mental pencil sharpening

I say I am awake. I got up around 10:15; late for many, but when do The Many go to sleep? I am awake, but it's not the prime hours of the day for me, the starter minutes, the limbering up orally, visually, aurally, et ceterally. I strive to be awake, to back up my claim of same.

But am I?

Who is?

I look around. Glance and browse with my eyes. If I were to close my eyes right now, could I name five objects in this room at this coffee shop, name five smells, five sounds, five textures? Could I describe colors, voices, fixtures, flavors, tastes, walls, floors, doors, customers, lighting, ceiling, temperature, odors, fragrances, air flow?

But who could? Who does such a thing?

To be fair to myself, and to anyone reading this (all 18 people), if I knew I'd be queried as queried above, I'd be able to practice my observation skills. I'd be able to sharpen my mental pencil, or mentally sharpen my metaphorical pencil. Something like that. I am confident I would achieve better results, as would anyone else.

Is it an acquired skill or a discipline, this acute awareness? Can anyone do it with practice over time? Are some people born with talents and powers and skills that aid and abet this adventure?

Detectives and priests. Writers and car salesmen (not gender-specific). Hustlers and thieves. Politicians and pontiffs. Pitchers and batters. Poets and magicians. Who among them exceeds at seeing/hearing/tasting/touching/smelling/thinking/feeling? Again, is it practice or innate talent, or a hybrid of all those things?

Are females or males better at this? I suspect babies and toddlers are the most advanced in this arena; they simply lack the ability to articulate it. Are some cultures better than others at it? Has technology dulled the knife of perception, the blade that cuts through the cloud?

So, you're reading this, and you say, So what? Who cares? What's the point? What's the big deal?

The big deal is the small deal. The small deal is the only game in town. It doesn't take a meteorologist to know which way the rain is falling.  

I want to know enough to get away from the train on the tracks. But I don't want to know so much that I can't tell the difference between a train and a titmouse.

handmade heartily

for my birthday today [yes, let's go for the deliberate low-keyness of lowercase] i received among other things hand-crafted notecards from Kozo Arts on union street in san francisco [if you start with lowercase, you must stick with it and while we are being appropriately minimalist let's start dispensing with punctuation marks at least some of the time] from our july august sweetly memorable visit the very last day cards that are so simple and stark in their beauty you want to feel them and touch them and yes meditate on them rest your head on them inhale them not use them it would almost seem to despoil them in their pristine reverence then again for very special occasions of birth or death or some things in between the occasion would rise up to meet these altars of stationery these stationary stationery inner sanctums the Kozo Arts product description insert itself handsome talks of "Chiyogami silk-screened papers from Japan [they uppercased], bark papers from Mexico, sewn papers from India" and it sounds like an exotic delicious menu even an erotic temple how about saffron robes and incense curling like prayerpoems to the heavens hosanna hosanna of thanks is my chant to my beloved family who bestowed these upon me and to the minds that designed these Kozo Arts sacred objets d'art as well of coarse no fine the hands that made them amen amen awomen too and anyone forever more who will receive these blank slates hungering for haiku or koan

Say What?

At Wegmans today [they don't use the apostrophe and their reasoning is weak] I saw a guy with a long goatee who had these words emblazoned on his black shirt:

Everything Louder Than Everything Else

in a Gothic-looking script.

After a slight bit of Google-addled research, I discovered what many of you already knew, that this is more or less a heavy-metal rock credo, with a rich musical history. Or maybe a Harley-Davidson creed.

As an observer [see my recent post], I was amused by the phrase's tautology and by its koan-like blend of logic and absurdity.

I like it.

It reminds me of a quote by Albert Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

It offers an array of endless possibilities to ponder and play with:

Everything Holier Than Everything Else

Everything more silent than nothing else.

nothing more silent than nothing else

no one more singular than everything else

something less logical than nobody home

either

or