*image by Ben Harubin

 

You turn a mirror slightly,
and get a different view,
your eyes become accustomed,
it must be turned anew.

How long will you still turn it,
to have a new view flee,
before your one desire becomes
to somehow break the mirror?

 

At first one man enjoyed the music coming from everyone's radios –
then he started becoming selective and soon only enjoyed the sounds coming from his own,
finding the ones from others annoying.

Then he went off, out of town on a lengthy journey, or else holed up in his house alone for a few years, I forget which, but at any rate, after doing "something-or-other" for a while,
he became irritated at the music coming from everyone's radio, including his.
And that's more or less where the situation stands today
(based on the latest report he's made available to us).
(I guess you can stay tuned to see if anything further develops in this story.)

If you did not listen to and watch thoughts prop up old ghosts,
what would keep you from the earlier,
carefree joys of childhood?

A traveler stood between a ravine and a mountain, looked first in one direction, then the other, and thought to himself how all of the great, enlightened men either lived in times past or have yet to see birth. And there he stood...pondering (what proved to be to him) this perturbing possibility. He was so swept up in his reflections on this affair that he stood in place for many days, motionless, and picture after picture flowed through his mind.
And then on the sixth day of his standing, immobile meditation, a horseman rode up and broke up his reverie by saying, "I have observed you standing here, long lost in deep, absorbing thought, and decided the time has come for me to approach you and ask if you'd like to buy some really nice skin lotion and moisturizer I'm distributing in this area?"
And the aroused man was outraged and cried out to the peddler, "How dare you interrupt
my transcendent contemplation for the sake of commercial consideration?"
To which the taken-aback tradesman replied, "Well...still-and-all, being out ere for so long
in the direct sunlight can play absolute havoc on a person's complexion, and no matter
how enlightened you may become, you're still gonna have a complexion."
And the previously upset man realized the validity of what the drummer said, and purchases several tubes of the ointment.

And a fan writes:
"Now, that's more like it! See, it's not that difficult. Why can't you have more of your little stories wrap up with endings that make sense?
Sincerely, Yours For More Logic And Less Ambiguity."