4 kinds of music

There are, I believe, four categories into which all music can be divided, according to one's reaction when the music is over:
1. The kind of music you don't even bother to hear till the end.
2. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us glad it is over.
3. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us replay it in our minds and wish it had not ended quite so soon.
4. The kind of music that when it is over, makes us cry because it leaves the air empty, absolutely hollow like a body whose soul has just abandoned it.

(thank you, Paul, for your input)

WHY

and i am beginning to think that people simply do not ask WHY enough and they call their teenagers selfish and immature for asking but i think maybe they are afraid of the answer and we teenagers are perhaps too stupid to know fear and common sense we only want to know WHY and have a way of asking WHY in the most inconvenient of times
we are desperate to know and as we do not find out we become complacent and stagnant and the rush of emotions stills and the tornado is over everything is much more settled but there is no real foundation things are only settled because they are settled and we have grown too adultish to ask WHY only we smirk at teenagers when they ask as if we knew and we wish they thought we knew but obviously we teenagers know they adults dont and what makes a person an adult anyway
if you dont have a foundation of answers to WHY then you are merely a settled teenager and nothing more but where there is a foundation there can be something real and strong and strong enough to always be a tornado and always be asking WHY and not be silenced by adultish people who are merely settled teenagers but really finding the answers

what is that?

I don't know. What do you think it is? Abstract stuff supposedly has a meaning. This means ... well, what do you think? I think the colors are unborn thoughts. and the purple squares are where the thoughts have been broken into words.

For most of us reading, whether prose or poetry, is a form of entertainment. At times if we find our own life disjointed and our reactions to some situations beyond clear, reasonable explanation, literature offers us the opportunity to look at patters of human life and contemplate them from a distance. If the writers are good, we can see parallels with what we have experienced and causes and effects make sense. According to one English teacher, "Fiction gives us little universes to ponder, to discuss with others, to marvel at and question."

from a lecture handout

White Music

Blank, soft sound, muted
by the sense of brighter.
No specific voice sings.
all voices melt and span
the breadth of the day.
Across the open, flat sky
the white flash of a seagull wing.
Rising, falling, open, flat,
filling the vastness,
creating the vastness.
Wide and untroubled
float these voices.

I think therefore I am- until I was

Writing exercise from my Composition class: Describing dieing in outer space because your ship has blown up.


That's my wing over there. I think maybe it's moving. I think... Who said that? Cogito...
My thoughts freeze in my head. I feel as if I ought to feel like I'm falling. But I don't feel... What do I feel?
Cogito igitur... Who said that?
I should be tired. But I am too tired to fell tired. I am freezing, but my blood is moving so slowly I don't feel it stop.
Stop.
Twitch my finger, and it hurts. Hurts to move: am I moving in this stillness?... So, this is dieing. I see a friend's face before me. Why her face? I wonder. Why not someone else's? I cannot remember what they look like. I can never remember what anyone looks like. Why am I thinking? Shouldn't I be dieing? Am I alive? I know I'm not dead.
Stop. Like a telegram. Stop. But I haven't stopped yet. Cogito Igitur Ego. Stop. I hold on to that thought, like a lifeline. But I don't care about dieing. I am too far from what I love to think how I will never be near it agian. I cannot, somehow, think 'Why am I dieing?' Perhaps because I only know it, cannot feel it.
It hurts to twitch my finger. Is this what death feels like?
There is a vacuous silence. My thoughts are sucked into it. They enter it and die. Dieing... But I cannot be sucked away into nothingness. I must exist until I die. I cannot disintegrate and evaporate with my ship. I must be. I will be. Until I am beyond existence. Stop.
Cogito Igitur Ego... Sum. And that is the final word, the closing chord. I am alive and wait. Wait. this is going very slowly. Why, I wonder, why am I dieing so slowly?
Blackness all around. Strange place to die. As if I were buried alive. Will my body fall apart, once I die? There is a very white star over there. It is so white and far away. Maybe I will come near it.
Stop.

water lilies

Water lilies whisper wondering
in the lakes and wetlands.
These are hard times;
these are cold times.
These are times,
and time's a river.
Listen, listen!
Don't you hear it?
There are times:
All times are history
by the morning
aft the closing
of the night.
Water lilies, water lilies,
wild stagnant water lilies
in the blooming of the waves
and in the sparkle of the the sun.
Time goes; time goes, and it's lost.
Hard times down the water falls.
What is left? What is left?
Water lilies, Water lilies.
Wild, stagnant, still the same.
Heart unbending in the waving,
blooming and not wilting yet.
These are hard times, water lilies.
These are hard times yet.

and the garbage cans

The sky is gray
and it's raining.

I lie here
petting the cat.
I should be
doing school.
I was so
happy yesterday.
I thought I'd
found something,
a reason to
hope in today.
But the earth is
the same place,
Nothing
has changed.
We lie here,
and it's raining.
We want to know
the answers,
colors to our
gray questions,
and be able to lie
down and sleep.

The answers are there,
at the other end of it all,
So I must keep going.

The bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
I thought I had found my answer.
But only I asked the question.
And there are many more questions.
The bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
It seems as I gaze at the cat
like I'm ready to sleep and not ask.
And the bicycles and the garbage cans in the rain.

The cat's eyes slit open in sleep.
Even in dreams you cannot leave
the life holding you and the rain.
It seems like I'll be passing
while the bicycles, garbage cans, rain.
The earth is the same thing

And it's fading away.
Vague thoughts that I don't hold.
And the bicycles- the cat twitches-
the rain. The rain has gone.
And I lie here by the cat.
And the bicycles lie by the garbage cans.
My thoughts run on; they ask
and I'm tired. The cat is asleep.

And I'm fading away.
I thought I found something.
I'm fading while the bicycles
rust by the garbage cans cracked.
And I'm fading. The earth is the same.
And cat, in the dream, and the rain's gone.
I'm fading. The questions still ask.