redux: weddings, La Cienega and Agra

One year ago I went to a wedding:

The sun rose behind the clouds, moving from hidden to vermillion to amber curtains of light pouring down onto the ocean. The full moon hung in the western sky, almost as if it was waiting to hear the "I do," and it occurred to me that the same moon was just beginning to rise in Agra, where my yin was visiting the Red Fort:

how far apart are these places:
8000 miles? a 20 hour flight? 9½ hours worth of time zone?

These places are one moon away from each other, one moon that holds the day in perfect harmony with the night. I thought about these things as the preacher gave his sermon. I thought about four years earlier, when I stepped foot on this particular beach for the first time. So much has changed since then, and yet to the sand and the beach and the ocean and the moon it was nothing. It was less than nothing – a blink of the eye, slip of the tongue, a cliché waiting to happen:

Time is a scam; a beautiful, inexplicably lovely scam.

do these denizens of Agra ever worry about time?

I have heard people liken the mind to a monkey:

"There goes my monkey mind again."

But these types of statements are an affront to monkeys the world over.

The mind - at least the mind prevalent in this part of the world during this time in history - is better compared to the ruthless precision of Swiss watches. A Rolex-ed tyranny of minutes and minutia, seconds and second-guessing. To live and breathe and swing from trees is the privilege and birthright of humans and monkeys alike. Have you ever heard a child ask:

"Do i have enough time to climb this tree?"

How about La Cienega, do you think she wonders about time in Nepal?

No; we were in communication this very morning:

La Cienega wrote:

the author responded:

7:29am
in joying india ??

7:29am
that is fantastic!
[my yin] is in Agra right now.

7:30am
Life is!!!
You no

7:30am
alas, no. school. writing thesis.
saw picture of you and carrots. lovely.

7:30am
hmm...thought of you a bunch of times...in Kathmandu hehehe...from months ago! Lost my camera..boohoo

7:30am
we're already planning a future traipse.

cameras are overrated, a poor substitute for the creativity of memory.

7:32am
I agree! I actually havent taken many pictures...the crew i was travlling with did! So entering Nepal alone i took on the camera...crossed the border...no more camera!

7:32am
how long are you staying?

7:32am
???

7:32am
beautiful. have you been to Bhutan?

7:33am
In love! Yes! It is Beautiful! One of the 13 grandmothers lives there...a nepalese shaman! Hope to connect wioth her when she returns to nepal

7:33am
envy. someday someday someday...

7:34am
if you truly desire you WILL make it manifest!!

7:35am
agreed. envy, like all emotions, is beautiful in its impermanence.

7:35am
When do you and [your yin] enter into sacred union

7:35am
last Sunday in February.

7:38am
Beautiful!!! You are a most beautiful pair!!! May all the love that is, continue to radiate from each of you!!! and spread out over the whole world!!!! Radiant love!!! Yum! Thank you for the blessing of your presence in my life! Often you come into my heart and my mind and i am lost in love and gratitude!!! Please know this! So much love and gratitude!!!

7:39am
always and ever the same.
love, light, and safe travels.
every moment is a gift.

Conversations like these, scattered and infrequent though they be, is why i call her La Cienega:



And while La Cienega is never beside the point, I should nonetheless return to the wedding...

There were three flower girls, the youngest of whom had a shiner and trailed behind her sisters (or cousins) saying "you dropped some" and pointing to the petals in the sand. It was adorable, the magnificent fragility of life and the imponderable resiliency of children. How sad it is that, as we grow older, each of us has to learn that we can be hurt. Even sadder, however, is that we come to believe that we can be injured in a way that dampers our spirit and being.

The preacher giving the service spoke to these things in his own obtuse way. It was a more traditional service than the one my yin and I would have six months later, but I was able to listen for the truths he spoke rather than becoming lost in the semantics. I was reminded once more that the largest difference between Christian theology and Eastern thought (at least as it's been taught to me) is a matter of which state one calls 'acquired' and which state one calls 'natural.'

In other words, how original is our sin?

a Rose by any other name...

Maybe I'll end up becoming a Christian mystic like Dostoevsky and see grand mal visions of the Divine and pen great sweeping novels with unpronounceable characters' names. Maybe I'll write heartfelt accounts of normal people, flawed and anonymous, that come to represent the shifting tides of history as an empire begins to collapse upon itself.

How far apart are 19th century St. Petersburg and 21st century Washington?

The wedding and sunrise were followed by breakfast, and I made small talk with friends and strangers while my mind pondered Dostoevsky. I questioned an acquaintance about her vipassana retreat and asked the server to prepare me a plate without any meat. In spite of this, the ocean breeze smelled like bacon.

After the cake was cut, I wished my friend congratulations. She is one of those special maniacs that does things like build surfboards in her free time and sews dresses for the bridesmaids. I still remember three years ago, when she attempted to set me up with her roommate and fed me a spinach-feta burger with sweet potato fries. The match-making didn't take, though, and that night I walked the beach with Mardou.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I spoke with my yin after the wedding and gave her a brief recap. She told me about Agra and sent a picture of the Taj Mahal, as seen from the Red Fort:

more of the Taj to follow...

My favorite, though, was this one of her with a half-Canadian:

"looks like you got laid," i observed.

Alas, getting laid is also beside the point... at least for the time being.

22 days and counting...

My yin and I leave on our honeymoon three weeks from tomorrow, and I find myself not unlike a cat, long-tailed and neurotic, in a room full of:

Apparently, photographs provide little relief to cliché;

.tnoi
peht
edis
ebsi
siht
tub

The point is
that last year
I was doing less
backmasking and
writing more poesy:

just got home.
just decided to write.
just talked with my yin.
just a mild case of poetry.
just listened to two messages.
just remember this is all a game.
just ten months until the wedding.
just one year until i finish my thesis.
just wonder what i will dream tonight.
just six weeks until we leave for summer.
just stacking one word on top of the other.
just don't care so much for right from wrong.
just regurgitating a form Saylor once admired.
just a sliver between the imaginary and the Real.
just thinking La Cienega leaves for India tomorrow.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just saw the swirling hypocrisy of time wither in the blink of an eye.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just broke my own rule about using "friend" as a verb.
just remembered the mid-February Fear of 2009.
just fifty-two minutes until my sister's birthday.
just wondered if Mercury is still in retrograde.
just learned Jache is flying for Africa tonight.
just spent four hours in a bar not drinking.
just experienced a parking lot revelation.
just learned my old roommate moved.
just "friended" my divorce attorney.
just have one research paper left.
just had french fries for dinner.
just read a rejection letter.
just turned off my phone.
just saw an apparition.
just stopped.

And the year before like:

I.

I drove home last night thinking about
marriage, ceremony, and ritual,
commitment and obligation,
thinking about dharma.

I thought about the moment hidden in the pomp,
the moment obscured by circumstance:

the moment two becomes one.

I thought about impermanence,
how every thing that has a beginning
will surely have an end.

I thought about the real,
the eternal, the unchanging.

I thought about what I have to offer this union.

No one can give you anything
that you do not already have.

Not peace,
nor security,
nor wisdom,
nor wealth
is lacking.


II.

Then what is the meaning of this marriage?


Is it a dress?

(once worn)

Is it a ring?

(tarnished)

Is it a Saturday evening in May?

(raining)

Is it ‘til death do you part?

(death is not an ending)

My wish for you, S____,
My wish for you, N_____,

is that
on those
worn
tarnished
rainy
days
you

remember

love has no beginning,
love has no end.

[lapse]

But this year, at least on this day, there's not a poem in sight. Instead I find myself in bookstores buying road maps and thrift stores buying books and half-lying about my consumption.

I am listening (truly) to a Chinese pop song:

And this, amazingly, is not beside the point, though I have no idea how it connects to all the other dots and circles running around my head right now. I've been able to meditate more this week than I have in the past month, and it's been amazing to watch all the various dreams and memories and visions and desires – repressed and otherwise – bubbling to the surface.

I've been watching Twin Peaks before bed each night, and someday my blog will have something to say about that.

to be continued...

weddings, La Cienega and Agra

yesterday morning i went to a wedding:

the sun rose behind the clouds, moving from hidden to vermillion to amber curtains of light pouring down onto the ocean. the full moon hung in the western sky, almost as if it was waiting to hear the "I do," and it occurred to me that the same moon was just beginning to rise in Agra, where my yin was visiting the Red Fort:

how far apart are these places:
8000 miles? a 20 hour flight? 9½ hours worth of time zone?

these places are one moon away from each other, one moon that holds the day in perfect harmony with the night. i thought about these things as the preacher gave his sermon. i thought about four years earlier, when i stepped foot on this particular beach for the first time. so much has changed since then, and yet to the sand and the beach and the ocean and the moon it was nothing. it was less than nothing, a blink of the eye, slip of the tongue, a cliché waiting to happen:

time is a scam; a beautiful, inexplicably lovely scam.

do these denizens of Agra ever worry about time?

i have heard people liken the mind to a monkey:

"there goes my monkey mind again."

but these types of statements are an affront to monkeys the world over.

the mind - at least the mind prevalent in this part of the world during this time in history - is better compared to the ruthless precision of Swiss watches. a Rolex-ed tyranny of minutes and minutia, seconds and second-guessing. to live and breathe and swing from trees is the privilege and birthright of humans and monkeys alike. have you ever heard a child ask:

"do i have enough time to climb this tree?"

how about La Cienega, do you think she wonders about time in Nepal? no; we were in communication this very morning:

La Cienega wrote:

the author responded:

7:29am
in joying india ??

7:29am
that is fantastic!
[my yin] is in Agra right now.

7:30am
Life is!!!
You no

7:30am
alas, no. school. writing thesis.
saw picture of you and carrots. lovely.

7:30am
hmm...thought of you a bunch of times...in Kathmandu hehehe...from months ago! Lost my camera..boohoo

7:30am
we're already planning a future traipse.

cameras are overrated, a poor substitute for the creativity of memory.

7:32am
I agree! I actually havent taken many pictures...the crew i was travlling with did! So entering Nepal alone i took on the camera...crossed the border...no more camera!

7:32am
how long are you staying?

7:32am
???

7:32am
beautiful. have you been to Bhutan?

7:33am
In love! Yes! It is Beautiful! One of the 13 grandmothers lives there...a nepalese shaman! Hope to connect wioth her when she returns to nepal

7:33am
envy. someday someday someday...

7:34am
if you truly desire you WILL make it manifest!!

7:35am
agreed. envy, like all emotions, is beautiful in its impermanence.

7:35am
When do you and [your yin] enter into sacred union

7:35am
last Sunday in February.

7:38am
Beautiful!!! You are a most beautiful pair!!! May all the love that is, continue to radiate from each of you!!! and spread out over the whole world!!!! Radiant love!!! Yum! Thank you for the blessing of your presence in my life! Often you come into my heart and my mind and i am lost in love and gratitude!!! Please know this! So much love and gratitude!!!

7:39am
always and ever the same.
love, light, and safe travels.
every moment is a gift.

conversations like these, scattered and infrequent though they be, is why i call her La Cienega:



and while La Cienega is never beside the point, i should nonetheless return to the wedding...

there were three flower girls, the youngest of whom had a shiner and trailed behind her sisters (or cousins) saying "you dropped some" and pointing to the petals in the sand. it was an adorable sight, the magnificent fragility of life and the imponderable resiliency of children. how sad it is that, as we grow older, each of us has to learn that we can be hurt. even sadder, however, is that we come to believe that we can be injured in a way that dampers our spirit and being.

the preacher giving the service spoke to these things in his own obtuse way. it was a more traditional service than the one my yin and i plan, but i was able to listen for the truths he spoke rather than becoming lost in the semantics. i was reminded once more that the largest difference between Christian theology and Eastern thought (at least as it's been taught to me) is a matter of which state one calls 'acquired' and which state one calls 'natural.'

or, in other words, how original is our sin?

a Rose by any other name...

maybe i'll end up becoming a Christian mystic like Dostoevsky and see grand mal visions of the Divine and pen great sweeping novels with unpronounceable characters' names. maybe i'll write heartfelt accounts of normal people, flawed and anonymous, that come to represent the shifting tides of history as an empire begins to collapse upon itself.

how far apart are 19th century St. Petersburg and 21st century Washington?

the wedding and sunrise were followed by breakfast, and i made small talk with friends and strangers while my mind pondered Dostoevsky. i questioned an acquaintance about her vipassana retreat and asked the server to prepare me a plate without any meat. in spite of this, the ocean's breeze carried with it the smell of bacon.

after the cake was cut, i wished my friend congratulations. she is one of those special maniacs that does things like build surfboards in her free time and sew dresses for the bridesmaids. i still remember three years ago, when she attempted to set me up with her roommate and fed me a spinach-feta burger with sweet potato fries. the match-making didn't take, though, and that night i walked the beach with Mardou.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i spoke with my yin after the wedding and gave her a brief recap. she told me about Agra and sent a picture of the Taj Mahal, as seen from the Red Fort:

more of the Taj to follow...

my favorite, though, was this one of her with a half-Canadian:

"looks like you got laid," i observed.

alas, getting laid is also beside the point... at least for the time being.

just (since 9:13)

just got home.
just decided to write.
just talked with my yin.
just a mild case of poetry.
just listened to two messages.
just remember this is all a game.
just ten months until the wedding.
just one year until i finish my thesis.
just wonder what i will dream tonight.
just six weeks until we leave for summer.
just stacking one word on top of the other.
just don't care so much for right from wrong.
just regurgitating a form Saylor once admired.
just a sliver between the imaginary and the Real.
just thinking La Cienega leaves for India tomorrow.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just saw the swirling hypocrisy of time wither in the blink of an eye.
just recounted a cadence on the beach in September 2007.
just broke my own rule about using "friend" as a verb.
just remembered the Fear of mid-February 2009.
just fifty-two minutes until my sister's birthday.
just wondered if Mercury is still in retrograde.
just learned Jache is flying for Africa tonight.
just spent four hours in a bar not drinking.
just experienced a parking lot revelation.
just learned my old roommate moved.
just "friended" my divorce attorney.
just have one research paper left.
just had french fries for dinner.
just read a rejection letter.
just turned off my phone.
just saw an apparition.
just stopped.

Sukhothai dog

part 1

this rambling satori-eyed bodhisattva:

photograph by Deb Huber

was caught on film, presumably in Oakland, by a big-eyed hobo photographer.

part 2

i met Deb(bie) just over two years on a Saturday night at the same restaurant, on the same crab-infested couch, where i once drank quinine and ate brownies with my sister in the rain. a high school friend of Saylor's, she was on her way to New Orleans with little more than a camera and rucksack. her ultimate destination was San Francisco, and although i did not know it then, she was a harbinger of departures to come:

my sister - 30 May 2008
Mardou - 13 June 2008
La Cienega - 12 October 2008
Saylor - 20 November 2008
Tarah - 22 November 2008

part 3

it's a rainy morning in south Florida, and i have spent my entire weekend reading the words of famous dead Frenchmen and obscure living Americans. summer is around the corner. i feel anticipation in my fingers and restlessness in my heart. i turned on the computer expecting to say nothing. instead:

a shining dog.

a faded picture.

a woman i barely know.

i find myself

remembering

the things that came

and left

before.

children's songs for adults

it all started a little more than a month ago, when my yin purchased tickets for us to see Phish in Miami. i have already ruminated on my complicated relationship with the band, and last night only served to confirm much of what i have long suspected...

we arrived after 5pm, parked, and made our way to "the lot," which i can only describe as a mix between a swap meet, tailgate, and open air drug market. there are bean burritos and "goo balls," cheap pizza and undecipherable meats on sticks. there are innumerable sketchy characters pacing about, many looking for their sister "Molly," and my favorite is a guy mumbling under his breath as he traverses the crowds. i listen closely, but even after he passes a second time, i'm unable to tell if he's selling "doses" or "dosas."

(mmmm... dosas)

there is an RV with a sign that reads "Please Come In" and we decide to take them up on it. a short girl wearing a doo-rag and a half-baked, made-up name tells us 18 people live in this automotive monstrosity. she is very polite, and i ask her about the commune to which she belongs. he answer is interesting, but cryptic, and i leave with the understanding that her community is somewhere between neo-hippie bohemian and Jews for Jesus Freaktopia.

eventually, after a bean burrito, we make our way inside the arena to our very good seats in the fourth row. i have not been in an arena since the dismal days of 2001, when i left a bad situation in North Carolina for a worse situation in New Jersey, but this is beside the point.

[shift tense]

the point is that my yin spies La Cienega, who jumps across the seats and kisses us both, tasting of liquor and reeking of patchouli. i have not seen her in more than a year, and other than sporadic missed phone calls, we have had no communication since she left for the West. it is a surreal moment, and there is some odd karmic bond connecting the three of us.

once upon a time, La Cienega was my yin's cheerleading coach, and i remember a night in 2007 when i still fawned over her, enlisted my yin's help in trying to persuade her that the gap between our ages was not to vast. the four of us - La Cienega, my yin, my yin's future ex, and myself - had gone to a kirtan that night, and returned to a small condo just off the ocean still vibrating. we drank tea and shared stories, and in many ways that magical night seems a lifetime ago.

(yet)

last night the three of us stood there in the 4th row embracing once more, and my yin told La Cienega how we had spoken of her earlier in "the lot" - somehow we knew we would see her.

La Cienega just smiled her indescribable smile, batted her bottomless eyes, and told us that she felt blessed to know we were together. she retreated once more into the crowd, and the lights dimmed to start the show...

the need for this experiment has ended

prelude

i wrote a poem on 29 November 2008 about taking a walk downtown; i called it "Wonderful prelude..." and later that afternoon i received a letter from a beautiful Russian telling me she didn't want to be with me any more. i had just written her a note and left it on the pillow where we had planned to rest our heads that night. her letter said that she still wanted to see me and i agreed.

before leaving to see her that night, i took a vow of celibacy until the dusk of the new moon of February 2009. (today). and thus the experiment began.


day 1

that night was one of the most amazing nights of my life, and i do not know if i have ever seen the magic so clearly as when we sat by the waterfront and a tour boat floated us in the canal. two hundred drunken tourists yelled in unison: "kiss her!"

but i did not kiss her and the moment passed us by.


month 1

the first month was the hardest, uncomfortable, restless, not even sure of what i was doing. i told:

Mardou, who once had a lover who did the same before meeting her.
my classmate, with whom i had a late summer parking lot flirtation.
my sister, who has rarely gone more than a week since i met her.
Jache, who does the same when his girlfriend is on her period.
my teacher, who had been telling me to do this since summer.
and (the one who is never mentioned but always there).

i told the beautiful Russian in her living room before we went to Art Basel. that night we walked in a room full of art, not touching any of it, and the moment passed us by.


the tipping point

i received a letter from Mardou on 22 December 2008 wishing me a happy birthday. my birthday was still more than a month away, but the gift was perfectly timed. it was a picture of her in front of a wall full of words in Jamaica.

that night i talked to the beautiful Russian and told her i was sick of not talking to her. i told her all the things i had been unable to tell Mardou the year before, swimming in the ocean at night, when i let the moment pass us by.


month two

the second month was the easiest, maintaining my vow in letter if not intent. i started teaching and had a full class load. i stayed busy. i turned 32 and was fed art, pizza and cauliflower in celebration. somehow i ended up with three birthday cards in my windowsill, not understanding how they got there or what they meant.

i didn't want any more moments to pass me by.


month three

the last month was the hardest. i felt strained and stretched. my teacher asked me if i had checked out on him, i didn't sleep well, i didn't eat well, i didn't write well. i felt trapped and panicked and full of doubt. i subjected myself to wild tales, the Fear, and mid-afternoon malaise.

i dreamt of La Cienega; i dreamt of Mardou; i dreamt of all the ones i had loved and the moments that passed me by.


the end

the end actually came a week earlier than i thought it would, and it wasn't what i had expected. i sat crying in a chair with my eyes closed in a house that wasn't mine, touching a place i had been only once, more than two years before.

the next day saw its own revelations and Saturday there was another one of those moments, when it all might have turned around and gone the other way, led me down a different path, a different life, a different fate, but i let it pass me by.

one cannot help but do his dharma.

there is no need to mourn the moments that pass us by;
nothing is resolved, nothing ever is.

we love,
we live,
we lose,
we die.

every heart is whole unto itself,
every moment is a requiem,
every art is a lie,
let us rejoice.

it's too early for this

it's too early for this, and yet here i am, typing away to some (imagined) invisible.

and so...

i dreamed last night of Saylor and La Cienega, overlapping tableaus of collapsible stainless steel platforms in the middle of the sea and haze-filled rooms, punctuated by the sound of collapsing real estate markets.

breakfast

this morning there was a cat in a cupboard, roosters on the roof, and a moluccan cockatoo across the street. i had fresh blueberry pancakes in the courtyard (twice recommended) and listened to my family weigh in on topics ranging from the caste system to private property rights to a homeless mountain man from whom i once bought a poem and gifted to La Cienega. but all this is beside the point.

the point is that my brother is napping on the sofa and my father is on the porch reading the newspaper. we leave tomorrow, and it has been a pleasure to spend time with them, but sometimes getting closer to the ones we love makes it all the more apparent how far we are apart.

"Wonderful prelude..."

(for Hafiz)

I felt like getting
rid of all my things
one Saturday morning;
I took a walk to clear my head

and missed her call,
looking at the Buddha
(green), impassive
stare reflection.

How many more did I miss,
distracted by Modigliani,
distracted by Botticelli,

I watched a boy so high stumble
through the art parade of life
on a Saturday morning

and met La Cienega,
smiling vision of Kali,
another fractured heart
dangling round her neck.

My mind is unable
to comprehend,
utterly, all the
beauty I see.

Why else would I write these poems?

San Francisco 4, me 0

Saylor left this morning at 6am for California. i was at his place last night and he gifted me a whole trove of goodies ranging from blank canvases to olive oil to a back scratcher. he's spending tonight in a hostel in New Orleans, and before he left i wrote him a note to keep in his wallet: "there is more than enough money to repay student loans." and there is, but this is beside the point.

the point is that Saylor makes three, and in two weeks Tarah will follow, bringing the score to four friends fallen and Franciscan. the first to go was Mardou, followed by La Cienega and i can't help but wonder who will be the next.

i have half an eye on Berkeley myself, but my time frame is measured in years... and the greedy Golden Gate could never wait that long.

the wee hours

my sister started a new blog last night at 1am. i was busy dreaming about La Cienega and when i woke all i could hear was i asked myself: am i any different?

these are the questions born on lonely Saturday nights, after 12 hours at work and 20 days in a row. these are the questions that come when you wake every night in a pile full of scribbles and a book half-written. these are the questions that give way to repetition and the Fear. these are the questions i used to never stop asking when i was 24... and knew everything there was to know and more.

"la cienega just smiled"

i met her in May, that's what the documents say. but i remember her before then, standing behind me in line in the coffee shop before the coincidences came clean. i remember her painting on sidewalks with children. i remember her telling me we lived in maya. i remember asking to see her and her reply: "in what capacity?"

but i don't think it ever hurt except for one Thursday night last August when i saw her walking home across the avenue. she was glowing, eyes wide, heart open. i saw that night that she would walk alone forever, breaking endless hearts... and shining all the while.

om shanti shanti shanti