenomenon in other stores too. One time above a magazine rack I looked up to see a gigantic ceiling area, full of thin cables and ducts, all painted in yellow. It was an enormous space I had walked under never seeing, because I was always staring at the shelves with their tiny products all lined up. If you ever want to hide something in plain sight, just put some racks of candy and magazines off to the side, no one will see your hole in the wall, or giant teddy bear balloon. Whenever there is something you are expected to stare at, look around to find what no body else is seeing.

Grady Houger ~ The grapefruit was very nice, and on average each contain 440mg of vitamin C.

Dancer

There is a good view from the top row of this amphitheater. More than just good, it's a fabulous view picked personally two thousand twenty two years ago by Herod the Great, ruler of Israel for the Roman Empire.

Stretching out in front of this stone seating is a disconnected jumble of items with the the sea not a hundred yards distant. Plastic bleachers along the open side for more seating, scaffolding for stage lighting presumably, a field of ancient carved bits; edges of buildings, pillar tops and a tomb. Broken stone columns lay in a heap, they are ancient, but what can you do with them? There is a groomed walking path with interpretive signs set out from a mass of ancient stone foundation. It juts clean out into the sea, the lowest stones are one of Herod's palaces that got built on by subsequent fortifiers. The ocean flattened out the ambitious parts it could reach, except for one hunk of old wall out in the surf. On top of it a romantic pair lean into each other. What makes the sea such a beautiful color? Blue-green, and white breakers rolling in, this is a mood of the ocean writers try to describe, but how do you really know how that looks till you've seen it? What makes it so different from other ocean scenes? Water quality, bright noonday sun at this latitude? It would certainly be satisfactorily diverting if the toga clad theater troupe fails to entertain.

Our group gathers at the top. Thirty tiers of seating lets us see down on ruins; what had been buildings are now a nonsensical mass of unearthed walls. The hemispherical bowl of benches catch the quiet test phrases of my fellow tourists standing down on the floor. Nate, our singular leader, teacher, and guide begins to explain the history of Ceasarea Maritima
. Various harbors were constructed over the past millennia, Paul the Apostle was imprisoned here for a time, and which international conflicts left each new layer of stone.

This being the twelfth of nineteen days on our tour-vacation-college-class-worth-one-credit, we are used to Nate explaining everything. He does an excellent job of it. But today, perched up here with the blue sky drawing breezes over the seaside, it can be a little difficult to focus on a lecture.

Multicolored wood sheets of varying sizes make a strange but smooth stage floor. We sit there, Nate stands, gesturing, expounding, sharing the fruits of his college degrees, some analysis of race relations in the neighborhoods of first century Caesarea, but that may have been later on in the day, or earlier, I don't remember exactly.

Down on the stage crisp snatches of conversation float up from other tourists in little clumps strolling by at ground level.
A red bikini wearing woman didn't just walk past. She stepped out to the center of the stage, performing ballet moves! That is no silly tourist clowning around; no normal person moves with such balance. I mean, I've never seen a ballet live, but it's obvious from tv commercials even, that such kicks, spins and toe standing done in an air of casual fun must be from years of practice. Normal people wave their arms in the air with natural clumsiness, not poetry.

We didn't say a word. Nate was facing us teaching, oblivious to this peril of such an exotic classroom setting.
It didn't seem appropriate somehow, to interrupt a passionate instructor, everyone sat there, waiting for someone else to make an exclamation, which no one did. We just watched. Such a spectacle was just what this place was designed for; a moment more engaging than the ocean view that framed it.

She walked away with a little laugh – a dedicated creature of the stage unable to go by without being able to say here too she danced.

Uncommunicative

I haven't written anything in way too long. This quarter I'm writing a lot for class, so I haven't been too motivated to edit things up for here.

Here's a picture instead. Check it out full screen.

Grady