we are choosing, breathing
being what we believe we
are if, and always if, we know
to believe and that is in doubt
in case, in time we drift toward
where we’ll end up…but only
when we stop holding onto
things that should be let go of
…where we end may be
diametric to where we start
standing, watching from the
other side, we have ideas
feelings sinking sliding feelings
unaligned to who we are where
we are what we are, all left to
devices inside ourselves, inside
plans of power and corruption
we wish we wish as our mundane
world seeps past thresholds
past milestones past moments
we desire cherish hold hold
hold to chests to the light we
attempt to look through ourselves
with the hope that we can’t, we
can’t see the seams holes
missing areas of wholeness
of solid structure where our
good parts leak out, where
our good parts leak out, we try
and hold on choosing, breathing
holding, holding…it is where we
started, where we end.

This sinking feeling, this slowly
ebbing, further delay, this moment
creeping slowly, falling through
cracks down backs, this chill is
tomorrow under our skin

Fear of what’s next what’s best
what’s less, we can’t decide, we
hide we fall all over ourselves to
escape, to delay and nothing is
left but waiting

Today we breathe, we see, we
believe that now is the best, the
rest…the rest is gone and left us
feeling, reeling, looking for
tomorrow in dark places

Us, society, us and you and me
we see, we think we see but our
eyes closed we walk over cliffs
into walls, life stalls, we ignore calls;
a tomorrow that knows us well

We know this, this pain of knowing
showing, growing sad and tired
knowing that tomorrow is nothing
less than today but stopping is
not an option for us

Today will bleed into tomorrow
inevitable, predictable, while walking
talking, we look only at each other
while time spins the sun
again and again

Into the tomorrow we won’t look at

I reach past what I
grasp, what I feel
when you feel me
eyes watching, ears
listening, skin sensing
…I let the moment
stand, settle become
the baseline and run
as blood through
grand arches through
time and infinite
space; my madness
personified; the ties
that bind that connect
that divide myself
into here and now
into pieces into
fragments
disconnected through
those arches
through time and
direction, through
the moments that
stood once as
gateways…I laugh at
the thought of
individuality, like 
knowing North makes
me a compass, we
are all connected
subjected infected
selected by our own
motivations to be
to see, to hear, to
fear the infinite space
the absence of grace…
the reaching forward
when behind is all we
really know

Your words like fireflies hover blinking, floating
streams of warm air; eddies, currents of meaning
not lost on me, not bereft of hope but trying much
too hard to land to become a thought inside, in
time a moment remembered…corrected, selected

Quietly the night becomes the medium the message
the moment remembered…your actual words fade
into shadows, into pools of deepness behind your
eyes; I put the feeling the shadowy remembrance
aside and embrace the you in my mind on my skin

I know the words, hear them fall bounce skid across
my skin in my ears I feel the pressure the sinusoidal
waves of energy…I can only watch as they lay dying
on dark waters: lack of warmth from lack of…
…love, a depletion of meaning and distance

I say to myself; confronting your words, mixing in
the night air, the movement of meaning from me to
you—clashing biting fighting words…mad fireflies
dancing in the darkness—I say to myself that what
I feel is simple loss…emptiness and sorrow

It was inevitable this parting this fading glory gone
ragged unkempt, the reemergence of shadows of
moments forgotten wedged sideways into cracks
into dark places…the night claims the space where
non-literal fireflies held dominion

I will remember only the still night air, fireflies 
land on frayed hemp lines: knowing being holding
us to love, the land, cutting slicing as the barge that
was us floats free into the current…and no fireflies 
dance in the quiet night

It was a signal, a moment in time for her to know, to
let go of the instant, the brief vision of now, she
breathed and unclenched with heart with soul, she
stepped free of a past held tight, held close…held.

One step led to two led to a journey across the world
onto a place a time a moment new and now, she
spread arms wide and mind open she watched and
felt the gladness swell the joy build…until it was false

And it was false, a veiled promise not to be kept
she gasps and air escapes though lips through
time she works hidden in the system toward a goal
a dream an instant seen so long ago and so far away

The road is hard long rocky and filled with places of
deceit of incompetent well meaning, she keeps family
and home close inside while storms rage while
storms…rage…she keeps her eyes open forward

Choices are made hard difficult choices looked at from
angles from despair from exasperation she chooses
and she lets go of some she doesn’t want to, hopes
for a change soon for the difference to be minimal

And she waits because waiting is what she does now
while details emerge are described are followed are
oceans of ink of forms and of long stretches of time
like shelves of books unread, she waits.

A shadow falling drifting
across my simple doorstep
a diaphanous presence
lending little weight; it is
the small impediment
felt touched experienced
as friction…slowing my
ideas floating, looking
finding solitude at the
dream littered entrance
to my soul…the light
blocking notion that I
know you…that at some
point some minute
second hour day lifetime
our lines crossed our
paths intersected our
minds knew the other
and it was warm good
and present and it was
or just simply was…but
the moment evaporates
slides slowly from sight
from mind from the idea
that what it was, was
what it was…and it passes
the light returns, the weight
lifts, the day loses the
friction it was feeling and
I am left with a pleasant
emptiness where I
thought you were

It happens on these
mornings, unexpected
unexplained…the coffee
waits to be drunk, the
Times waits to be read
…I stop for a lull, a minute
of quiet more quiet than
normal, more less than
less, I reflect on a thought
an image a diorama
unfolding with shivers
of light with sounds and
senses, I watch an internal
sequence…an
independently aware
movie; you…the ground
beneath us, the air around
us, the moment between
us and I am there breathing
you…just being and living
and knowing without
knowing until the moment
the minute cracks and it
is the paper and it is the
coffee and it is Sunday
morning again.

It’s not what we’re made of; bones and blood
ideas lodged firmly in places never seen, never
felt but there and there until we don’t know
anything but what we know

It’s not the same, this living this life, this forever
in the small tide pools of thinking, or sinking
we slide slowly towards a tomorrow that we
would stop if we could…if we could

It’s not above or below but around and around
like the song in your head, it’s the sound of
living, the sound of falling deeply irrevocably
into the future we can’t stop from being

It’s not me…it’s not you but us living as atoms
bouncing colliding a Gaussian blur as our
orbits enmesh and divide into simple space
into who we are alone apart

It’s not the past that binds that holds us tight
but our hearts entwined with the fantasy
the dream of who we are when who we are
is nowhere near today

It’s not all and nothing it’s the beginning, the
moment that we breathe see are seen as
the people who live in this time this day
this hour minute second heartbeat

It’s not me, it’s not you, it’s not them
it’s us

Imagine a robot with an electronic brain that has the capacity to hold all of the knowledge in the universe and further imagine that this robot was created without any preconceptions of behavior or logic and, in an instantaneous flash, was turned on. The basic programming of the robot is to, first and foremost, maintain its own (and other robots around it) operational health and it does this by observing everything around it, mimicking the actions it determines are successful…and avoiding those that it believes will lead to failure or self-termination.

As the years go by the robot absorbs and repeats behaviors that it determines are positive, based on direct and indirect feedback from its environment but it cannot experience its own behavior separate from itself (it cannot step away and observe itself objectionably) therefore if it has erred (or has been subject to input that was, in fact, negative but presented as positive) and is reacting negatively, it will not recognize this data and will continue those behaviors until an outside force acts on it to attempt to redirect the behaviors. This happens often as more mature robots around it provide external observation and attempt to redirect the robots destructive behavior toward a positive outcome. In some cases the robot itself, sensing a misapplication of logic, may seek out data that explains certain logical impossibilities. This is rarely effective however as the robot still cannot separate itself from itself and objectively observe its own behavior (or does not trust the internal evidence when that rare moment of clarity does happen).

In some cases, this destructive behavior becomes enmeshed and indistinguishable from what the robot perceives ais positive behavior therefore the robot rejects any external pressures as being irrelevant and possibly counter to its basic programming. Unfortunately, this cycle tends to reinforce itself by creating a negative feedback loop whereas the behavior manifests (with negative results) so the behavior is simply repeated (again and again) as the robot still believes it to be positive. The robots logic cannot break this feedback loop, which tends to amplify and become a greater and greater burden on internal systems until eventually the circuits become overloaded and the robot suffers a severe malfunction.

There is nothing different in that scenario from you as a small child growing up and learning to behave by observing everything around you and sometimes thinking something is positive that is, in fact, negative. You live your life and repeat those negative patterns over and over despite people you love and trust telling you otherwise. The hardest part is trying to step away from yourself and see reality, not through the filters and distortions of our own thinking, but as it really exists.

While it is true that you are the sum total of everything you’ve experienced from the instant of birth right to this very second, it is also true that you have the ability to react and behave any way that you want, regardless of those experiences. It is just a matter of believing that to be true.

Believe. Go. Do.

~TrevorZen

I’m asked every now and then what it is about art that moves me, or how did I start doing this stuff. I usually toss of something meaningless like “it’s the cool junk inside that I need to get to the outside” or other drivel but I think I need to write down, now, what the real story is…

When I was growing up my mom was a commercial artist so the tools were always around; canvases, paints, papers and pencils in every color imaginable. I was the third child in a set of four boys (two older brothers are twins so effectively I was the middle child) and I spent much of my childhood alone which, besides the obvious art supplies noted above, is the absolutely next essential ingredient to being an artist. Time. I spent hours and hours by myself, just experimenting (ha ha wasting materials mostly) as I found and perfected techniques and got comfortable with the tools. I learned much about art from my mom just by watching her and she was always very reassuring and free with positive support. I did take some classical oil painting technique classes later on but it was that time, that warm cocoon that my mother built around my fragile ego, that really set in concrete my need and desire to create art…but it wasn’t all of the reasons that I do now…

When I was about 6 or 7, my mom switched careers for a while and she became a seamstress for a burlesque house in Detroit (this was the 60’s) and her role was to “build” costumes for the dancers (they have to be able to be deconstructed over a 6-7 minute dance number without coming off completely) and that is where the “human body as art” was settled in my mind. I distinctly remember coming upstairs one morning (from the basement in our suburban Detroit tract home) and walking into a living room filled with naked burlesque dancers. Obviously the details are fuzzy but I think there were 6 or 8 nude women milling around as my mom did fittings of costumes. I was like 3 or 4 feet tall so I have just three main memories; pubic hair, the underside of (to me) massive breasts and nipples. Seeing that these women were in the show, the smallest bust size was probably 36 double D or even E or F and there’s sleepy eyed, yawning Trevor gazing upward at the glory…not to mention what else I was at eye level with.

The naked female form, that mighty and truly magnificent structural marvel, has been the one key ingredient that has always been in the back of my mind when I think of beauty, and thus art, and is what has driven me both away from and back to art. “Away from” in the sense that when I was married and the pressures of providing for a family was paramount, I had to sublimate my desires to create because I could not live both lives (artists and husband) and be successful in either. “Back to” was after I was divorced and living on my own for the first time in many years and I used art and the making of art to rekindle my love for the medium, for the subject matter…to reconnect that vital circuitry that for so long lay dormant.

And that is where I am now…creating art addictively and looking for an outlet to market it but, right now, it is a secondary pursuit as I do have a successful career in technology. Eventually I want to reverse the two and basically dabble in technology while art pays the rent…but that is a scary thing looking from this end of living 😉