i would give anything
anything i own
not to let you go tonight

keep breathing, its only beauty
give
and not let go, not tonight

falling crystals of light
our tears are all the same
the salty taste
like a kiss in the ocean
your eyes already on their way

in haste, in blood,
i write these lyrics
i sing your body electric
the one song, the one verse

all about not letting go
tonight

posted by bluematrix at 07/30/04 00:12 | link | comments

the watch

I once knew a man
who lived by his watch
he looked at it all of the time

All of his life
he scheduled his time
the people he loved got a share

The man had a wife
she gave him a child
somehow even found time

to go to the park
and watch his son play
but soon they were walking towards home

One day at his job
they asked him to leave
the machine was much faster than he

he stared at his watch
the second hand stopped
he felt for his pulse - it was gone

He fell from his chair
his watch hit the ground
and shattered its glass on the floor
the two faces staring at each other

posted by bluematrix at 07/21/04 09:12 | link | comments (3)

well it took longer than i thought it would to actually getting around to adding images to my blog, but i find it much more to my liking...i'm really not an off the shelf template kinda guy.

the photo above is one i took on a day off late last fall during an unseasonably warm day. i spent many a quiet day and night sailing on a boat just like that one before selling it last year. nothing but the sound of the wind in the sails as i read, drank irish whiskey, and tried to pretend i was in the caribbean sea instead of a lake in the midwest.

true seeing is forgetting the name of the thing seen.

posted by bluematrix at 07/20/04 20:20 | link | comments (1)

yes, but when she comes, does she have a drink in her hand?
and if so,
is it a screaming cocktail, so full passion you die
or a glass of soothing ice water from a mountain stream?
are your eyes open?
would you videotape it if you could?
and i wonder if there is music playing, a song for a doorway,
or a slow grand sucking sound that grows softer and softer
swirling round and round into the universal vortex
increasingly muting as if going deep underwater
you see its not the falling, its the landing she says.

one last thing...
either those curtains go or i do.


(and try to smile.
.

posted by bluematrix at 07/18/04 00:14 | link | comments (1)

there is this book (actually anything by this guy rocks) that continues to amaze and enrich my understanding of life called 'the blank slate' by stephen pinker. in it, he proposed an idea that caused a major paradigm shift in how i look at the life in the universe. check this out, his reasoning is quite solid.

intelligence is NOT something that all animals strive towards or evolve into. intelligence is the evolutionary tool that a certain ape-like creature on the plains of africa used to be able to survive long enough to pass its genes down to the next generation. if given millions of years, dogs or horses or whatever will not slowly evolve intelligence - they don't have to in order to propagate their species. since mankind was not endowed with claws or speed or sharp teeth - we just happened to have evolved large brains that were capable of designing tools, and solving spatially complex problems, among other things, to make up for our lack of physical prowess.

so whats so big about that? well if you buy into that very reasonable argument, then think about a subject that was near to my heart when i was a young geeky kid - extraterrestrial life. while the analytical side of me could never buy in 100% to the notion of life on other planets, i sure wanted to believe that there was intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. all the sci-fi books and movies sure made it sound convincing, like when jodi foster replied to the kid who asked her if she really believed in life on other planets, "it sure would be an awfully big waste of space if there wasn't".

well, if intelligence is nothing more than an evolutionary tool used by only one of millions of species on a planet with exactly the right conditions, then the chance of that particular tool having evolved by other life forms on other planets is no more likely than any other evolutionary adaptation like, having a long trunk like an elephant. and the idea of a race of aliens with trunks doesn't just strike that same romantic chord that SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intellignece) buffs cling too.

posted by bluematrix at 07/14/04 10:38 | link | comments

I...

I start a lot of thoughts with I...and then seem to fade from there. if I can just begin, perhaps the flow will return...

I...want...

I...think...

I...am not sure...

Yes, I think a lot of it comes from not being sure. I want to write, to share, to communicate, to archive. and sometimes it just comes out, much like having to go to the toilet, and whether I'm sure or not, I write. or strum, or sing, or create.

It is the times in between when the 'I...' comes out.

The initial stimulus to create bubbles to the surface and then...nothing. Or at least nothing deemed worthy of spending my or someone elses valuable time on.

Usually an outside nugget stimulates (or perhaps releases pent up) creative urges. For instance, this session was triggered by two stimulii - the first being the photos of the rings from the Cassini Saturn spacecraft (the cosmic photo of the day today) which in turn triggered the second, a response to the photos - a quote (and a scene) that drilled hard into my head while watching the movie 'american beauty'. "there is so much beauty in the world." this kid shot video of things that others would just walk by and saw the tremendous inherent beauty in the mundane. his favorite shot, which oddly enough happened to me a few days after watching the film, was when the wind caught a plastic bag in an ally and swirled it around and around. it danced only for him (me). it was so beautiful it made my heart ache. and again a few weeks later a similar occurance at a fountain in a large city park. it was early evening and just getting dark and i stopped the car for some reason at one of the more obscure fountains. it was almost completely surrounded by a low hedge and set up on a small hill, only the front portion which trickled into a waterfall and then a reflection pool could be seen from the road. i walked up and squeezed past the hedge into the inner circle of the fountain pool. there were 15 or 20 small jets of water in a circle around one large jet and it was set on some lengthy, intricate (if not random) spray pattern. I was mesmerized. and as it got darker i noticed there were colored lights flashing under the jets in time with rising and falling patterns of the upward reaching water streams. for these long moments, this elaborate show was only for my benefit. in fact i'll bet 99.9% of the people that have driven by this section of the park never gave this fountain a second glance. and it was so beautiful it too made my heart ache, but an ache that for some reason was pleasurable. it made me smile, it made me feel special, it made me glad to be alive at that moment, because it was so fucking beautiful and it was dancing just for me. I've tried, with ocassional success, to see that beauty in everyday things because i know it lurks there, wanting me to find it, waiting for me alone to witness it, to appreciate it, to instill meaning in the moments we share. but it takes a mind open to another level of experience, and eyes open to a different way of seeing, and a consciousness that can determine what is a trivial distraction and what is a meaningful moment, and perhaps hardest of all, a schedule open to allowing its spontaneity.

posted by bluematrix at 07/12/04 21:51 | link | comments (2)