These shadows are our lives
stretching towards eternity.
The ocean wave of liberation
breaking, receding, never
quite touching the toes.
I watch the shadows grow longer
reaching for the surf –
The sun going down behind me,
my shadow becomes
indistinguishable from nightfall.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
untitled
Thank you for this bumpy gravel road to nowhere, this pristine sidewalk graffiti of thumbprint and initial. I am
not the first to pass this way, not the only traveler on this road, not the only one to mistake the map for the territory – or was it the other way around?
I will not be the last haggard soul, or the final disembodied poet. I look east and see a forest of pens, west lies an ocean of paper. Between
the two there is only me and this bumpy gravel road to nowhere, this pristine sidewalk, graffiti, thumbprint and initial.
not the first to pass this way, not the only traveler on this road, not the only one to mistake the map for the territory – or was it the other way around?
I will not be the last haggard soul, or the final disembodied poet. I look east and see a forest of pens, west lies an ocean of paper. Between
the two there is only me and this bumpy gravel road to nowhere, this pristine sidewalk, graffiti, thumbprint and initial.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
a little over three years ago...
The poem below was written a little more than three years ago, and although I didn't know it the night I wrote it, tiny cracks were beginning to appear in the facade of my would-be romance. At the time I was engaged in an experiment with celibacy, which taught me many things, but few of them were what I expected. The mind's ability to project inductions and fabricate deductions is truly stunning.
The point is that growth, change, and shifts of consciousness always happen just beyond our ability to see them. The precursors, however, become visible if we practice placing our attention on them. For me this primarily comes through dreams, poetry and meditation.
Unfortunately, waiting for a dream to reveal our next step can lead to a long time waiting (believe me, I've tried), and even when they do arrive interpreting them is a hazy proposition. Poetry is more reliable, but inspiration follows its own timetable – not to mention the dangers inherit in mistaking the muse for the Muse.
That leaves meditation, which is far and away the most reliable source of clarity and wisdom I have yet to discover. (And by 'discover,' I mean stumble into.) One of the interesting things about meditation is that its benefits are realized through practice, not the practitioner's belief of its efficacy. This mean two things.
First, practicing meditation will provide grounding, improve focus, and offer peace of mind even if the practitioner doesn't 'believe' in it. My own experience with mantra and japa mala has taught me this. Second, believing in meditation without practicing is no more useful than believing in reincarnation or the Big Bang or the price of tea in China. For me, although rare, this lack of practice usually results either from a perceived lack of time (inevitably false) or pleasurable distraction (self-explanatory).
Anyway, a little over three years ago I was doing a hell of a lot of meditating. There were flashing lights and revelations and cosmos-shaking insights, but the true benefits of this practice were beginning to show up in more subtle ways. All the flashing lights in the world don't make a difference if we stay stuck in the same patterns, and what good is an insight if we don't integrate it into the way we live our day-to-day lives?
The poem hinted at this process of integration, which was happening in spite of my mind's best efforts to twist the actual situation around into a story worthy of John Hughes or Lloyd Dobbler:
I hold meditation responsible for what happened, and more importantly, for all the things that didn't happen. I could have stayed spinning in that cycle for months or even years longer, delaying – or perhaps even denying – the peace, happiness and fulfillment I now (don't) take for granted. And all because...
But this is beside the point.
The point is that growth, change, and shifts of consciousness always happen just beyond our ability to see them. The precursors, however, become visible if we practice placing our attention on them. For me this primarily comes through dreams, poetry and meditation.
Unfortunately, waiting for a dream to reveal our next step can lead to a long time waiting (believe me, I've tried), and even when they do arrive interpreting them is a hazy proposition. Poetry is more reliable, but inspiration follows its own timetable – not to mention the dangers inherit in mistaking the muse for the Muse.
not this Muse
That leaves meditation, which is far and away the most reliable source of clarity and wisdom I have yet to discover. (And by 'discover,' I mean stumble into.) One of the interesting things about meditation is that its benefits are realized through practice, not the practitioner's belief of its efficacy. This mean two things.
First, practicing meditation will provide grounding, improve focus, and offer peace of mind even if the practitioner doesn't 'believe' in it. My own experience with mantra and japa mala has taught me this. Second, believing in meditation without practicing is no more useful than believing in reincarnation or the Big Bang or the price of tea in China. For me, although rare, this lack of practice usually results either from a perceived lack of time (inevitably false) or pleasurable distraction (self-explanatory).
Anyway, a little over three years ago I was doing a hell of a lot of meditating. There were flashing lights and revelations and cosmos-shaking insights, but the true benefits of this practice were beginning to show up in more subtle ways. All the flashing lights in the world don't make a difference if we stay stuck in the same patterns, and what good is an insight if we don't integrate it into the way we live our day-to-day lives?
The poem hinted at this process of integration, which was happening in spite of my mind's best efforts to twist the actual situation around into a story worthy of John Hughes or Lloyd Dobbler:
Cusak did for stalking what Madonna did for Kabbalah
I hold meditation responsible for what happened, and more importantly, for all the things that didn't happen. I could have stayed spinning in that cycle for months or even years longer, delaying – or perhaps even denying – the peace, happiness and fulfillment I now (don't) take for granted. And all because...
I didn't listen
When we met she told me she wanted to be alone.
But I didn’t listen and soon I was in her bed until
one day she said she needed to be alone. But I
didn’t listen and this was repeated many
times until one night she told me that
she didn’t not want to spend the
night with me. I looked around
her room and saw the cat on
the bed, a stack of books
on the nightstand and
I realized the only
thing in her life
saying she
wasn’t
alone
was
me
.
But I didn’t listen and soon I was in her bed until
one day she said she needed to be alone. But I
didn’t listen and this was repeated many
times until one night she told me that
she didn’t not want to spend the
night with me. I looked around
her room and saw the cat on
the bed, a stack of books
on the nightstand and
I realized the only
thing in her life
saying she
wasn’t
alone
was
me
.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
some brief thoughts on Santa Claus
Things are finally getting back to normal. The holidays are always full of ambivalence for me, a combination of contagional excitement and mnemonic dread. The time seems both phenomenally unproductive and full of busybody anxiety as people run around buying this and opening that and eating enough sugar to give a rhinoceros type-II diabetes.
There are also blockbuster films with idiotic names:
Speaking of, Cameron Crow should know better:
The point is that my yin and I had the opportunity to hang out with a lot of kids over the holidays, and besides being fun watch, it brought up an ethical dilemma:
Option #1: A parent tells a child that Santa Claus exists, ensuring future disillusionment and instituting a policy of parental deception, manipulation, and subterfuge
Option #2: A parent tells a child that Santa Claus does not exist, and then must attempt to explain why the child must lie to all of his or her goyim playmates.
The interesting thing about this situation is that, either way, the parent is forced to teach the child something about lying. I had never really thought about Christmas this way until this year, and although I haven't thought all the way through it yet, it seems to serve as some sort of litmus test for a parent's understanding of ethics.
Do we adopt a situational morality and lie to the child? What trauma will be incurred by the child when he or she learns the truth? How will this revelation affect his or her perception of the parent? How is one to explain why the child should lie to his or her peers? Given the American larger culture of Christian Consumer Capitalism, what are the ostracizing effects of not believing in Santa Claus?
And, perhaps most importantly, why don't more people ask these questions before they have children? Given the awesome responsibility of nurturing a child into adulthood, it seems disturbing that we do not even perform a moral and ethical inventory with regard to the stories we tell our children.
There are also blockbuster films with idiotic names:
Speaking of, Cameron Crow should know better:
But this is beside the point.
The point is that my yin and I had the opportunity to hang out with a lot of kids over the holidays, and besides being fun watch, it brought up an ethical dilemma:
What is one to do about Santa Claus?
Option #1: A parent tells a child that Santa Claus exists, ensuring future disillusionment and instituting a policy of parental deception, manipulation, and subterfuge
Option #2: A parent tells a child that Santa Claus does not exist, and then must attempt to explain why the child must lie to all of his or her goyim playmates.
The interesting thing about this situation is that, either way, the parent is forced to teach the child something about lying. I had never really thought about Christmas this way until this year, and although I haven't thought all the way through it yet, it seems to serve as some sort of litmus test for a parent's understanding of ethics.
Do we adopt a situational morality and lie to the child? What trauma will be incurred by the child when he or she learns the truth? How will this revelation affect his or her perception of the parent? How is one to explain why the child should lie to his or her peers? Given the American larger culture of Christian Consumer Capitalism, what are the ostracizing effects of not believing in Santa Claus?
And, perhaps most importantly, why don't more people ask these questions before they have children? Given the awesome responsibility of nurturing a child into adulthood, it seems disturbing that we do not even perform a moral and ethical inventory with regard to the stories we tell our children.
This rant has been brought to you by your friend Ebenezer.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
last night's dream
Dream of a parking lot and
unplanned encounter with Nancy
I'm walking down the hill.
It's sloped like the one in the park:
the sky above.
the park dangling in the middle
The town below
falls gently towards the Earth.
Nancy is getting in her car
| a sports utilitty |
| that barely sque|
|ezes between th|
|e cracked white l
|ines on the aspalt
We're surprised to see each other,
and I nod uneasily as I walk past.
Something has shifted though
and I turn back around.
We exchange a tentative hug and wish each other well.
The trauma has healed.
The vitriol has dissipated.
The first six years of the new millennium never happened.
Monday, December 19, 2011
we [clarification]
I watched Rent (the film version) two years
and two nights ago and either:
The bohemian romance of New York
is a clever fiction, a lie we
[Generation X]
with the fact that we
[Americans]
live in a nation where the indomitable efficiency of
interstates and television has obliterated the
peculiarities of geographic separation. We
[artists]
loathe to believe this, and write musicals
and songs and books
[and blogs]
[would-be critics]
trepidation as a quilt emerges from our collective
musings - a quilt pieced together from pop culture
references, allusion, consumption, cleverity,
pathological irony, and non-historicized personal
experience. We
[the tragic curious]
if it was only a dream we
[the unreformed romantics]
from shivering in the night;
the pastiche quilt of post-modernity makes for a poor bedfellow.
OR
I
[the author]
wrote the above in an attempt to
distance myself from the sadness I
distance myself from the sadness I
[the human]
felt.
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