I was tempted to call 'resonance' a valid measure of goodness,

You know the conversations where you can tell they're not feigning interest and the connection seems genuine. Resonates.

Until I remembered Glen Hansard's caricature of a lovelorn Irish busker, rending hearts and vocal cords on a sidewalk. No reverb, no resonance, dead audio, or even a lone old-timer holding fast to marriage being a thing only a man and a woman are entitled to, as she and her words are swept under the tide of a tolerant, sound-proofed mob,

So that bucks my theory

And again, my attempt at a fixed idea is quickly made irrelevant, and I'm reduced to silence... momentarily

This was supposed to be a happy poem

When the wind blows from the west, bringing the salt lake's smell, and the clouds are low and heavy, and perhaps a gull passes overhead, hurrying to shelter in the relative warmth and calm before the rain begins, 

There is an ocean nearby, just on the other side of the Planet Fitness, and the one horse town I never left is no longer hemmed in by the cost of living, the familial responsibility, or the sprawling succubus of modern Mormon culture,

And I think of the last scene of some required reading, where she walks out to sea and smiles when she realizes she has gone too far to make it back to shore, blind Paul Atreides gone into a coriolis storm,

Remember my own vain attempts to return to the wild

They were not skillful, sober, or quite unreturnable, and I will not repeat them, but I bow to the desperate last-ditch drive that I obeyed, diluted, impotent, sincere

Before returning to write self-pitying poetry and to forge more links for my heroic and ponderous chain

Pronoid Synchronicities

The dream was mostly about a giant refrigerator

Which held tons of food but was not cold enough, so brand new jugs of milk had flecks of mold floating in them. Dutifully I crawled under the monstrosity to where the cooling elements were.

Side note: My utter lack of handyman knowledge was made clear to me, as apparently my unconscious understanding of a refrigerator is that there are fans underneath a box blowing cold air upwards... this is how the food stays cold.

In any case there were too many fans plugged in and the circuit kept tripping.  I tried to space them out and find new outlets to plug into, but never got far. Brand new food was going to waste and my family and I were suffering for it (wasted money, eating potentially spoiled food).

I woke at 4 this morning and hit the gym as I had to be back home in time for my wife to get to work by 6. I've recently started re-watching episodes of Sherlock (why did I pick Sherlock?) to make the treadmill more bearable.

On today's episode, Cumberbatch explained that he only keeps things in his mind that are really important. There's finite room in his mental hard drive so unnecessary things (in his case the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun) have to go.

Yesterday I deleted my music app to make room for a game to entertain a fussy 1 year old at a work appointment. So during breakfast I did not have my algorithm-made personalized playlist and had to use youtube and actually decide what music I wanted to listen to. Stone age...

Anyway, I felt like listening to Mason Jennings during breakfast and learned he has a new album out. It's called 'Songs From When We Met.' I haven't finished the whole album, but I like what I've heard so far

I think his name was Boethius, and his fate was much more dramatic and extreme than most, yet maybe universal in its themes and emotion.

And he apparently found salvation through the Goddess of Wisdom and more power to him if she really helped

Against her advice I often find myself pleading to the muses for support through poetry and music, which yeah, might just give the pitiful more fuel for the fire

But I've also called on Wisdom, and awareness, and detachment followed by immersion, and the elusive middle way between them

And the present moment and the Christian God, and the more defined Mormon one, and a smattering of indigenous, Eastern, and Jungian deities

The spirit of the depth, the unconscious, Jesus, psychedelics and stimulants and Johns O'Donahue and Steinbeck, mom and dad and son and daughter

And they all told me that they felt it too and that I needn't try so hard to make it sound important and original. This is hard. And I'm not sure how or if it will get better. And if it doesn't, I'm not sure there's enough left to go on

But look, the cat's come over to cozy up, and done so in that very cat-like way which says, you need this more than I do, but I'll let you think you're doing me a service. Thank you and you're welcome

There's a fenced off preserve in heaven, populated by all the plants and animals I've eaten, worn, caught baseball's with... or that were the baseballs.

There's a small army of tuna, cows and chickens, a lone reindeer, acres of cotton and bamboo, soybean, rice, quinoa

Even two parakeets which I did not eat but did keep in a cage briefly until they died from boredom or over feeding or lack of perceived purpose

And is it a good exchange? Can it be? Is there some unseen value in this daily transaction which justifies it somehow? I can see the need for a Jesus when I think of it this way.

Conversely

I will not be the hero of international relations - no- world peace will not come from me

I may not be the selfless first responder, though I did ace the curriculum (both written and practical portions)

I will in all likelihood not be mother Earth's savior, and the rhinos will indeed go extinct

I am certainly not my bright-eyed younger self's hero, for I have made no genre-defying hits, and not once has Letterman gotten off his pretentious ass to shake my hand

But I can handle a spilled cup of water, a dry pajama top, a reassurance that things can be good again, or, that at least the attempt to make them so will be worth the effort.

The worst part of life

A sharp cry from her bedroom,

More babyish than she normally sounds now,

Confused and denuded, sheets soaked,

Working to right the cup with wet hands,wet nose, wet face, blurry half asleep eyes,

Between heaving, betrayed, embarassed sobs:

I was thirsty