for a friend by a friend

"Don't be dead any longer.
You can't afford it. 
Buying a casket every two weeks
is so much more exhausting 
than just being free. "
                           -ZH for RM

http://wavehandslikeclouds.bandcamp.com/

displacement as a test of essence

To be displaced from reality is a most interesting experience, even as a young child. This is why Mr. Rogers fascinated me, most especially when the little train went through the tunnel. Special music, the screen goes dark, and all that lies beyond is a mystery. To fly is to be completely displaced, and once in a while I welcome the feeling. Then, I run through the Dallas airport at full speed, red shoes and shirt, stomach clasp on big-zipper backpack, feeling alive, capable, and cool; I realize that I am home. I am substance. Maybe traveling gives me substance because I have no outward circumstances of place or familiarity to define or describe me. Maybe the feeling of oneness within this skin is the reason that I love trains and planes: the feeling that they take you places and you are just along for the ride. And what can I take with me? Beneath it all, besides for the bags and backpacks, no matter how sturdy the zippers or ergonomic the straps, only me. Me! I am really here right now. Would you believe it- I am a person! What is the essence of self, displaced? Perhaps people were never meant to be isolated, so in the best version of life it this is not even a necessary question.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoxUiqUpkw4&feature=related

past reflections not current events

Walking as if I am waiting for someone, eyes distracted by perpetual searching- for what? For whom? Aspettare means "to wait," derived from the same root as expectation. To wait is to be in expectation, accentuated by this darkly-veiled sky, holding its secrets deep within itself, holding its breath and churning slowly. Pressure is dripping out of the center like liquid longing. It is whipped into wisps of gray cotton candy, and it pushes dully against the limits like a body against a glass wall, naked and barefoot. Hands press and forehead rests against the cool surface, and eyes fall closed, heavy with the fatigue of energy unspent and potential uncompleted. An electric spark so recently crackled across the cells of her skin, so ready to light fire within the vicinity of corresponding eyes. How can companionship be so close- an inch beneath every step- and so far beyond that cloudy barrier? 
It releases into rain; I release into a run. When we return, we will have open eyes and I will embrace the recognition of my invisible shadow; I will like the audience of my own consciousness and go about my artwork as if her eyes were enough to see it. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuDipDU0jCQ

i love you

I want a kind person.

I want a kind of person. 

I want a person, kind of. 

The words get stopped if I imagine the words themselves will be judged for what they are instead of what they mean, which I really don't know how to say. 

death of a butterfly

It's the weightlessness of not being heard. The raindrop splashing off the surface of the porch table makes energetic fireworks of water. The tiny melody I can pick out of a piano's huge span... they all want to be played together. The major and the minor do not want to be separate anymore. The happy and sad tire of the way their story of opposites has been drawn out for so long; they tire of the way one is always left alone, one always prominent and then the other. It is beginning to feel monotonous, like side entertainment while the eyes glance expectantly towards the main attraction: fullness. 

http://youtu.be/IJgRpteDKW8

rilke, mentor

I've found so far that one thing consistently helps: when I am not in alignment and nothing feels right,  I must take time to let sadness come to the surface. Most often, my "off" frustration gives way to a great, heavy, and terrible distress. It needs to be brought out fully. Today I created a playlist "sadisfaction," of sad songs, or ones that bring out sadness in me. Weeping, sobbing, letting hopelessness engulf; feeling inescapable and eternal. Every single worry, burden, outcry, impossibility, outrage, instead of being pushed away to keep sanity, is drawn forth. It is a very difficult sickness. Today I was able to know it was over by a meditative Shaman drum beat. 
This is the only way I have been consistently able to heal, feel cleansed out inside, genuinely better. 
It is the decisiveness of giving direct attention to and acknowledgement of something I can feel the effects of, but which is all too easy to ignore whilst going numbly on, feeling badly. 


http://youtu.be/p_WyCOGZjbM
(domani gia qui ~ tomorrow is already here) 

drum drum drum.

warily, walk warily
the stillness come so scarily 
in peril i will come to thee
but don't forget your drum

johnnies

       There is a particular impediment that prevents me from becoming one of them: a wild rush to the freedom of unbounded possibility. It is a trait introduced to me by none other than they with whom I should have liked to settle down. 
       I wonder, though, if stationary circumstances may be held for an amount of time in the same way as a yoga posture. During our forward lunge in Warrior Two, arms spread wide, eyes focused on one a single point, our instructor asks us, "How does your mind respond to being asked to stay in one position?" It is not only your body that must learn to stay, but your mind. 
      I thought of this example during a particularly terrible day at work on Saturday. Every moment of it was a small torture in some way. Stress or mistakes or exhaustion, or rudeness or any number of uncomfortable sensations. The hours stretched on and at one point I came to ask myself, "How does your mind respond to being asked to stay in one position?" Oh! Something clicked. A day at work may just be a maintained yoga posture. It is difficult and even painful, but when it comes down to it, it is just a practice of staying in a type of mindset. Then you release it and go have fun, and you get stronger and more steady.
     (This is only an example; I am not yet convinced, by any means). 

fireflies

Normalmente, mi piace le nuvole, ma questa sera mi fanno triste e stanca. 
Normally, I like the clouds, but this evening they make me sad and tired. 
Forse 'e perche il futuro 'e come nuvelosa. 
Maybe it is because the future is similarly cloudy. 


It is miraculous, startling even, the way humans can become a light for each other in dark states of mind. Like Papa missing his HoneyBee wife and I a recollection of "the point." We sat together in the fluorescent-lit kitchen with the dark clouds outside the window and down the hallways of our home, and I looked at him and we made laughter, and we were light to each other. 


http://timbre.bandcamp.com/track/fireflies 

dejavu

The dejavus that come, I release into them, no reservation. I've come to recognize the state that I let myself become: all muscles totally soft, as if they are pores of skin suddenly opened to full capacity by gentle, warm water, no protection. Mind equally squishy, all strings cut. In a trance, my eyes move slowly to see the things I know come next. Thoughts pass uninhibited, like tinkling leaves scraping softly their light, dry tips across the textured strings of a brick orchestra, lying in dormant expectation on the floor of an empty train station. The recognition is stunning, and I follow with absolute vulnerability and unquestioning obedience, the step-by-step revelations of my lucid dream. 

socrates

White mist after the movie. Time stops and I am nine years old at the Capitol building in Boisie at Christmas, watching "The Sound of Music" in the Egyptian Theatre; then with Andrew in his big slippers and his puppy, Ginger; then the future, a kiss from the unknown, a warm embrace on my skin- all in that one moment, and I wonder: how could it be? Why did it happen so suddenly? - the seams of reality split apart to reveal how tiny we really are, how absolutely little we know. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRAI87PbX8c&feature=related
(again, music) 

register 16

A late-night run to Walmart for pantyhose and hairpins. At the only register open, the line grew longer as the some disturbance blocked progress at the front. A woman explains the details of her credit card story to ears that know only the functions of the machines, and cannot help the situation, whether or not they know the hows or whys. She is left with no options, locked out of her credit card due to pointless mistakes and abstract reasons having to do with number symbols communicating through computers in unknown realms completely disconnected from the humans standing in line. She leaves upset, leaving the clerk upset, and without the items she lamented that needed the most. In the parking lot I had a strange vision of her yelling in the car, driving dangerously, and facing whatever situation at home had such desperate need of those unpaid for items. I asked her if she had any cash at all. She thought I was asking her to give it to me and exclaimed, "Are you SERIOUS!?" "No, no- I just mean- I have $12, so if you have about $3, we could make up the difference." She understood that I meant to give it to her and the situation changed entirely. She was so relieved, so surprised. It seemed to me that a little warmth entered the world. She insisted on taking down my number so she could pay me back. For 11 dollars, a person can restore a small spark of belief in humanity. In a conversation on the topic of the oldest question of humanity: "are we good or are we evil," my answer was: "Right now, we are hurting." To not feel abandoned and accused by every fellow human may offer a minute salve for that wound.

Ubuntu: "I am what I am because of who we all are."

pretty

I walk above the basketball court after yoga, centered, peaceful, body stable and relaxed. My fingertips run over the red balcony bar and my face is gently uplifted. From below, he looks up at me with a smile, blond hair, and says simply, kindly, "You're very pretty." I look down at him and smile, and I begin to mouth "thanks" but don't speak; we just continue smiling for another second and then continue on our ways. Now, I walk with a delicacy that makes me feel like a girl, not rough, or boyish because of my hair. My lips feel a little more colorful, my eyes slightly brighter. "I am very pretty." This is a co-creation between girl and boy, of a woman's beauty.  

a way i've changed

Let's make love
Construct and fabricate love
Can't kiss your lips if it's a fake love
So come on, let's make some. 


The recognition of a "real kiss" depends, perhaps, on the amount of openness in your own levels of self. Root, sacrum, navel, heart, voice (listening), vision, spirit. A kiss is real, at least at this point, in the presence of danger, and it is only dangerous if you are open, because then you are exposed, no spoken agreement or contract to assure you of the sureness in proceeding. It takes the risk of being brave and foolish to enjoy the pleasure of being met there in no-man's land of the unknown- which is really the underlying state of things anyway, so to face it in its full force of possibilities is, perhaps, a way to live more passionately. 


http://youtu.be/2P38O_EKVAA 
(the movie is an old favorite. i'm posting a link to this video for the music).

lamplight reading

There sometimes occurs a certain striking moment, such as while Mom Joanna Santangelo and I were reading next to each other on her bed in the lamplight (me "The Science of Kissing," she, "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage"), each in our own worlds, enjoying an undefinable comfort of shared presence- a perfect experience of Rilke's description of love as "protecting and bordering each other's solitude." And the realization is that: this is it; no one is ever REALLY going to know about our existence except us. Dear fellow human alive at the same time as me: we cannot carve our story into anything except our own recognition of being alive. The details of all that means for us is lost, and when we die... when we die, Friend, I should like very much to look into each other's eyes and remember what it was to exist together; you and I, Friend, once we are gone, will never be alive to anyone in the same way. I'm glad it was you.