There was just a continent without much on it  
under a sky that never cared less.  
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.  
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

~ William Stafford At the Bomb Testing Site from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems +

(photo: Ben Linney via  pithandperiphery)

Lamentation II

The moonlight reflects dimly off Julie’s white eyeballs.  They hold still - impossible to read in the darkness.  Shadows have always been her friend.  They hide all her physical insecurities.   Only in darkness can she be judged by her personality alone.

Just before she blew out the candle, her pudgy face conveyed the deep disappointment that formed after her vulnerable smile faded.  She will never be hurt like this again because she will never reveal herself like this again.  Her true self will exist permanently unilluminated, in fear of the pain that can come with honesty.  

~ü

[This is a film treatment for a series of five lamentations.  Lamentation I is here.  Lamentation III is here.  Lamentation IV is here.  Lamentation V is here.]

[Painting: Alphonse Mucha Woman with a Burning Candle (1933)]

Lamentation I

Jack is laying flat on the concrete.  A small puddle of blood is forming behind his head.  He is not breathing.

This terrible outcome is the result of one small misstep.  His foot didn’t quite make it all the way off the curb.  His heel got caught on the edge and his ankle rolled, turning his entire body 180 degrees as gravity took over.  When he exited the small sandwich shop, he didn’t think twice about stepping off the curb instead of taking the ramp.  

It was a sudden death that surprised everyone.  Although Jack never got the chance to consider what he had done, his family was shaken by the permanent change.  One small misstep altered the path of his loved ones forever.

~ü

[This is a film treatment for a series of five lamentations.  Lamentation III is here.  Lamentation IV is here.  Lamentation V is here.]

[Painting: William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar, 1795/1805]

Reversing entropy.

This image depicts the entropy in a box of turbulence. Concentrations of entropy correlate with visual turbulence features such as shock waves and vortices.

Source: Laboratory for Computational Science & Engineering, link

Lamentation III

Jack’s face expresses a mix of embarrassment and regret.  He thought he was doing the right thing; he finally showed her how he feels.  A few months ago, she had said she loved him.  He thought he could really be honest with someone that loves him.  So he kissed her.  The timing felt right.  They were sharing an electric energy and a palpable sexual tension.  They just had a few drinks.  They were talking about sexual fantasies.  They were sharing deep desires.  In reality, she wasn’t sharing them to be flirtatious.  She was sharing them because she trusted him.  He was someone she would never think of in that way.

Their relationship was never the same after that.  They grew distant and Sara eventually had children.  In fact, after a chance encounter at a restaurant, they never talked again.  The day that Jack decided to be honest with someone and share his deepest insecurities and feelings was the day that he lost Sara forever.  Maybe it was how he did it.  Maybe it was something she was hiding.  It was probably a mix of both.  Regardless, he will never know.

~ü

[This is a film treatment for a series of five lamentations.  Lamentation IV is here.  Lamentation V is here.]

[Image: Emiliano Ponzi : Regrets]

Lamentation V

Jack gazes downward at his tooth.  A frown crosses his face.  His lips are bloody and the rush is getting worse.  He was unprepared for the elbow that crossed his face.  It was a small, accidental gesture.  The perpetrator was talking on his cell phone.  He was unaware that Jack was behind him.  When the man turned around, Jack took an elbow in the face.

One moment can change our life forever.  Jack will never have that tooth back. Although it’s a small thing, it’s permanent.  That’s what shakes him so deeply.

~ü

[Photo: Uncredited]

[This is a film treatment for a series of five lamentations.  Lamentation IV is here.]

Lamentation IV

Jack sits alone on a bench in a well-manicured urban park.  He watches wistfully as Diane walks away.  He missed his chance.  She was sitting right next to him just moments ago.  She was reading, or to put it more precisely, pretending to read.  There was obviously an elevated level of tension because of some intangible draw between them.  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her looking out of the corner of her own.  It made Jack nervous.  It made him excited.  But it did not make him any more audacious.  So he sat there, with a dry mouth, unable to speak and unable to introduce himself.  

And now they are far apart.  The space between becomes insurmountable as Diane crosses the busy intersection.  Jack knows that meeting Diane would have changed the course of his life forever.  Things will be different next time, he thinks.  What he doesn’t know is that there will be no next time.  This is permanence.

~ü

[Photo: Katie Barthelow, Grant Park Chicago]

The memory of pain can be embedded so deeply that simply using words associated with the experience can trigger it.  Although the plasticity of the brain is astonishing, the vague sensation of memory can be, and often is, permanent.

~ü

As the scientist and his team from the Dept. of Biological and Clinical Psychology could show in a study for the first time it is not only the painful memories and associations that set our pain memory on the alert. “Even verbal stimuli lead to reactions in certain areas of the brain,” claims Prof. Weiss. As soon as we hear words like “tormenting,” “gruelling” or “plaguing,” exactly those areas in the brain are being activated which process the corresponding pain.

- Science News