A dream during twilight

She bears a burden that chills her heart,
takes away the aches and pains,
slows the rhythm of life to the minimal
pulse excited only by alcohol and running
away from fear, fear of solutions to what seem like
indelible problems yet are as evanescent
and fleeting as fireflies.
Her body becomes colder and her frozen breaths
can’t sustain her for much longer.
Her warm appearance is unlike that which lies within;
while perhaps thoughtful, calm and capable of true
acts of humanity and love, she is as broken and twisted trees,
mangled not of their own accord,
yet still holding with a firm grip on to the power of life
through each brittle winter that howls and roars to claim.
It will take a year of working,
a year of sun, fertile rains and the
loving being of all that is, but she who
once stumbled in the frigid dark and
grasped blindly for a hand to hold
onto may know herself as herself,
alive and empowered –
nothing trivial, not any more.

Food and Vegetable Politics, oh my!

Following my experiment in consumption earlier in the week and the proceeding discussion of food politics on Facebook, I decided to continue my exploration of taste and desire by comparing and contrasting the high-fat, highly-industrial burger meal by spending three days eating well-balanced, nutritious vegetarian meals. The difference is tremendous.

In my average, daily diet here at college I do not consume a great deal of meat to begin with. My only meat comes from either the pepperoni pizza I eat occasionally or turkey or fish in a sandwich. To go three days without this food was not too much of a challenge. Instead of getting the chicken and chicken gravy in the shepherds pie, for instance, I opted out of both of those and replaced it with a delicious potato and leek soup.

The following two days, I satisfied my cravings for something heavy and dense in my stomach — such as a burger or some other sort of flesh, per se — with a lot of complex carbohydrates from grains or whole grain bread. Beyond this, milk was an adequate source of protein and nourishment. One evening, I had egg salad. Some vegetarians would dispute that eating an egg is non-vegetarian and carnivorous; my response is that I am an experimenter and in no way a purist.

To summarize my diet of the past several days, I enjoyed big bowls of fresh spinach leaves and other greens and colored vegetables that I ate raw and, generally, with my hands. No dressing is required to bring out the full, bold and earthy flavor of spinach. On my brown rice I used olive oil and added a few veggies. This was completely satisfying, easy on the stomach, and incredibly healthy. I did not miss meat in the least.

Last night I broke my three day journey into the vegetable life when I encountered ham salad at our deli bar here on campus. This is a rarity. When I was little my mom would made ham salad quite often for my lunches to be spread on sandwiches. I really enjoy the combination of mayo, ham, and relish. Unable to resist, I had it on my sandwich. My enjoyment of the meat came only in the value of nostalgia; I could remember the times in the past and the fond feelings towards my mother, her cooking, and being a kid. The ham by itself was sub par.

Another one of my favorite foods as a kid was bacon. One morning while coming back from a few days lodging in Bar Harbor, my family stopped at a breakfast buffet. I was so overwhelmed with the options that I loaded more than a pound of bacon into my bowl and went back to our table, intent on eating it all. Not only did I feel dehydrated a little ways into the meal, I was sick to my stomach and not even the combined appetite of the four of us could finish it off. I felt terribly wasteful. I’ve cleaned my plate and taken only what I can knowingly eat ever since.

Remembering this, I tried some bacon this morning and ate it slowly, thoughtfully, and inquisitively. Nothing. As my friend commented: “translucent” flesh and fat. Salt. There was almost nothing worthwhile in it. While bacon is not as pervasive as McDonald’s, for instance, there is a similar hype about it. That savory feeling in the mouth comes when images of bacon are on television or in print. Even just discussing the smell of bacon is sure to make one hungry.

To finish off my survey of food qualities, before writing this I ate a bag of Lay’s kettle cooked chips, the Jalapeno variety. Kettle chips are one of my weaknesses. I prefer brands other than Lay’s, but I figured that these would do. On the back of the bag, I noted the presence of MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) in the flavor powder coating the chips. MSG embodies the fifth flavor picked up by the human tongue, called Umami or “Savory”. It took me about fifteen minutes of intermittent snacking to finish off the bag. As I neared the end, my mouth felt otherworldly; my salivary glands were in high gear. All of my mouth was tingling and my gums felt inflamed. The savory flavor so embodied by MSG had overtaken my taste receptors and the flavor of every other ingredient to create a wild explosion of saliva and confusion.

The Findings: I am going to permanently reconsider my choices as I am dining. While I have been interested in nutrition for the past year or two, learned myself in some basics of organics, health foods, food additives, and other key components relevant to our modern diet, it just isn’t enough.

I will not align myself with any restrictive food ideology beyond my own, be it vegetarian, vegan, or any of the multitude of diet plans being sold on the market. I can feel clearly that burgers and a bowl of spinach affect me in distinctly different ways, and will use this instinct to eat as much as I can, rather than buying into the consumer market.

My hard earned money and yours ought not to support corporate giants who use food as a means of control and domination. A dangerous loss of culture, health, and liberty all result from buying into the lifestyle of soda, fast-food, and Western convenience. While I cannot escape the system, by being knowledgeable and open-minded in my choices, I can combat it, do my little part and be healthy within it until the day when we can all farm our own food.

Lapse Into Soul

The sun sets on
the silence of
another evening.

I see fingers of light
mingle through the
trees, I feel wind
freeze my beard.

The billowing
glow of stoves
and wood smoke
drifts on the breeze.

The moon peeks
through the wavering
clouds, cold, diffused.

People walk before
and behind me on
their way through
insubstantial space.

I stand in the middle
of space, now, the torrent
of blustery existence,
smiling for just a
moment at all the
world now around me,
harmony in complexity,
curiosity in simplicity.

Then, I am gone.

-hrafn

Desert Wakes Up

The expanse of lights fills up my vision;

I am awakened flying higher than Phoenix and

in the darkness of midnight I recognize no one

in the deserted city. We descend and drive through

the dark blurry streets that criss-cross the city’s wings

and soar on towards death in the Sonoran Desert.

The landforms that took a hundred thousand years

or more to form are recreated in sterile plastic for

a passing travellers palms to pass over, the palms’

leaves void and disperse the city lights in shapes

of sharp feathers out across the through-fares.

Beneath, the dark asphalt approaches the Colorado Plateau,

and begins the ascent out from

this endless circus of fiery lights.

The mimicry of a heart quakes beneath this city,

frightened, sustaining a thousand new refugees

each month — yet in a hundred years this place, fated

to become a wispy dune, will be a stronghold only

populated by dusty metal bones and mummified memories

of life, cracked and dried like those in Pompeii, trapped

in eternal gridlock for a drop of water, a drop of life.

There is oblivion outside my window as we drive the

steep mountain passes away from the immortal city.

Only phantoms of people and cars roam the street;

hope is  rumored to be forlorn, the grace of the modern city

is about to spontaneously combust –

and as the old desert sun rises and gives hot breath to a new day

I can see the ravens playing in the burning crimson light.

Haikus for lonely New England

1
Winter in Maine is
a butterfly in stasis
preparing for life.

2
Once, the elms were here,
the great walnuts and chestnuts;
time, it took them all.

3
In the old man’s field
the birches, pines and maples
drove out all the cows.

4
The typewriter sings
in the middle of the woods;
the writer’s gone home.

5
On the summits of
the old Appalachians, a
raven will greet you.

6
A few forgotten
streams can inspire one to
imagine, wonder, go.

7
Atop Great Mountain,
challenged by thunderer,
you will find yourself.

8
Crow travels among
valleys and people; here,
there, home is everywhere.

9
The darkness settles,
the candles are lit, the storm
closes the shutters.

10
Harvest rushes in.
Corn, squash, oats, blueberries, all
people are merry.

11
An empty quarry,
a raven’s nest, rocky path,
New England, my temple.

A writer’s winter

The typewriter sings
in the middle of the woods;
the writer’s gone home.

He’s traveled back from
a sojourn of hiking trails
smoothed soft by snowfalls.

In the autumn he
searched for a little something,
came back with nothing

but rough hands and a
pair of broken boots,
broken ambitions.

The pages of his
novels were sundered by the
wind, cast adrift in

sullen storms, into
the upheaval, soggy, bleached,
unrecognizable;

if all his tales are
just allegories of the
long passed, he would write

them again, on a
typewriter inside a warm
cabin, through the winter.

Titan

Pine I. Click for larger image.

Pine II. Click for larger image.

The old Wolf Pine of Mt. Apatite.

Beyond Androscoggin

The ebb and flow shower over
grayish rocks of old Great Falls;
Cool and quick, white water rapids
shimmer clear and clean under the mist.
The memories of an indelible pollution,
smoky mills and a river’s bitter ruins
are submerged beneath her surging waves.

We take upon these rising rushing waters
in canoes with courage in our hearts –
then off we go into the river’s fluxing flow,
where we drift away from home and high school,
toward college and our noble futures.

Some of us paddle along to CMCC,
or swirl and cheer, riding an eddy to Andover.
Along and down the mighty Androscoggin,
we traverse her graceful course worn by the years,
over the ancient bedrock of mystic Maine.
Sailing on her timeless form, we wave and shout
to friends at USM, or sip and talk all about
the Arts and premieres at lovely Bates –
All now common places brimming with
brave students on uncommon, unique journeys.

As we go may we all recall our youths in Lewiston and Auburn,
the thriving towns that nurtured our opportunities.
We all grew up here, among rivers, bricks and evergreens;
And while we slowly row down the river towards the sea,
to where effort, love and wanderlust will lead us,
we can see many a destination, and begin to realize that the
intuition from our local college educations is the panacea
that can cleanse the dark mill dust from our skin and clothes
and deliver us into a place that the passage of time only knows.

Notes: This was a competition piece for a scholarship by the Androscoggin Chamber of Commerce. It’s quite college-oriented as a result, but I feel it is a powerful dedication to the ancient Androscoggin River. Ever since I was little, the Great Falls have always fascinated me with their might and importance to the area. Without the Androscoggin, L/A would have not been the largest shoe producer in the world (I believe) around the time of WW1. The irony here is that that the result of our powerful industry and endless, giant brick mills, is that Androscoggin became one of the most polluted rivers on Earth, colorful and smelly. It is still slowly recovering and you can “smell the past” on its waters.