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
I could have played along just as easily. I just wasn’t built to. No harm or foul if you are. Pros and cons to fitting in, and the same for not fitting in. Just so interesting that progress and economics are primarily owned by one, and love and spirituality are primarily owned by the other. Like two armies with different types of soldiers, one with archers and the other with swordsmen. Both could potentially win the battle, each by completely different means.
There are dark times and there are light times, always. There is never only dark, and there is never only light. Even at the same time, the dark is light in some ways, and the light is dark.
I say this because sometimes it gets so dark that I think to myself I’ll never again see my shadow apart from all darkness. And other times it is so bright that I think it’ll be light forever. Always, things change. And things come up that I never expected—this keeps me moving forward, through good times and bad.
I play games with my mind. Young and western, a student of philosophy in particular, my physical self is pushed forward by my mental. Running on the treadmill, I chase after a goal: a certain distance in a certain time. Until I realize I can certainly achieve it; in fact, I am almost there, and my body is not tired yet.
So I reset the goal, and reset my mind to push my body to chase after it. My body knows no better; it forgets completely the former goal, though admittedly more tired than the start, it chases after the new goal with the same ardor as the original. But now my mind has caught on to what may be an infinite regression of goals, so O focus it on a drishti: a paint speck on the wall, and just watch it and listen to my breath, and avoid looking at the numbers for distance and time on the treadmill.
For my whole young life, I asked why. I would stop in my tracks and ask why and not keep on going until I was satisfied with the answer. So you can see why it was a problem when at some point in college I asked my philosophy professor why and he told me for the first time that there may not be a why and that was the first answer that stopped me in my tracks instead of starting me going again.
And ever since then I’ve been playing these mind games, inventing up answers and getting along that way until my mind figures out the trick and wants to ask why. Only I find fewer and fewer who can provide an answer of any decency. Most of the time they have not asked enough why’s themselves. And so I am stuck answering my own why’s but most of the time I don’t have any reasonable answer so I just invent up a new game to get me along for a while.
If it’s all slowed down, you must take the day to turn it around. And this is the most difficult part, to be slothy or downtrodden or depressed and not say, “Oh, why me?” but instead fight the viscous sludge and stand up and run around and smile and create and love and put all this into positive motion without any attachment or expectation of result or reciprocation, and keep on putting positivity into the world, until you’re not even realizing that it is the world at your back and pushing you along.
Schopenhauer says we vacillate between distress and boredom. I think of this when deciding whether to move to Monterrey Bay and live a quite life by the ocean, hiking occasionally and thinking and reading, but also risking boredom and lack of inspiration. Or, to stay in San Francisco among so many people and new ideas and work and energy, but risking distress and the occasional anxiety. Of course, it would seem there is a balance between the two, which is why we drive back and forth on the pacific coast highway.
I consider the emotions of mold in a jar of jelly. At first non-existent, there is just jelly in the jar, and the jar in the fridge. Then born, the mold, crying into a cold world. Its young years are slow and painful but joyful just to be alive. Struggling, to grow in less than ideal conditions.
Then, a miracle happens: the jelly jar is taken out of the fridge and thrown away in the trash can. Misery for the jelly but, ah, what bliss for the mold! A whole new world like heaven with all the ease of growth in the warmer trash can. And in the landfill, the jar broken, the mold breaks free to spread and grow and lives happily ever after.
Ish was always singing, most of the time with her headphones in her ears, singing along to whatever music she was listening to. For most people this is impossible because they need to hear their own voice to regulate their own pitch.
But Ish explained it to me once—like a painter who only needs to look at the blank canvas once and the palette of colors in his hand once, and then can close his eyes and paint the whole painting, his hand so trained in muscle memory and exactitude moving back and forth between palette and canvas, so that at the end he opens his eyes for only the second time and sees the whole masterpiece—so too with Ish and her singing with her headphones in her ears.
She didn’t need to hear her own voice; she only needed to hear the pitch and rhythm, and then she could keep up recreating it only using her feelings of the vibrations inside her head and chest. And the whole time looking like a dancer, swaying back and forth so that her long black dreads were reaching down to her waist and swinging slowly side to side.
When they first met, Blake couldn’t stand Ish’s singing. When Em introduced Ish to the group, they sat in the coffee shop and Blake, as usual, set his current volumes of interest on the table and read a few pages and then picked up his pen to write and then read some more and picked up his pen again, and he usually went on like this all morning until they left the coffee shop for lunch.
But with Ish there on this particular day when she started to sing Blake looked up from his work and just stared at her for some time with his brow furrowed but Ish couldn’t notice because she had her eyes closed with her headphones in her ears and was just swinging her long black braided hair side to side.
Blake looked back down to his work and tried to keep on reading and writing but he couldn’t and you could tell because he pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up and walked over to where Ish was standing, swaying and signing.
He tapped her on the arm and said directly, “Could you please stop?”
Ish looked at Em, her being the one that had invited Ish along. Em smiled nodded back in Ish’s direction as if giving her the approval for whatever Ish would say or do anyway.
Ish looked back at Blake and took one earphone out of her left ear and said innocently, “Stop what?” And she swayed a little bit as she said it so that her hair swung from one side of her waist to the other.
“Stop singing please. I can’t concentrate on my work with you singing like that.”
“Oh, my apologies, yes of course I can stop. I didn’t know it was distracting you.”
Blake showed her a smile and turned to go back to his desk but before he could turn all the way around Ish said, “But only if you stop scratching with your pen and turning those pages. It throws off my rhythm.”
Blake was taken aback. Em was smiling noticeably in the corner, pretending to listen to what Oliver was saying to her but really she was just watching Blake and Ish.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t stop reading and writing.”
“Well, why not?” Ish asked resuming her innocent tone.
“Because that’s what I do; I read and write,” Blake responded defiantly.
“Of course. Then I’m sure you can understand that singing is what I do,” Ish said this a little more directly and stern without so much innocence.
Blake was silent and just looked at her, not just frustrated as before; still frustrated, but now with respect. He turned and went back to his desk and picked up his pen. Ish put her earphone back in her left ear and kept on singing. Em watched as Blake’s pen paused for a second as Ish started singing again, but then Blake went on writing and Ish went on singing, and they both went on for the rest of the morning. And right before they left for lunch Em could have sworn she saw Blake’s foot tapping along to Ish’s singing.
After a high Thursday night and early Friday morning, I am up and euphoric. Not worried about anything, lazy and just kind of floating. Not taking control of anything because what is coming to me is great.
Then after lunch in the early afternoon, I feel a dip lower—and here is where I realize the difference between what I used to do and what I want to do moving forward. I used to think that my emotions were necessarily sinusoidal. But I believe now that is a fixed mindset and not necessarily a fact of life.
Because the greatness comes from all different directions. I dip lower now sitting in my office chair after last night with Lily. But I needn’t live only in that linear. I am surrounded with friends and my body is healthy and ready for exercise and there are books and music for me to lean into and adventure as soon as I take the first step and beauty if I’ll only see it and all this is always around me.
There is also always meditation for me to return home to my Self and, what’s more, subtle, is that the dip is not necessarily a dip in any particular direction with an associated value judgment; in other words, the dip is not necessarily “bad,” if I just watch it and look at the dip on the bridge of its nose and in between its eyes and meet it with empathy.
The dip might be otherwise understood as an opportunity to take in more; whereas, when I am focused on something on the up and up, something “good,” whether it be love, beauty, art, pleasure, or anything else that occupies the whole of my conditioned dualistic attention, I am consumed by it fully. The dip is an opportunity to refocus, to have another “good” fill my attention. Yet this is still of the natural, conditioned, dualist world. On the spiritual level, the same question remains: How can I fill up with all of it always? How can I, figuratively, stay up in tree pose, focusing on my drishti, being One with all of it.
It is very difficult for any leader to be anti-structure, having been deemed a leader by said structure.
It was dark in the alley, he had the gun low pointed at my chest. He wasn’t even holding it right, kind of side ways and scared. I put both hands over his, holding the gun and raised the barrel and pressed it to my forehead.
Click.
Click. Click. Click.
He pulled the trigger once, to my surprise. I didn’t think he would. Then he pulled it three more times. Thank god I pressed the safety button when I put my hands on his.
Ever since 11th street, I’m more conscious of the vulnerability of the back of my head, and always want to be looking around to make sure somebody doesn’t come up with a shovel or a wrench.
I have a plant, that sets on my bookshelf, in my apartment. I believe, whether it is true or not, that it makes me healthier: to have some nature, inside my industrial apartment. Only that, some mornings, when I leave for work, I forget to open the blinds for my plant to get light. And some nights when I get home, I’m so tired, that I forget to water it. So that, the plant may be healthy for me, inside my apartment; but my apartment, is not healthy for the plant.
One day, I opened the glass door to my balcony, and set the plant outside, to get sun all day and water from the rain. I planned to bring it back inside the next morning, but have now left it outside on the balcony for several weeks. I can still see it through the glass door. And so receive any health benefits from “seeing” plant life, but cannot smell it, nor receive its oxygen from my carbon dioxide.
That glass door—between the inside of my industrial apartment and the outside of sun and rain—is a line in the sand, and the human species is drawing near to a point where we must decide which side we’re on.
Her animal self reaching up to her god self—in the middle is human.
I need a better enemy than death. I need more motivation than my own survival.
For a while when I was young in the time between after I gained my intellect and before now, I was depressed. Because I learned enough to believe that truth was important. But began to doubt the truths I had from before.
See, before I was just a physical young boy and went with my instincts. As I learned, sometimes a thought overwhelmed my instinct. The only trouble was that there were so many thoughts, all of which did not agree with each other. At least my instincts were consistent.
So before I learned, I was happy. And after, I was troubled. But now, I have found consistency in some thoughts, like love and balance, and I am happy again. So that now I feel the same sureness of my boyhood.
And then all of a sudden it became an urgent situation and my brother and I climbed the stairs to higher and higher floors to get away from a man who was trying to kill us until this man fell into a classroom of glass and when I went down to finish him off I saw his spine was severed at the neck and this is how I knew it was a recurring dream because there was a perfume vial capping the top of his exposed spine and I remembered and that’s when my brother and I crept and tiptoed down the building with so many floors where everyone was looking for us but the young kids were on our side so when they saw us creeping down they just shook their heads and smiled and acted like they hadn’t seen us so that the adults wouldn’t find out until we got to the basement and my brother had to pack his stuff to leave and that’s when she found us and really started to yell and we were in trouble and my brother handed me the shotgun and I ran ahead and now here I was sitting in the car with the gun’s neck resting on the open window and the two golden-butted shells behind two silver hammers and my heart beating like a tribal drum wondering what the hell was taking my brother so long.
I thought I’d remove the titles of each poem before I published this, but when I did the poems weren’t the same, especially the ones that are only one sentence. Which made me think there is something important about a title, like when you decide to read a book you make a judgment about its contents based in large part on its title, along with some other content on the front and back covers. You have an expectation about what the book will contain like a sign above a doorway that says “welcome home” or “please take off your shoes.” And so I decided to leave the titles because it makes for a dynamic micro-experience of each poem, splitting the reader into two of herself, one who reads the title and sets an expectation in her mind and the other who reads the poem and wrestles with her former self if it is not what she expected or feels smug consonance with her former self. And so I decided to leave the titles.
The philosopher, having arrived at a nihilist amorality, thought to do nothing. He lost his taste and thus his hunger. He discovered that freedom is not what he desired. True freedom came from bondage. That is when he realized masochism. It is not so much a love for pain, as love was the farthest thing from his present position. And even pleasure to him was also nonsense. But so absurd the world had become that he only wanted to feel, and even for all his thorough scrubbing, his need to survive still barely remained alive, and awakened when he pressed the knife to his palm, and felt a sting that was neither good or bad, and felt the witness come forth from the sting.
Dark archers defend the dream while light cavalry gallop from underneath the door and through the curtains. From behind eyelash parapets, a sea of arrows blot out the sun. Even a battering ram cannot open the eyelid gates to the outside world. Until the wise light leader calls out, “O’ dark lord, from whence comes the substance of your dreams if not the light?” Alas, the gates open and the real world digests the dream.
Coming of age in modern America is the process of whittling down your identity from a coloring book to a business card; the irony is that it’s the business cards that make the coloring books possible. Stability comes from ensuring we do not have too many of either one.
It begins with a building up of potential and power: flowing up from the earth through the palms of your feet and from another soul through their eyes and into yours.
Learning to hold potential realities, your mind fills with experience: your whole being swells with the reality that flows in through the senses. It grows within you and wants to get out and return to the rest of reality, but you must hold it, letting it fill and stretch your bounds.
The reality you hold enters its own home; you carry Her like a welcome guest. The energy exists in the physical space, all that remains to be seen is whether it will exist within your gates for just a little while longer before returning to the wider bounds. It grows as reality pours in through your eyes, ears, and skin.
Together with reality, taking mutual pleasure that it is held within you but also at the same time within Her, breaking down economic laws that one good cannot be possessed at once by two. The simultaneous ownership is symbiotic, and the swelling grows within the inner gates while reality, hospitable to Her guest, expands Her widest bounds.
Reality delights in the creative friction where you rub on the edges of the world, pressing against its walls, borders and exactitude to stretch its limits and let it unfold for you. Her walls, laws and rules bend around you.
Drunk with pleasure there is the temptation to overflow before reaching the high spiritual and deep physical. Or there is the temptation to lose focus and slowly shrink. Yet you endure, skeptical of both your limits and reality’s bounds.
Alas, the king is not foolish to keep within his own gates what has grown from resources imported from the outside; he is a vessel for reality, a traveler in the realm of power and creative ecstasy. When he has built up his kingdom to the perceived limits and can endure no longer he allows his gates to open and flood the countryside and even the deepest valleys with a river of wealth.
He releases his power and hugs tightly to his People, for they are now inextricably linked like a family. If he is still young, he will rest to regain his strength, then set out to be filled with reality and swell up again, using the residual power of his last creation—knowledge of principles, strength of body, and awareness of spirituality—to build up his next kingdom even greater than the last, until he is buried beneath his magnum opus.
We stand inside a stump’s stomach and meditate. My color wispy white, like cloud tails that mustache the mountain faces.
Boots on a forward tilt crushing wet redwood. She says, between deep breaths, “I’m not feeling … anything … but my biology.” Woken just an hour ago from our green symbiote moss mattress. We dance across a fallen trunk bridged atop the river.
The forest doesn’t apologize for its fallen trees; nature isn’t orderly. I don’t apologize for my chipped teeth.
Even amid tall trees and wide rivers, I look at my feet. Retreat into myself, a perceiving thing, and a thing to be perceived, without sense of which is which—other than some vague memory of a rational animal that emerged from the woods, until I now re-entered.
In the wooded world, I roll in my present fingers a perfect stone for the game we played on the lakefront yesternoon. Take aim at a tree down the mountainside. And release it. Ahead the group has left me; I run to catch up.
Longer than the zig-zags rise, we come upon two others: one kneeling, holding his face, and the other standing.
I ask the standing what happened; she hands me a stone perfect for the game that we played on the lakefront yesternoon, “This came down through the trees.”
The kneeling looks up; I look back into my own eyes and do my best to smile with my jaw hanging from its hinge on one side, a smooth string of blood streaming through the ghost teeth. I smile back to myself, showing me my own crooked jaw, and hook a finger in my cheek to show the scar between my top and bottom molars.
At once, my companion and I become ourselves.