I stand on the brink of an idea and lean forward to see how deep it goes. Sometimes I pack a parachute, knees-shaking, and jump, only to meet the ground just two or three feet below. Other times I stumble to the edge, trip on a rock, and fall and fall into a never-ending black bottom. Most of the problem is my being short-sighted. I can’t see that deep. I can only see the beginning. If I get halfway through packing the parachute and start to doubt the depth, I might walk away from a good canyon; I know I’ve done this before, and left canyons unwritten. Just the same as I’ve jumped without a ‘chute and fallen for a while in senselessness, until the crash landing inevitably ruins the piece. As I lose my sight of physical depth, I gain a feeling like my sore knee before rainfall, that tells me when to pack the parachute.
Month: August 2020
Trite lyrics
It doesn’t matter if the lyrics in a song are trite, because the complexity is carried in the singer’s emotion. The same words can be sung in different ways with different emotions, and different meanings as a result. Emotions come through so clearly in a singer’s voice. It is hard to fake, I imagine. I recently saw a performance where the singer started to cry. I listen to a song now, and I take the lyrics and repeat them in my own head, bastardizing them from their musical context. They don’t sound the same. But when I listen to them as lyrics in the song, they take on a whole new meaning. That meaning is the unique emotional state of the singer. In a moment, I understand how important these words are to them. That understanding is communicated by the pitch, rhythm, and volume of voice, it seems.
Dying in a bad mood
What a shame it would be to die in a bad mood. Not surrounded by loved ones or running into battle or sacrificing yourself in some heroic effort. Just sitting in a chair, brooding, and you have a heart attack. Or, stamping down the stairs, cursing, and you slip and fall and break your neck. I guess, in some sense, all your troubles would be over. But how small they must seem, to your soul in the afterlife, looking back. From that perspective, I find it very hard to be in a bad mood.
Ideas
So many are almost there, but not quite. They come to the edge of birth, and then die off. Sometimes they are born prematurely, and doomed to die, without ample time to mature in the womb of the mind. Being fed with nutrients from past experiences, and growing into an individual one with a life of its own. No, ideas do not always make it. And it is the wise writer, as another wise writer once rightly said, who must do the killing. Of which, the benefit is twofold. First, to get rid of an unworthy idea. And second, to get the killing over with and bury the carcass in the soil, so that another life may feed from it and spring up. Like a phoenix from its own ashes, many ideas are born this way.
Deep
What depth is left? Everyone has dug their holes, as far down as they would go. Back on the surface, they stand around, scratching their heads. One guy says to another, “You too?” The other responds, “There’s nothing down there.” Some phonies tell stories about what they found. People gather around them, either because they seek the entertainment of a storyteller, or because they want so badly to believe that someone else found something different. But it was all the same. Just a void at the center, where everyone converged. Some stayed down, too tired to make the climb back up. Some lost their minds. Some found the void to be quite interesting. Back on the surface, old-timers wonder to themselves whether all the tiresome digging was worth it. If they had only known what they would find, they might have stayed on the surface from the beginning. They start to talk amongst themselves, and many agree. They try to tell the young folk, but they won’t listen. They pull their hard hats down over their eyes and start to dig.
Mac Miller
Listening to Mac Miller’s posthumous album makes me think about the meaning that an artist’s work takes on after their death. I think it has something to do with the finality of death and how the artist can never make more art. What they have already made is what gets left behind. They can’t return to edit, obsess over, or make any more. They’re dead and gone, and therefore their art takes on an antique quality, like a limited edition baseball card that’s no longer in print.
Mountain pose
In mountain pose, I stand with my feet planted firmly on the stone mason man-made patio, arms outstretched and rising up with open palms. In my line of sight is a tall trunk of a tree, aligned perfectly between my hands. Framing its trunk with the inner edges of each hand, I trace its straightness, extending upward. Its symmetry surprises me, out here in nature, where I came to get away from the straight lines in the city. It makes me wonder, with renewed childish curiosity, if the straight lines in the city have some semblance to nature.
Modern beauty
In a sunset, I see beauty that might have meant something, if I had been born out of doors. If I had needed wood for a fire to keep warm. If rainfall had meant the bison would come to the water in three moons.
As it is, I see beauty in bath tubs and grocery stores with fully-stocked aisles. I see beauty in buildings, tall ones in cities and small ones in neighborhoods. I see beauty in the corner of a room where two walls meet the floor. I see beauty on the dinner table and between the drapes.
Through the window, I can see where building tops frame the sunset sky, and I cannot tell which I love more—the building side, that runs down into the life I know; or the skyward side, that runs up and up, to a life I do not.
Sad shower faucet
The shower faucet stares down at me, unrelenting with her many eyes, crying forth. Cold in sadness, hot in anger, steaming so the whole bathroom knows. The mirror no longer shares her secrets, in fear of who might come to wipe away the steam, showing her true self. The toilet bowl says, “There goes that faucet again.” The knob puffs out his chest and says, “I can do this.” The drain gurgles in agreement. The knob is turned and the whole bathroom sighs, except for the shower faucet. Empty-eyed and resigned to stare forth, studying the white basin of the bath tub and the white tiles on the wall, wondering if this is really all that a faucet like her is made for.
In between dreams and reality
Lying safe and alone, I am unindividuated and idle. My mind swims in the stream of dreams that is ever less loosely connected to experiences from my own lifetime. There are added elements from movies, books, and my own imagination, scenes I have only seen or heard about secondhand. I pass through these scenes, sometimes as myself, other times as someone else. Sometimes I am no one, I am only observing what transpires without participating myself. In this way, dreaming teaches me how not to be myself. Such that I awake surprised, when I find myself back within my own body and mind. At first, I feel contained. I feel that my wide-open dream perception has been narrowed into a limited point of view. I can still close my eyes and imagine, but it is less powerful, tethered to awareness of being in my own body, tied down by the constant reminders from my senses that I am connected to a singular body in a certain location in a physical world—hearing the traffic noise outside, feeling the bed beneath my back. I cannot lift off and separate as completely as I am allowed in the dream world. For one, there is less ability, but I also experience less need. I am not yet completely myself, in the groggy moment between dream and waking life, I have not fully remembered who I am. It would seem just as natural for me to close my eyes again and slip back into the dream world, if not for hunger or the need to get up and go to the bathroom. At the same time, I am happy, having returned to the land of the living, as I know it. Able again to say good morning and have breakfast and go about the work which I left unfinished last night.
Things my kids may not know
When someone takes change out of their pocket to pay for something, similar to someone smoking a cigarette—even more so if they carry their own pouch and rolling papers.
When someone wears a watch to tell the time, and when asked, they will either show you their wrist, or look at it themselves and tell you out loud.
When someone writes in their own handwriting with pen and ink and paper, especially when they are writing in their own journal or meaning to mail a letter.
When someone carries a paper book in their back pocket to sit on a bench somewhere and read.
When someone sits alone and thinks and does nothing else for a while.
When someone swings an ax to split firewood that will be used to burn and keep warm.
When someone breathes outdoors during the winter time and their breath turns to vapor.
When an older relative knits or sews clothing for the family.
When someone wakes up with the sun’s rising and goes to sleep with the sun’s setting.
When someone reads the newspaper at a coffee shop or listens to the radio in the car.
When someone wears a belt for its purpose and not just fashion.
When someone tells stories from memory, especially to their kids at night.
When someone walks to get somewhere and knows the way.
The irony of advice
Once you’ve gotten good at something, it’s similar to how all the advice from your parents starts to make sense once you’ve grown older. All the advice from those who were already good at the thing only starts to make sense once you’ve gotten good at the thing yourself. The irony, of course, is that you needed the advice much more before you became good at the thing yourself.
I find this to be especially true with art. You must slog through it on your own, no matter what. It is not like science. There are no repeatable steps. You could put all the same ingredients into your beaker as the person next to you and still end up with something completely different.
There are at least certain themes that seem to be consistent between artists. But even these themes suffer from being difficult to understand for amateurs. They are not themes that you can proactively put into place. They can only be seen through your own solipsistic lens, looking backwards on your own artistic development.
Fallen leaf
I have a small tree that I bought at the wholesale flower market a few years ago. It stands next to the bookshelf, against the northeast wall in our apartment. Its leaves are green and large, almost like lily pads. This morning, I noticed a fallen leaf on the floor. I could see a gap in the tree where the leaf had clothed the naked branch, now exposed underneath. It was a curious moment, to see the single leaf laying there all alone on the hardwood floor. On a forest floor, it might not have seemed so odd, with so many trees about, and plenty of fallen leaves. But on the apartment floor, it was like looking at a crime scene. Similar to a body in the street, it couldn’t just be left there. It had to be picked up and thrown away in the trash, furthering the unnaturalness of the event.
Changing perspectives
If you don’t like the way the world looks, lay down on your back. Look up at the sky, and see if it looks any better. Even if you’re inside, look up at the ceiling.
It’s the same concept concept as traveling. Changing your perspective changes everything. Laying down on your back can be just as good as drinking a beer.
Lose myself for good art
I have to lose myself if I’m going to create good art. All these poems that start with “I” are worthless. It was when I was meditating and putting unconditional love out into the world and remaining unattached to my material pursuits that I was creating good and honest art. Now I’m all caught up in my job and trying to make money and so focused on myself that my stream of consciousness is ego-obsessed. That stream is where I get my art. It’s no wonder I can’t get any art from a stream full of only one thing. I need to open myself up to the world, and lose myself, and stop writing so much about “I.”
Here now
I have this habit of thinking forward, forward, forward. Until I retrace my steps and think, it will have already started at this point, and this point—earlier and earlier, until I reach the present moment. Then I realize, it has already started, presently. I am living, now. All that I seek in the future—joy, entertainment, wealth, love. It is all, to some degree, here with me now. Possibly, it is in a form that I have more difficulty recognizing.
Fast and slow
Moving fast and slow
I move
Without a thought for
What I’m doing
When it’s fast
In the middle of the day
And I’m working
Washing dishes
While my lunch is on the stove
To get back
To the desk
Faster
On weekends
I slow down a little
For my meals
And eat
Without doing anything else
At the same time
Or sleep
Without an alarm
It’s nice
Every once in a while
But I need that go
Fast
Multi-task
Most of the time
Head space
I know things now
But I fear to forget
So I write them, recite them
Read them over and over
And carry a head on my shoulders
Full of the past
Like a traveler’s trunk
With too many things from home
On a journey to a place
Where there is no return
Back to how
Things were before
Something else
Two come in time
Taking space
Of what would have been third
If I could just keep in
To each for its own sake
Not always looking later
Longing for the next
They would come and come
Countless
Each for itself
As all things are
Eased into being
And nothing
Not so selfishly taking
With respect to what is
Or is not
One’s own
Let it stand there, being itself
Until it must be
Something else
Hard to hear
So worded strange
Wrung like rags
Wet with dish water
Saying so much
As a dirty plate
Could show the sink
By crumbs
From a meal now past
That taste
Travels so far to feel
In a conversation
Trying to keep clean
Between
Two non-feeling things
Nap time
Noontime sun seeps in
Singing of searching
Clouded and loud
For thunder could not
Strike so straight
Turned away by light:
Things, bright things
Searching still
In this dark draped bedroom
Go back now light
From whence you came;
You will find naught
But darkness here
There are limits
I imagine a knob
I can turn and turn
Down and down
Tighter and tighter
Until it’s flush with the dash
And the system turns off;
Or, up and up
Until it reaches the top,
Falls off the screw,
And is broken
Something new
Stepping up the stairs
That I’ve stepped up
A hundred times before
A thousand maybe
To get to the second floor
Unit number five
I look up and see
Something I haven’t seen
Usually looking down
Fumbling with my keys
A bright light
Under an arched doorway
Shining bright
Showing me
There is always something
New to see
No matter how many times
I think I’ve seen it
All before
Noises outside the window
Bus arms
Latched onto wires
Making a clicking noise
Passing over notches
Conversations
At the bus stop
And in line
For the bakery
Shouts
From transients
Usually at night
Sirens
At first farther off
And then closer
Louder
Sometimes much louder
On our street
Passing by
Quickly
Running the stop light
Honks
From non-emergency vehicles
Just upset about traffic
Or telling a driver ahead
To look up
And go
Through the green light
The garbage man
Picking up cans
From the curb
With his truck arm
And shaking them
Like maracas
The wine bar
Across the street
With live music
On the weekends
The rain
On the fire escape
The cement street
And the glass window
Pattering
Shadow yoga
Practicing yoga
My shadow practices with me
Doing as I do
In its own way
Black and flat
Against the stone surface
Stretching longer
Myself
Or my shadow
I forget who
Is leading the practice
Naked in the trees
Unclothed in between the trees out here
Welcoming back the nature
That got poured over in the city
With cement streets and concrete buildings
A few trees remain
In square foot sections of sidewalk
But not enough to stand between
And be surrounded by
Like the thick forest here—
The grass is overgrown, as it should be
Some trees knocked down, but not by man
Most trees still stand, as they should
And I stand with them, unclothed, at peace
Meditative hike
Gravel crunches from heel to toe
Counting its own cadence
For the group on the trail
To fall into step, synchronized
As the mind
Follows the body’s lead
Into a consistent rhythm
On the straight path forward
Mountain peaks up ahead
And tall evergreens on other side
Some fallen, long since withered
Crunch, crunch, crunch
Like counting one, two
And then back to one, over and over
With the nice scenery around
To chase away any possible complaint
Sky hunger
On the porch
The smell of chicken on the grill
Draws eyes back inward
Through the gut
To pull down a moment of beauty
Watching clouds pass slowly
In the blue sky
Back into very real desires of hunger
More pressing to an untrained mind
Than the allure of pure beauty
To be seen
But not eaten
Deck
The deck boards are screwed in
And have been
Ever since the deck was built
The wood is cracking
But the boards are held in place
And the deck will stand
Stout
Obsidian stout sipped slowly
Owing both to its belligerence
And the cigarette smoke from the ash tray
Making the air heavy
With a sense of wanting
To be nowhere other than here
A moment
The hot sun on the back porch
Bakes into bare legs crossed over
Eyes closed, head leaning back
Exhale
Here is where
Here is where I’ve needed to come
To this moment exactly, I mean
More so than a place
More so a space in time
A moment
Looking out the window on Monday morning
Rust flakes on the rail
Cars drive by in the background
The window is dirty and smudged
Pedestrians walk across yellow rectangles
Cars continue to drive by
Not two feet away
Two men drink their coffee under an awning
The branches in the tree bob gently
The man with coffee gestures with his other hand
A man with a dog on a leash
Stops to look inside a shop window
While his dog sniffs at a light pole
Blue and green trash cans stand by the curb
Cars continue to make their noise and avoid crashing
The same man from before
Walks back across the yellow rectangles
Think
You seem to think
You need to think
About something
All the time
Thinking man
Think as you can
You just can’t
Think it all
Sex
Sex makes sense
When I start to feel
Like I can’t hold her tight enough
And want to become one
House plant woman
With a few long leaves
Leaned over
Our house plant
Looks like a woman
With one hand on her hip
Copping an attitude
And the other hand reaching down
As she bends at the waist
To pick something up
Sigh
Fingers raking
Through my hair
In a sigh
With my eyes closed
Thinking to myself
What can I do
Exhaling
Over and over
Until I’ve got it
And get back to work
Creaky floor
I’ve learned which boards
Creak in the floor
When I wake in the night
For a drink of water
But I walk over them anyway
Too tired to care
Noise as it may make
Doesn’t matter much
As long as it doesn’t
Wake baby too
Just one
Does it really matter
Who
Exactly
If the shape is the same
I mean
Aren’t our powers
Of perceiving
Those small differences
At the margins
Fairly weak
Anyway?
So rather than one
Why not be
A mass-produced
Mold
Of that one?
There will still be
Some difference
Say ten molds
Total
And the differences
Between
But does each
And every person
Really need
Their own individual mold?
A mold to be
A mold to love
Just one
In the whole wide world
Just one to love
And just one to be
Really?
Or can we fit
More snugly
On the conveyor belt
Than we care
To admit
Car shadows on the ceiling
Lying on my back
Looking at the ceiling
In the late afternoon
I wait for the light
Outside the open window
Above my head
To turn colors
For the next wave of cars
To pass by
And make shadows
Through the tree
Between our window
And the street
On the walls
And on the ceiling
Gifts
I close my eyes to remember sight is a gift.
I sit in silence to remember sound is a gift.
I fast to remember food is a gift.
I catch a cold to remember health is a gift.
I spend time alone to remember friendship is a gift.
I stay in one place to remember travel is a gift.
I go to sleep to remember life is a gift.
Bowl song
As I gathered
Bowls
From the cupboard
One clinked
Against another
And made a song
Of just one note
In the quiet
Of the kitchen
Non-weather
Non-weather is when
There’s no wind
No rain
You can’t quite tell
If it’s hot or cold
And there’s an eery sense
That it’s about to change
Free from myself
I close my eyes, interlace my fingers behind my head, and forget who I am. I forget when I am, to be more exact. And as a result, I forget where as well. I can’t remember if I am young again, laying in my childhood bed. I can’t remember if I have laid down to sleep in any of the many cities I have visited. I can’t remember if I’m back in college, laying on the shitty mattress in my dorm room. I seriously can’t remember, for a split second. And my mind searches through all these memories, trying to find an identity to assume. And in this split second, I am free, unattached to myself; a soul searching for a body to inhabit in some time. Searching, for a split second, I am free.
An orange peel in the park
I was doing my exercises in the park, when I noticed a piece of orange peel on the ground, no bigger than a child’s palm. The inside of the peel was full of ants. Most of them were dead. I could tell because they weren’t moving. I’ve never seen a live ant sitting still, have you?
I wondered about how they died. Could something in the orange peel be poisonous for ants? Maybe it wasn’t poisonous in a small amount, but the dead ants were gluttons that ate too much of the orange. But I didn’t think this was probable either, because I’d never heard of ants being gluttons, only about them being strong and hard-workers.
I noticed there was a trail of ants leading away from the orange peel. It was a little hard to see because this part of the forest floor was in the shade and the black ants blended in with the dark dirt. I put my hands on my knees and leaned over to get a closer look. I saw the general direction of the trail of ants and started shuffling my feet to follow it. I followed the trail for a few minutes. It went a long ways. I was hoping to find an ant hill at the start of the trail, but I got bored and went back to my exercises.
Among the dead trees
We stepped off the trail, into a clearing in the woods where many trees had fallen. There was a lean-to that appeared to be man-made, dozens of broken branches were leaned up against the larger trunk of a fallen tree. Other branches were laid over the top of the fallen truck. In this way, there was a wall and a roof made from broken branches. We climbed on top of the fallen trunk. On its side, the boughs extended longways from the trunk, hovering at varying heights above the ground. Several trees were fallen this way, with their boughs interlaced, making a lattice. She said, “It’s like a playground.” I nodded my head in agreement, dangling my legs about ten feet above the ground, sitting on one of the boughs. “It’s chaotic,” she said. This inspired deep thought in me. I asked myself silently, “Yes, I also feel it is chaotic, but why?” It occurred to me that there was a lack of symmetry. In a forest full of life, all trees stand tall, with their roots in the ground and their branches reaching toward the sky. In this place, the trees laid on their sides. Their roots had been torn up; they hung loosely, with no soil to drink from. Broken branches were strewn on the forest floor, disconnected from their trees of birth. The lattice created by the interlacing boughs of the fallen trees was not natural. There were no leaves on the boughs. These trees were dead.
How he walked
He walked like he was going somewhere. Not like anybody was watching, or at least not like he had an awareness that anybody was. He didn’t have his shoulders thrown back or his chest puffed out. He wasn’t too serious neither. Not like a businessman with a briefcase, leaning forward and walking fast like he was late to a meeting. Not like he had all the time in the world. Not a slow stroll to enjoy the scenery. He had somewhere to be, I’m sure of it, just from watching the way he walked. And what’s more, I knew he believed in where he was going. He wasn’t going because someone told him to or because he had to. He was going for his own reasons. If you asked him, he could explain it to you, but he wouldn’t be able to explain it, at least not well enough for you to understand completely. His reasons were inevitably his own. And so he walked. His strides were even, each as long as was comfortably possible for his body. His shoulders were not hunched or thrown back. They were square and set perpendicular to his path. His gaze was forward, not looking much side to side, except for when crossing the street. He walked like this, on the sidewalk, on a Saturday morning. And I watched for not more than five seconds, and I knew that he was going somewhere.
Closing my eyes after a shower
I close my eyes and lose track of the reality that returns when I open them again. Standing in the shower, light-headed; I almost fall over. I close my eyes again. The longer I look at the black in the backs of my eyelids, the more animated it becomes, with figures I might learn to name if I were to look long enough. The black doesn’t always strike me. Sometimes I close my eyes and open them without noticing. The world returns and it makes sense to me, seeing again the same thing that I saw just before blinking. Other times, the black catches me, at first in its simplicity, in a reprieve from the physical world, full of complex optic details. Then these animated figures start to appear, moving with a life of their own. I wonder if we could adapt to that blackness, given enough time to evolve and get used to it. What would that black, close-eyed life be like?
Start
You don’t know. At the beginning, you have no idea. But you have to start in, because it could turn out to be a good one. And you won’t really know until around the middle, when you might as well finish up anyway. It takes time. Once you’ve picked one, seeing it all the way through takes time. So you’ve only got so many shots. You can’t start in on every one, and there’s the trouble. You have to decide, standing right where you are. You might find a pair of binoculars and look out ahead as far as you can. These are the planners. Or you might say, well heck, I’ll spend as much time sitting here looking as I would if I just ran on down the road a little bit. These are the runners. Some are a combination. They’ll run a little ways and then get out their binoculars. But either way, you’ve got to run the whole race at some point or another. Some run the race a few times. Running is one thing. Picking the right track is another.
White noise breathing
On my hands and knees on the mat, bending my spine into cat and cow, I can hear my girlfriend in the closet on a work call. I think of getting up to grab my headphones to play a track of white noise that I have saved on my phone, to drown out the work talk and focus on my yoga. Then I realize my breath provides a natural white noise. As I am bending concave into cat and exhaling through my nose, it is loud enough that I can hear almost nothing else other than my breath. And the same for inhaling. This realization inspired a new attention on my breath, as a noise-cancelling mechanism, in addition to a life-giving force.
Nobody downtown
On the train going south from San Francisco now. Downtown was so empty as I walked to the station. The virus has emptied out all the tall buildings, which, in turn, has closed down all the shops and restaurants. There are still a few transients about, talking to themselves. But they seem lonely, even lonelier than usual. One woman I walked by was carrying on the most sincere conversation with no one. Not shouting, or jumping around; she was just hanging onto a lamppost and leaning out over the curb, balancing on one leg. I walked by and she didn’t even notice me. It was just her, all alone, for at least a few blocks. And all these tall buildings and wide streets, designed for crowded weekdays and rush hours. There were some service men too. One was loading boxes into a van from inside one of the cafes. It was a cafe I used to go to actually; I used to get their ham sandwich during my lunch break. Another man was up on a scaffold, fixing a window. Other than that, there was no one. It was surreal, seeing downtown that empty.
Speed walking
I walk fast like I’m trying to get away from something, but the truth is I’ve already forgotten where I’m coming from and can’t think of anything else other than where I’m going. Wanting to be there already, walking around slow walkers on the sidewalk carrying groceries or just lollygagging, looking around and enjoying the scenery. I can’t lolly, gag, or anything other than focus on keeping my stride as long as possible without dislocating a hip. All for where I’m going, I know I’ll be satisfied once I get there. I know it will have what I need. There’s nothing here for me anymore, except for what quickly slips behind, and what lies still ahead, representing all the hope in the world.
These scissors
These scissors smell like they’ve told secrets to get here. Like there were barge men that needed bribing. Like this pair was part of a special pack at the factory that needed to go out right on time. They smell like the metal mined wasn’t enough and there’s still some poor miner there, mining for more. They smell like plastic that came from a big vat of plastic that has all since been molded into separate things and ended up elsewhere, individuated and useful in some capacity or another. These scissors smell like they are capable of cutting hair. They still smell like metal, though, and not like hair yet. Having not yet had the chance to actually cut hair, they reek of factory-made frustration. “Let us work!” they shout. Let us cut, and keep on cutting. Let us do whatever we were made for. Until we are broken and dead and gone and discarded. Let us work!
Growing old
For me, it was sudden. One day, you’re young and pushing the limits, and the next, your back hurts and you’re trying to keep your job. I don’t think it was actually sudden. Looking back now, it seems to have happened over time. First, you’re so young that you don’t know what it means to be young. Then, around the time you start to rebel against your parents, then you’re young and you know it. Finally, five or ten years further down the road (even later for some), you start to understand what your parents were talking about—this is the mind growing old. The nail in your no-longer-too-distant coffin is when your body starts to ache. That’s when it all really slows down. You can’t drink like you used to. You’re less confident you would win a fight. If you need to bend over to pick something up or put on your socks, you have to do it real slow to avoid hurting yourself. From this point on, there is a certain amount of deliberation that goes into every one of your physical actions, which causes you to think twice before listening to what your raging free spirit is telling you to do. It is scary, seeing death as near as you ever have, and growing nearer all the while. But it is the way of things, and a lot more makes sense now.
Let it go
During a hip-opening posture in yoga, my instructor tells me, “Make sure the tension from your hips is not going anywhere else in your body. Wherever you are feeling tension, let it go.” With my eyes closed, I think of this. I realize that my eyebrows are creased with concentration, so I let the tension go, relaxing my face. Next, I focus on the tension in my legs. I ask myself, should I let this tension go? But I cannot, at least not completely, without falling out of the pose. Some tension is necessary to maintain the pose. In this moment I learn again, from my body, something that I have learned before: there is a balance, between focused effort on what is essential, and letting go of what is not.
Sleep in the city
I take a bite of the sidewalk and fall back between the cracks. Is it still vipassana then? If my mind is not allowed to wander any farther than the sirens and bus stop conversations outside the window we’ve left open. It’s too hot. So we have to choose each night, between sweating through our sheets, and opening the window to noise that even ear plugs with a 33 NRR can’t block out. We have ice packs in the freezer. I can wrap one of these in an old t-shirt and get my temperature low enough to at least fall sleep. By midnight, sometimes before, the ice pack is melted. So the window gets opened eventually. And then the same choice: to fight the noise, pull the pillow around my ears, and try not to hear; or meditate on the chaos. I cannot do this successfully. Some primal part of me cannot forget that loud noises mean danger. And my writer’s mind has a hard time hearing conversations without listening to the words being said. I try not to judge. I try to just notice. But I still miss the pitch black silent nights in Montana.
Individual life
My soul, having since ceased to be mine, jockeys for bodily position in the pool of purgatory where all souls queue en masse. Seeking flesh destined for another set of spacetime events not all too dissimilar from the physical life which preceded its most recent death, my soul searches. Hoping, as all souls do, to live again in individual form. It is a vague hope, to which not all souls are privy, in the ocean ether of all souls joined together, mingling and meanwhile forgetting having forgotten belonging to the One. It is the same problem on either side of the divine line—forgetting what is was like to belong to the One on the earth side, and forgetting what it was like to be an individual on the heaven side. Until the ethereal ocean lifts out of itself and prepares to precipitate all of its divine life into tiny ignorant droplets, all of which will once again fail to remember their former divine lives immediately upon impact with another life on earth.
Smart dog
This dog today, looked at me like he knew what I was thinking. He smiled at me with his tongue out, panting from his walk. Sitting there on his haunches, leashed to his owner, waiting curbside to cross the street. He said to me with his eyes, “It’s all a sham. I know it. You know it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to go for a walk every once in a while.” Then the light turned. The dog’s owner gave a tug on the leash and said, “Come on.” The dog got up and trotted happily along. I stood there long enough for the light to turn, and so I had to wait for the next one.
A transient walks by
A transient walks by a restaurant with outdoor dining. He shuffles his feet. His pants sag. A folded newspaper hangs out of his back pocket. A jazz band stands by, holding their instruments idly, in between songs. Seven or eight tables are set up outside of the restaurant. People are eating and talking at their tables. Forks can be heard clinking on plates. The transient starts to shout, something indiscernible. People stop what they’re doing and stare at the transient, as he stands there on the sidewalk. He looks at one table in particular, and continues to shout. Nobody does or says anything. Forks have stopped clinking. The transient stands there. For a moment, there is silence, other than the street noise—cars passing by. Then he continues to shuffle his feet, moving on down the sidewalk. The band picks up their instruments and continues on to the next song. Forks resume clinking on plates.
Excerpts from A Trip in Montana
I am a little off balance now as I walk. And so it begins.
Large ants crawl on the Mexican blanket. I am interested in their movements.
The shadows have caught my attention as they dissipate with the movements of the clouds between the sun and the ground.
It is starting to open up. Ideas in my head seem to be connected.
My friends are talking on the deck above. I am on the patio below. Their words are disruptive. They are talking about college.
I have a desire to put on my shoes and go into the woods.
I am going into the woods, to discover species anew and to give them new names.
It is hard to write
With the light so bright
On white paper
As I put my pen to paper, I almost forget the words, but still they come to me somehow, flowing from objective reality itself, then through my senses, and seamlessly into Word.
I feel the sun hot on my shoulders through my shirt.
An ant crawls up the leg of my shorts.
I have found a convenient stump to sit on and write.
There is an ant on my left pointer finger, probing me with his antennae.
I need to get out of the sun. My neck is already burnt.
I am tripping, assuredly. I have wandered a bit farther into the woods, where there is some shade. I stepped across a crumbling trunk, like a balance beam, to get here.
I can hear my friends laughing behind me.
I begin to feel fear for the future; fear because this good feeling will come to an end.
I remember the Bene Gesserit mantra: “Fear is the mind killer.”
The fear comes from my ego. When I remember that I am part of all this, the fear goes away.
There are certain words that reassure me. They are often phrases or quotations. Some degree of spirituality, it seems, is just to memorize words, and then, when the right time comes:
(1) Recognize the appropriate situation.
(2) Recite the words in your mind.
(3) Let action flow forth from your body with the realized meaning of those words.
Again, I start to think of the future, and ill feelings immediately follow. Stay present! Stay mindful! This is the heart of my practice.
I fear so much for the future. I fear so much for my ego.
I am concerned for the physical health of my body.
I am concerned from the performance of my financial investments.
Even as a bug lands on my hand, I check to make sure it is not a bee that can sting me. So what if it is?
I am a part of all this. If the bee stings me, it is a part of all this.
It is like the book that I cannot recall the name of. Ishmael, there it is.
He talks of how man was in sync with nature before. This is how it should be. This is the answer.
All of man’s developments have placed him in a position above nature. Many of man’s modern problems would be solved if he would return to his place in nature.
Now, that seems unlikely. It would mean the death of many humans on our overpopulated planet. We have trodden too far down this track.
I hear my friends laughing in the distance. I wonder if they appreciate the deeper power of the trip. Or do they take it all to be just funny visuals?
As they speak with each other, they are kept from going deeper into their own minds.
I think of the time. I do not have a watch. I am fully tripping now.
I wonder how long I have been standing in this place. My legs have held me just fine, but when I look at them, I am unsure of how they operate.
I do feel taller. This is something Sean mentioned he often feels while tripping.
When I misspell a word or scribble, I think, “Don’t worry, they’ll get it.”
But I must realize, they won’t get it. All of THIS, is captured only in my humble words.
I should stop writing and enjoy it.
It occurs to me to draw.
I laugh at myself for thinking I could draw such beauty.
I start to feel ill feelings. I feel them run a familiar track inside of me. I see them, like rushing rivers, encountering the dam of my heavily-fortified ego.
I observe, dangerously at this time, what my ego is built of.
The wind blows. I let it pass. I pick it back up.
My ego is built from who I think I am. My history, my present physical body, what others say about me …
It is hard to keep track of this thought.
I am fully tripping. I have stood in one place for so long, I had almost forgotten what it’s like to move.
I am fully tripping—these exact words occur to me again.
I constantly have these thoughts:
– What should I be doing?
– Is this, what I’m doing right now, productive?
And then I start to think into the future about what will be most productive …
I have to remind myself, that is not the game we are playing.
Stay here. Stay present.
It strikes me how easily I forget. I have an ill feeling, and then I am distracted, and then I forget.
Even control over my body seems to be something I could part ways with, other than for the convenience of my fingers which hold this pen to write.
Things occur to me as being beautiful, and in that moment of occurrence, nothing else matters. My senses are fully immersed in the beauty, like the sight of a crumbling tree trunk, split open and filled with forest debris. So dead, but so perfectly at home.
I think, how will these words sound to the others who read them?
I remind myself, it does not matter. Stay here. Stay present.
Of all the bugs, mosquitoes are the only ones I swat. I do not so much mind the prick and the drawing of blood. I am more worried about disease.
This idea of disease, planted in me by society, affects my behavior towards other living creatures. Again, I think of reading Ishmael.
I cough to spit. It surprises me that I have a throat and a mouth.
I am so at home in the woods right now. The wind blows through my hair, just like it does through the leaves in the trees.
I hear something behind me, a rustle in the leaves. I feel the desire to make myself unseen, to crouch low, to hide.
I feel that I understand my ancient ancestors in this moment. At the same time, I feel the call back to civilization.
I think of my friends and the house, and I smile.
I am surprised to feel my facial muscles smiling.
As the sun shines and the birds chirp, I am filled with so much love for nature.
A moment ago, it was dark. The clouds covered the sun. I was scared of what I could not see among the trees. I was alone.
I am resistant to going back, to have to talk.
I know it will be hard to stay out here for too long. I do not know the ways of the woods. I would lose. I do not want to lose, and so starts the civilization of man.
I was born civilized. At this point, it would take much undoing.
I see a runner on the street through the woods. It invokes a feeling of familiarity.
From where I stand writing in the woods, I feel perfectly balanced between far away from, and still close by, to civilization.
If I were farther into the woods alone, I might feel a more primal fear for my survival.
As I see things on the forest floor, I lean down with my paper and pen, like a photographer with a camera.
I hear trucks on the road. I remember what people have told me in the past.
I just feel so happy, particularly to be inside of my body.
To be contained in a physical being, capable of realizing thought.
The body is a beautiful thing. More than just the beauty of its form, but also of its function—to realize thoughts and feelings.
The importance of yoga, to cultivate this connection between body and mind, occurs to me now.
It is a practice I could spend my whole lifetime learning.
In contrast, I am less interested in certain aspects of my job. There are aspects that seem far removed from man’s natural state. Like keeping the body seated in the same desk chair all day.
—
Woah! A mother moose and a child moose just passed, not more than forty feet from where I am standing here in the woods.
At first, I felt immense fear. I could not tell what was near me in the woods, other than that it was big—bigger than a bird or a chipmunk.
Your eyes play tricks on you between the branches in the trees.
I am being bitten by mosquitoes. I choose to return to civilization, knowing the risks.
I am sad to leave. I must remember the connectedness to nature that I experienced here.
—
I hear my friends and their words. I cannot speak to them. They must come out here into the woods and experience it for themselves.
All around me, the forest floor is alive, mostly with ants. There are also mosquitoes, flying and landing.
There are many aspects. You do not need to fear that it will be over. It will continue. Whether your ego is involved, does not matter. You are a part of it all.
But these mosquitoes are insufferable!
I feel a drop of rain—another element forcing me to return.
My friends talk too much.
They do not wait in silence long enough to experience it themselves.
—
I look back at Marie, I think to talk to her as Marie—she, of the flesh and blood, with whom I share memories.
But she is not the same, as she appears to me now. She is participating in the One. She is a soul, and that’s all that matters.
I think of my own flesh. Am I housed in the bones I would choose? What does it matter, if we’re all the same.
These words are so meager. What art form then? What form could capture this most fully?
There is the question, first, of what art form could capture a lived experience most fully. Then, there is the question of what art form could capture THIS (tripping) most fully.
It occurs to me now that the “come up” has passed. We have arrived at the plateau.
—
I am not sure if any of the others would be willing to participate in this experience in the way that I participate in it.
The woods are a very clear analogy. Deeper in the woods, there is only the sound of wind in the leaves. The only movements are the ants on the ground.
Back at the house, there is music from man-made speakers, man-made words, and even man-made men.
These man-made men are the ones who do not understand.
I think of Ishmael again.
We come from nature, that is where we will find ourselves in order.
Man does not understand himself. Not even the accumulated knowledge of generations of man thinkers can understand one single man.
How then, can we expect man to build himself?
He cannot do the job of nature.
It occurs to me now, how brilliant the book Ishmael really is.
Even as I write these words, I realize that going back to read them will not be the same.
Impossible to achieve the same understanding.
—
I am aware of the ground being alive with ants. I cannot look anywhere on the ground where I do not see an ant.
These ants are like men—successful, relative to other species, and still working to further themselves.
The operations of nature make sense to me in terms of business. An enterprising species will take market share from others and win.
I almost caught a look of myself reflecting in the window, blue bandana. I looked away, not wanting to see my face.
Talking aloud to Marta, my voice sounds inadequate. I wish it were more musical.
—
You have to have your art form ready, before the experience.
When you are awash in the storm of your emotions, there must already be an artistic channel, into which that emotion might pour.
Without a specified channel, the emotion will search for one.
I am an emotional person, I realize now. I always have been. This emotion is my power. It fuels my actions.
—
If I allow it, the economy will engulf me here where I stand in this moment with the skills I have to offer, and my hopes and dreams to be used as motivators to put my skills to work.
The economy does not care where I land. It does not care what profession I choose. It will get use out of me, one way or another. This is management, the business of getting use out of people. And the managers report to investors, and so on.
This is the nature of the economy—investors pushing people to do things (who then push other people to do things) to make more money. It is the investor’s passion for more that sets the whole economy in motion.
Proper nouns
I’ve noticed lately that the type of poetry that I enjoy reading includes proper nouns. Poets writing about very specific times and places and people. This poetry is of the symbolic world. My poetry is not like this. My poetry includes abstract words that can mean many things. Words like light and time. Perhaps this is not well received because it seems banal and already said.
Old art
I go about forcing, fitting square pegs into round holes, in my day job. At night and on the weekends, I must switch sides, and let it come to me, if I’m to make any art. It refuses to be forced. It seems to me that beauty is natural. It comes from an older source, that has always been here, long before us. What we create with our technology and economy is synthetic and modern. This may be a means to art, a means of production especially. But the source must still come from the trees and acts of love that have been here for eternity. That is the art we are drawn to. Even for art that may seem to be built on modern precepts, the root of it is always the ancient and natural that has moved us from the beginning.
Shower together
The apartment unit neighboring ours has a bathroom window that is about six feet away from our bathroom window. It is almost summer in San Francisco and we have no air conditioning in our studio apartment (most buildings in San Francisco don’t have air conditioning, due to the mild summers). So we keep our bathroom windows open all the time.
The window is built into the shower wall. It is high enough in the wall, that I can stand flat-footed in the tub, and the bottom of the window barely reaches my shoulders. Still, there is some lack of privacy from having an open window as part of your shower wall. The neighboring unit used to be vacant, so there was no problem with showering without a shade over the window.
About two months ago, our neighbors moved in. I believe it is another young couple. Lately, the young woman and I have gotten into a habit somehow of showering at the same time. I will get in and turn on the water and start to shower, and then I will hear the metal rings pulling across the shower rod from the open window across, and I know it is her getting in.
At first, I dared not look. I even arranged shampoo bottles on our window sill so as to create a barrier. One day, I caught a glance of her. As I reached to grab a bottle from the sill, I saw her brunette hair tied up on the top of her head. That is all I could see.
She is not tall enough to see above the sill over into our window, unless she were to stand on her tippy-toes or climb up onto the edge of the tub. But she must hear the water from our faucet and my occasional absent-minded shower singing. Still, we are complete strangers, for all intents and purposes. So we shower together, six feet apart.
She is not tall enough
To see above the sill
And we shower together
Six feet apart
Eyes closed
My morning routine, as of late, has been to wake up with the sun at seven in the morning. I get out of bed and get dressed, then roll the rug away to make a space for my yoga mat on the hardwood floor. I set a cushion on top of the yoga mat and start by meditating for five minutes. After meditating, I go through about ten minutes of yoga flow. My back has been hurting me lately, so most of the postures are focused on my lower back.
This morning, I achieved a deeper focus in my meditation. When the alarm went off on my phone, I was surprised. That’s how I knew the meditation was deeper. I was enjoying my sense of peace, but I also wanted to begin my yoga practice. So I made a compromise with myself. I took away my cushion and put my hands and knees on the mat, but I kept my eyes closed. My eyes remained closed as I moved between my yoga postures.
By keeping my eyes closed, the focus I had achieved in my meditation transferred to my yoga practice. I felt that I was seeing my body from the inside out. When a vertebrae in my back would pop, it sounded very loud, and I could tell exactly where it was. When I extended my hands to change postures, I had to feel with my fingertips for the edge of the mat. Once I had found it, I was reluctant to move my hands, knowing they were in the right position, and fearing to move them without the aid of my sight.
My thoughts drifted during my yoga practice to what it must be like to be blind. I imagined a blind man with a deep spiritual practice. Maybe he would enter a monastery and live a simple life. In a small space, it would not be so difficult to find your way around without sight. Without the prejudices of society, he might find deep friendships with the other monks at the monastery. He might even achieve a deeper spiritual practice, owing to the very fact that he was without sight, and thus less distracted by worldly appearances.
Rushing
Rushing, rushing, but why? To get back in bed. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to sleep. Cooking, rushing, chopping, to eat. Working, rushing, typing, to relax. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to see friends, get out and do something. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to get back home. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to sleep. To die. And then what?
Clogged shower drain
I turn the shower to cold, briefly, and then off. Standing in water up to my ankles, I turn and face the white shower curtain. Watching water drip from my nose into the pool gathered around my feet, I wait to dry. Standing thus, waiting, I remember my girlfriend hates it when I leave the drain clogged—this being the cause of the water up to my ankles. It’s my fault, really; being my hair, mostly, that clogs the drain. I reach down and scrape my fingernails along the edges of the indented mesh gate that covers the drain—this produces a mess of hair the size of a small mouse. Then the water really starts to drain. I resume my former position with my chin against my chest, holding the mouse, water dripping from the tip of my nose with slightly less frequency. The water line recedes down the slope of my foot. The drain makes a sound like rain in a gutter. I am caught up in hearing this and not much else. There is no other pressing concern, waiting to dry. The water finishes draining. There is no noise now; not the shower, nor the draining. It is over then. I prepare myself to pull back the curtain and find something else to do.
Ants
Today I’ve watched ants. They have crawled on the wooden boards of the deck and on the stone patio beneath the deck. Some have even made their way into the house—much to the chagrin of our host. One ant carried a dead ant, equal in size to the live ant. Another ant carried a dead bug of another species. The dead bug was three or four times the size of the ant. I could not identify the dead bug; a beetle, maybe. Its body was mangled. Last night I made a comment, “If ants were in charge of a country, that country would take over the world.” I continue to swat at mosquitoes; they carry disease and aim to drink my blood. They bring the violence upon themselves. The ants are peaceful, going about their business. They will climb up and over my leg if that is the most direct path to where they are going. I don’t mind. I like to see them up close. I admire their hard work.
Descent
“We’ve started our descent,” the flight attendant says. The plane banks to the right. When I look out the window, I can see straight down to the trees and streets and buildings. The houses are each about the size of a penny on the window, even smaller. We’re low enough that I can make them out as being houses with grey shingle roofs. One house has a circular driveway. It’s larger than the other houses and bordered by trees.
I wonder to myself, “What’s going on inside that house?” Is anyone home? Are they on vacation? Does a family live there? Are the parents happily married? Are the children happy to be children? Have they had lunch? Do they have a dog? Is someone taking a shower? Is someone doing something they’re not supposed to be doing? What’s going on inside that house?
I wonder, and I bet nobody else on the plane wonders about exactly the same thing as me. The plane levels out and the big house with the circular driveway slides out of view. White clouds fill the window again.
Ant killer
If I were to take an ant from the forest in Montana and trap it in a jar and take it with me in my suitcase on my flight back to San Francisco, would it survive?
I do not know for sure what ants eat, but let’s say I did, and I put some of that in the jar, say, some blades of grass. If the ant had enough to eat, could he survive? Maybe it needs some water too. Okay, so I add a few drops every week. With enough food and water, would the ant survive? If not, why not?
Would the ant die because of a physical reason unaccounted for? Maybe there’s not enough air in the jar for the ant to breathe. But let’s assume it’s none of this. What then? Would it be something mental or emotional? Could an ant die because of separation from his colony? What if I introduced the ant to a new colony in the redwood forests near San Francisco. Would the ant then survive among other ants? Albeit, not the same ants as the ones at his home in Montana.
But let’s say it’s not social. Let’s say the ant stays in the jar. What would kill it then. Like a prisoner in solitary confinement, what would break first? Would it be the same for all ants? Or unique to each ant based on their individual temperament?
Self-conscious
I step away from my desk to stretch. I lean over to touch my toes. The sun from the window behind me shows my shadow on the hardwood floor. I see that my hair is disheveled. Previously unaware of my appearance, I am now self-conscious of my appearance. What if I go to see people later? What if someone comes into the study? My hair should look kempt. I fuss over it, using my shadow as a mirror.
Gendered yoga
While practicing yoga, some poses strike me as being more feminine, others as being more masculine. Down dog, for example, with my rear end pointed up, strikes me as more feminine. Plank pose, with my bicep and forearm muscles flexed, strikes me as more masculine. This may be a bias in my yoga practice. I am unwilling to go deeper, stretch farther, or hold longer in feminine poses, for fear of appearing even more feminine. In masculine poses on the other hand, I am eager to go deeper to appear more masculine.
Krys says nice
Driving to the airport on our way to pick up Marta. Krys is driving. He has his hand out the window, letting the wind pass between his fingers. The sky is a light blue. The gradient grows lighter toward the sun, high in the sky. We come to a stop. Krys looks out the window, exhales, and says, “Nice.” Seamus looks at Krys from the passenger seat and asks, “What?” Krys responds, “All of it.” We all laugh, and quickly express our emphatic agreement. It is all very nice.
John and the coffee pot
John stands in front of the coffee machine. Connor asks him what is wrong. He explains that he can’t figure out how to turn off the ‘Clean’ function. He says, “I need coffee to figure out how to fix the coffee machine.” We laugh.
Cutting vegetables
Cutting vegetables for soup, I learn lessons like “a dull knife requires more power to cut” and “one cut across three carrots is as good as three cuts.” I start to chop slower as I am learning these lessons, until I am learning from each chop. It is simple—the vegetables, the cutting board, and the knife. I am enjoying myself. And the smell of the chopped celery. Soup is a simple dish—everything in the pot, with some broth and water.
Muse
She is gentle and will not be forced. She must come to you first. And then it is a matter of what you do with it. If you try to go to her first, it will not work. She will not be open or ready. And you will merely be grasping from the outside. You must be patient and wait.
Caught
I got caught peeing in public by the park police today. My girlfriend and I were walking on the sidewalk through the Presidio on our way to the beach. I stepped off and took two or three steps into the trees. When I turned around, the unmarked police car was making a U-turn in the middle of the street with its lights on, but no sirens. When I saw the car, without even thinking, I said out loud, “Oh man, are you kidding me?” I looked through the passenger-side window and the officer was motioning for me to come closer to the car. I walked over and bent down with my hands on my knees. He rolled down the window halfway. He said, “If you’re going to urinate, walk back far enough into the trees where people can’t see.” I said, “Yes sir. I apologize.” I tried my best to look scared. Truth be told, I was a little scared. I didn’t want to get a citation. He nodded, seeming satisfied, and rolled up his window and drove off. I stepped back onto the sidewalk and kept walking with my girlfriend.
She keeps me
She keeps me straight and narrow so I can focus my energies, keeping my sexuality from welling up and over the rim of myself. My sex flows into her only. This pointed and consistent release has allowed space for my other energies to grow strong. Previously this space was filled by frantic sexual energy, like gas fills a balloon. Now my sexual energy is compartmentalized. It is her compartment wholly and I don’t think twice about it.
Test
This is a test. I’m using a service called IFTTT to post automatically to my WordPress blog when I write a note in my Evernote. I’m curious to see if the service is smart enough to wait until I finish typing the note, before it posts to the blog. We shall see …
Test
This is a test. I’m using a service called IFTTT to post automatically to my WordPress blog when I write a note in my Evernote. I’m curious to see if the service is smart enough to wait until I finish typing the note, before it posts
Non-specific
I don’t like particulars. I aim to be non-specific. I would rather talk of the sky that is the same everywhere, rather than what is only of this specific place here. Is this an inherent contradiction? Because symbolic language is specific, and therefore inept to capture the universal.
Lake and his book
Lake sits in a wooden rocking chair on the back porch. One leg is crossed over the other. The leg beneath bounces gently. A grey and white Mexican blanket is draped over his shoulders. His neck slightly craned over and eyes squinting at the book in his hands. Occasionally looking up at the Montana mountain scenery beyond the porch railing.
What will
What will happen, will. When I realize it is not me. None of it is mine. I am part of it, and that is all. What will pass through me, will. As I try to control and plan and schedule. Taking it all into my arms to wrestle it into the shape of my desires. My arms are not big enough. I only tire this way. It has all already been wrestled. It has been wrestled into what it will be. I am here for it. I am granted the privilege of having a part to play. I will play my part. As it comes to me, I will play.