Sunday, March 7, 2010

Midnight Contemplations/Errata, in Conclusion with a Touch of Sadness Somehow

Haven't seen this side of midnight in some time.
No worries, the photo is many years old.
It's been said that it's quite possible (and perhaps all too often palpable) that one can feel alone in a crowded room. I've been performing involuntary empirical studies on the subject lately and I can attest to its validity. And then the gosh-durnedest thing occured to me...again: resentful though I may have been, my dad's 'words of wisdom' keep coming up. Oh, and proving true to boot. (That's the clincher.) Tonights episode fruited another gleaming jewel in said crown with the long ago and far away utterance, "Artists aren't happy people, and maybe when they become happy they stop being artists. They thrive on misery and suffering." I greatly disliked that one, and now I see that my distaste lay in my own myopia: I simply hadn't accrued the experience in life to grasp the concept.

I finished writing the lyrics and music to a song tonight that has been dangling, netless and weary, for several years. I kept thinking, "I'll have the time sometime. I'll make the time sometime." All that crap. Anyway, tonight, alone and frustrated or angry or sad or whatever the hell I was (likely all of the above), I finished the song. It's quite the lamentation in the end although I'm not certain it was meant to be. Don't get me wrong, the melody veers at times toward melancholy, but the impact of what came through me tonight was great. For me, at any rate.

Too much this, none of that, very little of the other stuff, all abutted with silence and aloneness. Lonliness and lamentation sure to follow in whatever form pleases ones muses. Mine answered with song, and for that I'm grateful.

There's little point to any of this, dear one, but for me as a means to regurgitate some emotion lest I get clogged. (Hey! What a catchphrase: Blog to Unclog!) I know this, but I'm glad it's here, any time, day or night.

I'm glad you're here too. I hope you know that.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Cutting Diamonds

Many years ago (in excess of 15....whoa) I wrote a song that began with the lyrics, "I said the winter was hardest on me, you said you knew, and without those same excuses, what would I do?" Prescient prose, really, considering its still somewhat miraculous that I come out the other side of February every year. This year I've fared...well, I've fared. When gaunt, hollow-cheeked sailors arrived back in some Spanish port after three years at sea, no one was concerned with the question of how they fared the voyage, and so I'm not entertaining the inane query regarding this winter either. Those that haven't grave tidings are simply miserable in my world this winter. Were it not for the children I may have leapt into the Doldrums of the Horse Latitudes myself. I have muttered the word 'fuck' more in the past month than I have in years...cumulatively. This winter has been hard on me. You knew. Excuses, I know.
When my projects for work tanked before Thanksgiving, you may recall that I was racing about, trying to maintain a family of six humans by any means available. The only means at the time amounted to my current full-time work; to say these means are meager is to call the Lake Erie a nice puddle. The wage is not even nearly enough to support a family, and to supplement I'd been working seven (all seven) days a week. Helps make the winter wonderful. At any rate, after several weeks of this and the mounting, ominous feeling that the condition was not soon to change, I freaked on God. Lost my shit. I screamed and cursed until I very literally lost my voice. I came home and cried really hard on Marcy. I told her that if this is what the deal was between me and God then I wanted out of the contract.
A couple of weeks later, Marcy was scheduled as worship leader at church, and so I was needed in attendance in order to contain the children. I had not been back to St P's since Don left, and the cleft had only widened with time. (Read: I was not pleased to be there.) The children sitting/sleeping contentedly, briefly, I perused the bulletin. The silent meditation read (loosely): Failure is a part of all this. To take this in stride and remain in faith is where discipleship truly ends or truly begins. I ruminated on this for three days before I had a deeper understanding of why it rang my bell so loudly. (I'll assume you probably get it right off the bat, and will spare you the exegesis.) The next morning (every morning from 5:30 to 6:30 is my study time) I opened a particular interpretation of the canonical Bible at random and read. Sixteenth chapter of the gospel according to Luke. Bounced off my frontal lobe like a four inch rubber ball. I read it again; I mean, this is what I opened to, this is what is meant for me. In the end I've now read five (yup, 5) interpretations and still pretty rubber ballish, although I get glimmers I suppose.
Anyway, many twists and turns later (trust me, you'll want to be spared this tome, including my self-inflicted thesis, "What the Christ Jesus Puports to Know Regarding God"...top of the bestseller list, to be sure), and I'm bringing you right into today, I've been spending my study hour back with the Buddha. Drawn like a magnet to an interpretive selection on the esoteric teaching The Diamond Cutter, I've been almost late twice now for my reluctance to put it down. Funny, when one considers that I've had the book for several years now, and have even begun reading it twice before. I suppose now is the time.
Okay, so as I was saying, I read something this morning that has resonated very deeply with me, all day. I hope it resonates with me for a lifetime. Please do allow me to share with you. (Don't concern yourself with any forebearing context. Really.)
"...like watching a pink lotus in a pond near our monastery in India, rising from the only thing that can sustain it-a mash of mud and debris. The metaphor is cherished by Buddhists-Can we be like the lotus? Can we swallow the pain and confusion of life, and thrive on it, and use it to become one of those rare jewels of the world - a truly compassionate person?"

I am officially blown away. Maybe I just needed to hear it in a different prose, a different tone...I don't know, but it speaks directly to me and asks me to check my inner reality, which is always a good thing. I mean, I do try, every day, and strive to be a truly, genuinely compassionate person. Maybe its just that I feel like my roots have been in the shit lately and this is someone saying, "Hey, we all get in it brother....the question is do you have what it takes to move on to the next level now?" And maybe all I needed was to be a) reminded that my situtation is not remarkably unique, and b) gently told that the shit underneath can maybe just be the rich humus of humility and helplessness needed to make some other part of this flower grow.

I dare say I'm not what you'd call 'thriving', but I hope I'm presenting the best lotus I can to the world, earnestly, and genuinely. I hope this one stays for a while. I hope to grow on this one.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

In a dream


....I have boundless energy. I carry enormous burdens without wincing, my brow not furrowed when eyes cast to God.
...I know what you need, because you are so important to me. I know what I need, and oblige. I'm important to me too.
...money is a concept more than foreign, an entity no more considered than pants on a hamburger. Home is underfoot and the floor is as granite: unwavering.
...I live with the sure knowledge, not needing recognition or description, that I am God...and God is I. We are one seeking ourself.
Errata:
I thought of my mother the other day. I was having lunch by myself on the job and found myself speaking to her. As I questioned why I would do such an ostensibly absurd thing, I found I was more truly asking a louder, deeper question: "If you're around, if you even have the faintest of consciousness to any of this, please let me know." At the precise moment I became aware of what I was asking so deeply, I noticed some movement to my right. I turned in my chair to see a mouse, standing, staring at me, just out of arm's reach. Moments into the encounter, as dissonance flooded my mind, the mouse ambled behind some wood. "Hey, little friend, you needn't be frightened of me," I entreatied, "come on over. I can share my lunch with you." At that, the mouse walked quietly over and sat directly beneath me in the chair. Psychically stammering, I cut a piece of tortilla and dropped it to my left, whereupon the mouse gladly picked it up and scurried behind a plastic pail to eat it.
I left the mouse some rice, beans, and more tortilla in the container placed on the floor and went back to work.
The container was washed clean by the time I left for home.