code switching

Meanderings of observation, thought and music. Streams of sound and color crossing, deepening.

[nerdstrodestro]

[where are we]

The soul of this country is the soul of the migrant. The flowering, slowly exploding soul of the world is connected by the glorious, enigmatic, painful common experience of Exodus. The planet-- our great, Mysterious Mother-- is coursing through Space Eternal, somehow living, somehow dying as well-- but is always migrating, always moving. If this notion strikes you as un-American, then fine-- I shall continue to be un-American. Since many of you seem to be so "God-fearing" (what a genuinely sad phrase!) please keep me in your prayers as I embrace a deep connection with all kinds of people-- as i live, as I die, as I emigrate and immigrate-- breathing, miraculously loving you and everyone else. It's all I know how to do, and I owe nothing in terms of empty respect to any collective ego, any country, any tradition.

Again: The soul of the world is the soul of the migrant.

Hello! Goodbye-- we end, we begin! How strange it is! How wonderful-- shh-- listen! What do I have to offer you but cosmic laughter? What can I give you that is of more value than a dangerous, peaceful embrace? The revolution, ladies and gentlemen, is carried out daily when we live and work together. One magnificent phantasm of life and death inhabits and shades us all each day as the living earth flashes through nothingness-- when we breathe, when our hearts beat-- just because, because. So you come from somewhere, and are going somewhere? Me too! What an insane common destiny that is! How baffling, how commonplace! How silly, how serious the whole thing is! Greetings. What you claim as "yours" has a way of hitting you in the mouth. You'll see. Or not. I'll keep moving regardless. 

- S. Grennan

Queens, NY, 11-22-14

[nerdstrodestro]

Aurora 97

The first and only time I ever saw the aurora borealis was in the summer of 1997, in the back seat of my dad's car. It was an hour past dusk, and he, my mom, and I were driving from Huletts landing, NY to Ticonderoga. I was listening to Radiohead's "OK Computer" on a discman, when I saw a strange, living mass of neon in the rear view mirror. I turned around to look out of the back window and there they were: shimmering sheets of bluish green phantasmal clouds waving peacefully-- in fragile balance above the mountainous horizon. Not knowing what I was seeing, an unlikely scenario formed in my mind that Lake George (or Champlain) was ignited from within by a ghostly, poignant light painting its signature on the sky. In complete awe and confusion, I let out a shout, and my father gripped the steering wheel, swerving the car. Before I could explain what I saw, we had turned a corner of the road and the view was suddenly obstructed.  Although my parents were upset with me for "nearly causing an accident," I felt initiated, drawn into another realm of simultaneous understanding and dumbfounding mystery-- empowered by the sublime secret of what I had seen and felt. When the shock subsided, I was filled with the urgent desire to transpose, transcribe, and thus communicate moments like this to everybody. Sure, it's the dream of a seventeen-year-old dreamer, but it isn't too outrageous when you consider life's opportunities to create-- if we are open, curious, and downright lucky enough. The canvas is the Great Mind-- the Inner Heart-- Our Soul. The medium is love-- the brilliant light of love. Alone, we bear witness-- with others, we elevate. This is fair Aurora as She kindles our connection. This is the fleeting light on the edge of the night.

--s. gRenNan

[nerdstrodestro]

#hudsonriver #tappanzee #tzbridge #rockland #westchester

So yeah i was on a boat near the banks of my birthplace and a couple people were tying knots, pulling ropes, messing with sails and what not. I just had to sit there and watch the Hudson heave, as if trying to widen the valley in an instant--

The light was everywhere, sporelike, reflecting and deflecting off of the waves as they angered to green, settled to brown. 

Early settlers of the area called it "mahicantuck," meaning "great waters in constant motion." I tried to repeat the name as the dull blasts of aqualined sunlight glowed through closed eyelids. The water heaved, warning of something. Mahicantuck.

[nerdstrodestro]

#amtrak #wilson #northcarolina

[nerdstrodestro]

“I have ripped through the blue lampshade of the constraints of color. I have come out into the white. Follow me, comrade aviators...I have overcome the lining of the colored sky, torn it down and, into the bag thus formed, put color, tying it up with a knot. Swim! The white free abyss, infinity, is before you.”

- Kazimir Malevich

[nerdstrodestro]

"As a boy, you must have followed a small stream gurgling along a narrow little valley, the waters running faster and faster, and have thrown something, such as a piece of stick, into the stream and followed it, down a slope, over a little mound, through a little crevasse -- followed it until it went over the waterfall and disappeared. This disappearance is our life."

J. Krishnamurti

[nerdstrodestro]

music and the road (installment 04_12)

Sunrise. Carolina mist—an amalgam of ghosts entangled, rises in an aching procession towards the full moon. Spirits swim upwards from the river to treetops, from treetops skyward. Ancient pain stirs, rotates and explodes, yielding to relentless light. Blown apart, naked against the morning, my mind kindles, flashing and radiating. Electric horns and guitars probe the atom and universe alike with each reflecting riff. Somewhere in between these two frontiers lies the spirit. Remember? ( - S. Grennan) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHzRdMsrc4U&feature=related

[nerdstrodestro]

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen— only wait. Do not even wait— be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other. In ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.” — Franz Kafka

[nerdstrodestro]

black bands of true pan-spectral cellform— waving antennae of the shadowmatter answer— towers of terrace dreamreel in an endless cascading corkskrew: your grace is a radiation in this staggering dream. transfigure and transpose me in a Chord of ancient alloy! cut through the rain on the window, the TV! standing on the shaking ground, i believe ( - S. Grennan)

[nerdstrodestro]

something out in wood side

heralded by sonic clashing of cloudswarm,  beauty from the sacred mountains stands incarnate watching skies for humming of seven train towards the swarm of metallic gray Softly, she sees him standing Watching laguardia’s pilgrim albatross migration: Distance makes the world look slower, He wants to tell her. They have never spoken, but Something is always there in that moment out in Wood side ( - S. Grennan)

[nerdstrodestro]

Once One

Filled with the night of the first dream, she tightened her grip on his hand. The lightform collage of a city seen by two-at-once widened, becoming bigger than anything they both had ever “seen.” A different dimension coming through in small leaks between their perceptive abilities served to light up the spaces between things, and they became separate in a way that distance only partially explained. He searched the dark for a touch of her hand, and she was gone— lost in a spectrum for all he knew— someone’s idea, a gust of wind, pop in a filmreel, gone— leaving slowly detonating spectral galaxy likenesses peppering his view whenever he closed his eyes for the rest of his life. For years. For years he wallowed, thoughtlessly, dreaming into the mega melody, only seeing her when he closed his eyes, as patterned mandalas made manifest in the starshine. Closing his eyes in her wake, looking for her hand, he searched, blinded by each time he shut his eyes to get nearer. “Her hand, he said. Her hand…her hand.” ( - S. Grennan)

[nerdstrodestro]

N. Carolina Transmit _01 - Twilight

Summer strata plays pink tones outlined in purple colorwave creations. Unreal billowing clouds emanate and seem to descend, peacefully, yet uncomfortably enormous. Great and instantaneous is the realization that the life star and the songlife it calls into being share common architecture and origin. This isn’t a joke, but I’m laughing, inwardly, just the same. Insects awaken to navigate the darkness, taking flight with sound, sounding off with flight. I swear their bristling calls cause the stars to scintillate in quickening pulseflutter. Blessed are the times where we aren’t afraid, and great is this weapon we wield when we know this. ( - S. Grennan)

[nerdstrodestro]

Spacebound, pacing 'round, present purpose of gazing down: the maze of clouds, haze profound-- places, towns, aurora shroud. Hoards of crowns adorn the proud, but this is different, shifting sound-- listen: glistening blades of brown-- ridges, mountains, seas abound! Crystal cities sing so loud, 'clipsed by darkened shards of doubt-- bliss is art in carv-ed mount, mystic marvel-- marching, out. Many starve for large accounts, but priceless ice in mind surrounds. Fractals, fragile, crowd the brow, hieroglyphic systems pound. Gaia, round in balance now-- a moment—only-- if allowed. Stolen tones of tinted vows, drones of poems from ages found: we are home in North or South, position blown to polar bounce-- nothing! something! with! without! Whisper what your faith avows-- myth and substance strain for clout-- wishes, drugs,

drain or

drown

(- S. Grennan)

[nerdstrodestro]

Germs (By Walt Whitman)

Forms, qualities, lives, humanity, language, thoughts, The ones known, and the ones unknown, the ones on the stars, The stars themselves, some shaped, others unshaped, Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings, the countless combinations and effects, Such-like, and as good as such-like, visible here or anywhere, stand provided for a handful of space, which I extend my arm and half enclose with my hand, That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all.