We had a sort of "dudes' retreat" last weekend (as staunchly opposed to a "men's retreat", of course), full of celebration and adventure (two words which aptly describe wandering around San Francisco on St Patrick's Day) and much borderline-appropriate behavior. Most importantly though, we set aside a good bit of time to delve deeper into our artistic selves and lay bare our current souls via poetry and song. Needless to say, I was shocked and impressed at the quantity and quality of art that was produced, and the honest ways in which it was delivered. Various pieces from that time will probably float around the e4 weblogs soon enough.

My main contribution was a song I had written the day before the "retreat", but I will save its lyrics for the time when I have a recording to go with it. I also wrote a short poem while on the top of Mt Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, where we had all gone hiking on Saturday. From Mt Tamalpais there is a glorious view of the SF bay, and this apparent division of the world into air and water, juxtaposed all about by land, inspired the poem, which I am calling "Tesseract's End":

Rugged shoulders to spines on back
    A strange animal I traverse
Its own life an undefined breath
    Overlooked substratum of heaven on earth

I walk sometimes up, sometimes in
    Phase shift accomodating forms that
Disregard boundaries of texture--
    Oh that my soul felt the same!

To swim or run or fly between
    The lines that slice the diff'ring spheres
A hardened wire of surface tension
    That feels, from altitude, as rock
        (on it I fall, and am crushed)

To be of wing or fin was given
    To marvels of motion and muscle
But lightspeed travel twixt high and low
    Alone can I exhibit
        --if only I could breathe at Tesseract's end