The magic of jazz
is not what you think –
there is nothing random
even in the wildest, in
the acidest of solos.
Cacophony is randomness
and the key to jazz
is to see the
invisible logic,
read the mind,
be the mind
of the musician.
It is zen, but only
if you stop searching
and just be in its
moment.
It didn’t surprise him that he
quickly understood the cat
they adopted during the pandemic
for all he had to do was apply
basic feline logic, that everything
in her new home was either
hers or theirs collectively,
it was just that simple.
He had come from a place,
a life, where there had been
hers and theirs, simple.
When that life ended, as everyone
but him seemed to know it would,
he came away with that portion
of theirs for which his ex cared least
or of which she had grown tired.
So he and the cat had a comfortable
understanding until more and more
of theirs became hers alone.
“When all else fails.” Oh, how I hate that phrase. Plan Omega perhaps, but how do they know all else has failed. Did they make a list? And just perhaps did one else succeed just a little. I mean failure ought to be complete. I know it never is, and if it isn’t tha complete failure then it was at least partially a success in that binary logic. So how do you ever get to when all else fails? God forbid you do, I don’t want to think about hearing “when all failed” for there is nothing to say after that is there?
The magic of jazz
is not what you think,
there is nothing random
even in the wildest, in
the acidest of solos.
Cacophony is randomness
and the key to jazz
is to see the
invisible logic,
read the mind,
be the mind
of the musician.
It is zen, but only
if you stop searching
and just be in its
moment.
We live in a zoom world, one we never imagined, and one for which we will never be prepared. But it is our life now, friends and family reduced to pixels, voices disembodied. They tell us this is the new normal, although what is normal about it is beyond logic and comprehension. We believe deeply that we are interconnected, curse when that connection is dropped by our technology. We cannot survive without our electrons and pixels, for that is where people exist. Every man is an island now, isolation is a perpetual state. And, hey, we should get together soon. I’ll send a meeting number and password.
The cat
has an issue with me
today, but she
refuses to discuss it.
She says that it
would be fruitless
for I would apply
what I call logic
and cats know
there is no such thing,
there is only obedience
to their will.
I would be glad
to argue with her,
knowing I would lose
by any objective,
that is to say her,
standards, but she
would rather see me
grow ever more frustrated
as the day goes on.
Nature has a way of applying
a perfect logic that eludes
its most complex creatures,
we claiming to be first among them.
Nature grants the housefly
a quite short life, but allows it
to see a thousand images at once,
a lifetime of vision in mere days.
The tortoise is consigned to crawl
along at a laggard’s pace, outrun
by other animals, who will be in
their graves in a tortoise’s middle age.
Birds must muck in the soil
for sustenance, or hunt small
creatures aground, but they have
the ample sky for a home.
Humans, well we have no such
luck, blind to all around us, rushing
always headlong into death, and only
dreaming of being free from earth’s grip.
First Proposition: You were put up
for adoption because your birth
parents couldn’t or didn’t want to raise you.
Second Proposition: We or I adopted you
because I wanted you and not another
and to give you the good life you deserved.
Argument: Given all of the possible
alternatives, you ought to be thankful
that we saved you from that other life.
First Fallacy: My birth mother feared
rejection for getting pregnant but would
have been a loving, educated parent.
Second Fallacy: My adoptive mother
had two children with her second husband
after they married, her children at last.
Opinion: You will he told that you are
one of the family, a coequal part inseparable
from and of the others, and the same.
Fact: You were made an orphan and
always will be one, and the best you can
hope for is to be just like family, a simile
that you know will always be a transparent
wall that you can never hope to climb
and which keeps you always separate.
He is worried, he says
that we will be leaving on a full moon.
I remind him that he leaves
in two weeks, that this morning’s
half-moon will be gone then
replaced by its now absent other half.
He says it should be full if it’s half now
and half a month passes.
His statements seem logical enough
But the moon and stars have their own logic
and don’t care what we think,
that’s why I say, Luna never turns
her back on us so she’s always half unseen,
and she and the stars are willing to remind us
they were all gods and goddesses once
and could go back to that with very little warning.
She says the shortest distance
between two points is a straight line.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her
That on a cosmic scale space is curved
and no one wants the short straw anyway.
She can, of course, read him, a skill
she knows is reserved for women
and is one of frustration to men.
She laughs, and adds as if an afterthought
there is a wormhole in the neighborhood.
He has no idea what to make of her,
and this is how she wants it for
she and he both know so very well
that the shortest distance between
the male and female mind is a leap
of logic only the most daring would attempt.
an old writer and his words 