The Sea of Gravity

I may continue this story with its philosophic mood here at this blog:


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The Sea of Gravity by L. Edgar Otto

"Life is not always beautiful" read the tattoo on her foot in Italian. I spoke it out loud standing by her waiting for the barista to finish making her latte so I could order my morning mocha."

"Yes, you speak Italian. No one has every understood it before without asking me."

"No, I just thought it was Latin and the words looked familiar from seeing them other places yet they fit together. But isn't it a rather dark thought on this bright summer day for a permanent tattoo?"

"Well, there is another part, a more hopeful line where life has its moments of beauty, but that on my childhood friend's foot."

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Sometimes we are caught between the fight and the fight. Some of us fear to step foot out the front door and some cannot stand to be inside for long. Others rearrange their rooms moving meaningless objects from one place to another as if to give their placement of thoughts a new deal but nothing is ever really cleaned up by it- just things sink to the floor from our cluttered table like water seeking its own level until it in turn is buried and if we take the effort to dig up such old memories we find them fossilized and far to much a part of the past earth to compare the DNA.

Rita could not stay for long in one town and with one lover, even with her medications. She had to go to warmer climes, leave everything behind. Yet her desire for flight was not a crisis flight- she got nothing from the just being on a bus forever from place to place, getting vouchers from Traveler's Aid to the next town and voucher. She just needed different lights, and ways to sustain a life from the hotel room as if that was permanent enough not to allow into her visions in the distant that troubled her and gave her mild but disturbing voices while her bouts of depression and mania.

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The Sea of Gravity (continued) June 27, 2010


My eye caught the cheery blossom branches curving down her hourglass figure. She was small and did not weigh much for that age when most reach a point where they no longer long to be older and begin to ask themselves if it was time to get their lives together. Maybe with regrets about as permanent as wrinkles and fading tattoos graceful re-inked and presenting a message to the world that now one longs to be younger.

So her khaki shorts fit loosely on her belly and though she was not the sort of girl to catch my eye I could not help but follow the cherry roots and a dragon entwined, head and wing and claws poking out from her dark but decent interval of leaning toward me, I not sure if it were accidental. So casually I felt shy like an intruder trying to realize what flora and fauna peaked through my lazy mesmerized cloudy dreaming eyes that could not focus on the motionless darkness leaving me wanting to explore all of her naked terrain that I might understand the message written completely, no islands undiscovered, no continents beyond the frigid poles of lines of sight and seasons of latitude, at least to name the mountain ranges and map some point of inaccessibility.

"So the key between your breasts fits the chest on your ex's, father of your child. He is so large and powerful, strong his upper body, deep mysterious yet gentle voice. I must admit I wondered if your were do-able. I would be afraid I'd crush you."

Sometimes I wonder how we survived as a species, our time so short and we around a million years after the first footprints in the mud. We meet on the prairie and can hardly stop the perpetual motion of our seed, our genes. Against that laughing dragon even our precautions can't withstand and our hidden hears are stronger than our desire.

So there is a newly dealt hand, a sea of fresh skin to decorate, renew our recorded memories and exploits of the hunt and stars rarely seen in our ritual fires, fading pigments on our cave walls.

Only the light can remove them, light we do not see itself but only as reflection- or a lover's name overt, inked over, imprudently not thinly disguised as some symbolic cipher. Such dark areas are seen in reflection, and dressed up one cannot hide the touch of unique creativity your own, yet no amount of looking into a mirror ever can hide the flourishes and Florentine pillars of amaranth and paisley leaves of the book illustrated by his unique style of art for you by your lover.

Nevertheless, it can be in the sea of gravity that where you would have stumbled in life's destiny your lover held you up in salvation for such is the world were love emerges and walks upright on land despite the heaviness and shifting sand.

So the changing flags you fly and lyrics of which there is not point after the fact to hold in regret as you sing, after the catharsis of pain and the vibrating needle done, is not all your own though fixed in your faith of the day. Our symbols speak to each other, or they can do or give us strength to belong as if of one continuous skin as well issue a warning in our chosen colors not to cross some line.

Your art hangs in our collective Louvre worth more than your shadow the lampshade. But I could not see it without your light from within.

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