Morning Catalyst

Maybe it's time to try that 5 AM wonderment of waking up and acting on that dream or impulse - rather, sloshing from side to side in your head, for you would have been sleeping anyway (and sleep--what is sleep to the dreamer who needs a reality of uninhibited dreams to instill the strength of dreaming further? Why, wake up!).

Open Your Hand

Open your hand
tightly.
Each vertebra—
bone by bone—
submerged
below cracks of mountainous veins.

Twist into two
and preserve yourself
There
in time
tautly clasped,
walking down the rue.

T.S. Eliot Made Me Do It

They come and go
They come and go
Talking of the tide that’s low
Thinking that they’ll have a go
With an almond filled croissant.

Often times they come in to flaunt
The hummer they drive, the jewels they want
(These are issues of importance for young debutantes!)
I could continue—on and on—but I shaun’t
For one is now at the front to weigh

His options; so after much strenuous delay,
Digging through purses, pockets, pickles, he finally pays
Then starts to chitchat of the day
Remarking “how do you like your job” by the way;
I merely laugh and prepare the over-calorific drink.

Next moment, hot water near the sink
Splashes on a girl who’s pink
And red due to the ignorant fink—
The one who originally started the kink
In the coffee maker.

All of the jolly, sweet-tongued bakers
Crowd the joint—a place ridiculous to exclaim an acre—
Debating with the boss, (the ultimate creator),
If the lad should be kept, tossed or dealt with later
But good ol’ Bruno makes a speech.

He first glances inside each
Of the bakers’ eyes to angrily leach
Out the truth of the matter; their motive to impeach
The youthful boy who did nothing worse than James of the Peach,
But fair is fair and Bruno begins his words:

“My boy you did not learn from your last curd,
When you tripped over the herd
Of baguettes lined up to be shipped to Lord Uward,
The greatest ruler I have ever heard
Who cried straight 88 nights in a row.

You did not think that I would see you and every crow
Who fumbles more than once running to and fro,
Losing my money with each cup he spills on a newly ironed bow,
(The ones you can only purchase in Cairo!)
No—you did not think at all.

Well, what’s done is done, so time to make that call
The one to the girl who you caused a fall
And gain a new burn, an original
One on her left shoulder, halting her admittance in the semi-final
Coffee Making Competition.

Oh ominous partition
I am forced to graze upon! Tell me lad, what’s your definition?
What’s the cause of this debacle? Was it a premonition?
Was I or my shop worthy of your spiteful ammunition?
I have no more to question upon.

The decision is made; Son, go wait out there on the lawn.
I will call ahead my workers who never once partook in a con
Or thought to thwart their jobs; Mon Dieu they always got here at dawn
To serve my people without the slightest yawn.
But wait, what’s this, a possible rumor…

A letter from a fellow consumer,
A kindly one who thought it a humor
Of the situation I made for tad boy (which frankly has given me the greatest tumor!)
I’d be better off to rest with slices of cucumber
On my eyes. Alas! No time for that, let’s forget the note.

I am faltering, fading away like a little boat.
Quick get me to bed, I might roll over right now of this tumultuous goat,
The boy who ruined me. I am done. Je suis fini was all he wrote.
They said some prayers and then wrapped him in his red petticoat…
But onward his café continued for all relations near or not of kin.

A Blank Page

You told me to write, so I'll write. And I'll write, and I'll write and I'll write.

How could it have slipped away? Itself, a privilege with time (and damn- there is only so much). Nowadays they prescribe a quantitative, not qualitative measuring dose of time. How much you got? Value? Scotch value. It's all about the number of lines crossed off the list. A day in the park with the dog would be nice, but no- you've got work to do. Let's dissolve this method. Let's loosen it up. Breathe some fresh air and get outside. Let it all melt down to the wick. Prerequisites and thesis galore: throw them up in the air. Let them flutter and fly. Give them the life they deserve and grasp onto your own.

It's known as a requirement of life; necessary by all means. You want to make it in life don't you? What kind of question is that? What if I do, what if I don't? I'll take my own route, thank you. I wont' put up with that. You'll get squashed, they say. Hey now, at least I tried. I'm gonna put an end to the numbering of what's important in life. What's now merely an act forced between a coffee here, an essay there; it needs to die. Stop it, just stop it! Write. Go ahead now, the pages are crisp, creamy and waiting.

Les 'Elms,' Au Revoir!

"After years of study and with advice from arborists and plant pathologists, the College has made a difficult decision regarding the dying elm trees that form Scripps' historic and beloved Elm Tree Lawn. Rather than continue the policy of replacement as needed, which Scripps has followed since late 1999, the College will renew the entire landscape with contract-grown trees in five or six years.

Elm Tree Lawn, an allée of 18 paired American elms, is one of the signature landscapes at Scripps.Annual commencement exercises and other major events at the College take place under this canopy, designed by Edward Huntsman-Trout in 1939. For several years, the College has had concerns with the health of the trees. Elm trees are not native to Southern California; in this climate, they live for only 75-80 years.

Over the past several years, the College has engaged two consulting arborists to study the condition of the elm trees. In December 1999, the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the Board decided to remove and replace trees as they neared the end of their lives or became a safety concern. One tree was removed in 2001 for safety reasons, and three of the weakest trees were removed during the 2004-05 semester break.

In the summer of 2004, Jim Clark, a plant pathologist with a specialty in elm trees, was contacted to examine the trees. His report was received by the Buildings and Grounds Committee in September 2004. Along with the recommendation to renew the entire landscape with contract-grown trees in five or six years, Dr. Clark advised that the College continue to carefully onitor and prune the remaining elms until the replacement trees reach a height of 25 or 30 feet.According to Lola Trafecanty, director of grounds, the replacement trees will be disease-resistant Princeton elms.

Don Johnson, chairman of the Buildings and Grounds Committee, said:

'Contemplating the removal of the trees in Elm Tree Lawn has been one of the more difficult topics we have faced on the Buildings and Grounds Committee over the last several years...The difficulty has been in arriving at an approach which will provide for the safety of all persons on campus and preserve the traditional setting for our graduation ceremonies. Elm Tree Lawn is a special place on campus and is in the heart of each and every alumna.The adopted approach of removing any trees posing a hazard, while contract growing replacement trees, will provide the required safety while minimizing the impact upon the campus.'"

Excerpt from "The Fall" by Camus

"Besides, this country inspires me. I like those people swarming on the sidewalks, wedged into a little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs, cold hands, and the sea steaming like a wet wash. I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.
Yes, indeed! From hearing their heavy tread on the damp pavement, from seeing them move heavily between their shops full of gilded herrings and jewels the color of dead leaves, you probably think they are here this evening? You are like everybody else; you take these good people for a tribe of syndics and merchants counting their gold crowns with their chances of eternal life, whose only lyricism consists in occasionally, without doffing their broad-brimmed hats, taking anatomy lessons? You are wrong. They walk along with us, to be sure, and yet see where their heads are: in that fog compounded of neon, gin, and mint emanating from the shop signs above them. Holland is a dream, monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke- smokier by day, more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funeral swans consistently drifting throughout the whole land, around the seas, along the canals. Their heads in their copper-colored clouds, they dream; they cycle in circles; they pray, somnambulists in the fog's gilded incense; they have ceased to be here. They have gone thousands of miles away, toward Java, the distant isle. They pray to those grimacing gods of Indonesia with which they have decorated all their shopwindows and which at this moment are floating aimlessly above us before alighting, like sumptuous monkeys, on the signs and stepped roofs to remind these homesick colonials that Holland is not only the Europe of merchants but also the sea, the sea that leads to Cipango and to those islands where men die mad and happy. "

A Day, A Thought - Vanished

Glitter skims the horizon with beauty breathless each time.

Freedom to be- as I please; walk the earth without a woven rhyme.

Shake of the trees balance sun

and shoulder invisible whispers made for none

but the birds.

Start something, Now;

before fog masks another cogitation to allow.

Morning ignites unseasoned thoughts,

Till evanescent hang the words once bought

upon a dusk - A silence.