rejectomorph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rejectomorph) wrote2024-04-14 07:50 am
rejectomorph) wrote2024-04-14 07:50 am
Reset Forty-Nine, Day Three Hundred Twenty-Four
The likely thing happened and I had Friday's dinner for Saturday dinner, and then I went to sleep for quite sometime, and only got up when dawn was breaking today. I don't have to think about today's dinner, as I have leftovers from Thursday, so it's all taken care of. I like when I don't have to think. It's like discovering you have an unexpected luxury on hand.
I spent quite a bit of Saturday evening looking for a pair of debit cards I got as a rebate for some stuff I bought. In the olden times, rebates arrived as checks one could deposit into one's back account. Now they often are debit cards, encouraging the recipient to spend the rebate instead of save it. But I had displaced an envelope containing the two cards totaling thirty six dollars. Did I accidentally throw them out? Did I simply put them in the wrong stack of stuff? Well, I'd done something stupid for sure, and I lamented my growing stupidity, because I really want to spend that thirty six bucks now, but can't until I find those cards.
So this morning I decided to check the drawer in my bedside table to see if I put them there, but I didn't find them. Then I saw my wallet sitting on the table, and a vague memory stirred. I felt about in one of the small compartments, and there they were. It turned out I hadn't done something stupid, I'd done something smart, and then stupidly forgot the smart thing I'd done. So, rather in a parallel manner to Schrodinger's cat, my brain is both stupid and smart at the same time. Now I can buy something. The thing I buy will probably turn out to be stupid, but for now it isn't yet, and maybe, like my aged brain, it will even turn out to be both smart and stupid at the same time, so there's no point dwelling on it. Let Schrodinger worry about it. Or his cat. I have other stupid and smart things to do.
Sunday Verse
by Richard Jackson
There are times when they gather at the edge of your life,
Shadows slipping over the far hills, daffodils
blooming too early, the dark matter of the universe
that threads its way through the few thousand blackbirds
that have invaded the trees out back. Every ending
sloughs off our dreams like snakeskin. This is the kind of
black ice the mind skids across. The candlelight burning down
into the sand. The night leaving its ashes in our eyes.
There are times when your voice turns over in my sleep.
It is no longer blind. The sky is no longer deaf.
There are times when it seems the stars practice
all night just to become fireflies, when it seems there is
no end to what our hearts scribble on corridor walls.
Only when we look at each other do we cease to be ourselves.
Only at a certain height does the smoke blend into air.
There are times when your words seem welded to that sky.
There are times when love is so complicated it circles
like chimney swifts unable to decide where to land.
There are endings so sad their shadows scuff the dirt.
Their sky is as inconsolable as the two year old, Zahra,
torn from her mother and beaten to death in the Sudan.
There are endings so sad I want the morning light
to scourge the fields. Endings that are only what the river
dreams when it dries up. Endings that are constant echoes.
There are times when I think we are satellites collecting
dust from one of the earlier births of the universe Don't give up.
Each ending is an hourglass filled with doors. There are times
when I feel you might be searching for me, when I can read
what is written on the far sides of stars. I'm nearly out of time.
My heart is a dragonfly. I'll have to settle for this, standing under
a waterfall of words you never said. There are times like this
when no ending appears, times when I am so inconsolably happy.
I spent quite a bit of Saturday evening looking for a pair of debit cards I got as a rebate for some stuff I bought. In the olden times, rebates arrived as checks one could deposit into one's back account. Now they often are debit cards, encouraging the recipient to spend the rebate instead of save it. But I had displaced an envelope containing the two cards totaling thirty six dollars. Did I accidentally throw them out? Did I simply put them in the wrong stack of stuff? Well, I'd done something stupid for sure, and I lamented my growing stupidity, because I really want to spend that thirty six bucks now, but can't until I find those cards.
So this morning I decided to check the drawer in my bedside table to see if I put them there, but I didn't find them. Then I saw my wallet sitting on the table, and a vague memory stirred. I felt about in one of the small compartments, and there they were. It turned out I hadn't done something stupid, I'd done something smart, and then stupidly forgot the smart thing I'd done. So, rather in a parallel manner to Schrodinger's cat, my brain is both stupid and smart at the same time. Now I can buy something. The thing I buy will probably turn out to be stupid, but for now it isn't yet, and maybe, like my aged brain, it will even turn out to be both smart and stupid at the same time, so there's no point dwelling on it. Let Schrodinger worry about it. Or his cat. I have other stupid and smart things to do.
Sunday Verse
Alternate Endings
by Richard Jackson
There are times when they gather at the edge of your life,
Shadows slipping over the far hills, daffodils
blooming too early, the dark matter of the universe
that threads its way through the few thousand blackbirds
that have invaded the trees out back. Every ending
sloughs off our dreams like snakeskin. This is the kind of
black ice the mind skids across. The candlelight burning down
into the sand. The night leaving its ashes in our eyes.
There are times when your voice turns over in my sleep.
It is no longer blind. The sky is no longer deaf.
There are times when it seems the stars practice
all night just to become fireflies, when it seems there is
no end to what our hearts scribble on corridor walls.
Only when we look at each other do we cease to be ourselves.
Only at a certain height does the smoke blend into air.
There are times when your words seem welded to that sky.
There are times when love is so complicated it circles
like chimney swifts unable to decide where to land.
There are endings so sad their shadows scuff the dirt.
Their sky is as inconsolable as the two year old, Zahra,
torn from her mother and beaten to death in the Sudan.
There are endings so sad I want the morning light
to scourge the fields. Endings that are only what the river
dreams when it dries up. Endings that are constant echoes.
There are times when I think we are satellites collecting
dust from one of the earlier births of the universe Don't give up.
Each ending is an hourglass filled with doors. There are times
when I feel you might be searching for me, when I can read
what is written on the far sides of stars. I'm nearly out of time.
My heart is a dragonfly. I'll have to settle for this, standing under
a waterfall of words you never said. There are times like this
when no ending appears, times when I am so inconsolably happy.