good and right

"Doesn't it feel good? I mean, doesn't it feel right?" Someone said this to me not too long ago. While it was more a suggestion than a question, I took the time to consider it. The assumption is that the answer to one will be the answer to both. It's convenient to lump these two together indiscriminately. It is decidedly inconvenient to lump these two together indiscriminately. The unnecessary is costly. Not everything that feels good is right. Conversely, not everything that is right feels good. 

lost and found

I went to the Long Beach aquarium Friday afternoon. I wanted it to touch my bad mood and it did, but not before I made a comment. There is such effort and artistry put into keeping those ecosystems alive. So much work required to maintain it. Why bother when everything will die? "Everything will die." Vocalizing this felt darkly childish, but I still expected it to ring true. It didn't. I've been thinking about why not and have come to this conclusion (a notion I have been introduced to before but which hits home ever so often in new ways): life never dies, it only goes in and out of experiencing itself (as a sea urchin, anemone, jellyfish or me, for instance).

Looking in the tanks you see that they are teeming with life - from very low to sophisticated levels of intelligence - but life just the same. How could life die? Only things die. Our different faces give the illusion of separateness. Faces whose expressions, nonetheless, endlessly reflect the same thing. Whole and inseparable. Even though we are given names and tend to eat each other. What a brat I was to have said something like that, even for effect. I suppose I'm afraid of death, of loss.

J.G. Bennett writes that it is "a risk to go forward in spiritual life, because all progress in the spiritual life must come from dying in order to be born again. Every step is a death, and everything that one finds is a new birth." I can't argue. This bad mood I've been in really had me by the balls for a few extraordinarily long and messy days. I was it's bitch. But I still did my sitting and practiced my guitar. It was in doing these that I found the strength and the wherewithal to ask for help. And there was no mistaking when it arrived. 

I've said before that I am like a dead thing all the moments between noticing. This was no less like being raised from the dead. I was struck from out of nowhere with a sense of renewed compassion for my self. I suddenly, lovingly, occupied my own body again and breath flowed in. This experience of relief had no clear connection to anything in my head or amongst my surroundings. A weight had literally been lifted from my shoulders. A weight I had already tried, and failed, to lift myself.

It was a good lesson for me. We prepare the soil. We lay the ground with our work. We strive to survive and to find balance, to become the architects of our own internal and external environment, but it's not enough. There is something we simply cannot plant in our own hearts but must be placed there for us. If it weren't for life continuously and uncontrollably flowing in and out, with its own will and its own purpose, we would still be lump of some mythological clay waiting for God's breath to invigorate us. We would get lost, as we all must do, but never be found.  

I know we're not meant to live forever but after losing Nana, an important figure in my life and also my maternal Grandmother, all I want to do is hold even more tightly to my own Mom.

I also thought about my Dad tonight. Sometimes when I read bedtime stories to the twins I hear his voice in mine - the one on the tape he sent Melissa and I because he couldn't be there himself (it was a white cassette tape with rainbow stickers on it). I liked the one about the birds who couldn't get along. Those fables might have actually been my first indirect introduction to Sufism. 

I left M.T.O. because I could no longer see a way forward. That doesn't mean I did not directly benefit from my time there (under the help and guidance of several mentors), or even that a way forward did not exist - only that after looking, I did not myself find it. 

blind spots

People seem quick to point out that others have not shared the same unique experiences as they... when trying to prove their own argument but tend to overlook the fact that, for this very reason, probably 95% of all their other opinions are completely baseless or taken on some authority other than their own direct experience, experimentation, or knowledge.

That my clearest moments of perceiving tend to underline my error in perceiving itself. That these observations somehow reveal the nature of my particular obstructions. Walls over which I climb only to encounter another which I in turn mistake for reality.

Love is what got me through my 5 straight years of fasting for Ramadan working at a restaurant where chunks of brownie, vegetables and various kinds of fruit were literally at my fingertips and being called un-American by my family the time it happened to fall on Thanksgiving. I am sad to say the love that carried me through in the past has, over time, slipped into obligation. Sadder still is that I find myself incapable of carrying out this month-long commitment without it.

mirrors

Most people, in one way or another, try to tell you something about yourself. If you don't know who you are to begin with, this information can be difficult to sort through. You can be taken advantage of. It helps to be able to see what others' motivations are, but this is also difficult unless you've spent some time tracking your own. A lot of time, actually. And, if you're looking for one, a true friend is an individual who has gained some measure of autonomy or freedom for themselves (usually hard-won); everyone else is looking to fill a gap.

Having just found a title for this entry I realize I'm missing the other half of the story. The flip side is that those people who are themselves - who have moved steadily closer, over time, to their own unique destiny, are also mirrors. But in them you see yourself more clearly. Where other people's dirt distorts the truth, these have been polished clean. By love. By the work of love. When standing in front of this quality of person you are asked not to confirm or deny but to simply watch and be. How grateful I am to have had both experiences in my life rather than just the aforementioned. 

charades

If I hadn't seen it my self I wouldn't believe it. And if I tried to tell you my words would be lost. They would be empty. They might not even sound. A silent film. As bad as charades. Or my best impression of a mime. The one where he's trapped in a box and can't get out.

There are no shortcuts here. And it's an uphill climb. But maybe the distance is made bearable if you're holding the hand of someone you love. Everyone else just wonders what the fuck is a mountain or are smart enough to have gone around it in the first place.

the sun

is coming up
everything
washed in
blue in
quiet

who
could have
suspected
in their beds
this much
light?

Panning for gold I

wait for someone to bring me

more than just their dirt.

somebody else's trash

I smoked a cigarette by the water today and thought about what I wrote last night. Everybody comes here to visit the beach. They get oiled up, fight over off-street parking and leave trash everywhere. There are lots of little crabs on the bottom of the canal. Our filthy canal. Should I add my cigarette butt to it? These little niceties are a drop in the bucket. 

If you don't give a shit about your self, why should I? Every decision carries an exact weight and has a quality which acts on the soul either to tear it apart or build it slowly. This I know for sure. Me? I threw mine away. You can do whatever you want with yours. 

one of a thousand regrets

is there still time to return

all the things I bought
(for comfort)
in exchange for my absolute
knowledge
that all things are holy?

P.S.

I bought a guitar last night.

I also received my first rejection letter. It was from Washington. I think I'll frame it.

And okay yes, after 6-plus years of absolute sobriety, I have started drinking again. If you think that makes me a hypocrite you're probably right.

feeding

we eat our own bread

but stir someone else's soup -
hearts in our mouths
and ears to the door.

and these,

though they were not mine,
became Mt. Tam and every
other lost landscape.

every time I close my heart I make a purchase

in my faith there is

a crack large enough to fit
any peddlers boot.

I slow down to look 
at wrecks on the interstate.
Some I even love.

being laughed at

Happiness is being laughed at by your instructor because you showed up at 6:00 a.m. instead of 6:00 p.m. to practice your cello in the garden. Happiness is knowing that you chose to come earlier because it was harder.

not the peacock I think I am

I've been lacking Humility lately. It's no wonder my drawings are falling short, my prayer as well. Paul's looking for artwork that poses more questions than it answers; art that looks and listens, keeps its own mouth shut, leaves its images unsolved, searches for a constant despite the wiseacreing of the eyes. An admission of ignorance is, perhaps, simply more honest. Lines that move (on paper) are beautiful in their honesty. They resist self-satisfaction, the fixedness of dogmatism and the false certainty of subjective perspective. I used to take off all my jewelry before entering Khanegah. I wouldn't wear makeup there either. I didn't want adornment. I wanted to come as a babe would come, naked and uncontrived. The more you try to hide your ignorance, the more naked you feel revealed. I keep thinking I can draw my own face and am consistently embarrassed with the results. Is it possible something I've seen/studied almost every day of my life could still hold its mysteries? Yes, of course.