Three Strange Angels

Another country (for Sean)

I love you much
Miss you more.

This longing grows wings
Flies to the edge of my
World, where by water
Fins unfold
(flip flop)

Falls away from the edge
Swims free
Across too far
And finds a new home
In your heart.

the sum of we

you and me
we fall into slipstream
fields of possibility
where we are neither
ourselves
(bound by blood)

for too long
I hung on
tightly
pulling umbilicals
as if I could hold
you
who could hold
you?

then I flew kites
learned
reeling in
letting go

surrendering forever
to the beyond
between
life and death
you and me
we are one
and then some
we are two
one of the few
who make three
that trinity where
we are everything
and nothing
together
or apart
we are.

we are.

(For Kyle).

One small single truth

We are born alone. We die alone. Why then do we spend much of our lives seeking union with the other? Is it to emulate the spark of creation? A fusion of binary polarties that for the briefest moment recreates a heaven for travelers far away from home. Born of the product of lovemaking, do we intuitively migrate toward the point of origin? Is it that we fall from oneness into twoness. Fragmented from unity into solitude, and so seek return to that state of familial solidarity? People believe in twin souls or soul mates or an original separation. For them is the need is seeded by longing? There are those who say we begin to create our true definition by breaking our parental mirror to redefine ourselves through the image projected by our lovers' eyes. For them does relation help craft identity? In indigenous lore seeking our antithesis simply means following the path of the original story. Emulating the birth of the cosmos again and again as yin meets yang. Or perhaps when we are truly alone we face the startling truth. We are borne of nothing, and die only to return to nothing. An emptiness so overwhelming that once alienated from it, we grasp onto anyone to avoid going back. For me the truth is this. We are borne of one into two, the sum of which makes three. A trinity of doing, saying and being that makes us more and less than we already are.

A letter on stalking word forms.

“Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah”
- Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

There are some lines that are so perfect, so remarkable… that as a writer you forever wish you had written them. And there’s a haunting that you never did.

That you weren’t clever enough, or that you didn’t get there first.

Do you know that some people think that when you’ve thought a thought. Given birth to it. Created it. It begins to take breath in the tangible universe?

Then it leaves you. And if you don’t stalk it... and own it, well then it grows legs and walks and runs until someone else hunts it down.

That’s why many writers never move without a paper and pencil. Because thoughts, like animals, have their own migration. An energy, a being and a will to enter the world as soon as they have been manifest. Perhaps they want to live screaming and kicking in this world, rather exist in some nebulous midway point as mere phantoms.

I wonder if Leonard Cohen knows that. I think he must. Because like Dylan he is a poet first. And poets are remarkable in that they have this rare ability to enable you to see the world anew.

Like Columbus on the Santa María or Livingstone hearing the thunder of the Victoria Falls... there are people who enable us to see the world fresh, for the first time. Who can catch rare beauty before it forever departs from their shore.

I wish I could do that.

Change the way people look at the world.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver

I am reading Mary Oliver again this morning. I have been reading her for years and years. I never tire of her poetry because each poem becomes a meditation, a revelation which opens itself to you a little more over time. Like falling into yourself or discovering your truth, her words speak in whispers that dance around your heart and enter your soul like gentle epiphanies.

During this last week I have been working with her piece "The Buddha's Last Instruction". Here it is for you. A gift. Just as it has been a gift for me.

The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver (from The House of Light)

“Make of yourself a light “
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal - a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I’m not needed
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Things I could have said...

...(but never did).

I will miss you.

You touched my being.

Each letter was a gift that flew out of the cosmos and into my heart.

I only wish you joy and deep beauty, for that is what you gave me.

I will always be grateful for the experience we shared, even though the parting was painful.

The time we shared was brief, but it was intensely delicate and magical. Like a majestic feathered creature that flew on a current of hope and looked deeply into our souls, before disappearing from view.

Instead my last words were necessarily abrupt. Even detached.

You see I didn’t want you to look back.

I wanted you to look forward and walk deeper and deeper into your decision. To travel courageously into your life and realize your dreams there.

I did so because I have come to know that if you care for someone you must surrender selfish wants to their higher happiness.

So no regrets save this.

If I could do it all again I would have let you go with love.

Karmapa Chenno*

I was at a meditation workshop with Rob Nairn in the Magaliesburg some years ago, when I heard him tell a remarkable story about the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

Nairn had met the Karmapa and said that one of the most remarkable things about him, apart from his stature and compassionate power, was his ability to flow from one emotional state to another. As if he was able to truly feel the fullness of each emotion to its apex, and then simply let it go and move into the next.

I have often wondered why we hold on to emotion. And how we can get to fully being and feeling and living in our emotions, and then let those emotions fall from us when they are done. When we are done learning from them.

Instead we let fear rule us, we spew anger, we grasp at happiness and try to avoid pain.

It is interesting to note that the word 'emotion' comes from the Latin emovere, where e- means 'out' and movere means 'move'. I think the etymology of words offer strong clues to what those concepts mean (or should mean) in our lives.

I also thought that what if emotions (instead of ruling us) are supposed to flow within and through us, and transmute us?

Making us into more beautiful and compassionate human beings?

*Karmapa Chenno is a Karmapa mantra  that was introduced by the 8th Karmapa Mikyo Dorje (1507-1554) in the context of a teaching about the tradition of  "Calling the Lama from afar." 

Written in Tibetan like this:

it literally means "Embodiment of the compassion of all Buddhas, take heed of me."

You have sharp edges...

..where I have bruising.

How is it that you used the word love when you told me you were leaving?

That I should remember you, each time I turn into your road?

I who drive that path every afternoon. Which means I'll think of you every day.

Which I do now anyway.

Marking time.

Just marking time.

Each tick. Tock.

Another second in the time and space continuum. That separates us.

We who work the same suburb.

Share the same street.

Time respects no memory or pain.

Relentless in its savage beat.

There will come a day.

When I won't think of you.

I will leave your imagination.

Though we'll ride the same road.

After this

All I can do
is look at the world
with hope
and walk deeper
into it in love,
whispering:
"I am waiting,
 come find me.
 So we can
 become one,
 who become two,
 who become one."

Figment

Some days I wonder

if you are out there

(flesh and blood).

 

Or if you live

(ephemeral)

in my imagination,

between heartbeats, breaths,

moments of memory

and sweet threads of longing

that tie one letter

to the next.

Deviantart Threads by ~l8