Impermanence on A Well-Lit-Path

who's coming?

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday’s general strike concluded without further agression – thank you to whomever had sense enough to cool the hotter heads in the room. Now begins the media battle, and probably some sort of legal battle.

To make sense of the right-wing response from Madrid (“Mine! Mine!”): at 20% of the Spanish GDP, Catalunya leaving the federation would be a bigger economic blow to the Iberian peninsula than if California, Oregon and Washington State joined to declare their independence, becoming some glistening, insane, ephemeral digitocracy, poised to shake into the sea with San Andreas’ next rumble. Catalunya has a history as an independent State, so a “bipartisan” Congress’ hard-line response would have the greater force of law.

The unfolding

Mon, 23 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It was not the first bottle of milk, but one of the first. His mother begins work in a few days; today is a welcome to the world for this five-month old boy.

What he wanted: Milk, Mother, Maternal, to receive ’til sated, to sleep on the breast. What the world offered: his mother’s milk, father’s arms, to accept or not accept the blessing available, to be sated or not sated, to sleep satisfied or not sleep.

Sólo lo tengo 24 horas

Sun, 06 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Entre los varios sueños que me visitaban ayer noche, este fue lo más problemático. Perderme, tranquilo; sufrir una pequeña accidente de coche, aguanto; llamar a casa, encuentro mi pareja cansada, sin tiempo hablar conmigo, está bien, está bien.

Pero cortando esta paisaje cinemática, como la voz del narrador, unos pocos palabras: “Tienes veinte-y-cuatro horas para vivir. Disfruta-las.”

Lo que pasa en el sueño es tan real. Quién estaba hablando? Dios, ángel, diablo? Tengo veinte-y-cuatro horas. Se ha hablado. Puede ser?

That's not the moon.

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The study of impermanence both demands and cultivates a steady mind. You would wish some of that learned gravity on our shrill leaders, whose gaming is driven at least in part by their fluttering avoidance of mortality, a blindness adopted to ward away their own short time upon the planet.

Politician or citizen, this week we are offered a lesson in humility. Not two weeks ago, observers in one of the world’s scientific groups detected a small asteroid far out of the normal plane of heavenly bodies, whose orbit around the sun carried it in the direction of the Earth. You might imagine the observer who first detected it:

starfall

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Stars that have lit our little night, also fall.

Would I keep them in the heavens? I can’t catch a star. Would I keep their light from halting? All light flickers, falters, fails. I can’t breathe them higher; or should I, blowing on a candle flame, that wind might burn them brighter, but also burns them faster, gutter, gone.

I guess, embrace the failure (which is not failure, only gravity-graced easing down to earth), learn tearful laughter, joyful departures, let my heart be beautifully marred, so love is written on it while it beats; so beating it repeats that name, these names, this worldful of names, one moment at a time.

remembrance

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

"… only perchance remembrance breaks the heart"

You won’t find that phrase in any Internet search engine – at least not until I post this page. You won’t find it in a book in the library, or on a video clip; buried, maybe, in a tattered notebook in some out-of-the-way cottage, hidden in an attic box or gathering dust under a bed, with pages as weathered as last season’s leaves. Probably the ink will have faded, if that notebook exists, or the pencil-line will have by friction and time been dissipated, so the words once alive in thought will have been undone, like a whisper in the wind.

another loss

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last night the wind picked up and, as I gently dropped into sleep, it not so gently opened its mouth and blew and blew and blew through the branches-spread-wide summer forest dark.

This morning, the alarm woke me. Wait: was it the alarm? Dream-dazed. It sounded like an alarm. No, it wasn’t the alarm. It was further away, it was down the stairs, it was the phone ringing.

Sign; groan; whispered curse; first thoughts. Who calls at – what time was it – 7 a.m. on a Saturday? The phone stops ringing. The body relaxes. Long, slow breath, like a yawn but not a yawn. Imagine an hour’s more sleep.

Earth to earth

Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the hardest physical work in recent memory is 72 hours on the Improv dance floor.

Also, the most rewarding. I haven’t built a house, or surveyed for a map, or planted a garden. But by listening listening listening I’ve followed the sprite of movement, and on her scent traced the outline of home; through repetition memorized (in the body’s threads and cords) the navigation lines I might follow to get there; and inadvertently collected in these outstretched arms so many wild foods along the way – fruit of this adventure – that I am fed.

Delible

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In response to a friend’s question: “What kind of Mark would you like to make on this world?”

I was selected to participate in a poetry workshop some years ago, with British war correspondent & poet James Fenton. He held strong opinions, no doubt informed by atrocity and explosion, and his work ranged from doggerel to deep, from limerick to libretto. His writing was always clouded by a shadowy lining, even when he was being flippant. I was riding my old BMW motorcycle to an event down the Mississippi river road, and he – not being much for tame avenues – thumbed a ride. Indochina, he said, rode bikes a tenth the size of mine, with three times the cargo; I had spent time on Java, so I shared his appreciation of smooth pavement, limited traffic, and 900cc of German engineering.

sparrow's flight

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

She lay like fallen leaves. As if a breeze brushed them, her wings fluttered odd angles; and I watched them reach for my breath, through the glass she thought was air.

The sound of her impact had stopped my work. Odd sound: where had I heard it before…?

…?

Oh… ? Oh… oh, no: the unexpected crush of accident, as the sound of two cars colliding at some distance, muffled by the safe walls and windows of your home. Muffled by the fog of trauma, an uneasiness slowly rises in the heart; it becomes urgent as the memory becomes clear.

Instead, there was a trail led out of town

Sun, 29 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

It may be that, in the beginning, there was intimation of the end: certainly one point connected to another, even by the crooked line of time, share an intimacy as close as any two lovers, perhaps closer. It may be that, when I started out, I had a plan, and that plan imagined an associated arrival.

But while there are some – maybe there are many? – who consciously describe a future in their minds, to then steadfastly walk in its direction, tinkering with the facts as they stray (until, with a flashing grin of satisfaction, and the pride of the accomplished, they arrive where they revisedly said they were going, often at a distance of years and miles from their intended target), I am not one of them. I arrive as errantly as any other, but rarely hold intention consciously, either trusting the currents of the world to sweep what is valuable in my path, or mistrusting my own dim vision to light up enough of that forward way, to set a heading far into it.

ghost-prints

Mon, 02 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

With the moon still under the Atlantic, there were stars, and neighboring houses whose lone lights flickered between the trees, to light the way. The world was more shadow than path, and the shadows were filled with cricket sounds and other, more furtive, nighttime feet. He squinted from the warmth of the doorway, but could make out nothing. “Better…” he thought, and took the small flash that hung beside the door, to make his way across the field.

Burial and baptism

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Two months since I last set word to the page. Life is not lived in words, but on the path where words are collected; where, if we speak of what we have seen, the story is written either in the heart and mind of the listener, or in the eye and inner sense of the reader. Sometimes I miss my time with the page, as the story is unfolding. There is a quietness you find in a record, as though counting and recounting your steps you are affirming “Yes, I have wandered here; I have wandered there.” In the telling there is acceptance of all that had gone before, the decisions made wise and unwise, the responses given well-considered or misspoken; whatever had been done was done with the best attempt that could be made at it. And the results…? We humans cast a hopeful eye to health that never ends, but historical forces and our own flagging powers teach us better. Today’s success must stand for everything: tomorrow’s challenge will face a new self, amen.

Look, this beautiful dream.

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

A counselor was speaking to a small gathering of people, those who had just recently been informed of a diagnosis of cancer. It was a mixed group, some were patients with treatable forms, others were less certain of the prognosis, and a few advised that the time left to them in this life was quite short – the time to see the colors and feel the textures that the body had allowed, to taste the richness of foods or the salt of a lover’s lips, hear the song of a flock of migrating birds perched in the trees outside the house, or that of the soprano who had spent years perfecting her angels’ art. Knowledge that the morning’s printed news, both good and bad, would be an echo far away, like voices in another tongue and another land, voices whispered into the wind, would no longer reach their ears. That the endless daily striving after endless daily goals was vanity; that there was little time left to dance that dance.