Novelty Clock

Visible, visceral changes in the flow of living  

Arrive in seasons,  

Cyclic in the round...  

Sun and moon spinning on the novelty wall clock, outsider art,  

Hand-painted in the style of Van Gogh...  

Starry, starry night...  

Waiting patiently, sometimes...  

Waiting for the right moment to spin the prayer wheel,  

Or the roulette wheel...  

Wheels within wheels constantly spinning...  

The fire on the fuse traveling by viper hissing sparks...  

This is how time appears to flow...  

Even your own senses are accomplished liars...  

Balancing what you need with what you want...  

Random portions of each in no particular order, but odds are 50/50 at any given marker point on the graph that 50/50 will be the final tally of plus and minus...  

Thanksgiving has just past...  

Fractal visualizations to meditation music playing...  

Incense burning...  

Bright lights low...  

Ceiling fan on high,  

Moving air helps with sleep...  

It has to be felt somewhere on the skin...  

A foot out of the blankets...  

Arms or legs...  

The torso usually wants to stay warm...  

Or, at least, wants something with some weight draped across it...  

Knees to sternum, more precisely...  

Gambling on another chance to travel out of the physical shell...  

Dreaming inwardly to project outwardly...  

Everything is inside...  

Everything you will ever need to build a personal universe is inside...  

Pyramids built of massive blocks of perception measured precisely,  

And placed with intelligent care...  

It seems impossible,  

But here it is...  

The sun will rise too early tomorrow,  

And the alarm clock will be unwelcome, but heeded...  

Some plans are coalescing into physicality...  

No longer just a thought or an intangible goal...

A done deal...  

A springboard...  

Setbacks always threatening to cast shadows by standing between you and the light source...  

You are the light source,  

You are the obstacle obstructing it's light,  

And you are the shadows that obscure you from yourself...  

Burn it all down,  

And keep shining until all that's left of you  

Is light...  

Last Day with Irja

She largely stays in her room  

Repeating the same phrase over and over...  

Her native language is Finnish,  

So I have no idea what it means...  

It sounds like "door to door" with a heavy Finnish accent...  

The second "door" always more breathy,  

Almost a hiss...  

Sometimes there's an extra syllable at the beginning...  

"Ja door to dua(shhh)), door to door..."  

Incessantly...  

*  

I can tell when she's trying to get up out of bed  

Because the volume and tempo increase...  

"Door to door"  

It's how I know I need to go help her,  

So she doesn't slide to the floor...  

She is frail and weak,  

But she never asks for help...  

*

Sometimes the "door to door" isn't spoken...  

In this case it's a low chuckling sound...  

Almost like she's laughing...  

And it is constant, like the aforementioned phrase, for hours at a time...  

The gentle clucking if a hen on her brood...  

Or ferrets at play, chuckling as they do...  

It's the only sound they make...  

*  

She can be the sweetest little, old lady you ever met,  

Or she can be a dog barking at strangers while tied to a leash...  

Heavy rain pouring down...  

Starburst streetlights multiplying through the water...  

From moment to moment, dementia is consistently inconsistent...  

*  

But that phrase,  

"Door to door", "dua to dua",  

And the chuckle-clucking,  

They dig into your nerves after awhile...  

Like water torture...  

Drip,... Drip,... Drip,...  

Sitting on a couch in the living room  

Waiting for the shift to pass...  

"Door to door"...  

12 long hours broken only by her bathroom breaks and two trips to the dining room,  

Lunch and dinner...  

*  

She is at her sweetest in the dining hall...  

She likes to listen to the gossip at the other tables...  

Entertained by people watching...  

The phrase doesn't happen in public,  

So she must be vaguely aware...  

"Door to door"...  

Usually mostly silent through meals...  

Spare attempts at small talk before and after meals...  

Always tries to order lunch for me on her tab...  

"Eat! Eat!"  

But I always demure...  

I always bring my own food...  

*  

"Door to door"...  

Aside from during meal times,  

She is very cranky...  

Very, very cranky...  

I was thankful that it wasn't personal...  

I have had clients who made their disdain and anger quite personal...  

Willfully trying to be hurtful...  

Her inner chihuahua spread its generalized rancor evenly over everyone...  

'I want to EAT!!!" She will yell when it's getting close to lunch...  

She'll yell if there's any sudden noise from the living room...  

More of a snap than a tirade...  

The kind of chihuahua that nips at fingers and hands that get too close,  

Or move too quickly...  

*  

"Door to door"  

"Duah te duah"  

Played on a loop that continues to play in my ears for hours after each shift...  

"Ja duah te duah"...   

"Duah te dua(shhh)"...  

Spelled the way the words sound...  

Google translate doesn't recognize this as language...  

It may as well have been spoken in tongues...  

Ancient Egyptian...  

World War II code...  

An S.O.S. in some variant of vocalized Morse...  

Bombs strafing the landscape...  

"Door to door"...  

*  

Maybe it was some kind of prayer...  

Repeated in some ritual with Tibetan overtones in respect to repetition...  

Spinning the prayer wheel...  

Spinning until sleep tunes it out of a distraction filled world...  

It's good when she sleeps...  

No "door to door"...  

No chuckle-clucking...  

The times you could be sure she was staying out of trouble...  

A break in the acoustic bombardment...  

*  

This was the last shift I'll ever have to watch over her before I shuffle on down the road...  

"Door to door" ...  

Opportunities opening up in the outside world that I can't refuse...  

She won't really notice my absence...  

"Door to door" is one of those things that has been burned into my memory...  

Tattooed into my ears...  

In the dog park below the third story apartment window,  

There's a green...  

Just across the street from a pond with a fountain in the center...  

Turtles basking on a small stone levy...  

A short distance from that,  

the road home...  

Saloon Doors Swinging

Eyes on the digital clock periodically...  

Keeping time and tempo...  

Flurries of activity punctuated by hours of waiting,  

Or is that vice versa?  

Times slows when attention is given to it...  

Perception is reality...  

We change time all the time...  

We manipulate it with our attention...  

We create gravity wells via contemplation and concentration...  

Electrons transform from waves to particles just by our focused attention on them...  

These things have been scientifically proven...  

We don't know why...  

Or maybe we do, but we can't seem to put it into words that don't sound impossible...  

We exist in a space within a space within a space, and so on...  

Galactic turtles swimming in the tachyon flow,  

Undulating back and forth like a dancer's hips...  

A dancing multiverse crackling with electromagnetism...  

Projecting holograms of physicality...  

If you pinch yourself,  

It doesn't prove this is more than a dream...  

Intermission at the drive in...  

Fumbling towards the overcrowded restrooms...  

Moths and June bugs bumping into every light source...  

Drawn to the light and the heat...  

Unable to resist the ageless photons being fast absorbed, reflected, and diffused by every obstacle between them and infinity...  

Ageless things gone in an instant...  

Waves becoming other waves overlapping a galaxy of disparate waves and harmonic waves and synchronic waves...  

The bedpost ringing like a bell sometimes...  

Distant memories of once being a man...  

Human is just a label...  

I call myself that for the sake of convenience...  

So I don't lose my place in the world...  

It's just a bookmark,  

The story is so much bigger than just this one life has to contribute...  

Just a mote of dust glinting in shafts of sunlight...  

Lost in an ocean of virtual drops...  

Just another tiny piece of the unified field...  

Within it, without it, dispersed evenly across the void...  

One with the source,  

Yet forever trying to individuate...  

Buoys bobbing in the waves...  

Circles radiating out from the perceived center of gravity...  

Perceived center of self and will...  

Trying to measure the massless and the incorporeal...  

Time isn't physical, it's just the space that allegedly physical constructs experience kinetics inside of...  

Time is an empty room...  

Consciousness swings wide the saloon doors and stomps in...