wonder systems

Archive

ambient buzz

bees 
 unknowing
of snow 
fill the air,
crystalline yellow
reflections 
of a confused sun
who rose 
to peek under
the Cambridge cloud cover
and found 
an astonishing
albedo
    So
    today
     is a day for 
      sending &
       receiving 
   rays:
crisp air
  soggy sidewalks
  dim cafes
 outline and
 outlimn
all edges
#128
April 7, 2016
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downclimb

my calloused hand
presses you, shaped
to your contours every
piece of palm and knuckle
whispering alone
its frictive desire
sweat
against rough against
your embrace branch match
climb up
(u
)p
¡

#127
April 4, 2016
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hindsight horoscope 3

this day will proceed
as a climb under belay;
take breaks as neccessary,
focusing alternately
on learning and on relaxation:
the stars decree that little
will be accomplished today
but much may be gained.

weather forecast:
the crunch of last night's snow
will set the scene for the crunch
of still-warm shortbread spreading
into a skew of afternoon sun
to lay in.

today's cycle:
balance
lean
step
breathe,
#126
April 4, 2016
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with interstices between the intersections.

Jet engine tilt-shift two things
in clumsy tandem
shuffling letters around
going through the motions
wearing more situations
and less clothing.


reticulated or
decussated at equal distances
nudging to the slow manifold of
effort less speed think more
      in the system whose
      interaction I recognise
the present is the fiction
      (the system-shove)
      at hand.

#125
April 3, 2016
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synthesis 1: hurricane glass

Spring break was a good week for reading, so today I have for you a daisy-chain of quotes and musings.

Any response appreciated, however tl;dr or part-baked; even especially such convenient quick connections.

Many experimental cognitive media are intended as explanations [...] By contrast, the prototype medium we'll develop is intended as part of an open-ended environment for exploration and discovery. Of course, exploration and discovery is a very different process to explanation, and so requires a different kind of medium. [http://cognitivemedium.com/emm/emm.html]

Perhaps once, perhaps no longer: the abstraction barriers between explaining (and finding things to explain) -to-oneself and -to-others seem to be leaking.

Or so at least it seems from the Orlando airport, where rain is pouring through the gap between two glass doors, a gap no doubt left unfilled for the sake of transparency.

Anybody who is not a white man (or at least interacts with people who are not white men) who has used Twitter for any significant amount of time could have predicted this outcome. The fact that they did not include safeguards against the bot learning the worst of humans to begin with is completely beyond me. They’ve already shown that their algorithm does a great job at online learning of a conversational model — it only took a few hours for Tay to begin spewing hate speech. [https://medium.com/@thricedotted/the-ongoing-lessons-of-tay-a585ff25aa1c]

Tay is the latest in a new style of industrial sociological/algorithmic engineering research where systems are tossed into our shared awareness to see if they float.

Researchers hope that explorations these systems do will serve as explanations of the systems or of humans; companies hope for good PR; but the humans played darkly with Tay, embedding hate.

consider... design as a form of participation in complex adaptive systems [http://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/design-as-participation]

If exploration/explanation are two sides of a mobius strip, so too are design and desire. In watching it's impossible to escape the realization that design is the process of figuring out what we want by making what we thought we wanted. Or not a cycle, but two parallel tracks: we start with an image of what we want, an image of what we'll make; they entwine and ramify.

Any actual existent object or experience seems increasingly a fleeting wave-crest, a particle captivating for its momentary capture of a world of streams.

(Of course I would feel this way after a week of slow days sunsets and museums.)

But at my back from time to time I hear global warming drawing near: how can we design "with" global warming with our contingent evolving elephant-by-the-trunk understanding? How do our desires change in the face of uncertainty? Perhaps the thinking we need for this exists,  already as the fingertip-feel of intuition, interaction, and anticipation.

We suggest that limitations on the speed of ice volume (and thus sea level) changes in the paleo-record are more a consequence of the pace of orbital changes and CO2 changes, as opposed to being a result of lethargic ice physics. [http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.pdf]

This paper is gripping, especially for layfolk: it takes a strong scientific, engineering, and political stance fully aware of, and hence enlightening, its context. I read in it an awareness that Fox news is too busy with Republican infighting to attack this paper. Perhaps now is a good time for long hard looks.

It is a lesson in how to think about the timescales and history of interlinked feedback loops, like watching someone debug an electrical circuit the size of the planet, flying from the Anarctic to the Bahamas to stick an oscilloscope probe into stone ice and water. It's an intimate text: they're not just thinking that Eemian-era data is relevant to today, they're feeling it, and you can feel it through them. Exploration sparks their explanation; they will not be cowed into detachment and distance.

Stop the tape of evolution anywhere and you won't see it. Stand under a rain cloud and it's not global warming you'll feel. Cut your coat into a thousand pieces—you won't find capital in there. [Hyperobjects, Timothy Morton]

Our awareness that we too are Nature, this decentering of the human that allows us to take a step back and express our humanity by blurring the boundaries between games and players, needs a kind of feeling, consideration, deliberation.

To use the metaphor of our era, we are running an extractive, growth-driven economic operating system that has reached the limits of its ability to serve anyone, rich or poor, human or corporate. [...] We must instead take a good look at the underlying assumptions of the marketplace we're busy digitizing and ask ourselves if they are still relevant to our situation before we let our computers and networks run with them. [Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Douglas Rushkoff]

Escape is a form of attachment; there's no way out but through.

"
The necessity or so it seems of forcing
A shape on these of saying like
Of saying see what I see see
What I ask you to see

Seeing
             How far you'll go
             with or on what
             grounds we

Already that shape is dissolving

Already that shape
Already another
[...]
"
[By and By / Lauren Mullen]
 

#124
March 31, 2016
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knowledge

      belief changes
and does not change
                     reality
when                 reality changes
      belief: a not-being in the standing-aside
              a being in the fitting of the new
when 
      belief changes reality:
              a being in the act of will
              a not-being as in
the already gone moment stood on top of a wave

         underneath

We grow in the dark and know in the light.
Created from between openings and closings
as clams wrapping layers
of understandings of prior understandings
around nothing at all
#123
March 27, 2016
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found words 8

do you
really
need to define only one thing?

tell them
the next table can't have legs
                                                     other
                                                     team members
can't think outside the idea

it's always in front of them
Already that shape
Already another
nameless instrument
it took so many days and nights to invent.

if too abstract easy
                                to understand
                                to mean very little
 

#122
March 25, 2016
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research art

were the mind a prism at whose surface light
turns suddenly 
either reflecting out or taking a new internal direction
then how shall we shape our boundaries
for light to pass in and through us
for some number of bounces;
should some be kept forever in internal loops
crystallized, is that personality
or just an
overthinking
#121
March 24, 2016
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optics

this candle
on that endless wall
wants to see
the half
universe
before it
take a
semi
-infinite lens
focused for that
point (its
bottom dipping
into sea blue
its top skimming sky:
infinities
loop, the two blues
are the
same) take the
paths of
every glass
bent
light
ray and slide
rings of glass
along their beams:
abstract that
half-sphere
'til it ribs.

take your
Fresnel lens:
all roads also lead
away from Rome:
our candle may now be
a lighthouse:
here there are
rocks
which we have abstracted
for you
as light

#120
March 23, 2016
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formal shoulders

dark coordination
thoughtless information
pinkblue skys
#119
March 22, 2016
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ordering

from fallow fields of gratification
fertile airs
break up monopolies
of words;

we are
too small
for silence

&

too large
to be happy
without it

#118
March 20, 2016
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key largo

salt buoys
surrounds calms
we float two feet above fields
of upside-down jellyfish
and I spot the ghost
of a horseshoe crab's shell
swimming pale with the current

#117
March 19, 2016
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breakevening

cars blur but it's not a thieving
fast pace but the past just creeps in
foot race but I can't stop feeling
it's a 
sideshow where we're all concealing
working late nights
no we can't break even
ing


(after "Breakeven" by The Scripts)
#116
March 16, 2016
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cat-

i am small
and speak
all
(all)
yarnball
tangled (red)
warm
lap or
that deep backroom of your
(i know)
 
ask
(i know)
sign( lightly
fastfeathery
/catch
me
sneeze
briefly
 
i know)
 
 
with Elena Byun, 2016
#115
March 9, 2016
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loops i-iv

[N~ This pome works better online, so I suggest clicking the link below, and then the link at the bottom of that page...]

http://web.mit.edu/eburn/www/lopp

[~ but here's a static version of it:]

your
environment eddies
call that
you
as the fiction of your deeds:
do not experience or fit them
but construct

the network of lines
which enmesh us
leave us confused
and wracked with the creation of

tools
such that their glitch
is the point
and their memes
are how the complex becomes obvious:
humbly automate meaning
by repurposing

presence
which in its diffusion
can resonate as

power
burning widely
and irretrievably
don't let it burn you out
instead build
#114
March 7, 2016
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found words 7

organisms do not experience or fit
 an environment, they construct it
 
so distribute power
 the hiatus or glitch
as widely and irretrievably as possible.
o u t t h i n k c h a n g e
 the dropped catch
or stitch
between the living & the written
it is nearly impossible to jam the stars
and incorporating flavours
is //what the tools are for//


 
#113
March 4, 2016
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Hurry I have hijacked a party of brain preservationists

and it looks like the yawn is reading the heart
solidity, flammability are, importantly,
an interesting sound to try and make
#112
March 4, 2016
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unexpectedly

a silver ray of sweetmoonstar
of feeling you-where-you-are
finds me through the dark;
in walls behind my eyes
mortar evaporates
and hazy sheets of light
shine through the gaps.
slowly, I
climb between them
the sun is rising red-
-in-blue shining
lavender light to soften
other huts
of their own walls
and weather: I catch suddenly
a laugh, wave greetings
at our hermit shells
and sing thanks to the sun
#111
March 4, 2016
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thrill of the hunt

diving deep in equations
rode the edge be
tween re
cognition, in
sight,
con
sumption
pro
duction
expectation, correction
completion
#110
March 4, 2016
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glimpse

we throw
                              our
                               gaze
                                              to
                                                             the
                                                           warm
                                                             sun
                 and return
to find it in ourselves
#109
March 4, 2016
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CRYSTAL HONEY CASES

something to be wrong about
existentially confused but probably yes
this is just a thing that happens.
#108
March 1, 2016
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ch@

                     hello
syntax,
                 thought
and tools
reflected
               from you,
to you
                  no you
mir      roar      ring
                       play
discovery
                 requires
uncertainty
     synchronization
           delay
acknowledgement
#107
February 29, 2016
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for_u___

It is necessary therefore it is
a life
Hallelujah!
endure 
most
Turbulence. It is opportunity --
love and use it
let our fears
our hopes Trust
 
You
than you 
the air or
on its way to
you
invented language to satisfy
desire
to make you
You
 
 
after Fortune, Elena Byun, 2016
#106
February 29, 2016
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:*

all weekend long we
feast like bears
fuss like poets
kiss like bees
fill our bodies
with honey sunshine
for colder days

 
with Esther Jang
#105
February 29, 2016
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project bubble

put sharpie 
to paper o
frantic ally
for this "mystery mansion" (they call it)
we name us after scooby doo we
name pipe organs puzzles subtle
creepiness creepy subtlety
each imagine dark-stained walls
papered ornately in mind's eye
while hands thicken lines
to capture breathed ideas
we talk, we listen
exhilarated for an hour
to grow private tumbleweeds of
hopes and taste by
sharing surface shines
clocks dance with ghosts
to the tune of haunted organs
and suddenly we're all together
exhausted
empty of thoughts
sated on potential
excitement become
low hum,
the hurly-burly done
battles lost and won,
when shall we five
meet again?
we should probably set up a
regular meeting time
or something
#104
February 25, 2016
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warm February weekend

in Cambridge sun and
warmth and scattered clouds
draw optimistic crowds
to sidewalks sidestrolls
aimless sidetalks
we'll take any Spring
and like it all the more
for Winter's nearness
and return,
to quietly shovel snow
with neighbours lazily greeted
these sunny unexpected days
#103
February 21, 2016
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found words 6

risk generator
the night, what it does to you
mind occupied the room
a human chaos
a nebula of confused elements
focal point for the creation of methods

love your hands
evolve the tango
move amongst finished worlds
keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive
for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
#102
February 21, 2016
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thanksgiving car notes

town & country. new england roads with trees on either side,
roads of trees, regimented but so pleasant

families: tight bundles of dynamics. good to have an in.

the equilateral triangles of highway trusses
make statements when seen at an angle.

helllo portland.

a feeling of ritual subsumption, wearing the groove
pleasant like a sleepy day, ripe.

season has that effect, one remembers ritual without trying.
memory as ritual. the quiet identity of a car passenger.

names and words and the feeling of cold are familiar.

parking garages and other injuries. 

umweltbubbles popping on collision with past
ride the ridge of ritual alert;
guide it and be guided by it. 
shape oneself via the world.

scary to perceive oneself via the world.

to be of rails.

that the day of year matters is a surprise, always.
that things are not homogenous, that stories are unconscioiusly
important, continues to surprise me.

so does no-one else thinking this car is cold.

boothbay canoe shield bowdoin brunswick bath, happiness?

camo truck, nightmare camo,
dark unseen patterns visible under those spray templates

next time bring up board games.
#101
January 29, 2016
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two sensations

i.
the rock plateau eddies
splits sinks hollows curves
into this basin, beyond which
the void white mist I sit
before. staring over the edge
eventually reveals treetops
hundreds of feet below.
to my right a
dark solid vertical edge
trips the eye
down to vertigo.
start again at the top slowly.
trace each detail of that edge
draw back the skipping eye
grow slowly that sense of space
distance 
depth
mist
stone
 
 
ii.
on red dirt roads, english podcasts
and tread-furrowed shoulder I pause
roll down windows and
hear suddenly the pings
 
high-pitched trills
bounce from bird to bird
changing at each reflection
an echolocaiton from foraged trees
 
eating small berries upside down,
one looks up and I see it ping
before being brought back again
 
to that tone as an endless response
to responses
echommunication
a sonic mesh
so clearly a thing of itself.
 
I wrap myself in it for minutes
and miss it still
#100
January 28, 2016
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subconscious roads

Somehow roadtrips always become journeys into the subconscious. Stories roll along the miles of driving until they're smooth as myths. People become archetypal, signposts / secret witches / forest friends. There's that feeling of driving over a mental landscape, small internalities magnified through still eyes. If not alone, strange frictions can emerge between these annexing silences. There's always something going on in the periphery, a tension on the shoulder. Signs flash, surreally readable, and after rolling their sounds around a few times you've forgotten what they meant. Reminiscence blurs into speculation like saccades along the landscape. The future always further ahead, no matter one's speed. The past indistinctly roaring behind one's head. A series of rapid turns brings excitement followed by determination. The sense that out there everything has changed, but in some way that's not visible when one stops to look around.
#99
January 28, 2016
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four new friends

i.
on the bus to
pick a car up
two tourists ask for suggestions
on what to do in Sydney,
a city I've been downtown in
only last night for a concert
at the Opera House.
They're from England,
can make me some recommendations
for where to visit to the North,
and came to Sydney last night
for the same concert.


ii.
a invisible fast movement
while de-tenting
catches the eye, reveals
a four-inch spider with furry
gangly legs, comically large eyes.
it walks on tiptoe
then sprints, hiding everywhere,
first sticking to the bottom of a leaf
flattening so convincingly 
I half-think it's gone, despite my eyes
then bursts to a one-inch knothole
shrinking inside without pause.


iii.
parking next to a camper, worried
I'll intrude on their privacy, but
Maureen offers chicken casserole,
and Al wants to tell stories of sailing,
of wind-surfing, and of
overambitious kitesurfers.
They're touring with the trailer
"most of the time now": Al
reccomends a phone application
for finding campsites. I leave
a postcard on their stoop early
in the morning, hope for an email.


iv.
rock-hop past families looking
for, I don't know, another adventure
in this misty day, this waterfall, I
find a sharp turn: a smaller waterfall
has scooped a pool out of solid rock.
turning back, the families are gone,
four, well, kids my age are dipping
below the big fall, I turn back and 
climb to this concealed cup.
back up, wetter, skirt the observation
deck to clamber to the four of them
start an awkward
conversation, but soon I'm showing
off the little pool, and we're clambering
up new rocks;

back at the cars,
swap peanut-butter on banana slices
("this seems very American, somehow")
for places to visit next.
and of course it turns out that
two of them did degrees in the same
building as the friend I'm visiting
in Sydney, and they sing Monday
sea shanties with the group I 
sought out at the folk festival
last week; but these similarities
are commonplace; we poke fun at Bryan
for his pun while pointing this out
and carry on
#98
January 27, 2016
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three small fears

i.
under
water
rugby
as far as I can tell
is the practice of drowning
6 feet under with a snorkel on
while someone's grabbing your shoulder.
but I can't say no, so
let's practice.

after half an hour in the pool, diving
and surfacing spouting sputterings
I see the game, after an hour I
begin to see its plays
shoving down to glide along the tangle
of offense, defense, tackling,
passing in three dimensions.
afterwards I feel like a drowned rat
but strangely eager to try again

until they mention the next "real"
practice is 3 feet deeper.

ii.
everything is too close
to my right, and my left side
keeps threatening to collide:
autobody
dysmorphia
I just want a regular car I
promise I'll drive on the left
I just need to shift the car over
a bit under me, just a little.

#97
January 25, 2016
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batbats

the kids call them
as I poke my head from the tent
ah. wombats.
one of them is ringing the fence
(the batbats, that is)

another waddles to the road
sprints across the packed white dirt,
waddling again on the far grass. remembering
all those I've seen dead on country roads,
I wonder how it learned this. In the darkness it
seems smaller, younger.

after the headlamps have left
I sit by two of them peacefully,
voraciously grazing; I wonder if
the acres of lawns here are all
wombat-maintained; these two
(joined by a third) seem to move rapidly
until I am surrounded by their spiralling
and so sit a while longer until the path
opens again

#96
January 25, 2016
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sorry for the triplicate email...

previous (tripled) poem was sent from the side of a dirt road which, mysteriously, had cell service.
#95
January 24, 2016
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JOG SIN SYD

JOG

that familiar preflight
anxiety is unexpected
for a flight I did four days ago,
still keeps me up


SIN

fresh from Indonesia
​I feel friendly, miss
greet-and-response with strangers,
catch many of my friend's classmates
in conversation before sneaking
away with his keys to sleep

awake unwillingly
to pack, clean, place bags outside
(will not be caught outside this house
without them
again) drink coffee
am late and lost to ramen
my appetite ebbed again
being outside in Singapore
makes me self-conscious
but inside I share stories (poorly,
they need practice yet) then
off for a quick goodbye, too tired
to talk but still talking 'til late
but the airport acrobatics are easy
this time; I grab my outside bag
as the taxi turns around, jump back in
and am at the gate bewilderingly soon:
luckily there are foot-massaging machines
from which to watch the line; I board
I sleep.


SYD

after an hour of
frustrating lines,
two hours of forest train
delight, soothe my apprehension
of slipping into sleep-deprived insanity
at the folk festival I've volunteered at.
the train goes around a turn, and
suddenly
ocean
over a one-road town
draws a triangle of depths:
green
         light/
                 dark blue water
                    mist
            fog
clouds

#94
January 23, 2016
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Fwd: JOG SIN SYD

JOG

that familiar preflight
anxiety is unexpected
for a flight I did four days ago,
still keeps me up


SIN

fresh from Indonesia
I feel friendly, miss
greet-and-response with strangers,
catch many of my friend's classmates
in conversation before sneaking
away with his keys to sleep

awake unwillingly
to pack, clean, place bags outside
(will not be caught outside this house
without them
again) drink coffee
am late and lost to ramen
my appetite ebbed again
being outside in Singapore
makes me self-conscious
but inside I share stories (poorly,
they need practice yet) then
off for a quick goodbye, too tired
to talk but still talking 'til late
but the airport acrobatics are easy
this time; I grab my outside bag
as the taxi turns around, jump back in
and am at the gate bewilderingly soon:
luckily there are foot-massaging machines
from which to watch the line; I board
I sleep.


SYD

after an hour of
frustrating lines,
two hours of forest train
delight, soothe my apprehension
of slipping into sleep-deprived insanity
at the folk festival I've volunteered at.
the train goes around a turn, and
suddenly
ocean
over a one-road town
draws a triangle of depths:
green
         light/
                 dark blue water
                    mist
            fog
clouds

#93
January 23, 2016
Read more

JOG SIN SYD

JOG

that familiar preflight
anxiety is unexpected
for a flight I did four days ago,
still keeps me up


SIN

fresh from Indonesia
I feel friendly, miss
greet-and-response with strangers,
catch many of my friend's classmates
in conversation before sneaking
away with his keys to sleep

awake unwillingly
to pack, clean, place bags outside
(will not be caught outside this house
without them
again) drink coffee
am late and lost to ramen
my appetite ebbed again
being outside in Singapore
makes me self-conscious
but inside I share stories (poorly,
they need practice yet) then
off for a quick goodbye, too tired
to talk but still talking 'til late
but the airport acrobatics are easy
this time; I grab my outside bag
as the taxi turns around, jump back in
and am at the gate bewilderingly soon:
luckily there are foot-massaging machines
from which to watch the line; I board
I sleep.


SYD

after an hour of
frustrating lines,
two hours of forest train
delight, soothe my apprehension
of slipping into sleep-deprived insanity
at the folk festival I've volunteered at.
the train goes around a turn, and
suddenly
ocean
over a one-road town
draws a triangle of depths:
green
         light/
                 dark blue water
                    mist
            fog
clouds
#92
January 23, 2016
Read more

SIN JOG

from puppet show to liquid film
our stories first leaned
across that tall table,
past places danced through
speaking selves

                            then the
frozen melted, flooded
the fore came into focus
as background blurred
everything had that
delightful disorientation
called significance
everything was oh so silly
and present, we were no longer
puppeteers of the past
our idle bets were taken seriously
and new friends were chosen
as they chose us, for a look, a laugh,
a great warmth; we laughed and spun
and unfolded across the night

food resumed the protocols of time
spice a clock upon our lips
and time split forever when you said
that our lotus of fries was an onion.
though sequence reasserted itself
through taxis and keys, through it all
I still felt myself to be
the lucky captured lens.

~~

on waking up two hours late
but with still a chance to make
the flight, reluctantly set out on
principled feet, though my head
not hungover just not yet sober
wished for mild disaster, some
excusably unavoidable delay.
alas, all went smoothly
except my tired packing,
whose two shirts were identical
and cold for the flight, and whose
lack of cash forced me to make a
new friend for a visa loan upon arrival 

#91
January 23, 2016
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postcard: Borobudur

through sunrise mist Borobudur
is an ornate hill, only the detail in
silhouette conveying the scale
of its rounded rise to a spire.
approaching with the sun, it stays
ambiguous whether the spire
rises up or draws down; now
one can see the terraced squares
in whose crenelations sit hundreds
of buddhas larger than life
watching impassively east
north south west, ensconced
like hindu gods but not drawing in
as they do: directed outward



                                                    it's
overwhelming: where cathedrals
architecturally amplify sermons
and hymns of the seated, this
channels pilgrims along a
square-spiralling prayer: clockwise
from east on both sides walls
of carved stories advance, counseling
the walker and shielding the sun

                                                    then
after the fourth four-cornered story
watched by buddhas, an octagonal
plateau, no protection from the sun
and the next level is visible, circular.
pointing in 12 directions out are
tall perforated bells inside which
buddhas sit on hewn lotus. their
stillness escapes their cages, suffusing
this bleak summit with calm



                                                     then,
in the next circle a solid bell roots
a square spire growing tapering
twisting to become octagonal:
it seems a spool for our walk;
clearly this is the broadcast
a stone megaphone
of seven hundred faces
and what pacing spun around it
has become woven air
spreading down gentle slopes
contrasting the visible smoking volcano;
and so one flows with it, radiated
in straight lines away,
inwardly still

 
#90
January 13, 2016
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things of and for themselves 2

the spider, its scavenging claw
rigged by now-deleted tweets
turns over
the profile picture
decides it will serve
as sunshade
and scans again the sands
 
 
the tadpole courier, indecisive,
splits: its meaning will take
both paths. down one it meets
a Trojan wall, so turns itself
message-side out: the wall gates,
scoops the package up. inside it
the tadpole awaits new waters
 
 
salmon alevin, yolk-sustained
drift the backbone 'til they can swim
downstream, to small rivers
then larger ones, where they begin
to develop camouflage;
they spread into the open sea
feast on data until
their timed life triggers then
back from whence they spawn
spinning network maps and
concentrated data
into new eggs
 
 
this monkey with a panther face
wants to share a shiny fruit
for your magpie attention, but
oh what's this,
you'd just been wanting this fruit
(or been about to) what luck!
you wave aside the cute but
irrelevant gifts of the rest
#89
January 7, 2016
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perform: ant

magpie leap/fly, think they as quick?
clothes are we, wear cities instead?
cooking, dancing,
ritual alternating
mountains back
from time:
#88
January 7, 2016
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missed connections

I'm not really sure when I first met 2016.
 
You know, it's like one of those math questions, with the trains: we took off from San Francisco, traveling minus one hour per two hours, but by the time we left it had already started East, joining parties at one hour per hour.
 
I do know that we met mid-air, before Shanghai; but nothing else. I may have been asleep, or reading. Perhaps as it passed through the plane it whispered in my ear, causing me to look up from my book and wonder again if the light bothered neighbours; or maybe it waved the wing hello-and-goodbye, one special bump on a particularly turbulent flight.
 
Had 2016 and I not been rushing in opposite directions, I think we'd have taken tea and the time to catch up, commiserate, share stories and plans. On parting, I'd have given it some gifts to give to other on its route: a powder box full of excitement and support for friend's trajectories, and a charm-bracelet of hugs to link us across time zones.
 
Eventually, in that moment feeling both too soon, and too full for continued chatter, I'd wish 2016 on its way with a glass-stoppered vial for collecting our imagined futures, a container in which they'd mix and merge then be released to travel the breeze and fill our breath.
 
Where I arrived, 2016 had wrapped the world twice over: I was just in place for the trailing sunrise. Left, then, to my own device, I'll ask directly: what sensations do you breath in, what thoughts do you breath out, what do you push against or clamber up, what feelings fill your chest? I'm traveling this January, seeking the forgotten familiar, and looking to correspond. Drop a line!
 
~N
#87
January 2, 2016
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SFO (PVG) SIN

SFO

O Geografia, muse of travel,
sing us a song to ease
these useless nerves;
start with a lonely high note,
subway keening, held, 
tension building, crescendo
to security, to an xray climax:
resolve to soothing voice
a background choir
of flights-not-mine,
publicly addressed
to people-not-me

PVG

like river rapids we move
and queues remain
in sleeplessness I seem
still: I am fixed in space, but the floor
crawls under me, I find myself
in another line, snaking
through low hallways, right angles,
towards the unseen and uncertain:
we line-mates share our feeling: we are cattle
queued for slaughter, so kept from its sight
but if Temple Grandin had designed this
at least we could see the sky
and, mid-flight,
reference the earth, we as ants,
instead we are caught
by a curious giant, held up
between thumb and forefinger

SIN

Singapore wastes no time
continuing the two
algorithmic ambiguitopias
I've read this endless day:
I scan my passport
for net access
gratefully.

digitally bolstered, step out
for humidity's warm kiss:
it feels (as ever)
like home rediscovered,
the forgotten familiar,
like a language remembered.
#86
January 2, 2016
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things of and for themselves

flat hands draw themselves
into new dimensions, dreaming
new rituals and assemblies

darting composers taste the storm,
scribbling symphonies
of spores and discovered flame

silver
lilies
dawdle,
dangling
nitrogen,
excitedly
coordinating
their algal quilt

machine-room barnacles improvise
a capella trills, megahertz harmony
around the ambient bass

#85
December 30, 2015
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what comes of diplomacy

Not mine this time; from a newsletter about the paris climate accord: "the closing monologue from Nixon in China. Chou En-Lai wonders what will come of diplomacy with the Americans:

How much of what we did was good?
Everything seems to move beyond our remedy.
Come, heal this wound.
At this hour nothing can be done.
Just before dawn the birds begin,
the warblers who prefer the dark,
the cage-birds answering. To work!
Outside this room the chill of grace
lies heavy on the morning grass.

"

~N
#84
December 23, 2015
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solstice rain

today was a
Lazy day I
hardly did anything I
got up (eventually) and
moved a table then
learned to regulate
the heat beneath the floors
grew suspicious that
our battery bank had
a bad apple
picked a good apple
walked downhill in the rain
oxidized a silver chain, we
walked uphill in the rain
to cut branches off a fallen tree
and tumble them down the hill
to clear the road, another we
rigged a press-fit multimeter tip
and attached a light to it
to test for bad batteries
with some small load, I
made a sauna.

It's always
so rejuvenating to come here
back to Comptche and just do
Nothing for a little while.
#83
December 22, 2015
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amphibian

it's surreal (how my skin,
inside out, roils ((
with each
word
surfacing selves 
(((
breathing
)))
through the skin ))
in conversation
for two day's vulnerable comfort )
that friends are real
#82
December 18, 2015
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four todays

i.
dousing sleepiness
in soursweet passion fruit icing
scraped from waxed donut wrapper
as I wait for Nevin to wake

ii.
motion at the road's center
a truck's large tire breathes
on a bushy tail, which flutters,
anchored by squished squirrel,
cruelly lively like a lizard's
sacrifice, but, unlike, stuck.

iii.
on white mountain passes,
a plow shoots snowfall
over bridge side, fanning
a rainbow with no color but density
feathers of snow silt falling
from an arc of ballistic ice
neither silt nor ice having purpose
beside the joy of gravity

iv hundred miles later, the sun
setting right over golden straw
casts a rainbow dome overhead:
pink on the left, yellow right
behind a stroke of hill silhouettes
which strike me as calligraphic, and
ridiculous
#81
December 16, 2015
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invert blue

when stars dim, it takes a moment
to realize clouds pass between us
raising shaded hills of
reflected light-in-the-sky
to turn us upside down:
they are now dark blue fields
and we the sidereal light.
it reminds me of
     laying upside-down
              over a cliff:
                     trees become a flat-
                              patterned bowl
              over azure terrain
                      of bewildering detail;
     and on getting up
one walks the ceiling,
perspective skewed
relevance inverted
a staggered sky-god
paying homage
to the purposeless blue
#80
December 15, 2015
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square

leaping from hand to hand
gracelessly
without time to think it through
brings a purity to my expression
a goofy grin
which I can only hope is self-effacing
because dang I've got a lot to learn
about dancing
#79
December 14, 2015
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