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A Day in the Brine

~ Unkempt Mind dribbling in the seethe

A Day in the Brine

Tag Archives: Introspection

To While Away the Winter

12 Thursday Jan 2023

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Introspection, Photography, Stories, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Drear, Experimental, Fractured Self, Introspection, Micro Play, Nature, Prose, Sea, Water, Winter

“Why are you here, talking to me now, after—so many years?”

“I guess all the frolicking wore me down.”

“Unlikely. I used to see you coming down the street. I’d dissolve out of sight so you wouldn’t—You were always alone.”

“I never did stay longer than a night.”

“Did you ever see me?”

“I did.”

“Did it—did you feel anything?”

“I did.”

“But you kept cantering on. A beautifully proud and stoic Gran Cavallo.”

“A nag out to pasture.”

“I used to wish I could become you. I still do.”

“Grow a beard and thick wrists?”

“Do you know what I think?”

“Probably.”

“I think one day, perhaps, part of my skull shall be found beneath a vending machine.”

“That won’t happen. You’re never around anyone brutal enough.”

“You’re not brutal enough?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s a brightly coloured vending machine, surrounded by snow-laden trees. And everything’s glazed in a thick pelt of ice. And it just sits there, soundless and devoid of use—offering cold drinks in a place where there are no summers. And underneath will be a little piece of my parietal bone—and a pale little springtail, no bigger than a centimeter—will find it. He’ll squiggle in delight, and use it as a lean-to to ease his eyes against the drone of the lights overhead—and there he’ll remain—to while away the winter.”

“A winter that never ends.”

“Maybe it will…I can feel sympathy for strange things.”

“It’s been so long since we’ve done this…”

“Yes. Rather sudden but natural—like the Rorschach of a deer misting across the morning commute.”

“Did you think I’d come back?”

“I didn’t think I’d…be here to find out.”

“Thought I’d forget you?”

“Ha. Like remembering a robin’s egg, found crushed in the grass on a cold spring day. Just a flash of amnion in the mud.”

“You said grass before.”

“Another non-sequitur. So many, so many. Could list them to the equator and back. But why come back…”

“I did miss you.”

“And I you.”

“You could never become me, you know—I’m not, I’m not whole.”

“I know. I know.”

“Did you ever—find that face?”

“Do you see one now?”

(No reply)

“Flakelets are scattering. Can you hear them?”

“Yes.”

“Like tiny white beetles ricocheting against a black tarp. I must bed down immediately. That clicking noise will put me right to sleep.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

“Did you go already?”

(Silence)

“Will you come back?”

(Silence)

“I guess you’ve gone. I can ease back now, let these arms bond to the earth, and analyze the entropy of this zigzag roof—see how long it takes for those holes to turn into denticled tears…”

Every Crushing Step

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Poetry

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Fall, Floral, Florida, Hope, Introspection, Nature, Photography, Poetry

flowerb-0559A humble path,
furry with
emerald moss
and splashed
in blue shadow.

A shiny-backed beetle
suns himself
on a cold
molar-sized stone,
then shuffles off
into a copper sea
of leaves.

flowerc-0317So many
roving feet
traverse here.

A horse gallops by
bold and solid
his chestnut sides
heaving.
He is followed
by the stab
of deer hooves
swift in flight.

leavesb-0243Now comes
my own restive shoe
hole-pocked
and pebble-filled
to bumble through.

Yet there you grow
tiny purple bloom
as if every crushing step
will always miss you.flowerc-1104

Sometimes, Silence is Reckless…

01 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Introspection, Video

≈ 70 Comments

Tags

Addiction, Black and White, Depression, Experimental, Florida, GIF, Grief, Introspection, Nature, Poetry, Prose, Video, Writing

(Some experimental refractions.  Thank you for drizzling by.)

MentalErosionThe clattering waves. The intractable sky. Mute again, with gloomy grey eyes. A bit of bone cuts into my thumb. A touch of wind whispers through decaying feathers. I do not remember the last thing I felt before the embalming.

AbandoningSometimes, Silence is reckless.

PurgatoryMy mind is fossilized. As lively as the oldest stone. I lean back on the retracting cushion of Entropy, and gaze blankly toward the heavens. How dazzling is this thatch of scattering sparrows; how enchanting their dance of dewdrop shadows.

RelapseThorny bliss is this mindlessness, oblique amongst the dried thistle and snapping bramble. I can vaguely hear it, somewhere wrapped in gauze; a little Life fizzing at the bottom of the quiet stream, beyond.

Like a mosquito, I insert a needle into it, now and then.

RecklessSilenceIt is easy to forget the threat of a wave’s smooth caress, that its languorous massage of oblivion is still a form of erosion.

Breathing2When I was a child, my favourite thing to draw was a noose.

TheMomentBeforetheFalterHe rang the other night. I could hear that his lips were cracked and bleeding. He wept and begged forgiveness, but I had never felt slighted to begin with. Yet, my response was blank-eyed silence. There was only the sound of the restive wind moaning through the eaves to answer for me.

PugnatiousSkiesHow stealthy a foe is this stifling captor; like a cashmere cloud, its downy coolness yawned over me. Its strangeness seemed safe, nestled inside its gossamer embrace, bound in a world without senses or thought. I am far too gone to feel alarm, now.

TheBreathofEntropySometimes, love is just impotent rage that is a little too tired to bear its bulbous face.

TenacityofGriefWhat an obdurate knot Shame so deftly creates, twisting away, as the years smoothly slip by, pressure mounting against my spine.

FlyingonaFeversBackRegaining a pulse requires resurfacing. To drag the bloated body from the turgid depths. To pry open its chalky eyes, exposing them to the bone light of the wild ocean sky, above. To kiss its mucid, slimy visage and blow through its cold stringy-white lips.

DejectionTo let the cherry rivulets of pus and water drain from the self-inflicted punctures.

HoldingOnI do not know if I will dry out, chafe these wrists, and feel again. I despise the sound of my own voice, the rattle and scrape of my defunct brain and the trepid rasp of my rusty breath.

LayDowntoCompostSometimes, though, Silence can be much deadlier than the noose.

How I Wish There Were No End to Rain

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Quotations, Stories

≈ 57 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Death, Florida, Grief, Introspection, Music, Nature, Ocean, Pain, Photography, Prose, Quotation, Rain, Sea, Writing

Ocean-bw-8404-BIII loomed beneath a dark feathering of sea-oats, pointed tips glazed with recent rain. I listened to the subdued murmur of little waves. The fetid and russet beds of sea-wrack had been washed away, leaving the sand barren and strange. A forlorn gull loitered at the swash line, analyzing the crinkling water as it fizzed in and out.

Beach- bw-8456-BDistant lightning lazily branched from the moody-blue squall-lines and spidered across a sullen sea of herbal green. Coy ghost crabs emerged, removing dark masses of dripping sand from drowned burrows. They built little, lumpy mounds around the entrances to their small, black holes.

The storm was leaving me. How I longed for it to stay.

Beach- bw-8441-BI was tortured the other night, seized with the memory of my little Siamese cat squeezing her eyes tightly shut for the last time. How swiftly she was gone, her soft, cinnamon cheek resting upon a colorful, flowing blanket that masked the metal slab beneath. I had never seen an animal euthanized, before. I understood, logically, that it ended the physical misery of her little, bony body.

Yet, how troubled I am by that last image of peace…of life tenderly released.

Beach- bw-8742-BMy mum died of a similar ravenous kind of disease. I remember that final image. Her face waxen and unreal, her mouth a small, black hole. She did not tightly close her eyes. She was not escorted quietly, through a warm wash of sleep, into the darkness beyond. Yet, I was not so disturbed by her image in death. And how vividly there lacked any look of peace…

Beach- bw-8752-BI do not know what that reveals about me.

But I wish the storm would never leave. I want, forever, to hear its screams over this cold and fleeting sea of herbal green. How I wish there were no end to rain. Just as there seems to be no end to Grief.

Ocean-bw-8411-B“Darkness settles on the ground
Leaves the day stumbling blind,
Coming to a quiet close
And maybe just in time”
– From the song God Only Knows by Joe Henry

A Shrewd Grief

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by smilingtoad in Art, Experimental, Introspection, Photography, Poetry

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Art, Black and White, Digital, Drawing, Experimental, Grief, Ink, Introspection, Nature, Night, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts

Milling01   Barbed malevolence

DeathA shrewd and blunt Grief

Fern3That his somber Absence

NightShould foster such Relief

Drown in Sinuous Streams

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Poetry

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Black and White, Brooding, Hiking, Introspection, Melancholy, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts, Water, Woods

Dull eyes, like nail-heads

Drown in sinuous streams

Dusk in November

Water Sinuous

Dappled green slug skin

Raspy leaves tangled in wind

Accordion cravings

Vitative

Smell of foggy woods

Staggering in solitude

Cold heavens asperge

DSC_2061

Wood-fire tango

Tendrils of rain punch the flames-

Broodings, vespertine

IMG_1729

Pursued by the Moon

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by smilingtoad in Photography, Stories

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Black and White, Experimental, Introspection, Nature, Night Photography, Noir, Owl, Prose, Story, Thoughts, Writing

07-02-13 Gleason Noir Night DSC_8975

Gritty steps reverberate the path, winding. Puttering along, the lone figure listens to the mosquito moon moaning behind skuzzy sky. Scraggly limbs cast sniveling shadow across his face, leather loafers glinting damp through lamp-light ripples. Rain hovers in misty summer air.

He stops, cognizant of Eyes upon him, lambent yellow beaming through the darkness. Then comes a muffled cry, a raspy whir wafting down from the arms of the great live oak- creature nestled somewhere in the down of rain-dappled Spanish moss.

03-25-13 DSC_6957

Muted-still, the man waits, gazing up into the dripping tree, listening to the sound of life writhing and stirring in the dank and brittle grass at his feet.

With a flash of pale wing, the creature spills into view, poised on a naked branch, talons curling into deep fissured bark, glinting with rain. Those gawping eyes of lemon fire slit the darkness.

07-02-13 Owlie DSC_8980

Then, a sudden gust of ludic wind flits through, brushing away the film from the moon. With a tossing steel mane, the man watches the little owl glide upwards and over the crests of trees, quickly dissipating into the darkness beyond, pursued by the lucid light of Sapphire Moon.

The man, too, hurries on, with bowed head, starlight stirring in ruffled puddles that swirl in his wake.

Embracing the Squirrely Kitten Within

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Quotations

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Beauty, Exuberance, Healing, Hope, Inspiration, Introspection, Kitten, Life, Pets, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Thoughts, Youth

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-Victor Hugo

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ― Madeleine L'Engle

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It's not the size of the kitten in the fight, it's the size of the puma in the kitten.” ― Mark Twain (loosely quoted)

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“What happens when people open their hearts?"..."They get better.”  ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“What happens when people open their hearts?”…
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

(Saga captured whilst out kitten-walking amongst a sea of squirrels)

P.S. More of the model, Fyodor Kitten, in Sir’s lovely and charming blog post here:  The Kitten That Rescued Himself)

Many jubilant cheers,

-Smiling Toad

A December Walk with My Delitescent Self

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by smilingtoad in Experimental, Introspection, Sea, Stories

≈ 36 Comments

Tags

Abstract, Abuse, Black and White, Introspection, Loss, Melancholy, Nature, Night Photography, Personal, Photography, Sea, Thoughts, Writing

Self-Portrait

December. The Sea has cooled, a bit. The sand feels like chilled velvet ‘neath my stumbling toes. Rubigenous seawrack trickles in. The seethe crackles and I suddenly catch a wee glisk of my delitescent Self abiding there in the reflection on the glass sand. It is the meek, quiet one within, the one that harbours all the pain and grief I have ever known.

Tossed and Overturned

An intangible being created long ago, and like a gentle chum, has ever-remained. It is there when I go sprawling, overturned, writhing in the spitting sand, rabid wind flinging shards of broken sea glass and shattered scallop shells into my eyes. It flits in and swallows every splinter of chaos, calmly, silently, so I may clamber back to my feet and stagger on. And then, I am reminded, Chaos is a Choice.

This Haggard Life- Dormant, but not Dead

This service performed without complaint, little shamrock-infused Soul. Nothing spoken, lurking reticent and Daphnean- alone, without yearning. But I can feel it, ever-present, and am zapped with its vital energy- how can something dormant feel so ardently alive? Is this where Passion is derived? Attitude and Perception? Is this what converts Grief into Peace? Agony into Understanding? Despair into Art?

When the Wind Aches

I amble on, in Memory, gazing through the Abstract: the hum of the fluorescent lights hovering over an infinite hallway; the sharp light polished on the gossamer surface of a muddy puddle; the buzz of a drill in the background, staring up at the pocks in the grey ceiling, tracing constellations of galloping stallions and peculiar faces; and the keening sound of the groaning flowers as they die on the frozen prairie, brushed by the aching wind-

These Doleful, December WalksAbstract memory has a way about it, washing things in a thrilling,
pensive kind of melancholy. Even the hideous and the terrifying can become
beautiful. The fracid and sulfuric scent of Death, black-red, sticky on the
sheets, is an oil-painting-flashback, a sad observation. Her vitative laugh, unique and impossible to replicate, is no cultellated recollection, but evokes joy recalling having known such a gorgeous Soul.

To Blear the Windowpane- the stains and the grime, the scrapes and the blights of Time

There is damage, but no distortion, feeling pain, but no torment; stumbling crippled, but not suffering. The wounded and mangled inner being that smiles coyly through the detritus of childhood abuse, of loss, and pain- I see it in the flicker of a blue shadow, the crunch of a dead leaf, and I know, I can feel it all, euphorically.

Piercing Christmas Lights

It provides Peace. It reveals fragile humanity, even in those others have named Monsters. Understanding comes, fear being vanquished. Is it the breath of Forgiveness?  How could it be, if I first do not feel wronged? Compassion and Love, the Beast with Gentle Eyes?

The Illumination of DecemberI wander on into the now dark, December night, Sea a distant hum behind me. Christmas lights and stars illuminate the way. I think about my brother, his addiction, our differences. I wonder if he has a hidden Self within to absorb the blows. I have seen him staggering in obscurity- searching for Beauty and relief in drugs, self-esteem in crime, atonement in masochism. I see him for what he is- a beautiful human being, worthy of forgiving himself. Aye, I think of him, as I ooze along, deeper and deeper into the lovely December night.

Trickle of Sea

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by smilingtoad in Introspection, Photography, Sea

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Ambition, Black and White, Florida, Introspection, Muse, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sand, Sea, Swash, Thoughts

Slowly masticates the land, this little, rippled trickle of Sea; so similar to the furtive Ambition that patiently gnaws away at me.

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