Sushi Monk

Sake and soy sauce splash

Anoints like holy water

This is the monastery 

Here he practices the sacred craft

Sushi rolled, presented, devoured

Simple

Rice, fish, seaweed

But hands rolling speak of more

An art long lost 

A way of life forgotten

Forsaken on the road side 

Like a pack thrown off

By a traveler who says

It's too heavy 

And moves on to more modern

Quicker 

Faster

Sleeker

Ways of life that promise

More

Better

Smiles welcome you near

Eased by alcohol 

Yet they welcome all the same

Chopsticks plucked by slender fingers

Or fumbled by meaty hands

Tell of different stories, ways of life, history 

Passed down by snatches of speech

And smiles with secrets tucked away

Tea leaves read and told of future paths

Roads yet taken, lovers yet unloved 

All who enter: present or future friend 

For their destiny is inevitable; friendship secure

See, this is a safe place, a solemn sanctuary

Cloistered close by, the monk practices his quiet craft

Diligently passing down his forefathers

In each plate, smile, hearty laugh

He gives food along with grace and the promise of safety

Like a warm embrace from someone you love

Here, tradition and green tea aroma wrap around you

Urging you closer to the future

Excitement in throat and eyes and smile

Of what was, is, to be

 

The Art

It sits on top of the hill, shrouded in a languishing mist, the white brushing its delicate features like a wedding veil hides a blushing bride's emotions.
I approach, and for a second I am transported to antiquity, making a pilgrimage to Apollo's temple, offering him my humble sacrifices and pleas of pardon as I beg the murmuring medium who stands guard to grant me an audience with the god. Just a little while, I appeal, the muses have not yet come.
Up the stairs, under the columns, through the doors. The welcome that greets me on the inside is pieced together by dusty whispers of history and hums of modern curiosity.
This is where the artists play. Their stomping ground, their hallowed haunt. This is where they twist time, beckoning it softly with their opening canvas, baiting it with paper, then grab grabbing, pinning it down roughly with paint strokes and pencil and whatever it takes to keep the time stopped, held suspended, captured. Victory is theirs, if only for a second.
But a split second is all they need to show the world that they have mastered, they have conquered, they have seen god's perspective, and for them, time is now simply an option. It has lost its power.
The art that lines the wall stands as testament to the struggle of artist against clock, laid out in beautiful graphic timeline imagery.
As you watch, look and listen, feel the brush strokes that clothed the naked canvas, smell the sweat drops that mixed deftly with the paint, hear the scrape of the easel and the sigh of success, and become one with the artist and his mission.
You understand. You get why this is so important, so vital to the artist. Because you, too, feel this urgency course through your blood as your ears are tickled by the tongues of men long dead. They live on through their work, enjoying their permanence, reveling in their defeat of death. For they have not been forgotten: their lives snapshotted and pressed image after image into the public's brains. They are immortal, their eyes staring out at you from the smiling Dutch boy or the bowl of fruit that are pinned like guilty prisoners against the museum's walls captured in 8x8 canvas.
Each art piece labeled by a small white sign precisely two inches to the left, detailing the dates of birth and death and disinterested facts of interest, scientific in its exactness, prompt in its boredom.
As if you could label art. As if you could put a tag on the artist's life, file him away like some interesting insect specimen. As if he didn't have a favorite breakfast cereal and his wife didn't warm his slippers by the fire and the tea he drank every morning at 9 a.m. sharp wasn't Earl Grey.
Because the art is not to be looked at and examined and ahhed over and is it time for lunch yet? It is to be felt. It is the artist's bare soul that is eagle-spread and stripped naked, put on display for you. It is his life it is his claim to victory it is his rebellion against time it is his it is him.
And you leave with a solemn sense that a great responsibility has been placed upon your shoulders, handed down to you like a heritage or a favorite family recipe. Your duty is clear now, your path is forged.
Come, time. Let us battle. Let me pinion you and make you mine.
If only for a second, if only for a life-time.

Reflection

It is introspection and reflection and depression that settles on my shoulders tonight. I leave my home to return home, and my heart is ripped, torn between two, incapable of settling, restless and wondering, and I can't stop my brain from pacing around the large empty space in my head.
I am so blessed. The Lord I serve has not failed to mercifully give good gifts. Denying and breaking and humbling and hurting in order to give and restore and boast and heal.
And the people I've met, the lessons learned, the sights seen are priceless. They can exist only in the frail precious world of words that flutters about in my heart and soul. I am so blessed.
But right now I feel emptied of every emotion. For though I've learned life and friended fellow humans along the journey, right now all I want to do is stop time. Stop. Stop. It's all too good, it's all too real, it's all too alive. And I'm so very scared if time keeps going going as its bound to do because thats how it lives and thats how it is then how do I know that things will keep going so well?
I tell myself I'm afraid to lose people. To not see them for a three month chunk of time. To not see him.
But really, at the root of the tree that blooms into my heart, I'm afraid I'll lose time. Because it's such a precious commodity and its fickle sands trickle through my hands and I'm utterly terrified that one day I'll notice that there's but a few grains left and then one and then none and then gone.
I've changed so much but does the world care? Life goes on and time keeps turning and there's good and there's hurt and there's kisses and there's missed-you-by-a-second and there's breathing and there's long goodnight sayers and sleepy wakers and in the end all we can do is exist.
And time goes on, mindless of us, mindless of where we are --youth-- or who we're with --him-- or that we want to be someone who matters when we grow up --who can autograph books and nod to the public and smile and say how good it is for you to come tonight.
It steals away our innocence; it leave us with wrinkles and memories and a wistful nostalgia.
Then it skips away.

Us

It’s not like I asked for you. For this. I was doing perfectly fine on my own, yes? Mending my heart with patches of hope from the souls that had bumper-carted hard against it and left it dented in places. I had it together, and I pulled my arms closer around me, tighter like a child tugs a safe blanket around himself, and I told me I needed nobody. 

And it was true because I made myself believe it was.

Then there was you. Oh hello, we’re friends and then we’re more and then its unsure and uncertain and hands grasping mine and eyes that light up and long nights and late talks and then what are we doing?

It’s not like I asked for you. I was done, done, done. Finished with finding faults in him, through with clearing schedules and making time for events that ended up being pointless because they were about him and then what happens when he doesn’t matter, over stupid heart flutterings and soul mutterings and silly so-good-to-see-you smiles and you-make-my-day butterflies. Done. The end. Kiss me goodbye one last time.

And then there was you. A blank page that promised so much if only I took the chance to write out the words in a steady hand. A canvas that begged to be covered and splattered and kindergarten-finger-painted on, hinting that the end would be a masterpiece. A wood that invited me to travel its pathways for who knows what hidden treasures lie there.

There’s the possibility the novel could fail, the painting flop, the wood devour me in its clutches.

But the slightest chance, the glimmer of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel indicates otherwise and pleads with me to give you a chance.

I don’t know how or if or why.

I’m not even sure if who. If you. If we. Us.

But time turns on and what’s life without risks?

It’s not like I asked for you. But here you are. Hello, you.