I. It turned out that the world had changed, and despite the uproars several cycles ago, we didn’t seem to see it coming. Oh well. The forms still seem to stretch and commingle, abundant sitting places for various songbird and rodent being provided in a threshold for spiritual nourishment and ascendant transformation. So much for the wayfarers. We had thought, for sure, they’d be the ones to build the Holy Land and hold it right there. But the more their children had children who went to school, and the more they watched television and were handed tablet devices, the more all manner of concentration began to become an issue – to hold meant to congeal, and in an attempt to congeal, we concretized, desperate, and in need of reinforcement. All the Madonnas and Marys were gone. The Hollies and Victorias and Graces. It was no surprise that Jims and Jacks weren't up to the task, but we certainly knew that Haleys and Madisons couldn't tell what from what and we didn't at all know what to do with the Jordans, let alone the Tophers. All the people prattling about Modernity had ways of taking this apart and putting it back together again. All amounted to some configuration of parts, conflagrations of theory and folk psychology writ psuedo-academic, but everyone knew that there was a world and, if we kept on this way, we were never going to see it, let alone participate in it. So we took whatever little material we had at hand, went to the workshop, and started putting things together as best we could. II. Nothing is identical. The memory is not the real thing, nor is the reflection. Nevertheless we repeat. Create replications and sequels. Over and over, in the same way seeds of the same species split, birthing new trees of similar structure and hue. Landscapes emerge and, as we walk and walk again, we see repetitions in the finite mind of the infinite pattern of the unremarkable, which is perhaps the most important of all of the stately structures we encounter. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published. And you and I will maintain ours, as well. Songs will be sung, and choruses repeated as covers emerge. That which is most popular is that which is most redundant, but not for want of originality. Instead, we tend to find the most unique expressions in the derivatives, the only substances which can truly hold the content, vacant as a shell must be to house protectively that which is essential. A life lived, or two or twenty. Insignificant each, yet the only figures on which we can experience consciousness, the one mystery still worth saving.
I saw you reading
poetry in your towel
while my ceiling leaked.