Sometimes the clouds roll in a few at a time like spectators to a barrel jumping competition, and before you know it the sky is bruised, the waves have run out of room, and they’re colliding on all sides like a legion of cymatic vendettas, or a black body radiation field composed of infinitesimal ballerinas and one-way mirrors. It’s the same way particles come into existence, always in pairs, up and down, here and there, […]
This post was written in response to the Inner Child Blog Challenge that Ka sent my way… Thank you, Ka, for the prompt… As children, what happens swallows us whole. We occupy slices of heaven easily. They’re what we expect to find. There are no beliefs to suspend in order to gain access, for our minds have yet to form them. Our physical brains are malleable potentials, taking in light and sound with curiosity, measuring […]
What I told Hafiz when I opened the bedroom door and entered the main living area after my daily five or so minutes of high-intensity, mid-morning meditation on the illumined heart of being, was that I was finally prepared to commit myself to crossing the Sea of Meaninglessness– to enduring the winds of fate, the firecracker heavens, and whatever battering-about goes on out there– to gritting my teeth at the sight of hungry kraken and […]
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 […]
For a while now I’ve been tip-toeing gingerly around this little tear in the fabric of my whole world and everything I’ve ever known or questioned or waved to from afar or shouted at or outsmarted or dreamed of lassoing with real jute rope or fallen in love with or skipped rocks across or retreated from or tripped over. Every time I ask Hafiz about cashing in what’s left of my heart for whatever it’ll […]
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 […]
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 […]
When Hafiz had invited me over for a treatment, I guess in my excitement I had imagined a gamut of therapeutic practices slightly more sporting in scope and dexterity than what he’d ultimately prepared. Because after sitting on lounge chairs all day under the shade canopy, sipping iced teas to stay alert, and listening to him chuckle whenever a caravan of clouds sauntered past the revealing sun, or mumble an appreciative syllable when the wind […]
Hafiz came along and asked what I was doing up there in that tree with soot all over my face and my hair in greasy knots, my feet scratched, blistered and bleeding, my wick burned down to the sputtering last, my eyes wild and leering, and talking to myself in curses and run-ons about trying one last time to impregnate the sky with the signal flare seed of the holy calvary I required. The snarling, yipping […]
Embracing Forever 