Confession

I woke this morning a little before 5am from a dream of an unruly meditation group.  In the dream, two of the students from my past life as an adjunct community college professor have found their way into the new age bookstore where the meditation group is meeting.  I attempt to corral their energy in a constructive manner but fail, utterly, and soon find myself asking them to leave the gathering.  As they get up to go, I’m struck by a wave of guilt – is one allowed to expel another under these circumstances if it’s for the good of the whole? Or, is it a sign of failure on the part of the teacher, a mix of impatience, incompetence and frustration?

Whatever it is, I find myself running after them in the dream, stopping them in the parking lot, and telling them they can come back inside if they contribute rather than distract from the teachings. Neither of them respond, and I return to the room.  Something has shifted, however, and the momentum that I had been building has been replaced by doubt.
This may or may not be the point.

[lapse]

I woke again at 6:30, meditated, showered, and made a cup of chai.  At some point I began to journal (a measly, anemic entry that has sadly become par for the course over the past year) and eventually turned on my phone. There was a message from Saylor:

"Drowned Sorrows Dried Up"

We haven’t spoken in months, and other than a couple of unreturned calls in either direction over the winter, we’ve had virtually no contact since last summer when my yin and I spent a couple of nights with him in San Francisco. The call, both in its timing and content, was poignant. Among other things, Saylor mentioned that he has been watching this blog, wondering what had happened.

(here comes the confession)

I don’t know.

I have at least a half dozen reasons, some real, others fictive, but all are ultimately unsatisfying. I’ve thought maybe it’s a result of being too happy, of being unhappy, of working too much, of not working enough, of working too much of the wrong type of job, of being uncomfortable, of being too uncomfortable, blah blah bah…

Do you see what I did there?

The words seem to disappear as effortlessly as they arrive, and over the past year this has been a curious source of disappointment for me. But, with Saylor’s call this morning, and the resultant  realizations I had on the drive into work, I can’t help but think I may have turned a corner, found some pinprick of light through the dark haze that has been obscuring the words for far too long…

Time will tell…

repost: Quantum Love Story

Three years ago (yesterday) i went with Saylor and a (future) mutual friend to stroll art galleries in north Miami. Along the way, I learned that my (future) mutual friend was a (present) mutual friend of the woman I was trying, with limited success, to date.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that the evening's events eventually gave rise to the poem below; and the poem below, in turn, ultimately gave rise to a forthcoming chapbook (currently awaiting Saylor's illustrations).

By way of full disclosure, a less poetic, more immediate version of these events lives here; the author does not pretend to know which assortment of words constitutes greater authenticity.

quantum love story

We watched quarks falling in love with neutrinos,
dancing in and out of existence in the skies over Miami.

Once upon a time we were like

but last night we talked about
love with the lights on:

“There is more than enough time for everything.”

Chasing nostalgia and remembering
the lies we tell ourselves when
we’re young and in love.

A cut-up in my head:

missing my sister in rain-soaked galleries

missing my sister in rain-soaked galleries

missing my sister in rain-soaked galleries

Nothing can be written that compares to dusk from the
abandoned high rises overlooking the Bay of Biscayne;

I knew nothing of knock-breathed Wynwood, lies and doubt.

It’s hard to see, searching for poetry
in lust in truth in love. Words are just
letters; sometimes they have meaning.

(I tried to tell her:)

The whole
universe
lives in
the
center
of a rose.

I bent to kiss it and it was gone, she couldn’t

hear me through the murmuring of her heart.

Honeymoon Days 15-17: San Francisco

My yin and I left Trinidad on a Wednesday morning, taking Highway 1 from Northern California all the way to Mendocino County. The road that cuts across from Hwy 101 is easily the crooked road I've ever driven, and by the time we finally made it to the ocean I was almost carsick. When we pulled over to appreciate the view of the ocean, we were promptly joined by this raven:

(or at least a crow)

Emboldened by this good omen, we continued down the coast. I was amazed to see bucolic pastures and farmhouses overlooking the rocky cliffs of the Pacific:

my yin is a superb passenger side photographer

We made it to San Francisco just before sundown, catching sight of the Golden Gate Bridge moments before the city:

Although we had plans to meet with Saylor later in the evening, the first order of business was food. My yin had a specific restaurant in mind, which serves what is – without doubt – the single greatest soup I've ever eaten in my life:

Ask for the samosa soup.

Inside I saw the most beautiful woman, eating alone under a painting of Buddhist monks carrying their begging bowls. I don't know why she moved me so deeply, but the memory of her kept rising to the surface during the rest of our time in the Bay Area:

I took this picture of her on the sly...

Eventually we made it to Saylor's place on Russian Hill, promptly went to bed, and woke the next morning to have coffee on the roof of his building:

Saylor and I

First, he took us to the Beat Museum in North Beach:

Saylor, myself, and the image of two dead men

It was better than I expected, especially with regard to its collection of foreign and first editions of Beat literature. It also had some groovy posters adorning the walls:

my yin, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso...
holding their respective businesses

We also stopped at City Lights, of course:

And I found myself walking down a small alley connecting the museum and the bookstore. I came to a corner:

And then realized I had been there once before:

failed pilgrimage to San Francisco, 2005

It was one of the most de-centering experiences of my life, almost as if my very being were dissolving into mist. I understood that the street post had not moved in the intervening years, yet I had aged and changed and remained the same all in a single breath.

But this, for the time being, is beside the point.

The point is we went to the Mission District next and walked the streets looking at murals:

my yin looking at murals

this one quotes Keats – I strongly approve

Some of the best ones, however, appeared to be unintentional, like this restaurant's advertisement. As far as I can tell, it depicts pigs butchering and cooking other pigs:

Nothing whets the appetite like thoughts of swine cannibalism...

That night my yin and I went out by ourselves, inspired by a 70mm showing of Vertigo at the Castro:

Little did we know that, in lieu of trailers, they have an organist perform before the screening:

The next day we resumed our exploits with Saylor, taking a ride out to Mount Tamalpais in Marin County and staging this wacky photograph with the help of our tripod:

this image has not been cropped

After dropping off Saylor, we spent a couple of hours visiting a friend of my yin's from grad school before finally going to Mardou's apartment near Golden Gate Park.

i
m
age
miss
in
g

Mardou, of course, inspired my first chapbook, which was illustrated by Saylor and which my yin watched unfold in real time back in 2007. In spite of this, it was my yin and Mardou's first time meeting, and although I knew we would have a blast, I had no idea how much fun it would be:

my yin singing with joy

Mardou told us that the people in San Francisco are so preoccupied with their beloved Bay that they forget about the ocean sitting right beside them. To prove her point, she drove my yin and I to the beach at sunset:

photo by Mardou

From there we went back to the Mission for dinner at Gracias Madre, which serves vegan Mexican cuisine. The food was delicious, and afterward Mardou drove us to Twin Peaks high above the city:

San Francisco at night

It was one of those nights where time seemed to dilate, and you could hear the clocks whispering to one another, "There go three souls dancing, one spirit singing..."

only known image of my yin, Mardou, and Our Lady of Guadalupe

non-sequiturs, 3 years and counting...

dancing the left ear disco in line at the bank

with a banana in my back pocket
and 16 days heavy
as a sock full of quarters.



writing heart-felt poetry
on the back of my hand
with a blue felt pen
and practicing
aparigraha.



muggy
Friday nights
googling Sanskrit
and staring at the girl
with the black skirt
sans stockings
gray shoes
red laces
texting
sidewalks
from San Francisco.


(fading

the shattered concrete dream of the American West

still smoldering

like smoke)

from the opium dens

and quaking from the memory of Mardou.

Kerouac's Mardou, Ailene Lee

my Mardou, texting pictures from San Francisco

*illustration by Saylor

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...

in praise of Townes Van Zandt (chronology of writer's block on a Saturday afternoon)

2009

There is still:

the editing
the bibliography
the footnotes.

There is still:

a sofa
an altar
a decade
of journals.

Some clothes; a bottle of tamari.

There is a bachelor party and a wedding

but neither of them are mine.

Somewhere in New Jersey a woman is dying.

There are still:

letters of recommendation
an application for a fellowship.

Still:

Al Green is singing.

My sister is writing.

Saylor called to tell me,
Mardou has absconded the city.

But all this is beside the point.

The point is that a girl once told me - in all seriousness - that she didn't know if she wanted to be an artist or a scientist, and therefore she was going to be a firefighter. Apparently the intervening two years have provided her with some clarity because, when I spoke to her yesterday, she told me that she was going to start studying polar animals.

My first thought?

You live in South Florida.

2010

Yesterday i woke up from a dream at 4:37am about swimming in a gray murky lake and being made fun of by a swimming instructor for not being able to swim.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I didn't fall asleep again until after 3:30 last night, and today feels like some odd combination of the last day of school (which it is) and the last day of summer (which it isn't). Part of me wants to sleep, part of me wants coffee. Part of me is already half-dreaming of what will happen tonight after I visit a real mental hospital and imaginary set of conjoined twins:

Evelyn Evelyn

suffice to say that yesterday i felt like i was coming down with writer's block and it didn't feel good and every word i wrote seemed to lead me in the wrong direction and i decided to get rid of all my punctuation and it wasn't until after i had locked myself in an empty classroom that i realized that the wrong direction was really the right direction in the wrong order

I proceeded to reorganize my thoughts and took the following note:

thoughts are memories in the present tense.

I do not know if this is foolish or wise or both, and in the end it does not matter because we are all going to die anyway and who can ever really know about what comes next?

lyres and prophets)

or

(liars and profits?

2011

Apparently I get writer's block this time every April, and I just watched a documentary on this dead Texan:

Townes Van Zandt

It was Mardou that told me about him. It seems years ago. It was years ago. It seems more years than that. I closed the curtains, I watched the film. I'm listening to him now:

I used to play the mouth harp pretty good
hustled up a little dough,
but I got drunk and I woke up rolled
a couple of months ago.

They got my harp and they got my dollar,
them low life so and so's.
Harps cost money and I ain't got it
it's my own fault I suppose.

I have one paper left to write.

I'm sick of words.

Tonight, music.

on the 4th day of Christmas

on the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

four boding starts

at three o'clock on the fourth day of Christmas, i was startled awake by a dream of a theater in North Carolina. i worked there as an undergraduate, and in the Dreaming i was mid-return. something about this scenario was disturbing, however, and as i lie in the dark my mind began to fill with questions about the future.

barring unforeseen calamity, i will complete my graduate work five months from now, signaling another of those life junctures where nothing is known, and one finds himself face to face with the enormity of endless possibility. every moment is like this, of course, but rarely do we accept it for what it is: exciting, but also frightening, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning.

rather than allowing my mind to spin in circles, i got up and went to the living room. i took out my mala beads and meditated:

vision of the fragile glass shell of my mind. i find myself trapped inside it, bumping from one side to the other. suddenly, i'm outside of it/ti fo edisni – i am the air filling the room and all that lies beyond.

eventually i grow tired again and go back to bed, but this insomnia and meditation stays with me throughout the day. i rewake at 8am, tend to various chores and meet with my half-Canadian friend mid-morning. i go to my yin's hatha class at noon, and in the afternoon i finally start revisions on the second chapter of my thesis.

a frustrating hour passes.

our weekly meditation group meets that night, and we spend an hour discussing the application of yoga-darsana in our lives, which is a medium-pretentious way of asking:

"do you practice what you preach?"

i talk about the conflation of, and confusion between, meditation in the colloquial sense and meditation in the philosophical sense. the former is more aptly described as a sitting practice, which sometimes (and perhaps atypically) results in the latter (what Patanjali calls as dhyana).

Buddhism (at least Zen variety) seems to outline this delineation more clearly than the yoga practitioners i've known, and in my limited, yet sincere, readings of such texts i have arrived at some understanding of the dangers involved with turning one's meditation practice into a substantial object (which can be possessed) rather than recognizing it as a transient, ephemeral process. put more simply:

one gains no-thing from meditation.

with the mysteries of the universe put to bed for the night, we practiced sitting together, and i had another damn vision, this time of a leaf spinning itself (counterclockwise) into a tight spiral, extending lengthwise towards the sky and the Earth. it had the shape of a elongated seed or pod, and was enveloped by a flame burning all around it. i have a blank canvas in my closet, given to me by Saylor years ago, and as soon as i come into some oil paints i plan to attempt a rendition.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my yin and i came home and finished watching Luis Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire:

Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina

the film is surreal, comical, and features les belles femmes above playing a single character named Conchita. Fernando Rey plays the male lead, of course, and he attempts to bed Conchita with all the absurd enthusiasm one would expect from Buñuel:

i know how he feels

there are innumerable failed attempts to realize his desire, and the film's French title (Cet obscur objet du désir) literally spells out the need for a Lacanian interpretation of these things. right now, though, with more revisions looming this afternoon, psychoanalysis is the last thing i want to write about. besides, these ideas are illustrated with images more forcefully than could ever be accomplished with words:

this poster is available here

suffice to say that terrorist plots by the "Revolutionary Army of the Baby Jesus" wreak havoc in the background, and Buñuel has this magical way of allowing the camera to linger in one place just a little longer than necessary, so that Rey's bourgeois nincompoop exits the frame and a second figure (a housekeeper, a gardener, a homeless man) is revealed to be the actual source of labor supporting his opulence.

visions and revisions,
mediation and surrealism –

thus concluded the fourth day of Christmas.

on the 3rd day of Christmas

on the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

three cups of coffee

as the title suggests, the third day of Christmas was easily the least eventful so far, a sure sign that things are slowly returning themselves to normal. i engaged in all my morning rituals: journaling, reading, showering, a light breakfast and two cups of half-caffeinated coffee.

since my yin had a client coming over, i exiled myself to Dunkin Donuts mid-morning, where i made the mistake of ordering a third cup of coffee. this one was black like the others, but high test rather than the weakened brew i make at home. i sat sipping it, scorching my taste buds without so much as a flinch, gnawing on a blueberry muffin that the woman behind the counter assured me was the best in the house – all in the name of a lousy coupon i had lurking 'round my wallet.

soon i felt the onset of the stimulant, zoning out in that pleasant place of hyper-focus and tunnel vision. unbeknownst to me, my yin's client had canceled and i continued working, totally oblivious to the fact that she had called and emailed telling me it was safe to come home. eventually the message was relayed by foot, and she walked into the place like some Revolutionary War messenger carried an urgent dispatch from General Lafayette:

"Qu'est-ce tu fais?"

"J'écris."

"Mais, tu peux retourner chez nous maintenant."

"D'accord."

on the short walk home i came across two French-Canadian children playing in the courtyard, perhaps made manifest by my caffeine-psychosis. "Salut!" i said to one of them. the child looked at me with a mix of embarrassment and amusement, probably provoked by my shameful accent and painful earnestness.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i paid for this third cup of coffee for the rest of the day with a medium-grade headache that just wouldn't let me be. i tried feeding it leftover tofu and chocolaty sweets; i tried escaping to the post office and bank and library. it followed me everywhere, dogging my every step until i eventually climbed into bed with an undelivered Christmas present. i sat reading dead men's letters like a common grave robber, pulling out gems like these and wishing i could write like a 17-year old:

"... it has all the melancholy grandeur of Mother Russia, all the borscht and caviar that bubbles in the veins of the Slav, all the ethereal emptiness of that priceless possession, the Russian soul."

- [name redacted], August 1944

but how common can any grave robber be in this modern world? do graves even exist when every chosen word is made available immediately? does any mystery remain, or do we live in an era of endless information? how can we run from the fluorescent omniscience of empty knowledge in a world where all our idols have already been killed for us?

the headache did not recede.

i wrote Saylor, trying to explain these things without saying them, and what emerged was an impossibly disjointed letter of short sentences and unremarkable proportions. even at my most capable, i would be hard pressed to name the things spinning in my mind. tiny fluctuations popping in and out of existence like the quantum tunneling i had read about earlier in the day:

it helps glucose catalyze into hydrogen peroxide... allegedly

in the end it was only my yin's cabbage tempeh casserole that saved me, and the headache receded into the void from which it came sometime after dinner. we finished watching Broken Flowers from the night before, which features Bill Murray as an over the hill Lothario searching for his son:

from here, we fade to black

in the end he finds nothing, of course, and i was well-pleased by the film's lack of closure: the passing broken-down Volkswagen and its slack-jawed doofus of a passenger juxtaposed against the hip, road-wise hitchhiker we all imagine our progeny – be they words or chromosomes – to be.

thus concluded the third day of Christmas.

on the 1st day of Christmas

in honor of Catholics and carols, and in an attempt to shed light on my own uneasy relationship with the Christian holiday season, i've decided to write about each of the twelve days of Christmas from now until January 7th, the day after Epiphany. i'm somewhat uneasy about this experiment, particularly the very real likelihood that i'll walk around for the next dozen days with that dastardly tune stuck in my head: "da da duh da da duh duh da da da da da da da..."

but – duh! – this is beside the point.

the point is that school doesn't begin for more than two weeks, and i have more free time on my hands than usual. so, without further ado, on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

a dead pig by the roadside

my yin and i woke up yesterday morning at her mother's house. she was reading Borges but put it down telling me it was "too heavy." as anyone who has every hoisted his Collected Fictions will attest, this is an apt description, and i found her double entendre especially amusing:

still finishing up my summer reading list...

in desperate need of coffee we went into the kitchen, only to discover my yin-in-law feeding a meatball to her pet macaw, which she inexplicably named Taco. i asked her, "you're feeding a meatball to Taco for breakfast?" she responded in the affirmative, and the rest of the morning passed without incident.

at the appointed time we left my yin-in-law's house and headed north for Christmas dinner at Mme. Fawcett's house. she and my yin have been best friends since the incredibly young age of 18 months, and among other things she is a stellar cook. upon arrival we were treated with all manner of delicious treats: olive/fig tapenade with goat cheese, cheddar butternut squash soup, scalloped potatoes with cream sauce, roasted veggies, baked sweet potatoes with maple syrup glaze, homemade cheesecake and and various other diabetes-inspired delicacies.

first, however, we happened upon a giant dead pig laid out by the side of US-441 with two carloads of gawkers pulled off the highway taking pictures. the beast had to be at least 300 pounds, and i have no idea if the onlookers planned to dig a BBQ pit or were merely snapping mementos. for all i know, it could be some sort of twisted Lord of the Flies holiday tradition, which is exactly what it felt like once we reached Mme. Fawcett's house. there were more than a half dozen toddlers, children and teens running around like maniacs and tearing into the Christmas presents at regular intervals:

don't be fooled by the cuteness...
i nearly lost a finger later in the night

there were several sets of cousins in the mix, and it reminded me of my own youth, opening presents with my cousin Landon and younger brother. we used to resort to all manners of mischief in order to deduce what presents were under the tree, ranging from peeking down the seam in the wrapping paper to weighing the box on the scale and them comparing its weight to the one listed in the Sears & Roebuck catalog.

all that's gone now, and i watched as ten and twelve year old boys opened gift cards with a mix of formality and expectation – but it was an expectation devoid of anticipation. the only uncertainties in the whole ritual were denomination and venue, and it saddened me to know that the cornucopia of online shopping and scaled efficiency of big box retailers have erased the beautifully neurotic fear of opening presents.

i tried to relate these things to my cousin when we spoke, briefly, later that night, but it seemed to have little or no effect on him. perhaps it was just the connection. perhaps it was just my own desire for a connection to a family and a childhood that was never mine to have. it's amazing how many of us find ourselves in families that feel a little off, and i don't know whether:

a) we choose to take embodiment in families that allow us to work
through metaphysical issues (as a half-Canadian might claim);

OR

b) it's a symptom of the bourgeois nuclear family and the breakdown
of more traditional, extended family structure (as one might surmise
from Marx and Freud).

as much as i love each of these men, i doubt any of them really know any more than i do. i didn't feel the sadness so much until the morning after, but snatches of it appeared in the awkward moments when every seat was filled and i stood around the edges, looking for a place tucked out of the way. my brother seems to have less issue with these issues than i, but i wonder how much of his bravado masks an underlying sadness:

illustration by Saylor, to whom i tried but failed speak

eventually the house emptied as the various families left to go visit the other sets of grandparents. those of us that remained took a walk through the neighborhood, admiring Christmas lights that pale in comparison to those back in North Carolina. this is a presumably unintended side effect of South Florida's preposterously agreeable December climate.

returning to the house, i attempted to watch Avatar but was able to stomach only the first hour. barring some drastic shift in the 3rd act, this film is both formulaic and naive, offensive and reductive, trite and unwatchable. perhaps it was better in 3-D, but if stereoscopic tomfoolery is a film's only redeeming value, can it really be said to be worth watching?

really?

as far as i could tell, the narrative focuses on a paraplegic hero (a metonym for his damaged society and obvious metaphor for his impotence) who learns the ways of the land from the exotic inhabitants (the tried and true 'noble savage' stereotype) of some mineral-rich planet. the film's heavy handed treatment of "the Company" (a second grader's book report on Das Kapital) fails to address the complexity and systemic nature of exploitation, which is all the more disturbing when one considers the tremendous economic and institutional forces that must be marshaled and deployed to create a film like Avatar itself.

in other words, the film's superficial critique of global capitalism only serves to efface its actual effect on the world in which we live. it operates as a form of cultural imperialism, colonizing foreign markets and drowning out the space for truly resistant voices. the film made over $2 billion dollars in these markets, compared to $760 million domestically (source), and overlooking these material realities in favor of Avatar's cobbled, hackneyed 'spirituality' only functions to reinforce the inequity most of us choose not to see.

maybe the film turned it all around in the final half hour, maybe this entire rant is based on insufficient information, maybe the impotent protagonist doesn't find romance (or, alternately, maybe he doesn't have to walk away from romance), maybe he isn't the 'chosen one' who can come to the rescue of the indigenous people – but it was all i could do to sit through what i saw.

my yin and i left Mme. Fawcett's a little after 10pm, came home and went straight to bed. thus concluded the first day of Christmas.

vicarious, trans-continental manifeston

my yin and i spent the bulk of yesterday morning procuring wedding supplies, taking advantage of the sales intended for the holidays and artfully dodging from aisle to aisle without becoming ensnared by all the things we didn't need. all in all we were successful, but this is beside the point.

the point is that i spoke with Saylor last night, who has had an exceptionally trying year. romance, finance, death, and educational woes have all come his way since January, and at times it seemed as if the San Francisco Bay itself were scheming against him. during our conversation, though, i had a sudden revelation that 2011 would be a red letter year for him. i have no basis for this conclusion, but felt it as certainly as an autumn wind on the nape of the neck, that gentle whisper of the coming winter that tells you it's time to pull the scarves out of the closet and walk a little more briskly from door to destination.

was it a premonition or hoax? what are the subtle clues were given each moment that allow us to differentiate between projection and insight? why do we engage distractions that block us from knowing?

i see it in myself sometimes, like my present predilection for the Heroes. there's a part of me that wants to justify this behavior by attributing it to the show's premise, which legitimately speaks to my childhood fascination and love of comic books.

clearly, i arrived a little late to the party

looking a little deeper, however, i suspect that this fondness of past times, of past things,of past memories is itself a distraction. it cannot help but move me away from the moment at hand, and in this separation i search for more reasons to explain away this distance.

Toutes les justifications sont des distractions.

but last night on the phone with Saylor there were no distractions, only the quiet certainty that the coming year (a prime number) will be more easeful than the last. that sort of clarity is the greatest gift any of us can receive, and it's easy to forget during this time of year, when the magnitude and range of diversions are unending. my wish for all my friends and family and strangers and colleagues is that they experience the peace already dwelling inside them.

photo and artwork by my yin