Pascal, we meet again.

"Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us."

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is this:
It's slouching in a chair at around midnight trying to relieve a severe case of writer's block (without much avail), when a dusty black case catches your eye. Nostalgia is half knowing what's inside and half frantically pulling the case out of the clutches of cobwebs, boxes, and furniture. It's opening the case and finding a long and lanky brass instrument that is both familiar and foreign. Nostalgia is putting the instrument together as if you'd known it for years but running your eyes up and down it as if you were seeing it for the very first time. Tilting your head in child-like wonder, you smile as if greeting an old friend, and you are unaware that your fingers have already fallen into the proper place. Nostalgia is giddily scouring the guest room for sheet music only to find yourself blowing dust off black and white keys, and when you've finally found some music, you laugh to yourself and realize that you still recognize the notes even though you can only read the bass clef. It's being unable to discern what is new and what is old for they've collided in beautiful clash of sounds, happiness, and a loss for words. Nostalgia is rediscovering music and all the young awe and fascination that first came with it and still remains.

Glass

At best,
I am but glass.
A pane,
Without protection,
Fragile and easily broken,
Showing only that which is the Lord's.
In Him I have all things,
A frame and a purpose,
Lucid and washed,
A window.

Work in Progress (or Less Serious Conversations on Straws)

My fingers sorted through the small bag of birdseed, carefully trying to gather equal amounts of each particular kind of seed before tossing it to the birds. The seed produced quite an audience some of which simply gazed over the generous feast before them only to leave, followed only by my quiet curses condemning them for their imprudent ingratitude. My grumblings to the reprobate birds generally took its toll on my demeanor often leading people to believe that I desired to be left alone. Of course, I cannot blame it solely on the birds, because it was I talking to them and not the other way around. Not to mention the fact that when talking to birds, a man is usually found in his most foolish state.
Adults are not much more different than children. We never left the playground. When we’re at the office we play tag. Hoping that we won’t be “it,” we pass the work that should have been last week on to the poor new guy hiding in cubicle four. When we’re alone, we still pretend to build impenetrable forts with moats and towers. We claim space that’s not ours to really claim, stake it as own, and start building boundaries and walls around ourselves, but we forget to build windows or doors. However, children are immune to the fortresses of adults, or rather, they are Trojan Horses. We think them innocent enough to let them within our bounds only to realize, all too late, that they’ve conquered our hearts.
When the seed was gone and my flighty, feathered audience had left, a little girl shuffled over to the opposite end of the bench, which I was, up until recently, surrounding with castle walls. Not seeing any imminent threat from her, I simply worked on putting the finishing touches on the moat and towers. With grace that can only be understood as childlike, she propped herself up on the bench. She had carried with her a glass bottle of pop that she could barely fit both her hands around. She took a sip from the straw that was inserted into the bottle, and her legs began to swing back and forth like she was on a swing-set. After a while, she looked my direction and asked, “Hey Mister, what’s a straw?”
Quite comically baffled, I half-heartedly asked, “What do you mean? Do you mean, what’s it made of?” “No, I don’t mean that,” she said, “I mean—um—I mean, what makes a straw a straw?” Still somewhat taken back, I tried to answer her question, “Well, straws are hollow tubes that are usually made out of plastic that we use to drink liquid out of glasses and bottles, like the one you’ve got there.” With a look of total dissatisfaction, she asked, “Why don’t we call them tubes then?” “Because not all tubes are used for drinking,” I replied. Her brow furrowed a bit more and she said, “But not all straws are used for drinking. Some boys in my class use straws to shoot spit-wads at the teacher. Does that mean those aren’t straws anymore?” I smiled and said, “No, those are still straws (I guess). They’re just not being used in the right way.” I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth before she asked, “How do you know if they’re being used in the right way or not?” I paused for a bit and began to say, “Well the way the boys in your class use straws is bad, and the way that you’re using your straw is good, because you’re using it to drink.” She then asked, “But what about when I’m not using it for anything bad but just for something fun like blowing bubbles in my soda or making gurgling sounds when there’s only ice left in my cup? Is that bad?” “No, it’s not bad. It’s just not the right way,” I replied. “But I thought that the wrong way was bad and the right way was good,” the girl said rather inquisitively. “Yes, that does seem a bit off,” I said, “Why isn’t it that way?” We sat for while, silent, watching a man play fetch with his dog. Finally breaking the silence, the girl asked me, “So have you figured out what a straw is yet?” I laughed and told her I was working on it. Then I asked her, “Have you?” She replied with a rather optimistic “Nope!” “What makes a straw a straw? It’s not just its shape or make nor is it just its function or how it’s used. But we can agree that straws can be used for good or bad purposes, so we’d have to say that straws are inherently good to begin with. Although, that doesn’t really answer the question, does it? So, let’s see. What’s so neat about straws? Well, like you said before, without straws we couldn’t make gurgling sounds or blow bubbles in our drinks. Straws also save us from embarrassing encounters with the ice and that little bit of liquid that always gets stuck at the bottom of our cups or glasses and waits to fall on us once we’ve tilted our heads too far back—the thing about straws is this: they have a given design and a determined function but it doesn’t define or limit them in what they can be used for. Straws share the likeness and similarity to tubes, but we don’t call straws tubes because calling a straw a tube would be like calling a dog a wolf. Straws have inherited a relationship with us that now separates them from other objects that may feign at being straws, like tubes or hoses.” I paused to look over at the little girl who had now finished off the bottle of pop, and I asked her, “Does that make sense?” She looked over at me and said, “Sort of, but I’m still kind of wondering what a straw is.” The little girl then slid off the bench and started walking over to the playground.

"If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always."

Any Prince to Any Princess

August is coming
and the goose, I'm afraid,
is getting fat.
There have been
no golden eggs for some months now.
Straw has fallen well below market price
despite my frantic spinning
and the sedge is,
as you rightly point out,
withered.

I can't imagine how the pea
got under your mattress. I apologize
humbly. The chambermaid has, of course,
been sacked. As has the frog footman.
I understand that, during my recent fact-finding tour of the
Golden River,
despite your nightly unavailing efforts,
he remained obstinately
froggish.

I hope that the Three Wishes granted by the General
Assembly
will go some way towards redressing
this unfortunate recent sequence of events.
The fall in output from the shoe-factory, for example:
no one could have foreseen the work-to-rule
by the National Union of Elves. Not to mention the fact
that the court has been fast asleep
for the last six and a half years.

The matter of the poisoned apple has been taken up
by the Board of Trade: I think I can assure you
the incident will not be
repeated.

I can quite understand, in the circumstances,
your reluctance to let down
your golden tresses. However
I feel I must point out
that the weather isn't getting any better
and I already have a nasty chill
from waiting at the base
of the White Tower. You must see
the absurdity of the
situation.
Some of the courtiers are beginning to talk,
not to mention the humble villagers.
It's been three weeks now, and not even
a word.

Princess,
a cold, black wind
howls through our empty palace.
Dead leaves litter the bedchamber;
the mirror on the wall hasn't said a thing
since you left. I can only ask,
bearing all this in mind,
that you think again,

let down your hair,

reconsider.

-Adrian Henri

(Satire is a guilty pleasure. Although, it should not be over indulged.)