Monday, May 9, 2011

Poems: An instrumenal piece (by Sacrag)

Una Pieza Instrumental

“Todo el mundo es un escenario,”
Dice el escritor inglesa
Como si la vida diario,
pasado, futuro, amor y tristeza,
          Fueran páginas de guión.
Como las piratas locas de El Dorado
Los humanos van desesperado
buscando lo significado,
esta cosa que no se ha encontrado
          nunca; solo inventado .
De la vida, sabemos la melodía;
 conocemos el ritmo que no se para,
pero la letra no existiría
si cada letra no se creara
por nosotros, quien la necesitamos tanto.
Pero la vida es una pieza instrumental—
Solo una experiencia que escuchamos juntas,
no para comprender, sino para sentir.
          Sin embargo, busca significado en una riqueza de todas otras cosas.
Y cometimos el error fundamental,
De asumir que las finas puntas,
nos pegan a todos igualmente, mentir
          de esto ruina la experiencia.  
Deja de buscar mensajes en este concierto,
no vuelvas a formar más preguntas.
Toca tu papel para que puedas oír,
          tocar, y ver el sabor. 

 Translation:
"All the world's a stage," 
says the English writer
as if everyday life,
past, future, love and sadness,
     were pages of a script. 
Like the pirates of El Dorado, 
humans rome desperately
in search of meaning:
that thing that is never found
     only invented. 
To life, we know the melody;
we know that unstopping rhythm.
But the lyrics would not exists
if they weren't created
     by us, who need them so. 
But life is an instrumental piece,
an experience that we listen to together,
not to understand, but to feel. 
     But still, we look for meaning in a wealth of other treasures.
And we make the grand mistake
of assuming that the sweet notes 
strike us all in the same way. To lie
     of this, ruins the show. 
Stop looking for meaning in this concert.
Don't ask such questions anymore.
Play your part so that you can hear,
    touch, and see the flavor.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Crescendo: Running breeds butt splinters

I sat in my chair, starting to smell in my formal graduation layers, watching the grads from the College of Business and Finance proceed to the grand stage, which was decorated with a grandiose black shawl flowing behind a dark crimson SVSU crest with its little Egyptian symbols in a triangle.  Now, I chose the word "proceed" with care, because leading the line of future accountants and managers was a skinny black dude in a wheelchair. I thought back to all the people to whom I asked this question: "Are you walking in May?"
Indeed, the very coming-of-age ritual is referred to in shorthand as 'walking'. I wondered if it was a source of annoyance for this man. Unlike everybody else garbed in wizard clothes, he did not look happy. He looked quite the opposite of happy. He did not wave to his particular fans in the crowd, smile and laugh with the president during his handshake, or fist pump at any point during his stroll. I wondered if he was humiliated by the whole ordeal, or if something else was making him grumpy. Or perhaps he is just a scroogy kind of fellow. I don't know.
But it made me think about how different today must feel for each of the 800 graduates. It made me think how different today was for me than the day I graduated high school. I left high school feeling like I had overcome a sort of victimization. I had endured getting the short end of the stick, but not quietly. I worked hard, but I cannot say that I took the high road more than once or twice during my high school years. I bitched alot. Mostly about other people. Not a good game-plan.  But on May 7th 2011, I stomped happily across the stage towards Eric Gilbertson, shook his hand, gave a fist-pump to MJ Brandimore, did a fancy handshake with JJ Boehm on the way down the stage, and proceeded back to my folding chair in the Arts and Behavioral Science section. On most days, that chair is not a very pleasant chair to sit in for anybody. But for me on that day, bringing with me all the cushion of four years of fun, adventure, learning, and relationship-forging, it may as well have been a million-dollar recliner.
And that's what I learned at that moment. The headline of that epiphany was, "Bring your own cushion." It reminded me of Becky Miller's dad. Becky Miller was one of my older sister's friends when she was in elementary school. She was a very pleasant, nice, funny, gangly girl with a quite tall father with quite large glasses and a quite large mustache. He had a really nice, memorable folding bleacher chair that he would bring to every Sault High Sporting event ever. I don't know if it's called a bleacher chair. It was like a bleacher supplement. It just unfolded and had a nice big seat and a nice tall back, and sat right on the nasty hazardous wooden bleachers of Sault High's gym. Once, I fell onto those bleachers running full speed, sliding along them and filling my right butt-cheek with dozens of splinters. That's what happens when you run fast. I should have run with a bleacher-seat bungied to my bum, but that's hard.

Rituals and ceremonies are useful for many reasons, one of which is the taking of due time to reflect on what has happened around us and to us. I think we shall have a few rituals of this nature in the next 73 days, time to take it all in and practice some invaluable introspection.

My life is a nice musical piece, a familiar verse constantly repeating around a theme, with funky little variations. I think that I get the pleasure of looking back and writing the lyrics to each verse. The melody of this last bit was loud, fast, and sweet.

happy mother's day. Happy Rob's Graduation Day. When you go to Starbucks, ask for a Chai Frappuccino

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Poems: to Awake

 
     to Awake

and, if there were a coffee cup,
We’d sit on the table;
wind’d blow; steam’d rise;
condensation would trickle and fall

to the table in little drops
staining the cotton cloth;
I would grab the handle, lift,

and dance in the coffee ring;
We’d dance in the coffee ring.


Friday, May 6, 2011

CD 1: Coop: The Legend of the Gindian

Name: Coop
Relation to Sacrag: Glorious and Trustworthy Friend
Sponsor Status: 5-star sponsor, for providing a guidebook to analyze our poop while on the trip
Occupation: Student of Social Work
Rob's favorite Quality: She is down to do anything that comes up
Stu's Favorite Quality: Dancing Skills
Super Power: Her hair is like a dream catcher but when you're awake, just turning all bad things good.
:
Caitlin Colleen Cooper, better known as Coop, is possibly the most important person to be aware of  while reading this blog over the Summer.
The Summer after Sacrag graduated from Sault Area High School, that is the Summer of 2007), a meek, quiet girl with a happy disposition began spending much of her Summer days with them. She was always nice to have around, but it soon became apparent that there was an extreme amount of character lurking behind that devious little smile and seductive, puss-in-boots-like face (there is no better adjective for the total effect of her big brown eyes and lightly freckled cheeks). Coop quickly became one of our move valued friends, and remains so today.
She is undoubtedly partially ginger. Fiery red hair in the sunlight, and freckles all over=ginger. I do believe she has nearly an entire soul, though. In fact, she has a great deal more soul than most people of much more prominent pigment.
She is also undeniably connected to her Indian roots. Half of her family hails from Bay Mills, Michigan, one of the two native tribes in the Soo area. She is affiliated with the Bowen clan of the Ojibwe tribe of Chippewa Indians. This culminates in Coop's character with behavior such as unrestrained passionate dancing around fires, compassion for all living creatures, doing most everyday activities while barefoot, and frequently dashing off into the wilderness for long periods of time to bond with nature.
She has been a sandwich artist and an ice-cream scooper, a cross-country runner and a soccer player (in the Sault Soccer Association, aka the SSA, aka the Ass-backwards league), a lover and a fighter. She tells it like it is and sees it like it is, a revolutionary of noble causes.
Sacrag and Coop would pack into the front of her S-10 Chevy pickup and go on 5 hour road trips rocking out to all the feel-good music one could muster. The panorama of that bench seat on a typical trip would be Stuie behind the wheel (because logistics didn't support moving the seat far forward enough for Coop to drive and fitting Robbie in the truck) singing at the top of his lungs, turning the steering wheel to and fro to the music, miraculously never being pulled over for swerving; Coop in the middle, gleefully soaking up the music and eating a frosty, which she would spill on Stuies pants if a glob were slipping of the Spoon and needed a place to fall; and Robbie, dead asleep on the far side, taking in the world through osmosis as Robbie often does.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Happy Cinco de Mayo, among other days. "The Many Journey Journal"

I am getting giddy. The trip nears, and we have passed several significant days. Monday was my dad's birthday. The old man turned 51 years old on May the 2nd. I have a funny way of remembering how old my dad is. My sister is two years older than I am, and when my sister was 14, my dad was 41. So it's only a quick mathematics equation to figure out where the poppa stands in terms of years.
(Katie's current age -14)+41= Dad's current age.  BOOM!
Then, it was May 3rd, the first full day I spent in Marysville, Michigan. It was magical. I made two trips to Meijer, had a slushie from Plum's (I forgot the name of Plum's once, and it cost me more than you will ever know: never again), and ate at both the Raven, who provided me with the most delicious supergreen smoothie and venetian chicken sandwich I have ever had (I shall eat a better one nevermore), and at the Linwood, where I ate a half-pound burger and a bunch of nachos, served to me by a 50-year-old bar waitress with a voice as silky smooth as a cigarette box stuck in a vacuum.
The, it was May 4th, or the day only 21 years shy of the day when the date would be 5-4-32. That would be a 6-point cribbage hand, if I'm not mistaken, and it's countdown nature coincides with what was going on in my mind:  6 days until departure for San Diego.
And here we are today, as Cinco de Mayo: a rough translation, "the fifth of May." I have not done any of the traditional gringo rituals to celebrate today, instead spending all day cleaning out my dorm room and doing laundry as I prepare to depart from 418-2, my last residence at SVSU that I will ever have. However, Shannon broke a 4-day no-pooping streak this afternoon, which is good.
Constipation is a serious thing. Not only can a blockage like that cause intestinal damage and internal bleeding, it can also lead to blood poisoning and other serious conditions because the colon, as anybody who has done drugs with their anus knows, absorbs chemicals extremely quickly. All the cholesterol and waste that should be dumped from the body, when constipated, is instead reabsorbed into the bloodstream. It's bad juju. Eat lots of fiber and stay hydrated, people.
As Robbie offers a constant flow of poetry and pleasant reading leading up to our departure, I will blog every day (more briefly than this) about logistics of the trip. Not overly logistical logistics, but rather, a daily introduction to one of the many types of journeys we will be going on while crossing the country. To illustrate, I reveal them now:
The bike journey: of course, we are riding our bikes a bloody long way. We will meet many people and cities, and blog about them all.
The musical journey: I have learned to play the ukelele in the last two weeks enough to grow as a ukelelist along the way.
The literature journey: reading a book takes one places. I shall go as many places traveling along pages as I will traveling along roads (except the pages are digital: yay kindle).
The yoga journey: I took two yoga classes this semester, following the advice that, in my last semester, I should take the courses that will help me in law school the most. Organizing my Chakras seemed more helpful than reading more about politics or society. The yoga journey will include all physiological/spiritual transformations.
The relationship journey: I will simultaneously be diving into the waters of being far away from many of my loved ones for a long period of time and the waters of seeing one of my loved ones more regularly and inescapably than I have ever been forced to see a loved one before. It will be magical, I am sure.
The philosophical journey: I am sure all of these trips will impact my perspective on the world. I have no idea how, exactly. That's the beauty of life.

And things like that. There will be intermingling blog entries addressing each of these themes, and I think it has the potential to be a nice book format.

It's on. Short, sweet passages will pour forth every day now. Love and respect.

Poems: Cravings


     Cravings

Blueberries line the path of the Hiawatha Forest
and white-tailed deer break between birch trees
to let bicyclers pass through the woods. 
Sunlight feasts on wet boughs

and speckles the dirt two-track. 
Each day, each mile gives us inspiration
to scrawl in the margins
of our yellowed paperback Walden

as we lie beside the campfire,
scorching our arm hair
as we move closer to see the words. 
Robins will wake us to the smoke

curling and chasing the morning’s anticipation,
playing games on the backdrop of the hungry dawn,
sweeping the pollen and dew and soot
into shadow puppets of whitefish and freshwater perch. 

With cravings in the morning, we’ll bike
to Kroger for cheese stuffed hotdogs.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Poems: Blessing of the Bike


     Blessing of the Bike

May Day, Father Jerome and I
eat bacon cheeseburgers. 
Just arrived from Colorado,
his grey hair is crew cut, and he’s leaner. 
He looks more like his grandfather. Grey hair.
He smiles then bites into his burger from West Pier,
and an onion chunk falls to the ground.
Father J says the sky is crisper and calls for
     the Mango Sentinel
—aged but still swift, familiar.
Drinks his milkshake and laughs.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Poems: A Song for Merwin's April


     A Song for Merwin’s April

With complaint of work
We are trite to sing April

April showers bring May flowers

But rain strikes fog
And flooded earth runs to sea

So we grow impatient
And must be reminded
April showers bring May flowers