Sometimes I imagine a breaking free, an unrestrained way of being, a way of living immersed within a beautiful and timeless feeling, and my heart soars. It is the sensation of climbing onto the back of a great and powerful bird called Peace, whose wings are as vast and wide as school buses, and vaulting into the air to glide endlessly over a deep blue sea. I am filled with warmth. I am the exchange […]
The hut in which I live is a simple shelter made of wood, set on a foundation of piled stones, with a roof of hewn wooden shakes. The chimney is short, the hearth just deep enough for a piece or two of firewood. It is perched on a rise near the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley that fills with morning mist and gliding birds. There is a trail that winds along the ridge, […]
The banana yellow 1960 Impala convertible drifted to a stop about ten feet from my front porch. The top was down and Hafiz was perched behind the steering wheel, motionless as a statue, wearing an over-sized floral shirt, an Oakland Raiders ballcap turned backwards, and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Near as I could tell he was staring straight down the boulevard, waiting, as if I knew what the hell was going on and would […]
The other day a Messenger came to my home with a certified letter. I happened to be standing at the window of my apartment, roughly a hundred feet above street level, aimlessly observing the Saturday AM shuffle of humanity down below when he arrived. He glanced up from the street right at me, as if he knew exactly which unit I was in, and of course I had no idea his arrival had anything to […]
The village in which I have lived my whole life is nestled along the coast. It is full of sun and figs and light breezes. Beyond our little harbor there is a great sea that stretches to the horizon and extends beyond the borders of the known world. No one has ever found the End. As children we used to go up on the roofs of our parent’s houses on calm spring days with baskets […]
I don’t know if you’ve ever imagined a state of complete and total nothingness- a field of emptiness without form or time, and most importantly, without any speck of awareness at all. It is hard enough to imagine being formless, but this is beyond formlessness. This is not being at all, which can be even harder to envision. This is picturing Nothing. This Nothing could go on forever, right? But I’m not that patient, so […]
In order to escape your prison, you will have to argue your case. No one can argue it for you. I’ve got a hearing coming up- Docket 249 in the Court of Self Appeals- and I’m getting antsy. I can tell you it’s no cake walk. I’m prowling around this cage like a tiger fresh off the jungle, drowning myself in images of freedom that induce feelings of freedom, that induce tears one instant, and […]
There is a desert inside of me where I wander, like a hermit, my vocabulary reduced to variations in the salinity of my tears and one Name that I give to everything. I found myself there again last night, sheltered against the wind by a robe of old rags, walking alone amidst an endless quilt of rolling dunes beneath the stars. I know I am not the Originator of this place, even though it is […]
I think we should begin with a bit of Rumi. This is like stretching out briefly before we tear ass across a back yard still slick with a morning dew. It’s a best practice, and it just might prevent us from ripping ligaments or pulling hamstrings in the recklessness that follows. It’s a safe beginning. Sort of. “We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve into non-existence, but non-existence fears even more that it might be […]
It began with thickets and brambles. I was mired neck-deep in a conclave of every manner of growing thing possessive of sharp, pointed, prickly, skin-penetrating armor. I was hacking a path to nowhere with a partly rusted machete, swearing, sweltering in the mid-day sun, growing increasingly angry at the steady rain of recently hacked-in-two, thorn-laden vines that seemed bound and determined to fall down on top of me. I was way behind schedule. My arms […]
Embracing Forever 