The Morning · 42 days ago by Jake Kauffman
...I’m trying to discover. I’m trying to see it for what it can be instead of something to get through. Most specifically, I’m trying to gain the same introspection in the morning that I can achieve at night, times of passionate music-listening and existential while deeply-inward poignancy.
This starts by actually not being tired in the morning. By getting up earlier (at the very same time each morning, as much as possible) and having action-packed days, I’m actually quite tired earlier at night, which makes perfect sense; I just didn’t think that I could give up my late nights that easily. I always have called myself a “night person”, and still consider myself one as far as the term is relevant, and so part of this challenge is seeing how much of a morning person I can be, too. For I don’t think that it is right to split up life like this, not being able to ring the succulent juices of all times of the day.
Being completely earnest and without a sort of snobbish ostentation that comes about when using this following term, I have come to realize that the first step towards “the good life” is to live good individual days which, of course, start in the morning.
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A Fresh New Way to Make Grass Fresh · 42 days ago by Jake Kauffman
I sit down at the computer smelling like a mixture of gasoline and fresh lawn. Yes, I just mowed, but not just the normal way that I used to.
When I first started mowing at, gee, probably about age twelve, I went crazy on the lawn. I didn’t like mowing, which perhaps led me to make interesting patterns in the lawn. One summer during the week before my family’s annual beach trip, I carved how many days we had left until the beach in cursive letters in the back yard. I let my creativity go to work.
My parents, viewing mowing as only a necessary utilitarian exercise, criticized my inefficient ways, and eventually I did see the advantage in saving time by mowing “normally”. (It’s ironic to talk of normalcy with mowing, since it’s simply a socially-constructed way to keep our lawns “nice”.) This synthesized with a spiked compulsive asceticism in twelfth grade that had me disdaining the thought of wasted gasoline by my extraneous mowing maneuvers, and for the last few years I haven’t looked back, mowing in straight lines and being done with it.
But earlier this week, something inside of me twitched, thinking of the olden days of mowing. I decided to mix it up a bit halfway through mowing my neighbors’ three doors down, who were on vacation (and still are, I hope, because I just mowed their yard again this evening) and paying me; now that I think about it, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea to try this out just when I did. I made a big loop around their lawn with my push-mower, giving in to the elements and the natural placement of environment in their lawn. For instance, their trees I made waves around instead of the idea of cutting right through them, as if man has the right just to do with trees how he wishes…oh wait… Their bushes I swirled around, making circles and arches that weaved into others that started on opposite sides of the lawn, all eventually twirling themselves into a circle in the middle of the yard.
For one thing, this kind of mowing is downright more fun than mechanistically going in straight lines; I did do some of that, for it’s my default human track, but whenever I came across something that would send me in another direction, I dictated the mower’s motion based off of it instead of acting like it wasn’t there, if that makes sense.
Second, I realized that this is, in all humility, itself an act of humility, in a way bowing before nature itself and admitting that it has the power to tussle me and turn me any which way it might want. At the very least, it’s conceding that there are things outside of myself which affect me, which cause me to adjust my life, because life itself is, of course, unpredictable, and I would argue that life is best when I can’t fully (or even partially) see ahead of myself.
And to combat those pragmatic mowers out there, without officially measuring it I have an inkling that this method actually saves time – and thus, gas – mainly because of doing mostly 90-degree turns instead of 180.
And, on a psychological level, perhaps there was some Peter Pan complex mixed in with my decision to revert back to mowing techniques of my earlier childhood. Or maybe just remembering those techniques was the real trigger. Well, I have come to the conclusion that most elements of this complex are unhealthy, but there is something to remembering the past and incorporating it into the present. This, I would say, is actually not the Peter Pan complex at all, because I’m fine with not being in Neverland anymore.
But someday I will (probably) have to leave Carlisle, and this sets me up for my next post at a date further down the line.
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I've Got a Bike · 47 days ago by Jake Kauffman
I recently got a bike, and it just feels so good to ride again! Biking through Carlisle, it feels like I once again own the place. Of course this is preposterous, but in all seriousness, it’s such a great situation as a bicyclist: you have some advantages of speed on the roads, yet, while certainly not faster or more intimidating than automobiles, you reap some of the benefits of sharing the road with them. At the same time, you can share some of the advantages of being a pedestrian, like squeezing in wherever you like, not paying for parking (or gas, for that matter), and being more organically in touch with the environment around you. What a bizarre phenomenon: before I could drive, I wanted a car, of course, and thought that bikes were limited and, well, let’s just say it – uncool. Now, as a college kid, it’s typically cool to bike for aesthetic and ethical reasons. The problem is that if bikes are only for aesthetic reasons, they are essentially faddish. But in general I’ve found that I’m trying to embrace things that I should have awhile ago before I can’t anymore. Family is probably the most prime example of this. Carlisle itself is another, and a bike obviously helps this along. I wonder how I’ll view this all in five years, wherever I will be. I guess it’s just all in the bizarre process of growing up.
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19419 · 50 days ago by Jake Kauffman
19419
The year I think I’ll finally be wholly satisfied
That is as long as things are working towards a system of perfection or else working for a beneficial surfacing of life.
19419
The year my mind will mend itself towards things divine
Or else my mind will falter and it will descend into a system of self-worship for a treacherous result that I will find.
19419
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Spiral · 51 days ago by Jake Kauffman
Give me your home and we will make one
Sound the horn, sound the drum
Just don’t make me your Rosa Parks
Making fire, making sparks
Too long feelin’ all too blue
What in the world to do?
Tired eyes make me….
Stay alive, little tree!
I’m about to…
Help me, Lord, whate’er[/err] I do
Falling..
Keep my heart from balling
Failing.
Why am I still ailing?
Stop.
Now take me to the top.
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Life as a Train · 52 days ago by Jake Kauffman
It’s peaceful endings
It’s so much sunshine
That I can’t feel fine
Unless for mendings
Of creamsickle fun
And lollipop love
A kiss from a dove
And, what, an onion?
Things are getting wry
Things are getting wet
Could it just be sweat
Or cries from my eye?
The worst is over
I think, or, I pray
That life is still gay
This next October
So open me up
Like a book on ice
Isn’t that rhyme nice
To put in your cup?
Now flabbergast me
Don’t send in the rain
Don’t pretend, don’t feign
Like you do love me
When you don’t.
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The Music Men · 54 days ago by Jake Kauffman
A young person only wanted to hear peace music. Is this too much? Another young person entered him, and has closed off his music and alone has rotated it, disturbing his music which very greatly upset the first young person who protected his music. He has been angry, and entered himself to close the opened music from of second type, but, once he realizes it, all of which he hears is silence. Anything has not been more. But silence is profound, and is beneficial to two young people when it is existing. Then, the second young person, when leaving, is angry (I think to that) and opens his choice music again. This reverses the first young person, who closes it, and in holy, holy silence is infatuated again. Holy, holy, holy silence.
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Q: If Blindness Disguises, What Good Are Our Eyes? · 55 days ago by Jake Kauffman
Now I wonder where to turn
Over pages left to burn
By the force that makes me yearn
For a path I can discern.
But I know not when or how
I can, with my hands, endow
Power to the smallest vowel
And consonance to things un-foul.
If I can and if I might
Ponder in the first delight
Of the things I see tonight
Then I shall be glad for sight.
But in terms of how it stands
With hard hearts and bloody hands
And summer’s fake plastic tans
I’ll stay blind in time’s worn sands.
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I Got One Question, Man · 57 days ago by Jake Kauffman
What would the Kingdom of God look like if we were to give Him all but ten percent of our earnings?
Sounds of Love and Things From My Room · 58 days ago by Jake Kauffman
Fair enough
But what if it is not?
I don’t much know
But here I go
Asking you only
If I can give you
A touch of kiss.
It’s what I mean
If love isn’t
Not what I share,
Than am I just
Rational?
But where does science
Come into play?
Let’s break it down.
There is beauty
To science and math.
If not for love
We would not know
This, though, you know.
Quirks and kinks
And ions and neon
Sounds that I hear.
Does history need love
To sustain itself?
Is modernism dead?
Or are we not sure?
Where is beauty now?
Are things abstract?
It happens each time
I raise my head.
I pray for peace
But only get war.
[Co-”writespiration” Credit to Mike Jones and Tony McClure]
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