As if I needed another reason to hate Wal-Mart.
this is how we fail
Posted by sean on December 19, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/12/19/this-is-how-we-fail/
corner seat upstairs
It was the way the trees spread out like outraged arms toward the sky. The grey in your eyes and everywhere else we looked. A dog barked and the mail slot clanged. Home again where visiting hours have begun. They never end and you never leave. Walking the streets late at night brings that yearning, the restless implants below your skin, bumping up at inconvenient times. The other ones make slow improvements when what you need is the now, your chest swelling with cold air, salty tears torn from your eyes, the pine needles to deliver something worth breathing in. No one asks for any of this. The cold flow of unattended life, the blank faces, the purchases and receipts.
It was the way rain fell across your face, eyes wide and shining. The cracked and swollen sidewalks, the screeching of your bicycle’s brakes. A leaking roof, a broken dryer, the things that need fixing when so much else is broken. We learn to survive through failure, leaving wreckage in our wake. We forge ahead out of desperation, armed with scraps of what we think worked before. Will the sky ever clear, or will the roof cave in on our heads. Does it even matter.
It can be the rubbing away of a greasy brand. The slipping off downstream. Evolution of the day-to-day, a smoothing out. The cracks, the breaks, the swells, the leaks, all of it stuffed in a burlap sack. Hurl it from the roof and watch it sink heavy in the rain. Watch it loosen the knot across your chest. This fraying will be our salvation, it will be our last rite.
Posted by sean on December 14, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/12/14/corner-seat-upstairs/
the other day
The other day was sitting on a rock outcropping with AR, gazing down on a river and across at leafless beech trees and listening to long lonely trains rolling to the city, a late osprey charging after them as if to hitch a ride, its cry wilder than anything we have to offer. The other day was also another acceptance and feeding chickadees from my hand. Even in this overly manufactured living space nature offers us redemption from our countless sins against it. I am grateful.
Posted by sean on November 9, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/11/09/the-other-day/
an acceptance
Today is a good day! Two of my prose poems have been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Stone Highway Review. Take that, pile of (mostly electronic) rejection slips.
Posted by sean on October 17, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/10/17/an-acceptance/
camaraderie
I used to watch through my window as the addicts gathered in the anonymous dusk outside the weekly NA meeting. It took me a long time to figure out what was going on. Downtown was always dead at night. It was mostly dead during the day, too, but at night it was a ghost town. Suddenly these hordes of people started showing up late on a particular night each week at what looked like just another vacant storefront on the next street over. One day I walked down there to see what I could see. Turns out there was a logo on the window of the place (of course it didn’t say Narcotics Anonymous). I looked it up, though, and that’s what it was. I became fascinated by watching these strangers mingle on the sidewalk under the sodium street lamps, waiting to get inside to work on their addictions together. From inside my concrete bunker, I quietly cheered them. They shared the camaraderie of addiction, a bond like no other, and I hoped they would make it.
Posted by sean on October 7, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/10/07/camaraderie/
hello october my old friend
Overhead geese honk against gun metal gray sky. I yearn to fly with them, wherever they are headed. Rooted to one spot but still rootless I remain. Is this some flaw of mine, or of my chosen substrate. And so the geese tempt me once again. The primal urge to shift with the seasons, in body as in mind. I wonder will it haunt me to the end of my allotted days.
Posted by sean on October 2, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/10/02/hello-october-my-old-friend/
green heron @ lake roland
Green Heron "digi-binned" @ Lake Roland, Baltimore County, on September 16, 2011
Posted by sean on September 20, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/09/20/green-heron-lake-roland/
bobcat
In the woods I came upon a young bobcat stalking a rabbit.
My arrival on the scene gave the rabbit the window it needed to escape.
The bobcat rose from its crouch, turned and stared me down before slinking off into the woods.
When I got home a mouse was living in my stove.
Outside a mockingbird splashed luxuriantly in the bird bath.
The orange cat next door was hungry.
I am feeling here and there, but mostly there.
Posted by sean on September 13, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/09/13/bobcat/
time…again
My coworker cracks me up because she is so strictly punctual. I always knew it but now that she’s moved into the office next door, I am reminded of it constantly. I know she comes in at the same time every morning (even though it’s well before I arrive…I just know it). I see her leave at 4:30 on the dot every evening. And if she doesn’t get to start her lunch right at noon, look out! We used to have a meeting on Tuesday from 11-12. One day when the meeting was running over, she got caught by a previous crazy manager for looking at the clock. While she was certainly embarrassed, she was no less indignant afterward that her lunchtime had been postponed.
I bring this up because I have been thinking about time again. Long-time readers of this blog in its many incarnations (all one, possibly two, of you) will perhaps recall that I have railed against time often in the past. It bothers me what human society has done with time: assigning monetary value to it, breaking it down into chargeable chunks, using it to create arbitrary deadlines and artificial windows of opportunity.
Anyone who has paid a bit of attention to time knows that it has a curious elastic quality to it. How fast it seems to go by depends heavily on what you are doing within it. Sometimes it depends on what substances you have consumed. The part of the day can affect this elasticity, too; a morning will seem endless, an evening brief. Often this has to do with the amount of available light. And certainly age also plays a factor. As we get older, years seem to slither by at an alarming rate.
So, what to do about time. I know I am most content when unencumbered by my awareness of time’s passing. Smash the alarm clocks! Abolish workday schedules! Don’t think about how much time something takes and judge it based on that alone. Shortcuts spring from a flawed thinking. There is no way to “save time.” It’s a delusion. Why are we trying to do things faster, anyway? It implies that what is happening right now is somehow not good enough, not “worth our time” and so we must get past it faster, faster, on to the “better” things that are more worth our time. But in the end, we just shortchange ourselves, because we have arbitrarily assigned “worth” when in fact every moment of life is valuable and should not be rushed through.
We are living in a frightening period of history. An entire generation is growing up with the expectation that instant gratification is the norm. People’s thresholds for waiting have diminished to a granular level. Impatience is ingrained within us. We are in a rush to get everywhere in our stupid cars. We get food in less than a minute, from a microwave or from a drive-thru window. Information is available 24 hours a day from the internet, from palm-sized devices we carry around with us everywhere, even into the bathroom. News travels faster than ever before. When we have to wait, we get indignant. Why should we have to wait? It’s not fair.
The whole situation has gotten so bad that there is now an entire slow movement. I don’t know much about it, but I think it started with Slow Food and snowballed from there. Clearly others are concerned about the speed at which society travels these days. I suppose making a conscious decision to try to slow down is a good thing. But I am more interested in how we got to where we are and why. Are we really more impatient today than we used to be? Is it technology’s fault? What is driving this desire and expectation for everything to be instantly available? Why do people drive so fast? What the hell is wrong with us?
Of course I don’t have answers for these questions. But I think about them constantly. I wonder why I feel so alienated. I know others do, as well. It makes me wonder if anyone would have an answer to the question of why they are in such a rush. Maybe they’ve just stopped thinking, and if they started again they would realize the absurdity of their actions. Perhaps we have all just become dulled to the point that we don’t know what we’re doing or why anymore. Maybe we have just each become a mere collection of tics: foot on the gas, fingers on the keypads, logging in and clicking around, spitting out to each other the words we’ve just heard and read and watched…never stopping to think for ourselves.
Posted by sean on August 6, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/08/06/time-again/
R.I.P. Fiznit, July 1996 – July 31, 2011
Yesterday evening Em El and I made the decision to release Fiznit from the bonds of her cancer. On Friday she had received chemotherapy, but did not seem to be responding to the treatment. Two and a half weeks earlier she had undergone surgery to remove one of her front legs and her spleen, both of which were riddled with cancer. She had been recovering well until early last week when she stopped eating and began getting sick to her stomach. A blood test revealed that mast cells had returned in force. The chemo she received on Friday was her last option for a solid recovery. Unfortunately the cancer was too strong, and with the sensitive guidance of Fiznit’s internist, we chose to relieve her suffering for good.
We like to think that Fiznit is now reunited with her beloved brother Scratchy, her constant companion from birth until age 11, when he died suddenly of a heart attack. I like to picture them ecstatically rolling around together in a sunny celestial catnip patch of the richest shade of green.
It’s poignant how when you live with an animal for so long, their passing represents more than just the departure of a dear friend and family member. Both Scratchy and Fiznit were with me for much of my adult life up to this point. Now that Fiznit is gone, I feel like an entire era has ended. We often think of the closure of time periods in our lives as marked by events like graduations, leaving jobs, moving to new places, and sadly, the ending of relationships. But often our companion animals are a constant in our lives over the course of the opening and closing of many such time periods. Sometimes they are one of the few or even the only constant. They provide us with comfort, stability, and a warm familiarity that may otherwise be lacking.
I personally have experienced much pain and joy throughout the lives of both Fiznit and Scratchy. They were always there to remind me of the good times, though, and help keep me from dwelling on the bad. I can’t help feeling now, beyond just grief at Fiznit’s death, a deeper ache at the severing of this living tie to my past. She was with me through so much, and her departure leaves a hole of such depth that it may not ever completely close.
Fiznit was a special cat, very much an individualist. Although she lived for a long time in the shadow of her larger-than-life brother, after he died she stepped forward and really came into her own. She became much more outgoing and seemed to relish her life as the only cat (and pet) in the household. Although we talked about trying to find a companion for her, we felt that ultimately Fiznit wanted things to stay as they were. After all, no cat could ever replace Scratchy and she probably knew that.
Fiznit won over all the staff at the excellent referral clinic where she spent much of her final week. Her fighting spirit and persistent sass even when she was feeling down heartened those who were caring for her. We all know how horrible cancer can be, though, and in the end we felt we had no choice but to step in and help her surrender what had become a losing battle. Although we will continue grieving for some time to come, we also feel relief that her suffering has now ended. Rest in peace, little Fizz. You will always be loved.
Posted by sean on August 1, 2011
https://sd-stewart.com/2011/08/01/r-i-p-fiznit-july-1996-july-31-2011/
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