9/30/10 Sentimentality
I feel sentimental a lot, or maybe that's not the right way to say it. I'm touched by the exquisite beauty, fragility and strength of life, people, the universe and everything.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
For 9/28/10 - Toddlers
At my job, clients often bring these short people with bobbly heads, wandering minds and tapered little bodies. Little wisps of hair (or sometimes a dense untamed shrubbery up top), and their little hands always reaching for stuff--elevator buttons, files, chair handles, toys someone brought for them. And they always look so curious, staring open-mouthed, impervious to instructions, as if here's a new thing, how do I relate to it. And their little heads bobble uncertainly. And they make noises in addition to words, and they laugh out loud and stomp or waddle unsteadily about. I work in a courthouse. Kids aren't allowed in courtrooms, but often the parents don't have sitters. They are angels, reminding us all about the stuff of life, our reasons for being in that building to begin with.
At my job, clients often bring these short people with bobbly heads, wandering minds and tapered little bodies. Little wisps of hair (or sometimes a dense untamed shrubbery up top), and their little hands always reaching for stuff--elevator buttons, files, chair handles, toys someone brought for them. And they always look so curious, staring open-mouthed, impervious to instructions, as if here's a new thing, how do I relate to it. And their little heads bobble uncertainly. And they make noises in addition to words, and they laugh out loud and stomp or waddle unsteadily about. I work in a courthouse. Kids aren't allowed in courtrooms, but often the parents don't have sitters. They are angels, reminding us all about the stuff of life, our reasons for being in that building to begin with.
Monday, September 27, 2010
9/27/10 - practicing falling in love.
I read in a book by the Dalai Lama yesterday that His Holiness does a meditation practice 6 or 7 times a day on dying, so that when the time eventually comes, he will be able to accomplish that transition with appropriate calm and grace (I assume), and go through all the structures and colors of the various levels of being that pertain in his belief system. I've decided that it's now my duty, since I've been on a dating website for almost a month, to practice falling in love with a similar devotional zeal. After all, people are afraid of it in this society, or they're doing it in the wrong say & making themselves ill, or some people do it but would they share how it happens? And I apparently haven't done it properly yet, or it might have lasted. So far what I have is this (practiced once this morning at home and twice on the bus on the commute home): Falling in love feels like the wing of a bird sweeps the top of your head, spinning it slightly, and then there are these clouds around the outside edge of your being that billow and drupe like clusters of grapes or lilac flowers or the leaves in the canopy of a great tree. The colors change like something you thought you knew in a fire, like a darkly tawny magazine photo of your body and someone else's, and you drop the page into a bonfire, so you still see the picture, but it starts to be engulfed in flames...that instant of fleshy picture and glowing fire simultaneously--that kind of tawny glow. And the colors and the clusters change and roll, like ocean waves crashing on the outside of your energy field, and then it is an implosion, and it washes over you and you are standing there no longer just your own person, but part of a set. That's what it feels like in meditation so far.
I want to keep practicing this, so I am ready at a moment's notice, because there are so many things in a day that I need to fall in love with. People on the streets downtown, and the newsstand guy reading his magazine article while I get my lunch, and the people at the office, and the clients who come in and their children, and a skittering dog on the sidewalk, and my son's face when he comes in from his game, and knowing the exact healing practice needed for my brother and his relationship, and knowing the exact exercise practice I need for my own health, and the ridiculous objects I've chosen to live with me in my house, and the compost I take out to the bin, and more and more.
I read in a book by the Dalai Lama yesterday that His Holiness does a meditation practice 6 or 7 times a day on dying, so that when the time eventually comes, he will be able to accomplish that transition with appropriate calm and grace (I assume), and go through all the structures and colors of the various levels of being that pertain in his belief system. I've decided that it's now my duty, since I've been on a dating website for almost a month, to practice falling in love with a similar devotional zeal. After all, people are afraid of it in this society, or they're doing it in the wrong say & making themselves ill, or some people do it but would they share how it happens? And I apparently haven't done it properly yet, or it might have lasted. So far what I have is this (practiced once this morning at home and twice on the bus on the commute home): Falling in love feels like the wing of a bird sweeps the top of your head, spinning it slightly, and then there are these clouds around the outside edge of your being that billow and drupe like clusters of grapes or lilac flowers or the leaves in the canopy of a great tree. The colors change like something you thought you knew in a fire, like a darkly tawny magazine photo of your body and someone else's, and you drop the page into a bonfire, so you still see the picture, but it starts to be engulfed in flames...that instant of fleshy picture and glowing fire simultaneously--that kind of tawny glow. And the colors and the clusters change and roll, like ocean waves crashing on the outside of your energy field, and then it is an implosion, and it washes over you and you are standing there no longer just your own person, but part of a set. That's what it feels like in meditation so far.
I want to keep practicing this, so I am ready at a moment's notice, because there are so many things in a day that I need to fall in love with. People on the streets downtown, and the newsstand guy reading his magazine article while I get my lunch, and the people at the office, and the clients who come in and their children, and a skittering dog on the sidewalk, and my son's face when he comes in from his game, and knowing the exact healing practice needed for my brother and his relationship, and knowing the exact exercise practice I need for my own health, and the ridiculous objects I've chosen to live with me in my house, and the compost I take out to the bin, and more and more.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
9/22/10 - the equinox
I love the advent of longer nights, warmer, sweeter soups, the darkness of creativity and fulsome transformation. Everything changes when the nights get longer--seeds start their journeys toward new plants, changing their insides overwinter. Some animals make their babies, in dark, fusty holes in the earth. Insects, inside their wintery carapaces and wraps, rearrange themselves to become something new. And there are stars, stars everywhere. I love the seasons of change.
I love the advent of longer nights, warmer, sweeter soups, the darkness of creativity and fulsome transformation. Everything changes when the nights get longer--seeds start their journeys toward new plants, changing their insides overwinter. Some animals make their babies, in dark, fusty holes in the earth. Insects, inside their wintery carapaces and wraps, rearrange themselves to become something new. And there are stars, stars everywhere. I love the seasons of change.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
9/18/10 - local lounge singers
You walk into a gritty bar with a clever name and a downtown address. Inside, the familiar smells of Carhart coveralls, draft beer and cement dust greet you, as well as flickering neon signs on the wall, uneven, beadboard wainscoting, and comfortable faces that have seen a bit of life. Your table is covered with red checked oilcloth and a flickering hurricane lamp. When you walk in, the singer and her accompanist are talking with people at various tables, asking people about their lives, their jobs, their kids. Cigarette smoke trails in at the door from people smoking on the streetside terrace outside, though smoking is banned in the bar. Boutique style reproductions of old headline singers (who probably never came here) hang on the wall--a young Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald.
The singer is as personable on the stage as she was at the tables between sets, chatting about her kids, the synchronized swim meets she had as a teenager, while counting out the next song. She scats like the pro she is, and she and the guitarist pour their everyday souls into the music, helping us soar for a few moments, above the bar stools, hair spray, painted walls, road construction outside, and the Saturday night lights in a quiet downtown.
You walk into a gritty bar with a clever name and a downtown address. Inside, the familiar smells of Carhart coveralls, draft beer and cement dust greet you, as well as flickering neon signs on the wall, uneven, beadboard wainscoting, and comfortable faces that have seen a bit of life. Your table is covered with red checked oilcloth and a flickering hurricane lamp. When you walk in, the singer and her accompanist are talking with people at various tables, asking people about their lives, their jobs, their kids. Cigarette smoke trails in at the door from people smoking on the streetside terrace outside, though smoking is banned in the bar. Boutique style reproductions of old headline singers (who probably never came here) hang on the wall--a young Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald.
The singer is as personable on the stage as she was at the tables between sets, chatting about her kids, the synchronized swim meets she had as a teenager, while counting out the next song. She scats like the pro she is, and she and the guitarist pour their everyday souls into the music, helping us soar for a few moments, above the bar stools, hair spray, painted walls, road construction outside, and the Saturday night lights in a quiet downtown.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Post for 9/12/10 - "Piling up unwanted things in an empty room"
at least, that's what my friend Dawn wrote on my Facebook page.
Here are my unwanted words for the (9/12) day, whew, such a relief to get them off my chest for now. I'll just put them under here, in this post:
Frivolous...choice...resuscitation...sneak attack...frivolity...thank god it's Friday...vituperation...syncope...address...charity...attractive...prosperity... Lame'...judicious...better than...excellence...mindfuck...happenstance... knucklebone...foundation... mobility...celebrate... poetry slam... unacceptable... needless...heedless... pince-nez... bayou ...
at least, that's what my friend Dawn wrote on my Facebook page.
Here are my unwanted words for the (9/12) day, whew, such a relief to get them off my chest for now. I'll just put them under here, in this post:
Frivolous...choice...resuscitation...sneak attack...frivolity...thank god it's Friday...vituperation...syncope...address...charity...attractive...prosperity... Lame'...judicious...better than...excellence...mindfuck...happenstance... knucklebone...foundation... mobility...celebrate... poetry slam... unacceptable... needless...heedless... pince-nez... bayou ...
09/15/2010 - burning hot chilis
I tried one today from Kung Pao chicken, just to see how hot I could stand it. Turns out, not very hot. That thing reamed out my skull like an acid wash, made all my facial bones and aponeuroses seem thin and stretched. I love the drunken walk into the land of the strange that we have to do to accommodate so much heat: shake the head, flail the hands a little, look for a liquid or a carb to douse the flame. The thin feeling inside the head, like the weaker gravity of a smaller planet, Pluto say, or Mercury. Wow! It's great to be alive!!!
I tried one today from Kung Pao chicken, just to see how hot I could stand it. Turns out, not very hot. That thing reamed out my skull like an acid wash, made all my facial bones and aponeuroses seem thin and stretched. I love the drunken walk into the land of the strange that we have to do to accommodate so much heat: shake the head, flail the hands a little, look for a liquid or a carb to douse the flame. The thin feeling inside the head, like the weaker gravity of a smaller planet, Pluto say, or Mercury. Wow! It's great to be alive!!!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
09/14/10
Fox in the Road, Morning
The water of the low-lying creek
weighs down this fold of land
like a woman lying on a soft, well-used bed,
or on an upholstered divan;
mist, like the woman's weary arm,
gestures low in the air.
The air above the creek hollow is bright,
translucent as weak tea,
though with the low, late-summer mist,
it should be rubbing things muzzy,
indistinct; instead, the air
like the lens of a telescope
enlarges and sharpens the oak,
the boxelder, the dispersing moths,
even the grey asphalt’s pebbles,
rendering them startlingly
close.
The vixen, whose momentary birth
from the boxelder opposite
I did not see,
lopes undisturbed uphill
in the moment’s quiet
to the nearer curb,
slender black legs undulating
with the economy of a centipede’s,
though she’s less rich of them.
Her golden coat glides
over the roadway, an unexpected,
unmistakable halo.
Haloed, she could be a saint
in a moving diptych;
my beggar's heart, rent by her beauty,
she also miraculously
restores.
But wild creature, she is on her strict
morning commute. She cants in her path,
darts effortlessly into the scrub,
and I see on the roadway, the far side
of the mist, that my bus
may be coming.
Fox in the Road, Morning
The water of the low-lying creek
weighs down this fold of land
like a woman lying on a soft, well-used bed,
or on an upholstered divan;
mist, like the woman's weary arm,
gestures low in the air.
The air above the creek hollow is bright,
translucent as weak tea,
though with the low, late-summer mist,
it should be rubbing things muzzy,
indistinct; instead, the air
like the lens of a telescope
enlarges and sharpens the oak,
the boxelder, the dispersing moths,
even the grey asphalt’s pebbles,
rendering them startlingly
close.
The vixen, whose momentary birth
from the boxelder opposite
I did not see,
lopes undisturbed uphill
in the moment’s quiet
to the nearer curb,
slender black legs undulating
with the economy of a centipede’s,
though she’s less rich of them.
Her golden coat glides
over the roadway, an unexpected,
unmistakable halo.
Haloed, she could be a saint
in a moving diptych;
my beggar's heart, rent by her beauty,
she also miraculously
restores.
But wild creature, she is on her strict
morning commute. She cants in her path,
darts effortlessly into the scrub,
and I see on the roadway, the far side
of the mist, that my bus
may be coming.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
9/9/10 - Prayer
I've been reading a lot of comments online about prayer and language. Prayer that is carried like the wisps of a mist up a mountainside into the clouds. Prayer that floats through the minds of people and unearths as secret thoughts when our guard is down. Prayer that finds its way out of holy books and whose letters spill in random places in our newspapers and novels, on billboards and on the sides of buses, in memos that we read on email at work, a mismatched ransom note to the world, in and of prayer. Prayers that are taught us by the animals we choose to live with, our companion animals who actually shepherd us, rather than the opposite. Prayer that travels in the wind, lightening our burdens, our lives, our songs, that turns green in a season and ages with stems and cascades and harvests. People are buying all kinds of holy books and reading them, to learn, to hear the voices of animals and angels, and to pray.
Prayer is about silent longing, what we keep in our vases, our vessels, in small boxes around our homes. Prayer is a voice addressing the Infinite, the Infinitesimal, one moment of one being, and all of creation. How is it that we happen upon this word, this trial, this random spill of hope and fluid? I trip and stumble like water over the stones in a brook. I pray every day as though I am all the letters in the universe's alphabet. I open my heart to these words of peace, of place, of the passing of time noticed by the stars.
I've been reading a lot of comments online about prayer and language. Prayer that is carried like the wisps of a mist up a mountainside into the clouds. Prayer that floats through the minds of people and unearths as secret thoughts when our guard is down. Prayer that finds its way out of holy books and whose letters spill in random places in our newspapers and novels, on billboards and on the sides of buses, in memos that we read on email at work, a mismatched ransom note to the world, in and of prayer. Prayers that are taught us by the animals we choose to live with, our companion animals who actually shepherd us, rather than the opposite. Prayer that travels in the wind, lightening our burdens, our lives, our songs, that turns green in a season and ages with stems and cascades and harvests. People are buying all kinds of holy books and reading them, to learn, to hear the voices of animals and angels, and to pray.
Prayer is about silent longing, what we keep in our vases, our vessels, in small boxes around our homes. Prayer is a voice addressing the Infinite, the Infinitesimal, one moment of one being, and all of creation. How is it that we happen upon this word, this trial, this random spill of hope and fluid? I trip and stumble like water over the stones in a brook. I pray every day as though I am all the letters in the universe's alphabet. I open my heart to these words of peace, of place, of the passing of time noticed by the stars.
9/8/10 - Being blessed in the street
You try to avert your eyes as you walk by--she is sitting there on a dirty blanket with a tattered cardboard sign, probably penned at a shelter from a bit of trash. You try to be inconspicuous, thinking of times when you do have more than 34 cents in your pocket, or what they could do with the coins. And regardless if you are thinking that, or whether you are feeling superior because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps so they should be able to, too. Or regardless if in your mind you are writing a check to an agency to help them, or memorizing the streetcorner and the hour so you can come back tomorrow or next week with a five-spot. Regardless of all that, here is someone who materially has so little, and yet she offers you a blessing. You have received a blessing.
You try to avert your eyes as you walk by--she is sitting there on a dirty blanket with a tattered cardboard sign, probably penned at a shelter from a bit of trash. You try to be inconspicuous, thinking of times when you do have more than 34 cents in your pocket, or what they could do with the coins. And regardless if you are thinking that, or whether you are feeling superior because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps so they should be able to, too. Or regardless if in your mind you are writing a check to an agency to help them, or memorizing the streetcorner and the hour so you can come back tomorrow or next week with a five-spot. Regardless of all that, here is someone who materially has so little, and yet she offers you a blessing. You have received a blessing.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
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