I’ve been thinking lately about things I have no business thinking about, like how to reconcile the capital-‘S’ Self from A Course of Love with what I’ve glimpsed of the Buddhist teaching of anatta, or no-self. Let me say right at the outset that this is not purely an intellectual exercise. One of the great miracles of starting this blog has been the dialogue with people whose words, and possibly (though it remains hard to […]
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 […]
A little over a week ago Linda nominated this blog for an award, and being Award Free here I graciously declined but expressed my appreciation for the recognition. Linda’s intent was clear and heartfelt, however, and revolved around expanding relationships and the threads of connection in this virtual realm. I felt I wanted to honor the intention in some fashion. So, I’ve been thinking since then off and on about relationship in general, and the […]
I used to think the very act of coming out to this frontier town, to this slat-walled refuge set down in the wild light and crooning darkness, would be sufficient. A proof of concept. Like I could purchase everlasting freedom with an act of unexpected boldness. Without thinking it per se, I believed that after packing just my necessaries and lashing them down, selling the house and the grandfather clock, then riding west across creaking leagues […]
There is a being inside of me, perpetually spilling over the banks– One whose color I cannot name, whose voice patterns the sky with tender pulsations. I, myself, cannot direct the geese, but the One inside of me points the way. Whisking through a cold half-light, each feathered movement unerring in its answer to the previous, they glide from one world into the next and back again in one full beat of their wings. When I […]
This post is part of a short fictional series. It comes with a brief apology about the length. I’m aiming to keep each segment under a thousand words, but, well… yeah… The beginning is here. * * * * * Click. They were gone. The sound seemed to shrivel and disappear beneath the threshold, pulling every other sound with it. There was nothing left but my breathing, and the blank-faced stare of the walls. For a moment, […]
However it happened—none can really say. I only know that I was standing in a pasture filled with mirrored boxes, like disco saunas, and that people were lined up in front of them in silent repose. We were like a host of jet-lagged arrivals waiting to get our passports stamped—or our eyes examined, or our opinion surveyed, or our future turned upside down and shaken out, its contents inspected for contraband bits of the past. […]
The limited predictive intelligence of nuance can sometimes permit the obfuscation of the glaringly obvious. Said another way: forecasts predicated on the data typically accrued during the life span of a single human being are known to be astoundingly flawed. This may explain why Hafiz and Rumi stare at me like a pair of dispassionate fieldstones on the verge of sprouting horns when I wax extemporaneously about the day’s events— as if my mouth is moving, […]
The sleek apparatus we call progress has failed us. The signs are all around, if we but dare heed them. I’m very clear, for instance, that the curdling of country lanes into frost-heaved mogul courses should be a bygone phenomenon. You shouldn’t be forced to drink the day’s first cup of coffee while your kidneys are undergoing paratrooper training. Similarly, had progress been successful, tests of the Emergency Broadcast System would have been moot by […]
When I say Jesus in these poems, I hope you don’t think that I think that I know with any real precision what I’m talking about. When a stone says yes to one day returning to the shimmering heart of a star, and the star says yes to beaming that stone’s endless heart through all of space and time, and the gravity inside of every pebble, rock, and speck of sand becomes a continuum of Meaning, […]
Embracing Forever 