Friday, May 26, 2006

Debut: A View from the Trailing Edge

Well, now that I've gone and done it, here it is - what every writer fears - the blank page.

Life here on the trailing edge of the information highway is filled with mystery. You'd think that by the time the ideas got to me, they'd be all worked out - all clear - but it's not so. By the time they get to me, they aren't even ideas, so far as I can tell. They're a group of acronyms hooked together with the most unlikely verbs you ever saw: "You can't run that JAVA using XP" and "Email me the URL for my wiki." And those are the easy ones.

And I work with computers. Of course, anymore, that's a bit like saying, "I work with telephones." Anyhow, since I work with computers, either to manipulate and analyze data or to help public health professionals define what systems they want to work for them and how they should work, you'd think I know how they work, but I don't (you'd also think I could have fit one more "work" into that run-on sentence, but I couldn't - not without the help of my trusty parenthetical expressions). But, come to think of it, I don't know how the telephone works either, so I guess it's OK. It's all magic. (According to the Trailing Edge Dictionary of Modern America - copyrighted and unpublished - magic is defined as "improperly understood technology."

Back to the blank page. Coming toward the middle of my sixth decade, I have many comments on many things, some of which are shareable. So I'll start this blog out with my favorite form of expression - poetry - about some of my most deeply felt issues. There is no conceit in my not naming the issue. If you have a different name for it than I, it means both/all, doesn't it?

South San Francisco Haiku
Lock-step houses climb
The hill - look out to
See if there are any trees

Cobwebs
Caught in cobwebs,
Silver cobwebs,
Sparkling, shining, silver cobwebs.
For one problem on solution -
Shining, silver, sorry cobwebs.
Each solution traps a problem -
Shining cobwebs,
Trapped in cobwebs.
Major problems, easy answers -
No attempt to stop the deathmarch.
Silver cobwebs, shining, cobwebs,
Pretty answers, all are cobwebs.

Now, weighted down with snow the trees
Hold out their arms with heavy pride
With lacy cotton fingers pointing down
In green and white they reach
The blue white sky
Christmas card beautiful
They struggle to survive
The cold the windy beetled pestulence
Of life
Once taken in and offered back
All shelter food and warmth
Of living lives in them
Enduring all
They dure
In beauty unimaginable

If you made it this far, you'll be happy to know this will be a weekly or monthly event, not daily. P.S. Please don't copy or publish the poetry without checking with me - feel free to tag, link, comment, or critique....

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  1. Anonymous7:16 AM

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