1
I would rather be a fool
who knows nothing
than a wise man
who knows not
the power of belief.
2
I am wondrous
in my complexity.
I can reach
such astonishing depths
and such exquisite heights.
I am not an either or
I am universe of contrasts.
The ground falls away
and I am thrown into a world
where form and movement
are interchangeable.
I am born.
Made whole.
Disassembled and reformed
thousands of times a second.
–
No one ever speaks
of death in terms
of animation
but now you know
that death surges
with the same creative impulse
as life.
–
The wind cradles and cajoles
what once was my body
and what has become
in passing a mere impression.
In this place
which is neither here nor there
emotions are like birds
drifting over
the still, bloodless surfaces
of the mind.
Below, under the trespass of gravity,
emotions are like stitches,
crooked and intractable.
–
I can smell the clouds
like strips of canvas.
They are the suggestion of a kiss,
the humid breath,
a body held aloft
by a single heartbeat,
a touch that is
all presence and no pretense,
a touch so light
it passes from one body
to the other.
–
There is nothing for my hands to hold.
I am swimming and drowning
in a sea without traction or gravity.
I am a radiance,
a boat of folded newspaper,
a desiccated leaf turning circles mid-air.
I dance across a shapeless void
feeling deep and incomprehensible feelings.
My only thought bares repeating
I am free. I am free. I am free.
It has been a while since I have sat down to write anything. The pressure is terrific. I haven’t left enough space to create. I have too many competing ideas. I am blocked and overwhelmed to bursting.
I am not sure where to start so I’ll start at the beginning. I have been doing a lot of soul-searching lately. I have spent a lot of time outside in nature. Thinking about it now I spend a lot of time talking (whether out loud, on paper, in thought) but not a lot of time listening.
Some months ago I made an impassioned prayer to the universe. I don’t want to live in a world without magic. In other words I don’t want to live my whole life limited by the perceptions of my ego. I never imagined what that would actually mean. I realized that reality has many layers/dimensions. What we usually take for reality is derived from our senses, experiences, values, beliefs etc. This is the reality which is more or less agreed upon by the society we live in and yet each person still possesses a reality unique to them. You will never find two identical versions of reality. But there is more to reality than the content of our senses and our upbringing. Technology allows us to see some of that unseen world. Education expands imagination/awareness but it can also block our intuition when we use it to confirm the limited views of our egos (think of all the outdated/debunked information you learned in school!). The best minds are flexible, open, curious, and humble. So much still remains unknown to us. The universe is full of mysteries, of unanswerable questions, of flux. Unknown and unreal are two very different things and yet we often allow our limited and limiting ego to fill in these gaps with fear and doubt. The ego insists that there can be only one right answer to a question/only one right of being/doing/seeing. The ego requires confirmation even at the expense of other people. The ego cannot live and let live. The ego manipulates, separates, and judges. Lizard-brain. Little god. Child.
Often we forget that dreams constitute a huge portion of our reality. We spend around ⅓ of our lives asleep, part of that time we are dreaming. We also dream when we are awake. Dreams are vital and they too are reality.
It said that we have a second brain in our stomach. “The enteric nervous system is often referred to as our body’s second brain. There are hundreds of millions of neurons connecting the brain to the enteric nervous system, the part of the nervous system that is tasked with controlling the gastrointestinal system. This vast web of connections monitors the entire digestive tract from the esophagus to the anus. The enteric nervous system is so extensive that it can operate as an independent entity without input from our central nervous system, although they are in regular communication.”
The bacteria in our gut can actually send signals to our brains! We can’t see bacteria with the naked eye and when all is properly working we don’t even think much about them. Yet there they are alive within us, communicating with us, essential to our life/health. If we abuse ourselves they can even make us sick. Nature too has a delicate balance. We’ve seen what happens when we try to beat nature into submission. We often forget that we are a part of nature. We are connected to every living thing on the planet. The planet/our planet is alive. I believe in a collective unconscious. This is why so many of our philosophies and religions end up saying essentially the same thing even though the creators of the original stories had no “ego to ego” interaction.
I have been fascinated lately by the unseen world as you can see. There is an anime called Mushishi that I am currently rewatching. Here is a basic plot summary.
Mushi are the most primitive form of life. They have no goals/no agenda aside from being. They are neither good or bad. They can exist in countless forms and are capable of mimicking things in the natural world. They can even mimic disease. Most people cannot see them in their original form but they do have the ability to affect humans (altered perception, disease, unusual abilities). They appear in the show as ethereal, sort of like floaters, except that they are light instead of dark.
“Floaters are little “cobwebs” or specks that float about in your field of vision. They are small, dark, shadowy shapes that can look like spots, thread-like strands, or squiggly lines. They move as your eyes move and seem to dart away when you try to look at them directly.”
I am not trying to convince you that mushi exist (we didn’t always know about viruses and bacteria haha). The point is I believe there is much unseen in this world. Just because something is unknown or unseen doesn’t make it inconsequential. Just because we don’t know how something works doesn’t mean it is broken. Just because we don’t understand someone’s point of view doesn’t mean that they are disposable, wrong, a threat, an obstacle to our success/happiness. Why give someone else all your power? Life is sacred.
I haven’t even begun to touch upon my beliefs on the afterlife, spirits and such but I will save it for another time.
I wanted to share a story with you.
“There was once a stonecutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.
One day he passed a wealthy merchant’s house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. “How powerful that merchant must be!” thought the stonecutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.
To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. “How powerful that official is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a high official!”
Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. “How powerful the sun is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the sun!”
Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. “How powerful that storm cloud is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a cloud!”
Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. “How powerful it is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the wind!”
Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it – a huge, towering rock. “How powerful that rock is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a rock!”
Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. “What could be more powerful than I, the rock?” he thought.
He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stonecutter.”
Sometimes we forget how powerful we are. Reality is shaped by our perception which means it can be changed. We are actively creating the world we live in, let your beliefs reflect the type of world you want to live in and reality will follow. When we act from a place of gratitude and abundance there is always enough. Enough time. Enough love. Enough money. Enough resources. The ego’s constant sense of scarcity is what leads us to the selfish actions that deplete the earth and our relationships with other people. The ego will never feel whole, full, or connected. Honor the ego’s service (it has a function, it is after all connected to our survival instinct!), honor your emotions (knowing that like weather they pass), but don’t buy into the story line, don’t cling to outcomes which are a small part of our experience (the journey is the vast majority of our experience). Imagine if you chose to enjoy the embarkation, the journey, and the destination? Your life would be so much more rewarding then if you allow yourself only the few seconds of ecstasy you get from the completion of a task/goal. Remember how good anticipation feels. How exciting life is when you allow it to flow. Write your own story. Dare to be a mystery, to go a day without needing to define everything. Dare to look inside of yourself, even at the darkness within, dare to love the places that hurt. When you look out at the ocean or up in the sky, at the vastness of it all you see potential, power, beauty, and enigma. Our bodies may be small/finite but the spirit is infinite, beautiful, mysterious, and full of potential. We create truth by becoming expressions of truth, by honoring our inner cycles, by following our intuitive knowing. Choose freedom.
Why is blindness a prerequisite of faith?
The truth can withstand deliberation
and if it cannot then can it be called absolute?
Neither proof nor patent, neither clutch nor crutch,
I am not without horror, without shape or contrast.
I live among others in the isolating patterns
of my perceptual field. This is the price of self,
the feeling of loneliness that comes
from being misunderstood and the callousness
of maintaining one’s discriminations
whatever the cost to others.
The ego cannot be discarded,
the trick is in recognizing
that the identity is fluid,
a process rather than a product.
By maintaining rigid boundaries
everything and everyone becomes
an enemy to be subdued or vanquished.
But if we regard others as aspects
of a vast and benevolent universe
then they become teachers, nuances
of our very own being with a purpose
unique and yet inseparable from our own.
Is this real or is this entrapment?
Minutiae dances along my margins
passable wraiths skirting
an improbable darkness.
We glimpse one another
beneath lowered lashes,
two indisposed hearts
on the brink of trespass.
Why is it that a suitable destination never arrives?
–
We are out of season,
stalking through drifts of star light-
white or yellow- vehemently inconsistent.
If this is a mistake then it bares repeating.
I have yet to break the surface
suspended in half truths
I am soon to become obsolete.
There are too many doors in this hallway,
too many choices that I cannot make,
too many hooks and premises.
–
Madness is an acknowledged peek
at the unseen universe.
It exists certainly but to see it
one must remove their eyes
(figuratively of course).
Sometimes I catch myself
looking at ordinary things
but are these habits and affectations
markers of sanity?
Is it sane to assign value
to the inherently worthless
and labor endlessly for its acquisition?
Do we fear death because it is the only outcome
or because it cannot be translated to the individual?
And is death really a must have
or is it an acquired taste?
–
Whether or not there is enough love
factors heavily into the equation.
Practicality is just another form of anesthesia.
I would share the breadth and bluster of my experience.
We do not speak of facts
which can only elucidate need
but of feelings which are imprecise
and by their nature uncharacteristic.
You are my exception, my desire,
my gasping, exonerated breath.
Your voice rides me
like black water
into exiled shores.
For the duration I am snared
as a genie to wishes
both controversial and obscene.
–
There’s always a drawback,
a sacrifice, a parasite ready
to eat the plush from my architecture.
All who love, bleed.
In time even our bones crease.
–
Sidereal and insubstantial
I watch the flask rise from your pocket
and the stitches from your flanks
like a witch’s unsightly fingers.
–
Were it that I were furious
I might still effect some miracle
but all I foster is dread.
Tears churn and wear
My god, there’s nothing left.
–
I am prone to rubatosis,
prone to suicide
the amethyst falls from my finger
like a child’s lonely heart.
What has become of us?
–
I don’t really know how to explain what I’ve been doing and why I haven’t been online much. It’s not that I am busy exactly, but preoccupied with philosophical questions. Like why is it so much easier to accept a negative/deleterious belief than a positive one no matter how ample the proof? Why do we accept certain things as truth? What am I really meant to do with my time? What is worth my time? What is life? Why do I look so old (it isn’t important but it is on my mind)? How do I see behind the body dysmorphia and the illusions of the media? We are living and dying simultaneously. The questions just keep on going. I am reading the Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I am thinking about longevity and what centenarians have in common. I am thinking and thinking. I am doing things too, trying to do different things because I’d made everything so safe and so polished and I’ve gotten bored of it. I figure out how to make things efficient and when I’ve gotten it down just so, I start over again leaving out the bits that scare me naturally. When I play the Sims I make all the characters, all the houses, all the community lots and I never really play the game, I just set the stage. I create characters, fascinating, gorgeous characters and I don’t write them into any stories. Sam bought my The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll his last book and it just came in yesterday so I have started to read that too. I am also reading Ariel by Sylvia Plath. I can’t read one book at a time. I am spending more time outside because we are having a spot of good weather. I don’t know how to do and feel at the same time. I either feel and write or I do and repress. I haven’t understood yet how to stop bouncing between the extremes. Well I could ramble all day about all the stuff bouncing around in my birdcage but it wouldn’t really clarify anything in a tidy and specific way.
We want most what we already have,
it’s the addiction within the addiction,
the enigma draped in ostrich feathers.
Denial through rigorous premeditation,
if I subtract my faults, I in turn am less.
–
From one grave to the next,
we shamble hungry and inchoate.
It’s Sisyphus all over again,
the need for redundancies,
the need to need.
All the better to hypnotize you with my friend.
A litany of deceptions, an erosion of hearts
harder and more brittle than the bones that contain them.
–
Want more, feel less.
Need more, think less.
Your success is a testament to my failure.
Perhaps we should do away with the game altogether
or we could both participate bereft of desire.
The lack of competition has made winning
more important than ever
only now the lessons are lost.
–
Take away everything but my failures
lest I become more incompetent than I already am.
We don’t want fair, we want the balance in our favor,
to be the exception in exceptional.
Take my life at your own risk,
become me, endure with me
the long, effervescent winter.
My lips cradle your forgotten reliquaries.
I am dissatisfied with my meager existence,
with the unquenchable depths that are my fears.
So senseless, these stories with their grievous outcomes.
My senses are addictions, they shovel in horror after horror,
at least my brain is given to such ornery interpretations.
I hate my brain, how weak and sickly a thing, a brain.
I am polluted, sacred still, but markedly polluted
and I think that I should suffocate
if not for the occasional bout of laughter.
–
What reason have I to laugh
what reason could I possibly need?
I don’t like people in a collective sense.
We are an insatiable wake, always seeking
a definition that excuses our personal excesses
and prohibits the prosperity of others.
We envy everything, even the deficits,
even the illnesses of others because those scars
could be used to claim some benefit
for which we are not eligible given our fortune.
–
We are cruel to one another because in others
we assign our motives and in others we see
that which we find lacking in ourselves.
Beneath our frightful costumes
there is a child hurting,
an innocence indelible
and if we could only forgive
we’d see that we too are substantial.
–
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/music-prompt-31-i-cant-escape-myself-by-the-sound/
Adolphe Valette
I invade your gangways,
your exhalations spiraling
like the plumes of a revenant’s cape.
Obstreperous parades foul the streets.
Buildings tangled together
in a sooty, deafening grave.
–
I dream of impurities
of hexes woven into a tapestry
of undulating feathers.
The rain scrambles underfoot.
My eyes pouring, downcast,
a single heart galloping
behind pitiless windows.
–
This made up world,
an apocalypse, grim
and force-less. If not for hunger
we’d feel nothing at all.
We are not meant to be whole
for on that day nothing else
would be capable of getting in.
A full man must surely be dead.
–
low on mojo
“Mate” by Anne Worner CC BY-SA 2.0
In the inconstant ravages of midday
I drink of your succulent greys,
of your endless repetitions.
Winning accounts for only a fraction
of our experiences, we lose everyday.
I stand here challenging my failures,
the pawn of my genius watered down.
I will not be made palatable.
I will not be made to adhere.
The only geometry worth the commute
is the human heart. Those slovenly angles
really get me going, even now
in this wrangling heat, the muse seizes hold
shaking me free of my rumpled dress.
–
We were young once, too young
to appreciate the distress of bones
huddled beneath orgasmic flesh.
Too young to know the intimacy
imposed by silence. I love you
in ways both innocuous and forbidden.
I’d kill for you, an oath not undertaken lightly.
We only seem casual, ordinary
but on the inside we are slicks
of versicolored gasoline, ready to ride
the circuitous waves of our ever deepening
sense of self. To truly understand life
you’ve got to jettison your identity entirely.
I will not be tagged, stacked, and sequestered
by your quadratic pretenses, the I before am
is completely unnecessary, be for nothing
else matters, not even the reward.
–
cutting it close time-wise barely managed a quick poem.
mindlovemisery 