Cup Runneth Dry: A Biji for December

A soul withered and dessicated. The wind a blade dragging across the heart deep in its winter of discontent. There is much to be said if little breath in the lungs with which to say it. To pour out the contents of the soul is Sisyphean in execution. There is no receiver, no longer motivation to do it, when the soil is barren and infertile.

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What if, amongst those 99 Problems, one of them turned out to be a bitch?

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Another occurrence of the dream. You know the one, coming to in a dim corridor, baseball bat in hand, surrounded by shelf after shelf of pottery and ceramics. Plates. Bowls. Cups. Especially cups. As far as the eye can see in the red-tinged glow suffusing the air. The cups inspire anger, blind hatred, blackening the vision with the need to destroy everything within the arc of the bat. It is not enough to merely knock the cups off the shelves, they must be destroyed. Ground into dust, if possible. But the bat will have to do. Dead run into the red fulgency, bat whirring like a helicopter rotor, the cups explode off the shelves in a tintinnabulation of porcelain destruction. Swinging, swinging, an animal roaring bursting from the chest as cup after cup falls to the murderous ministrations of ash and anger. Exhaustion sets in. Rest seems a distant memory. The corridor seems infinite, dissolving only in the alarm-induced cold sweat of another day to be endured. On the bedside stand lies a single shard of pottery, warm, stained with blood.

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There arrives a point in the sidereal journey when the heart collapses under the weight of grief. This point is a singularity of lost love, fear, despair that grows like weeds where nothing else will. Wasteland of the soul made barren by giving all, giving everything, until the day it realized the giving was for naught.

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We’ve all heard of the “Parable of the Boiled Frog” in which a frog is immersed in a pot of water so gradually heated that it dies before it realizes it is being boiled. Why don’t we ever hear of a “Frozen Frog”, which perhaps could be the opposite parable? And if parable can become metaphor, the heart is a frog, its temperature raised or lowered by the capricious ministrations of another’s cruelty and deceit. The end result is walking death, without the humor of a zombie apocalypse.

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Nothing like a little patch of black ice to wake you up. Black ice is a harsh teacher, but you learn lessons real quick. It has the virtue of efficiency.

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The red wolf. Canis rufus. One of the most endangered mammals in North America. Somewhere between 50 to 200 alive today. Climate change appears to be implicated in their decline, along with the usual human fuckery involving animals. No word available on whether red wolves taste like chicken.

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It loads the dishes into the washer.
It dries its hands on a damp towel.
It pours itself a glass of tea.
It feels good to have done its chores.
It weeps to endure the solitary evening.

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An unexpected occurrence of grace. The cat greets you at the door, meowing and purring. When you pick it up, it snuggles against your chin. Gentle head boops and vigorous rubbing of chin to chin, as the cat revels in the scratchiness of a warm beard. If only all pleasures in life were so simple and spontaneous.

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Have you ever listened to sleet falling into still water? An ethereal hissing, precious and restorative. You must sit still.

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"Trying not to walk crooked while this anchor's dropped.

But I been out on them choppy waves and it's hard to say where this land begins and that water stops, 

I got sea legs

I got sea legs

I got sea legs." 

(From "Sea Legs" by Run the Jewels). 

Yeah, that's it. I got sea legs.

This is the Hard Part

There is nothing like being a parent to make you feel like you might amount to something in this life. And nothing like the same condition to make you wonder if you will ever live up to the promise shining in the eyes of your child. 

This is the hard part. Overcoming the limitations of yourself. Overpowering the weaknesses in your character. Learning that love is more important than ego. 

Trying not to be swallowed up by the black hole of worthlessness that lurks in the bottom of an insecure soul. 

This is the hard part. Staring in shock at that human bent on the mirror and realizing how great the task that lies before it, that of being a better person. 

Better, for the sake of love: the imperative of life. 

The Stay-at-Home Nomad (Sunday Meditation #28)

If the redwoods questioned their roots as often as it seems I question mine, the forest would be full of giants crashed to the ground, howling at the moon about the indignity of the craters at their feet. There would be no grandeur, only solipsistic anguish.

The weather, damp and dreich outside the walls. Gazing out the windows at the sodden yard, trying to get a grip on the untethered balloon that is my soul. Perhaps the better analogy would be blowing about like a plastic shopping bag caught in a dust devil. I feel like that, sometimes. This floating, flying, whirling sensation has acquired a life of its own in recent weeks. Often it is triggered by the weather, like today.

I am not blaming the rain for my dislocation. The rain has no motive, no desire. I would be quite the fool to think the dull gray clouds and the drops were out to get me. No, I don't blame it.

After all, think positive, right? It could have been more snow, right? I actually manage a smile or two. Given the choice I would take rain over snow most every time. The deep snow of the past two weeks has mostly melted, under the influence of warmish temperatures and now rain for much of the day. The thrum of the sump pumps in the basement offers its own commentary on my ruminations. I shiver to think what might happen if the pumps failed. The groundwater is running fast from snow melt and the rain.

To be fair, the weather isn't the catalyst of my rootless funk, it is only the familiar of the extraordinary pressures I find my self battling at the moment. Life has been a swirl of change. Tax season is upon us, and I will not fare well this time around. I am still searching for the right combination of jobs to resume truly useful employment. There are many irons in the fire but no clarity.

Nights are spent chasing sleep, and believe it or not, dear readers, I have been wishing to not dream so much. This is unusual. Up until about the end of last year I hadn't dreamed much at all for quite some time. Long enough that lack of dreams became the new normal. But then something changed. The dreams came back. Frequent, disjointed, erratic

My dreams, dressed in harlequin, enrobing the motley fool that is my mind. All possessed of a common theme, in myriad variation. I am searching, I am hunting, I am lost, I am prey. It is a terrible quest to find something you cannot name while being hunted by something you cannot identify. I search and search, only to awake empty handed and weary, wondering what just happened.

Bah. It wasn't really dreams about which I wanted to write. I am not certain now what it was I wanted when I sat down to empty my head. I wish it could have been fiction (I have a number of things floating around in my head), as I am sure it would have been much more edifying for all of us. But the fiction just wouldn't free itself up. I tried, but I couldn't get the snow out of my mind.

The snow. Yes, that is it. The snow that had been on the ground is what triggered this funk. I know why. It came up in a recent conversation I had with someone I love, in which we were discussing our respective reactions to the heavy snow. Hers was more gleeful and upbeat, mine was grouchy and less than cheerful. Mine involved expletives.

The significant thing was not my surliness. It was something I said, the import of which did not fully catch up to me until yesterday. I said out loud that the snow made me unhappy because I have now, in my life, seen more snows as an adult than I ever did as a kid; snow means something very different to those stages of my life. Snow as a kid means playtime and wonder. Snow as an adult means (at least to this adult) inconvenience and stress. The melting drifts reminded me that I have been an adult for many moons now.

The full realization of that revelation hit me hard today when the pewter skies opened up and the rain began to fall. I listen to drops fall, snow of a different genus, and the water hitting the ground became the scissors that cut the string holding me to the ground. My body stayed put, but my mind went whirling away, spiraling up into the sky. I felt weightless, rudderless, wondering when the roots I am desperate to grow will spread themselves firmly into the soil that surrounds me.

The chair creaks softly under the weight of my body, a corporeal anchor to my nomad soul. I'll open the window tonight so I can hear the rain while I drift off to sleep, perchance not to dream.

Psalm of the Bagstamper

August 17th, 4:57 PM. Cooling my heels before heading out the door. Lovely day.

It is a very simple task, this stamping of bags. Ink stamp, lift stamp, stamp bag. Repeat. Two words, two colors, each bag gets stamped twice with one color of each. Simplicity, indeed. It is not the most intellectually engaging work to do, true, but you know what?

That doesn't matter.

Also,you know what? I'm good at it. I'd go so far as to say that I excel at stamping bags with the company name in green and purple ink. The colors look good on the brown kraft paper of the bags, and I have a knack for getting the ink coverage and positioning just right. "It ain't rocket science!" people will say...but it doesn't have to be rocket science.

Let me make it clear that I am not making light of the chore. On my latest workday I stamped enough bags to fill up a cardboard box about 30 inches to a side and 24 inches deep. That is a lot of bags, I can tell you. As can my aching wrist and arm. It may be a simple task, but it need to be done. It is worth doing and therefore it is worth doing right. It is part of the way this particular business of selling spices is conducted.

I like the idea of hand-stamping the bags. It adds humanity to the business, a semi-anonymous (the customers usually don't know who stamped which bags) yet uniquely personal (a person stamped the a paper) touch in a what could be seen as a cold process: exchanging money for goods. One thing I realized, the core reason why I believe I liked what I was doing, is that by hand stamping the bags, each one becomes a unique creation. Retail snowflakes, if you will, through slight variations in word position, word angle, coverage of ink, even the occasional little spatters of ink from hitting the bag a little harder. It was cool, this concept of the simple, imperfect beauty.

So I stood at the counter, stacks of bags and ink pads at the ready. Ink the bag, move the bag, ink the bag, move the bag...I achieved a "no mindedness" flow, as the bags piled up in the box. Simple problem, measurable result. Was I lighting the world on fire, landing on Mars, discovering a cure for the common cold?

No, of course not. What I was doing, however, was getting something done. And that is just what I needed, right there in the Now.

EHarMatchonyBlog.com

August 15th, 8:16 PM. Preparing to crack the seal on the raku kiln that is my mind.

Skipping through the electronic poppy field that is the Internet this fine day, I caught a blurb that made me nervous and made me laugh. I think it was in an email newsletter from a website devoted to the craft and business of writing, a 'Tip Of The Day' type thing that is supposed to reel you in to spend more time on the site. No problem with that, but I was skimming and distracted so I didn't go beyond the tagline.

The tagline was this: "Your blog posts should be like dating-site profile information..."

'Scuse me? (nervous laughter)...good thing I'm not writing to get a date.

I am not (fortunately for me) out on the dating scene, so I will not worry about that aspect. But I get the perspective being out forth by the writer of that little gem: if you want your blog to attract others, then it must be written to maximize your attractiveness. Am I understanding that correctly?

Hmm. This does present a bit of a quandary. We are told on the one hand to write authentically, to be ourselves and to write from what we know. Supposedly this is what "blogging" (in its nascent sense) is at its core. Yet dating sites, to some degree, are about salesmanship and packaging. They are about being attractive enough to attract ideal partners for whatever motivation one chooses.

So to push the analogy, in order to make my blog more attractive to ideal partners, I should write only the things that would increase my 'dateability' vis-a-vis the readership. The implication is that potentially less desirable things (quirks, foibles, emotionally-charged topics) should perhaps be avoided. Heavens, we wouldn't anyone to know those "real" things, would we?

This begs the question of authenticity, does it not? I'm all for maximizing the positive, but for what one hopes to be a long-term relationship, how can we ignore the reality of ourselves? It seems a bit misleading to put hyperbole before truth. Yet that little dot on an otherwise pristine page could lead to heartache and regret down the road. I know this to be true.

To be fair, I acknowledge that a blog has more latitude than a dating site. It could be said that the very idiosyncratic nature of a blog is what gives it enduring appeal; after all, it is your blog and you can do what you want with it. It doesn't have to be, and perhaps shouldn't be, perfect. That is because we are not perfect.

I didn't start my blog to attract potential partners, or set up a string of dates. I had no idea that is what I "should" (metaphorically) be doing. I started it out of a need for expression, as a way to get the noise out of my head and out into the universe. I didn't know any better than to be anything other than what I am, and hopefully the writing reflects that outlook. I don't need a date (I have great love and companionship), but I am very grateful for all of you who choose to come visit with me, and stay awhile.

And there's no need for a monthly fee, either. We are here because we genuinely want to be here. That is a lovely thing, indeed.

Sail

Sail on

before the sea
leading mighty winds

with a whaler's heart
a saint's conscience

your crumbling ego
wrack become raft

chase the flash
that is your desire

disappear 'neath the tide
where love fills you

find your heart
cast upon the sea

it's what you know
it's what you need

Sail on.

Grit

Pardon, pardon, dear readers. A brief hiatus for me whilst on a week's vacation, a post for another time. I'll get back into the swing of things, I'm sure. Tonight I had some observations which would not wait, meditations on Olympic sport and the limits of human capability.

I caught the semifinals of the men's 400m tonight. It is significant because lane 5 was occupied by Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee runner from South Africa with blades instead of legs, below the knees. Anyone who has paid attention knows most of his story, so I won't repeat that here. Suffice to say, I was fascinated by the sight of this man who is not quite like many men, running as fast as he can on prosthetics, in the premier sporting event of human history.

I wanted him to win, but alas, he did not. He finished last and approximately two seconds behind the man who did win, Kirani James of Grenada. I was disappointed, but not overly affected. I was about to turn away, thinking of other things when something amazing happened that put a lump in my throat.

Kirani James, a man possessed of "regular" legs,  asked Oscar Pistorius to trade name cards. The sight of them exchanging the papers and a hug put small tears in my eyes.

I stayed put, entranced by the sight of this man who has had no lower legs since he was a child, yet got it in his head that he was going to run. Run, not just like the rest of us. But run against the fastest people in the world. I thought, "This is a man with grit. With steel."

That he did not win is not the most important thing to take away from this race. At least not for us regular mortals. The thing I will remember is that I must stop thinking I can't run with the best, something that will certainly be true if I don't even try.

I should run. We should run. There is no way for us to know how good we can be if we don't cast aside the things we fear will hold us back. We should all be Oscar Pistorius...and run, no matter what.

Shine the Now

It's Saturday. Nothing particularly unusual or significant about the day other than it is the Now. The Now is beautiful if we let it shine.

It's Saturday. My brain feels like a reactor core deep in the cooling pond. I'm grateful for the water to contain my chain reactions. I've had a lot lately, as the pages of the blog show in abundance.

It's Saturday. I am setting aside the tragedies, the anxieties and the grief because it is the Now, and I wish to enjoy it. I wish you to enjoy it, dear ones.

It is the Now. That's all we have, and it's beautiful. Peace to you all, in your Now.

903 Views Of Mt. Gumbo

Following my own "narrow road to the deep north"*, through the countryside of my mind...

This is a time of particular reflection, as I contemplate change in my life, and a path that unfolds a step at a time. The jottings here have mapped out parts of the peculiar terrain of my mind. I have been unable to shake the notion put forth in the work of Japanese artist Hokusai, in his famous series of woodblock prints 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The art being a manifestation of explorations into a central idea, I realized that I have been engaging in the same thing with words.

The problem is I am still chasing Mount Fuji.

My nine-hundred and third post. 903 different maps in just over three-and-a-half years of journeying. I'm still looking for that point about which this world of mine revolves. My own personal axis mundi. Perhaps it is there. There have been glimpses. Sometimes the fog burns off and I can just see something there, something that might be a mountain, a tree, a post the size of Fuji.

I don't know. Ideas are funny that way. Our heads are full of them, universes contained in the perimeter of our minds. I have many. What I don't know is the one that functions as the anchor of my internal universe, and by extension, my external universe. I've come close, at times, I think. Lately "Love" seems to be central to the mental eructations I call my writing. You, dear readers, may better able to tell me.

Gripping smoke. Herding cats. Embracing a waterfall. The tasks I set for myself, because if I have learned anything from writing, getting a handle on truth, authenticity, and the "real" means chasing something I may never fully grasp. Yet something keeps me on the path, searching for that one view in my head that finally makes me say "I have seen the mountain".

I will see it. I know it. All I need to do is keep looking.

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*The Narrow Road to the Deep North (and Other Travel Sketches), by Matsuo Basho, is a book I would love to write for today, and one I wish I had written.

Road Along The Sea

This life can be as a road along the sea, hugging the cliffs like curves hug a snake. The drive can be anything you want it to be, if only you know what you want and what you need. Driving with the top down at high speed when you feel confident, or maybe when you forgot where are the brakes, you round a curve at the bottom of the hill with the hood of the car pointing up and out over infinity.

You don't know what to do.  You can't see a guard rail, or feel the wheels on the pavement. It gets quiet there, and slow. For a slice of infinity you ponder the Was, Now and What May Be. What is it you have done with this life, and what will you do should you find the road again?  What can bring you back?

Take a deep breath. Let go of the steering wheel. On this road, there is love, if you care to look.  Better yet, if you care to feel.

Love will bring you back.  Love will put up the rail, stop the fall, get the wheels back on the pavement.

Love will do these things, if we let it. We just need to let it take over and drive.

All We Need is Wooooah!

Wooooah!

I need a few more of these in my life.  Those moments where I could just shout it.

Wooooah!

I'd love to burst out with it in the middle of a business meeting someday.  I think it would be a great way to let everyone know my enthusiasm for the topic at hand. Get some attention, for sure.  Wouldn't that be cool?  Random explosions of joy, of exuberance.

Wooooah!

What holds me back?  Decorum, I suppose.  Not wanting to perturb co-workers or random folks passing by.  Although that wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Wooooah!

I used to shout it out.  That was back in the days of being a young Gumbo, at concerts and dances where it was noisy and I could get lost in the crowd.  The problem for me was self-consciousness and a lack of good musical voice.  Not that being able to sing is necessary, but it is better if you can at least get it in key.  I can't sing, and for me to hit a key is more chance than skill.

Wooooah!

These days I don't get my woah on very often. It has to be the right moment, almost always music inspired.  And I don't do it in public.  Mostly in the car, or in the odd moment at home when I can occasionally be moved to caper about like a fool to something on the radio or my music collection.  I kid myself that I can do it well.

Wooooah!

Sometimes I do get it right.  And when I do, I smile and play my air guitar or put my fist in the air, recalling the energy I once had and the time I cherished where a good woah fit right in. These days, I hear one on the radio and I know that exuberance can be had, if I know where to look.  I used to think that growing up meant I'd have to leave it behind.  For too long, I did leave it behind.

Now I know better. It's still there, peeking out from the shadows of my jaded heart.  It won't manifest every day; that's no longer possible.  But it doesn't have to be every day.  All I need to know is I have it, and all it needs are the right moments.  I'm happy to say that, even in the midst of nearly four months of being jobless, I'm having quite a few Wooooah! moments.

That is a very good thing indeed. Wooooah!

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Two of the best wooooah! moments I have heard recently is in a new favorite song of mine, "I Don't Owe You A Thang" by blues guitar virtuoso Gary Clark, Jr.  If you want a great pick-me-up, you can listen to the song/watch the video HERE. Great stuff.  I wish I could do it the way he does it!

Sunday Meditation #13: A Mind Divided in the Land of the Free

A day such as this gorgeous Saturday in January begs for communion with the breeze and sunlight.  The temperatures nudging 60 degrees and sunny, feeling more like spring.  My daughter and I, feeling much like the cardinals frolicking beyond my kitchen window, decide on a trip to the lake.  I grab my film camera with trusty black and white, and we head to the lake.

Parked the car by the boat ramp.  Dogs, people abound, and we delight in the canines gamboling about on the pathways.  My daughter keeps up a cheery banter, expansive as young children tend to be when they brim with energy and have their innocence about them.  This is as it should be.

Me, the adult, I am not so lucky.  The walk started off well.  We ambled slowly to take in the fresh air with no agenda.  Geese and gulls on the lake, along with a small flotilla of waterfowl which I could not identify.  I speculated they might be scoters or buffleheads, the sounding out of which provoked a fit of giggles in her.

The walk resumed.  Conversation, and then a small cloud of distraction dimmed the light. I abruptly fixated on a troubling observation, set free from my subconscious; the statement framed itself in my mind thusly:

In America as I know it, I have never seen so many espouse the idea of independent thinking while at the same time so eager to join groups, and be so chauvinistic about their affiliations.

This rumination was sparked by the sheer number of people I saw wearing clothing or accessories on which one cannot fail to notice all sorts of logos, brands, symbols, and statements which presumably signify the allegiances of the wearer.  From the brand of water one drinks to the American flag, from which sports team one follows to what corporate clothing chain at which one prefers to shop, I was depressed by the widespread group think I saw emblazoned on almost everyone.

Never having been a "joiner", and never having felt it important to be a walking advertisement for a brand, I have encountered everything from polite puzzlement to outright hostility from others when discussing this subject.  As if by choosing not to engage in the cognitive dissonance of declaring my individuality by wearing/buying/driving/eating the same clothes/goods/car/fast food that thousands of others do, I am an alien, an auslander, a non-consumer.  In this culture, consumerism equates with normal.

And I am not normal, I suppose.  For pete's sake, real football, i.e. soccer, is my favorite sport.  In many area of this country, that is almost un-American in the minds of some.

So there I was, out for a walk with my beautiful daughter on a lovely sunny day, and all wrapped up in uneasiness about my 'square peg, round hole' self-image.  I felt discombobulated.  On a day such as this, being divided about myself should have never occurred. In my mind's eye, I saw the transformation from human to sheep in progress.  I sighed.

As is very often the case, it was the unintentional ministrations of my daughter that pulled me out of my funk.  Her laughter and cheerfulness, to be exact.  She was asking me questions, and making observations about the geese and the dogs and the rocks on the water's edge.  She giggled and held my hand.  She spoke to me of many things that matter to the mind and heart of a child.  She made jokes, and laughed.

We rounded the east end of the lake.  The sun began dipping behind the clouds, slow strobes of white gold light painting the dry grass in the meadow and her cherubic countenance.  It was then I took a few deep breaths to fill my lungs with the cool air wafting across the water.  I held them. My mind reset itself as I watched her make her way down the berm of rocks alongside the path.  I shook off the funk.

I knew clearly that to be the best father I can be for my daughter, I must honor my true self.  I may always be a square peg, but that peg is a worthy soul that is deserving of respect...especially from myself.  I meditated on that as we returned to the car, watching my daughter and stitching my mind back together.

Little Mirrors, Big Reflections

September 13, 2011, 8:20 p.m.  Home.  Drinking tea and thinking.

Living alone, as I do now, has not been easy.  It is easier than it was when I first was thrown into it, yes, but some days it grates.  No, not grates.  That isn't quite the word I sought.  Let me rephrase it:  Some days, it exhausts.  It wears down.  Today was like that.  The weariness started, as it often does, at work.  One too many repetitive questions over things I had considered settled, another iteration of not being allowed to do my job without undue interference.  Sparing the details, it is difficult to manage when the second guessing and redirection starts.

Anyway.  That is not exactly the topic at hand.

I left work feeling quite drained, a physical state that induces in me a tendency to ponder.  True to form, the wheels in my head were turning almost as fast as the wheels on the car taking me home.  I considered what I do, and my reactions to things, and how I ended up where I am in life.  And I wondered how much was fated and how much would be different had I just paid more attention and stood up for myself more often.

I thought about this, because I wondered about the incredible creature who is my daughter, and what she will be like when she gets older and has to make increasingly difficult choices in her life.  Choices that will have material effects on the person she will become and the life she will lead.  This led me to saying out loud to myself "I hope she doesn't turn out like me".

The hardness of the truth in that whopper was matched only by its utter absurdity.  I then laughed at myself, because why on earth would I say such a thing?  More importantly, why would I believe such a thing?

The truth of it is, I do hope that my daughter doesn't turn out like me.  I don't want her held in thrall to a sometimes crippling lack of self-confidence, or gripped by the sudden bouts of social awkwardness that occasionally sink their claws in to me.  I hope she doesn't fail at standing up for herself, as much as I have on some occasions in the past.

I don't want her to be steamrolled by doubt.

I know by objective measures my life and the way I live it isn't so bad.  My sense of self is in much better shape than it has been in a long time.  I hope I am being successful at showing my daughter how to be strong, how to be balanced in life.  I can't say I'm perfect, but I do hope I'm good.

That way, maybe my daughter will grow up to be better than me.  I have all confidence in her...but it's me that still has things to learn, too.

Living In The Synapse

An odd phenomenon here on the People's Republic of Gumbolia.  I had approached the computer with vigor and purpose, certain I had a gem of story to tell, and when I sat down to write it, it disappeared.  This pleases me not.  I felt no need to reach for a notebook, because I was convinced the story would make it to the page.

I was wrong.  I should have known better.

This happens to me on a regular basis, that I have a great idea, only to have it vanish.  Well, who knows if it was great, if I can't write it down for all to see.  Not to worry, I suppose.  It's Saturday, the weekend is in full swing.  Perhaps I'll live a little...then come back to tell the tale.

Falling Water

September 5th, 2011, 7:01 p.m.

Rain falling from the sky as I arrive home with full belly and half-empty heart.  The sky was pewter-white, the drops pregnantly silver.  They fell soft in an aqueous sibilance that I've yet to decide reminds me of the sound of frying bacon or a crowd of people whispering all at once.

I looked up once to gauge the heaviness of the clouds.  A fat drop on my glasses caused me to flinch a little.  I hurried down my front steps to enter the house.  My first thought was that I wanted to sit at my little table on the porch, and listen to the rain.

The crickets and birds were striking up the band.  In the tree just in front I could hear something rustling around and squawking.  At me or the cats across the street, I don't know.  There are enough trees and shrubs near my house that being outside in the evenings the acoustics almost sound like being in the woods.  I enjoy that timbre, that pitch.  I often fantasize that I have my own little writing studio, surrounded by or near to a substantial grove of trees.  There are two windows I can open, right in front of my desk, and the sound and the breeze please me when I write.

In my fantasy, of course.  For now, I make do with a console in my dining room and the occasional stint in the wire mesh chairs at the slate tile covered table on the porch.  It is my hope that it will not be that way for much longer, that someday my computer and my notebooks and my pens will have a permanent eyrie in which to nest.  Portability has its charms, but I crave that special place for them to rest.  To know that I won't essentially be restarting every time I sit down to write.

I must rephrase.  This wasn't intended to be quite so much about writing.  Wait...a cicada is chirruping loudly, and it has distracted me.  Ah.  There.  It has stopped.

No, this wasn't supposed to be so much about writing.  It was supposed to be about the profundity of rainfall, the knowledge and calm to be found in listening to its journey to the earth.  It is a sound I had forgotten on my way to becoming a man in his 40's, sitting in a chair and trying to make sense of the clamor in his head.  It is a sound I heard in my youth, but didn't listen to when I should.

The rain falls now, my head and my heart sit up and take notice.  Rain, silver from blue into green, giving gloss and depth to the world.  This is what rain does: it has spoken the secrets in my heart.  I do not bemoan that I cannot fall from the sky to do the same; instead, I fall into the page, seeking gloss and depth, and secrets.

Sunday Meditation #5: On Unfathomable Violence

It crept up on me, this tenth anniversary of the day that changed the world.  Ten years gone since the twin towers fell, and we all felt as if we would never be safe again.  I made no plans to commemorate the events, as even memorials however well-intentioned will always carry the taint of the things that made memorials necessary in the first place.  A lot has been said since September 11, 2001 and a lot of people have been hurt or killed in pursuit of trying to make things right.  All of this, the totality of the thread that binds together horrendous evil and spectacular good, saddens me.

I will not, cannot, let it rule my life. It will not do to forget what happened, of course, but I can no longer live my life under a cloud or in fear.  Such a state of affairs would be a repudiation of all that we claim to stand for, that the terrorists so misguidedly thought they could dissuade us from practicing: the freedom to pursue our lives navigated by the pole star of our conscience, free from tyranny and fear.

This thread has been spun by the hearts of humans, filled with good and evil, to create a fabric we cannot unravel.  This, because we are human beings.  But because I am a human being I will no longer spend this day wallowing in fear and sadness.  I hope that my morning of sipping tea and quiet meditation on the notion of being human serves as a rejection of evil and hate in the world.  Because I no longer hate the terrorists.  I do not subscribe, and never will subscribe, to their warped notions of what this world should be.  It is those ideas I would hate, if I could find the energy to continue hating.

I will not hate them, any longer, because hating them only validates their view of us.  But hate is what they brought.  Hate is the food they wished us to swallow. I, for one, have had my fill of hate.

I am a hungry man, to be sure, but it is love upon which I must feed.

In The Morning, I Carry Water; In The Evening, I Chop Wood

There is a peculiar silence in the mornings now that I don't turn on the radio when I'm making breakfast.  It is not a hermetic silence.  There are noises, the myriad ticks and whispers of an old house coming to life, with the birds awakening outside the windows.  In the corner of the cloister called the kitchen, the refrigerator hums its offices while I make tea.

The non-silent silence anchors me in the day.  Music is a love of mine, but lately it has begun to wear on my ears.  This is a sure sign I have been listening to it too much and I am in need of a break.  Hence the true silence of the radio I usually stream through my computer.

What else has this silence given me?  Mental breathing space.  A chance to ease slower into the day.  I believe I needed it long ago but stubbornness and a fear of the noise in my head kept me from the silence.  The change came abruptly, yet I cannot recall when I stopped turning on the radio.  It must have been sometime in the spring.  Spring, yes, that was it.  A season of change, with the growth of things coming on strong.

I feared the silence, beginning long ago, and was unaware that was the case.  Separation and divorce brought me face to face with it, sharply focused.  I even remember the event that caused me to recoil in a spasm of anxiety over the whole matter.  It was dinner, in the apartment I moved into when I moved out of the house two years ago.  It was the sound of my chewing that made me stop eating and place my hands on my stomach to calm the churning that threatened a reversal in the flow of things.

I had no desire to get ill on my own cooking, alone at the table.  But I could barely finish what I had made.

Two weeks ago, it seemed a reverse revelation when I sat down to my cereal, toast and egg that sunny summer morning.  I was in my bath robe.  A mug of fresh tea by my right hand, plate in the middle and book to the left.  I even managed to not check my email first thing, and was looking through the blinds to enjoy the soft gold of the morning sky.

My chewing and slurping seemed as loud as ever within the confines of my skull.  I didn't run from it.  Rather, I found myself meditating on it.  It seemed familiar, an old hand, boon companion at the breakfast board...and I felt no anxiety, no sense of loneliness to have enough silence to hear my corporeal self going about the business of living.  It felt good to be there, in the morning, having breakfast.  Just me, the book and the silence.

In the mornings, now I carry water.  In the evenings, I chop wood.  Those are the good days, and I am living more of them here in the monastery of my Self.

I'll Not Be A Pr*ck

September 2, 2011 - Mind akimbo.

Mind wandering, careening back and forth across the pavement like a wheel that fell off a bus.  All because I was directed to do something that would have made me seem like a prick.

What I was directed to do was not illegal, immoral or unethical.  It did not go against the tenets of my profession.  It was nothing major, but just the same...it would have made me seem like a prick.  All because someone else was acting like one, but was "too busy" to do the thing itself.  I was acting on earlier directions, following instructions and exercising my professional discretion to get things done.  When I relayed the news that the information we sought would probably not be available in time to get it into the project, I was directed to give an ultimatum to the person providing the information: get it to us by X, or have your name removed from consideration.

An ultimatum given for no other reason than it could be, flexing muscles for the sake of flexing.  I asked if that was really necessary, given that the issue in question would not delay the project, could easily be added after it went out (when it was apparent that other, bigger things will have to be added), and was it worth it?

I was rewarded with spite, pissiness and dismissal.  I was told "never mind, I'll do it myself".

On a late afternoon in September, I was directed to do something unnecessary, that would have made me look like a prick.  All in the service to another's apparent insecurities.

I didn't do it.  I'll not be a prick as a surrogate for someone else.  Never again.

Sunday Meditation #3: Everything I Want Is Obsolete

In the fading nickel-silver light of a Saturday afternoon, I saw a herd of deer cropping the grass down on the flood plain of a small river.  I do not know how many there were, my guess is at least ten.  I was driving past them, and the road was some tens of feet higher than the flat ground upon which they stood.  The ground itself was behind a house just ahead, tucked into one corner of the T- intersection of the road.  I gasped in delight.  I would have liked to stop and take their picture, but I was driving to dinner and I needed to devote my attention to the road.

Still, the image stayed with me throughout the meal.  I wondered what kind of picture I would have been able to take.  The camera that was with me, a Nikon EM, has become my favorite new road trip companion.  I had it loaded with black and white film, a medium I have come to enjoy quite much.  The pictures it takes aren't perfect, but they are lovely and they comfort me.

It was the deer and the light and the camera that led me to ruminate on the things that bring me peace, that make me understand the joy in this life.  Nature, photography, thinking, writing...all pursuits that anchor and exhilarate me.  These are the things that bring me peace.  I find myself recharged after walking in the woods, or by a lake, or even just somewhere among green, growing things.  The sight of deer makes me happy; the sight of construction cranes and chewed-up landscapes leave me uneasy and sometimes sad.

Nature seems to get short shrift these days.  It isn't sexy enough, it doesn't have enough volume or makeup.  The only time people seem to care about it is when it gets in the way of building something or it unleashes violence upon civilization.  Nature in an old-fashioned sense, seems to be getting obsolete.

Increasingly I find myself drawn to old-fashioned Nature as a restorative.  I feel the same about photography and writing.  But not just any writing.  As much as the computer facilitates getting these thoughts out of my head, I still get a lot of juice out of dragging pen across paper.   Letters, notes, thoughts...some days I wonder if I had been a professional scribe in a past life.  But pen and paper, they too, seem to be getting obsolete.  This to me is a saddening turn of events.

Photography, well, is another creature altogether.  I credit the purchase of a digital camera nearly two years ago with reawakening my interest in the art form.  I finally found a way to get to the core of issue, the output, so much faster than before.  This was revelatory, and led me to a sustained burst of picture taking, the echoes of which have yet to fade.  But, still, something was coming up short.

It amused me to discover that while I enjoyed the immediacy and the clarity of digital photography, it was the slow pace and fuzziness of film photography that had a grip on my imagination.  I think this goes back to the root inspiration of this post.  I discovered that I need the slower pace, the contemplative turn of the mind, the measured consideration of the act and the output to truly feel at peace in this world.  This leads me to walks in the woods, quiet conversations founded in love, the cameras that take film, and the page with watermarks that come clear when held to the light.  Soon, I will purchase a fountain pen, probably with an honest-to-god brass nib and filled with ink out of a little glass jar.  These are the things I want.

And the things I want seem to be obsolete, with the possible exception of love.  I see the deer, chase the light knowing full well I may be pursuing an archaic notion of beauty.  But I continue to hold out the hope that love, in the quiet bloom of sustaining the soul, will never be obsolete.  If it does, then I too will be obsolete.  Stubbornly, uselessly, beautiful obsolete, perhaps, but still believing in love and beauty that can be enjoyed without having to be possessed.

Sonic Truth

If you ever want to know the truth about life, the universe or simply what is in your heart, take heed of the sounds all around you.  Shut your mouth, open your ears and listen.

I have heard the truth, my friends, oh yes I have.  The swish of wipers on a windshield and the sizzle of tires on rain-slick pavement.  A train horn in the cool of the night has shouted gospel to me across the river, this I know, because I have heard it, heard it speak.  I have heard it in that pause in the music when switching from station to another.  I have heard it the music itself, fast or slow, loud or soft.

Truth has whispered to me.

The truth, ladies and gentlemen, has been delivered in the buzz and tweet of the lawnmower and weed eater.  Maybe sometimes not what I want to hear, but consider this: pushing and toting those machines means that I can walk, freely, and the sound means I have ears to hear.

Small wonders, you know.  Ordinary miracles we should be grateful to witness.

The truth is definitely out there, as the X-Files would have us believe.  And it is.  The wind has ruffled the leaves outside my window; it has sighed around the eaves of my house.  This is truth, loud and clear.

It will be Monday when your eyes fall upon this page.  Mondays, for many of us, bring their own truth, that many of us have a hard time swallowing.  It is Monday and that which has us by the short and curlies pushes us out of the sanctuary of our homes and back into Real Life.  Be that as it may, I ask you to wrap your head around this:

Mondays sometimes get me. Life sometimes gets me, by the throat.  This I know.  But...I have heard the truth and have wrapped my heart around it.  The truth...

I have heard it from my daughter, dear ones, in her laughter pure and strong like a brace of silver bells.  

It makes me stronger than the beast. I hope it can do the same for you.