I Have a Coat

I have a coat now. It was purchased at the local Goodwill Retail Store for a scant $8.00. This coat is soft black, and has some sort of quilted texture. The buttons are too big and the sleeves are too short.

Let us reflect, though, for a moment, on how this coat makes me feel. I feel strangely elegant in this coat, and often put it on just to spend long moments lingering in front of my mirror, surveying my sophistication.

This coat makes me feel whole.

The possibilities are endless when I wear this coat. I could be strolling into a theater in Times Square, or dumpster diving behind the Circle K. That's what I love about this coat.

Everyone should have an item of clothing that transforms the psyche.

A Story to Tell

Do the trees around here tell stories? I'm not sure. I keep waiting for them to speak to me, but, thus far, I have only heard echoes rattling around inside my own head. I often wonder if I should hurl my own stories at the trees in an attempt to start a dialogue, but I refrain from doing so. It seems to me that the stories have to emerge, unhurried.

I once read a book about horses by a woman who had named her horse Tabula Rasa. Tabula Rasa is Latin for "clean slate." I have tried that archetype out on myself numerous times since I arrived in North Carolina, testing it to see if it fits. It doesn't . . . not really. I have brought with me countless stories, seedlings of hopes and dreams, shadows, and defenses.

When I was younger, I fled from wherever I was, and arrived wherever I was going to, with mythic expectations. There were no experiences to be had, because the ones in my head were superimposed over every layer of reality presented to me. There was no ocean but the Ocean I lived in in my dreams. I never encountered anything on its own terms, but only suffered when the Real clashed with the Dream.

In the end, exhaustion wins the day. There are no more pots to be stirred, and I have not the will to believe I have escaped myself this time. The beauty of it is that I am not at all sorry that I cannot escape myself. Not anymore.

There is only surrender. The stories will tell themselves.

Acorns on Acid

At my new home in North Carolina, there stands one lone oak tree in the back yard. This oak tree produces hundreds of acorns, which are strewn about on the nearby ground. My roommate spends a great deal of time gathering these acorns, in an effort to prevent a seasonal infiltration of squirrels. Our kitchen table now is home to mounds of acorns, numbering in the hundreds. I don't know what I am more stupefied by: the sheer number of acorns a single oak tree can house, or the sheer determination of my roommate to rid the yard of all traces of these acorns.

Perhaps it is the Virgo in me, but I often find myself fascinated with random details. Like acorns. They are, after all, details of an oak tree. The efforts of my roommate have afforded me with an opportunity to really get up close and personal with acorns. They greet me every morning from the kitchen table, and bid me sweet dreams as I grab my nightly drink of water and go to bed. Those acorns have become quite the presence in the house.

I can't help but scratch my head and wonder what is going to become of those acorns. She doesn't seem inclined to throw them away, but they're certainly not going back outside again. Maybe I can make a little choir of acorns. They can sing madrigals. Wow, I'm really on to something here . . . . . I'm on to something big . . . . . a chorus of embryonic oak voices, rising above the coffee machine, above the pots and pans, above the granite countertops . . . .

A lot of people think I did tons of acid. This is not so. In fact, I have never done acid, or psychedelics of any sort. I really didn't need to.

Big Fat Buttons

If the world consisted only of mountains of buttons

It would be a plentiful world indeed.

So let us live in a world of buttons

Pearly buttons, big fat buttons, delicate buttons, wooden buttons.

It is no accident, I should think

That the button is a close relative of the wheel.

Today I am happy

Because I choose to revel in the marvel of buttons.

Tomorrow I shall revel in string.