The final day of the month is again enshrouded in mist, proving that grey can be glorious. I never get tired of fog. I love to photograph its many manifestations, from the clear near through the misty further to the distant nothingness. Something mystical manifests in fog; Avalon was hidden in the mist and only those who knew the path could find their way through.

This island can be like that. From the other side of the mists where does the world go? Right now, there is no world but this one right here. The edges blur; nothingness becomes real.

Another misty day at the edge of the world, looking over into nothingness where a view once was. Cool! I love the mystery, who knows what is really happening inside the fog? Reality may shift and morph to suit itself while nobody watches; imagine the freedom for the fog faeries and sprites of the air as they dance and show their true shapes, hidden in an opaque envelope of mother of pearl air.

‘Mother of pearl’, don’t you love that phrase? I can see my hand in front of my face, but it shimmers in this iridescent water crystal air.

Something about music played with friends, something wild and transcendent happened tonight… be happy for me, anybody out there. I joined the band, lent my hands and rhythm to the rhyme scheme shared by all and even played bass for the first time. It was horribly fun, so much so fun I want one now—oh joy, another thing to set my heart’s desire on! Anything I could say about music falls into cliché, so there’s almost no point saying it.

Still, I have nothing else to talk about here and now. Every cell is aswirl with rhythm and song.

Belly full of healthy dinner, I can eat French toast later with a clear conscience. Tradeoffs and bargains abound in the inner world of guilt and sin; “I’ll do this good thing if I can get away with doing that bad thing in exchange.” I’d like to ditch the good-bad paradigm, but then I’d be fresh out of digms (which make the world go round). Let’s have a new paradigm—a flock, a parade, a crowd of digms to replace the dogmas of the day.

I’ll believe in yours if you’ll believe in mine; how’s that for a lovely pair-o-digm?

The world today is pearled in fog, made mystical, revealed to be the mystery it’s been called all along. With proof like this, who needs clarity? I would live in fog, dim diffuse rays of sun brightening its crystal bits, if it meant that the dream might never end, but the ground lands on me from underneath with a thud and my blood must once again be pumped on its endless journey from cell to cell, cleansing, feeding, scrubbing, nurturing, washing, hardworking heart never resting, never tiring.

I’m the one who surrenders, giving in to the grey glamour of deathwishing gloom, but inside my flesh the work never ends, no matter how much trash I flush down the hatch for my system to try to synthesize into useful fuel, processing the rest into easily excreted batches which are then dispatched with pleasure. Oh, baby. What more could one want from a physical life? (more…)

Everything is mystery. Contemplating it muddles my mind into strange binding twists, moebius strips of self vs self, all me but all strange. Who am I today, right now, this minute, this fractal moment in time and space? What do I look like—is it possible for me to ever know? Why all the fucking questions? Shut up!

Blast and hell, the tolling bells in the back of my brain won’t let up, they make me think that maybe time is running out, as if such a thing were possible. Can time be bounded? Did it begin, will it end?

I have a love-hate relationship with woman, with self. We’re a pain in the ass, finicky defensive manipulative reactive subtle incomprehensible. I find myself thinking those things about me, mystery to myself, yet when I’m with women the mystery becomes magic, a form of greatness, vastness like sky or sea that I could birth in. I fall in love with women, abundant rich deep thrilling magnetic powerful.

We’re a strange tribe whose language was stolen from us in the cradle so we no longer understand ourselves. Who will teach it to us, when our grandmothers are dead or have forgotten?

The day began in a dreamworld of drama, kidnapped sisters held at knifepoint by a Very Bad Guy and hauled via city bus to a torture school where they are beaten and traumatized. Meanwhile the bus driver knows what’s happening and reports back to the parents, who, it transpires, orchestrated the whole thing to teach the brats a lesson.

That kind of dream calls forth the inner cry, “What does it mean?” Surely meanings exist in my dense inner symbol world, self talking to self, saying something Really Important If Only I Knew What It Was. But no answer comes.

The sun’s return, shining in its misty winter way on feathered patches of clouds, lifts my mood for the moment to transcendent heights. Bliss and blessings! Overlooking the ocean, vistas open into heavenly proportions. Warm rays play over my flesh, make me think of spring’s approach. What with bulbs beginning to burgeon and buds of rosebushes already a-burst, this early onset of spring is the payoff for January on the wet coast.

By this time next month, we will nibble freshly-steamed nettles… and this is every bit as Canadian as frostbite or snowmen. We don’t all live in igloos, y’know.

Something new to say has become for the moment more urgent than substance, so I swim through amniotic brain fluid seeking novelties made of words, plain, sugared or chocolate. Baloney pan-fried in batter spatters nonsense on my keys, making me sneeze then snort a snoutful of snot in sneering, self-deriding annoyance, what nonsense! What crap! Fey fantasies flicker just out of sleight of hand, a new land beckoning with bright hazy coloured lights, how delightful the sight for a fraction of a fractal moment until grim grey reality once again settles its concrete bulk atop the plane of my brain.