When I knew I was porous.

Like each of my senses has a physical skin,

as does food, air, earth, plant, and absolutely everything.

Becoming something is imperceptibly changing with temperature,

moisture, altitude, and depth.

A thought has a surface and a time,

can be altered by pressure, velocity,

or simple observation.

Nothing could be more profound

than a sound seen reflected back to the resonance

of the subwoofer.

Sound erupts in mimicry, movement interpreted,

and more often synchronizing.

That moment, a step mirrored by a stranger,

becomes an electric slide of 100s,

consuming a street, a city, a scene seen from space.

It is no less impactful than the witness’s perception of it.

An alien watches our civilization in an instant

of color melting matters only in its becoming answer.

Let’s zoom all the way in and see pink mist on a puddle.

Closer—while the hair is changing

from white to pink—and think how long it lasts.

Take a step, think 🤔 how deeply it bruises.

A Class 4 laser-light-powered pattern,

corrected to a circle or a square,

the wave applied to white or black

will differently react.

Smoke as a signal or a soother.

A joint, or a methamphetamine vaporized,

entering blood and a parent’s pausing parenting

as seen on TV.

What changes is more and more important than who,

because on a molecular spectrum

there is an action, reaction, a change—

when known, perceived unconsciously or consciously,

best certainly understood to be as simple

as we see a sunrise becoming the lever

that drives photosynthesis to enter

a string of levers that produce vitamins and bacteria

further down the timeline.

A nourishment or corruption of an organ,

over time—even that sleep is secure

in its ability to produce damage and desire,

disrupt dimensional inclusion

and the ability to trust and/or variably

toxic distance.

Words and water flow to and from a source,

shaped by generations—discovered, uncovered,

differently by a pig than a politician.

Not the what, and not as actionable as the when and who.

It all changes everything.

Coffee filter or HEPA filter, laden with the resin of mango diffused into oil—

what can it become?

A child on a ski hill.

One accompanied by father every Saturday for ten years,

and the other flying from Chile dressed as a mountain villager.

Sharing a lift to the top—

both very clear where they go from here.

Both undone by one element, one moment:

a nuclear explosion on the horizon.

One orphaned at birth,

the other in a moment from now.

Kiss, f$&!, or handshake, eh?

1. What changes when I stop asking who is responsible and start asking what is passing through?

2. Where am I porous—and where do I pretend I am not?

3. What am I observing that is already altering the outcome simply by being noticed?

4. Which influences in my life act slowly, imperceptibly, the way temperature or altitude does?

5. What filters—biological, social, technological, moral—shape what reaches me?

6. How often do I confuse intention with impact?

7. When faced with asymmetry, how do I instinctively choose to meet the other?

8. What do I treat as infinite that is, in fact, finite?

9. Where does scale shift without my consent—from personal to collective to planetary?

10. If only so many snowflakes will ever fall, what deserves my attention now?