An unexpected message from an old acquaintance, a teacher from childhood, adolescence, telling me that he was getting burned too often to remain teaching. Think the sincerity, the candor, as he calls it, of my last letter to him might’ve been too much to allow for any prompt reply on his part. As I look back on it, the candor of the letter surprises me as well, when I attempt to relay that gratitude for his skill as a mentor, for his humor and understanding. The whole conversation now leaves me with a warm melancholy. It was ten years or close to it, when I took his class and despite my bitterness for his absence later on I know too that the school didn’t deserve the man. These thoughts are like finding an old photograph you’d long forgotten.
I do love this city. Spent some little evening walking in the backyard that is Sunset Boulevard, in the strange and sprawling urban garden amongst the 11 o clock cafes and bus stops and strip joints and grocery shops. Its got the echoes of many tales and it is warm and old, and beaten down and it is home.
Superstitions swirl in my mind. The sensitivity that I strived for now nicks me at my side, for I stand in fear of everything because I am in love with everything. And I wonder if this is the nature of being human in its most raw form, before knowing that I’ve got a long way to go. Write too much of these things and you could throw off the balance, one that is all so important and one that I believe in very much.
–
Graduation Song
Don’t throw me friend
This is all far from fixed
I’m standing in the dark
Amidst warm, gentle mist.
I was a babe when I stood amongst friends
Cannot see home, thoughts suspend.
Is this the dream they warn you of, in
This garden where lies Noah’s dove?
This is not the common road
I see no old friends nor old foes,
Just a sign by an umbrella rack
Reading ‘face the rain and don’t turn back.’
You walk this road where words fail the beauty of what you see.
It’s all just life you’ve chosen to lead
When you lose all thoughts of destiny.
And what sings the song for humanity?
‘This is life, and life only.’
You repeat, staring the line of sweet fragility.
Ren Michael 