One day I was astonished to find Hafiz giving instruction to a cadre of beggars. He was explaining to us how much better off we would be, if we were drunk right from the get go, and he was passing out copies of his latest poem, saying, Drink these my friends… Drink these with the rising sun… The idea being– all our surly ideas about fate and how things really work and who could of and should […]
On that summer day, that I still remember… doorways beckoned from every direction, hovering near stacked horizons as if the Beloved had hung wreaths of heat and time along our world’s borders. There were voices you could see occasionally, ribbons of them wafting up from the ends to mix with the sky like jugs of clear sap poured into whiskey, swirling and touching noses and everything at once… merging. And the air, too. The air….! […]
At the center of every human being, something stupendous is happening– something deadpan naked beautiful, a trembling madness, a high outcropping of multiplying swooning cliff diving lovers. I don’t know what it is, but I think it might be related to the fact that the sky is peppered with drums so vast their beats shake galaxies out of the darkness like dust from the Beloved’s rug, that it’s full of light transmissions, secret messages, and the odd comet, […]
You will never find water that isn’t in cahoots with all the other water. Even the last drop of a dried-up lake has the idea of the sea inside of it. A buffalo laps it up. Now what… What I mean is that when you’re quiet, dissolving into the sky is a completely natural thing to do. You could pop back out anywhere, coalesce out of nothing, find yourself in an active hygroscopic nebula, and […]
At the clock makers convention we arranged ourselves neatly around a life-sized cutaway of a gravitational escapement, observing the pendulum bearing the maker’s seal that swung to and fro behind a nest of hypnotic linkages, together recalling amidst polite chuckles and knowing nods the virtuous marriage of metallurgy and time-keeping. Not too many really understood what we did… Not too many could even fathom the significance of what was on display… Pretty cool, eh? said the gentleman […]
I read an article the other day about some people who did what all the books said to do and they were explaining in very simple terms how now their every movement opens up before them like a strawberry shortcake snack at the Center for Incredibleness and their every breath brings with it some beneficent manifestation like a phone call from some Swiss lawyer representing a great uncle they never knew they had who made some […]
When I see a leaf as big as a baby elephant’s ear bouncing in sunlight, plunged like an open hand into a river of life-giving rays 93 million miles deep, and behaving so mysteriously— responding to the way of things with medicinal colors and chemistries only it can offer, as if flush with a secret I once discarded in favor of concocted ideas of legitimacy that involve passing out cards with my name on them in […]
Jesus is a condiment you can sprinkle onto any moment, to give it life. This is, I think, his greatest miracle. While most condiments come in glass jars or plastic bottles, Jesus comes inside of people. He’s a salt that melts the ice around the heart. He’s a sauce that turns every pain into delectable mystery. When you dunk those french-fried ideas of who you are into him, they become something else entirely… Lotus blossoms. Sea glass. Abandoned […]
Hafiz picked me up and drove me out into the countryside, aiming the right front tire for every mud puddle he could find, and filling the rearview mirror with volley after volley of clay starbursts. Then, much to the relief of both my kidneys and the vehicle’s suspension, we came across a dog breeder and popped in to say hello. After a cup of tea and a profound discussion of canine nutrition, she invited us […]
Everything you see is a trick. And Love is the punchline. These skins are just the charade we need, to remember what can never grow old. Children with eyes overflowing— they don’t tire of hearing it over and over and over again. All those goo goo gah gah faces we make— so certain of our personal contribution to their pleasure… They’re not even listening. It’s what’s in our eyes they crave, that punchline peeking through our […]
Embracing Forever 