Noah Gundersen: Whiskey & Wine Live

c.6

He is quite large and tries to hide it by wearing sloppy over-sized army colored clothes he gets from the Army Surplus store down on Victoria St. If he is lucky, nobody notices him in his day to day life. He is almost twice her age and he lives next door to her. He doesn't know if she knows he exists, or not. But he knows about her.

He is a noticer. He likes to think of himself as a thoughtful noticer, like a well-wisher. Not the creepy kind of noticer. But who knows what others would think if they noticed him noticing. 

He spends a lot of time collecting odd items to photograph and sell online. He likes to photograph items that are secretly recyclable. Things that people throw out, that they have no idea can be reused or melted down, made into something of value for another person.

First he plants online the photo of the original item he has found, usually in the trash or in a second hand store or garage sale. Then he finds a way to recycle it, to make it something else. Then he posts it in the same place online,  beside the original, and sells the two as a pair. 

Sometimes, the buyer requests to buy the actual item, but he always refuses to sell it. It would put a wrench in the entire process. Everything has a flow, beginning to end, he thinks. So, they final item needs to be discarded, no matter how valuable it becomes to someone new. The truth is, it was never originally what it looks like now.  The concept, the perception of value, of usability. Something that can never be measured, captured or made permanent. 

There are bugs in his apartment lately. He doesn't know why. He is impeccably clean. He eats only cabbage, cucumbers and tuna out of the can, and he always washes the can before he recycles it. Bugs are so creepy, he has to kill them immediately when he catches them scurrying by. But it scares him, so he has a spray can full of some kind of poison that he shoots. That keeps them at a distance. But lately, he hasn't been able to sleep. Maybe he needs an exterminator. 

.c1.

     She feels more animal than human. She hunts, she catches, she hibernates, she even goes camouflage sometimes. She is attracted to others who seem more animals than men. She once slept with a man who was covered with a full coat of fur. It tickled her skin as he hovered over her, trying to find his way. She remembers it being more pleasant than she had expected. Until then, she had thought herself more of a naked-mole-rat loving kind of girl. But of course, there are exceptions to everything.

     Today she sits perched on the edge of the sofa, knees pulled up to her chest. She is thinking. She sees a small cockroach scurry across the cieling near the wall opposite her. She sits back and watches it, considering her options for it's demise. She is going to sit and wait for it to come closer. She watches it and wonders how long it will take, and how long she will last, before she loses control of her urge to kill it. Once she lets go, it will be dead.

     There is an odd noise in the room. It's what it might sound like in a mother's womb, she thinks. There is a slow and steady beat, muffled by a constant whirring and swishing. It's sort of calming, until she wonders if it is real or only in her head.

     Once the prey is close enough, it will be a simple kill. She leans toward simplicty these days. She is tired of working too hard for everything. She has put out too much energy, into the words she has chosen, the friends she has tried to keep, the men she has loved. Too much. Looking back at it makes her want to puke. Or spit up a hair ball, of all the wasted efforts. It got her nowhere anyways.Trying to be so smart, or so complicated, or so fancy, or so lovable, or so strong, or so patient. All of it unnecessary. She needs to be nothing to anyone anymore.

If she were to meet her old self now, she would be so annoyed. It'd be like meeting someone you can't stand and then realizing that the things you don't like about them are actually reflections of things you don't like about yourself. Like a mirror of truth. She swats at her relflection these days.

Before she can blot out the bug, the doorbell lets off its annoying siren. Shrill sounds are so rattling. So are cheerful perky and unpredictable sounds, that mean, your personal-thought-world is being interupted.

Someone is here, behind the door. Probably to save her soul by way of Jahaova, or to sell her a stale chocolate(coco oil product, barely digestable) bar for way too much money. Or maybe it's the drunk guy from next door who can never seem to find his own apartment after his binge. She debates whether to open the door or not. Face the enemy on the other side, or face the noise of the relentless door screams. She wonders why she gets paralyzed like this. After a minute of staring at the door, she goes back to the sofa, and looks around. She can't find the cockroach.

The Fruit is Ripe (sometimes).

Love could be knowing you are the thing that shakes someone's tree. And seeing that their tree shakes upon various winds, and not batting an eye, a little here and there, its ok to you. You understand, you breathe easy.  Knowing, deep down, to the deepest roots, you are the one that shakes that tree the most.. You are the one that makes the fruits fall, heavy and full, from it's limbs.

That is love. Watching the tree sway in the wind, knowing that wind always passes, but you, down deep at the roots, you never leave. You never leave. You shake and shake, when the time is right, and the fruit falls and falls. When the storm comes and goes, you are there, holding that tree in place. The fruit is ripe, sometimes. (and sometimes it's hard)

of Moths or Dust

I wait for the moths of my mind to stop their fluttering for a time.
To settle, like dust, on the surface of this autumn's reality.
So then they'll eat holes in possible plans, if I tuck them away in a drawer, to forget,
 as I prepare to drone through winter.
Or in spring, I can write a word in this layer, if  it's thick enough and has settled lifeless by then.

A Sorry (falling and flying) Mess

I am sick. And I am alone in a foreign country. I don't think I can ask anyone to help me. It doesn't feel very good to be like this. But..even though I am a sorry mess, I know I will be okay. I will try to think happy thoughts.

Every time I come to the end of myself, it is brutal. But then, I recover and I feel stronger than I was ever before. (that was a not happy thought, but...it was followed by a very happy one..so maybe the unhappy one was worth having?)

Coming to the end of myself is sort of like jumping off a cliff and trusting I won't fall until I hit the ground. Or maybe being pushed off the cliff. I never do fall all the way though. It feels like I am falling really fast, but in the end, I open my eyes and I am flying on my own.

Flying is the best feeling in the world.

Poems with the taste of aged wine would not feel as poor,

if there was someone to whisper them to.

Yoksul düşmezdi yıllanmış şarap tadındaki şiirler böylesine, kulağına okunacak biri olsaydı eğer.

                                                                    from If (Eger) Can Yucel

Bag of Weeds, Bag of Wonder

As I head toward the stoplight she approaches me. Her knotted and wrinkled old hand claws me in the direction of a plastic bag on the ground. It appears to be a bag of weeds. Her clothes are old, dirty and mismatched. She doesn’t stand over five feet, especially hunched over, as she is, probably from lack of calcium and other nutrients back when Korea was a poor country. Her face wears the work of a hundred summers in the sun, wind and rain, and the wrinkles around her eyes make me want to jump deep into them to see what treasures of her long life I can find.

Her mouth speaks things I cannot understand, and what teeth she still manages to keep scare me back to a safe distance on the corner. (I always hate how these kinds of things momentarily cut through compassion and make me loathsome, despite my regret for such feelings at the time. Loath for the person in front of me, loath for the person inside of me for loathing involuntarily). But it doesn’t last long.  I am pretty sure she is telling me to buy the weeds. I try to tell her I have no idea what to do with her bag of green grazings.

She has an insistence on what she has to sell. You cook it, I take it. Or you make salad maybe? Maybe it had a lot of vitamins in it? Or maybe it has ancient cancer fighting agents when made into a tea, how could I know? It hurts me that I don't want what she is selling; It seems to be of such value to her, and she has loving insistence on me having something I really don’t want. I wish that I could really want that bag of weeds. Like one wishes he could love his mother’s burnt gravy each year at thanksgiving, or the brutally ugly sweater she buys at Christmas.

These greens seemed to me, the same things which we spray in our backyard to avoid their determined spread. We rub them yellow under our chins while muttering a childish saying about our mothers and butter, and we blow them like little white angels when they become fluffy, not realizing we are perpetuating our own backyard malignancy. Isn’t that always the way.

I search my purse for a paper bill. I find a five. I hand it to her without thinking of her pride. Just take the money, I think. Take your bag of wonder, and take your money, and stop hurting me with your authentic beauty, and your pathetic existence, selling a bag of weeds in your tatters. Stop making me jealous, wanting to have the wisdom and the peace that you have, with your bag of common backyard nuisance, on your street corner. Kind insistence, persistence, or whatever it is that is pulling on my emotions so strongly, make it stop.

Of course, she will have no money without giving me the bag. I realize it is of great value, and to not take the bag would really be awful to her. I take the bag and paste on a smile, my heart still cut, and bow, heading off to wait for the next green light. She smiles, her work is done for the day, for there was only one bag of weeds.

As I cross the street, I try to recover from whatever that was, and try not to scold myself for such a irrational purchase of something I do not want. At the same time, I wish the weeds had have been more expensive. What to do with a bag of weeds. I am sure I will think of something.  Part of me wants to hang on to them, because somehow they are special. Maybe just because I don’t know exactly what to do with them, it doesn’t take away from their value, I think.

Alongside me comes a woman, around the same age as me, native to this country. She has seen the entire transaction. Before we reach the other side of the street she has asked me, are you going to throw those in the trash?  I shrug, of course, because I have no idea what I will do with them. I haven’t gotten that far along in my processing. It’s just a five bill and a bag of weeds (that a poor old grandmother searched out and harvested for the entire day).

Would you like them? I ask her. Are you sure, she says (not asks, just says for show, since we both know she wants them bad and I'm going to give them to her).

Now, I am laughing at myself and at the situation.  Be my guest, I think. And I hand her the bag. Oh my, she blushes, I couldn’t. Well you asked for them, you nosey housewife. Anyways, have them.

After all, the only use I have for them is to give me something to write about. I wait for the bus.

Stick

They lived on paper then.

Stick man and stick woman. stick computers. stick work stick love.

Stick lives stuck.

Something became red-real.

It grew and it bulged, more and more, and one day

It rippped through the paper.

A lip or a tongue or it could be a heart.

She saw it with her own stick eyes.

Now stick man has a red-real heart.

Full and juicy.

The paper is moving.

ba-bum, ba-bum-ba-bum

where

The artist took his pen.




He drew circles around the times we talked.



It made beautiful bubbles,



light like air, delicate,irridescent-oil on clear,



a masterpiece.









The artist took his pen.



He drew stars around the times we've seen each other.



It made a unique constellation, shiny and electric in a dark sky,



leading somewhere,



a map of wonder.









The artist slept and he woke.



He wept on his knees.



For between the bubbles and the stars



he saw that there was no space,



nothing at all.









He needs to draw more.



He desires to draw and draw, on and on.



But where?

















 

Thanks GmKee Good Words

Pearl..and pearl...and pearl

"Again", He said. "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it." (Matthew13:44)

Does it mean go sell everything you have if you want to get to heaven? Many churches would love us to believe that. No, perhaps it means the pearl has already been bought and the price was high and has already been paid. And the pearl is already in the kingdom of heaven.

Next time I look in the  mirror I wonder if I have enough faith to see a pearl in its reflection.

...might explain my obsession with pearls for the past several years. (The sudden stories and poems I woke out of dead sleep to get onto paper, and the dreams, the desire to have or wear them,especially black ones, the recent obsession with the names of pearl, the side jobs related to pearls..)

Thank you Paul Anderson Walsh for explaining a much misunderstood parable. I always love when light is shone in such a way. Thank you my wonderful Maker and Merchant.

Maya Angelou

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination.

night vision

done days roast well on a fire


tried to catch you in a net
of unexpressed desires
but you're no firefly


when the embers turn to grey
I can't find you


in the dark

Superman - Five For Fighting (Boyce Avenue cover) on iTunes

Bus 14-1

Bus 14-1 is a moving accident waiting to happen, and the most peaceful place on earth, all at the same time. It happens to be my bus. My personal office, my thinking space, my main source of action in my day, my high risk adventure, the place I figure out my unknowns. For one generally peaceful hour in the morning and one more grueling hour at end of day, each day of the workweek, I enter the 14-1.

 The bus driver holds the worlds of all those who ride..delicately balances all of them in one hand while we turns the giant wheel with the other, blue cotton gloved hand, maneuvering  it to and fro, honking generously, in none but Korean driver-style. I wonder how many accidents will be luckily avoided today, how many times the driver will save the day, how many times he will in turn almost cause an accident..and if he realizes how stressful his job really is. He has probably been doing it for so long, he doesn't even know it anymore. He protects them well, gets them from important places to other important places, on time, come rain, wind or yellow sand. Yet he doesn't merit even a small greeting from most. He is so accustomed to being treated as a machine, that he doesn't know what to do if he is actually acknowledged or given a proper hello. It is so off balance, yet I wonder if I am the only one who sees it.

I always sit in the front right single seat. It is my seat. No one dares to sit there. They must all know it is my seat. On all thirty 14-1 buses. Or perhaps it is the seat for sick people or those who are developmentally challenge. I am culturally and linguistically challenged in Korea, so how would I know? Nonetheless, I have one sort of challenge or another on any given day, so I remain the sole proprietor of the front right single seat. It is starting to become a very comfortable place.

The odd day I am lucky enough to see a few familiar faces on my way to or fro. There are the three men in dark jackets and ball caps who get on by the major construction. They usually stare at me a while and then talk among themselves. I wonder what they do for a living and where they are going. They look like construction workers, but they are never dirty. There are a couple of women, my guess is they go to their skincare clinic or similar job and put in their days' work. And then there is me. I am definitely a regular.

Everyone on the bus has their device, even me. Old ladies and twelve years olds, everyone. They seem memorized by whatever it is they are watching on their phone screens. Video or drama, I imagine. They transport to one world or another, anywhere but remaining mentally on the bus, I suppose. Me, I listen to Martin Luther these days via MP 3 files a my earphones. He makes my brain wake up and do a little dance, before it settled in to a mid functioning level when my teaching day begins. He also makes me realize that people are the same, over the years. The true nature of people remains. And God never changes either.

The first blooms of spring are out on the trees. Magnolias and cheery blossoms. Everything around is brown, brown leaves, brown dead tree branches, old brown grass from last years' summer. And then, suddenly, there is a small burst of colour. It is so vibrant against the brown it seems almost unnatural, like it shouldn't be there. But my eyes know better. My eyes have been itching for this colour for months.

The first pink and yellow flowers are like little warning bells, spring is riding in, prepare the way. Stand up straight and give it a proper welcome. The blossoms, however, are white and cottony. They are like fresh towels out of the dryer. They wrap themselves around the entire scene and make it soft. They want you to sit down, or lie down, stare at the sky, forget all the circumstances which make everything seem brown.

Sometimes when I ride the bus I forget where I am, what country am I in, where am I going, why am I going there. I supposed the challenged chair is the right place for me. Either that, or I have found a place where I can see that these things are only the circumstances. They are not what brings the meaning to my life. What brings the  meaning is that I am compelled to say hello and goodbye to the bus driver. Compelled by love, I suppose, for my fellow human being.

God's landscape which he continuously recreates each second that goes by, is enough of a gift to remind me that love does make the world go round. It makes the flowers bloom vibrantly, even among the old dead brown earth and sticks. It makes me also know that I cannot go to any place, not even the end of this earth (for Korea might be almost the farthest place from my home) where he doesn't not reach me with his gifts and with his love.

On Saturdays and Sundays I sort of miss 14-1 and I am tempted to take Avaih for a ride on it...to anywhere.

The True Vine