Gold Line, Chinatown; Winter 2019

Look up from the deep, the static

All you see is what was,

what is
apparently,
enough.

Lungs inhaling, people slipping
past a line.

Space collapsing on itself;
time churning, slipping, sulking.

Light pulsing,
passing,
placing,

itself

on a face it’s seen before, or a billion of them

Only to leave them,
fading endlessly
into darkness.

Or what’s called darkness,
death, or a dead end. The abyss.

A dark point; or a point within itself.

A point not going anywhere, trapped within itself, drained of all its time.

A point alive only when it’s named, but at no other point in time.

No other–
What’s the point

Getting larger and larger into emptiness.

Universe unfurling into a mute minor nothing.

All forms of life fading, disintegrating from light, proceeding into decay

Fragmenting into space

outer,
void,
space.

Amid a billion other empty spaces just like them.

A point nearly breathless, though still heaving.

A point nearly obliterated, but still funneling

A point, then a consciousness

A point still percolating information

and transmitting noise into

this.

A point abandoned. Until now.

A point breaking ground until IT’S BROKEN;

Then a howl throttling from eons away,

Then a vision spiraling from the blood of these open veins,

Then a dream:

HOW tomorrow we rise again.

Look up from the deep, the static

All of time and space,

The stars.

They are still OURS.

J.T.

The Tides are Changing

As I look out at the horizon, I see waves that were once familiar replaced by new ones. As much as I might want to find the old waves again, I can’t recover something taken by the tide. And yet, I saw something interesting the other day when I read that ‘water has a perfect memory.’

I’ve also read that more than half of the human body is made up of water. I think for a moment about how every day somewhere there’s a new discussion about whether our lives are led by our own hands, or by a destiny somewhere beyond our control. But maybe it’s like water and the human body.

No matter what I might call water, my body knows that it needs water to live, to refresh itself, and to nourish other life. In turn, whether I view water as a resource given to me by the universe or a gift from God, the simple act of refilling my body with water itself might be the purest form of honoring its life-force.

In this same sense, whether the world looks like a broken conglomerate of water and land, or whether it looks like a perfect sphere in the midst of a dark galaxy, the world is still just being, and sometimes being is just enough. I can’t change how the tide treats me, but I can flow with the tide.

It’s only when I let go that I find myself absorbed by the world I struggle so often to understand. When I just walk into the water, my life reconnects with the originality of everything. Then, I remember. Together we all make up a brilliant waterfall through time and space. Everything is there.