Perspective

When you think about how narrow the scope of human vision is in any single moment— how small your actual perspective is— it’s amazing to realize how much synthetic data your brain adds to your memories. I have many memories that I recall from up above rather than from inside of my body, even though I was a part of the scene. How does my mind conjure so cleanly a perspective that I never inhabited? When and how and why does my visual cortex set about fashioning an omniscient perch from which to view my own lost history?

And for that matter, why does humanity so often presume to narrate its own history from an omniscient point of view? What is it in us that so easily slips into an outsider’s perspective and escapes our own? Even in our memories, we escape the confines of our corporeal being. 

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The lust for freedom always needs a boundary to transgress, 

Whereas a freedom freely given provides for rest. 

Solid Edges

Take me with you to the hall of mirrors

You retreat to when you think that

I see through you. Let me shine 

My light on all your solid edges that you fear

Are disappearing when you’re near me.

Let me stand beside you

While you learn to see yourself anew.

All Information Is Poetry.

When the nights grow short

And the ground sheds the heat

It’s absorbed from the sun

In the circle of days,

There will form every once

In a clear, still night

A mist that hangs low

And close to the ground.

And it cloaks all the beings

Who already know

How to wrap the night

Around themselves.

Some people, too, share this

Curious gift— 

They know how and when

To be wrapped in the mist.  

Vanishing

Perhaps it is my future self

That stands behind a creaking pine

Along the hill that, in the sun,

Becomes a slow and labored climb.

I hope she sees that, though I slow, 

I do not stop my quest to meet her

At the top, although I know her quiet knack

Of vanishing before we meet—

It is a skill I have honed well

And taught to her to spite myself.

Just Like This.

I’ve seen a thousand visages

Bloom like day lilies

For an instant on

Your features and

In each one there’s this

Completeness, like a poem

That ends just like this.

The Mechanics of Self-Deception

When I run, and the metronome of my steps and breath begin to tick, some autonomic function in my brain begins involuntarily to count each step. I have trained this part of my brain to count in increments of 180 steps, as this roughly correlates to1 minute; 8-9 minutes is a mile. (And it's helpful that 180 is divisible by 3, because I take 3 steps for each inhale and 3 steps for each exhale). If I am mindful, I can tick off the miles with rough accuracy without looking at my watch. But despite the automatic nature of the counting itself, my ability to maintain focus long enough to remember which 180-step block I am in is hopelessly flawed; my mind always wanders to other topics and I forget where I am.

As my concentration slips and I realize I have lost my simple, monotonous thread, two separate mental functions-- perhaps best referred to as my conscious and unconscious mind-- begin to work along separate lines. My unconscious mind is a great flatterer; it would always have me believe that I have run further than I actually have. Knowing this from long experience, my conscious mind makes corrections; it backs up the mental count; forces me to start counting anew in the middle of a cycle; it over-corrects for the weakness of the subconscious mind.

Both my subconscious and my conscious mind are aware of their deceptions, which lean in opposing directions and attempt to cancel each other out. They seek, through compromise, to convene at the point of truth-- seek to perceive accurately and without external assistance, the position of my body as it moves through time-- an inner and outer harmony achieved through the rough, inescapable mechanics of self-deception.

To arrive at a correct understanding is perhaps not to avoid self-deception but to understand fully its mechanics, and to correct for them.

Triptych: The Choices Women Make

Eve 

I am that She who slaked her need

Underneath the apple tree,

Who cursed the whole of womankind

Through our yet unbroken bloodline.

“Yes I would do it all again,”

Say both pride and humility— 

And that is because the two are one

As long as we continue to bleed.

Athena

Sprung fully formed from the mind of a god

And an Apgar score that’s off the charts,

She can see the world in six dimensions at once,

Tracing every intention back to its heart.

She will give you a gift that will meet you halfway

In becoming who you’re meant to be,

And she’ll make you a spider 

If you sit down beside her

And dare to think you could ever outshine her.

She crouches behind opposing perspectives

Then holds up a mirror to show your reflection.

Mary

Perhaps at twelve, as Mary perhaps was,

I may have said yes out of love,

Or at least I would have thought that’s what it was.

Consent, to faith, is a strange drug.

When Gabriel left and silence fell,

And the impossible came to dwell

In such a space as small as me,

I may have felt the infinite

Reflecting on the price of love

That weds it to its opposite—

How could it ever (always) be

That women house such mystery?