Between Moments of Fog

This was so weird. I was listening to a CD I had heard about from the Daily Om Music email called the "Secret Garden" last night. For some reason rather than being experienced as peaceful and relaxing it just brought up all this stuff connected with the things around me, books, radios and memories all connected with the past, so many connections with things. It was like I just wanted to let it all go, just leave everything, memories, all the stuff in my life and even the world. Life and all things I had collected and experienced seemed only a burden bringing a deep sadness and feelings of how hopeless and devoid of meaning it all was.

It was a sad and yet comfortable experience. What transpired next was like waking in between the moments of time into a timeless moment for lack of a better word. Because there was no sense of time; it was like time had simply dissipated like morning fog which covers the beach on a coastal morning. The chill washed away as I was being wrapped in the warmth of sunlight.

What joy to fly in that space amongst and around those time moments. Perhaps that is what it is to be in the moment, to be in that place where what you think and see in your mind as the moment are just things you dance around in the nameless space between them.

Past, Passing Away

The past too heavy
so much stuff
to hold.

Failures like
autumn leaves
covering a once
green meadow.

Everywhere
memories of dreams
which might have been,
scattered leaves
in the winds.

Like trees
once lifting their
foliage to the sun;
now standing
bare, alone
on a cold winter’s
night.

Just a short walk
into the forest
to lie at peace
in the earth;
my soul perhaps
to sprout
again with the
coming of
a brighter
spring day.

Inside a Tick

Chains
melting away
tar like oil
runs down;
no residue
remains.

Darkness
peels away,
opening like
the tulip
in spring.

Sitting silent
in a world
between the
tick-tock
of a clock.

Time stops
as I run
leap and
soar in
this moment
between slices
of time.

Who Is It We Are?

I sometimes remember faintly
the taste of what
it means to be alive.

So what is it to live,
to be alive?
What is it to be human?
What is it we do
with our lives
to give them
meaning?

Is it to die in Auschwitz
bare foot,
in a mid-winter’s blizzard?
Is it to kill in those
very same camps?

How many have given
what is best?
Mother Teresa,
Michelangelo,
Bach,
or Einstein.

How many have taken
what is best?
Joseph Stalin,
Erzebet Bathory,
Heinrich Himmler,
or Tomás de Torquemada.

Who do we think we are;
if after rising from our king sized bed,
and looking into the mirror,
we do not see all those faces
and hear the echoes
of their voices coming back at us?

Who do we think we are;
if we do not see the very worst
and the very best
of humanity within each of us
and with that vision –
choose?

We are, each of us, the salvation
and the damnation of our world,
our species
and our children’s children.

So what is it we choose
this day, this moment,
with each breath we take?
Is it the hang nail
that nags us
or is it something more
magnificent and
far more glorious?

Some Anais Nin quotes

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

Quotes on writing:

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

Eating Fish and Chips

I found myself sitting in an old style drive-in hamburger place. The kind with the covered parking places right out front, like out of a 50’s movie. No one came out to take my order like in the movies though. This place must have been there forever and hadn’t changed a bit, except for the service, of course. So I go inside where it is cool, with air conditioning. It felt so good. Wanted to order a nice big cheese burger but, went healthy instead with the “fish.” Yea, real healthy fish buried in batter and deep fried in lard. LOL

Anyway so here I am eating my “healthy” fish and chips (fish and veggies), when I begin looking across the street. Here right in Fresno, which if you don’t know where that is, well it is in middle of an oven called the San Joaquin Valley in south central California. The drive-in has air conditioning so I’m cool, relaxing, just looking across that baking sheet of a road at the very peaceful place, with grass and trees and some carved stones.

It has this big sign “Mountain View Cemetery” right across the entrance. MOUNTAIN VIEW, it says and there are no mountains anywhere to be seen. This valley is just one big, hot, flat desert and I have no idea where the found the mushrooms to eat before naming that place. I guess it really doesn’t matter anyway because everyone in residence there couldn’t see them anyway. Or maybe they see something the rest of us can’t see.

As I am looking out over all the markers I can’t help but be over come with envy for all those lying beneath. I was aching to share in their nothingness; the quiet, solitude, my mind finally quiet and the pain inside finally gone. Hopeless for them no long matters, it died with them.

Life is just feeling so empty, depressing and meaningless now. This is the usual depressing crap, food is good, I guess, I loved fish and chips but, I am not enjoying eating it. I had just come from a demo put on my the computer group I belong to, it should have really excited me, it didn’t. Everything is just shades of gray, no color, no taste, no fragrance or anything that would be enjoyable.

So I finished my healthy meal and drove over to a park by the zoo, found a quiet bench by a beautiful pond with a fountain in the middle, to read. I Open up the book I am reading “Fight, Flight, Surrender” by Brett McGibbon to next page past my book mark. What is the only poem on the page read.

“Death
in the twilight
walking on a moonlight
night
sounds so right –

I think I might”

Yes, signs again meaning what? It does so reflect what I am feeling, it does sound so right. Perhaps I am the sign painter. Now that concept sucks, I would hope that they are being painted by someone or something more insightful than me.

I know, I really do know, I can choose to continue like this, feeling like this or I can choose to move towards happiness. I do know and understand that, I know all the right stuff to do to get there, even if I don’t feel it but, right now, I simply don’t want to be happy. So everyone who wants to fix me can put that in there pipe and smoke it. I don’t want to feel joy, or sadness, to be up or down, it all just does not really matter to me one way or the other what I feel because in the end, as well as the middle, it doesn’t matter.

If I choose one or the other, create one or the other; it really will not make slightest, fucking difference to anyone, including myself, life in general, the world or that dead leaf blowing across the grass in front of me. Really after I am gone, maybe my kids will remember some bit and grandkids even less but, after them nothing. So I should be happy while I am here to enjoy it. It makes the same sense as going on vacation, after it’s over it is as if it never even happed. Only in this case, there are not even memories.

If there is an after life, what then, well either everything is wonderful or it’s hell. I certainly know I have screwed up most everything I could already so, it ain’t going to be wonderful. The best I can hope for is oblivion; if, instead, it’s reincarnation which happens, then that shit is even worse, just more of the same forever. I haven’t changed or improved one iota in this life, a few thousand more isn’t going make and difference.

So that is all the crap that is running through my head, and bleeding out of the gashes in my chest as I am sitting hear trying to read, what I had considered a wonderfully inspiring and thought provoking book.

So let’s see, where is all this going and where am I, how did I get here and is this the end or am I going to finally make it the end.

It is all coming back to that same place, emptiness and meaninglessness. It is that place which gives birth to new life and possibilities. But, this dieing, this ripping out of everything inside, is so much agony and pain; that real death would be such a blessing. So I guess, I will just sit here by this little pond, watching the water shoot up into the breeze out of the fountain and wait until the dieing is done.

Then I can fully embrace the emptiness and meaninglessness with all my heart and soul or at least what remains of them, when all I know them to be is gone.

Time ticks along...

I’m still sitting here, now looking up at the tree branches of this huge tree behind the concrete bench I am sitting on and just looking at those dead branches up there. Sitting and wondering, if I am one of them, waiting to be cut away and burned or am I the tree just needing to be pruned?

Waiting some more. Oh isn't it just wonderful that time moves.

I am still pondering the question, the answer just isn’t clear quite yet.

Yea, well really it’s that the questions haven’t cleared away quite yet. LOL
They will, they always do. Patience, that's all it takes a little fucking more damn patience!

Water Wheel

It was said:

"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once."

--From Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37)


I suppose that makes me a coward then. However, I think if that were true, I would take the one final death and be done with it. It would sure be a lot easier.

This cycle of dieing and being recreated or born happens over and over again. Like a bucket of a water wheel for an old mill; rising up, empty to be filled to the brim, then to plunge back down again loosing everything I held inside. It just keeps turning round and round, filling and empting, keeping the grist mill of life rolling.


So when do I get to eat some fresh baked bread from all that grain being ground into flour?

I’m ready now…

voices IN my head

Incessant chatter
echoing inside
my skull.

Commentary
for each and
every thing
I touch
feel
taste
hear
see
think
or do.

Judging
debating
arguing
each and
every crumb.

Their decisions
final
verdicts
and sentences
absolute.

These critics
within,
discerning
keepers of
truth and
light;
ready always
delivering
apropos
swift
adjudications.

Moments of
enlightenment
reduced to
frivolous glimmers
from refuse
strewn
across
my destined
path.

Endless clamor
bellowing
at every
turn.

Resistance futile,
each attempt
met with
stronger
louder
more
hostile
opposition.

Like pulling
an enormous
unbreakable
rubber band.

Only relief
someday
hopefully
found in
that final
last exhale.

The voices
have a
secret
though.

One which
they will
never
tell,
so listen
quietly
for
unspoken
words
never
told.

The secret
you see
is cloaked
in silence;
shared
with the
Chinese
Finger
Trap.

Release
is only
to let go,
to quietly
know.

The voices
are only
the creaks
and growls
from deep
inside
the machine.

So embrace
their
moans
and
thank
their
groans.

For then
at least
for a while
they will
be on
their way
but most
likely back
another day.

Suicide

“The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing”

- Herodotus

“No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one”

- Robert Byrne

“The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."

- Bill Maher

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

Résumé

By Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.