Surrender on A Well-Lit-Path

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.

Welcome 1 – The Midday Wind

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The mind is like the body in that it settles over time: these joints, my joints, supple yet some of their spring is past; I dare say the arc of my body has moved beyond its height; and I find my thoughts these days are as informed by a personal history as they are by the all-possible present, gravity being the agent of change.

These thoughts. They are gently urged to earth, so that what was once a bright green fancied flight flutters down to a slightly darker summer tone, or to September’s dust, not somber yet but… sobering. I knew (when first I stood) that gravity pulled on my frame, but hadn’t yet understood how the gravity of time, experienced and therefore set in the stone of my bones, made New in my eyes less likely, almost an act of will: I refuse to allow the prevalent physical violence of Brazil to invade the relative peace of Barcelona, and I resist – to the best of my abilities – the psychological violence of the United States, as it places the beautiful circle of my family and friends under siege.

11 – Momentum

Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There is a certain rapid-fire, reactionary mindset at play during times of great change. The intransigence of weight at velocity: the more mass in is motion, the less its ability to change direction.

(Aside. Since everything is in everything else, use anything as a metaphorical lens to make big things smaller, and small things bigger. When considering mass in motion, please apply this lens to our notional [sic] politics, corporate belligerence, world-as-our-battleground stance. Of course it will fall apart. It is a train that can’t escape the track, can’t escape its wreck, no matter how gradually its approach.)

13 - Dragonskin

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

You may have read the children’s story of a perfectly beastly boy who because disoriented, wandered into a cave, fell into an enchanted sleep, and turned into a dragon. An unpleasant combination of events.

Upon waking, he frightened himself nearly out of his wits: the left hand moved, a claw!, the right hand moved, another! So, he was surrounded by a boy-eating creature. He ran – scuttled in fact – out of the cave and to a pool of water, which reflected his true nature.

Tiger is Tiger

Wed, 28 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Muscular I took the tiger’s tail in hand As his stripe in terrible elegance flashed Into view, in the sun, in the tall, tall grass Me at my prime – just past my prime – and confident I owned the gift of taming still…

But still

Tiger is tiger, and man is man And man, I did the best deluded can ‘Til he ran away and away he ran. I looked around to reassure me, friends Had each eluded the talon’s tear

hay before rain

Wed, 14 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

I am up late working, as is the case so often this year, when personal and business projects demand most everything I’ve got (and I give it). To make sure this tired self doesn’t oversleep, I set the alarm, so this daily cycle of which I am proud (and somewhat repulsed) to be champion might repeat, again, and again.

I see myself a very clever and determined machine. I know success to the right may be failure to the left. I know this is a passage, not a destination. I’ve got the muscle; I’ll climb this mountain.

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.

lição das horas

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Com idade se ama mais

the mirror is broken, so it reflects

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

After the movie ended, I sat for a moment. I imagined a moon rising behind the clouds, so that the weather’s back was lit all silver, while below the rain fell easily down. Nothing easier than letting go, from a great height, and being received, at sea level. That was not what I thought. That is what I was.

What I thought took place in the mind, while everything important was going by. The mind felt alone, even lonely (of course): that is how a mind lives. The body, it simply touches or does not touch, feels rain or does not get wet, stays long in the sun and turns red or does not turn red. The mind, meanwhile, reaches out with no fingers, speaks with no voice, feels the beautiful curve of no lips, recalls the graceful arch of the body, the arrow loosed, the heartbreaking arrival (you cry, because beauty breaks the heart, whereas horror merely hardens it); the mind reaches out with fingers fragile and tenacious as a spider’s web, tries to catch the breeze, the dew, maybe time.

Vignette

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

She shifted her weight imperceptibly right to left, so the sand beneath her sifted, with what she imagined was an audible rasp, then locked again, the earth reassembled beneath her. Just ahead were ripples in the beach the wind had carved, waves in a dry mere that capped and broke and crashed with such slow dignity that only the most patient eye could follow their motion, day on day. If she practiced the smallest fraction of that patience, and held her eye on one hands-breadth of beach, the grains of that small wave could be appreciated; but if she wandered, if her interest drew her further from the moment where she stood (right then: right there), the detail blurred and merged, the grains became a texture then a whiteness in the sun, while the waves resembled ridges resembled ripples resembled an empty canvas where anything could be drawn.

yes, and yes

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I picture a circle of relatives, drawn together by circumstance, from distances and activities that kept the majority mere echoes to one another, voices from the past, children’s faces, simple times. There is a circle of relatives standing around a hole cut into the earth, gestures turned to ashes, words turned to dust.

And in that gathering of grief, as though each had swallowed a stone, the weight of gravity drawing them down, as if to join the departed one.

white on white

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

“… hope she is feeling better. Have a good night yourself.”

The ember of the day fading, so the small electric sparks that lead from corner to corner all the way home are now apparent, where before their minor lights were lost in the grander, warmer rays of the sun. A friend departs. The engine stumbles back to life. The CD that had paused picks up where it left off

Liquid Planet

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

… and so all follows water’s path, from cloud to peak, from heights to valleys, from valleys to the sea; follows through channels that life itself creates, in currents at times quickened at times slowed by degrees of its descent. The selfsame wave that rises, falls; the selfsame lightning separating droplet from the whole, sees droplet join the torrent, follow current with the urging of this gravity-constant hand until, to end a sinuous trackless trail, again it joins the whole.

Passages

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Our habit of looking backward is only matched by our desire to grow, keep growing forever, perhaps; or to look forward at the vast horizon and never see it rush toward us, not feel the edge and the bright light or the pure darkness beyond. Amazing how an event from childhood can reach into the heart and into the cells of the body, certainly into the convolutions of the mind and the echoing halls of memory, steering the feet and the desires toward or away from today’s choices. Amazing how our efforts can disregard time, as though today’s choices were all that existed and all that mattered: as though time itself, a current that began at some unremembered flash (if it began at all) and runs on to an out-of-reach terminus (if terminus there is), would carry these bodies and their endeavors on without faltering, and would never let us… fall.

Invisible

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

By heaven and the night star! And what shall teach thee which is the night star? The piercing star. Over every soul there is a watcher…

We find ourselves through an effort of discovery. That we are all born into this life, with years of uncovering to follow, is simple, and fact. The events in which we play part or which come upon us are the mirror, and our senses and our eyes, through the effort of discovery, open to all that is being reflected. Until we find the strength to open and see the good and the bad, until we look and see our failures and our graces, the glass is blank; the name is unwritten; and the night star, your night star, is for you invisible.

Becoming Human - II

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

… and then there are the moments where, surprised, you find that the fingers loosen of their own accord; you no longer struggle to make something happen, nor struggle against struggling, but allow the events of your life to be the agent of release.

Tonight, I passed some time with Tevye, the village milkman: Tevye, whose fundamental beliefs are challenged at every turn, and at every turn helets go, further and further. A daughter marries against his judgment, a daughter marries without his consent, a daughter marries without his knowledge… and with a smile and a shrug he bows to the will of the God of change, bows to the god of gravity, the god of aging, the god of humanity, asking of the same spirit: Why…? Didn’t your teachings say, follow this path, it will keep you and your family safe, it will grant you peace and propserity, give you enough?

Teacher's Back

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Under the cover of darkness, or in the blaze of mid-day, there are the brief encounters with the teacher: the real teacher. When we are young or when we are misinformed, the lessons are ignored or avoided. As though that final test could be dismissed, no thank you, I prefer not. It cannot be dismissed. Under the cover of darkness, when we are most exposed, or in the blaze of mid-day, when we least expect it, we are offered these little practice sessions. Just listen! It is Guará come back not to haunt, and neither to taunt, but to instruct.

Pain as Teacher

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Many Buddhist traditions share a specific practice for opening the eyes, opening the eyes of the heart.

If you follow the path of enlightenment that Gautama Buddha walked, one who wishes to be free of entangling thoughts and desires – desire for the next and better car, the other better house, a different and better partner – makes an active attempt to embrace impermanence. Meaning: one does everything in his or her power to realize that this life passes with the snap of the fingers, that much of our effort comes to no result, and that in our hurry we often miss opportunities for seeing what truly has value.