Some notes will stray, but
others linger and haunt.
They carry the quickness as
the heart tarries its pace.

The fingers remember and the keys.
When our knees no longer bend
I will remember our music
and bow proudly.

Akismet has blocked a crazy number of supposed spam comments, but has automatically deleted all of them. So, if you commented on something and have yet to see that comment, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll look into it. It’s a g-mail account:
mick.nonlogic

I was starving for a smile
and a smile is what I found,
a thousand in your eyes.

You’re an oasis,
a gift from above.

He set the box on the banister-wrapped porch. He breathed deeply, turning to survey the large, old oak in his hedge-lined yard. He admired the quiet street of his new home thinking “What better place to grow old, and happy, and . . .”

His eyes trailed and a devilish smirk betrayed the interruption of his thoughts as he turned back to the box, hopping up on the porch to sit next to it. He ignored the stack of legal documents inside, but retrieved from within the implements of an ancient rite for which he was expertly-practiced. As he poured the first glass of well-aged Merlot he considered the amber hues of the setting sun and settled into happiness.

Adle was fortunate that no house existed directly across the street. He could watch the evening fade to dusk as the sun struggled against the high horizon of a distant hill. Soccer practice or some such adorable, urban thing had released shortly before darkfall, or so he reasoned by the convoy of minivans and SUVs filled with unruly, uniformed children. He thought he saw someone coming over the distant hill, but the final gasping rays of the sun always appear so intense, he could not really be sure. He ambled inside as the last ray of autumnal sunlight succumbed to the dark sky of the first long night.

The wooden screen door whined and shut with a comfortable slam. Adle forgot the day, the world outside, and sleepily climbed the stairs to crawl into bed. Nothing, though, not nascent happiness, not old, spring-bound screen doors, could bar the creeping darkness entry.

© 2010

Some notes will stray, but
others linger and haunt,
carry the quickness as
the heart tarries its pace.

The fingers remember and the keys.
When our knees no longer bend
I will remember
when our music had no end.

© 2010

Even if an atheist or group of atheists, using the scientific method, discovers what a person ought to do in a given situation to effect an outcome or even in every situation, what will come of that discovery? For argument, we will say that it is incorporated into culture and normative. A scientifically grounded rationale has now become ingrained in cultural memory and taken for granted. A population will attend to the logical flow chart until behaviours normalize to the predictions of the flow chart.

Science will have accorded us a step-by-step process of reaching an outcome, but it will not have evaluated the desirability of that outcome. It can describe the measures one ought take to achieve a granted outcome, but can never prescribe an outcome.

Appeals to genetic bias toward altruism and greed are accompanied by supporting rationale for the merit of each as foundations of ethical behaviour in society. Is disposition prescriptive? Twentieth-century psychology would certainly agree to such determinism.

To what rationally founded ethical framework does an atheist appeal? This is the criticism of religious men and religionists.

If the scientific method is impotent to prescribe, does it likewise lack ethical authority?

Of course, answering this affirmatively does not mutually affirm any religious ethical framework.

I happened on a cage with a tree long since felled and free of foliage. A small sort of pond, a sizable bathtub, really, was there. A large flat perch had been constructed on the horizontal tree. On the perch, a large thing covered in fur reclined. I thought it was dead at first, but it perked up as a zoo keepers motor cart passed by. Then, back to a lazy slump of brown-spotted, yellow fur.

I looked at the sign on the cage. “Amir Leopard”. I perused the cage– no leopard. My eyes met with the furry beast again. Dull eyes returned what might have been a gaze once, but now I saw what can only be described as an obligation. The reclining thing was burdened by its own eyes for the sake of using them. So it looked at me with eyes that should have burned with hunger and spirit, but instead only cold emptiness resided.

It did not move except to shift its head, to spread its empty, ennui gaze on something else. Could it remember the hunt? The rush of adrenaline as it neared its prey? The boring thing with a beautiful coat of fur- Was ferocity locked away somewhere in that cage or is it lost even to generations?

A child laughing took my attention and when I looked back the furry beast was gone. I expected a scream as someone discovered it had escaped, but in its place, on the man-built perch atop the tree long since felled, lay a far more terrifying sight than any free roaming predator.

There was no leopard.

Only a mirror.

I am amused that those events which affect us most seem to afford the least retrospect detail. I am no sentimentalist, either. I murdered that bastard years ago. Or maybe he died of some strange sort of gluttony, though forced it might have been. Still, all I remember is a phone call. One-thirty in the morning.

Click.

A ghastly deed. A quashing of hopes and dreams to no end except my own destruction. I had cast away or lost (my memory denies me the courtesy of details) such a great gift. That was not the sum of my ruin. As the diligent Fates wove, like a great, resounding gong that subtle Click reverberated through the threads of my life. That wicked wave still travels the fibers of my being- less often now than before.

As with a plucked string you can watch the source of the effect, but with greater clarity as time traipses onward. The wave slows and you can watch it traverse the full length of the string. It lingers a while longer, too.

Yet here I am visited again by the wave of yesterday. Perhaps one day it will carry me along and I will ride it and finally see where it goes. Today, though, my heart is wary and resilient.

Another wave has passed me by.

From the needless passing of Tyler Clementi a fervor has swept across the States. No doubt it will continue on until it is lost in the ocean of white noise we call the news. For now, though, we have moved past the mourning of a broken young man and consider how to avoid events like these. Unfortunately, idiots comprise the think-tank.

An NPR feature addressed the notion of particular need for Internet civility lessons to be taught in public schools. My disgust is not aimed at NPR, but any argument for specialized Internet civility curricula.

The Internet is a tool. While it is a peculiar space governed by our imagination, it is still just a tool, a mechanism extending or creating capabilities. As with any tool it is subject to the wielding hand. Sadly, very irresponsible hands were at play. Death here is not a product of the Internet, but of the capacity to, by any means, subvert humanity. This is the crime. I am unaware of any classes or special instructions given on the careful, civil use of candlesticks, despite the grande qualification of a candlestick as an excellent bludgeoning device.

Of course, the offending student(s), though vile catalyzing agents, did not murder Tyler. They merely subverted his humanity. They imposed upon his personhood in gravest fashion. The very suggestion that “the rules of the Internet” are ambiguous and require explicit clarification in public school setting disheartens me greatly. If that is true, that our humanity requires explicit, fully expounded instruction, then we are a hopeless race of creatures.

Social commentaries have long mourned the loss of civility in American culture. We live in a country, perhaps a world entirely, where no one cares to say ‘hello’ while passing by, where we step over the body of a dying young woman because our carton of cigarettes beckons. We live in country, perhaps a world entirely, where foul language with no real value in communication dominates our speech and we wonder why our discussions never progress. We neglect meaningful discourse and concede to those who yell the loudest. We dispense accolades as freely as prescription pills and wonder why our children grow up plagued with uncommon strains of avarice and schadenfreude.

Will we make of every tool a weapon for our own destruction? How many ways will we discover by which to hate ourselves, to spite our great potential?

Tyler Clementi died because in America we cherish, cherish the virtue of schadenfreude and relish in the domination of another human being by the subversion of his very humanity.

She never glances,
but considers all that she sees.
Her smile is the fire
   around which transient hearts warm.
Her eyes are the consoling beverage imbibed.
Her face, though, is a meadow of serenity
   far from the urban streets, and
   Time stops to hear her speak as
She considers all that she sees.

—————————————————-

Conversation passes,
a breeze among daisies
carrying seeds of new breaths
drawn in hope.
Words so spoken are pollen
   drifting to fertile ears-
   fruit born in the mind
is devoured by the creatures there.
As new life sustains
A breath is drawn in hope.

© 2010