07/05/19
Bright, misty morning. Nothing but white, white, white.
The air is heavy with them: these vast impenetrable clouds.
Sa Pa hidden below, mountain slopes lost above.
Peering into this nebulous void is like trying to see into the future:
all that is visible: that which is around me now,
and even that is impossibly indistinct at times.
These inscrutable clouds that move in from all around.
02-24-19
Coffee—nearly at last
A mustard-yellow wall
Spirals of razorwire atop it
In places it has crumbled away
With age, with the damp, with forgetfulness and neglect
It is like an old love, the glow of the setting sun on it all that is giving it warmth,
Illuminating it before it sinks into darkness
Coffee arrives and smells of strawberries and passion fruit.
It is a red and orange and purple and blue carpet spread beneath my nose
A garland of fruits and flowers hung about my neck
The air is still, silent
Ocassionally it quivers with the voice of an employee or guest, like a single plucked string of a guitar
[Enters loudly: steam from the espresso machine wand]
And suddenly a thought comes to me: why aren’t I meditating while I am here?
As I think about this cafe space as an isolated sphere of peace and serenity a child’s voice bursts in from a room in the rear
Bright and happy like a jelly bean, she skips through back to front and out the door, like a stone across a lake, leaving the surface calm and still after
The world undisturbed
As it was when I first arrived.
Humphrey’s Peak right up there
With clouds tailing off
Dusted with snow like a cinnamon bun.
Flagstaff silent but for the crows,
Some traffic rolling along cracked and tar strapped asphalt
Breeze pushing yellow, green, yellow-green leaves along a sidewalk
Bluebirds bright, their song with joy
Happiness like a child’s reflection in an iced over pond.
Everything—
the very air
—crisp, crackling with energy.
Winter draws nearer.
The smell of old leaves,
Of dead leaves,
New soil,
Life.
Blue of autumn sky.
Glory, I say.
No?
Let’s try that again.
GLORRRY!
(and AMEN, as Henry Miller would say)
GLORY! says the bark of the sea lions from that yonder pointed rock, protruding sharply and hard-edged from the mouth of the cove that I’m overlooking from this rocky promontory.
GLORY! says the sun sunk behind the next island a few miles off, clouds rippling around its peaks loudly like streamers.
GLORY! says the sky, speckled with sun drenched clouds glowing heavily with summer’s honey-colored light even though the last week of October.
(soft streak of rose
petals and tulips
across the horizon
in one long painterly stroke)
This air is life itself — GLORY! — perfumed by the salty, aquamarine waters hundreds of feet below, crashing onto the shore, foamy-white.
And here I sit on the most luxurious rock, looking out at all this revelation.
I could be sitting on a pin cushion.
I discern no visible joy out there, only mystery and a raw primalness. But within, a sense of calm equilibrium and belonging.
I have merged with the salt-sea air, with the last remaining rays of the sun, with the wild, mangy bark of the sea lion.
I am no longer, as I once thought, just this flesh and bone but, I see now that I am this whole of nature.
This skin which contains me; which keeps me bundled up in this extraordinary body with its two legs and its two arms and a head which swivels this way and that, and a mind that thinks and creates divisions; this skin which contains me, which seems a boundary, is also contained within me. It is merely the surface of an ocean, the ground floor of an atmosphere.
It exists, but only in your mind.
So,
GLORY, I say!
GLORY & HALLELUJAH!
The sound of the rain
That countless chorus of voices
Each drop individual, different
But the same word sung—”LIFE”
Shouts the children in the street with giggling
They know the language well
Ah!, it has been so long since last I’ve experienced rain
Here, on the patio, in the dark I sit
Alone but for the company of the cat
The two of us listening, and smelling as we breathe in breathe out
Quietly—the children have gone
Inside (to supper, to games, to bed?)
The rain continues its chatter
Meaningless, but life-affirming
At first I couldn’t see the rain
Could only listen to its voice
Until a car pulled up
Headlights glancing off a window
And the drops of water stuck like glitter
Dazzling like the germs of stories in my head
Until the car pulled away
And this poem began
On the patio outside Bartavelle
I feel just like a dog—
Or just like my thought of how a dog feels—
Wild and free, not bound by a leash, or lassoed to a pole.
Not even a collar, what!
Just wild and free
Gazing into the void
A cacophony
but through the window
my vision sharply focused: PEACE.
Interpol dancing loudly on the stereo,
the ‘clank-clank!’ of dishes,
shouted announcement of prepared food: “Ling! Ling!”,
the rip-roar of a motorcycle in the parking lot,
a burst of steam from the espresso machine.
But outside, the wind tickling the trees tickling the sky white-streaked and blue.
There is a peace here maintained by staring out the window.
There is a joy here audible if one listens.
fruit, and cheeseboards, and books
lattes, and glasses of lemonade
on small, circular, wood-slat tables
bathe in the sun
reading books
reading phones
standing in line staring at bread
waiting for the line to move
salivating
the parking lot empty
the intersection full
the wind turns
the trees dance
children shout
wafting toast aroma flutters out the door
Sleeping faces
Nose-in-a-book faces
Enchanted by smartphone faces
Hidden-by-sunglasses faces
Laughing faces
Straight faces
Pale faces
Dark faces
Multicultural faces
Animated faces
Faces in repose
Faces in love
Profiles of faces
Children’s faces
Teen faces
Adult faces
A beautiful face directly across from me
Smooth and youthful faces
Pockmarked and wrinkled faces
Bearded faces
Clean-shaven faces
A tattooed face
Inquisitive faces
Concentrating faces
Looking and questioning faces
Apologetic faces
Weary faces
Calm faces
Sunlight through the windows on all of their faces faces
There’s an orange peel under one of the seats
And this train is hurtling along at incredible speed.
In the Yard, Everywhere a Garden, Frisco
The rustle of the aspen leaves like strings of soft wooden beads gently pushed aside by a hand.
Swallows soaring swirling acrobatics tracing the world’s most complex roller coaster clear into the blue, chittering happily and madly because they are swallows and it is theirs, and theirs alone (but this they do not know: that it is also mine).
A hummingbird’s thrum as it zips there (where?) dashing lines in a picture book, now stopping—hovering stationary—motionless but for the soft blur of wings, in front of a purple flower its slender saber-like bill inserted like a bank card into the slot of an atm. Then, ZIP! from my watchful eye, the flower crystalline still.
And the sun filtering through clouds sweetly and warm, an exquisite hand, fingers wriggling, reaching through soap bubbles for something. The touch of my only lover on my skin.
On the tall green grasses
Water droplets
The mountain peaks
Obscured by rain clouds
A young boy
The pebbly shore
He picks one up
_________
At Lake Dillon Marina. On a large boulder along the shore. The sky perfectly blue. Indescribably blue (indescribably perfect). The sky indescribable at any time. It’s more like an emotion than a physical thing, the sky.
The clouds punctuate long rambling sentences that are meaningless, wholly without sense. They’re beautiful and white. As monumental as the mountains, though they be so much more ethereal, insubstantial, always shifting, changing, bits vanishing like an old flag torn to tatters by the relentless wind. Of course, the mountains do too, just slower. So much slower, like the eternity it takes to find someone you love, and then they’re gone.
It’s been ages since I’ve sat like this, down by the water, just observing. Some time ago in Annapolis. Months ago. The breeze a mere whisper today—a comforting pat on the back by a missed friend. More ripples in the lake than unaccountable footsteps in the world. Infinite and everlasting. The sky contained within, but only a part. One could sit out here forever.
The End (not to be confused with the Birdhouse skate video)
Walking by Royal (in so much as one can walk by a mountain). I’m thinking about how my time here has nearly come to an end, and how this all seems like a dream, how all life seems like a dream, and that I’m nothing more than a wisp of smoke, an amalgam of gas and ashes that has somehow been bound together into a corporeal body, and that it makes no sense, but that trying to make sense of existence is like digging a hole in the desert hoping to strike water. That the beauty and the strangeness and awful magnificence and senselessness are to be loved and cherished and enjoyed (or not, if you so choose!). That it matters not if this is all just a dream and every leaf I touch and mountain I climb are mere tricks of these senses (those senses themselves being tricks, too), that their apparent solidity is nothing but an illusion, and my own solidity as well. I laugh! Because it is the air let out of the balloon, and it flies around the room making that silly noise. It is a revelation. But also the genesis of a dream or a reality (is there truly a difference?) that begins anew every moment of every uncountable moment which is this one singular moment that is and forever will be.
How does one draw a line for eternity, yet never move the pen?
The Cosmological Eye 