(making?) sense

see
the passing beauty of eternity
in its cracked mirrored perfection.
feel
the gossamer stare of anonymity

lurking around every corner.

hear

the echo of this moment
in the shadow of the past.

savor
the aftertaste of Denver
in the back of my throat.
smell
the things that never were in
the redolence of the morning after.

list of symptoms

time.
prose.
apathy.
banality.
headache.
digression.
lack of sleep.
loss of words.
loss of appetite.
thoughts of rain.
poetic anesthesia.
feelings of sadness.
sentence fragments.
frequent meditation.
repetition of mantra.
overuse of repetition.
pushing slightly further.
inability to communicate.
decreased dream intervals.
experimentation with ritual.
decreased sensitivity to time.
syllabic repression of emotion.
increased dependence on form.
recurring thoughts of insomnia.
insomnia thoughts of recurrence.
increased sensitivity to hypnagogia.
circular orientation of thoughtforms.
inability to recognize Oedipal fixation.
withdrawal from friends and love ones.
occasional abortion of midday samadhi.
extended periods of occasional attempts.
obsessive experimentation with nostalgia.
increased consumption of media products.
rapid onset of dramatic temporary solitude.
occasional lapses in obligatory self-reflection.
inexplicable sensitivity to arbitrary past karma.
forced examination of self-defeating tendencies.
fear marked by prominence of existential ideation.
six years spent in lugubrious celebration of this day.

short eulogy for Merce Cunningham

i saw him only

1

time

2

years ago in Miami.
i watched red numbers

counting down

0:20:00

until

0:00:00

nothing

i watched green numbers

counting up to

1:30:00

(applause)

i watched him bow

wheelchaired and prophetic.

not a metaphor

there's an umbrella in my shower, it's thundering outside, and last night i dreamed of West Baltimore. none of these things are (particularly) related, and i feel like i'm living in some strange Kafka cum Camus world of rainstorms and approximate deadlines. but this is beside the point.

the point is that my current experiment has neither design nor hypothesis. so far the main result appears to be a slight resurfacing of my latent existentialism, mixed with an almost Homeric sense of voyage and discovery. i do not know where it ends, but it began in earnest four days ago when i decided to modify my journaling ritual. i'm spending less time interrupting my day with the pen, and as a consequence i can feel my concept of self beginning to unravel...

i am [insert fiction here].

perhaps

enlightenment

is nothing more
than letting go

of the incessant
implicit insistence
that each moment
has any meaning
other than its
presence and
passing.

existential pleasure v. dialectical disdain

i watched Hearts of Darkness yesterday. it was a good documentary about a better movie, but this is beside the point.

the point is that the film left me questioning the balance between Self and society, wondering about the relationship between mokṣa and our collective karma:

what meaning does meaning have when it rests upon a foundation of reification? how is one to understand austerities born of privilege? who chooses the fulcrum when contemplation is set opposite ideology? where does one circle stop and the next begin?

maybe it's a better documentary after all..

teeter

i spoke to my yin yesterday about something i wrote, and in her beautiful, gentle way she inquired (approximately) into the state of my mental (well) being. my response was a sincere, albeit hare-brained explanation regarding pronunciation, translation, and nuance. but this is beside the point.

the point is that the words i threw away in the afternoon were recycled into the poem i birthed that evening. i sent the below to her with the following instructions: "start reading at the top of the circle and continue clockwise until the onset of samadhi."

i teeter between

miserable

and

list

less

me
than
i think

more

me
than
i know.

Woodstock is like...

Sixteen hour days

and

"dehydration"

after

an impromptu poetry reading.

“Are you in Love?”

said

Charlie Parker’s

drummer’s

ex-wife.

Unknown mad pianists

named after

well-known mad painters

playing

off key perfection.

"Browsing"

Genet

in the bookstore on

the 3rd of July

and

beautiful Chilean women

singing like chickens.

Montpelier is like...

Sidewalk fiddlers and vicarious nostalgia

bloody-handed parking lot

menstruation and

The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Used record stores

croquet tournaments

beguiling bat-eyed strangers

a bridge over the Winooski River.

A beautiful woman and her quotidian existential dilemma.

Uphill traffic jams

running out of paper

losing my pen

…

only to find it

and start

all over again.

feeling _______

yesterday evening's ennui and overcast have returned, and i'm watching my mind drift from one poor idea to the next. i had plans with Jache, but a (minor) operation and a pint of blood loss on Friday have left him laid up at his apartment. i offered to swing by and deliver coffee or tea, but thus far my phone remains silent. in the meantime, i've been reading about Padmasambhava and the illusory nature of good and evil. (like you do...) but this is beside the point.

the point is that these words feel flat.

the thoughts i was thinking (last month)

On the way back from the gym I was thinking about Denver and the taste of balloons, the drive from Julian to Colfax to Sherman. How that life – once real to me – now exists only in memory and Dream.

I'm getting more comfortable letting go, realizing it was never real to begin with – the [deleted], the tragedy, the nihilism – they were all false, held together only by samskara and force of will, the repetition of failed attempts to touch the divine, lifetimes spent lying to myself, pretending death was real, insisting life was fleeting.

The process of letting go is easy once one realizes there was nothing in hand to begin with. - from my journal, 18 June 2009

more or less

(right now)

is one
of those

strange times

when
the nostalgias run together

and

it becomes impossible

(right now)

to tell:
this day
this hour
this drive
this sunset
this hunger
this moment
from any other.

this could have been anybody.

any mind

any personality
any collection of thoughts
clumped together into
a ball dense enough
to call reality.

six billion
people

(right now)

feeling

joy/pain/anger/sadness/lust/love

(right now)

in every:
language
place
way
silence

one can imagine.

does that
make it less?

(day after) Bastille day

yesterday saw the close of another experiment, and i was left (this morning) with the futile, irresistible task of trying to articulate that which cannot be named:

"... this sharing of our process, her knowing me knowing her, knowing it is all the same in spite of the illusion of separation, exploring the illusion, charting its geography so that when we become lost we have the landmarks, places we have seen before, the places we recognize as familiar and false." - from my journal, 16 July 2009

the temptation (for me) is to take these moments and try to explain them, to warp the emotion into art, to burden them with the weight of explanation and meaning. but none of these things were present yesterday. it just felt empty and sad, and i didn't try to feel that vacant room in the center of my being with all the pretty words that might have been said.

it is only now that i see the circle, the echo of this moment in the shadow of the past:

"Dean and I are embarking on a tremendous season. We're trying to communicate with honesty and absolute completeness everything on our minds." - On the Road, p. 41

(no benzedrine was involved in the making of this blog)

(night before) Bastille Day

it all started when Jache told me his mother thought i looked like some "woodland creature," and ended with me writing a single sentence about the night that was.

but

to really taste the Madness
one must have been there
standing in line
waiting to see a woman
who didn't want to be seen
standing stage left in the dark
wearing a boy's shirt and black tie
whispering a soulful, morphined rendition
"House of the Rising Sun" to open the night.

it was beautiful,

how

much of

the sadness
i heard
was

hers?

short poem inspired by Chan Marshall

she didn't sing
every song
to me

but

when
she did it
was beautiful.

coup d'état

last night there was a coup d'état in my (upper) gastrointestinal tract. i hold panir i didn't eat, and a uterus in Vancouver, at least partially responsible. but this is beside the point.

the point is that the last time i experienced such distress i ended up bed-ridden on a day of arbitrary importance, watching and writing about Volver. this time, however, i was able to abstain from the insomnia and vomiting, convalescing with ginger ale, brown rice, and a heating pad. i was asleep before 1am, and upon waking a new theory of the crime emerged. it now appears the real culprit is the letting go in my mind, manifesting in the knotting of my stomach...

benevolent manipulance

(keystrokes
lethargy
and
Saturday
afternoons

almost
a year ago
the first/last experiment
(not of my design)
taught me:

it is possible to know
meaning only in its passing.

it is a matter of trust,
of rearranging the things
we think we know into a circle

and

allowing the space in the center
the whole in the middle
to guide us
where

we already are

the pygmied cancer of longing)

for an audience of one

dear yin,

i am in serious need of adult supervision...

since brutalizing the broccoli two nights ago, i have purchased a container of spring mix, forsaking the arugula and spinach and romaines that typically haunt our icebox. my motive was equal parts novelty and transgression, but as i prepared my lunch yesterday, the scope of my folly became apparent. before i knew what happened, i was staring at a monochrome salad, unsure of exactly how i got there. i threw in some carrots in an attempt to add a little color, but the splash of orange only underscored how anemic the leafy greens beneath. it was like looking at a poxy pasty Vermont child in June, or a splotchy French-Canadian on the Florida beach in December...

now i am running amock again, experimenting with your delicious granola recipe. i told you that we were out of agave nectar, but what i did not tell you was that there are no pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds, and the maple syrup substitution i made has come up short. worst of all, the safflower oil petered out, and i panicked, glancing back and forth between the peanut and olive varieties. i went with the peanut, but somewhere along the way garam masala entered the picture...

i plan to eat the pasta in the fridge tonight, and i feel confident that my ability to boil water will assist in the process. until we eat again, as ever....

...circles

itchy wrist

my left wrist is itching like crazy, and in an attempt to remedy the situation, i've been liberally applying my fingernails. somehow it doesn't seem to be working, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i've been on iChat most of the day, and i'm sick of staring at tiny electronic boxes. [insert self-reflexive comedic situational irony here]. it seems as though i can sense the days already growing shorter, and my mind wants to drift to self-injurious thoughts like: there's not enough time. i know this is false, and it is (almost) amusing to watch it rise and fall...

[lapse]

the wind is blowing the palm trees outside and the sky has gone gray. the rains are about to begin, and i'm barricaded inside my apartment with a fridge full of fruit, a cupboard full of chai, and hours before i sleep...

recent arrivals

i returned from Boston this afternoon just ahead of the rain, and Jache picked me up at the airport. there was a gallon of iced tea in the back floorboard, and the stale smell of cigarettes mingled with the conversation on the ride home.

i heard him recount my very own life,
and
(mainly)
i kept my mouth shut for a change.

the trip served as a coda to the experiment i ran yesterday afternoon in Cambridge, stacking nostalgias one on top of the other until the veneer of melancholy began to splinter under their weight. they came crashing together sometime after 6pm in a Church Street tea house, sipping chai and staring at The New York Times. i saw the potential for a new form emerge from a trite meditation on the nature of war, but this is beside the point.

the point is that last night i wrote of these things to my yin, who is currently preparing to take residence in a Vancouver basement. putting words to my vision allowed me to recognize and develop the ideas in a more nuanced manner than i might have otherwise, and this is the gift promising to emerge from her absence.

time will tell...

imminent departures

there is a bus leaving from White River Junction tomorrow morning. there is a plane leaving from Logan Airport tomorrow afternoon.
there are three computers spread across the living room.
there is a large salad on the table.
there are short declarative sentences.
there is repetition. there is passive voice. there are no commas.
there is a full moon on the seventh.

there is another plane leaving on Wednesday.