Saturday, September 27, 2014

Comma or comatose



Sometimes it seems that run on sentences aren't really so different than the life we're living.  I should take ownership of this and say 'the life I'm living.'  If it doesn't seem like going to work is like going through a revolving door, than you must be retired. After a while everything becomes a blur. I know from experience that this will not always be the case but it seems to be the case now. 

The reason this is connected to run on sentences is really obvious to me.  I think a comma represents a pause in thought; a segment of thought, a place where you stop and check out what came before you got to this place in thought and where you might want to think about what's coming up in the sentence.  Or, if you're writing on oxygen it could be where you take a breath. If you take a breath than the person reading your writing will also get a chance to breathe. Unless of course we're talking about a majority of people that don't sub-vocalize and these people probably are anaerobic readers. If I have that spelling right. 

These kinds of people, and they probably are the vast majority of readers in this country, can read, and breathing, other than the necessity of it for being alive, has nothing to do with their reading. I and others like me, on the other hand, read and breathe in synchronization. I cannot read without taking a breath and commas, are that breath for me.

Therefore, I believe, but I'm not certain, that people such as myself, might well want to use more commas so that we can breathe and read and not go comatose.  “She died from reading.” for instance, would be a curious but sad commentary on how she ended her life.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

the summer feeling like always

It is not the water that moves but the energy through it.  Every wave is an illusion of movement; as if the water is moving from one area to another. The Indian Ocean eventually coming to the Jersey shore and every wetland on the coast holding something of the Mediterranean and the Aegean within. The Pacific, one Jupiter-sized ocean, carrying every river and Lake Baikal from Russia, even water off the deep sturgeon and all of it rolling into every otter’s paws like a cabbage of energy, that is really, layers and layers of energy and detritus of many oceans and currents, rolling into their paws or filtered through the feathery gills of baby clams.  Every leaf a wrack line and watermark from the Yangtze, the Yellow or the Seine rivers.  Why not bring Paris into it? After all, those kicks of the Follies surely moved the air and birds’ preening feathers loose caught this wind and moved onto the Seine and into the ocean and through the currents, rolling, rolling to the Jersey shore. Why not?  Or the Danube, blue dancing on the edges of the red cabbage. Well, where else would that blue come from except the Danube?  Dancing on the red cabbage like the white moths touched by yellow but owned by the air and moving through space, time and energy to your garden.  Wave and crest, colonies of Monarchs, moving through time’s patterns since their own generation did not make the crossing but left it to cascades of sparrows to wing through the air, stir up the cosmos and move the whole pilgrimage along the curve of energy, the ladle of abbondanza, the plenty crowding out of the great Horn and all of it, ending in the colors of the evening, the deeper blues before the dark, the warmer reds, the sweet colors of skin with summer on their nets and the lunar curve of children’s calves and thighs walking through the sand; small sprays of grains whisking past their toes, as one or maybe more look back for the dolphins, always ready to come to the surface when you’re not looking; always there the day before when you should have been.  The summer feeling like always.