You Gotta Know When to Fold 'Em
What do we become when we fold? Will we recognize ourselves or have we become something else entirely?
THE FOLDING CRANE
Control is folding shirts neatly only to stuff inside a bag. Aka an illusion
Life suds stain, mangle, and wring out our succulent joy to leave residue
A spin out of our entire being will ensue as we lose the center of control
Remember: An iron's as close as you'll get to a crease-free life. We wrinkle.
Our desires have no desire to hide or bleep themselves. They live au naturel
Wide open they are purposeful in their approach, yet afraid and vulnerable
Stapled barbs piercing our hearts, our unnecessary shame centerfolds Living sharp on high alert, prickly and aloof, while remaining surface smooth.
Money talks in riddles and rhymes, cracking at the surface skin as broken bones
Pointing at the ever-shifting interests and wandering decimals: the fractures
Of society’s inequities. Its cruel logic and clear contempt. Its dull structure
Apple-crisp fresh billfolds tease the poor while pursuing those sweet deals.
Sans belief, minus faith, trust, truth, and basic moral compass, we crumble
Give up the semblance of try, with ethics appearing visible as ghosts
Quickly lose the rules, the laws, and decide that the only way is our way
Folding fast as we liquefy our backbones, collapsing rudely, as cheap chairs.
This gamble with the spice of your tandoori, your fragrant curry, is living
Always play with a poker face, bold heart, cards laid out for each game
Risk owns the deck, the flow, and stakes, but take a seat at the table These hands with callouses, blisters, and scars, these hands go all in.
Once bitten, say our elders - knowingly, sagely, annoyingly - is twice shy
Idioms on a Sunday morning, read from newspapers or off a coffee cup
Twofold is surely just failure evolving? A do-over doubling to twice grown
Evolution is folding failure into our dough, absorbing all our Worth Watts.
Like a cake, we fold it in, sponging up experience to make us all sweet and soft
Our recipe reads like a poorly-written cookery book, hungry for disaster
Beaten by threats of expiration and potential vomit of our shameful flavors
Discarded in dumpsters and out of car windows, our essence never tasted.
Our pages turn in the wind and stick with saliva, a dampness dense and needy
Inks wet with a desperation we cannot control, letting our characters blur
We index our wonderous deeds, our acts, and our chapters like librarians
Yet we fold our dreams, hopes, and ambitions to fail as fast as magazines.
Arms folded in defiance, a soldier at your castle gate forever saying no
Twists tight as an elbow to the throat seals the wretched deal to deny
This is a damaging treason found in brain gyri and sulci willing war
This is a proof-point for paranoia on speed dial leaving a body longing.
Embracing a spectrum, a body, a being all at once, you are my everything
In you and your infinite spaces, a cavernous love now exists within me
I fold you gently and with great and sublime tenderness into us
Two lives are with sudden, infinite ease, and easy grace, made whole.
All hope is contained in whispers with hands pressed tightly in this gesture
An emoji entered in your current thread to speak ardently to your god
Clutching at a meaning made real to validate these honorable beliefs
We kneel at the foot of our beds, seeking the faces of truth in expectant altars.
Life unfolds as a picnic blanket upon a lawn, attracting ants curiously
Laying out feasts and temptations as we formulate, quickly, a menu
To follow the appetizers, mains, and desserts served to you or not
Eating only the pure protein, real fats, and rich sauce of life's endless mystery.
1,000 cranes will carry you to heaven, soul lifting to 30,000 ft. minimum
Folded to receive your wishes for happiness, good luck, or perfection
Complexity held in every precise crease, every fold screaming with simplicity
An ideal of a worthwhile existence, resisting a meaningless life.
Listen to me read this post to you, here 👇
Go behind the scenes and see inspirations for this post👇
Even more background information, videos, and links on mad libs at the full Behind the Streams episode page, here.
This week’s amends…
“Sometimes in writing of myself—which is the only subject anyone knows intimately—I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure, an antic sound.”
E.B. White, Letter to Stanley White, January 1929
Via Letters of Note
On Rotation: “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by Willie Nelson
To celebrate Willie’s 90th birthday on Saturday, I reposted a piece I wrote about the greatest concept album of all time (probably)—Red Headed Stranger.
Janeen McCrae
I originally published it on another site, but I’ve decided to create a section of The Stream called Music | Response. It will house these occasional (probably monthly-ish) posts of me talking about the albums in my collection. I thought it would be rude to automatically subscribe you to this, but now I’ve made it awkward. To make sure you receive notifications when these infrequent free posts arrive, you need to do this:
- Navigate to your Settings page via www.substack.com/settings.
- Under Subscriptions, click The Stream
- On the next page, click on the toggle next to Music | Response which should be listed there and you should receive it when I get my act together and write the next one. I hope.
RIP Al Jaffee. The Mad Magazine Fold-In? Yeah, that was Al Jaffee’s idea.
Via Austin Kleon
Well, this has been sitting on my post list since 2020. Evergreen! Quinn Wharton, the dancer in the video, has a series of these.
Via Open Culture
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
This was a nightmare to make. I’m glad it’s over. The clue to what I was attempting to do lies with Al Jaffee, and I can tell you right now, it doesn’t work on a mobile device so it’s a bit of a bust. The “poetry block” option in Substack is supposed to maintain the format, but it didn’t work as expected on mobile but works on the web if you want to see what it should look like. The email preview seemed to work too, so fingers crossed. 🤞
Behind the Streams this week is gonna be a corker! You should totally join if you’re not already on board!
Now to be obvious: The poem lays out in Mad Magazine Fold-In style. I posted some pics on Instagram. ↩
