the big round

jean posted a beautiful photo of the moon here. it's the same moon that i see out my window even if it is a different sky. i turn around and look out my window which faces east and right now the moon is high up. last night nicholas and i watched it as it started low just below the tree-line then saw it rise this lovely luminous round. an october moon. jean and i both live in california but my california is different in that it is land-locked - the great central valley - while jean lives nearer to the coast. the eco-systems are different, the air smells different, the temperatures are different, yet it is the same lovely moon.

anyway, had a great 3-day holiday. not much to add to the cacophony but my favorite activities involve doing very little. the walk home from work, even if work is crazy nuts at the moment, is just as i like it. dusk, cooling off, the light a dusty gold, slatted, and soft. houses are decorated for halloween, the smell of candy corn permeates and either could be a figment of my imagination or be simply the product of the time of year. and it is probably both.

at any rate, time, what writer does not think of time, how rapidly it passes, how soon our mortality slips from us. was watching a program hosted by theoretical physicist and popular commentator on science michio kaku last night on the subject of time. tho we know the past and look forward to the future kaku pointed out that we live in the present. how long does the present last? as long as we are able to form a sentence or remain sentient, i suppose. but as i age, and i don't mind aging really, not yet at least, i've long thought i'd do okay being the older, jerry garcia-type, of poet. well, shit, whatever that means, but i really don't mind getting older. and i can't help it. neither can you. getting older is something everyone has in common. even if we live only in the present we are deeply cognizant of our past and as we age we begin the process of loss. our abilities, our loved ones, our friends. and yet . . .and yet i find life to be so rich and beguiling, its madness and beauty, and all so wonderful to bear under all of it, the horror and the sublime.

so then back to poetry, and the reading and writing of it. one for the ages? i doubt that, but life is life and death is life too. i dig poetry and a life spent in its thrall is a fully lived life. i hope so at any rate. maybe i'm just buzzed from all the candy corn. still, when i read kasey mohammad's piece about poetry and stupidity i got that buzz i get when i read something that embodies life's rich pageant. i agree we have to have a degree of stupidity for us to find amazement, but only some, otherwise we'd fall for the same tricks over and again and become gullible sheep. ah yes, cultivate your stupidity. i mean that. reminds me of something raymond carver wrote in the essay 'on writing':

Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing - a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.

amen, brothers and sisters.