Just Do It, How 2009 Started

This is just spooky, now that I have had the heart attack. Some of you may remember how I have written here that I feel I have limited time to do this poetry. I wrote five today for example. On Dec. 31, I wrote nine. There have been many days like this. So I was sitting in the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 as if it were an omen that I was trying to read and here is how it read in those winter days.

Sinking the Ch'i is Chinese and the Indians have a similar set of concepts. The Asian energy sciences (they insist that this is science verified by experience in inner space of the Self, that you too can verify if you accept a trainer (guru), a lifestyle under his guidance, and join however loosely in a fellowship of practice). Sinking the Ch'i is basically an "inhale" from beyond into bgvvvvvvvvvvvb (I am leaving that because my cat thinks it belongs here) so, again, sinking the Ch'i is a kind of "inhale" of energy from beyond into us, but it is principally experienced as a lowering of blockage.

Just Do It

Before I go there,
Before I do sink the ch'i,
It's impossible.

After I go there,
After I let the ch'i sink,
It's so easy. Lord!

Exactly. Lord help me now.
Help. Do what my heart cannot.

December 31, 2008 7:59 PM

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Help. Do what my heart cannot. Wow. Those were the last words in a new poem I wrote on New Year's Eve. It is unquestionable that most of the set up for my heart attack was in place already.


So I spent the Eve alone, which was fine, and at nearly 26 years sober then, I wasn't sneaking drinks. And the alone part. I am sitting here alone right now, well, since I have fed my cat, she's leaving me alone. I am not only used to it, I enjoy it. I was okay New Year's Eve too. There's an old joke among alcoholics, even the active ones...we stay home on amateur night. It's just too dangerous out there. There was a sober dance I could have gone to. I know many people who did. I didn't. I got up pretty early on New Year's Day. I wrote this

How 2009 Started

A dark, stormy morn
Greets my timid thin shuffle
Into this new year.

There is no shadow of me
And no sun to throw it down.

I hope no omen:
This bleak and black announcement
Says, go back to bed.

January 1, 2009 8:10 AM

I hope it is no omen...I wrote this headed into a couple months of unemployment. Then I got back to work and very shortly allergies started and opened me up for virus, which in turn drove the allergies down into my chest, where everything stalled for five weeks. I lost five days work to this. It lifted finally to give me a few days sort of healthy, and then BAM. Heart attack. I lost four days work to this. Now my whole life is changed. I have no sense at all of what is to come. But it will be ordinary. Probably.

Permit me to explain...as far as I am concerned, this all fits within the bell curve of ordinary life, admittedly sort of far out on one end of the curve, but in it none the less. I have been through far worse, meaning that in worse times the demons were busy eating me as well as events were happening or stress was transforming itself into physical distress. This year the demons were not attacking. The vultures were hanging out on someone else's bedpost. There are no vipers under my bed. Deeper, Coyote is still my friend and Death on my shoulder is a light burden and good advisor.

I hope you guys see the humor. I do.