Sipping Tea

News breaks the windows while living in a water world. Glaciers made of tears melt in the heat of hatred and violence, spewing runoff into a sea growing increasingly bitter. Walls rattled by wind still manage to keep out the chill that clings to the air. But they are working hard, groaning with the strain. The walls will hold. It is in their nature.

Keeping the windows clear is not imperative, simply desirable. A worthy expenditure of energy in a season possessed of insatiable hunger for it. In this manner weary eyes can monitor the swell and breakers. Heavy seas pound the shore but rogue waves will not take the cottage by surprise. The iron green water roils and tumbles, polishing the stones mingled with the sand. In this there is comfort. The stones murmur in concert with the water. Listening carefully cheers the soul, in spite of light being hard to hear.

The hearth smolders, crouching cat-like at the end of the room. Eyes of embers and paws of flickering yellow. Hot breath caresses the kettle. It howls in response. The body, mind, and heart know what to do. Pour the water, steep the tea. Meditate while the ancient magic coils its way into the mug. The outside scratches and claws at the door, but cannot break the hold of hands on the mug. Sip. Watch the sea and sky. Peace will find a way into the heart.

Setting Stones

The singular coldness of basalt, agleam with the residue of maritime fog, seeps into fingers stiff from work and winter air. The greyness itself seems to transfer to the flesh as if the rock itself is exacting a toll for having been quarried for use by the hands that dared disturb the earth. Fair exchange, perhaps. There is no escaping that in the material world creation incurs disruption, if not outright destruction. We do well to acknowledge that condition through respect for the resources consumed and environments affected. Our destiny is to sleep in the beds we make, and our descendants should not look upon our legacies with disappointment and disdain. They should know we laid the stones with respect for the past and for stewardship of the future.

The head and the heart began collecting stones long before the hands. This last day of the year I sit on a small boulder, chin resting on palms, meditating on coming days of slow and steady work. Even through scuffed leather the skin of the fingers has picked up a faint aroma of iodine and minerals. That scent itself a legacy of the sea just yards away, exhaling its spirit over the beach grass and stones. The cottage itself has been banked with samphire and laver around the base. An old tradition that still has its use even if only to comfort the mind with thoughts of stopping the wind. The waves whisper up the strand. Reaching out, I pick a stone and kneel to the new foundation.

This is what happens when the mind is given pause by deep shadows and short days. Human perception and language creates this border, this separation, this arbitrary terminus est at which the old gives way to the new. Things turn with the year. The hands grip stones, the weights of which inform the heart of desires and directions to feed and nurture through the passage of winter. Our foundations start here, setting stones on the last day of the year.

Stonemason Blues

On the shore of a personal ocean, black stones of the past clutched in hands scraped raw. The palms ache. The back, the legs, tremble to support all the weight. Gravity fills the bones, pouring from a heart overflowing from the rains of memory. Saltwater washes over bare feet sinking into the sand from the current. The stones are heavy. Heavier than physics would seem to allow. Dark matter denser than blood and iron carried so far, so far.

A journey of decades led to stumbling down this path ending on the strand. Years of confused struggle against things rarely understood crystallizing in a vitreous, drawn out slice of infinity. Time gels and breathing slows. Tears may well but do not fall. Life thickens. Ghosts whisper in the back of the head. They win, sometimes, in their efforts to coerce the mind into believing it will never be whole. They speak occasionally of hearts forever sundered. Deep in a cold night of the soul, victory against such slanderous propaganda seems unattainable. Why would it not? Belief and stamina once led a verdant existence in the valley of the soul. Now there is desert.

Drought happens in life. Rivers shift in their channels, rain ceases to fall, clouds become precious memory. To be human is to know a sere existence upon enduring loneliness as a rule rather than an exception. In the mirror maze of the heart there is no mystery to this loneliness. It is in the world, like gravity.

What is the seeker to do? The soul cannot sustain this constant cycle of wandering and returning with nothing but stones of experience. To build a shelter from them would be to take up residence in longing and bitterness. Terrible feng shui to be sure. The advantage to such housebuilding is that at least the shelter would be a known quantity. No guesswork, no fevered wondering at where one would lay one's head to get out of the weather.

The waves continue their liquid caress of the shore. Listening closely to their sibilance arising from sheets of water gliding over sand the heart may hear voices, offering encouragement or warning is difficult to ascertain. On the beach for miles in each direction no one is visible. No one to turn to, except perhaps figures in the mist whose advice may be as ephemeral as their presence. The questions to be answered, of course, are of what to do with these stones. Throw them in the ocean to let the tides carry them away and out of memory? Or find a green, quiet place to lay them down as a foundation of experience upon which to build a new life?

The head and the heart debate these questions at the edge the world, watching the tide recede.  They will have their answer soon, turning over and over the stones in the hands.

Punchout

Kerchunk. With that sound my belly dropped to my feet. A few years gone, just like that. A new hole in the identity of my life.

The clerk drops the hole punch on the scruffy laminate counter between us. It lands with a bang, making us both jump. Louder than seemed possible, overheard over the PA system announcements and background chatter of the crowded licensing service area. She apologizes, chuckling nervously as she arranges my paperwork. I assure her it is no big deal, happens sometimes, right?

What I don't say is that maybe now I don't mind the most recent chapter of my life going out with a bang. Much better than a whimper. Certainly a tenfold improvement on the chunking sound the punch made as it bullied its way through my old license.

She hands over to me a thin sheaf of paperwork. On top of the sheaf is the license. There is a hole, oval-shaped, near the top of the dull plastic card. The hole is off center. Fitting, it seems. Not that the hole in the license is of consequence. Not now. Not ever, unless I was dumb enough to use it again for any purpose where it would be scrutinized. So never. I am many things. Dumb is not one of them.

The clerk tells me in a voice unexpectedly cheerful for the DMV that I am all set. Everything proper, signed off, good to go. She points out the temporary license. My very own register receipt verifying my fitness to drive in my new state. I can expect the official validation of my existence to arrive in the mail in about ten business days. Wonderful. "How ever will I survive ten days of marginal personhood?" the snarky question asked in my head.

"Easy answer," says the shadow in the back of my head, "in the manner you survived months of marginality before pulling the reverse Oregon Trail maneuver that brought you here. Numb patience and the art of non-thinking."

No comfort to be found in that pronouncement. I step through the doorway of  out into the bright, hot, muggy day. The humidity makes me breathe harder its so thick. I walk slow back to the car. The old license is in my left hand. I flip it back and forth between my fingers, a clumsy card shark maneuver. The license seems heavier. I have no idea what I will do with it. Unusable, unnecessary, undesired. Descriptions not lost on my weary soul and battered ego.

Bruisingly hot air spills out of the car upon opening the door. A veritable pizza oven on wheels. I wait momentarily to let the hot rush subside. No hurry. No place to go that requires my presence. Not yet, anyway. Standing in the searing light I'm staring at the empty car. No one in it except a passenger seat full of memories. The rest hot and empty.

Empty. Null. Void.

I glance at the license again. The punchout is a sharp relief shadow against my palm. Lao Tzu whispers in my ear sweet nothings about nothing. 

"Moulding clay into a vessel, we find utility in its hollowness." 

Sweat rolls down my face, stinging my eyes. Or so I tell myself. Maybe it is the pain in my heart causing the eyes to water.

"Cutting doors and windows for a house, we find the utility in its empty space."

My heart is a shell, but it exists. Like the clay vessel, it is hollow. As with that vessel, it is the void within that will ultimately grant fullness.

"Therefore the being of things is profitable, the non-being of things is serviceable."

Actinic light on a cerulean day illuminates the chunk of sky collapsing on my head. Words of a dead Chinese philosopher advise me to look deep within the emptiness of my heart to find a way back to life. 

License as talisman. The hole in this plastic locket a reminder to embrace the void within, and without. I get in the car and drive off to home, relief flooding my system. "It is useful. My heart is useful. It will be filled." The words are loud in the cabin of the car.

The license rests serene in my shirt pocket. My heart is serene inside my chest. Patience, and it will be filled.

---

Quotes in italics are from Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, Commercial Press Edition, Shanghai, 1929.

Bullet and Target

A little something I rediscovered while editing my field notes. A curiosity for your edification and rumination. Not sure about the delight.

BULLET AND TARGET

The heart stares down

a blue steel barrel

Gleam of hollow tips

Tracking the beating core

lonely chamber now empty

Echoes of the bang

claw at the sides

before the mind

pulls the trigger

The heart stares down

the barrel of the gun

firing from a mouth

once sacred, holy,

vivifying and precious

Now targeting, tracking

flechette rounds of words

ripping air asunder

to lodge in the soul

Broken Compass

Sunrise on the headland and on the last day of the year. The storm of the last few days had broken up, rosy beams of light chasing off a few straggling clouds. Breakfast and a wee dram had not quite chased off the clouds in my head. The comfort I had drawn from my overnight scribblings had evaporated when the first rays spilled through the windows to illuminate the evidence left behind, in the the form of the salt-stained, slightly ragged notebook atop the desk under the sill. The words pulsate as I sit contemplating what I had done.

There comes a time in a man's life where it finally penetrates his skull that he has to straighten up and fly right. For Evan Whittaker, now was not that time. Not yet.

The cold had barely time to seep through Evan's coat before the snow began its slow descent into the corn stubble in which he lay. A sparse 'V' of geese, late in their travels, parsed the icy air overhead. Evan breathed out watching the birds waver and shimmer in the plume of mist. Fat flakes, pale and gravid, dotted the sky. He blinked, a torpid lizard gaze blotted by tiny crystal knives. Nearly numb cheeks registered their stings as the flakes landed upon his face. 

Evan's eyes twitched and tracked a thousand frozen messengers bearing voices on the wind. Hand in coat pocket, he clutched the bottle tighter, whispering to the snow. 

"Which ones are you, darlings? Which ones are you?" 

Being in the center of things, center of the "goddamn greatest country in the world!" as Uncle Leo used to say after a few shots of rye, had done little for Evan. He had struggled with what to make of it for so long the conflict seemed an extension of his body. The discomfort of such a tight skin had led him to seek solace in the spirit world, but it wasn't ghosts that made it numb. 

He needed to put some daylight between his belly and the bottle. He needed to sleep for a century. Drowsiness fueled by liquor was kicking in. Turning his head to get more comfortable, he did not notice when the barrel of the shotgun he had carried began to freeze to his cheek. 

Sitting back and staring at the ocean does not bring its usual clarity. The waves were calming down, but evidence of yesterday's turmoil was still there in the sporadic violence of the breakers on the strand. I could divine no prophecy in the spray, nothing in the light upon the curls, that illuminated wisdom into what I had written. Such melancholic thoughts put me in mind of a carving I had found weeks ago, washed up after a night of heavy surf.

The carving resembled to my eyes a person, man or woman I could not discern. The figure was worn down but enough detail remained to see eyes, a nubbin of nose, and a mouth. Its hands were holding its its cheeks. The mouth, gaping and distorted, could have been open in a scream or shout. The bulging eyes seemed to reinforce the idea of great stress or terror.

The day of discovery I sat on the beach and studied the figure for what seemed hours. I wondered whose hands had carved it. I wondered what they felt, and how intense it must have been to move them to create this amulet or token. They must have felt something, that much was clear from the expression on the face carved into the stone. What they felt was not so clear. Hope or despair? Heartbreak or love? Happiness or anguish? There was no true telling. 

My eyes chased the gulls skimming over the waves. The fire on the hearth burned down slow. On this last day of the year I ponder the words before me to wonder if I can ever truly know what drives me to put them on the page. There is no easy answer, only time.

Last Known Sighting

Over the many winters of his life, the mapmaker Bradán could not recall vellum as old as that which lay before him. Rougher than the newer leaves, but thick and sturdy. The tiktiktik of dividers scratching upon its surface a metronome to his thoughts, struggling mightily to contain them. He laid down the worn brass instrument to pinch the bridge of his nose with ink-darkened fingers. The momentary relief of pressure gave pause for him to consider just what were his thoughts.

Looking out the window to the sea, his mind turned to the days of youth spent fishing along the shore. Bluefish and striped bass were the prizes, he recalled. But it was the silversides and menhaden the prizes chased. His thoughts, Bradán concluded, were silversides thrashing their way through the shallows in a frantic attempt to escape the maws behind them. Silver sparks jetting through a fuliginous night in which they will not be caught until exhausted and bereft of juice.

The sea rolled on, breakers of teal and jade painting the sand to dissolve into foam. Bradán turned his attention back to his drawing table. The parchment lay stretched out before him. It was incomplete, inescapable. Most of the mapmaker's work began with a photograph, sometimes more than one. Photographs gave the mapmaker the fixed point he required to set an axis for the world, a maypole about which his imaginings danced in the light of the sun. As it would appear to a casual visitor to the shop, this project was no different.

Bradán knew otherwise. Photographs carry with them invisible burdens, transparent gravities known only to the select few who had anything to do with the making of the picture. The lines he had set down on vellum only hinted at the density of their genesis, a slightly grainy black-and-white image perched on a tiny easel at the head of the table. The photograph curved space and time. He marveled that it did not crash through the desk under the weight of subject.

The subject gave him pause. He looked closely at the intersections, the circles, the tangents he placed so far. No matter how thick the lines to his eye they seemed feeble in light of that which they sought to locate. Too thick and they would blot out the page. Too thin and the heart would not be able to trace them back to the source. It was a conundrum Bradán faced often in his work. Decades of experience, drawing arcs and origin points, had endowed him with a near supernatural ability to parse lines and weights. Pilgrims made their way to his door based on his reputation to locate the lost or undiscovered.

A different day, a different problem. He knew this. Never before had he encountered such a riddle, a temporal-spatial quandary of such depth and intensity. He had heard of such things. More than one tale of complexities had he heard from the two masters responsible for bringing him into the brotherhood of De Animabus Cartographers, mapmakers of the souls. Master Gerrit had been old when the mapmaker entered his care as a youth, and had related twice the creation of maps so difficult they had whitened the beard upon his face. When Gerrit died, Master Kwan took over. Kwan was younger, inclined to impatience and silence. But even he held the marks on him of a map so harrowing it was a wonder the master had survived.

Bradán leaned back in his chair. He adjusted the wooden blind at the window to allow more light to stream across the table. The map was beginning to take form, but what? Where was it going? He feared it might be his encounter with myth, the infernal Map of the Night used to frighten weak-minded and superstitious mapmakers in training. Bradán had never known what to make of such tales, but he could tell his masters had heard the same things in their apprentice days. He was not sure that they did not believe the stories themselves. Unknowns were very much part and parcel of their existence.

He hefted a compass while absentmindedly twirling the adjustment wheel. His instincts knew when to stop. Abruptly he leaned in over the parchment to place a series of overlapping circles. Five in number, some tangents included, he felt the rightness of placement and the anxiety engendered by the maddening occlusion that sometimes befell his inner sight. His hand reached out for a parallel rule and a old nickel-silver quill pen. Lines flowed onto the vellum, deft and true. Gone were the ink smears of his journeyman days, the wavering lines, the skips. Bradán slipped into the trance so familiar and necessary to his work.

The map fleshed itself out. Hours passed. The north light changed subtly, something he only noticed when he paused long enough to sip uisce beatha carefully from a stoneware cup. His late lunch consisted of smoked herring and brown bread studded with currants. He barely noticed the smoky sting of whiskey and the sweetness of the fruit. He sensed the map was nearing completion. Perhaps by nightfall he could lay down his instruments.

The sea and the sky had other ideas. While he had been slaving away over the map, a storm had moved in. Wind whipped the sea into a bedlam of froth in violent parley with the sky as to who would dominate the shore. Gale force winds pounded the stone walls of the cottage, rattling the windows with threats to smash the glass. Bradán awoke from his trance to hurriedly close the shutters all around. The gloom prompted him to light up the four hurricane lamps he possessed, bulbous brass bellies cast in the shape of pineapples topped with seeded glass chimneys. Rain fell hard as liquid cannonballs hitting the roof. Bradán made his way back to the desk.

Standing before the desk in the pale gold light of the lamps, the truth of the matter became clear to the mapmaker. The map was huge as these maps went. It covered nearly the entire surface of the desk. Rich golds, blues, and crimsons held their own against the deep black boundary lines, the points, the listing planes. Beautiful, he thought, but incomplete. A chill settled into the pit of his belly as the knowledge of what the map lacked sank in. Chill turned to fear that it was possible this map would never be complete. It might never lead its patrons to what they sought, and it would be Bradán's burden to bear.

He stood still as the tempest ravaged the cottage. Staring at the map, he realized the answer might be found through a deeper look into the photograph that inspired it. He reached up to bring picture closer to the light and his tired eyes. Cool fingers entwined themselves around his heart. The pressure brought wetness to his eyes that blurred the photo further. He choked on a plug of grief.

The child in the picture was a mere infant, a girl-child swaddled in a patterned blanket that proclaimed her lineage to the world. She lay in a reed basket, the handle of which was partly visible in the upper left of the photo. The hand of the mother could be seen in part gripping the twisted stands of wicker. The girl's head was turned away, her profile in semi-sharp relief in the light of day. On her head was a few wisps of hair visible as little tufts. Bradán thought she looked like one of the sparrows that flitted amongst the hedges flanking his cottage.

A sparrow she may have been he thought, one of the little fallen ones spoken of by Matthew in his Gospel. Bradán found himself reciting the passage, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will," the words sounding harsh like wet rust in the chill of the cottage air. His voice nearly failed him towards the end of the passage, throat closing on grief and helplessness.

The girl had passed suddenly, no warning. Her parents had laid her down to sleep in that basket while they tended to some chores around their own little cottage. The scent of buttermilk had been heavy on the mother's hands as she had tearfully, tenderly given the photograph to Bradán. The parents implored him to make his map, to find her soul. The burden of ignorance imposed by the Universe on her passing was excruciating for them to bear. The photograph was the only relic they possessed.

The truth as he knew it was that he did not know if he could finish the map. He did not know if the lines, the inks, and the precision of his man-made instruments could ever truly know what God knows. Bradán did not have to power to track every little sparrow fallen, an imperfect being charged with comforting those reeling from loss. The photograph was the last known sighting of their precious vessel, and he would chart a path to the soul of that sparrow, or lose himself in the process.

Bradán took up the dividers and a pen, cool metal heavier than they looked. The storm raged on while he hunched over the vellum. Somewhere over the water he find her. The map would be complete or he would dissolve into it. His hands moved, the ink soaked in. Dawn was hours away.

Tide and Wrack

Things have been quiet here on the headland. Panes have rattled little in their frames, mostly. There are those who work hard to convince me that this particular silence is a good thing. I reckon it is. Mostly.

Beyond those very windows the sea acts in its honesty, trying hard to give meat to the bones of this silence. But the evidence lies before me in the mid-spring sun. The sea, with muted voice, is as restless as ever. Waves. Waves. The eternity of their susurrus upon the strand drives my dreams and washes over my heart. 

The sea is made for a life of constant motion. My heart and head know this and savor the delicious incongruity that they both are not. The heart beats and the head thinks but stillness is their natural state. An excess of motion works everything hard. The picture slips from the frame, the body slips from the soul, and edges blur. I do not suffer blurriness gladly. 

Ah, blurriness. The soft error. A misstep of intention and execution. Or statement of fact. I wrote of stillness as a natural state for my heart and head. It should have been written as a "desired" state. The waves question and point out my folly. It has been ages since I have felt true stillness. On the bad days, stillness seems mythic, like Valhalla or Shangri-La.

Thus the sea haunts me, nurtures me. Shades of jade and iron coruscating before my eyes. Can the sea be gentle? Today the answer is yes. Low tide and high wrack, the leavings of recent storms mirroring the debris scattered across my desk. Jetsam of a recent excursion writ in receipts for dinners, a movie ticket stub, credit card slip printed with the names of books purchased on impulse (one for me, one for her, and they made me happy, yes?). The bits of paper strewn about in an effort to lighten the load upon my memory.

The sea can be gentle, but it can never be still. Even in the doldrums you see it: the surface warps and quivers in response to things unheard, things unseen. Waves know this from the ripple to the breaker. I ponder that thought as an image bubbles up from the depths of my childhood.

Summer light streams across my neck and back. My skin prickles with heat and sweat. I lay prone on a concrete culvert pipe, lazily watching brackish water flow north with barely perceptible motion into the marshy terrain leading to the river. The tide is nearly out, soon to turn in obeisance to ancient imperatives. The water here is not deep but it is nearly opaque. Its opacity stokes both curiosity and anxiety. I feed neither beast.

As I lay there, a few inches away the water ceases moving briefly. Curdling, turning, a sheen of oil becomes a miniature pinwheel turning around the spot upon which I focused. The surface moves again, but nothing arises from below, and the viscous mirror returns to its serene repose. This mirror does not reflect its serenity onto me. I am nervous, I am tense, wondering what it could have been that disturbed the water so. Despite the brass lantern of the sun I shiver. I recognize at once a fear that will carry over into adulthood, the full import of which will not hit until years down the road from that summer day at the culvert. The jolt pushes me to my feet. I stare at the water for a few moments, then turn away and begin to run back home. I say nothing to my parents of my fear when they ask me where I had been.

I fear that which I cannot see. I need that which I cannot see. If the sea has taught me anything it is that this peculiar duality is integral to the conduct of my head and heart. 

The papers and receipts have turned gold in the deepening afternoon sunlight. With a start I realize I have been daydreaming for quite some time. The sea has crept up the beach with the turning of the tide.

The memory of that creek side revelation begins to fade and is replaced with another notion, slow to form but recognizable as having to do with love. Life is the sea. Love is the thing in its depths, the whale's fluke that makes the water curl around you yet never presents itself to your eyes. Thrashing about in the turbulence is a natural reaction to the unknown. The head fears it, the heart needs it, but blessed are those who find it.

Sunday Meditation #42: Sketchy

Christ, I don't reckon I know what has gotten in to me. Springtime on the headland is usually a time of joy, even for a a child of the fall such as I am. The sea looks different, feels different, even smells different. Maybe it is life blooming a bit in the shallows and the depths, stirred up by the rolling of the waves. This spring, I am different.

More restless than usual. Head full of ideas that never make it past the daydream stage. The slush of thoughts not making it to the ice of clarity. The proof is in the scratch papers, notepads and detritus piled up on my desk. They form a dune banking up to the windowsill. The paper rolls and bleeds into the dunes. It is a curious thing to have a sandbank comprised of the ideas illuminated in ink that ultimately is wasted. The scribe in me feels shame at the thought.

There is no avoiding it. Truth in front of me. The very notepad under my right hand bears little in the way of words and much in the way of idle sketches. Sketches of what, some may ask. I cannot say other than describe them as architectonic, formal follies. Mostly they depict variations on cubic volumes, shaded with crosshatches. Towers? Obelisks? Cenotaphs?

That last idea makes me chuckle. Cenotaph is fitting. Little monuments erected in honor of ideas buried elsewhere in my mind, or somewhere in the cottage around me. The sea, even! The sea. It waits there beyond my windows. Jade swells reflecting an unquiet mind. My hands stop shaking long enough for my attention to be drawn to the sky. A mottling of pewter clouds rolls in. Beneath them I can see the gauzy stain of rainfall. Spring has been wet here so far. Much has been washed away under its maulings and caresses. This I know.

The cottage fills with that special light of overcast as raindrops spatter and hiss on the glass panes. It comforts me in a way that sunlight and blue sky do not. My hand continues to sketch. I am building something. No, I am searching for something that I have lost the words for but my heart seems to know from someone I once was decades ago now. I recognize some of the drawings from my adolescent years, the younger me sketching out abstracts in blue and red and black. Somewhat confused by what they could mean, not knowing how to quit drawing.

The paper fills with fragments of someone I used to know. I can see him there. The rain falls harder, and weariness floods my gut and head. I watch the drops fall into the sea where perhaps they trouble it just a moment. But the ripples vanish as the sea rolls on. I take that as a lesson for my heart, rippled and anxious, but rolling on.

Ruins of the Temple

February is the honest month. The ego laid bare like the trees, all leaves finally gone through the insensate malevolence of icy wind and sheer cold. Winter is not through with us, not yet. February brings us to our knees where we implore it for mercy.

Even the sun meddles in the affairs of the heart, its white-gold rays teasing this troubled organ with warmth that never quite reaches the bones. We persist in our fantasies of life. The groundhog becomes Delphic. We do not believe in its prognostications, yet groan when the shadow lays upon the frozen earth.

On a Sunday of no particular note, it is my freezing shoes that trouble the snow and dirt. I stand alone with my thoughts before the stones of memory. The wind skirls amongst branches scratching at the sky. A sky so blue as to break the heart, empty, cold. It is the blue I imagine would have been the color of my children's eyes, had I been so lucky as to seen them open.
I meditate upon the idea that in deep winter we become the trees outside our walls. Frozen, sluggish, bereft of the leaves that allow the sun to nourish our starved and hollow bodies. Hard funeral ground grants me no succor. The cold of it seeps through the soles of my shoes while the granular snow crackles and squeaks as I shift my footing. My roots are paralyzed, asleep. There will be no growth until spring.

Crows caw out raucously from the trees scattered around the cemetery. Their metallic rasps and croaks is not laughter, I think, but perhaps conversation regarding the stranger in their midst. I find strange comfort in their company, the chatter reminds me it is the children I came to visit. Snow was dimpled softly over the memorials. Twelve years of memory overlaying scant inches of white blurring what I used to know, used to see. A brief debate ensued in my head as to the necessity of brushing their graves free of snow. I say debate, but it was foregone that I would do such a thing.

My heart needed to see. These children of mine deserve the sunlight. I reached down to begin, snow shockingly cold sending a brief lancet of pain arcing into stiffening knuckles. The metal beneath the snow was colder than lost love. Their names became exposed in a winter light, shiny like the melancholy of an arctic midnight. It is a stark beauty that I cherish. My fingers trace the letters and through the numbness I feel a warmth, an electricity cutting through and lighting up the pathways to my heart. I marvel at the strength of the foundations as I kneel in the ruins of the temple.

Magpie Tales 248: Raveling

Bond of Union, 1956, by M. C. Escher, via Magpie Tales

No one warned us our love would be covalent, 

sometimes corrosive, often explosive

burning bright twining around hearts

built for comfort not for speed

whirling so fast making time run backwards

mirrors held up to each other reflective

refractive actinic addictive as gold

spinning tendrils so fine the pain unnoticed

until the sun burned out and we in the dark

howling with sweet misery of the raveling

Magpie Tales 240: Dawes County Meditation

Photo by Tom Chambers via Tess at Magpie Tales

Wide open here in God's country

That means hearts as well as range

Loneliness not the sole province of cowboys

Rim of her world defined by stone

Scratching its defiance of the sky
She knew the legend of star-crossed love

Romeo and Juliet of a different hue

Whispers of their mad leap from the butte

But all she wanted was to escape

the barbed wire of her heart

Area 51

Last week I stood on the rim of a desert mountain valley, tanning myself in the ultraviolet radiance of a salt lake pan, the existence of which I had allowed myself the luxury of forgetting. This forgetting is either conceit or folly, I know not which for certain. Perhaps the surprise its discovery creates is a product of willfulness, slag and dross generated by a desire to avoid the unknown irrational roots that anchor a soul to the world.

Queries will be met with neither-confirm-nor-deny. Yes, it is there, people know it by its present absence. This is how I myself know it. Explanation is futile. How does the heart describe the strange machines seen at distance, the enigmatic materials moving under darkness, dissections of mythical extraterrestrials? Who would believe it? Who wants to try, for fear of being branded a flake at best?

I cannot answer in confidence. I look at the dry lake in my heart and marvel at its strangeness. My mouth strains towards words to vocalize what my inward eyes are seeing. My hands trace glyphs in the air and I interrogate myself in my sleep. The dreams. I want to understand why I dream what I dream. There is this underlying belief that my dreams would make sense if only my heart had the vocabulary to parse them.

It does not. Not yet, or perhaps more accurately, my mind does not yet understand the language being spoken. So I wander. No, damn it, not I, it is my mind that wanders. The trail it breaks veers from pampas to forest to lush jungles, yet is always taken aback by the sudden bursting into the arid flatness of a lake gone dry so long ago that the vanishing is lost from memory.

Yet, it is there. It is in the diamond core of my heart, like the grain of sand in the center of a pearl. It is good fortune to laminate life with the bright and the shiny. Mirrors and polish presented to the world in the hope that there will be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation by the world around us. By world, read those we love and humanity in general.

But that is the ideal. Too many strange things happen in this heart-that-is-and-is-not. Phenomena occur that I cannot explain to myself, much less to those around me. It becomes a race between what my heart shows to the world and what the world, in its information vacuum, makes up about my heart. Whispers behind hands, looks of concern or affectionate bemusement, irritated impatience: these are the usual currency of emotional trade when discussing my own personal theater of classified operations.

So last week, I stood once again on the shore of that dry lake bed, the one in my heart, and baked in the sun. Black machines moved in the shimmer, far away across the plain. I wondered if there might be aliens here. I pondered the existence of emotional programs so secret that even my own mind would be at a loss to explain why they are or what they do. Officially, this place doesn't exist.

Unofficially, it does. It is vital to my existence, even if there is no way to describe why. I do not ask questions of it as much as in the past, and that is a good thing, I think. The heart has to learn to accept its own terrain even if that spot on the map is marked 'Unknown', and trust the things that spring from it.

On the Cliff, By the Iron Sea

He usually only became aware of how long he had been running when the sun was high and the wind brisk off the water. His consciousness came into focus like a bubble popping, breath ragged between his lips. It was at those moments the runner would ask himself "How many years, Lord and Father, how many shall I carry you?"

The path led, as it seemed to always, along the edge of high cliffs. Green sod feathered itself out over hard lines of green-black basalt, the fractured planes of which slid sharp into the heaving sea. Slat spray and gulls engaged in a whirling dance of which the runner never tired. He looked forward to them when the sun would rise over the hills and plains after long nights of black and silver stars.

The cries of the gulls were as choirs to ears burned by wind and sun, years upon years of ceaseless motion with the relics upon his callused back. It had been so long since the stone cross in its thick ox-leather bag had been roped on to his back that he had no real memory of the occurence.

The sting of the whip across his calves he had never forgotten. The scars were still there, knurled ridges bulging from legs that resembled stones. The scars ached often, mostly at night when the runner entertained fantasies of walking, or heaven forbid, stopping to lay on the ground. He dreamed of it in his staggering sleep. The desire made him weep when it overtook him.

He cried less now. It attracted beasts in the night and made it difficult to breathe. Outrunning the one and overcoming the other were luxuries he could no longer afford. He grew terrified at the prospect of not making it to the mount, where he had been told he could lay down his burden forever. But the mount seemed no closer than the day his trial had begun.

He saw it now and then. Mostly in dreams. It was there shrouded in mist, far away along a curve in the coast. On this day, he saw it so clearly jutting up from a headland like a giant's fist. A fist that shook itself in his weary face.

"But why, Lord, does it grow no closer? I've run so long, endured so much, yet you offer no solace!" he yelped, wheezing. He was seized by a pang of regret soaked in fear, thinking he might be struck down for such impertinence. The cross in its leather sack hammered the knobs of his spine. He groaned and spat.

The wind continued its low moan over the grass. The sea mumbled and groaned on the rocks below. Neither offered comfort or counsel. The runner's feet continued their slow shambling run along the cliff. He did not hold his breath waiting for a sign.

The sun slid a few minutes of arc down the dome of the sky. The runner looked up as a passing shadow glissaded across his path, tracking over the shiny grime of his face. It was a gull, huge and gray, flying in a slow figure eight pattern just overhead. It seemed to be watching the runner. Its eyes luminous in the afternoon light remained fixed on him.

The runner grunted, shifted the weight of the leather bag so the straps would not dig in so deep. Off in the distance the mount was slowly fading into a mist rolling in off the ocean. The runner grunted, an idea taking shape in his head.

He watched the mist, waiting for it to swallow up the mount whole. His pace remained constant, but somehow he felt lighter on his feet. He felt the fear lifting from his belly and his heart. He raised his sunburned hands up to grasp the straps of the sack. Thumbs under the stiff rawhide, he waited still. The mount was nearly gone, only the tip showing up above the cloud bank. The runner allowed himself a faint smile.

The gull swooped lazily back and forth, eyes intent on the runner. The setting sun flashed on the tip of the mount, then it was gone, swathed in the thickening mist. The runner smiled openly. He lifted the sack off of his shoulders, veering closer to the edge of the cliff. Below he could see a cove where the water seemed deeply blue-green where it met the slick basalt knifing down in to it. Perhaps it was deeper there, he thought. 

The sack slid off his back, dangling by a strap in his hand. He ran faster, feeling lighter, and began to slowly whirl the sack in a windmill arc. Faster, faster, it spun, the sweat-stained leather looking like a giant heart in the blood light of the waning sun. The runner roared, a bell toll of pent-up anguish, and flung the sack over the cliff. He stopped, suddenly, almost falling over with dizziness after years of running.

The sack pinwheeled its way down to land with a subdued splash, sucked under by a huge wave that had come crashing out of the far sea. The gull shrieked and spiraled over the head of the runner, who hunched over panting with fear and relief. His legs trembled, as did his hands, but he had never felt so free as he did then.

The gull landed on the path some yard away in the direction of the mount. The runner turned to look. He saw that the mist was approaching them even now, dimming the sun and muffling the wind and sea. The mount was invisible.

The runner straightened up. He stretched, the lack of weight on his back novel but welcome. He waved to the gull, who then launched itself into the air with a squawk. It circled twice, then headed off into the mist towards the mount.

The runner grinned. He took the gull's flight as a sign, and began walking to follow the bird. Walking, he told himself. Walking. After all these years, he would walk to his meeting with Lord, and carry upon himself no burdens cast upon him by anyone but himself.

His heart began to slow. Peace was upon him, even as the sun slid below the edge of the sea.

 

Letting Them Slip

Of the things that get my goat these days, the conflict between art and duty is at the top of the list. I kvetch often when I cannot seem to find, or to make, the time to attend to the acts of creation that I claim I need to sustain myself. It would seem to be inconsistent with my goals. It makes me wonder when I truly am going to pull a carpe diem and satisfy my intention.

My peace of mind depends on it, don't you think? And if peace of mind is that important it would seem imperative to follow those notions and impulses that feed it. I had the chance today. Make that two chances. I failed to act on both, and now I am disappointed.

The chances were nothing earth-shattering. There was no flash of insight leading to the cure for cancer or ending world poverty. No, these chances were more humble, intrinsic to me and me alone. Well, unless you consider that the chances had potential for me to gather something to share with the extrinsic world.

I had an assignment wherein I had the opportunity to do something constructive with my camera and earn payment from the results. The assignment was in a semi-rural area somewhat south of my current abode. When I had left the house earlier, on impulse I put my film camera in the car, in case I saw something scenic or interesting out in the rolling fields and farms. So it wasn't like I didn't have any equipment.

The assignment took longer than I expected, and I was tired, hungry and hot when I finished. My thoughts turned to getting home and finishing the task. I was in a hurry, for what in hindsight turned out to be not so pressing reasons. So I get in the car and head home, thinking too much about what I needed to do.

I passed a concrete plant at an intersection of two roads and what seemed like four cornfields. The interplay of light and shadow on the industrial structures was fascinating. I thought about the black and white film I had, but shook my head and muttered to myself "No time, gotta get home." I kept driving.

Nearby and across the road the top of a slightly derelict silo peeped up above a deep cornfield. Next to it were some barn buildings, also in need of sprucing up. Peeling paint, an old tree, cornstalks waving in the foreground. The light was hitting it all just right. The mood was of opportunities fading away, hard work needing to be done, and the unsettling openness of the prairie sky above it.

Perfect photo op, right? Great shots to be had, yes?

I watched it recede in my rear view mirror. I didn't stop. The velvet shackles of duty, the sure thing, the chore to be done, all convinced me to keep going by laying on the old saw of "There will be other opportunities, move along." What really bothered me, the farther down the road I went, is that the creative soul in me raised hardly a peep. It just let it happen.

The question turning over in my mind and heart while I sped down the highway back to the "city", was one of "If not now, when?"

Indeed. Opportunities may exist, but to assume a guarantee is to take them for granted. The voice in my head told me to drive, to follow the call of duty. My artistic life is in danger of atrophy, all because sometimes I listen to the wrong voice.

Seventh Wave

She's not coming back, Marley. You know that, don't you?

Finn's words clove the air in the manner of a rusty jail door opening on greaseless hinges. Marley's fingers tightened on the chilly granite of the window sill. For the moment he ignored the remark, keeping his back to the man who was his best friend. He stared out the window, flaking steel mullions framing the iron-green ocean a short distance away. To his red and grit-ridden eyes the rectangle of glass appeared to be a small painting come to life, with miniature gulls swooping into tiny bursts of spray. A minute or two of silence, then Marley cleared his throat to speak.

I know that, Finn. You don't need to remind me. But it is my head what knows it, not my heart.

Marley had not turned to face Finn. His words bounced off the misty glass, shattering into needles that sped across the width of the small cottage to spike Finn where he stood. The Irishman winced, took off his cap and ran a scarred hand across his head. He briefly kneaded the nape of his neck, his hand dropping slack to his side. He leaned back against the whitewashed stone of the cottage wall, and waited. Marley spoke.

The ocean gave me much, my friend. Life. Blood. Ways to make a living. But it took a lot, too. Just before she came to me, I was thinking...

Marley's voice dropped off. His mouth hung open, working slowly. Fish out of water, Finn thought.

...I was thinking, that I didn't want to die but simply not living anymore would be just fine. Days like  that, a man is likely to believe in anything what makes him better. Even witches. Selkies. Them that you swear you see in the mist, those nights where sleep is a fraud and the sea is the only voice louder than the ones in your head.

She was there, Finn. I know it. She in this room, she shared my hearth, my bed. I...

Marley's throat tightened around the grief and longing welling up from the spring of his heart. Finn's eyes softened, and he made to speak, but thought of nothing he could say to fill the void in his friend. Marley's shoulders shook, his hands clawing at the sill in a death grip. Finn could see from across the room the knuckles going white. Marley's head dropped, and stains bloomed on the stone of the sill. A croaking whisper rising to a near shout skirled out from his throat, causing Finn to flinch

I know she's gone, Finn! The sea took her back, and left me here. Why, Finn? Can ya tell me that?

Marley turned to look at his friend. His eyes were wide and wet, reflecting the nacreous light seeping through the windows. Behind him, the surf walloped the rocks and sand, and Finn swore he could see waves deep in the pupils of the haggard man who swayed slightly across from him. Finn hesitated, then walked over to Marley. His steps rasped the silence, tearing it apart with a duet of sand and hobnails on the burnished planks of the floor. He put his hands gently on Marley's shoulders and slowly spun him to face the sea.

I don't know why, Marley. You said yourself the ocean gave you much, even if it did take much. Manannán has a wicked sense of humor, you'll agree. But take this to heart, friend. The sea did give her to you, and she gave you to yourself. Remember that and rejoice.

Marley turned his head, staring at Finn with watering eyes. He said nothing, only nodding, then turned his face back to stare at the waves. He thought he saw a face, but it smiled and closed it eyes, disappearing amongst the foam.

Electric Slumgullion

8:34 PM. Burning off the dross of the day, the sky is undecided. Rain is on the way, I think. But there is music.

Lately I have been looking in the mirror carefully, trying to see who might show up. Or what might show up. See, I've also been unable to shake off the notion that if I had a totem from the world of plants, it would be an onion. I stare into the silvered glass, watching the layers morph and ripple across my tired face.

To have my animal self replaced by a plant is deflating. It should not be, perhaps. We are all of us made of many things, and not all of them mammalian. The identity drawn therefrom can serve as a wellspring of strength, courage, energy. In my case, I fancied my animal self to be Panthera onca, the jaguar. Powerful, enigmatic, and possessed of a shamanic energy I crave and envy.

The jaguar has been scarce lately. I catch the occasional glimpse, but full sightings are scarce like iridium crystals. I hold the totem in my hands, but the eyes are dull. This troubles me.

The jaguar, it seems, has given way to the onion. How long this will last, none can say. All I  know is that the last year has peeled away a lot from my outer surfaces, exposing even more layers within as well as creating the occasional tears. I spend a lot of time meditating on these circumstances. It is important for me to plumb my depths. I have no desire to be caught from behind by things I did not know existed within.

This is not to say that these layers are always serious. While I certainly have the tendency to be too serious, there are things I keep finding that make me laugh, or marvel at the oddities that contribute to the mass of intriguing weirdness that resides in my heart and head.

Case in point tonight: on my way home this evening, I caught a musical snippet on "World Cafe with David Dye"---an interesting radio show hosted by WXPN---that made me sit up and take notice. It was this weird but likeable mix of what sounded like Indian-inspired dance hip-hop party music. I had no clue as to genre, and I missed the name of the group, but I wanted to hear it again. I felt I had to know who, what, and why.

So I turned to our friend the Internet and looked up the play schedule for WXPN. Turns out the music I heard was by a the group Red Baraat, a Brooklyn, NY-based outfit that combines Punjabi bhangra with New Orleans-style jazz, hip-hop, and go-go music. I couldn't even begin to tell you exactly what all of those styles encompass, but I can tell you this: the music made me happy and wanting to dance. And I'm not a dancer by any stretch.

Dig this, too. The leader of the band is named Sunny Jain. Born in the United States, his parents were Punjabi immigrants. He is trained as a jazz drummer. The band is heavy on percussion and brass, including a two-headed drum---the dhol---and a sousaphone.That's right, ladies and gents, a freakin' sousaphone. And the guy who plays it also raps.

I don't know what it is about stuff like this that draws me in. It makes me wish I could play a sousaphone, for crying out loud. It is weird. It is loopy.Which some might say are accurate descriptors of me.

It is this sort of thing that gives me hope for the future, for the world, and for myself. I like to think the one who likes all this weirdness is the poet in my soul, the one hidden behind all those layers, and that doesn't get to the surface as often as I wish. What I heard made the poet smile, making me okay with my weirdness.

I bounced in my chair for a bit, listening to the music and tucking into a digital bowl of electric slumgullion. After all, the jaguar is in there, too. He is hungry, he must be fed.

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.

Magpie Tales 147: Tara Cognita

Image from The MetaPicture via Magpie Tales

Sailed the seas of her

roaming over black rogue waves

pounding the fearful ego

 

A bittersweet joke

Lost on Mare timoris,

compass in the heart

Bed, a safe harbor

Her breath, waves lapping the strand

soft hips, map to home

Sleeping Dogs In My Head

Crash! Clang! Bang the lids
Warbling yelps, claws scratch hardwood
while bastard me laughs