clayton

clayton

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It began with one or two leaves tripping up, then down, like dancers rising and falling from sudden slumber into poise without purpose. Suddenly a gust blew hundreds of dancing leaves into a chaotic mass, expressing both the random microscopic perturbations within the wind and its larger funneled force, like a flock of zombie birds, twitching but moving as one this way and that in response to an invisible power.

The oranges were thrown from the truck with such force they arced through the air in a great wave. A moment of orange beauty until the truck itself lifted, rolled, and crashed down into the dirty roadside ditch, its tires spinning furiously, finding no purchase in the thick southern air.

Things that happen to other people: earthquakes, accidental poisoning, revolution, typhoons, sea level rise & other effects of climate change, extinctions, air poisoning, economic failure, aging, death.

Trumpets sound from castles and temples. How is it that the Mormons are the inheritors of all things fantasy medieval, outside of literature, in America. Although fiction is apparently their forte in many respects.

Unthinkable, shut out, denied, unthought. All lies. Our capacity to imagine innocence is a critical part of our imagination and human experience. Suspended disbelief is leverage, making it possible to separate out time and space to develop new ideas. It's like social evolution, tiny isolated islands, laboratories where the rare and new can flourish uninterrupted by the overwhelming reality that we are largely out of control of our world.

I asked him what was the derivation, and he said he didn't know the etymology. I said the history was vague, could be of French or Spanish, origin. He said English is a mongrel, a language of vigorous but classless hybrids.

Sailing, felling, shelling, falling. Sold. Gone. Done.

Irreverence: easy in church, expected in the lab and student union, offensive in polite circles and at my Mother's dinner table, breaks the social contract on which we depend. Reverence is for the stifling, straightjacket, stiff-necked, self-righteous, sycophantic, suckers who have traded their own will for dogma and arbitrary convention. Balance is hard.

tide

a pulse, salty, in my veins. coming and going as it has for all my ancestors. it is a clock of the ages pulsing in my body. a tide of evolution.

waltz

off-kilter, assymetric balance. could be wobbly or graceful. military cultures produce music in 4's. easy-going island cultures make music in 3's, 6's, and polymetrics.

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writing since 2010 · 41 entries · 40 days shown up

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on this day 12 years ago

clayton wrote about spikes
“the sage filled her small kitchen garden with its scent in the late morning as dew evaporated in the sun. its long blue flower spike jutted above the parsley and rosemary plants near it. a hummingbir…”

the words clayton reaches for

airlivestandingsmilessmilingactselfflowerleapwordcultureseasybodyagainstcompletelyface