Joss Whedon, Super Genius

Day 10,807

Still don't know why I'm here, what I am, or what this place actually is metaphysically-speaking.

I just like to remind myself of those facts once in a while. Then I get on with the excitement of going to see The Dark Knight on Friday. Woooooooo!

Travelogue

Port of origin: Parts unknown.

To be alone
as all living things are alone
secluded, if not in placement
then in soul.

To bear a mind-sewn quilt
stitched in the steady and unsteady
hand of the senses.

To wear a mantle
of inseparable flesh
and know someday you will be parted.

To fight with intangible why,
run with, to, or from intangible
why and watch it endless elude.

The plot of the weave
of a fabric softener sheet
and the fractal arms of a spiral galaxy
equal in mystery.

The incoming birdsong,
the rabbit's movements in the overgrown yard,
the unexpected chemical burn of love
equally out of control.

I did not puncture the window screen.
I did not make the screen.
I did not make the air and light
passing through the puncture.
I did not even make this eye,
or the ink, or the language.

To inherit all the world from past
and dwell in a body of luck.

To crew this shell of compounded fortunes
appointed by chance, fated to choose.

To send forth ships like leaf skeletons
and wait for word of other shores.

To grow drowsy with the effort
of such metaphysic alchemy.

To put the pen down
with nothing resolved.

The Rand McNally Blues

I was searching the lines of a book for answers when the car entered a new state. The name of the state was Summer, and we were cruising through it for several miles before I finally looked up. Like Iowa and Georgia before, the landscape was hardly any different. I should have recognized it immediately from dozens of road trips past, the ramshackle snow cone stands and rusted gas station oases, grass longer than a mother's hair, swifts and swallows skimming the erupted roots. Yet too much had changed: someone built a silver skyscraper on a distant ridge, the dust was less flavorful, and inside my head the clockwork cogs had been swapped out for a pulsing atom of quartz. To be honest, I felt comforted that I could burn the book anytime, let its ashes trail out the passenger window without a care. But that book was our atlas, and the roads aren't well marked, and lately I think all the compasses point inward. A fork is inevitable, but for now it's Red Arrow Highway all day.