The Book...

 For whatever reason, I had a compulsion to find 'The Book'. The Book is a small journal purchased when I was 14 years old. Inside The Book are my first poem, a few insightful sketches, and pleas of acceptance.

The thoughts in this book rhyme, for they are the sing-song lullabies of a young girl already wanting sleep. Pages toward the back abandon the rhymed stanza for a different pentameter...those more suited for awakenings.  The Book, after page 109 is empty but electronic bits and bytes continue and continue into megabytes on this computer. Text files are small.

My poems and thoughts are of joy and pain...not unlike a clown with his smile drawn upside down.Exactly like me. Sometimes emotion can only be expressed in ink, or on keyboards. And sometimes, no, most times, they are left only for me. They are left for me to remember, to purge, and to admire as I see fit.

Sometimes, if I dare, I let them out on blogs like this hoping someone will hear me, that my words might connect with someone who has a Book of their own. Someone who doesn't count on the 5-7-5 haiku, but instead relishes in free form and all its constraints. Someone who knows how to control the words yet let them play into streams of bits and bytes to be tasted by someone like me.

TIME: Part 2 - It's Spring... Time

As fickle as a puppy's attention, so is spring Time. In one instant, warming streams of sun shine through wintered windows, and in the next snow returns to snarl at budding crocus. I think these sometimes violent mood swings aren't completely unwarranted. Fighting through December, January, February, and March to give warmth... to think you have arrived, only to have your efforts pushed aside by snow; This is betrayal, and this, can make anyone, or in this sense, spring Time, very moody.

Time though, as I've said before, can pass quickly. And before we know it, the streams of warmth get stronger and stronger. Crocus, daffodils and tulips find their strength. Humans too, stretch and yawn away their bear-like hibernations to squint at spring Time. Winter windows thaw. Breezes with the smell of freshly mowed lawns and precocious barbeques rise in triumph, for spring Time has arrived again.

TIME: Part 1 - It's Past... Time

Time is a funny thing, if you think cruel can be funny.  Time can lag on forever, yet at the same time speed past you.  It can stop, it can proceed in slow motion, it can disappear leaving us to "where did the time go" hide-and-seek games we play with it. It can deceive us and elude us. Time has no respect for us wanting more (e.g., "I wish I had more time to spend with you")... or less for that matter (e.g., "How much more time do I have to spend doing this?").  Time taunts and teases, comes and goes, passes and stands still, someTIMEs all at once.

On occasion we get a glimpse of  time present, past or a future past de ja vue, and if we sit quietly, it will sit...just beyond our reach, and allow us to breathe.  And in those moments of breathing, we have opportunity to reflect; to imagine; to propose all of the things we couldn't when time wouldn't stand still.  I stumbled across a picture today. A moment frozen in time itself; cocooned in minutes, hours, days, wishes and memories, i-think-so's, and what if's... all of those things that Time carries in its pocket.

The caption is dated Oct. 2012, E's 10th birthday. It should have said her 11th ... but this is proof how time flies.. and even more so if 11 months have passed before the picture is posted.  Time is liquid and slimy; rarely concrete. Except perhaps in those moments frozen in Time, where we can remember conscientiously commanding time to stop by releasing the shutter. Even then we are teased as the feelings... at that very second... can taunt us again and again; and for that, we are painfully thankful.

It doesn't matter whether it should have been 10 or 11... because soon it will be 12.  What matters is.... that the ball was orange and that E was smiling. Neither of which has anything to do with the arrogance of Time. But has everything to do with missing the 10, 11, almost 12 year old girl young lady.