Living Freely

By Austin P. Torney

Copyright 2012 Austin P. Torney

Smashwords Edition


Living Freely

She loves road trips; the autumn colors called,
So we were off on the ups and downs,
She with taped ankle and myself with wrist,
The warriors running away from home.

The scene was of the turning leaves falling,
Unspoken poems reciting the paths flown,
Only now the scene painted with the words,
As music played poems sung to melodies.

Country roads, quaint inns, dilapidated barns;
What’s this? A dance hall lighting the dark path?
We dance the song of evening bells rung
In a twilight zone in nowhere’s middle.

The music played, past, but not yet past,
For it was in recent memory recalled.
Newly savored sensations continued on—
That which could be presently known.

Mind anticipated the coming tones,
The transitional ‘middle’ blending it
With those sounds not totally gone.

In this past-present-future resides
The delight that none could produce alone—
The smoothly rolling ‘now’.


The Cheap Life

Well, the books are all written
And the tennis palace is long closed;
So, it may be time to travel again,
To winter on the west coast or on Oahu.

Last time it was South Carolina,
And before that it was Route 66
Into Arizona and California.

We’re ready now for a slow drive
Southwest across the country.

We now live for cheap on
What they call a mountain
In NY, and still can, when we get back.
There are lots of big hills between
Connecticut and Millbrook.

We have a heavy duty tent
That can be hooked to the van.

And a very small solar panel
And a tiny generator, too,
But these are just luxuries.

All is quite livable, even in the cold:
Barrels catch the rainwater or snow
And the solar panel supplies
Some minimal power,
For what is not on battery,
And when we are not turning on the van.

Heat is from a small fuel heater
Or is channeled from the van.

The chain saw is run 
By the generator or fuel
But we don’t really need it;
A wood fire is not required.

Wireless internet arrives from a nearby town/hotel.
Email is both the mailbox and the phone.
The laptop internet is the TV and the movie theater.
We can use a PO box for snail mail.
No taxes, no rent, no mortgage.
The view is superb.

We get the extended
Morning and evening sun.
No one wanders by.

In summer,
A canopy shades the tent
From the midday sun.
We had to cut a few trees;
Now they make a fine windbreak.
We can easily pick up and move
We spent half the winter here.
No problem. 
 
Time is not kept track of;
We can even sleep 16 hours
And stay up for 30; whatever, whenever.

She paints; I write.
The van is used
On super frigid nights.
We can stand up in it.

There is a table by the window,
A slow drippy shower in the back
That uses the same water over,
But we have to plan ahead to heat it.

The bed unfolds over the aisle.
Fridge is the outside, for now,
But is underground in summer.

On Oahu we will need even less
Up in the mountains.
Will get a lightweight tent.
Can leave the van on the west coast
Or leave it back here and fly.

A motorcycle will be fine.
I know a spot from 40 years ago.
May try hunter-gathering,
But the world is not that bad off yet. 
Now the secret is out.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by…

From high above and far away in Oahu,
One could see the planes landing
And taking off on the reef runway
Out in the Pacific Ocean
At Honolulu International Airport,
But one cannot hear them.
I remember the gate there
Marked ‘Papeete’.

She slept a summer by my side;
She filled my days with endless wonder…

Those were the days, of dissent;
The Army drafted; I was in,
Vietnam ongoing, objectors all about—
Jane Fonda, FTA rallies in Honolulu.

Took one look at the barracks,
Never registered therein;
Decided Waikiki was better,
A beach front by Diamond Head.

Saw a sign, “roommate wanted”,
So I, the soldier lived and loved,
With she, the antiwar protester.

A few days in a hotel
On the cheap rates
Of this low economy
Should set the stage.
 
Will there be internet
In the mountains?
Who knows.
Doesn’t matter,
For one can download while in town.

She will carry a bag of groceries
While sitting behind me
On the motorcycle;
More in the saddlebags.

Onward, up and up the trail.
The little people
Will welcome and remember.

I dreamed that love would never die;
I am still young and unafraid…

While Oahu is the “gathering place”
Where things happen,
There will be another camp on Maui,
Out in the open; there’s no need to hide it,
For it will be on a friend’s land.

He is a hang-glider flyer.
We will soar on the updrafts
Through the mountain mist into the skies. 

No song unsung, no wine untasted…

The tigers will not come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
But only the kittens purring.

Now life has brought the dream I dreamed.

It is where
The Theory of Everything began
And where it will end.

…

The trick of life
Is to foresee the past
By remembering the future.

Now we are on Oahu.
The van would not have been needed.


Living Off of the Grid

The motorcycle churns the dirt of the trail,
Its first gear pulling us up and up,
Through twists and turns,
Over roots and rocks,
Towards the camp,
In late afternoon
(Raising up the sun),
Sometimes even at night,
Water and goods in the saddlebags.

Here the tent, the soft moving airs,
And the lightness of being;
Here the internet from
The fort to the laptop sitting
On a small folding table,
Then, later on, the soft pillows of sleep
Into the dawn, below the shooting stars;
Existence always trumps essence.

Here today, gone to-Maui
To relearn hang-gliding.

Twilight dawn or dusk are
The still points of the noise,
The day-night neither here nor there,
But in equipoise.


Gridless

We are living off of the grid
In the volcanically made
Island counties of Oahu and Maui.
We don’t get into those pot plantations,
Plus, they are well hidden.

As the motorcycle races down the Pali highway
At 90 mph the ultimate symphony begins to play
(Emotions in the state of being);
Miss Adventure rides on the back.

The motorcycle is the
Generator/charger for the laptop,
Which in turn is still the phone, the mail,
The jukebox, and the TV/movie theater.

We cross the deep blue ocean
Aboard the ferry to Maui.
There is no internet in the interior
But only in the towns.

We fly the gliders on the updrafts,
Getting closer to the demigod, Maui.


On the Island of Kauai

The dusk deepens, night’s pot of tea steepens;
Silence descends, as when a gift opens;
Eventide rises. On high, Orion camps.
Our eyes catch stars like fireflies in lamps.

The ferry was continuing on to Kauai,
A rare destination,
So we remained aboard.

It’s a quiet island,
One good for honeymooners,
And sightseeing,
Containing the legendary Bali Hai
And the Waimea Canyon,
Lined by a road that is
Not much of a road at all.

Amid the endless sugar cane fields
We came upon yet another tin shack;
But this time we stopped
And gave them some goodies,
And talked and stayed
Into the night—
With this Filipino couple.

In the quiet of the night
We could hear the waterfalls
Rushing, way off in the distance.

They knew the names of the stars
And that, therein them,
Hydrogen was being converted to Helium
And that that was why the stars shine!
 
They were surprised
That I knew some Tagolog;
However, I’d spent a lot of time
In the Philippines.

…

Space gives me room to realize
That the Earth couldn’t
Be much farther out in space, alone,
It rolling along a spiral arm, unknown.

The stars of space beckon,
Warm and welcome,
Being the fires of home—
Those ancient lights
Piercing the depths of time.

Look at the stars
In the depths of the night;
Hold the flames in your mind,
Keeping them bright.
Their power flows,
Energizing you from
The eternal charger—
You see the light!

The stars are my mind,
Having made my mind,
And so I’m ever inspired
By a thousand ideas
Beckoning from afar.

They wink in
The mind’s meadows,
Like fireflies;
They stab the
Darkness of naught
With their light,
For the eyes can
Ever catch these stars,
Like fireflies, in a jar,
To make the lamp
That burns the night away.

They are eternity’s running-lights;
They’re the gleam in my eyes;
My smile’s light
Is that of a distant sun
From long ago. 

From Heaven’s stars
Came my dust eterne,
For I was born of stardust
And then nourished
By the sunlight
That filled my living cup
With so many wonders of delight;
For Time’s seas
Nurtured me and thee in turn.

From time, death, and dust
I thus became,
And so by this, thus, and that
I must return.

Star light is the origin of our being,
Being the source of our matter, energy—
Everything; It’s our radiant spirit,
Our self-winding mainspring.

Soul to soul, it said to me,
“I’m the light, thy spirit’s sight,
A beauty bold and bright,
An inspiration come from darkest night;
You’re a newborn star aglow with insight.”

Oh thee, of thine,
Whence came this life of mine?
I wish thee to thank for this living wine.
Oh, Nature, Father Time, Guiding Star—
Thanks for throwing me this earthly lifeline.

Our shadows are touching, in the same shade—
We embody, in third dimension made;
We kiss, drift, cross into each other’s role;
Spirits open—rainbows meld in the soul.

(We still have much to know
About star formation,
As it is that stars about
20 times larger than our sun
Would seem to have to be limited
At about that point.)

Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.
 
It’s tough for men and women to exist in isolation,
For, the nature of one makes necessary the other.
A good way too find yourself is to lose it in another;
However, it becomes rather a shared identity
That does not destroy the identity of the other.

Soft and warm, the evening caresses me,
In gentle darkness and quiet stillness.
I beg her to yield her dearest secrets,
To reveal the full truth of what she is.

Much I already know from twilight dreams,
And from poems unveiling truth and beauty,
But, I ask, with my most inquiring looks
To know the deep mysteries of the night.

Above me, fires burn the stars away;
Below me, the Earth turns under my feet;
Within me, unworded dreams haunt my soul;
Around me, night pours blackness on the ground.

Often I’ve deeply felt thee, phantasm,
Known when you were there to encourage me,
Felt your touch in my heart between its beats,
Always sensed your presence in the mind’s sight.

Now I ask from your powers of the night,
Not immortality, nor youth, nor birth,
But only that I retain your presence
Within me, in rhythm and resonance.

Now I sense your sweep across my heartstrings,
For I’m undistracted by day’s bright noise.
NOW I hear your voice singing with my own;
NOW I know the love and goodness of man.


Young Again

I am home, back where I began. 

If, by our late middle age
We begin to really live,
Although by then it’s almost too late,
Then it’s because our prior life
Was but a preparation:

In our forties there may have
Been more work than play
As we solidified our careers
And guided our children on;

Our twenties had demanded of us
The unsettling stresses
Of graduating college,
Finding a job, wooing a mate,
And buying a home;

In our teens,
Although our hormones
Were flowing wildly,
We were often thwarted
By the cell walls of study,
Curfew, and sexual responsibility;

Only as children
Were we almost free,
But even then
The shadow of authority everywhere
Passed as a dark cloud.

Therefore, it is only when
We spread into middle age,
Say at age fifty or so,
That we finally reap real interest
From the dues we’ve paid.

We are free to live and write,
To fully create art, life, and love—
Albeit, though, that death’s faint knockings
Have already sounded in our hearts,
And that time’s corruption
Is seen in the wrinkled skin
That we may fondly try
To stretch baby smooth.

A step or two is lost in tennis
And age is noted in the graying of the flower,
Although the root may still be green.

Yet, for all this,
There is a new exuberance
That never was,
A realization, at last,
Of the full worthiness of life
And of its precious pleasures,
Of the promotion of one’s spirit
To a higher plane—

And the complete removal
Of oneself from parts of life
That suddenly appear quite needless,
And a determination to live even more,
The way we would have if we could have
Ditched out of all work and worry.

Yes, the unseen but still sensed specter
Of old age still looms;
But, it is well around the corner—
Not even an enemy,
But a most inspiring presence
Which promotes living, not dying.
So, one is reborn.
This and that home improvement
Seems no more to matter so much
As does creation, friends,
Health, adventure, and loving. 

We are part and parcel of everything— 
We are the cosmos; we are life; we are love; 
We are all that is; we are the creator 
Of the dance as well as the dancer. 

With pep, zing, zip, oomph, vim and vigor,
We bounce along with spirit and fire;
Enthused by life’s spirit energy of the zest,
We know that this life is one of the best.


Bali Hai

We had driven to the end
Of Kuhio Highway 56,
Reaching the exotic
Ha’ena State Park
Located on the north shore
Of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i
Often referred to
As the ‘end of the road’…

We were tucked against
The Napali cliffs
Is this Ha’ena State Park.

“Ha’ena” is usually translated
As ‘red hot’.

When the sun is down on the
Right side of the Napali cliffs,
The scene turns to
A deep and perfect red,
And thus is where many couples
Have envisioned a beach wedding.

The 230 acres park is situated
At the terminus of
The North Shore drive
And is host to Lumahai beach,
Ha’ena beach, Ke’e Beach,
And a spectacular
1,280 ft cliff named Bali Ha’i.

The cliff and these beaches
Have also been the locations
For several well-known songs
In the 1958 film once titled Bali Ha’i,
Set in the South Pacific
By Hollywood in 1958.

One mile to the east is Lumahai Beach,
Which is actually three beaches
In various degrees of connectedness,
Depending on how the sand builds up.

It is visually stunning,
With black lava cliffs,
White sand, blue ocean,
And green jungle.
It’s always great for
Running on soft sand,
Then swimming
In the fresh water
Of the mouth
Of Lumahai River,
And playing in the waves
Where the river meets the ocean. 


Existence Over Essence

We are back at the Oahu mountain base.
A cat has adopted us.

I may take a vacation from
My holiday from retirement,
Leaving the tour of the Big Island
For another time,
By just lazing around.

Yes, these are very lazy days now,
As we sit in the shade on lounge-chairs
About twenty feet from the edge of the cliff.

Fort Shafter lies below,
With the city and the ocean
Much farther out in the distance.

The lady usually paints while I read,
And the cat perches at the very edge,
Looking out over all creation.

We cooked a prime rib on a gas grill, somehow,
Each of which we obtained from the PX.

So, there is food, lots of sleep, and love,
As well as spirit, earth, and moon.

The days and night are about 12 hours each
And the seasons never change.
The scents are on the breeze
And the life is in the living.

The absolute essence is of no real concern,
It being the uncaused tiny
And simple of so long ago,
Something not very amazing,
As it is just some minuscule movements.
It is enough to be informed by science
Of that which has occurred in our universe
And all around us, up to now.

Each person has to make an ongoing life,
And so that’s what’s first and foremost,
And way beyond the pondering
Of the original essence.

To speak of life in its positive aspects
Is ever of real and immediate use;
Negatives, politics, sufferings,
And all those
May still instruct, as well,
But, I leave that to others.

The transcendental moments ever come,
Those filling up the scene within,
And, from without,
All the adventures of life’s living.

The afternoon sun shines,
A thousand nuclear bombs worth
Going off in it every second,
It still having 5 billion years left.
We are a safe distance away.

Dinosaurs still fly, as birds,
And the bacterial kings of forever
Are still with us.

Sometimes we imagine
The graceful forms of the australopithecines—
Those who are yet in your heart and ours.

Thanks, dear, for the vivacity, animation,
Liveliness, vitality, verve, high spirits,
Exuberance, zest, buoyancy, enthusiasm,
Energy, vigor, dynamism, élan, gusto, brio,
Bounce, spirit, fire; movement; oomph, and pizzazz.

I awoke, her scent traveling,
All my senses merging, changing,
My hearing following the one vibration
That echoed from below—
A spirit, leading me to the lake,
 Plunging me into the cooling depths,
Where the mermaid waited for me.


Utopia, With No Myopia

We slept over ten hours last night,
A fine luxury.

Another easy going day day
On an utopian island
That is racially democratic
(We are a minority here),
The temperature hardly ever going above 81,
Or not even above 84 in the “summer”.

The motorcycle idles,
Which is really nothing more
Than a soft purr,
As one of my long-life
Laptop batteries charges up,
Waiting to be swapped with the other,
Soon to be dying one.

There is swimming in the ocean
In the late afternoon,
Whenever,
Then tennis, on some days,
Followed by a dip in a
Freshwater lagoonish type of pool,
Then Smorgy’s buffet,
Now and then, as a treat,
The meal savored outside on a
Lanai overhanging the ocean
And under the stars,
For night falls at 6 PM or so,
The sun even plummeting
Like a deadweight,
Relatively speaking,
With but a short twilight thereafter,
And, yet, the sunsets
Are often glorious ones,
The colors more rapidly changing.
Then closeness, later, in the tent,
And wonderful sleep…oh, beautiful sleep.

Eat, sleep, play, drink, nature, love, thought,
And sex are what we are made of,
A rather beautiful meld beheld.

We know that self organization must be so,
Else we could not have been here to know.


Here’s a good, but solvable mystery:
Look at your eyes in a mirror,
Trying to see them looking and moving,
Even far to the left of right…
You don’t see them move at all,
But only being still,
Yet, we can see other’s eyes move.
How come?


Good feelings arise even further
With moderate warmth, more or less,
Plus an outlook of joy;
Cold ones more so of the cold
Or of the very serious, although not always.
People do not look down at the ground here
When they pass you.

Negatives, humorlessness,
And an overly serious and very fixed outlook
And attitude can ruin the fine recipe
Of luck making its own [good] luck
Of ‘karmatic’ successes.


Out in the Real World

We were in a bookstore the other day,
Summaria and I, in the Science section,
It being on the left,
With the Dogs and Cats section on the right.

A redheaded lady, finely dressed,
Was sitting on the floor,
Reading ‘Antimatter’,
Trying to find out what particles are,
For we inquired of her.

A kind of ‘mad-scientist’ then arrived,
Looking for a Science Dictionary,
His hair much worse than Einstein’s,
Plus, he was all shabbily dressed
With really baggy clothes
And had probably gone
Without a bath for weeks.

I asked him if he was a scientist.

He said “No; I would be,
But the pay is not good.”

Another lady appeared,
Looking for the
‘Poodles for Dummies’ book.

Someday, all bookstores and libraries
Will have to double in size to hold
All the ‘for Dummies’ and ‘for Idiot’s’ books.

As you can imagine,
Some karma spread unto these people
And we were soon all sitting on the floor
And having some kind of informal class
On Anything and Everything.
I had become sort of
A Professor for Science Dummies.

“What’s a particle?”

“Electrons, neutrinos…
You can find them on the internet
Under ‘Standard Model’,
So, don’t waste money on a book.”

The redhead wrote this down,
Along with everything else that got said.

“Maybe God is the particle,” she offered,
“But where did the antimatter go?”

“Maybe a lot of it glommed together
And went down a Black Hole or something.
At least we have mostly uncle-matter around here,
Thank God.”

“Could God be the particles?”

“That sounds very restrictive,
As well as being a lot of information to manage.
Let’s just let the particles be the particles,
And simply have them do their thing.”

“Oh. Well, energy comes from the stars and planets.
I’ve kept a log and there are different effects
Depending on the time of day,
Plus those energies, of when I was born.”

“Astrology?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the doctors and nurses
Surrounding your birth
Would have had far greater effect
And influence on you at birth
Than some stars and planets far away,
Although they do emit some amount of energy.”

“They determine our lives with that energy.”

“Yes, true, there is energy
But I don’t think stars
and planets just sit around,
Thinking ‘What should we do to this guy; 
What should we do to that person’.”

“They decided that I would get hit
By a tractor-trailer truck,
Which nearly killed me.”

“Wow! Glad you made it.”

“When it happened, I had no memory for a while,
Being somewhere else in another dimension
In some blank space.”

“Let’s just say that you
Got the hell knocked out of you.”

“Could be.”

The shaggy hair guy was listening, too,
But was getting perturbed
At finding no ‘Dictionary of Science’,
But the Poodle lady was taking it all in,
Never saying a word.

“There has to be a cause for life, professor.”

“Causes of LIFE making Life making life
Can’t go on forever; so, no go on that one.”

“Ever see someone turn into light
Right before your eyes?”

“No, you?”

“Yes, and these are like spirits and angels.”

“Then it returned to normal?”

“Yes. And the spirits are here right now.”

“I don’t see any; hey, who bumped me!”

“You can’t see them, but they’re here.”

“Hey, where’s Summaria?”
(She had played a fine joke on me,
Skipping out,
Leaving me stuck with
All this hocus-pocus stuff.
Even the ‘mad scientist’ had gone,
Looking for a store clerk.
All I had other was the Poodle Lady.)

…A bunch of really fine talk flowed
That had a lot of good stuff and jokes
That I have put on TQ, at times,
But, well, you had to be there…

“Are you a Buddhist? You sound like one.”

“No, for they believe that all is illusion;
Otherwise, fine, as they serve the task,
Like always picking up litter,
Not worrying if anyone is watching;
Although they don’t have a God,
But just a human guy, Buddha.”

“All could be a dream,
Such as us being here now.”

“I’ve heard this one.
I knew the Great Lama
Of the Eastern United States.
He owned a restaurant
Near the train station,
And I got to know him pretty well,
His bodyguards retreating.
He even offered to take me
To India with him,
But I stayed here.”

“Any great wisdom?”

“Yes, for when I asked him
Who really won the election,
Bush or Gore, he said “Who cares!”

“A very great wisdom, indeed.”

The bushy-haired guy reappeared,
With a store clerk;
They couldn’t find a ‘Science Dictionary’,
And so the guy got mad and left.

The store announced that it was closing.
Summaria peeked around the end of the aisle.

The redhead offered,
“I’m inviting you guys
To have dinner with me and my friends.”

I looked over at Summaria.

Summaria said “Great; we’ll go.”

And a fine dinner, it was,
With much further and good discussion,
That which spurs even more thoughts,
In a fine mansion, no less,
The redhead telling us we could stay
As long as we liked and/or visit her,
Whenever, coming and going.

And such the karma was flowing,
So we are having
A wonderful vacation from our tent,
There being servants and all.


The Real World Continues…

The redhead looks like a rail, frail and thin,
But energetic nonetheless.
She is really old [looking], being 60,
Which, I know, is younger that I am.

Too much sun, perhaps,
Plus, there was
That tractor-trailer accident long ago.

She is a combination of
The dreamy but fun,
Along with a positive glee,
But having an open
And wishful scientific-to-be path,
One that comes and went vs.
The non-conceptual invisibles.

Rare that a caucasian owns a plantation,
But her deceased husband was oriental.

These plantations, of which there are many
In the level interior of the island,
Raise cane and whatever else in this fair climate.

Kind of a laid-back atmosphere here,
The workers coming and going with ease,
Even into the glorious white mansion
And its outbuildings.

We can see the back and the side
Of our mountain way off in the distance
As it calls to us from this lowly point,
And so we come and go.

The cook here is fantastic,
Blending all sorts of seafood
And vegetables with the hardier stuff as well.
Protons and wantons abound here.


At the Shore

Where we am now, the sea
Is neither blue nor green,
But a color in between.
The deep dark hole
Of cold is not here,
Just the warmth aglow.

The ego is neither
Gone nor overblown,
But in equipoise, the known.
The calming waves roll,
Amounting here their toll
From the other side of the world.

We’re on holiday, on vacation
From our retirement…
Where might I be?
I am beside her,
Astride the duality
Of the yin and the yang.

There is no talk here of One,
Nor that nothing can move,
For all is moving life about.

There is brightness all about
These shifting sands of time,
A heart warm beside mine.

No talk of me nor thee
Behind the veil of naught,
Just eternity’s parenthesis.

The birds came down
From the sky
To pick the table dry
As the ghosts of Pacific
Walk the waves,
The captains of old,
For so it said,
As we read,
While laying in bed.

The wind on through the curtains flew,
As I wrote some poems anew.


(Hanauma Bay)

After love was made, we, connected, stayed,
And, in each other’s embrace we laid, still in place,
While our senses melted away,
And were felt no more that day,

Having been replaced by a new sense,
A joy that lay beyond sense—
A realm of calm deeply felt
As everywhere it dwelt,
A sensation both mystical
And totally magical.

In it we drifted, crossing oceans
Filled with good emotions,
And floated down through
Deep caverns—deep we flew,
Rising and falling through a space
Where no thoughts could race,
Weightless, unlimited, unmeasured,
In the poetic land of many pleasures—

There becoming invisible, losing
Our bodily presence, choosing
To remain as one, although to
Even move would have required too
Much effort—of which we had none,
For, in spirit we had one become:

Ghostly phantoms, specters with
Human powers known only in myth,
Lying, awash, on some distant shore,
Our senses shining forevermore,
Like the sun, a scarlet flame above—
Beings quenched in the sea of love.

The pulse of love was still much with us
As we lay awash on the shore, resting,
Entwined, in the paradise of lovemaking,
Where, we rode upon the waves, receding
And returning, wet with liquid peace, fulfilled,

As now and yet again small wavelets
From the soul’s ocean of emotion
Swept on through us, in ripples,
Echoes of the storm’s mighty swell,

Vibrating and rinsing.
Waves seemed to come from within us,
Yet, from all around, relaxing us,
As each other we kissed,
While rivulets ran back into the sea,
Every drop tingling as it found us in caress;

Then another, and yet another drop
Quivered its waving way over us,
Cascading, while we yet embraced,
Connected all the while in one ALL,

Flowing, immersed in romantic afterglow,
Water sinking into the sands,
Half drying before wetting again—
Moisture rising up into the air
In one fluid motion toward the sun;

Then, yet one last whisper of watery sensation...
Calling us back into the sea.


Vacation

We’re on vacation
At a secret hideaway
Right on the ocean,
Doing a study of materialism.

Everything seems real here,
But for some obvious cases
Of silicone fraud.

My room is so unassuming
That its entrance is via
An unmarked door in the stairwell.
No bad guys can find us here.
The town is filled with transients—
Visitors from all over the world; 
Same with all the workers—
They come here from afar to work
During their summers off
From college or whatever.
Our room even has a little hump
And a downslope just inside the door,
So even if any bad guys did get in
They would immediately fall down.
We’re off to the depths of the sea now.


The Awakening

Rising slowly from the cold dark hollows
Where the night airs fell and soundly slept,
The restless wind left her secret bower,
And, gaining strength, lovingly surrounded

And caressed the willow trees, which wavered
And swooned in her wake, as she, the wild and
Wandering wind, flew by in a cool breeze
From the west on her undulating wings.

Spreading the incense of the morning to
Nature’s world of growing and living things,
She woke the flowers from their slumber
By drinking from them their blanket of dew,

Then told the tales of the joyous forest
To the birds, who soon carried them aloft,
Thence into my ears: songs of streams flowing
Freely, and stories of a glowing sky.

That promised many sunny hours to come
In the dreams of those who felt her passing,
As sleep was washed from their languid eyes
When they sensed that new dawn arriving…

As if some transparent veil had lifted—
When she gently stirred the embers of the
Last watch-fire and whispered softly to them
That the stars had gone and day had begun.

Of stars, those lights of dark eternity,
Is one that now shines bright for you and me;
Photons race the sky across, shedding light,
Enlivening, illuminating humanity.

Earth couldn’t be farther out in space, alone;
In all directions it rolls along, unknown;
Look at the stars piercing the depths of time
They beckon, warm and welcome, the fires of home.

Oft I drink-in the pleasures of creation,
For what else could be the point of cognition,
If not to absorb all that comes streaming in?
Life’s sensation is the main attraction!

Earth’s a garden, an oasis in space,
A world of boundless beauty and grace
We could search the heavens for such in vain,
Finding no equal, any time or any place.



###


About the Author

Austin began writing for real around the age of forty, a respite from working as an Information Engineer in the field of Computer Science, doing programming, an art, as it turned out. He calls himself a humanist, and is one who enjoys the liberal arts, utilizing science, for it pervades every discipline. He is currently retired and lives in the mountains of Poughquag, NY, near the Appalachian Trail. He enjoys tennis, writing, fun, humor, thinking, sleeping, poetry, music, dining, travel, romance, reading, swimming, and life.


Connect with me online

email: austintorn@aol.com


Movies

See my YouTube Channel, ‘austintorn’.


Books by Austin P. Torney

Astronomical Wonders: Illustrated stories, poems and pictures of the universe, the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets.

Austin’s Art: Best art, mostly from the other books.

Austin’s Tennis Tips: Some humorous; tennis play, and stories. Color.

Brain Waves Illustrated: Astounding revelations of the mysteries of the mind and the universe. What is Consciousness and Awareness? Where did the Universe come from? What makes the mind operate as it does? What is Meditation? What is our Destiny? How do the senses work?

Butterflies At the Edge of Forever: Toe Questors from www.toequest.com discover the Secrets of the Universe, as well as the humorously dangerous implications that follow their possession of the Holy Grail of the genuine Theory of Everything. With the world’s future hanging in the balance, they sharpen their wits and skills through the teachings of the learnéd Grand Masters. Extraordinary mixed media color photo composites of tropical and otherworldly scenes beyond compare. Many poems as well. Fun science, too. Much original humor. There is no greater quest than to know whence we came and what we are. Humorous but meaningful.

Elfin Legends: A journey through the otherworld.

Epic Thoughts: The Best Of: The deepest and most profound thoughts.

Illuminations: The End, the Beginning, and All that Lies Between.

Illustrated Sayings: Pearls of Wisdom.

Flora Symbolica Illustrated: The Lore and Legends of the Flowers. Color-illustrated stanzas of the myths, legends, and facts of the flowers.

Glorious Revelations: The complete scientific series of exploits.

Illuminated Revelations: Color-illustrated glorious and romantic scientific exploits.

Illustrated Take-Offs And Jokes: Humorous illustrations, many of which I made, with the remainder discovered on the internet, mainly those that are lists of things. Much original humor.

Last Knight’s Almanac: The Adventures Following King Arthur’s Demise Last Knight’s Almanac celebrates life, love, and adventure, in the years following the death of King Arthur. It also serves as a backdrop on which I can draw literary portraits of many of man’s favorite things, such as nature, astronomy, emotion, poetry, travel, history, fantasy, art, and so on. Arthurian legend is the main thread of the story and is also one of my favorite things, so this is important, too. What really happened in the Dark Ages? And yes, it’s true, but only if you wish to believe it, that I unearthed these Chronicles from an iron box that was buried 1400 years ago under the Abbey of Glastonbury.

Living Freely: Life on the cheap and nearly free in a warm climate.

Magical Moments Series: Magical scenes composited as they really could be on a perfect day.

Magical Revelations Series: Magical revelations of nature on a perfect day. Part of a series. It wasn’t easy getting birds to pose for me and waiting for a glorious sunset or sunrise, so I used Photoshop to create realities that could be.

Nostalgic Notions Illustrated: The Good Old Days: Illustrated nostalgic art with a paragraph below each. Relive the golden olden days for inspiration and remembrance.

Office Life: The Glad, The Sad, And The Ugly. Life at work-from my observations at IBM and elsewhere.

Reality Recomposed: Magical scenes that one might find on the perfect day at the right time.

Scientific Exploits: The Glorious, the Humorous, and the Serious: The “dry” formulas from science books are depended on for a large portion of our existence, and while we may stand in awe at their deeper meaning and even enjoy some lab experiments, they don’t always reveal their full and complete history; however, the stories behind many scientific discoveries are usually insightful, amazing and sometimes even hilarious. Being that we are human, we can be doggedly eccentric in some of our earthly quests, and perhaps the genius of some scientists begets even more incredulous undertakings. (Wait until we look into the strangeness of Isaac Newton.)

Scientific Implications: Fantasy, Fancy, and Reality: Even more science exploits.

Scientific Explanations: And more science exploits.

Scientific Revelations: More science exploits.

Short Takes: The Stories Of Austin P. Torney: Original Comedy/Jokes, Glorious Nostalgia, Astounding Science, Thought provoking Satire/Take-offs, Gripping Short Stories, Deep Mystical musings, Self-Help, plus, the Theory of Everything deeply explored.

The Anti-Word: The Absurdity Of Religious Belief: The absurdity of religious beliefs is pointed out directly, as it must be, but there is also grace, humor, insight, style and the urge to fully live, unfettered by superstition. Long ago, people were thrown out of the tribe for not believing in the moon god, but that god is long gone, along with the gods of Mt. Olympus and others who had to be relocated so far away as to become invisible. Is our present day God any more real? Is He a leader? Is He a good role model. Should we follow his ways? Was God made in Man’s image? Is it all just a myth? What do other insights have to offer? Lavishly illustrated. (Some overlap with ‘The Guide to the All-Embracing realm of the Ultimate’)

The Art of Love: Sayings (the art of) and illustrations (the art) of love.

Telling Stories: Original, illustrated Comedy/Jokes, Nostalgia, Astounding Science, Thought provoking Satire/Take-offs, Gripping Short Stories, Mystical musings, Self-Help, and even a deep science dialog with a cricket.

The Illustrated Rubaiyat Of Austin P. Torney: The Embrace Of The Human Condition: An extension of Omar Khayyam’s Rubayiat into modern times, illustrated on every other page. The Rubàiyàt stuck a chord in me which was already resonating to Omar’s frequency, so, I wrote my own. Somehow, inexplicably, the verses came to me as I lived through all the experiences described therein, for I dared not write of any philosophies which had not been tried and proven. My quatrains, like Omar’s, aim into the heart of life’s dilemmas, offering simple common sense solutions. In this hectic, complicated world of ours we often forget that it is the simple things in life that are still the most enjoyable and inexpensive-for, everyone dies, but not everyone lives. The spirit of Omar’s Persia-fume has reached me, across the centuries, as he had hoped it might, and has overtaken me unawares, inspiring me to live and write, in that order.

The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam: Translated by Edward FitzGerald and Illustrated by Austin P. Torney: 114 quatrains are presented via a merge of the first four editions of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The 80+ illustrations, all in color, are a mixture of ancient and modern styles, ranging from Austin’s own nature compositions to his enhancement of engravings and drawings obtained from very old books. This publication celebrates the nearly two hundred years since Edward FitzGerald was born.

The Poems Of Austin P. Torney: Flora Symbolica: An epic poem on the lore and legends of the flowers as taken by Eve from the Garden of Eden. Color Symbols: Lore and Legends of the colors. Elfin Legends: Lore. The Rubayiat of Austin P. Torney: Extension of the Rubayiat into modern times. Brain Waves: The mysteries of the mind and the secrets of the universe. Misc. Poems: Science poems; Many more short poems.

The Rubaiyat Of Austin P. Torney: The Embrace Of The Human Condition: An extension of Omar Khayyam’s Rubayiat into modern times. The Rubàiyàt stuck a chord in me which was already resonating to Omar’s frequency, so, I wrote my own. Text. 570 quatrains.

The Secrets Of The Universe: Wherefrom, Whereto, And What To Do: From Possibility, as in the quantum realm, but deeper still, came our account, via the near-nothing of Potential, where the buck stops, for it is neither substance nor nothing. How does everything work? What are the secrets of the universe and what do they tell us? To what shall we amount inside our parentheses of eternity? To know where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve been, and what we’re made of. Celebrate your good fortune! This is the large format deluxe edition, with all text illuminated by color plates.

The Illustrated Triumph of Life, Love, and Being: An Exploration of the Joys of the Human Condition through the Life of a Loving Couple Engaged in the Ultimate Relationship Across the Centuries and into the Future. Escaping from a monastery-abbey that engulfed itself in the flames of ignorance, such as the one in in the book ‘The Name of the Rose’, they, our ever returning couple, salvage a mysterious book of quatrains that guides them through the joys and follies of the human condition as they live out its words, for the proof of all writing is to live it. So close in thought that they need not even be named at first, our couple takes a picaresque journey through the first part of the book to solve the difficulties of life as they are encountered in their travels through the forested countryside. Alive and positive, it makes you want to run right out and live. Includes the Book of Quatrains and the Journal. Many illustrations. Magical and Mystical.

The Guide to the All-Embracing Realm of the Ultimate:
Is it that with grace, humor and style that we will describe all the realms of life, as well as answer the ultimate questions, some via seriously comedic adventures? We will it.
Will good and evil clash, with a triumphant success? Indeed, and in the deeds of grand stimulation and logic.
Is the cause of the universe itself causeless? Yes, and we will learn why it is uncaused, just be-cause.
Did the laws of the universe come from Nothing? Just about, but there is some further ado about this near ‘nothing’.
Does everything amount to a total Nothing except for the quantum fluctuations of uncertainty? Certainly.
Will we disprove the Supernatural? Naturally.
Will we hear tales of DIA events ‘that never happened’? Yes, but please keep them under your hat.
Is it that we are but a shimmering glitter in the eye of eternity, a small parentheses enclosing a dust mote of a rare and lucky event of little significance on the faltering edge of forever… or, that, as our luck has never failed, our joy and innocence will ever prevail? Who the heck knows!
What does the sum total of the information content of Everything add up to? Nothing. Nil. Null. Not a thing.
Will the Earth be destroyed in this story? Yes, but only temporarily and only a few times.
Are these your poems and art compositions? Yes. I, Why? Note that this is not even the shortest poem.
Did you read ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?’ No, I hadn’t, amazingly, but when someone told me that my book was like that, I quickly read the first ‘Hitchhiker’ book of the series. We don’t really go to many other planets in this book, but there is much earthly imagination and excitement and comedy within.
Do we really learn Everything here, such as what is the origin of the universe and also the explanation of that which produced it. Yes. Really? Yes, for sure.
What is www.ToeQuest.com? It’s a web site where people discuss Everything. It’s fun; come on over and post.
Who are your favorite authors? Victor Stenger, Lee Child, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer, Jonah Lehrer, Bill Bryson, Omar Khayyam, Percy Shelley, Dan Brown, Robert Ardley, David Darling, Carl Sagan, Nelson DeMille and all the CIA/detective writers.
The unSupernatural section is long. Yes, and although it’s quite funny, too, these considerations actually helped lead us to the Super Theory of Everything, so… Thank God!
Does the book get more serious as it goes along? Yes, seriously, for I am first showing the exhilaration of being alive.
You cite some of the ideas of great thinkers. Yes, and I hope that this spurs my readers to go out and buy their books to get the whole story.

The Good Book of the Humanist Bible: The UnWrit Book of Books Of the Unholy Scriptures And the UnVarnished Gospel Truth of Reality: The title says it all.

The Illustrated Poems Of Austin P. Torney: Illustrated poems on everything: life, nature, the universe and science.

The MPs’ Tales: Two Army MP leaders pursue a seemingly routine weapons theft case in Hawaii, but find there are larger forces at work. Their mysterious Colonel eventually initiates and guides them towards ultimate maneuverings, in a drug case, and even to the underpinnings of reality itself.

The Theory of Everything: All the Way Up: Everything explained, its source, its Why and How, and then the Where, What, Then and When, leading on up to the Who of being, plus many discussions, and more.

The Universal Day: A journey through the hours, the life, the seasons, and the ages.

Wick and the Cricket: An enchanting tale and discussion of cosmology, especially concerning our freedom to act. Wick began this inspiring tale on ToeQuest, the likes of which may never be seen again, for it was the rarest of happenings unplanned. Crick, Kit, Carmel, and LabelWench soon joined in. It takes place “somewhere/sometime”, in the English countryside. It begins as Wick frees a cricket from his bamboo cage.