Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutang slow dance.

by Anna Quindlen

This was a speech made by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Anna Quindlen at the graduation ceremony of an American university where she was awarded an Honorary PhD in February 2008.

----

"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk or your life on a bus or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.
 
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.
 
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and them to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true.
 
You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon or found a lump in your breast?
 
Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.
 
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
 
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the colour of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.
 
I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face.
 
Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".
 
 

Five, five, one, zero

One week to go. May the 5th onwards, Hinterland will come alive. God bless the idea of togetherness. It should be like coming home. Coming home to the absolute law, coming home to you, your heart chakra. :)

luluwolf.com

W# (Victor Wooten and the language of music)

Sumatra's Diary: 220410

So now that Sumatra is with me let me take you through the corridors of what. Route three-not-three, no? Today on my way back from the lake I saw the lonely faces of the, er what they call the middle-class, their routine, templatised life, their morning walks, their corporate talks, those "got to up those stocks" talks, living room crocs, dotdotdot. You know what I mean. The routine of things, that sticking to and of time, those boundary lines, those same hello's, flirting in the pantry over morning tea before the Monday morning catch-up meeting which happens after the timesheets are distributed and we begin working our mechanical hands and brains on auto-pilot fearing that one day we might die alone and poor. The feeling that I was not on that side of the fence comforted me. That bardo thing brought back of how we got to go through the hell of one thing be it greed, lust, pride to come out to the top and see the other side of the spectrum. You reach that atomic interval. But no, nuff said, they are there, I am here, everything is everywhere. And that's it no? We could be finished this very second.

Tx S, you really seem of the earth, of the sky, of the clouds, of the leaves, of the seas, of the rivers, of the oneness that is us and that one-in-all, all-in-one thing.

Sumatra, Hinterland

Sumatra xx2-1804

Born in Hinterland: 18 April, 2010 (Original date of birth - 1988)

Type: Motorbike

Impermanence in Benaras

Thezenve, Hinterland

To touch the earth, feel the leaves, smell the clouds,
To walk the earth, smell the leaves, feel the clouds, love the earth...

100handsofHinterland :)

May

Few more days to May,
So, I quietly stay
and wait to break that transient ray
into permanent daylight, day after day...

Maternal Shift

Like those old storytellers weaving stories of those long gone days when the sun shone brighter, the grass looked greener and the water happier. A tonal ascent in a certain life. A discovery of that path, that visceral path, that intangible pattern, that randomness...

They spoke in that peculiar language called Viscera. It sounded like the trees laughing. Suffixed with "ha's", following their idols of pataphysics with their twisted yet deconstructionist views of life, their unformulaic ways of being nature itself, being the experience rather than experiencing. Here, Hinterland is born, in irregular numbers, uncertainties and Wabi-Sabi. Zen, too. Slow, still, like that moment by the stream when the cherry-blossom flowered on me and I could almost hear the water dreaming. Hinterland is here, hinterland is you. Hinterland is one, that motherpower absolute, that one truth, that "dharma".

In that stillness there is that point in time when nothing is heard. Nor is anything said. Everything is understood. Everything is simply everything. No labels, no you's, no me's. Just that simple nothingness that no one makes a fuss about. Its now time to be. Just be the experience of nothingness, that zeropower. That is hinterland. This is hinterland, too.

The grass that day made me cry. I felt the earth's heartbeat next to mine. I lost the I-carapace completely. The concept of time disappeared. A maternal shift happened, that nature thing you know? And when those falsetto's echoed in the wilderness, I sensed transcendence swooping downwards like the Mother of God, at that moment deep into the night when all life somehow seemed asleep and unconscious.


* Wabi-Sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence, specifically impermanence.

Development of the "Viscera" script

Hinterland is for everyone and no one,
Hinterland is everywhere and nowhere,
Hinterland is you, Hinterland is me,
Hinterland is xx, Hinterland is xy.

----

Sun, sky, clouds, hills, river, earth...
(Finally the start of something new, arriving somewhere but not here...)

AbstraKt Kollision

Ft. Dryday, Rebel, Womanturningaway, The Servile, Mixedfeelings Pt. 1 and 2... among others. The pieces are nearing completion. 100handsdotcom will be freshfreshfresh from Hinterland very soon.

Holyyy Shittt

varanasi from isaac niemand on Vimeo.

Pilu

Time of play: fourth quarter of the day (late afternoon before sunset)
Expression: she does not know herself what she wants, she is satisfied yet longing for something else, sometimes gay and sometimes sad, ever changing.

Barbara

She knocked, I opened the door.
We spoke for hours about life and love. Somehow the questions I had were answered by her. A very awakened woman who has seen a lot in her life. Finally she has landed up in Benaras and here sitting in my room talking to me about what could have gone wrong over the last couple of months. I found answers and now I feel a lot more lucid. A sense of clarity. Now I can move on and stand on the edge, like that piece of wire in "Edge-less" (Artery, Hinterland, Vol. 001).

I'm through with this whole circus.

Shyam

Back in Shiva-city, a roaring rampage of heat;
Evening, Balu's tea shop and wonderful love story of Shyam, the pocket-size boy
He told me of his 9-year long relationship, his undying love for Madhumita (tattooed on his arm), how he used to go every evening to see her at her balcony (the signal of two coughs to make her know he is downstairs), how he would end his life if she didn't marry him, how she used to call him everyday at 7am, 2pm, 7pm and 10pm to check if he has eaten anything, how she used to throw notes to the ground, he told me about all their loveletters (thousands of them), about the concept of "true love waits" and his own idea of "if the crow bites your finger, will you look at your finger or the crow", simple philosophies that have guided him so far and kept him in everlasting love, about how she refers to him as her child, how he stopped drinking, smoking and all such things after he met her, so many other inspiring stories of their love. He spoke, I just listened to everything he said. He told me his story in total sincerity, I listened in total awe. So much to learn, so much to learn...

Bliss is
legs in steaming hot water, back against stone.

I feel fresh and delicate like a rainbow in the sky.
Stillnessisnice

Still




real still.
Nothing, just nothing.
Vashishta, heaven within my fingertips, the world in my hands.

Tristeza

She cuts the ribbons on the floor,
draws letters on the wall,
she also paints the eyeliner on her heart.

She is the ellipsis
Macrovision in definition
she is the little green light beside the bright blue wall.

She is Tristeza.

Used

Diffused,
Like the height of light.

Infused,
With the unkind mind.

Bemused,
In the throw of to-and-fro.

Confused,
With the way of the paragraphic day.

I miss you from isaac niemand on Vimeo.

Abstrakt Kollision

A funny day.

A day spent
on the houseboat, chillum with Bengali baba,

A day spent
in those recurring walks in the gulleys, then back to Assi, surprise visitor Marco Italian trumpeteer, like a boy discovering a new toy, lost in the sounds of my mini-xylophone, Aurobindo breathing through every note in the minor scale. Doodling away with Viswanath and Dhrupad singer Amar, minutes and how they flutter through air pressure, then McDonalds followed, my western heart happy, back on cycle rickshaw to Assi, a fun day, surprise moments and then the icing on the cake. The Black Cherry, that moment when I got off the cycle richshaw, paid the guy, walked onwards and trying to avoid a dog fight, crash into cyclist from behind, dog jumps towards me, bites. A little blood, now I am on the grid, I was the collision point, abstrakt kollision, the victim, the one who got hit and hopefully, the one who got away...

...and the poem that followed...

That moment when the points collide
On the trajectory
When the orbits intersect, the x meets the y,
the Bite is done, the needle and the damage done, the moment passed.
Stillness followed...
Like that time, deep into the night, in the silent wilderness when the tigers come out
That stillness

Feeding Fish

Panchganga Ghat, the narrow lanes behind it, like walking through the streets of time, chai in a small shop with green and blue walls, then bought some dough with MohanDanger and Viswanath Baba, went down to the ghats, added water to it, fed the fish. Took the boat back to Manikarnika, fed some more fish, lit chillum under submerged temple near the underground path that has been blocked off for over 2000 years. Up on the cantilvered section of the temple, two dogs playing. While I quietly fed the fish. Back to Balu's tea shop, a cigarette and on the cycle again, back home... a wonderful day.

3/3/10

And then the following day I went to Lara's house, again.

Transcendental. In one word. She told me all these lovely stories about her, how she lived in caves for a year, broke her six-string to make it a 3-string, trishul and all, how she landed up in Delhi and could understand Hindi, like the phonetics were from a mirror-image of a parallel life, or probably the previous one. We jammed, my 12-string and her concept-guitar. It somehow kept meeting in places. Like a meeting in the aisles. Secretly. The secrets of the soul slowly unfolding. A closer connection. A looking in view. Seeing. When she sang, I was taken back to Medieval times, those lutes from that time. That pale-green light surrounding everything. Pastel. She told me about Xi, a name she gave herself which she felt was her, about her paintings - those wonderful ones of the mountains, of Mt. Kailash, of all those moments her heart blinked. And then she began playing the harmonium and we had a very crazy midnight suicide-time raga, dark and brooding. Then she continued playing on her concept-guitar. She sang some wonderful songs. I was lost. Wonderfully lost. There is a deep sense of devotion I feel for people like her. "Like her" wouldnt be the right thing to say, because she is the only one like herself. But yeah, them. That lot. That gifted lot of musicians and artists. And over the last few days the wonderful insight into Mohanettan's paintings have opened another window of my soul, now giving me a clearer view of what its like in there. Deep where that light shines. That eternal light, that silent light. Of truth.

I am in total awe. Her heartchakra is in total spring. Total spring, absolute earth.

2/3/10

The day I went to Lara's house.

So, I met Lara at Kashi Coffee stall. She was on her Luna. Looking so cool prancing around in His Highness Shiva Ji's megacity. Cool, legs loose, a free spirit. I felt it. The energy was raw, untamed. Beautiful. Like a Lara Croft in Benaras. Supergirl.

We went back to my pad. She sat on the floor eagerly waiting to see Look here, Kunigunda, my Tarkovsky-inspired magnumopus from the pre-man phase. I played it, Ganesh played his pakawaj alongwith the Rachels. A strange southern twist pre-mississippi blues. We spoke a bit about the film afterwards. Then she took the guitar and played a few chords. She invited me over to hers. I was eager to see this instrument she had created, a marriage of the Sarod and an acoustic guitar, 4 strings, numerous sympathetic strings.

We went back to hers on her Luna. Past Gangaji, reflecting the lovely full-moons light. Ripples of earth. Lara mouthing "Abhay niklo yaar" to the rather drunk people on the street, the Holi-hangover partypeople. I told her I could teach her some "gaali's". On a tangent, oh, I just remembered how Pashupathinath ji sang "Gaali mein doongi" and how he repeated numerous times, variations, various nuances. Enthralled and totally zoned out, total macrocosm, magnetic field something +ve, something -ve. Mixed. Gallons of electrons.

Back to her, she began playing songs. She was surrounded by Tablas, a harmonium, a little table with her iPod player and other things. And she started playing... and I wont say anymore words. It was beautiful, really beautiful. Her posture when she was playing the tabla, her hands, blurring between the eyes of time, her head skywards looking at the third eye looking back. Eyes seeing eye to eye. Dissoved in the stillness, an energy I haven't experienced in a long time. She is Lara. Lara Xi. She is Kali's energy in a French outfit.

The choices we make, the cakes we bake, the decisions we take, the nuances we fake
All like little mudhills around a lake...

She said, "I dreamt I wore a Mulberry hat."
He said, "You should be a beginner to life always."
She said, "I prefer lilac, though."
He didn't say anything.

Juxtaposer™

IwillalignIwillattachIwilltouchIwillfeelIwillsmellIwillseeIwillhear
IamtheJuxtaposer™

Dhrupad "Nuances"

Yesterday was quite transcendental. I went for a lovely Dhrupad concert organised by my friend Yogesh in Ramakrishna Ashram, open air, under the moon. I am getting the flavour of this wonderful soul. Its like an open sea of the slightest nuances in voice. God bless India.

As Much As You Can - C.P. Cavafy (The Canon)

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.


Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

(C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992)

Thanks, J.

Bringing in the light through the back door,
Limiting the shift of the paper I tore.

Untangling the night from the timid sun,
Developing negatives on the run.

A day of strange serendipitous events...

About yesterday...
So, I got to Aum Cafe as usual in the morning. Marcela was there, her hearty laugh, her positivity, her all-black clothing. Such a wonderful happy soul. We chatted for a bit about this and that and then finally when she scribbled her full name on a piece of paper, I found it strange that her surname was Rossiter and the first four letters of her name Marc. So, who is Mark Rossiter? He is a very good friend of mine in Dubai. He was the protagonist of my film Look here, Kunigunda, back in 2006, all those mad black and white days in Dubai trying to jump off that corporate machine, those lonely days in Ogivly... I needed that outlet. Anyway, so we spoke of the possible genealogical connection and there was Ludwina there who apparently is a psycho-analyst which then made her interested in the film since the film is about the wonders of the subconscious mind. Somehow three of us were connected, informally, though "formally separate". So, they are coming over to watch LHK today...

In the evening, after a few j's and a cookie I made my way to Hayat to meet Gael and friends. I got there, we all connected, it was very peaceful, a few good laughs with Gael, spoke to his friends. I don't remember their names, though. I also had a lovely chat with Mohammed, the Jordanian who runs the restaurant and discussed his love for Oum Khalthoum, her beautiful voice, her different expressions of love, the soul in her music... Suddenly I got a text message from Mohanettan (Paris Mohan). He is dead broke, apparently vomitting blood, no food. Ten minutes later, Gael's friend asked me if I knew Paris Mohan since we were on the subject of tribal life and the films I made in Kerala. How strange. She knows Mohanettan quite well and we connected through that. I wonder how these things happen. Strange connections, funny grids, patterns, all merging into the universal one, the law of nature. Dharma, totality and beyond...

An Introductory Note

Just as industrialisation began to take over, Dara Okat began planting the seeds of Earth-Realisation, a 14-volume, 150,000-word document on the consideration and the understanding of our mother earth and the wonderful harmony of its existential elements. These detailed descriptions and handdrawn sketches of his artworks titled Schema-Livitus were displayed at the Okat Lab, circa 1955, and were conceived on a windy night in December when Okat was stranded at the Paris Convention on sustainable societies.

It was around this time he began with the conceptual drawings of Hinterland, a place, according to him, "for everyone and no one". Alongside he started writing his second full-length thesis on the emergence of a new consciousness. He titled this work The Psychograph of Dara Okat. In his initial studies and research, he developed the floating room where he conducted exhibitions and talks with imminent philosophers, activists, musicians, filmmakers and dancers. These sessions were documented by The Vision Controller in detail and an analysis of current scenarios was archived in analog and tape format at Arc-Eye.

Hinterland, figuratively defined as an area lying beyond what is visible and known, was a place that Okat saw as a collective of kindred spirits. The make-up ie fabric of their internal textures were cut from the same cloth. They wore Vision Controllers, a silly metaphor to the ever confined lives of the others, those in externalities and personalities. The essence of these things was baffling to the human eye. The island, the sun-eye, was the heart of Hinterland. People visited, walked the visceral path* (originally sketched by Dara Okat, circa 1950), bought the funny gadgets of H10,000/-, tried out the DaraOkatSubliminal T-shirts from Quro, sampled some fresh basil at Tea Tree, walked the "D" bridge cross Alpha Channel and unto the wildernests that followed.The Ellipses was the communion of three friends, film, music and architecture.

Tangent, sometimes also called Transition, was Okat's den. He projected messages from his ethereal room in the trees. He would come down dressed in a beautiful bear costume monkeying around looking for honey. These were the little signposts in his cave. His tavern, his carnival, his terra.

His remote-controlled channel Okat TV projected those flickering images of the cult superseries "The Moons of Randox 12". Those still images of a nape bearing the fruit of Okat's brain, the seeing eye. I wont forget those last hours we spent at Arc-eye sifting through videos and still images, analog feeds from The Vision Controller, a post-modern eye-videocamera that comes in three models - black, white and mirror. Discreetly becoming the nemesis of the seeing eye, the antithesis, the antagonist. Eyeless, yet witnessing everything, documenting everything, live feeds right into the nerve cells of the heart of Arc-Eye. That ginger tea Okat sent us at sunset was unforgettable. I wont forget the strawberry specially hand-picked by Okat, like he quietly sent us a bit of his energy, a sneak-peak of the oracle that he is. Kingsize.

I'm the sky's hidden tears, the sun's hidden fears...

disTEMPO

Click, clack, three-four, waltz shfting to a sevenish rhythm, breaking into a major vacuum, lost in Bflat minor, drifting over keys, aimless, like tip-toes on water, cling-cling tinkling, tip-top-tip-top, drop...
The second movement is a flutter, shifting to another mood, pulling the beat past time, before time, never in time, challenging the nature of things, aligning itself to the void, breaking the parameters of sound, sleeping in silence, awoken in the freshness of that warmsound, the sound of the new day. Apparently, the sun is up.
The leviathan of the outro, the enormity of the progression crushing like the hardwaves on rocks, forming clusters, plaza's and coves, the progression denotes a dip in the psychograph, a trough after a peak, a low after a high, lost in that last joint made with the night's unfriendly hands...
End-image appearinggg...

Fivefiveseven

Dead stov' on the ground
Right hand underground
Six two one oh! bound
Foundlostfoundlostfound

Break three in its knees
Head lost blown to squeeze
White mouse after cheese
Me's, you's, me's, you's, me's

Cry the pillow off the bed
Fight the fellow in my head
Kill the yellow in my red
Bite the hello in my bread

A Pole
brought in
A December Soul Caught in November

Hinterland

Dot above the eyes
Sitting in tangent
Transmission,
Open.
Never shuts
Sees,
Never blinks,
Listens,
Never thinks,
Breathes.

Dot above the eye
Like the last sentence
In a seminal work
Existential and
in silent oneness with Her
Like a thoroughfare
Stretching out into a wistful dream

Dot above the eye
Placed like a door
Open door, oceandoor
Never shuts
Open,
Since the dawn of man.

You are here, we are open.
Like the dot above your eyes.

Possible Preface to "A Hopeless Man" by Nic Holas

Any2 for ribbed Shackle Toe?

Through the realms of Sardine Village;
From the burden of yesterday's meat defeat
comes "Swift AL" and his pointless and scattered collection of weapons, soft socks, branded folds, pre-smile jokes and not forgeTTing his / her partner in crime "BolloX McBollox" a deeply clean, clean shaven, beard of a twat.... See More

Together they work alone sorting through enormous, yet reportedly too expensiV to see "lost dead knee helicopters" with zero intent.

buTT it is that thYme of year when 89th Ventricle Street becomes the newest monster of aLL, so no wonder AmbiDextor IV is hanging about pining for his gorgeous wife with her 5.89 million nipples.

Yes, after careful farting with smelly bell shaped after meal grins, these wankers are best served with metal shaped poo from Mickey House.

Smell?

Five, three, two

Five seconds later, five decembers back,
Five things on the bedside table,
Three switches to the right,
Aluminum conditioning, a repository of defeat,
Two words in my head, two colours in my bed,
Pulling the chord from the ceiling
...into the stages of my psyche.

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

Tulips The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.
My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.
I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.
Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.
Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.
The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Time

Its 11:17, I have no idea what that means,
Its Wednesday, I have no idea what that means,
Its February, I have no idea what that means,
Its 2010, I have no idea what that means,
But I do know that...
Its the time for colour and a curious love, a time for corduroys, a time for elephants and turtles, a time for two R's, two N's, two L's, a time for a breathing heart.
I might know what this means.

It has to begin somewhere, end somewhere.
Okat thinks, Okat lives, Okat says,
"Hinterland is everywhere, Hinterland is you. All you have to do is look."

The Transmigration: Sunbirds (Wildlife analysis)

Step 1: Research

The sunbirds and spiderhunters are a family, Nectariniidae, of very small passerine birds. There are 132 species in 15 genera. The family is distributed throughout Africa, southern Asia and just reaches northern Australia. Most sunbirds feed largely on nectar, although they will also take insects, especially when feeding young. Fruit is also part of the diet of some species. Their flight is fast and direct on their short wings.

The sunbirds have counterparts in two very distantly related groups: the hummingbirds of the Americas and the honeyeaters of Australia. The resemblances are due to convergent evolution due to the similar nectar-feeding lifestyle. Some sunbird species can take nectar by hovering like a hummingbird, but usually perch to feed.

The family ranges in size from the 5-gram Black-bellied Sunbird to the Spectacled Spiderhunter, at about 45 grams. Like the hummingbirds, sunbirds are strongly sexually dimorphic, with the males usually brilliantly plumaged in metallic colours. In addition to this the tails of many species are longer in the males, and overall the males are larger. Sunbirds have long thin down-curved bills and brush-tipped tubular tongues, both adaptations to their nectar feeding. The spiderhunters, of the genus Arachnothera, are distinct in appearance from the other members of the family. They are typically larger than the other sunbirds, with drab brown plumage that is the same for both sexes and long down-curved beaks.

Species of sunbirds that live in high altitudes will enter torpor while roosting at night, lowering their body temperature and entering a state of low activity and responsiveness.

Sunbirds are a tropical Old World family, with representatives in Africa, Asia and Australasia. In Africa they are found mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar but are also distributed in Egypt, in Asia the group occurs along the coasts of the Red Sea as far north as Israel, with a gap in their distribution till Iran, from where the group occurs continuously as far as southern China and Indonesia. In Australasia the family occurs in New Guinea, north eastern Australia and the Solomon Islands. They are generally not found on oceanic islands, with the exception of the Seychelles. The greatest variety of species is in Africa, where the group probably arose. Most species are sedentary or short-distance seasonal migrants. The sunbirds occur over the entirely of the family's range, whereas the spiderhunters are restricted to Asia.

The sunbirds and spiderhunters occupy a wide range of habitats, with a majority of species being found in primary rainforest, but other habitats used by the family including disturbed secondary forest, open woodland, open scrub and savannah, coastal scrub and alpine forest. Some species have readily adapted to human modified landscapes such as plantations, gardens and agricultural land. Many species are able to occupy a wide range of habitats from sea level to 4900 m.

Sunbird are active diurnal birds that generally occur in pairs or occasionally in small family groups. A few species occasionally gather in larger groups, and sunbird will join with other birds to mob potential predators, although sunbirds will also aggressively target other species, even if they are not predators, when defending their territories.

The Transmigration: Blue Jays (Wildlife analysis)

Step 1: Research

The Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is a passerine bird, and a member of the family Corvidae native to North America. It belongs to the "blue", Canadian or American jays, which are, among the Corvidae, not closely related to other jays. It is adaptable, aggressive and omnivorous, and has been colonizing new habitats for many decades.

The Blue Jay measures 22–30 cm (9–12 in) from bill to tail and weighs 70–100 grams (2.47–3.53 oz), with a wingspan of 34–43 cm (13–17 in). There is a pronounced crest on the head, a crown of feathers, which may be raised or lowered according to the bird's mood. When excited or aggressive, the crest may be fully raised. When frightened, the crest bristles outwards, brushlike. When the bird is feeding among other jays or resting, the crest is flattened to the head.

Its plumage is lavender-blue to mid-blue in the crest, back, wings, and tail, and its face is white. The underside is off-white and the neck is collared with black which extends to the sides of the head. The wing primaries and tail are strongly barred with black, sky-blue and white. The bill, legs, and eyes are all black. Males and females are nearly identical except that males are slightly larger.

As with other blue-hued birds, the Blue Jay's coloration is not derived by pigments, but is the result of light interference due to the internal structure of the feathers; if a blue feather is crushed, the blue disappears as the structure is destroyed. This is referred to as structural coloration.

Blue Jays have strong black bills used for cracking nuts, and acorns and for eating corn, grains and seeds, although they also eat insects such as beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars.

Blue Jays can make a large variety of sounds, and individuals may vary perceptibly in their calling style. Like other corvids, they may learn to mimic human speech. Blue Jays can also copy the cries of local hawks so well that it is sometimes difficult to tell which it is. Their voice is typical of most jays in being varied, but the most commonly recognized sound is the alarm call, which is a loud, almost gull-like scream. There is also a high-pitched jayer-jayer call that increases in speed as the bird becomes more agitated.This particular call can be easily confused with the chick-a-dee's song because of the slow starting chick-ah-dee-ee. Blue Jays will use these calls to band together to mob potential predators such as hawks and drive them away from the jays' nests.

Blue Jays also have quiet, almost subliminal calls which they use among themselves in proximity. One of the most distinctive calls of this type is often referred to as the "rusty pump" owing to its squeaky resemblance to the sound of an old hand-operated water pump. The Blue Jay (and other corvids) are distinct from all other songbirds for using their call as a birdsong.

Dial-Ogh

p.s.H.:
Did Yu hear about the man who was born with a shoe for a mind?
Well, for a while his best friend, Arnold "the", thought it 0.9% hilarious to pile on loads of weight to his 2 foots. No one will EVER know how this took place, but after 10.46 years in social solitude his 2 foots got so large (or extra big) that they becam...e "mind". He combined both 2 foots into one convenient mind and within this mind he placed his shoe. It became his mind.

The Vision Controller:
Mind then took a walk (with his mindless feet) to the otherside of the galaxy. He was so disappointed when all he could see were clones of himself, but badly reproduced, made in taiwan clones selling for six quid. Alas, he thought to himself, and retreated into the unbecoming glaziers in south of france. He was 4.6% less happier than he was initially...