aerial musings

The land was lilac-colored; the clouds, pale pink peonies. And the sky, well, it was a lovely, slightly green-tinged light blue, a color cool and warm and electric and soothing all at once. A great wide ocean of muted, yet vibrant, color, in layers like a rainbow sherbet parfait, and I grab a pen and a scrap of paper and look out the window again and it's all different now, darker, colder, gray-tinged, juxtaposed against that moment of bright, glorious harmony which I just saw and still see in my mind. How beautiful the world is! How different it looks when you're floating high above it, with Jiménez's imagery and Kerouac's syntax dancing in your head.
Little orange lights - like fireflies whose lamps are stuck in the "on" position - slide along dark gray currents. Two approach an intersection, speeding toward each other perpendicularly. Neither one slows or stops. They meet, one disappears, the other zooms on. A hit-and-run? A Bermuda triangle? My eyes strain to decipher the aerial image. An overpass.
And I finish scribbling this down and "welcome to Baltimore"

¡Ay! que me duele...

...la cabeza.
Me duelen los ojos,
los dedos, los hombros,
la espalda, los brazos,
los pies y las manos,
el corazón y el cuello,
aun el cabello.
Pero sobre todo me duele
la cabeza
por fuera y por dentro
y al llegar al centro
¡qué cosas encuentro!
que ni sé dónde estoy
ni adónde voy
y todas se están dando vueltas
en círculos corriendo a rienda suelta.
Ni yo las puedo frenar
mas de intentarlo no puedo dejar.
Me convendría que explotara
mas quizá sea mejor así
que se derramen las palabras
cayendo una por una
hasta colocarse en este frenesí.

to teach and to learn

I have been blessed with a handful of extraordinary friends and teachers. They are really one and the same, friends and teachers. A truly effective teacher must also be a friend, and a true friend effectively becomes also a teacher. When two human beings earn each other's trust, which is the foundation of the pure love in friendship, then they are truly able to teach and learn from each other. Trust, love, teaching, and learning: these, I believe, are essential ingredients in the recipe for a successful, happy, fulfilling life on Earth. God has provided my mixing bowl with a few heaping tablespoons of each.

prologue and disclaimer

This post refers to my blog's inaugural title and has since been edited for the sake of anonymity.

I intend not to deceive. Therefore it must be noted that by "everyday [skylark]" I do not mean to say that here may be found every day a dose of [skylark]. I simply cannot make such a promise, nor do I believe anyone really desires nor deserves such a thing. Well, maybe a few people do, but that is beside the point. Rather, with the adjective "everyday" I want to suggest that what is presented here shall be a sampling of [skylark]'s thoughts as they flow in and out of her brain on an ordinary day. Tone: casual, though I offer a warning that it may slip into academic. Conformity to conventional syntax and mechanics: optional. Style: all my own, for better or for worse. Subject matter: well, everyday. Nothing extraordinary to be expected. Just a bit of the essence of [skylark], in electronic form. Eclecticism exalted. Exceptions acceptable. Alliteration allowed. And so commences the creative experiment. It may come out capricious, or conceivably cacophonous. Time will tell.