What To Do

 I hold a sparkler of thought in my hand. It entertains the guests. Cognition is largely heuristic, but also energetic. I can build a flower out of sound. But how do I explain water to a fish? Thoughts wiggle in a tidepool mind, slosh back and forth in a tray of chemicals, Arthur Rimbaud doing photography in Ethiopia. Sometimes I feel gray, sometimes violet. I don’t understand any of it. I hear voices issue from the radio at night, all sorts of people trying to explain things, espousing theories, opinions, ideas. One thing I do know: perception is a creative act.

How could it be anything else? It could be a pumpkin, but it’s not. An imagined world must have something in common with the real world, or it will just seem bombastic, and lean to the side and create more business opportunities, more pamphlets, more meetings, more tables and chairs, more violent and foul-smelling eructations. There is nothing so dangerous as the pursuit of a rational investment policy in an irrational world. Even the clouds refuse to rain.

Nothing will serve the common interest except linoleum. Arthur Rimbaud will drop photography and try his hand at merchandising rifles instead.

It doesn’t go well. He will resume writing in Cairo, Egypt. The year is 1887. It is mid-August. Arthur writes a precise, dry, fact-filled article for Le Bosphore Égyptien about “the actual state of things” in Abyssinia. And that’s that. He returns to a life of dromomaniacal wandering, ridden with rheumatism in his back and seventeen pounds of gold in his belt, which he will deposit at the Credit Lyonnais for six months at 4% interest.

He is a very strange man.

The individual who classifies facts of any kind whatever, who sees their mutual relation and describes their sequence, is applying the scientific method and is an individual of science. But what’s a fact, and what is it doing here?

A cloud obscures the hill. Flamenco dancers echo in the forest. I feel a stirring in my blood. Time hops around like a kangaroo. There’s no way to remedy existence except by accepting it on its own terms. Successes are few, failures are many. Poetry is a symptom of what has so far been kept silent. Failure is the form life assumes when it concentrates too zealously on achieving the impossible.

And then it squeaks like a rack in a gift shop.

I can hear the heart of the mountain beating. This could be a haiku. But it’s not. It’s a fist blossoming into fingers. Pancake breakfast in a firehouse. Ingots of light on the tables.

Is the ego an egg or a useless burden? I think it’s a question that can only be answered by the swallows living under the Aurora bridge.

The wound of existence requires the balm of philosophy. A wiggly squiggly slimy thing in the hand. Tools. Fools. Spools and jewels. Schools and pools and stools and rebels. Tassels and gorse and Hamlet. Fjords and swords and the drip of gargoyles. Shoes in the hallway. Water clicking through Danish pebbles.

When thoughts enter the air they assume the color of rain.

I was a once a cowboy on TV. I had money. I had two sets of keys in my pocket. I was complicit in lies. I created fictions. I created myths and illusions. And then I escaped. I joined the Beatles in Hamburg. I grew a mustache and named it Sly.

One night I found myself sitting in a cold Mexican restaurant to meet someone who called too late to let me know they weren’t coming. Ladies and gentlemen this is life. This is the wind rustling among the reeds in the mournful delta.

Let’s do that. Let’s evolve into reeds.

Arthur Rimbaud in Alexandria.

The ancient coals of history walk through my heart. What happened to the world? Spiders happened, then birds, then bears, then the comforting timbre of Michael Moore’s voice on NPR trying to explain the inexplicable, trying to explain how we are about to be cooked in our own prodigality.

We need to abandon our cars and get out and breathe the air.

That still leaves a lot of ambiguity in the data, I know, but we’ll get there, we’ll arrive at a conclusion soon, something that makes sense, even if nothing is resolved, we will watch the aurora glimmering over Barrow, Alaska, we will ride a horse across documents of sand. What if silence could be bottled like alcohol? Wouldn’t it be the perfect solution, the perfect ablution, the sweetest resolution?

There’s something creepy going on in the garage at the top of the hill. The rich man’s house. What’s going on in there? Fans creating the perfect dust-free environment for his jaguars?

I sneeze in front of the cash machine. I think of a seed with a giant sequoia in it. Think of that, a seed as a word. Every word has something giant in it. Something dynastic. Something infrared and exponential. Personal as thumbs. Impersonal as time.

I find a friend in the rain. Meaning the rain is my friend. Meaning the history of anything has roots and neurons. The bells of Notre Dame exploding into metaphors. Even a thermometer has morals. This is your cue to enter the stage. Bring your preferences. Are there any facts you find questionable? Are there creatures like us elsewhere in the universe?

Galileo used little bells to demonstrate the law of falling bodies. All I do is fall. Let’s give a cheer to falling. We’re all looking for a way to lessen the pain of being alive in a time of conflict.

What time was ever free of conflict?

A woman in Texas seeks to rid herself of bees on her porch without destroying the bees. The honey bees of Ethiopia are endemic to a volcanic dome system. The bees in the Ukraine produce 75,000 metric tons annually. Bees are amazing. Bees communicate by the waggle dance and navigate using magnetic abdomens and a keen spatial memory. This is why we need prepositions. It is good to be prudent but better to be wise.

It’s not the way you smile that melts my heart it’s the mystery in your eyes.

I’m temporary, a library book with a due date. We’re all temporary. Ephemeral. It’s a cause for sorrow and a cause for joy.

I’ve got a wart with eight arms and a stratosphere. I’ve got an answer for everything and proof of nothing. I like to swim underwater. But will it help to attain enlightenment?

It will help me understand water. The body is a parliament of organs. The truth is sometimes stranger than money. Have you ever borrowed a burrow in Barrow?

There’s a tool for everything. There’s a tool for writing and a tool for making music. You take any stick and make letters in the sand. And that will do for the moment. Sometimes I even enjoy taking the garbage out. You never know when a problem will unravel or a third eye shine back at you in the mirror. Listen to the audacity of the underworld. The ocean of blood under your skin. I like the taste of coffee but I can’t tell you why. I sift through my thoughts looking for oblivion. It’s pretty easy. It’s one of the easiest things there are. Everything in nature is fundamentally interrelated. How can you go wrong? You’ve got to move. At the very least. If you want some soothing tea you’ve got to boil some water.

So there you are. Now you know what to do.