And so summer either begins or hits its midpoint, depending on how you count, here on the Solstice. I've come down to the Judge's Bench to toast it.
Last night I got to go over and catch up with Mike, hadn't seen him since I got back from Japan. Joe came over too, so I was able to hand out their omiyage.
I've been mucking around more on ancestry.com the past few days, digging back through census records, finding out a little bit about the great-grandparents and even some more great-greats and great-great-greats. Might have found some distant cousins through the site, over on the Sprole side.
So I'm contemplating the metaphor of fire for love, and thinking of how they leave behind a mess of soot and ashes and smoke that has to be cleaned up. Or that will eventually soak into the soil and nurture it, but meanwhile is a mess.
But it's interesting to consider the perspective of emptiness on the end of a relationship, as we would apply it to death...we might understand that a "self" is a dependent arising, not a real thing. Can we see the same in a romantic (or other sort of of interpersonal) relationship, that it is an aggregate of things that come together and come apart? Just as when a flame is blown out, yet all the molecules of air and fuel remain, so she and I remain, and so does the space between us.
Of course, contemplating that the flame has not really "gone away" anywhere is not useful when the fire goes out and you're freezing. Emptiness is also empty.
So, let's stretch the writing muscles with a little poetic exercise. Supported free-write on a random overheard phrase: "light me on fire"
So light me on fire, like some life-size effigy, I'll burn for you if you just give me a spark, burn long and hot. Light me on fire, I'll never tire, light me on fire, light me on fire, night me on tire, fight me on spire, bright me on sire, sight me on lyre, blight me on fire, flight me on fire, flights of fancy, fiery flights of fancy launched across the sky leaving bright orange trails behind, bound for someplace beyond, bound for the other side, not a raft but a rocketship, the rocket-yana path to salvation. So,light me on fire, ignition, liftoff, I'll be your rocketship, I'll be your fireworks, I'll burst for you, burn for you, fly for you, explode for you, just light me on fire....
sometimes i worry that i will
forget how to write poetry
that the orifice will close up and
i will swell up until something ruptures
sometimes i worry that i will
forget how to speak truly
my grandmother, after a stroke, apahsic, unable for a long while to make sentances
i wonder if that happended to me if i would take a vow of silence and try to speak without words
sometimes i wonder that i will
forget how to think straight
get twisted through some line of bullshit or another until i'm sucked into some cult or party-line bullshit
(please shoot me)