Friday, July 1, 2016

The Answer to Yellow


Too much coherence squeezes the bloom of solitude. Coherence can lead to stagnation. A swamp. Decay and fertility in balance. But where’s the tempo? Where’s the stir of anticipation? Something must be left out for fulfillment to occur. If I could forge the unpredictability of wind I could sell a wilderness of moods to a strand of dreams and retire in Stockholm.
Despair is circular. If despair had a direction it would cease being despair.
Pure despair answers the call of vacancy. Vacancy has a kind of beauty. I say kind of beauty. It’s not a blunt, indisputable beauty. It’s a subtle beauty. It’s a sign on the prairie at night. It’s a soft light in a blue room.
Pages of a book flap in the breeze as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight crashes and bangs under the Magnolia Bridge.
Democracy meanders through a banana. But why does the bank shatter into seismic parquet?
Luxury drools from a myopic sentence. I salute the garage with a rag and turn to wax a fresh generality.
I like to bring things to a boil and then discover undercurrents interacting with a whistle. The railroad quietly sips a distance and spits its ruminations in coal.
This is why I take care of my fingernails. My blood glows. Butterflies flip the thesis into a landscape. Everyone unites in humor. Meanwhile, the man who lives upstairs worries about a small hole in the parking lot, which was asphalted only a year ago. And now there’s a small hole at the base of the building. It becomes the subject of a robust correspondence. Was the hole caused by a small burrowing animal or a large burrowing animal? Was it caused by erosion or fate? Drainage or hedonism?
I believe it was caused by a urinating calliope.
The calliope flutters in the leaves each time the wind passes through.
Sometimes it’s better to suggest something than to declare something firmly and unequivocally. But frankly, I find that declaration gets things said quicker. It’s clean and Etruscan.
A lot depends on the quality of the charcoal. That trembling and burning you see up there at night is a sure sign of anguish among the stars.
There are agitations at the heart of everything. Life assumes way more forms than I ever imagined. Look at the birds. Write something. Follow your instincts.
Take the color yellow. What does yellow signify?
The totems speak among themselves. The trees bend. Elegance folds itself into mohair. Everyone understands mohair. Do you understand mohair? I don’t understand mohair. I’m just not like everyone. I go for wool. Wool gets me every time. It’s thick and slides easily over my head.
You’ll find, however, that fire rarely requires a zipper. It’s all about heat and nakedness.
The answer to yellow is obvious: five guitar strings equal the fondue of paradise.
Tie a balloon to a potato. Fill it with helium. Watch the pronouns dance.
I crash my mimicry into an imitation life and watch its history unfold in cormorants and afterthoughts. The mind is sometimes a strain to bend into ivory. I’d like a sandwich now. Adaptation lacks coherence when you get to the edge.
It’s always our machinery that we choose to celebrate, never our lust for form and potential. There’s a heart beating beneath this sentence. It yearns for the flair of tusks. Consider this free of charge. Just think of it as a spoon. You know? The kind that tokens honey.

 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Dear John,

I admire your work. The reason I am writing is that I am nearing completion of editing the first issue of my first house mag. It should be mailed in about a week or so. I was wondering if I could get your email to contact you directly. Thanks! Best wishes, Collin

John Olson said...

hi Collin. I just now sent a friend request to you via Facebook. Thank you for your interest & appreciation of my work.