Originally published 092623

Off Calabassas Road c.1963

I jumped down from my perch in the apple tree, ran up the hill, and burst through the door.

“If everything is here, and everything was free, we could do anything. So, why do things cost money?”

I can still see my mom sitting at the kitchen table, needle in hand, torn jeans on her lap, mouth slightly agape. Setting the sewing aside, she hugged me.

“I don’t know, honey. It sure seems like it would be better that way.”

Her response gave that idea permission to persist.

Walnut Creek 1996

I set out to paint that memory in a short story.

Inexplicably, the prose kept veering into rhythm and rhyme.

Finally, I gave in and let the muse have her way.

It would be much easier, for all of us I think
Look at what we’re standing on, and what we’re on the brink
If now could be just like then, then maybe we could speak
Wouldn’t have to run and hide, from what our wishes seek
If we did not know better, what questions we could ask!
Listening, we’d make believe, and wear the answer’s mask

How many answers do we take as a given?

That’s just the way it is.

Neither questioning nor giving a second thought.

Abstract finger-painted words, to dance the metaphor
Makes the rhyming reason, for those who will explore
Twenty-six, pick-up sticks, word pictures do you see
Common sense, evidence, in conflict do they be
Look the question in the eye, extract what’s make believed
Prism bends the lighted path, like notions preconceived

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Context: Dream Yet Complete emerged from a two-inch thick stack of binder paper filled with hand-written (and rewritten) stanzas that occasionally flowed out of the pen as if by their own volition.

040626: Gemini Pro 3.1 just provided the words I’ve (repeatedly) failed to find.

Featured Image: Hear the Art (HEARTHEART) is an updated version of something I scrawled on a notepad just after it flashed in my mind. The version (below) appears in the CFF video (000). The version (above) is from a tutorial about symbols, instances, and enhancements. The notepad is in a box in the garage. Analog memories, cocooned since our move from Northern California.

Typo and all, this is how it happened.

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