Describe the Most Beautiful Smell I’ve Ever Smelled (A Sensory Piece)
Baking bread Or that first waft of sugary cold air when you go into a candy shop. Not the ones in the mall, but the ones in cute downtowns that have nothing but candy, and at least 100 different shades of chocolate. Or rain about to come. Or the neighborhood during the rainstorm. Or the pavement after the rain. The warm, dank, mysterious steam, a fragrance of childhood mixed with danger with a dash of nostalgia to round out the aromatic notes. Or Thanksgiving day just about 30 minutes before dinner is served, when the red wine gravy is being finished and the sides are being warmed up again. Pumpkin spice candles And the pipes of old men remembering stories of when they were young men. Can laughter have a smell? If it does it smells something like burning autumn leaves mixed with sugar and rosemary, yeah, rosemary. That’s what laughter smells like. With a raspberry aftertaste. If smell had an aftertaste the aftertaste of the smell of laughter would definitely be raspberries. Did you follow all of that? Well, try and keep up.Lasagne. Roasting garlic. Basil. Coffee. Ill concede it has a good smell, a great smell. But it tastes gross and anyone who says otherwise has been brain washed. They call it an acquired taste because you had to go through psychological programming of “being an adult” and addicting yourself to caffeine just to finally be like “yeah, coffee good.” If you have to go through mental acrobatics to learn to like something then that something is inherently not good. Or you would not have to be taught how to like it. Or fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. They smell awesome. Poison for the arteries though so there’s that. Wow, smells bring up a lot of conflict for me. Something fishy about that. Something else for my someday shrink to sink his chiseled jaw into I suppose. And yes he would have a chiseled jaw because that’s why I chose him. Anyway focus. Smells. Sweet cologne on freshly showered man skin. Honey suckle. Gasoline A crackling fire The smell of accomplishment, you know the one, a mix of sweaty gym socks and fresh spring air Or the smell of success, air conditioner mixed with expensive furniture polish.
Something I Can’t Live Without Is…?
Something I can’t live without is inspiration. Well, I can, but the living is grayer, heavier, less inspiring. I come alive when I get a visit from the muse Coursing with energy from the newly lit fuse I get excited about the ideas and visions about to take shape Its all I want to talk about until everyone I know wants to escape I forget to keep track of the time, and I forget I have vices. The work is too important to get side tracked by addictions and habits. Who needs unhealthy mid-day snacks when their normal purpose is to distract me, and with inspiration come to visit, the last fucking thing I want is to be distracted. If someone tries to talk to me when I’m inspired this better be important If someone tries to makes plans with me when I’m inspired they better involve bowling, sex or cheese. And even then I’m gonna say “shh, don’t bother me, I’m working.” If someone tries to encourage me when I’m inspired it had better be so well timed that your interruption to say something nice to me didn’t interrupt the flow of my delicate, squirrily, fickle creative inspiration. Because one thing I’ve learned about creativity is that it doesn’t like to be interrupted. It won’t be kept waiting, it will just disappear. And it won’t under any circumstances be told what to do. Inspiration requires surrender. And though foreign to our culture, the idea of letting go, surrendering, that’s for cowards right, the losers in a bloody war surrender. The smaller kid having his arm twisted on the playground surrenders. But Americans, humans, we don’t surrender. We fight. But you can’t fight with inspiration. It is the ruler. It is the king. And it’s just as keen to abdicate it’s throne if you don’t pay it some goddamn respect.
If I Started Aging Backwards My New Goals Would Be…
If I started aging backwards my new goals would be hard to pin down. Would I be the subject of a media frenzy because I’m the first real life Benjamin Button? Or is this a world where aging backwards is a thing sometimes, so there’s no media outcry, but just an existential dilemma about my trajectory. If I am aging backwards would I suddenly start to become less skilled with practice?Or would I be more skilled still, but younger. When I got young enough would I start to lose my hand/eye coordination? Would I start to shrink? Would I need to be changed and taken care of again. And possibly have someone crush up my food as my teeth recede. Come to think of it, I’m not sure getting younger before you die is any different than getting older. From age 10 down to zero you need a babysitter again, just like some folks in their last decades of life. I’d get a re-do of my twenties, and be sober more. And I’d most definitely have way way way more sex. Sue me, but it’s true. I’m gay so I can’t accidentally make any humans so I’d stick it in more places. I just would. I’d take being a horny teenager seriously this time, and get laid, like alot. I’d waste no time in the closet. I’d be out and proud all the way until I was back in diapers. I’d second guess a lot less and give second chances a lot more. I want to say I’d enjoy the shit out of those 80’s movies again, but now I think I’m confusing aging backwards with going backward in time. I’d spend more time having fun as my body became more youthful and vibrant …
Glancing At God (The Cat’s Meow)
Based on a writing prompt: “The Cat’s Meow” I look up, a mix of startled and befuddled, like a stunned cat. This cat looks up through glass the way I imagine myself looking up though my limits directly at God, if such a thing is dared. Almost like I looked up to defy but defiance withered under the crushing weight of awe, and dumbfounded, and wondering what I could possibly have ever had to complain about I stare, transfixed, frozen, Gazing at eternity, for an eternity, all in a momentary flash of insight. The energy, the abyss, unexpectedly stares back at me, simultaneously completing and terrifying me. Wholeness is an awesome power I don’t feel ready for. When you combine wholeness and awesome do you really get wholesome? Because I think that doesn’t quite capture it. Perhaps not wholesome, but holy. Or event better still just simply whole. To experience what it means to be whole. Missing nothing Lacking nothing Wanting for nothing To be aware of great force of creation and to be that force, to harness an understanding while wielding the energy of life itself. A couple a hundred years ago you’d be branded a witch and set on fire if you could harmonize with the energy of creation the way we must finally come to embrace in this newest evolution, an evolution of consciousness. Are senses are heightening, like a jungle cat every day, The reflexes of a jaguar where there used to be those of a junkie. Humanity is learning to see in the dark, land on our feet, and live many lives. 9 or so I believe. And when we do life will be better than utopia? What’s better than utopia you ask? Well, I tell you, that’s the Cat’s meow!
What if…Time Were An Illusion?
If time was an illusion it would mean I’m not getting older I’m just getting creakier It would mean there’s no such thing as being on time, which seems even freakier It would mean nobody dies young, and you can never show up late It means nobody peaked too early, and there’s nothing left but fate Because without time there is no occurring, there is just this moment here and now. Happening simultaneously with every other moment, even the ones from before and the ones to come after, but don’t fucking ask me how I don’t know the nature of reality But when I set time aside I think perhaps I start to understand the idea of eternity A timeless unruffled state of being So esoteric, so untapped, it feels like you’re part of a secret fraternity Able to leap boundless, and transcend the trappings of modernity If time was an illusion then you’d never watch the clock Because it’s a meaningless invention, that would no longer be in stock If time was an illusion, well I suppose I’d have to wonder why What’s the purpose, what can it teach me, as the seconds go whizzing by Like a fiery comet on a collision course in space The minutes pick up denser matter and they also pick up their pace This comet is made of months now Then it cascades into decades Eventually a century And I wonder what I learn as I pass moments in this illusory tar of time. What do I get from this illusion, if not simply older and dead?
Baby Steps To Adult Growth
*From a writing prompt in my monthly writer’s group. I am in my infancy still when it comes to adult growth. Can an infant even take baby steps, or would those still be way too large for me? Ego growth, denial growth, willful ignorance growth, now those I excel at. In that sense I’ve really grown. But adult growth….as in making good choices and feeling empowered and invigorated…I don’t remember that from the reading. Is adult growth going to be on the test? Because if so, is there some kind of worksheet or something? How do I know when I’m growing adultly? Instead of growing in my confusion, or error or waist line. How can you tell growth from the motion of careening, unknowingly, unceasingly toward certain mental disaster, total annihilation, or unfathomable catastrophe? No, I’m really asking. This is not rhetorical. How can you tell? How can you tell expansion and awakening apart from a psychotic break? I don’t know because it seems the symptoms might be very similar: You lose interest in normal conversation You don’t understand how everyone can’t see the rigged game You overcome some addictions and justify others Your mind no longer constrained by logic, leaps curiously, almost crazily, from shiny object to shinier one. You are eerily calm when culture says its freak out time. And you let go of the need to control others Seeming too permissive So the rigid can become so dismissive And write the supervisor a strongly worded missive Old fears begin to stop haunting And old dreams start to seem less daunting And your achievements need less flaunting So you wander through life more solo A solitary fool looking for a tribe to belong to The only thing separating you from the truly crazy might be a sandwich board and the ability to string thoughts together, well mostly. In a world of insanity being sane is revolutionary, almost crazy making, because you see the backwards, inverted nature of the society we’ve built collectively, and you are the only one with any questions about why it doesn’t seem to work quite right.
Things The Oldest Tree On My Block Has Seen…
The following spoken word piece comes from a writing prompt about what the oldest tree on my street could have witnessed…enjoy. Love, Brian THINGS THE OLDEST TREE ON MY BLOCK HAS SEEN. The oldest tree on my block has seen entire families grow up and die, living generation after generation in the same house. That same ancient tree has also seen family after family move into other houses like a revolving door of bloodlines, like long lines at shopping malls on Black Friday in the 90’s. The old tree has seen the earth get trampled on like shoppers trampling on each other on Black Friday in the early 2000’s. The old tree has also seen us sell off our morality, our dignity, resources and each other in the twenty-teens, like Wall-Mart black Friday junk being sold off on clearance likes some Midas-caressed heirloom. The old tree would close its eyes because it has seen enough It would roll its eyes when I try to explain why humanity deserves another chance It would dry its eyes when I said I cared for earth but it smelled chicken and butter on my breath, things that rightfully belong to its mother, its family. It would rub its eyes with incredulity when I threw myself at its mercy saying I swear we’d change. I’d say… We’d become stewards where we had been wayward We’d become shepherds where we had been slaughtering We’d become better fathers and do better at daughter-ing, and watering our family trees because that’s the only way we can restore a deep respect for earth back into the heart of humanity. By deepening our own roots with life. By branching out By letting go of what leaves, all that leaves And raking myself back into piles of dead old problems that are now just play things for me to jump around in, to burst out of, and make people laugh. To burn and enjoy the smell of The be captured and under the spell of The old tree has protected me during every childhood autumn when it rained down comfort and color and beauty and made me hibernate in the bosom of my family. The tree is that one tree in every neighborhood. You know the one I’m talking about. That tree. When you were a kid it was too big to contain but now that you’re older it’s somehow grown but also smaller than you remember. We’ve all sat under it and been shaded. The brave or dumb among us try to climb it The unlucky fall out and the blessed are caught by the family they nurtured back there in the shade. Am I blessed? Or am I shady? Or is that my shadow convincing me I’m not ready. To be nourished or to ever flourish. Time to learn from the tree the deepest lesson it has to teach me. Time to root deeply, branch out, reach for the sun, open my palms and soak it all in.
WRITING PROMPT: “It Takes Too Long…”
It takes to long to make home made bread And it takes too long to overcome existential dread It takes too long to make dreams come true And it seems to go by too fast whenever they do It takes too long to find the perfect mate But it also takes too long to get the check on every bad date Sometimes I think I’ll fuck anything and other times I think I’ll wait It takes too long to let my own voice be heard Which is why I always tend to come in third It takes too long to do things the way you should And it seems impossible that I’ll ever by fully understood It takes too long to start from scratch But it feels so wrong to let life snatch All my hope about a better tomorrow So I throw up my hands and surrender to sorrow And think about the peace I could one day borrow If I can’t have any that’s my very own that is. It takes too long to save up a down payment Or to fully awaken from our cultural enslavement It’s been taking too long for our next phase of evolution Which is why we’re on the brink of revolution May the light of the divine show itself as our solution Its taking too long for the ice caps to melt Or is that just a gloomy story we’ve all been dealt It’s taking to long to find my happy chewy center The place where I feel safe and few can enter Sometimes I think I’ve glimpsed it, the hedgy labrynth almost clearing But in one anxious breath it vanishes, without anybody hearing And as I search for it again I can almost sense it nearing And that responsiveness is what I find so magical and endearing.
WRITING PROMPT: When I am aligned with my higher self…
When I am aligned with my higher self I am non-verbal. I am uncontainable by language I am enough I am complete I am perfection I am realized realization realizing itself newly for the first time in just this exact way at this exact time I am a prism, crystalline awareness, flawless, Hard as diamond and malleable as marshmallow fluff I am present I am flowing, exuberant. Enthusiastic or not, and if not, I’m gentle about it, full of grace and understanding. I am okay I am full I am well I am better than well When I am aligned with my higher self I am surrendered Strapped in Adding what little skill I can as I lean into the wind and thunderous rain A race car driver in a race car twisting around in a tornado At some point you just have to let go, let the seatbelt fulfill its destiny doing what it was designed to do, letting the tornado do what it was designed to do…and knowing that if I survive this state of surrender, or die and am resurrected anew I am, from that moment forward going to do, fearlessly, what I have been designed to do… Now where did I put those design plans again? I wonder if I truly aligned with my higher self if I’m after anything anymore. Perhaps when I’m fully aligned I’ll have traded in seeking for finding, asking for receiving and knocking for invitations to enter. Perhaps when it feels internally like any door to any opportunity can fling open at anytime with a kindly little knock then outer reality will reflect this expansiveness. And paradoxically, I will be expanded internally by then and the need for outer reality to change to match will no longer exist, though this mirror reality in which we live and move and have our being will shift anyway. It will have to. I am learning to master the art of desire…so desire gives me pleasure instead of pain, a sense of hope instead of overwhelm, a sense of possibility where there used to be unworthiness. So wishes don’t become burdens and the inner judge doesn’t use my dreams like daggers. Mastering the art of how to desire, without burning to death in the raging fire is the task to which I now aspire. Buddha, I’m going to nirvana and beyond….if that’s not too presumptuous.
WRITING PROMPT: I’ve Been Thinking
I’ve been thinking about the future. What I’m going to amount to, specifically. And as dreadfully cliche as this is going to predictably sound, I’ve been thinking about the past. What I was supposed to accomplish by now, and what I’ve lied about, stolen, manipulated and schemed my way into instead of living by faith. I’ve also been thinking about that alternate reality we all have where the past is shinier and the future certain and brightly lit by the flashbulbs of fame and the sunrises of serenity, with a breathtaking view of victory. Which means in the end I’ve been thinking about nothing constructive, nothing worthwhile, nothing useful, ironically, to my future. I’m not even thinking, I’m ruminating. That’s like thinking when it gets committed to an asylum. “Oh, yes, we had that thinking committed when it become prone to rumination,” some great aunt with dementia might mutter as they drove away to leave my over-thinking ass stuck in the bowels of my shit-for-brain mind. I’ve been thinking too much, clearly. And not too clearly I might add. I don’t want to think about what I’ve been thinking about anymore. I wonder what I haven’t been thinking about. I haven’t been thinking about how it could all go right. Or how it could all work out, how I could get the guy and do the twist and shout. Even writing this line feels like a propped up whimzy, because we all know true love is actually truly flimzy. I’ve been thinking its harder to have faith the older one gets in the ruts of their past thinking. Is thinking just like sinking, quicksand with no outstretched hand. Or like a shamed prostitute slinking away in the night Made of nothing but fright and wheat thins. The two minute warning is making me think I should brighten this up bit but we’re heading into darkness, less sunlight, and the abyss of a new England winter. So a clever ending just ain’t on the holiday menu tootse.
