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for those interested, the links below disply the inspiration/art historical contexts that went into this collage. the visual appropriations should be pretty apparent.

El Greco

Bruegel

Cardinals

i like to reason with the stars.
people never look at the stars. not in the city.
in the country, its different. people look at the stars there.
i am different.
i look at them. i see them.
and sometimes i reason with them.
does the world really exist? i ask.
i dont think the world exists.
its just pretend.

and next to the window, on my desk
there is a picture.
its old and yellow and i do not know
who is held within the frame.
but he knows me.
his eyes are always looking me.

the eyes always look alive
and they watch me.
they follow me wherever i go.
and every night the stars shine
and tell me that none of it really exists
but he watches to make sure
that everything stays the same.

I just have to tell someone - do you know thast feeling? It comes when you experience something that literally changes your life and you wish everyone else could’ve been there. It happened last year standing with Jared watching Wilco do their amzing work @ the Alabama Theatre. Well… it happened again tonight. I didn’t know much about MUTE MATH going into the show. I knew the were a “christian” band and had some cool songs on an EP. It was, and will be, one of the most amazing musical experinces of my life here on earth. “Their live show thrives on this random energy… involving homemade instruments, live sampling, a junked-out keytar, and enough dizzying energy to make the hardest cynics wet their pants.” There were drums everywhere, played by a drummer who walked out on stage before the show and slung black tape around his head and headphones about 6 times before sitting down for a short time (good thing he did that), keyboards strategically scattered, pieces of tin buckets for hitting with drumsticks, guitars for hitting with drumsticks, a bassist whose strings sounded like the cables on the golden gate bridge, a frontman who made your eyes fixed on him especially during the few times he cartwheeled it over his rhodes, and a strange keytar/synth/star trek/thing that was played then passed through the crowd - still on - and it worked. I could go on and on. This is a band you MUST see if close to you - trust me. I’m still in shock. MUTEMATH.com

The sky is keeping secrets from me. The answers are up there, somewhere, but tonight the universe is taunting me- the moon hangs in a cheshire grin, a perfect crescent smirk, and the stars are winking, concealing.

My newly formed day-in/day-out existence has been complicated. This morning, for the first time in years, there occurred to me the possibility of a search. I dreamed of the old apartment building I once inhabited. Well, I didnt dream so much as I awoke with the taste of it in my mouth, the queasy-musty taste of 1932 and Cedar. And I could swear that for a moment before my eyes cleared I could see Hannah laying in the doorway near the heater. Hannah was my roommates mutt. She was a good dog.

I remember the first time the search occurred to me. I came to in a rocking chair situated on a porch above the world (or at least the world sifted through a small country town) and i soaked everything in through rusted screens and dirty windows and jack kerouac. It was a great time, but you must consider that generally, the best times are for me the worst times, and that worst of times was one of the best.

But that was then, and this morning when I got up, I stared into the mirror as usual, showered, considered shaving, dressed and began to put the usual belongings into my pockets: wallet, notebook (for taking notes and writing down occasional thoughts), a pen, keys, ipod and the leash (otherwise known as the blackberry). They looked at the same time unfamiliar and full of clues. I stood in the center of the bedroom a stared at the little pile of things. What was unfamiliar about them was that I could see them. They might as well have belonged to someone else. I think a man can look at this little pile on his bedside table for thirty years and never once really see them. The pile is as invisible as his own hand.

Once I saw it, however, the search became possible. I poked through the little pile in search of a clue about as well as Vincent D’Onofrio on Law and Order pokes through the dead man’s possessions, using his pencil as a poker, his face squinted in a “I’m a tortured genius” sort of look.

The idea of a search comes to me again as I am on my way to work, riding the #32 bus across town. Its a bitterly cold day. The wind is fierce but the sun is big and bright. The monuments are casting long shadows, and my fellow riders are all squinting as the driver turns the bus onto 15th street and into the sun. Everything is orange.

What is the nature of this search, you ask?

Well, I dont know. But I have an idea that it might be simple- so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what I, or the guy two rows in front of me on the bus, or the lady next to me taking up more than her allotted space, would undertake if we were not sunk in the everydayness of life. Everydayness is so blinding, so binding- so to even become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something, I think. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

So now if I could just figure out the “something” I am onto, and what the little pile of clues on my bedside table means, then some progress might be made.

Do you, my dear Watson, have any ideas?