What shall I write next?

is always my question. And the glass of water answers, telling me of cool thirst slaked, and the sparkled beam of sunlight answers me, disappearing in the shadowplay of the willow. And the traffic of the road answers me, sounding like an unfolding ribbon or cascade of pavement, musical more than other times when it rains. And the whisper of the stars answers me, sending me all the information I could dream to write. And the blades of grass answer me, cool and perspiring beneath my feed, green and full of two-sidedness like my pages, becoming the leaves and sheets of parchment that I will write. And the spines of books talk to me, divesting secrets with an intimacy that shocks me at times, pouring forth to the empty air--patient and meticulous verbiage. And the quiet chair answers me, holding me up within a pocket of time. And my pockets answer me, containing as they do my memories and old smiles, worn and soft handkerchiefs, and the chocolate wrapers I opened at the theater. And the windshield wipers answer me, shhing in the gloom, and their story is about seeing new possibility, keeping the doors of perception fresh. And the empty air holds my reverberant breath. And I dowse each movement of my pen, finding water underneath, a flowing torrent the life water that becomes real and flows as ink to the surface.

What I thought about last night and what I am right now, these are things not taken lightly. I dreamed a burning house. I was the house and the dreamer. I burned myself and I was relief in the wake of those ashes. The clarity. And I think that the house was unwanted. And if there was anything that I needed, I didn't need what was in the house, the house was wrong.
There are hours of the day where I have time to myself. I go infinitely in, like the hanged man on the card. If there was something for me to do I would keep it to myself. A true meaning presents itself. And the fortune on the cookie left ripples in the air. If there was a message written on a little slip of paper... A man reads a fortune cookie and has a perfect realization. What happened, what brought him to that dawning? What were the events that made so much sense when he read that slip of paper? If we could be so lucky, our lives would fit like novels into sense and cohesion, ended by two books, one beginning, one closing, and all the threads neatly tied. But the center of self cannot hold in coheshion without sacrificing a swim. The neurotic drowns in water he was meant to swim in. The mystic swims in the sea. I think I'm setting out in a boat. If all the docks are dry where do the ducks go in winter?
I am on a journey. What house will I build to replace the one that burned? I think I will live in the old and worn house of Joseph Campbell. I will walk the tattered floor where I felt vertigo. I will converse with pale clapboards and the slate-grey sky. I will associate with the wind.

trust the water

What can I meet you with, holding out in my open arms? If you told me, would it be as freely given, or as highly prized? I could open my flowers for you, and you could feel the saffron-threads of my tender joys. Love the light, I love. My love. But not any exception keeps you from meeting. Lovers interrupted in a half-grove of moonlight and attention, vying for significance in each others' hearts, still very much a dance, two roles, the moon and tide, but no question as to who responds, who sets and wanes. In an instant I am moving beyond the better part of doubt into knowing that a certain center of the self is always present, watching, a voyeur in the game of love until the undulating body prudently closes its eyes. Unbeknownst, unknowing, it waits balanced like an egg, to fall on either side. The better part of valor is hope. And each encounter makes one more sure that the beginning is time well spent. How can something end if nothing ever begins? Has the courage to begin? wet.

I awoke to find the world windy in its grey cloud cover. What a day it will be today. I thought that it was my imagination. Those owls of the mind that never swooped except in self-recrimination, levelling loneliness into a silhouette with tufted ears, but maybe there WAS more, a creeping, inching enjoyment growing from a shadow to cover the moon, who had his intentions elsewhere. What does an intentional community really mean? The rustle of the open wind gave no answer. Instead, the whole sky was a shepherd, and gusted about sheep clouds, fat-bodied in their layer of the atmosphere. At night the stars went deep into the rich velvet of the sky. But no one stayed to watch them long. Everyone tried sleeping and found that they were waking to another time, the dreamtime. If there were any approximation of luck in the universe, the measure of its joy would be all in carelessness, care-free-ness. So we will see how soon I become someone warmer. I am not the most solar of creatures. Maybe I can be you though. Maybe the act of writing makes me large. If there was ever a way to go from here, I would be borne upon a paper flying carpet with a big pen in my hand. What do I want you to say, my friend? Words of praise, comfort, criticism? But you stay silent. You are wise. I don't want those things. You cannot address the question of what I want. You are not my god, my muse, the big thing that calls me in form the universe to do it honor. I am rolling with the air above, I am pictured in the halls of mountains. Their valleys pine for me, leave a negative space for me to fill, like the gently curving back of the lover, wishing to be held. I am coming home. I am coming home. I am coming home into myself.

out-standing in my field

The plant that nightly makes meadows smell sweet is rightly named fragrant bedstraw, along with purple and pink vetch clinging to tall grass stalks full of grain, and daisies waving gently in the breeze, campion forming white pillowy clouds, and elecampagne sweet and low to the ground. Clover awash in white and red, and strawberry peeking from low-growing beds. Black-eyed susans and loosestrife, buttercups too, and parsnip and goutweed, goldenrod, alfalfa, dandelion, morning glory, aster, and the twinkling silver coming from the underbellies of waving leaves on the small aspens growing casually, five feet from the edge of the field, as if no one would notice their encroachment.

The sound of home is the rustle blue-green of these leaf beings on a summer night. A creature sound. They are tall and have stood there ever since I can remember. Can they remember me? I ask. I am a wild one, a small bark scrambler with barked shins, scratches where I scrabbled up the trunk, perfectly perching high above a burbling river bed. This is what the trees remember, my almost still gaze, blood pounding as I crouch, precious gasps as I wonder at the set of day, elated and pleased to be several dozen feet higher than usual as if I had gotten away with something.

My heart has always been in the heart of a certain field, a low point on the land but an open one from which the sky is apparent, and the nearby mountains make their presence known, the funny one shaped like an anvil. An itch that I've had since I was small urges me to run towards open sky, and standing here, I can see wide vistas. A glitter, the light reflecting off a metallic angel, that pilot and I the only ones who know the secret of this sky, its freedom. You and me, buddy. You and me. I don't envy him, whoever he is. He has to look at his instruments, and focus on work, and is surely above the brilliant color display. I in my field see it all pass before me. Like one of my trees, my glory is in watching the world passing by and furthering, becoming. Who else will take the time to notice? If I do not stand out in the field and gaze into this stretch of sky, my stretch of sky, with weather passing across the canvas in a brilliant ever-changing show of wonder, if I do not stand here, will someone else?

The colors of home are the light on hills at evening. How can green become so pink before it all goes dark blue? The clouds on up through the stratosphere each in their turn follow suit in a gentle blending motion. It is suddenly not fair that every sunset has been painted as if only in one moment, when sunsets are temporal events, changing from one moment to the next, now it is the most beautiful, no, now, now, now, until it's blue in gray or is it gray in blue? and I can no longer tell the clouds from the sky nor distinguish the patterns of the leaves and the dew brushes cool against my scraped shins and I turn my steps for home because the day is gone.

The time is now and if I do not write, what good are all the hours of my life? Too long I lingered in the shadows, pale imitations of a dream, whiling away my time with fancies and with fantasy, but NOW those shadows I shall cast, that stand out bold and clear, distinct from every meager spectre of the dying day. What good the empty page? Yes, just so. The page. Who ever heard such pouring forth, extemporaneously, there is not time enough to send my thoughts to shake the fount and center of the earth. But here is this, I cannot form but wish a form to life, exhale my breath as prayer and come an empty vessel to that humbling page. And all those spectral auditors, the shadows spectating even as I who came a member of that formless audience beyond the form of Life, a story, Truth; a witness in the dark to the illumined forms of Love spelled out upon the stage, and those spellbound amazed listeners will heave and sigh, breathe, gasp in my breath as I, exhaling, now send forth words. Not my words but words unto themselves, that struggle out their meaning, flare and die, even as their light illumines and inspires. How shall we fare when entertainment's cheap, the word a silver seed stolen, ransomed, bargained, begged, thrown away out in the gutter? I cannot see the fruits of what will be but toil upon the circle's edge, a leading spiral spinning, spinning, yet never to reach the center nor see the whole complete. Here's to the rim, the narrow path, the ledger lines of profession, duty, fate, or is it will? To bind myself to words, is this my choice?

the four letter words

Dear ____,
I just had a dream which is about to slip away. But I want to remember the sense: we do what we do, save the world or author it, shape it, become its architects, because of the strenght we get from being with other significant people. The architects of the world, the true Poets, its saviors, create spontaneously, without apparent effort, but always because they must, because some need, some impulsion drives them to great urgency. At this time their great precision, their carefully schooled behaviors and skills, allow them to flawlessly tap that which is the power of the universe, and use it in the service of Change (which should be a four letter word but isn't). Despite Fear, our strength.. no, BECAUSE of Fear, our strength lies in unity, not separation, unity centered on the perfect and abiding quality of LOVE. We are small in the measure we separate and close our hearts, and we are great in the measure we dare to let LOVE dream through us and imagine the blossoming of the future of the world. This is why the world needs LOVE above all else, and why the greatest force for altering current situations may still exist, dormant, among the masses. A friend told me evolution has not been survival of the fittest, all these years. In Darwin's later writings he theorized that LIFE was kinder than that. What would a world look like if we turned to the understanding, like he eventually did, that we evolve best through (or rather, in the direction of, towards) our experiences of Beauty, Truth, and LOVE, and through our integrity to those concepts and a deepening of the experience of humanity?
What might the world look like with calm LOVE at the wheel, instead of raw Fear pushing from behind, propelling us? Is that not a worthy goal?
If we stop to calculate everything in our Fear and our isolation, then what we miss is LIFE! And the vibrant, insane, jerry-rigged inventions of the dream will never come into being. But our science, our art is far greater than mean calculation, and as we talk to the universe, we shall become its next shapers, for ill, or indeed, for better.
***
All such power is metaphoric, and if I told you the contents of my dream, the horrors, the struggles in their particulars, it would mean nothing to you, less than nothing. Yet what I have read from such images may, I hope, be writ large upon mankind.

sensitivity

Right now I drink
the slightest sound.
I am a still pond
and my whole being
is dizzy with listening,
waiting, watching.
I am so wrapped up
in sensation, so wrapt
in my attention
the slightest dip of a robin's wing
is enough
to fill me completely.
I am a pregnant tummy
so full of my own being,
that funny egg-question of a soul,
tapping on the shell, hearing
echoes from the world, dreaming
of no time at all, resting
in the dark and quiet, changing
ever so softly.

Changing.

While the golden egg
of my mind waits,
I need not say or do
anything of import.
That waiting itself
holds a gift.
I will bear my mind's treasure
on some sandy shore
and swim back out
to the milky stars of silence.
I have no room for anything else.

See

I remember climbing up into the maple tree and sitting there in its arms and feeling held by the green bowers' embrace an expansive love enfolding me hidden, invisible, green fairy of the air I was, a small thing that could climb with skinny legs dangling, an apple and a book. What else the summerhood child of pleasures? My green libraries the sundappled pages that shifted all around me with the whisper of a thousand voices, each a character and each a friend, their names and patterns known to me within the wide world of my myopic inspection
daydream self that stumbled stopped dead at every dewdrop, pebble alive in millions, little worlds in every corner framed by my own fascinated mind.

What I could learn of, eagerly I climbed, remembering not the day I marveled first, saw the leaves on the trees, unlooked-for mystery revealed, two small windows--each one eye--and worlds were opened, trees, books, everything that I could fit within the frame and always and intently press the bridged glass-rim further up my nose, if the windows were only closer I could see more, know more, peer into the very corners of the universe, tease out test answers, life answers, read what's written on the board, read what's written in the wind, stay a little longer before the great show, spend another moment, breath forgotten, lost in delicate intricacy. Be quiet enough and read far enough long enough read the spaces in between the books upon the shelves, the curves between what is now and what is storied, stored. Futures, sometimes, maybes, more windows seeing past to untold worlds. Around the next corner, or the next, inside the next cover, beneath the trunk, the shafted sunlight, if I hunch my shoulders and direct the torrent, hold my head still with both hands, I might yet find the biggest frame.

Streaming

I have been seeing the ghosts of things past
Sitting in a seat facing backwards on the train to watch the memories and milemarkers streaming out behind us, in front of me. Visions living in the spaces behind mirrors.
Have I regrets?
I am walking along a road, it has rained and the maple leaves lie damp in the gutters. Their companions rustle and sigh in the wind's caress, waiting for release. Autumn lies thick on the land, and the blonde bleached grass and mottled browns of scrub extend over the valley. The only accents are the few blazes of color in the lone holdout trees. I glimpse a river running behind a house. The water is brown with slate grey reflections from the sky, and it looks cold. Its burbling is barely audible, muffled by trees and houses, but I want to stand and hear the full roar. I have come to a fork and choose the path closest to the river, hoping it will open up onto the bank, and I start to walk parallel, craning to see in between the houses. I am approximating, always anxious to see how soon the full flow will come into sight. The farther I go along the road, the more I feel the cold and heavy feeling of committing to a path. Should I have struck across the high grass at the first sight of water, lifting my arms and scooting sideways for a closer look? The river isn't going to meet up with the road. It must curve back around. And now I am taking myself farther and farther away from the clarity I so desperately wanted. Cut off from the source. Car fumes settle around me and refuse to dissipate into the autumn wind. Everywhere boxes and parallel lines, but all I want is to cut the corners. Find the hidden torrent and be swept away.

Purr

No one would ever know what I took in the night,
the satisfaction and sleepy warm fuzzy feeling
I stole, or did it steal over me?
Can contentedness cover me the way a comforter does
so that I hum all over--
a cat that somebody has brought home.
I really like the furniture.

Something with wings

Halloo in the frosty silence, halloo in the echoing night.
The smallest pieces of the globe are glowing shards in our hearts
The myriad reflections of a lost myth
Beyond the shadow of smoke, beyond faith,
Formless hope in the wellspring
What is the question reverberating against the walls?
A fairytale, is it made of more than glass?
Can it be bigger than the fine, fragile bird skeleton we clutch at with clumsy fingertips?
What will make it live and sing within the cages of our breasts?

Anything but wings

Here it is, the poem towards the end of the book about fireflies.
Go into the twilight.

I am the one holding the bubble wand. Fortunately (?) my power is in positively altering my environment, though I often do not directly feel the results. Let's talk about allelopathy, secreting chemicals that alter the growing environment and make it less hospitable for one's competitors. Allelopathy is an adaptive strategy. That's not what I do. I am about the business of making things slightly better in the space all around me. I focus and create bubbles, dandelion tufts, things beautiful and simple and buoyant that are dispersed on the wind to take root in some forgotten corners. I no sooner breathe than create, no sooner create than rejoice. And my greatest joy is in the motion and interaction that my loves and small attentions conceive. I create a place that is a little bit better, a little richer, than anywhere else, maybe it is the only clean patch and neat, or riotous and vibrant, but the party which is open, is open even to the people who come and take (we call them generalists) who will take what I can give and then move on. They pop the bubbles which would have died anyway, but they tread on the goldeny threads of inspiration and cosmic joy in that moment of dance between the world and the senses. They are loud and don't know what I have begun to say in the quiet. My worlds are not hidden from the street traffic, and everyone can see what is valuable in it but not why, and they pull the meaning up by the roots, dissect it to see if it had merit. A disincentive perhaps to share my world, to exhale (my being and my breath). Every body has to survive, but if I can't help but live in mutualistic association and I have no protecting symbiont the world takes care of itself by taking from me anything that I offer.

Show up at the page, appearing at this window I offer myself up as a blank mind to the tender mercies of the winds, Muses as faint in scent, as feathery to touch, as invisible, as passingly extant as all thought and inner experience flowering into some product the subtlest fluid of which it is permissible to drink and in drinking to be drunk deeply, to pour forth that fountain-- that voluble torrent of love and care, the softest words whispered to oneself and the dark ceiling in the night beyond light in the twilit chambers where filters each shadow becoming impressions on the pastel wall, as memorable as water beads running in the shower, and as intently noted even while they slide away all. Words are free and thus is their pain; to live fleeting, mutable lives in the mind, altering the landscape for the space of half an eternity--half a second. What could matter in this ever-fixed ever-changed war, where transformation is the only constant, the only choice, and the particular, the definite marks death?

I am frustrated with my own slow progress, self-referential loops that leave me myopic in the passive and descriptive, endless circular thoughts filled with commas, with hesitation. I am frustrated with the way my mind settles and clears following stones thrown to the bottom of a lake. How long it takes. I am the stone-thrower. I fight the gradual accumulation of what I already sense, and would stamp my feet to have the whole before me. Despite my tantrums I work steadily, I progress despite myself, or when I am asleep. I must keep myself in the dark, work miracles behind closed eyelids. No wonder my waking self forgoes sleep as long as or longer than it can physically be forgone, anything in rebellion, anything but what my deep self dreams of, anything but wings. Why can I not grant that boon in and for myself? I am yet keeping myself powerless. Stalemate with stale hopes on a dusty shelf, when I know that the snowglobes hold castles and patterns of the deepest shades, burgundy, royal blue, and the gold that burns. Dust is useful to me yet, and it suits my mood. Things which are glorious pretend at the tawdry. After all, from what matter sprung creation?

Who likes to feel laughed at?

Once upon a time, the world woke up. It was the funniest story that ever happened. And then it could have been the end, everyone slapping their knees, except no one got the joke, so they just kept living. It would take too much time to explain the joke, so everyone is very patient with each other, and humorless. We ruffle each others' hair, and pretend to be grumpy about this small consolation. If you catch someone's eye right after they see a balloon that someone has lost hold of, they will show you a piece of the infinite, blue chuckling music that we are deaf to. But it doesn't make them happy, for who likes to feel laughed at?

awake and not feeling anything particularly strong

And so I am just going to write and see what comes of it. An invitation into the night, into the mind spaces and the in-between places. Between one window of glowing light and the cathode ray signals I'm beaming out, or between mind and brain, between the fingers and my keys, perhaps that is where it really happens, mind and keys, fingers and keys, yes there's a dance going on, a dance I can't understand because (have you ever felt this way?) as soon as I think about it, I stop being able to type.

for a while.

THe way to keep myself functional functioning in motion is to keep myself from knowing what my hands are doing. IF not, I will steadily undermine all my own work with secret ninja thoughts sent by which half of my brain? the half that doesn't like me, sent to assassinate all my attempts to create something or be happy. I was happy in the midst of a sea of rain, I was happy floating in a dream somewhere beneath the pine trees, I was happy in my nest, in the soft warmth of silence, a cloudlike comfort, heavy and confining.

How do I keep myself conscious, when my instinct is to be ever wider, ever open, and embrace that which is most uncritical and free? I feel afraid, afraid to love too much, to be the firefly leaking sparks in every direction until I must fizzle out. It is uncontrolled, I am crashing and burning. And I like it. The hardest things for me are easiest for other people, and I will start with the basic premise they struggle with for their whole lives. Do I want to close down? There are people who could show me how, show me myself in the mirror if I wanted such things. What is the value of control? Learning it so you don't have to use it if you don't want to. Dammit, that means I should. It's a good thing there are counterterrorist cells in my mind, and spies and counterspies. Otherwise, I would have to make up far more for myself to do. IF I weren't self-sabotaging, imagine, I'd have to imagine a lot more. Have wizard's duels with people I met at the bus station. Not that I ever go to the bus station, but it seemed appropriately inappropriate. I am inappropriate. I laugh inappropriately. And I act this way when I'm sober. I act this way all the time. Do I act this way when I'm me?
How do I console myself, is feeling emotion just my indulgence, my bigger weakness, bitter, the emotions and the elements I'm drowning in, am i the vaguest Flower like the Little Prince's, not seeing anything in front of me, my reasons not making any but internal logic, what is my character's motivation? I worry somehow that metaphors fail me, and everyone else sees through being a hippie, they see in it something silly which escapes me. Perhaps I take myself too entirely serious when I should laugh, so that I do not laugh inappropriately as well as laughing inappropriately. In that case, and on that note, I will end this post by expressing the regret that I ate so many chocolates before bed. Though I cannot guarantee that such a thing will not befall me a second time. Temptation wiggles her fingers even now.

Shabby magic; some words and a handful of dust

As I spell I keep myself spellbound, fixed at my desk, fixed in my head. The words come flowing out, I read them, I read them or do they read me, but we remain aside from the world in a solitary love affair, in isolate reciprocity, ours the dying lovers' embrace. When will the words grow cold and stiff and press too tightly on me, corpse-white? Will I feel the growing horror, loathing as the thing nearest to me is revealed in its full monstrosity and hideous mockery of life? When will I curse fidelity? keeping me rooted in a loveless union out of fear, a miser grasping at sand, fists clenched, now emptying as the final grains tumble and with them, illusion.

Wet Pavement

Small world, where it rains at night, and things smell of lake and pine and the underside of damp leaves in the dark, secret earth. Driving through cloud-herds, swishing in the fresh, looming blue. Wet secrets whisper from the dripping leaves, the eaves and marges of the forest brooding at the wayside, making way for my wake. Awake still, with reflections past the wipers, the pavement glistening a lake of ice and vertigo, and I slide along it, loosened from perception and glowing lines. I could live in this dark mirrored world where the signs shine out and cars cast glimmering trails, and the noises are those of a mermaid's dim cousin sighing gently in her sleep. For the hushed space of a rainstorm, I dream.

What can you do with a drunken sailor?

That was the first thing that came into my head, be prepared for STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS! More like a trickle. If there was anything to be said, I would have said it. No actually, I would have hemmed and hawed (what a great expression that is) and then I would have said 'um' a few more times, and then thought about what I was going to say some more, and then tried to phrase it, with the end result that you ran out of patience and finished my sentence for me! I stand in the way of good conversation. I also try to stay on the phone as long as possible, there is something so beautiful in the awkward way people try not to seem like they are hanging up on me, because I'm sure not hanging up! People are awkward and beautiful. Have you ever noticed that? Watch someone eating a sandwich. Watch someone eating anything, really. They are very self-conscious, and disgusting, sort of, you can hear chewing noises and see down their throat. A great thing to do is to try and make eye contact with someone while they are eating, and see their gaze slide away, embarrassed and full of enjoyment. I love how we think that we are so fragile that we can be shattered with a glance! Walking along down the street, carefully avoiding each other, eyes on our shoes, nervously we put our hands in our pockets, we take them out again, we ruffle our hair. Being a human is probably the best game I can think of, because we forget we are playing and we start taking ourselves seriously! Could that be the theme of this blog so far? Hmmm....
I've been in a good mood lately because of the rain. About twice every day for the past month it has been raining in Poughkeepsie, and there is something about the sky just before, just after, or during a thunderstorm, it makes me very happy to be alive, and to be wearing a yellow raincoat, and to be wet/notwet inside/outside, any combination of the above, possibly with a mug of tea and a movie, or barefoot in wet grass. Also, puddles! The smells are better, the sunsets are definitely better, and it's soothing to listen to when I fall asleep. All of which leads me to the conclusion that I should move somewhere like Wales. Oh, Wales... of course I would live in a cottage, and it would downpour regularly and then one day a young, freshfaced Welsh shepherd would knock on my door, carrying a lost lamb and wearing a wool sweater (because damp wool has such a Nice smell), and I'd invite him in for tea (hem hem).
The answer to the drunken sailor question is you press-gang him, of course, but it's suggestive isn't it? In my childhood I was exposed to an unusual quantity of Irish drinking songs. I've no regrets, I won't be the sucker who has to buy the whole pub a round because she kept clapping when the chorus was over. But my true weakness is for folk ballads. Songs that wear their hearts on their sleeves, and are damn proud of it too. Unabashed sentimentality, that's for me, with a bit of antiwar propaganda here and there.
I suddenly had a paranoid moment of realizing how impersonal the internet is, and how little control I have over machines. Why am I trusting the computer? It could kill me with its little finger. If it had a little finger. (WHY is THAT an expression? English, I tell you, it's pretty weird, yeah, hehe.) But the worst is bathrooms that are fully automated. If machines suddenly developed consciousness, a sadistic sense of humor, and a grudge against humans, bathrooms in which the toilet flush, the running water, soap and dryers are all electrical would be an absolute nightmare. Be afraid! Be very afraid!
...And that's my story.
And then we went and had pasta.