2011.10.19 — A Drift of Haiku

It has been a while since I've posted any Haiku here, even though I've been participating in a Haiku game from Goodreads, and decided to post some of the one's I've written for it.

The fun part of the game it so link your poem with the previous one. I of course am frequently unable to resist the temptation to create a bit of a tongue in cheek poem. So, given that and that they were written over the course of almost three weeks, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the one's I decided were worthy of blogging formed, loosely and after a bit of re-organization, a kind of story,

So, extracts from the Goodreads Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! group's Haiku Game.

Her skin was the milk
of the gibbous moon caressed
by a kitten's tongue.

I am full of want
And want for nothing but you
in Barcelona.

Red-eyed night reading
forgettable prose alone
on a plane from Rome.

She had me in the chair.
I didn't know that her name
wasn't Chastity.

The strand of her hair
was coiled stark red in the dawn's
new bar of white soap.

When I left childhood
I parted my hair sideways
to wash out regrets.

The cat in the hat
licked her lips, combed her whiskers
and smiled his sad smile.

The morning talker
Forgot to remember that
unsaid words are best.

The moon surprised me
it was full behind dark clouds
where I was empty.

Who am I to be?
The tree stood as quiet as grace
One hundred feet tall.

2011.10.15 — The Paris Fushigi* — Small & Trivial

Yesterday [the 14th] I spent some of my allotted time of life wresting with whether or not to blog the tiniest, most trivial of fushigis I've experienced. You would think that this kind of thing would be an easy decision to make, given the time constraints of a busy life, etc: yes or no, piss or get off the can. But I dislike passing them by because I think that the act of registering them as a kind of living scientific experiment. And I think recording them is important because that act validates their existence in my experience of life. And in all likelihood attending them quite likely encourages them or, at the very least, teaches me to notice them, even when they are as subtle as this one. But it was so small.

That wrestling has now become a part of the fushigi because of what happened the next morning while I was driving around doing the Saturday morning chores. [And when continued my writing of this on Monday I was listening to Zoë Keating on YouTube and up popped another tiny little fushigi oddity; and then another one after that.]

I'll begin with the introduction. It began in the form of a Haiku — actually, a pair of Haikus that were written as a part of a Haiku-chain game that for no obvious reason on October 14th devolved into:

My sister’s poodle
is so purebred that he barks
in Parisian French.

Oct 14, 2011 01:14pm by M.

Followed by:

Ah, Paris the place
for lovers, dreamers and art,
but so expensive!

Oct 14, 2011 03:19pm by AMF.

What triggered my itch to blog was when I got around to reading the October 14th e.mail Q sent in response to the October 13th e.mail I sent in which I ask Q about Chris Hedges. I asked Q this because we have previously discussed Chomsky and the issues of media mis-information.

And since I'd only discovered Hedges the previous week (thank you RT for linking me to Inverted Totalitarianism), I thought I'd pay RT's favour forward to Q.

date: 14 October 2011 09:50
subject: Message from Q: re: Chris Hedges

In the rather long e.mail Q writes about the difficulties of getting to web-based information in China, and resorting to books. At some point, out of the blue except as a point of interest in trying to acquire books, Q adds:

This week I'm on a business trip in Paris, for a short training on my work. [My emphasis.]

See, completely small and utterly trivial and most certainly meaningless and about as un-scientific as it is possible to get.

That was Friday.

Saturday rolled around, as it is want to do, and when I returned to my car after doing mall chore stuff I found that CBCR2 was playing an aria I didn't particularly like by someone I didn't recognize and didn't like. I changed to CBCR1, which is something that I have done extremely rarely, perhaps 4 or 5 times this year: talk radio is frequently painful for me to listen to, although RT, again, recently opened my ears to its possibility by linking me to Beauty Will Save the World. (It is an interesting discussion about beauty prompted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Speech Beauty Will Save the World. AS credits Fyodor Dostoyevsky with the puzzling statement.)

Anyway, I turned to CBCR2 and stumbled into a radio show called This is That. The host finished talking about I forget what and then introduced a story about the, as it turns out, world famous Nanaimo Bar. (In fact, as a joke I checked to see if it is famous enough to warrant a Wikipedia page. Yup. And I may have to correct

it's first paragraph, because the lowly Nanaimo Bar is apparently popular across Europe now, too, and not just North America. Oh: I live about 3 hours from Nanaimo, and have been to the small Vancouver Island city many times. Oddly enough I don't think I have actually eaten a Nanaimo bar there, despite them being a favourite I've been eating since the age of five(?) and have made on many occasions.)

Where was I? Oh! Well, it turns out that the city of Campbell River, which is to the north of Nanaimo, has a resident who has taken it upon herself to bump the highly overrated dessert off the world stage with a dessert of her own. The straw that broke the dessert back of Sherri Hickey and put her into fighting mode was when, on a European vacation, a waiter in a good Paris café offered her a delicious Nanaimo Bar.

And so it was that I came to start this Paris fushigi blog late Saturday afternoon. But later that afternoon I left for poker with the guys — which went late! And so I didn't get the blog done. Sunday was also busy, and so I returned to the blog on Monday.

Monday.

I decided to listen to Zoë Keating via YouTube while I was writing. I flipped back to YouTube whenever a song came to end, then picked from the quasi-randomized music clips. I was very surprised to see in the pick-list Zoë Keating, "Lost" @ La Boule Noire, Paris 10.23.08.

So I noted that little fushig and continued to compile my blog's elements — the various links and photos. And I also continued to listen to Keating.

But as I was doing so, it began to appear that my ISP was beginning to fail. Despite that I went to a Keating video with the title Don't Worry. But the video didn't load properly and my browser became locked. Before closing it and trying to confirm whether or not it was the internet that was broken or my pc, I read:

i like how it says paris hilton out of jail
mcxironcresentx 1 week ago [October 11th]

This was so odd to me, that I took a screen clip of it.

With my web function broken I yet again didn't get the blog done.

Tuesday [today].

Before I sat down to write this evening I finished cleaning up after supper and then watched some of the Republican debate — for my first time, ever! [However, the hypocrisy and misdirections that the various wannabes spouted was laughable. For example, the danger of Iran having nuclear weapons was raised to justify defence spending, even as the spending on foreign aid was justified with the example sited of using Pakistan as a country that allows the US to move troops. Pakistan is extremely unstable, religiously and politically, and has nuclear weapons and is quite likely the 2nd biggest nuclear threat in the world behind the USA.]

Anyway, I got tired of the lies and misdirections. TV was so bad that I wound up flipping to watch the end of the new Sarah Michelle Geller show (Ringer Episode 6) to see how it was before settling down to write. (Yup, I was procrastinating!) The show seemed confused and not particularly well written. But the final scene was of the character's 'ringer' setting up, or confirming, some evil plan from a cell phone in, yup, Paris.



Wednesday.

2011.10.19 6:54am — Addendum
I got in the car this morning to drive to work. CBCR2 was playing something I didn't like, so I flipped the station to my second-choice station, Shore 104 FM in Vancouver. I hear the very end of a song, and then:

Sundown in the Paris of the prairies
Wheat Kings have all their treasures buried
All you hear are the rusty breezes
Pushing around the weather vane Jesus.

This is from the song Wheat Kings by The Tragically Hip.
From Shore, here's the play listing: 6:17 AM "WHEAT KINGS" - THE TRAGICALLY HIP.

2011.10.04 — Imperfect Short Story and Wayne Dyer small fushigi*

Yesterday I completed and posted a short story for the Goodreads group of which I am a member. It is a weekly competition and I've been a member of it since Feb 2011, and this was my first short story posted. (I have posted in the poetry thread in this group too, quite often.)

For some reason the topic, 'Imperfect,' appealed to me, and I wrote the following:

Imperfect — A Story


It began with a story. But of course that is not unique or even interesting, because doesn't everything begin with story? I would like to think that mine is at least unusual. But doesn't everyone?

Where was I? Right… It began with a story. Well, actually, for the story to be, something had to be, or at least have been before that, and so maybe that is where I'd best begin — before the beginning.

In the before the beginning the objective was to write a scene from my life told in omniscient third person. This is something that I had a hard time doing, but the teacher was particularly inspiring and filled my heart with the ache of wanting to impress him.

Looking back I am no longer sure that my motives were simply to bask in his approval for my becoming creatively liberated, or to be simply carnally consumed by his spirit made flesh. I did love the flash in his eyes whenever a particular passion in art was discussed. Now, as I look back on it I wonder that my having aged did not bring at least some token of understanding, or even an iota less confusion. Or perhaps it is simply that youth misunderstands what real understanding is, and that is to expand from impossibility what can be true and untrue at the same time.

But let me keep it childhood simple: I had a story to write and an older boy to impress. Thus I strove with all my imagination to be my story's God. For all I know I may even have said a quiet, not really believed by me prayer to that end because I was still a part of my family and heartfelt parental prayer always preceded dinner, groundings and the rare but ever questionable strappings. The important things, I guess, were what needed prayer and boy was this story important.

No one warned me of the dangers of imagination, and so I put imagination into the pre-textual page as God, and that imagination took me to the Biblical adage about sparrows falling, and 'But the very hairs of your head are numbered.' God is in the details, I realized, and that requires omniscience.

Oddly enough I know now that it was my complete lack of imagination that had me begin the story with me sitting in a room — my bedroom, in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair, old oak and without wheels or a cushion. With only some hesitation I wrote that all down, and the details of the desk and its scratches and ink stains too. And then what was on it and under it: books, dolls, a teddy bear, Disneyland ride ticket from when I was young, a photo with me and my dad when he had a long beard, iPod, carpet, dust bunnies. Then more detail. A Wrinkle in Time, To Kill a Mocking Bird and a ragged and stained cloth bound Tale of Peter Rabbit, a childhood favourite; threadbare pale green wool carpet, a single sock with a hole at the toe and in the heal, etc.

After that it got easy. I wrote everything I could see, in as much detail as my imagination demanded of me, down to the number of teeth marks on the plastic end of the pen I liked to chew on to make myself look like I was thinking whenever I heard my father creak down the hallway to surprise me with a 'Homework finished yet, Jen?' check. And I wrote that down too.

I did not write that my ability to see is — was imperfect. I began listing in the morning, Sunday after early morning church. The day had begun overcast and was now wet with a steady light rain. As such it was a perfect day for writing, if what I was doing could be called that.

I wrote steadily, but steadily faster and I remember feeling pleased with myself when I finished the first scribbler of details around the time mom call 'Jennifer, it's time for lunch!' And I wrote that down. 'I'm busy right now!' I called back to her through the closed door. 'Doing school work! Is it okay if I eat it in here?' And I wrote that down and the details of the next scribbler - red Mead metal coil 200 pages, etc.

That my mother did not question me right then was a warning sign, the dangerous kind because it didn't look like a one. Instead, after what must have been a pause, she called back 'Okay,' and a few minutes later she'd set lunch down in front of me. Homemade mac & cheese. And I wrote that down, and the details of the pasta and the paprika and parmesan cheese in the bread crust and the roasted sliced tomato and pepper and olive oil and the aroma and the taste. I did not write down why she did, but what she did and wore doing it. Even that her hair was bobbed, that she wore glasses and just a hint of make-up.

After lunch my listing seemed to take on supernormality and I went through three scribblers and five pens before the call for supper. My details had moved beyond my room — the closet was tough! And encompassed the house, one room at a time. Then the yard, including the trees — four Japanese maples, three ornamental cherries two jack pines and a robin's nest in a pear tree. I was just finishing the street when I was surprised by mom's 'Supper time!'

I stopped, and set my pen down with stiffened fingers. I rubbed them as I rose and then turned to leave the room and screamed when I saw what walked past the large mirror resting on the floor, angled against the wall. I don't remember fainting but the next thing I remember was the sound of my family's voices too close to my face and too full of anxiety. I think someone was slapping my hand.

When I looked over I saw her, just as I'd written down in my book. And apparently she was the one holding and none too gently slapping my hand. I could feel mine in hers, and hear and feel the other one slapping me, but I didn't see her hands! I screamed again, and this time jumped up oblivious to dad's and mom's frantic 'What's wrong?' to re-look at myself in the mirror.

I wasn't there! I saw my dress and shoes and my hands, but nothing else. I had no arms or head, no legs or feet. I turned to look at my parents, and I saw my father's beard, just as I'd described it, and his kind eyes with the noticeable laugh lines, but the rest of his face wasn't written down. When I looked towards the door I could see his hands reaching for me, but where my mother's hands should have been I saw instead the cuff's of her Sunday chores' blouse, blue with splashes of flour and mystery colours. Just as I'd described. When I looked at my mother's face the concern was visible everywhere but in here eyes, which for some reason did not exist, lost in an opaque disk of nothing.

'Wait!' I called, voice cracking to keep tears from being triggered as I moved unsteadily to the books of lists.

'What's wrong?' they pleaded.

'Please, just wait. Please,' I begged. 'Don't move, stay there!'

Frantically I flipped to the first book and looked for where I'd described my father and me in the picture. I gasped in horror when I read what I'd written: '… My father standing beside me, his eyes crinkled in laughter as they always are after he'd given me a beard-tickle.' What I'd scribbled, what I'd painstakingly described were the things that I'd remembered perfectly but I'd omitted the other ones because they weren't important enough to be perfectly remembered. And I'd describe how my hair looked that day, with the ribbon mom had tied into it that morning, but not my face.

My mind was reeling. This is impossible, I thought. And looked again to the faceless image of the mirrored me; and then at my mother and father, and their missing pieces.

I quickly flipped to the front of book #2 to see how I'd described mom. Yup, the mom who was mouthing 'What' wrong, baby?' was the one'd I'd described in scribbled ink. I tried to answer, but my voice box wasn't working. I creaked out a couple of 'I… I… I.. 's before my father said, 'If you're pregnant, Jennifer, we don't care. In fact a new baby would be great for both of us.'

'I'm not pregnant!' I barked back, genuinely surprised that my father thought me an easy and careless lay!

'No, no, I'm sure you're not,' my father stumbled his words. 'I'm just trying to say that even if you were pregnant, we'd take care you.' He paused. 'You don't have to,' drifted into my panicking brain.

I went to the window, and saw our trees, and the giant neighbour's tree, all of which I'd described. Not so much the neighbour's house, although it did have a big chimney, just like I'd described, and smoke.

I jumped back to the desk, and opened the last book to the last open page, and began to describe the neighbour's ugly red house in as much detail as memory allowed me to. And when I looked at it again, it was now far more detailed, although now it had become decidedly lopsided as if it were some kind of antagonistically conjoined split-level / raised-level house. 'But that's not my memory!' I cried out loud.

'Whatever do you mean, dear?' my mother asked. And I missed that warning too, another dangerous one. 'You stay here, please, and we'll get you help.'

'I don't need help!' I yelled.

But I did. I needed perfect recall, and a lot more pens and books. Instead my mother called emergency, and while I was scribbling the details of my world back into existence an EMT armed with a loaded syringe stabbed me in the arm with a drug that knocked me out. Good-bye, world.

When next I woke, I knew I was in a hospital even before I opened my eyes. It was the smell. In the bed beside me was somebody snoring, loudly. I turned my head to see who was there, but when I opened my eyes I couldn't see. I couldn't see the snorer or anything — 'I'm blind!' I cried which got some of the staff to move more urgently around me. After the staff and other patients settled, I heard someone I couldn't see me tell me that he was a doctor, and that I was now in good hands. 'What hands?' I thought. I hadn't described them into existence yet.

Now for the fushigi.

Today my wife called me at work to ask me to pick up some groceries on the way home from a local market. This is a very unusually but not unheard of request, and it is a small dog leg to do so. Today, for the first time ever on a Tuesday I broke the hurry get home fast rule and stopped in at Renaissance Books. (My hope is to catch some Chomsky or Jung that I've not yet got.) This was to be a very quick look and see if I get lucky. I didn't, but when I drew a

blank I took a quick look at the self-help section to see if I there were any other writers there I am also looking for writers like Marie-Louise von Franz or David K. Reynolds or Sheldon Kopp. An example of one I am not looking for, however, is Wayne Dyer.

Thus arose the fushigi, when my eye caught a book by Wayne Dyer:

You'll See It When You Believe It: The Way to Your Personal Transformation. HarperCollins.
ISBN: 0060937335

No, I did not buy it. I've read two of his early books, and seen him on TV a couple of times, and while I believe that what he argues is fundamentally true, he does not provide me with any new information.

What struck as the fushigi was that my short story was about how a young woman discovers that her fundamental ability to see is proscribed by what she is able to see in her imagination and then make manifest on the page. I wasn't consciously writing that in my story, although I am well aware of the philosophy that to make something manifest requires the believe in its existence in one's life.

Like I said, a small fushigi.

2011.09.18 — The Dogs' Masters — A Sonnet

As I'm about to write this, the AMAZING Zoë Keating is playing



Both the song and image seem almost perfect for the sonnet I wrote earlier today. It was inspired by the subject 'Mood Swings' from the Goodreads Weekly Short Story Contest and Company, which includes a weekly poetry suffrage section.

So, click the Play GUI above and read

The Dogs' Masters

The moods of nature swing with ambivalent
indifference, cool to the high summer's sun.
Without need of ice the dogs lie content
while in shade their masters strive to have fun.

At the pendulum's obverse comes winter,
dark beneath the stark panoply of stars.
Nose down and tails wagging the dogs canter
while their masters in snow boots de-ice their cars.

With the grace of easy equanimity
fall the rains of spring and the leaves of fall.
The dogs' play is time's spontaneity
while their masters trudge to end the day's call.

       Who's it that drinks-in the scent of life's mud?
       And who but the masters wash out in its flood?

2011.09.16 — Ian & Sylvia and a Windy Fushigi* or Two

This was a rare — no, it was a unique Sunday (September 11th) that began with my waking early after a relatively late night. While my waking early on Sundays is unusual, my waking before my wife has happened at most a dozen or so times in thirty-two years. This beginning may not have been a singularity, but its rarity filled me the joy of beginning my morning by and with my self, to quietly watch the world move into the morning's sunshine in my own way, at my own pace.

With "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" reverberating inside my head I grabbed Saturday's Globe & Mail, which is likewise a Sunday morning event at least as rare as my waking before my wife. With it I settle into my favourite chair and turn on CBC Radio2 before 7am, which is yet another thing I haven't done on a Sunday morning in … I don't remember when. And thus begins this little fushigi: Part I.

So, while Molly Johnson, jazz singer and weekend radio host chatted and played her eclectic mix I moved my way through the 'Focus' and 'Arts' sections of the paper, skipping, as usual, the disinformation-al 'A' and 'Business' sections.

I turn to the penultimate page (R17) of the 'Arts' section and see the following headline:

Four Strong Winds: Ian & Sylvia

by John Einarson with Ian Tyson and Sylvia Tyson
Review by Li Robbins
From Saturday's Globe and Mail. Published Friday, Sep. 09, 2011

And I do a double take. Re-read the headline and more carefully listen to the radio. Yup. I'm in the middle of Neil Young's voice in perhaps the definitive cover of 'Four Strong Winds'.

Completely useless, undoubtedly meaningless, and yet… when does a string of truly bizarre conicdences remove themselves from statistical improbability into synchronicity?

So, now for part II of the fushigi. It actually occurred last month. I got busy doing other things and since it was so small I didn't get around to transcribing the terse blue sticky note into the blog. But, since 'Four Strong Winds' has come up, I decided to cheat it into the blogosphere, here.

It begins with my undertaking yet another rare action. No, I didn't wake up before my wife. I did something even more rare: I sent an inquiry on a job, notice of which I received via e.mail from the CCPA (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). I didn't quite apply for it because I didn't quite have the desired experience and skills, but I did have a significant number of the them. Also, the job is in Ottawa, a city about 3500km away, and very cold. (But one my wife loved when she lived there 40 years ago.) And the job's starting salary would be a pay cut.

I thought about this for a long time, but the thought of changing jobs pushed me to send an inquiry from work on August 9th.

Later that morning one of my co-workers and a friend, whom I've nick-named Marcus Aurelius, came by my pod. After the usual morning greetings he commented that he'd got into the office late that morning because he'd dropped his sister off at the airport to go back to Ottawa.

Curious. I have gone years without having personal relationship with Ottawa and within 2 hours I have 2.

2011.08.26 — Star Wars, Schumann & a fushigi*

I find particular enjoyment from fushigis when they involve music. Surprisingly often I've had them when I'm driving a vehicle. This is one of those in an backwards/backhanded sort of way.

This one begins with me in my automobile on a rare for me Friday household chore run around 10:00 am. I turn the radio to CBC-Radio2 and after about 8 notes I think, this is Mozart's Queen of the Night aria And it is a beautiful version . Next to come up is William Walton's Symphony No. 1, 4th movement.

Clip from CBC Playlist

I don't know this piece, probably because whenever Walton has entered my ears my eyes have tended to glaze over and my fingers reach out and change the station. And so it happens this time too, and I change to a local edgy blues-pop rock station.

Alas, I get bored with that now forgettable tune too and flip back to CBC-R2, from which Walton is still playing. As it drags to its end I think about why it is that I find the romantics like Schumann to be rather boring — something about Walton strikes me as 'romantic' although I'm not sure if that is how he is technically classified. With Walton in my ears and Schumann in my thoughts it strikes me that there is an equivalency between how I react to this kind of classical music and how I react to the treacly sentiment that is frequently expressed in American movies and TV. Like Spielberg, I think, and his relationship with John Williams, especially the Star Wars series.

As I'm thinking this the Walton movement comes to an end and the host chats about the upcoming 'music that rocked your world' segment, in which she shares the e.mails or voice mails of people who disclose the singular piece of music that changed forever their relationship with music. Well, to my amusement the e.mail read by Julie Nesrallah is from a man who described how

John Williams' scores to Star Wars 'rocked his world'. And the writer even specified a particular movement or scene, Hyperspace.

This is a tiny fushigi, but a distinctly amusing one, because I was surrounded by music I do not particularly enjoy.

2011.08.20 — Miss Me, Jann Arden & a fushigi*

The other day — August 18th, to be precise — I visited my friend Miss Me's blog. She'd finally posted something new — she is a bit of an intermittent blogger — and so it was with anticipation that I began to read School and the Gapsers.

MM with colour and eloquence shares her feelings and concerns about going to college:

…School isn't exactly tailored to the spirited. I want to be running and jumping through life, constantly in motion even if it's just mentally. Some would see school as this, and I even did a long time ago. But the changes that have come over me are difficult to tailor back into a major and a minor, humanities courses, math and psychology.

And so I wrote a quite long response, in part because the way MM expressed herself reminded me of something I'd just read about how school saw a girl as touched when in reality she was a dancer. (I've been wracking my brain to remember where I read that. I wonder if it was in the Globe & Mail?)      P.S. 2011.08.28 It was a TED lecture by Sir Kenneth Robinson. Very funny, but to the point: the purpose of school is to kill imagination and creativity.

So, typical of the quietest fushigis, not too exciting so far. However, when next I comment she is excited because I'd recommended that she give Jann Arden a try: Jann's CD came up in my wife's car,

and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Good Mother and most of her other songs. And I immediately thought of MM.

But what got her excited was not just that she loved JA, but that the week previous she began watching for the first time via Netflix the old TV series Dawson's Creek, a show I've never watched, but which features a Jann Arden song in the opening credits!

Until last week MM had never heard nor heard of JA. (This exchange took place on the 18th.)

And that certainly warrants it being a nice little fushigi, but that is really just an hors d'oeuvres, because it began to get even a bit weirder. In the Goodead's group Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company the topic of the week posted 2011.08.19 is [alarum) "College Life". Hmmm. Okay, both the moderator, Alex, and MM are college age, but still. Certainly fushigi-ish. Note: I've not seen MM post in the WSS group, nor has she mentioned such a group; nor has Alex mentioned MM in the time I've been there.

But now it gets truly weird.

MM and I continue our exchange. I comment on the fushigi-ishness and ask if MM would allow me to blog this. She gladly agreed, and then added (on the 20th):

Not at all, please do!! I know how much you love these fushigis, it truly is wondrous. I also bought Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C.G. Jung just a week or so ago, but that's because I know how highly you recommend him and have wanted to read him for awhile now. :) Not really a fushigi except that you commented on my blog...

So, the final straw, the one that got me to write this thing, was that I'd just finished writing a poem for WSS about 'College Life". It ends with me dreaming I'm a bookish butterfly. Here's what i wrote:

Flutters By Books

I used to think I was unlucky,
sitting alone,
     reading alone,
          thinking alone
while all around me there sounded
the high walled, open quad's reverberating voices
of excited echoed learning
amidst the musty scent of gym bags and hormones enraptured by,
     lost in,
          the mysterious other that was disguised — almost!
by the breaking out of inky scented
     newly printed
          pre-bought
               pre-digested
ideas
and their naïve promise of understanding,
     purpose,
          meaning,
               pelf.

Not wisdom.
How to teach that to the arrogance of youth?

It took ten years
to shake from my mind
the schooled limits I selflessly embraced.
And I was one of the lucky ones.
Many around me seem —
are asleep
     in their thoughts
as they blithely allow learned
     inertia
          to carry them forward
                    into something
other than what they
     think
          they
               are.

Sometimes I dream that I am a bookish butterfly,
fluttering freely
     from leaf
          to leaf of
               ancient texts
                    and an increasingly empty wallet.
When I wake,
I wonder
     Am I
          still
               asleep?

And truly, how do I know — how can I know that I am not now in a dream, from which I (or someone else) will awaken, and proceed to forget.

An entertaining fushigi.