Tearquila

Here I drink the tears I have fermented.

[pyrovik]

Leaf. Cut, cut, cut. Friend. Cut, cut, cut. Pull. Cut, cut, cut. Friend. Pull. Carry. Reverse. Trail. Trail, trail, trail. Carry. Friend. Trail, friend, trail, trail. Friend, friend, friend. Home. Carry. Friend, friend, friend. Garden. Home, friend, garden, friend. Carry. Garden. Leaf, garden, food. Friend. Trail. Friend, friend, friend. Trail, trail trail. Friend. Trail. Leaf. Cut, cut, cut.

Sixty million years. Leaf, cut, pull, carry, trail, home, garden, food, and friend. Six million dynasties. Empires in the undergrowth. Legions on the branches; legions in the wind. In the dark, the gloom, and sometimes even the light. Always by the hand of the dynasty. They select the seeds that grow, sustain the plants that thrive. They cultivate. Theirs is the kingdom – above and below.

A lux is one lumen per square metre. A lumen is a unit of light flow; trivially, a foot-candle is ten point eight lux. The brightness of one candle at a distance of a foot. So, directly, nothing to do with podiatry.

Deep, damp rainforest has little lux and, for sixty million years, never any feet-candle. The way the limited light descends from the canopy through the undergrowth is luxurious. A regal wave. Certain, slow, steady, illustration of light travelling. A twenty-four-hour sunset – as can be seen at the poles – casts much the same illusion.

It is an overwhelming achievement, then, for the colours to be so vivid. Palatial in quality and quantity. It is not ‘just green’. Green here is an empire of its own, under which the kingdoms of hues, tones, shades, and tints thrive. Chartreuse, sage, emerald and pine. They command the analogous yellows and browns, the shimmering hints of red and blue. These pay homage to, prostrate to, surrender to that empire. All are enveloped and defined by ‘just green’.

But even that empire bows to generations of leaf, cut, pull, carry, trail, home, garden, food, and friend. The chittering of this process, repeated now by hundreds of thousands. And rendered countless when considered by years. A powerful sound of a powerful empire, instilling awe-inspiring reflection. Or, in the words of Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Orellana, the question:

“¿Qué es ese ruido incesante?”

The answer to just what that incessant noise was came quickly to him thereafter, while lying in the evening gloom of the rainforest just off the Amazon River.

“Hormigas. Santa mierda! Hay putas hormigas por todos lados!”

Ants. Holy shit! There are fucking ants everywhere!

His last words were not recorded in the history of this empire, nor any other. To his credit, Francisco de Orellana did make a brief contribution to a small fiefdom of viridian green.

[pyrovik]

As much as we had all changed, the conversation felt so fondly familiar. Different only by the volumes that we never said but all seemed to acknowledge in the silences. Then it dawned on me. I could feel it. Just as familiar and unspoken as the silence. It flickered – briefly – as if out of the corner of my eye; but gone again as soon as it was acknowledged. Yet in that moment I knew that it had always been there, waiting. I had gone looking for happiness. I need never have left. Here it was, in front of me the whole time. These people I felt so distant from hadn’t sought the distance themselves. I had put it there. It seems insignificant, like the mechanism behind a cheap magic trick. It makes me shake my head and smile that it fooled me all this time. But that’s it. That’s all I needed. And it had always been enough. It didn’t matter that it might come and go as time moves on. I know where it is now. I know how to find it. And I only needed the briefest second. And I know, with unfamiliar but total certainty, I really know: it won’t ever leave.

Me

[poetryprompts]

Write a poem titled “Long Lost Longing.”

[pyrovik]

I burn to go back.

But time requires advancing.

Cold, alone; without.

[pyrovik]

Today I am Sad

Today I am sad, and most people don’t know,

Because I can laugh and joke and argue,

And smile and go along.

 And I know that you’re not like them,

I know that you sorta know.

And over my guise I see under yours,

A worry I can’t dissolve though I know I am the cause.

 I want to give you the words,

The ones I can’t form,

That fixes all ailments,

That makes all cures obsolete.

 But instead, today, I am sad, and I have my facade.

If you promise to keep yours up,

That’s all that I need.

 You are my family,

And I don’t know how to value you more,

But I’ll keep making memories,

Because that’s what they’re for.

[pyrovik]

The Chief Bird Witch is the final username that tumblr suggested for me.

The Chief Bird Witch was no doctor, nor *the* Doctor, nor a police officer, or a gardener. The Chief Bird Witch sat on the council of Chief Witches. While the men held their political court, all the other genders made the real decisions at the Court of the Coven of Witches.

The village, nestled in the foothills in the evening shadow of a single, solitary mountain, houses the Town Hall. That was where the superfluous decisions of men were made.

During the day the Chief Witches were simple participants in the village. They clothed, fed, bathed, and tended to the tight knit families.

At night they gathered quietly at a plateau a short climb above the village. A fire was lit to keep the Coven warm. There gathered the Chief of the Coven, chosen every year by consensus. The Chief Agriculture Witch, the most knowledgeable of the seeds and medicine. The Chief Animals Witch, the most knowledgeable of hunting and husbandry. And the Chief Meteorology Witch, who tracked the winds and the seasons.

The Court of the Coven of Witches did not suffer fools. The men in the hall called their practice witchcraft; the Coven of Witches called it fact based reasoning.

Yet this year was different. There was a new Chief Witch. The Chief Bird Witch. The Chief Animals Witch did not cover this territory. It was important to diversify, to innovate. So the youngest of age proposed the position, with the intent to fly.

Logic and reason can only get one so far: imagination should not be stifled. And it was on the coldest morning, as the frost melted from the village below, that the Chief Bird Witch stepped from the plateau.

A rig of canvas wings dropped and their stomachs churned. Then the wind caught the material and it billowed. The wooden handle under the fixed canvas triangle dug in to the Chief Bird Witch’s hands as the canvas tugged and lifted.

The Chief Bird Witch glided over the village and the tip of the Town Hall. To land in a field beyond.

The Chief Bird Witch was the first human to fly. Not even the politicking from the Town Hall (that brought the invasion of murderous men that tore the village to the ground the next day) would change that.

[pyrovik]

The second last suggested name was the Futuristic Police Persona. I don’t particularly want this blog to be anything to do with politics - I have Twitter for that. But naturally that is an unachievable goal. Everything is political, including not engaging in politics. The Police are, by the numbers, a purely political organisation. There are no incarceration figures you can look at that paint the often heard line “most police are good people”. They imprison the poor, the marginalised and the mentally unwell.

I am reminded strongly of the eponymous Doctor from Doctor Who. The character that I like the most in all their iterations is the idea of a deeply flawed individual who has a chequered past at best. I imagine being the Doctor’s companion is a lot like being good friends with a dictator. Plenty of luxury in the journey, to drown out the horror at home.

Looking only at the good things a dictator has done you will have a story of a hero. Consider even a small portion of the bad and you very quickly have a villain. The Doctor polices the galaxy from a sense of morality that is more often than not derived from the companion who travels with them. The one who says “Doctor! You can stop now.”

Yet if we do not stand by the Doctor, if there is no companion, the typical result is much worse. So increasingly I find it important to uphold the idea that “most police are good people” in case they find themselves aspiring to be anything but.

[pyrovik]

The third suggestion was the Wildly Casual Bouquet.

There are still people out there who pick flowers. It’s not a simple thing. You don’t want to find you’ve just picked up poison ivy or stinging nettles. Then you need to keep them well or they’ll fall apart on your way. Rubbing sap and green on your clothing.

Buying a bouquet lacks all the risk or reward. A wildly casual bouquet sounds a lot like an adventure waiting to happen. To return with something not half as pretty and yet a story twice as fun.

Of course, it would not work if you had planned it. That’s where casual comes in. Which means often walking in nature. I like this idea as not just a single bouquet, but a type of activity. I’ll be right back, I have to get started on a Wildly Casual Bouquet.

[pyrovik]

The second suggested tumblr username was the Big Collective Student, and that got me thinking about school, societies and clubs, working together, and learning. All those opportunities that exist when you study:

I’ve been thinking about school.

I used to dream about finishing and never having to go back.

I told myself that when it does finish,

I would wish it never had.

And now here I am, all these years later, wishing it had not.

[pyrovik]

I created this tumblr to write things as they come to me. The suggestions for a username were more creative perhaps, in a computer generated way, than what brought me here which is a tad disheartening.

Instead of leaving it at that, however, I will use the names as inspiration for my first posts. Here is a picture of a garden. It is where you will find the first entry: The Dark Goatee Gardener. They are proud of this place. Proud to have something to help grow. Like the garden, this person doesn’t mind if you like their goatee or not. The goatee is not for you, though you can enjoy it.

To those who do not like the goatee, or question its place, the Dark Goatee Gardener responds:

“Who are you, to question what should and should not grow?

I aspire to be like the Dark Goatee Gardener; to know (not just believe or assert but to know) the answer is just the same whether the subject is the garden, or the goatee.