As soon as a stretch
In that direction
Left me off center
I wasn’t either
Anymore
And after a while
In between
It started to seem
A new center
Comfortable
For the time being
At least until
The inevitable
Next stretch
Soon to come
Category: Ball-enz
don’t fight the seasons
Don’t fight the seasons. Go with the cold depressed wet rain. Run into the gutters and beneath the city like the plastic wrapping on a food item thrown away without any ability to pick itself up like a responsible wrapper and throw itself away just running with the rain. Lay down and let the cool winter air come in your nostrils at night and the muffled city noises come through your walls and into your ears. Let the radiator hiss now, for this is its life, quiet dormant and seemingly dead all through summer. The seasons have been forged over the years of a natural undulation of a frozen slow down sleepiness for things to hold form and stay where they are focused and rigid and indoors if possible while the summer will come to let all those out who have been cooped up and cold and will run amuck for long enough to sweat out hibernated calories and gather new ideas that can be seen in the bright light but only captured in the morning winter dark of a study with paper and pen in hand. Don’t fight the seasons. Let them take you.
an analogy for balance
there is a balance between pain and pleasure. i have been taking cold showers for about four years now. it’s not cold for the whole time. i wash for about 10 minutes in hot water, and then turn the water to cold for just a minute or two at the end. one time i decided to skip the cold shower at the end. i was enjoying the hot shower and thought it would be nice to avoid the pain of the cold shower at the end, just this once. but then i realized, as soon as i got out of the shower, the air felt cold to me. i had to put on clothes quickly to get warm. once you’ve enjoyed the warmth, you can’t escape the cold. whether i chose to turn the water cold by my own hand, or feel the contrast of the cold air after opening the shower door—either way, there would be an inevitable cold after the warmth. pain is inevitable after pleasure.
it is like my muay thai trainer once told me, “fighting is fair. if you choose to attack, then you put yourself at risk of counter-attack. if you choose not to attack, then you are not fighting.”
the universe is fair. balance is the rule of fairness. pain is the counter-attack after pleasure.
get lifted
i get lifted
off into where
there is no
balance sheet
or rulebook
to tell me “no”
or slap my hand
which i need
sometimes
to stay grounded
i love art
i love art
so much
on the weekends
that some
sunday nights
i think i won’t
go to work
when i wake up
on monday
but then
soon remember
the yin
and the yang
the day
and the night
the dance
and the sleep
art is the leap
but there still
must be
the landing
and the takeoff
which must
go well
before
and after
the air time
that is art
and can go
just as it will
but money
and survival
and physics
and rules
and relationships
are still there
when you land
rent in sf
living in san francisco, there is a tension between: not wanting to leave the apartment because you’re paying so much for rent, and wanting to leave the apartment to go out and experience the city that is the reason you’re paying so much for rent
Thinking of what will be
Experiencing what is, thinking of what will be, wondering how what is will affect what will be, letting your thoughts about what will be define your experience of what is, letting your feelings about what you are experiencing be good only in the case that they are good for what will be, only allowing yourself to be a certain way, which is to say only allowing what there is to be a certain way, as you experience what is, and making these requirements for yourself based on what you want yourself to be at some point in the future, which is to say making requirements for what will be in the future—in other words, trying to control the future. All the time doing this in the present, to manipulate what will be in the future, instead of just allowing the present to be itself, and thus looking deeper into the experience of the present with your full self that also exists in that present, letting water run together with water, instead of always focusing the attention of your present self on thoughts of the future, letting oil try but fail to run together with water. Future thoughts are merely experiences of a reality that has yet to pass and thus are less clear and beautiful than the thoughts of a present reality that exists right in front of your nose and overwhelms your appetite for attention over and over again if you really look deep enough and never run out of things to see.
Like just now, I am high, unable to function too well in terms of what my experience will demand of me in the future, especially when I have to return to work, but I don’t have to work for four days, and all that my present experience demands of me is that I relax, and so I ask myself, why let thoughts of the future change my experience of the present? Especially when my current state of being high is actually better suited for this present reality and will certainly change, many times perhaps, before the future experience of going back to work according to which I am now judging my present self and for which I now prematurely try to change my present self, and as a result would make my present self more ill-suited for the present experience in favor of being better-suited for a future experience. Why does that make sense? It does not, I don’t think.
Or, with my writing, I paused because I was going to write something but forgot, so I stopped writing, and started thinking of what I had forgotten, trying to remember, thinking of what the writing would be if I could only remember what I had forgotten, thinking of the future of the writing and ignoring what I was thinking in the present, restricting my experience of my present thought process so that I could pull a thought forward from the past in the interest of a future version of the piece that I had conceived of only in my mind.
Safe balance
Always a balance, he says, so that he can escape either way. Waiting, watching, somewhere ambiguously in the middle—the safest place to be.