Weaver's Work

This is a painting of Zambhala, a Tibetan Buddhist divinity that some will call upon as a practice in their spiritual walk hoping for spiritual prosperity. They can use this Mantra among others: "Om Padma Trotha Arya Zambhala Siddhaya Hum Phat"

Buddhism does interesting things when you start looking through various filters. That is why I can't leave it alone even though I am far too deist to really take it seriously, Tibetan Mahayana schools notwithstanding. For example, it makes complete sense to me that I can in all arrogance ask God to come near and participate by leading me in Bodhisattva activity, thus allowing me divinely permitted if temporary elevations justified in the service of getting this whole entangled thing over with.

In the meantime, while we continue to do mean time, I also dare to ask to serve at God's permission in saving the world right now, holding it together in all patience and compassion. Saving the world right now is the true subversive activity that Hippies once yearned to perform. That's another post.

Saving the world right now is also, by the way, the deepest activity of the mage, that for which he gathers his familiars and his power, and it is the esoteric activity of the alchemist, why he dares to transmute the elements. It also is the work of Shambala, of the hidden masters who reside in the mystery. When the shaman calls upon the Golden Age of the Ancestors, the Dreamtime and shifts his shape to all good purpose, it is to save the world right now. And when Carl Jung struggled to express the mechansim of divine eruptions, arriving at archetypes and synchronicities, he too was engaged in this rich subversion of ordinary days and ordinary mind.

How's that for a prose poem?

However, deist or no, here is a pointed discussion about how an open mind in a technically specific sense sidesteps conventional knowledge and information for a more direct universal approach to all that's real, striding right past all illusion.


Found in my mailbox, Tricycle Quarterly's Daily Dharma talk for January 13, 2011:

Nirvana is an Open Mind

Nirvana, or whatever you want to call it, means the complete deconstruction of all of our rigid mental patterns and habits as well as the deconstruction of all of our limiting beliefs. This deconstruction creates a space for true inquiry. When we open our hearts and our minds completely, we are in a place where we can experience something new, a new truth, a new reality, a miracle that we haven’t experienced in the past. We can see things differently and they present new, expanded opportunities, new horizons. Therefore an open mind is required. This is true not only in relationship to the truth but in relationship to everyday life as well.

- Anam Thubten


As a young child growing up in Tibet, Anam Thubten was intent on entering the monastery, where for much of his childhood and young adult life he received the benefit of extensive academic and spiritual training from several teachers in the Nyingma branch of Tibetan Buddhism. He conveys the Dharma with the blessing of teachers Khenpo Chopel, Lama Garwang and others gone before in a lineage of wisdom holders and enlightened masters. Also during his formative years in Tibet he developed a special affinity with a yogi and lifetime hermit Lama Tsurlo, who became a deep source of inspiration that continues to manifest in Anam Thubten’s expression of the Dharma.

After arriving in America in the early 1990’s Anam Thubten began to teach the Dharma at the request of others. Today he travels extensively in the U.S. and occasionally abroad, teaching in fluent English and offering in a direct experiential manner the essence of Prajnaparamita, the timeless, non-conceptual wisdom teachings of the Buddha. These teachings, free of any sect or dogma, point directly to the recognition of one’s true nature as boundless love, unfettered by the false notion of a self that is separate from others, and free from any limitations of egoic mind. In his teachings and presence with others, Anam Thubten invites the heart-opening, mind-emptying awakening to one’s true nature that is already enlightened.

Anam Thubten is the author of various articles and books in both the Tibetan and English language. His first book in English appeared under the title ‘No Self, No Problem.’ He is the founder and spiritual advisor of Dharmata Foundation based in Point Richmond, California.


Weaver's Work

If I took the weave
apart and collected space
I found between, space
I put in the jar
I keep on the old oak shelf
above our heart's fire,
if I did this thing
it would be for hope, for you,
in the name of love.

October 15, 2009 12:22 PM

Someone's Got To - Reprise

That's me on the left, with my mother and a colleague of hers on the Bridge of Faith at Unity Village, Mo. on July 30, 1972. Mom had moved to begin training as a Unity Minister.


I am sitting at the dining table in our apartment overlooking the Yaquina Bay in Newport, Oregon, ca. 1976.


First posted, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2009


I couldn't make this up. I'll bet you couldn't either. It is just beyond me to ever conceive of this. I found it on Post Secret, so somebody did make it up, perhaps even commited this act. I loved the postcard so much I wrote it as a poem. This act against the Gideon Bible is surely one of the ultimates in underground resistance, the sort of thing hippies loved to do. It is nearly perfect in its peacefulness. I don't care that I stole the idea. Stealing the idea (but not the form) is technically legal. Stealing the idea also is an underground act.

Everything I am builds on the fact that for six years I was a hippie in one or another form. In 1966 this die was cast. In 1973 I was forced by circumstance to go underground. I began training up in things like careers and marriages. Even so it took eight more years until I bought a house. My heart still delights in things hip.

Someone's Got To

I go on long trips,
stay in hotels with nothing
to do, but pull out
Gideon's Bible
and draw naked people where
I can find the space
for them. Then I list
the pages on the cover
page to help others.

February 13, 2009 4:16 PM

A Bad Day - Three Word Wednesday

What a Day! I'm so confused!








I don't know where I am this morning, why my freakish mind would go to such a place. Must be bad drugs. Some mornings it is hardly worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. But at least I have both my ears intact.

Written for Three Word Wednesday

Three words: harmless, moist, yelp

A Bad Day

I thought you harmless,
dewy, moist as a baby
fresh from mother's love,
from the morning's bath.

I turned away in all trust
and that's when you bit
off my ear's soft lobe,
took my old gold earring too.
What a yelp I gave.

January 12, 2011 11:51 AM

The Tender Spots - Agnes Martin

First posted, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2009 - Agnes Martin



Agnes as a young artist

Agnes late in life

"Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step." - Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin (March 22, 1912 – December 16, 2004) was a Canadian-American painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist. - Wiki



What a statement of faith.

Love, compassion, forgiveness. Prayers for healing.

The Tender Spots

The tender spot's found
in between
the dark and day
or day's end and night,

or in between me
and
you dancing in twilight
lit by rosy flame.

You said eternal
life
is found in us. I said
Yes, within our hearts,

In the tender spots.

February 25, 2009 5:03 PM

Here are two of Agnes' minimalist works

The Enigma, Old Business - Reprise

This post is a reprise of the post for WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2009. I have added the pictures and the music video.

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco

I am very happy Eco said it. However, I can't stop there because it is not only madness that attempts to interpret the enigma from our side. Sometimes it is a yearning of the deepest heart, and that creates when there is talent and skill, much of the greatest art. And in my experience, the penetration is not only one way. What I mean is, the enigma sometimes interprets me. When that happens it is not always terrible. Sometimes it is a new birth. When the music broke loose in me in the nineties so I could return to it, I feel this is what happened. After the turning point, the world is no less a harmless enigma, yet it is now married to the yearning I have had lifelong where once it was somewhere beyond me, and maddening for that, just as Eco says, terrible, demanding an interpretation which is impossible.

Is this also the force behind the experience of mothers and fathers who fall in love with their infant, that the enigma is delivered directly into their care, just as they once were delivered? Is this not as well the position of the mystic? Is this what happens in the best love making? This is as well, I believe, the best way to die, embracing the enigma.

That quaternity is the true cross found at the heart of the harmless enigma that is the world we live in.

***************************

I am an arrogant man, but I am a recovering arrogant man. I try for gracious gratitude, even though I think gratitude is beneath me. Practice. I am glad to have learned the musician's lesson about practice, even though I really think practice should be beneath me too. Can you imagine how embarassed I have been at times, getting caught in my arrogance? I am unfortunately not arrogant enough to avoid shame successfully. I am shame driven when I am smaller than fits my true heart. I have to keep my arrogance a secret from myself in order to function that way. Or else I must practice, practice, practice until I learn to live right sized.

Old Business

I didn't ask you
to help me, did not accept
graciously at all,
in fact I rushed off
as if I found something new
laying on holy ground.
A unique moment,
a unique new man was born,
that's how I thought then.
Now I know how this
is old business, common,
belongs to us all.

February 26, 2009 7:50 PM

Fields of Gold

What can I now say
that hasn't been said other
ways at other times?

Just like this
I love you.

A Fool's Grin On My Face

The Japanese Peace Pagoda
Buddhist Temple found in the Darjeeling hill district.

Darjeeling is one of the most magnificent hill resorts in the world. Part of West Bengal, this district is bordered by Nepal to the west, Tibet to the north, Bhutan to the east and Bangladesh (East Bengal) to the south, with a narrow corridor connecting the district to the rest of West Bengal. This heavenly retreat is bathed in hues of every shade. The flaming red rhododendrons, the sparkling white magnolias, the miles of undulating hillsides covered with emerald green tea bushes, the exotic forests of silver fir - all under the blanket of a brilliant azure sky dappled with specks of clouds, compellingly gives Darjeeling the appellation of Queen of the Hill Stations. Darjeeling is internationally famous for its tea industry and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

MIND OF CLEAR LIGHT:
Advice on Living Well
and Dying Consciously
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
translated and edited by
Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D.
"Everyone tries to remove superficial pain, but there is another class of techniques concerned with removing suffering on a deeper level--aiming at a minimum to diminish suffering in future lives and, beyond that, even to remove all forms of suffering for oneself as well as for all beings. Spiritual practice is of this deeper type.

These techniques involve an adjustment of attitude; thus, spiritual practice basically means to adjust [and refine] your thinking. In Sanskrit [spiritual practice] is called dharma, which means "that which holds." This means that by adjusting counterproductive attitudes, you are freed from a level of suffering and thus held back from that particular suffering. Spiritual practice protects, or holds back, yourself and others from misery.

From first understanding your own situation in cyclic existence and seeking to hold yourself back from suffering, you extend your realization to other beings and develop compassion, which means to dedicate yourself to holding others back from suffering. It makes practical sense...by concentrating on the welfare of others, you yourself will be happier." (p.52)



Is it just me? I think the Dalai Lama's statements concerning the heart of Buddhist practice are beautiful and compelling. My first impulse was to use this space to explain various aspects of the way they stir my soul. I spent some time crafting several paragraphs and I did a pretty good job. After I finished, I took a nap, then I mercifully dumped that entire work. I know better than to try to explain it. No matter how precise and clear I make those explanations, they cannot do what I really want of them. I have to tell you I love you other ways.

A Fool's Grin On My Face

I'm mad, I tell you
as if I could convince me
in time, in telling
you over, over
again with a strange giggle
too small for my size,
choosing to wear hats
sideways with arrows through them,
stumbling as I go.

I'm mad, I tell you!

October 13, 2009 1:09 PM

A Hermetic Moment

Giambologna, born as Jean Boulogne, incorrectly known as Giovanni da Bologna and Giovanni Bologna (1529 – 13 August 1608), was a sculptor, known for his marble and bronze statuary in a late Renaissance or Mannerist style. Giambologna was born in Douai, Flanders (now in France). After youthful studies in Antwerp with the architect-sculptor Jacques du Broeucq, he moved to Italy in 1550, and studied in Rome. Giambologna made detailed study of the sculpture of classical antiquity. He was also much influenced by Michelangelo, but developed his own Mannerist style, with perhaps less emphasis on emotion and more emphasis on refined surfaces, cool elegance and beauty.

Giambologna became well known for a fine sense of action and movement, and a refined, differentiated surface finish. Among his most famous works are the Mercury (of which he did four versions), poised on one foot, supported by a zephyr. The god raises one arm to point heavenwards, in a gesture borrowed from the repertory of classical rhetoric that is characteristic of Giambologna's maniera. (From Wiki)




A Hermetic Moment

Myriad spidery
threads, halos of warm highlights
cascading around
the remarkable
presence of wings on his feet
announce that he has
reached the heroic,
reached his calling as God's man,
God's good Messenger.

For Big Tent Poetry,
January 6, 2010, 8:52 PM

The Triangle - Three Word Wednesday

I have written the following, using plausible, taint, willingly as my contribution to the roster of poets found on the Three Word Wednesday site.

Remember there is truth in fiction. I have no wife. I once did. I betrayed her in other ways.

The Triangle

My soul willingly
carries your taint, the wide stain
as if on canvas
smeared with bright color
or my skin with wicked scent,
and you gone away
on a plausible
errand for my wife while I
hold here still silent.

January 5, 2010 4:59 PM

Fatigue

Everything Has Frozen by

Evgeniy Lauk

Nick: laew

City: Germaniya (Germany) / Paderborn

Site: http://eugen.lauk.photosight.ru/

THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
- Les Murray



Leslie Allan Murray (born 1938) is the outstanding poet of his generation and one of his country's most influential literary critics. A nationalist and republican, he sees his writing as helping to define, in cultural and spiritual terms, what it means to be Australian.




When I lift from a standing start, with both of my feet firmly planted on the planet, I do not disagree with Les Murray about the nature of things. But I came at this wondrous poem of his looking to frame my own work. It was not today for me a standing start. I was already in the air. So I must say there is yet more. There is a place for the words, for the worlds within the words. In this I stand with the producers of fantasy art in all its manifestations. The inner world is pressing in its demand for expression in some of us and is appreciated by so many more. There is a place for all that. I have a modest following here on this blog, with over eight thousand hits in seven months, and that means that many of you agree with me, or are at least entertained by me. When I "remember" other lives and other shapes in this life, I accept the presence of this and other inner worlds, the imaginings and the dreams. So here's a brief display of another world, one of the worlds that can be found within the words:

Fatigue

As you sink with grace
and place your crown aside, place
your head on my knee:

Milady, I am
perplexed, in wonder, half-smile
on my boyish lips.
I recall other
nights and feel the full presence
of your throne beside
this stoop where I sit
lower than you would if you took
your true rightful place.

October 13, 2009 12:43 PM

Searching For Love

Artist: Philip Straub
Medium: Photoshop and Painter
About this Image: A painting for the Philip Straub original IP, Utherworlds.


"There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story." - Linda Hogan

Linda Hogan, Chickasaw, (b. July 16, 1947) is a poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. Hogan grew up in a military family and therefore moved often, with most of her childhood spent in Oklahoma and Colorado. As a result, she did not grow up within an Indian community. Linda has a Masters degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Colorado.



"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves." - Carl Jung




"There is no freedom like seeing myself as I am and not losing heart." - Elizabeth J. Canham

(I comment, Isn't it wonderful that someone thought to say it that way?)

The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth J. Canham has been leading pilgrimages and retreats for more than twenty-five years. She is a priest in the Episcopal Church who came to the United States from her native England in 1981 and continues to celebrate her Celtic heritage. She has served as spiritual guide to pilgrim groups in Israel, Egypt, Europe, the British Isles, and the Republic of Ireland. She is connected with Stillpoint Community and Stillpoint Ministries

Searching For Love

I have looked for you
everywhere, pretending
I would recognize
you if I found you.

October 8, 2009 3:46 PM

Bed Habits

Ocean Of Fire

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


"Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving." - Kahlil Gibran









"Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love." - Mohandas K. Gandhi







Bed Habits

I sleep alone now
on, not in the bed, lifted
on bolsters, wedges,
head high and feet too,
could string a hammock I guess.
It's hard getting old.

It's hard losing love
and I always sleep left side
making room for you.

October 8, 2009 12:29 PM

Wishing It Would Come Again

Cliff Diving At Sunset

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer (14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a Franco-German (Alsatian) theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, in the German Empire. Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at his time in certain academic circles, as well as the traditional Christian view, depicting a Jesus Christ who expected and predicted the imminent end of the world. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his philosophy of "Reverence for Life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, now in Gabon, west central Africa (then French Equatorial Africa). As a music scholar and organist, he studied the music of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach and influenced the Organ reform movement (Orgelbewegung).

Schweitzer's passionate quest was to discover a universal ethical philosophy, anchored in a universal reality, and make it directly available to all of humanity.

"To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!" - Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and medical doctor Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (27 May 1894 – 1 July 1961). Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and World literature. He remains, however, a controversial figure because of his satirical anti-Semitic tracts published during 1937 and his support for Vichy France during the Second World War.

"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy." - Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."

"Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives." - Frederick F. Flack (I have Googled this man and can find nothing about him. However, his quote has gone viral, found worthy on several sites, now on mine as well.)

Sometimes life gives you one chance, or at least you don't know when it will come again, if ever. Sometimes it passes near, over and over, but is not yours even so, may never be yours again. Sometimes you are called to measure up and you just can't. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to be the person you should have been. You get there, become that person and realize it makes not one whit of difference, because the opportunity has come and gone. Sometimes you understand the underlying truth and realize that you have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Wishing It Would Come Again

It used to be hard
and I would shrink, hide myself
in the sharp corner
of the mountain road
hearing it approach, roaring
its way then past me
not heeding my shape
and me glad of all my skill
at hiding myself.

It takes so many
shapes, sings chorales, harmony
in one verdant voice.
I could love it now
with my new strings and bright frets,
with my callused tips.

October 5, 2009 12:58 PM

It Takes Courage

Oddly enough, this next poem ties with the last post very well. Certain of the comments in the last post were about courage being more important than brilliance in the work.

I am heading out to a New Year's Dance shortly and I must cut short all the fancy stuff. Here's the poem.


It Takes Courage

If I was brave, man,
I would stand here as naked
as the day, so bright
and clear that you would
need shades of your own to stop
the glare. I don't have
that kind of courage.
I have enough love for you
to wish for it, though.

October 5, 2009 10:21 AM

Spider Bite

Front view of a Wandering Spider (note at least six eyes-sees real good)

"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and the threat is outrunning our response." - Sam Nunn

Samuel Augustus Nunn, Jr. (born September 8, 1938) is an American lawyer and politician. Currently the co-chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons



"Even if you can't sing well, sing. Sing to yourself. Sing in the privacy of your home. But sing." - Reb Nachman of Breslov

(April 4, 1772 – October 16, 1810), was the founder of the Breslov Hasidic movement. Rebbe Nachman, a great grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, breathed new life into the Hasidic movement by combining the esoteric secrets of Judaism (the Kabbalah) with in-depth Torah scholarship.

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer

Spider Bite

I am caught in webs
woven of predatory
self, eight legged and lobed
with black toxic fangs,
I search for the soft tissue
within me, bite deep
and moan out my guilt
along with cold thin gruel
sure I can blame you
after all this time.

October 3, 2009 10:31 AM

It's All Perspective

“Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third” ~ Marge Piercy (American novelist, essayist, and poet, b.1936) Marge Piercy is the author of seventeen novels including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; the National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women and the classic Woman on the Edge of Time; seventeen volumes of poetry, and a critically acclaimed memoir Sleeping with Cats.



“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” ~ Albert Einstein









“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” ~ Charles R. Swindoll (American Writer and Clergyman, b.1934)








“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche












It's All Perspective

I circle above
cold eyed, clear sighted, spying
on the moment between
the two of you, knowing
you argue but seeing the dance
you perform at this height,
either of you are
simply too big to carry
to my waiting young.

October 3, 2009 7:50 PM

The Cheshire Cat

"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." ~ Sir Julian Huxley

"The order of the world is always right -- such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin." ~ Jean Baudrillard

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." ~ Albert Einstein


The Cheshire Cat

The Cheshire Cat grins
and that grin is the last sign
as he fades away.
He has taken guilt,
all the guilt still in the world
near your complex life
and holding it close
he winks and then he departs,
grinning, fades away.

October 1, 2009 3:51 PM

Intermission - Zoe's in town!

Life happened. Sorry. :)

I needed the time to catch up with Zoe, who has gotten an advanced degree from the London School of Economics where she graduated in environmental studies and has gone on to work for an organization doing non profit consulting on environmentally sound urban planning. This organization is headed up by Prince Charles and so she has met him. Prince Charles oddly enough was born a few years after me on my birthday. She is in town visiting her mother and her old friends, soon to go back to continue her work life in London. She claims they don't really pay her enough, but she STARTED with five weeks of vacation as is rather normal for working across the pond. She wrote a proposal for revamping the organization that they have willingly adopted so she has had very early career success. Basically smashing success.

Zoe is the daughter of my last lover. When we started she was finishing high school and lived in the house with us. So I fell in love with her and have been rooting for her success all the way along. I have a very full heart just now.

Pickled Bats

Love this picture. They said the pump on the left is for gasoline. The pump on the right is for kerosene. This is a little while back. Somewhere in the south in the thirties I think, and the blacks are locals chewing the fat, while the caption said that the guy in the doorway was the storekeeper's brother. A particular afternoon...I always yearn to be a guy walking past or something with photos like this.

This particular music has received nearly 5.5 million hits. I offer it as counterpoint to the push of this season.

This is an intriguing poem. I don't know now what started it but I am very happy to call it mine. There is a truth in it I am not sure I can write any other way. I have strong memories of being haunted by the risk that I would discover some place in me, some truth of me, some darkness or entanglement or some other thing that would be bigger than me or otherwise more than I could handle. This was part of the trouble of psychedelics for me in my twenties but also their draw because I wanted to exorcise this demon, get past it. I saw me crippled in carrying my haunt. It was fucking my music for one. It was stopping me in other ways. And yet I knew approaching it straight on would destroy me. This haunt was left to me after I turned the corner and found a way to live after all. That victory came when I was twenty one. It was the culmination of the open struggle that began when I was nineteen. It was the fight that I began to fear coming when I was thirteen. So in October, 2009, very near the forty-third anniversary of that victory, all that was left was a pickled bat in a jar in the basement of my soul. It is still there, I think.


The Common Vampire Bat. I suppose it might as well be this one that is pickled and kept in the jar. Poor thing...looks like something chomped off a piece of its left ear. Look closely. I wonder if it was done with a hole punch as a scientific marker.


Pickled Bats

If I were to find
a jar with a pickled bat
inside it down in
the basement of my life
I don't know what I would do
about it, but I
know I'd remember,
take it personal enough
to have pickled dreams.

October 1, 2009 8:52 AM

The Pretty Thing

Author: jamico

"The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life." - Mark Twain







"Empathy is full presence to what's alive in the other person at this moment." - John Cunningham (there are too many John Cunninghams to be certain who this is)

"The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today." - Daniel Goleman

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds." - Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman (born March 7, 1946) is an author, psychologist, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, specializing in psychology and brain sciences. He is the author of more than 10 books on psychology, education, science, and leadership.

Goleman authored the internationally best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence (1995, Bantam Books), that spent more than one-and-a-half years on the New York Times Best Seller list. Goleman developed the argument that non-cognitive skills can matter as much as I.Q.
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I have to jump in right here because this idea is crucial...it means that intelligence is broader than thinking and if emotional intelligence is or can be as important, it might turn out to be true that your dog or cat is at times "smarter" than you are. There is no question that our animals are emotional. Every pet owner is likely able to verify this animal intelligence anecdotally.
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The Pretty Thing

What is that I smell
better than jasmine? It comes
from that pretty thing
all snug in the moss
north of the tallest cedar
in the old growth stand.
I found it, followed
my nose and the stirring blood
within me, growing
hot.

Take it, you said.
Steal it. You know how. I did.
I'm caught like a fish.

September 28, 2009 10:43 AM