Mythos & Marginalia

life notes; flaws and all

j.g. lewis

original content and images ©j.g. lewis

a daily breath...

A thought du jour, my daily breath includes collected and conceived observations, questions of life, fortune cookie philosophies, reminders, messages of peace and simplicity, unsolicited advice, inspirations, quotes and words that got me thinking. They may get you thinking too . . .

Mondays are just young Fridays

One year since. . . 

   The death toll rises each day in this certain uncertainty. A geopolitical conflict, its consequences spilling out across this planet and onto the streets of my city. Distanced from the direct atrocities of another war, it is more than tension we feel in the neighborhoods where we live.

   Every day the headlines speak to me. Every day there are more questions than answers.

   How many bombs?

   How many dead?

   How many prayers?

   How many times, in my lifetime, have I heard about the possibility of Middle East peace?

   I, still, can only try to understand.

   I too live with the fear, the grief, and the polarization of it all.

 

10/07/2024                                                                                                                j.g.l.

It’s not nothing

I would like to think it is nothing, at least I’d like to try. I know I can’t, but I will fool myself into believing it was less than what it is (I’m gullible that way).
   Still I know, deep down, it was more than what I was expecting. Certainly it was more than what I was prepared for.
   It’s always something; really, anything is.
   There is something in anything, worthwhile or not, that captures your imagination or sends your soul circling.
   Nothing matters then.
   It is always more than what you were counting on, even when there is nothing to compare it to.
   Always unlike anything else, you try to twist and turn it into something familiar, or something you can relate to, all the while knowing that nothing has been like that, or felt like this: ever.
   Yeah, it’s like that.
   It’s not nothing, but it can’t be everything. . . or maybe it is.

© 2017 j.g. lewis

a deeper conversation

Ever the questions, 

no response, until now. In the wake 

of all that happened all that time ago; 

even recently, as details were 

unearthed convincingly.

Negligently we accept responsibility 

for secrets and sins unacknowledged.

The government, the Church, 

the children. The shock of it all. 

Tears now stain history books. Truth.

A deeper conversation. 

We talked about it, yesterday.

Too long society, 

more specifically “we”, have turned

a blind eye to ways of a world 

we thought we never knew.

Lord knows what they were thinking 

and did nothing.

 

10/01/2024                                                                                                             j.g.l.

 

I'm like a pencil;
sometimes sharp,
most days
well-rounded,
other times
dull or
occasionally
broken.
Still I write.

j.g. lewis
is a writer/photographer in Toronto.

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She Wants To Breathe

Posted on February 4, 2015 by j.g.lewis Leave a comment

 

_MG_8116

 

Restless now. Really for months, an urge
a need, to do something. Feel something.
An interest in objects, as much as anything.
Certain things mark a time. A sugar bowl, a
cookie tin; items, almost sacred. Empty, at
a glance, yet brimming with moments.

Grandmother long gone, she now finds
herself in a place. Voices. Ushered forward
by a child, young woman now, and held back
by memories. Her flesh, her blood, those
who raised her. Comfort. Restless still.
Words and thoughts, she wants to write.

She wants to write, but never has. Not like
this. Father’s firm disposition, a mother’s
tenderness, a voice that softened her reality.
She wants to write, like she wants to believe.
Decisions made, not regretted, but pondered.
The ink is fresh, the pen permanent.

A snap of memories, broken, diminished joys
not of parenthood, but of partners. She wants to
write about love; past and present and perhaps
more. She wants to write like she wants to breathe.
Ink flows smoothly. Her blood. History always
an interest, this is more personal.

Shameless, blameless admissions, only to herself
and a page presenting itself as a stranger. Now
it offers its skin as a lover. The smooth, thick pen,
heavy and hard between her fingers, finds a rhythm.
An object desired. She wants to write, like she
wants to feel. She has, and will again.

Never like this. Minute details reiterate her faults. The
pen’s nib, ever constant, captures lives left behind,
but still within. If only her heart, if not in her life.
The pen moves forward, she still there. Now. Every
letter, each stanza reveals a voice. A need.
She wants to write, like she wants to bleed.

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