Joseph Rastovich

Sometimes I admire the street person with few belongings and no job. They have time to observe and think. They are unbeholden. Perhaps they are as the wild animals. Fighting for survival but free.

Then there is the pull of the aescetic monk living in the proverbial cave, his work is mastering himself.

Oh the stories, inventions, books, songs, poems that were never expressed and die with the physical body in the grave.

Let me have the focus, clarity and time to express what is inside. Give me space to explore the inside. Staring at a wall or closing my eyes is the deep work which often goes unrewarded.

The greatest things take time. Music takes time. Dance takes time. Writing takes time. Thought takes time. Adventure is time. Nature takes time.

And so how shall I spend my seconds which leads to years and spell the life story?

Lock the door and close the windows. I will emerge when I do.

In running, a rock can cause a fall.

In walking, a rock becomes a stumble.

In stillness, you become a rock.

Silence and solitude calls me like a long lost lover.

To be engrossed and entwined with one thing of focus where the greatest expressions are found.

Find me off the trail on the other side of civilization watching as the birds do.

Mindless bustle that they claim as productivity.

The real work is done as we sleep. As we walk. As we play. As we ponder.

Freedom to flow as the winds and waters.

A favorite stone. Like the one a lover gave or you found while having an epiphany in nature. Like your grandpa’s tools. Your great great grandpa’s tools. Or your great great grandma’s sewing machine. Or the family homestead with stories imbued in the walls and land.

Or perhaps jewels and gold and stocks and pork bellies. Or barrels of oil.

Or perhaps the touch of love.

Or the future generations. Your own progeny. Your inner child. Their inner child. And the core within that child.

Or cute things like puppies and butterflies and old people and babies.

Or perhaps the land. With undiscovered creatures and plants and other life. Of the medicine of Nature.

Or perhaps the most precious thing is out time and attention.

That currency which we can experience all other with.

Attention and focus.

So precious yet so obvious.

The magic of obvious yet overlooked and disregarded.

Setting on the shore of a black and calm lake. An occasional shooting star and jumping fish.

Black holes absorbing light just as my pupils. Perhaps they are just the universe observing itself.

Reality shimmers as a crystal. A crystallized form of manifested dreams.

Reality begetting dreams.

And dreams begetting reality.

Which came first.

With every breath I am reminded of the wind blowing in forest canopies.

The smell of pitch.

I like the bark and stones and mushrooms and snow and grass.

Smoke wafting upward like departing souls and drifting thoughts.

Heart beat as an ancient drum.

Connection just as looking over a vast landscape to the setting sun.

And pondering – marveling – at the moon without logical reason.

How many other people have stared at the moon?

Surely all things for all time.

And thus to watch the moon is to be reminded of our interconnection.

Of our greatness and smallness.

Only humbling.

Translation begins with reception.

Clarity is influenced by conductivity.

A baby is more conductive than a grown up.

To assume closes one’s eyes and ears.

To label is to assume.

Words are our first labels.

As soon as I think tree,

I no longer see the tree.

How to translate without labels?

Words are but one language.

As is dance.

And drawing.

And touch.

And music.

But what about that which can only be experienced and never explained?

Ephemeral essence.

As if a dream forgotten,

But embedded beyond.

And yet language is our super power.

A single word can change the world.

Can elicit memories and dears and joys and arousal and healing and recollection of smells, tastes, sounds and textures.

Words are spells.

Affecting crystallization, manifested existence, outcomes, perceptions.

Those who know words can influence existence.

A straight line, path, stream.

A calm lake.

An averaged amalgamated face.

A grade of C.

Fifty percent.

Vanilla.

Unfinished.

Generic.

The overlooked.

The wall-flower.

The hidden.

The subdued.

Grey-scale.

The weed growing in the crack of concrete.

But give the ordinary attention, love, respect, curiosity and time.

Sit with the ordinary.

Hold the ordinary.

Look deeply at the ordinary.

And subtly the secrets are revealed.

Unburdened by bright colors, loud sounds, spicy taste and over-stimulation.

Slowly yet suddenly.

Hidden beauty, magic and profundity shyly reveals itself.

The ordinary hide their secrets.

Just as the quiet person knows the depth and mystery of silence.

Give me the demure and overlooked. The little white flower, the trickle of a stream, the little brown mushroom.

The gentle and profound.

Intoxicated by subtle magic.

The snap, crackle and pops of a young one formed slowly by sudden upheavals of tectonic plates.

It’s cold being stone. Hard rocks exposed want the cover of lichen and moss.

Slowly a relationship forms as the single celled organisms embraces the stoic faces.

Time continues as clouds become a blur and every season is as if a heartbeat.

The warm soft cover builds with each whirling Earth rotation swinging around the Sun.

The birds flying above are friends.

Sometimes I wish I could fly.

But then how would my friends ever land?

Oh the trees. They tickle me as they dance with the breath and whispers of wind.

I love the hibernating bear within me during winter.

I feel as if hugging.

And the huckleberries are sweet nourishment while purple lupine and fragrant cedar give medicine.

Releasing through streams

And catharsis through landslides sloughing.

Fires and avalanches remind of my origin.

Life is a book,

don’t judge by the cover.

But first impressions are real.

Some are glossy and colorful.

Those are the new ones.

Some are mis-printed and self-published.

Some are old and dusty.

Some are embellished with gold and jewels.

Some are newsprint and others are parchment.

Some are leather. Some are vegan.

And some don’t care.

All in the library of collective universe.

Some fat, long and verbose.

Others short and simple.

They will all be born again as the next in series.

Chapters as eras in our own life.

The childhood, teen, young adult, adult, older adult, and wise one all leading to the next.

Pages as Earth rotates around Earth and as Sun rotates around Earth.

You cannot turn the page until this one is written.

Have patience.

The best stories take time.

When was the last time you touched the world with your tongue?

I mean really touch the world.

To lick a tree.

And to know you’re free.

To explore the green veins beneath a leaf.

Or the roughness beneath a fern.

Soft and supple.

Hard and brittle.

Fluffy like a bunny.

Horny like a lizard.

Smooth like an apple.

Pithy like the inner flesh of a reed.

Rough like elephant feet.

Ridged like horse hoofs.

Wet like a salamander.

Warm like sunshine.

Cold like an icicle.

Own own bodies.

Pulsing texture.

Contures. Fractals.

Sense as an explorer of distant lands.

To taste bitter sage.

While touching straw like bunchgrass.

While laying on lichen covered basalt

finding the perfect spot for my body to lay as if a perfect puzzle.

Warmth from the dark rock

absorbed from the day.

With contrasting cooling of wind.

The sunsets as the birds settle.

How flavors match their texture.

Animal. Primal.

Beyond logic.

Here. Presence.