Poem: Happiness Happens, Actually

Happiness Happens, Actually

Actually sat down for tea, but ended up having rice liquor. She preferred

tequila to both, but took what she could get—you know, he was paying.

She thought, I see no ‘tea for two,’ as promised, and that she’d rather date a

guy with pretty blue eyes because they seemed more “angelic,” but it was—

an annoyance in spite of good looks.

Actually knew better than to answer the call of a blind date and a friendly nudge.

But, here she was, sitting in a clown suit—a tribute to Halloween ‘08

and a week of build up—entertaining thoughts of fucking a stranger

just because and fingering her sake cup erotically.

If this clown suit gets me laid, there is no greater God than Desperation.

And if this guy pushes his glasses up his nose one more time…

Actually wanted to punch him.

Guy made obvious attempts to bridge the gap and distort the awkward silence.

His voice cracked: “You’re a cancer, aren’t you?”

Guy was avoiding the obvious—an avoidance too unreal for Actually.

She took off her red nose and squeezed it, making a fist.

“What about me seems so much like a Cancer, Guy?”

Guy, startled, index-fingered his glasses till they were flush with his ‘brows.

His hand darted for his expensive apple-flavored sake.

Fucking nerd. Maybe his dick is big. Might be this fucker’s only saving grace.

Guy’s lips tightened, reaching sideways and skyward: “Excuse me. That was tangy.”

“No worries.” Actually, taunting a Russian accent, eyed Guy flirtatiously.

“Well, I’m embarrassed. I admit—I don’t know why I said that.”

Actually was a Leo and, at that very moment, started thinking “lesbian” was

the way to go. She lit a cigarette and mentally memo-ed.

Note to Self.

But, alas, she had already been down that road—and pussy hadn’t really spun her skirt.

Actually’s doubts were suddenly slighted by invasive twinges of compassion. Out of nowhere, she felt like doing someone else a favor.

She imagined she would fuck him in the best way possible. She would build him up “hard” and let him down “easy.”

While her short-spurted fantasies played out, she felt herself becoming wet.

“Could it be my unruly appearance and soft pink core?”

40—love.

Actually uncrossed her legs and, with the precision of a beach volleyball nailing the sand, farted.

Her calculations, like two-faced bitches, had turned against her. She was beat-red with embarrassment. Beneath the ludicrous and vindictive veneer of face paint, a semblance of humility began to surface.

Now, it was she who was squirming. She could no longer meet Guy’s once darting eyes with such prowess and strength. She was no longer the beast in the jungle.

And then, for the first time all night, Guy scooted his chair close, leaned forward, and met, what he’d later call, her “fortuitous look of consternation” with the same sassiness she’d had.

He cleared his throat: “You know, I’ve never smashed a clown before.”

And then, for the first time in a long time, it happened—happiness happened. Her once frozen, brokeback mountain heart had been surprised off its high horse just long enough to thaw.

It was then, during the April of those unexpected happenings, that Actually was able to love again.

A Work of Art is Good If It Has Arisen Out of Necessity

From Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke

Paris

Febuary 17, 1903

Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses, for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't so sayable and tangible as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small transitory life.

...You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should avoid most right now. No one can advise you or help you--no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your while development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to question that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer...

Poem: Turtle Baby

In Memory of Judith Gardner, Sean Hughston, and
Souls Gone Home

Turtle Baby

The turtle that carries home on its back carries the

weight of the world without ever saying a word.

Movement is slow but steady.

A turtle will be a turtle, no

more or no less than a turtle.

The Earth spins on its axis around 1,000 miles per hour,

while revolving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour.

All those (r)evolutions.

From outer space, city lights emanate,

like glow worms or kindling fire.

God is an astronaut, sailing through the

dust and memory of eternal falling stars.

I am His Judas, Her Mary Magdalene, Sweet Jesus, Ruth, the Israel who was once Jacob.

Little turtle babies leave the sanctity of eggshell, rake

the sand with their little turtle baby flippers, return home.

Moths to the Proxigean flame of the new moon.

Soft shells harden with each successive elliptical rotation of

the Earth around the Sun and the Moon in love with the tide.

We’re all following the path of

a kite lost in the infinite sky.

A yellow balloon ascending as one final salute.

What lies below are the memories of

the living—our only afterlife.

On Slights

My aim is to deliver
a toxin to your liver.

The dead dog
is where you
go to die.

Poem: A Dream of Buddha's Teardrops

Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be your own reliance. Hold to the truth within yourselves as to the only lamp.

The Buddha assumes responsibility of collecting all the world’s pain in a single, solitary teardrop: “The other teardrops are for good measure--strength in numbers,” the Buddha chuckles. Down by the Bodhi tree, the Buddha’s teardrops nourish life in the soil: (digging) roots, the natural darkness, earthworms, grubs, insects, moles, moss, lichens, snakes. Each drop feeds 1001 hungry children in the midst of Silence and the Great Solitude— forty days and forty nights in silent presence. Beside the Buddha, a woman of Pure Mind, a seed of love roots, a tall purple flower blooms, carries the hope of the universe, heralds what the Buddha knows, claims is already here, “already present.” The Buddha laughs aloud, speaks, “Oh, Greatness, it is only the Preserver of Life—I shall plant seeds for her coming!” The Buddha takes from her pockets a single rock, beads, rice, two handfuls of seeds, throws them high up above the heart-shaped leaves and canopy of the Bodhi tree— 1001 doves take flight, feed their mighty hunger. The Buddha smiles as she smells the sweet scent of hope, fluttering. The Buddha's compassion consumes anger with a single, solitary teardrop of understanding, creates a universe of karmic task—her hands clasped, legs crossed in prayer. The Buddha takes two handfuls of white sand from a red, silk pouch, lets each single, solitary grain take flight with the wind. The Buddha waits for stars to twinkle, nourishes a planet of dreams, in between breaths, gives them life. No one knows she moves into unknown galaxies only few understand the Buddha is quiet and still enough to become. No jewel is worth more than the diamond embedded in the Buddha’s heart. A river of light flows through the depths of the Infinite Unknown, comes full circle: The Buddha continues, “My heart flowers. My rose is ripe for the getting. Thorns should never keep you from picking. My rose is in bloom,” she sings. “I am delighted.” The Buddha, in full lotus, smiles, knows no hatred, no anger, only a secret, goes back to her lesson: the root of human suffering. The Buddha’s teardrops meet the Great Divine. The source echoes, in the void out of time, “It’s love.” Weeps with us, “It’s love.” The Buddha’s heart-mind wakes-reverberates to its long, yearning cry.

To Those Running From Skeleton Woman

A Love Letter December 2006 

 Freeing myself from a place of confusion takes grace, and faith. It takes movement and a momentum that forges a new reality, a state not torn between ways, to make what is dual, whole. Freedom from confusion mostly takes grace, a kind and generous answer to the silent prayers in the heart of humankind. Yes. No. Something as simple as "Tread the path on the high ground. Bring sustenance--food and water. There will be plenty of air." To breathe, deeply. Would suffice. Change is good. It is simple, although it bears the fruit of a new world, of roads taken, of complexities and long, drawn-out answers discovered. (And undiscovered.) There is but one question: It is the flavor of life, the beat of drums that thumps the chest, driving us into a frenzy of feeling, of wanting and needing, of sensing truth and the infinite vibe that drives the chariot. Another world is abloom with the fire of the chariot's wheels. My heart is connected to my head via "satellite." My heart speaks in a tongue my head fruitlessly tries to translate. I tell my head, "You over-analyze--the truth got lost in translation." Forget your Rosetta stone. Follow the voice of the silent muse. Remember and recognize, order and harmony speak in the natural universe, full of mystery, oblivious to the untrained eye, in the language of the Soul. Laboring over analysis, categorization, of what smells of heart and soul is a dubious task that affords only death: It is where dreams die. I mention the word "intuition." I write of the existence of a world that exists inseparably with the world around us. In infinite possibilities. What is "God-plasma?" And the blueprint of the Universe? We cover our heads to block out the sun. But, we need light like we need our Mother's bosom to sleep in at night. We need each other in a language that is not ours alone. It is a language of faith that arose as we took our first breath; the faith and grace that allowed our seed to root and become a tree. We struggle together, weighing our love and our fear, our gains and our losses. That struggle is the force of life in its ebb and flow; its inhalation and exhalation. We are fruitless without this exchange. We are dead without this faith. There is a force that has tied our fates together in a knot. (We untangle each other out of our struggle, in faith and in love, for commitment and lasting union.) Our destinies echo the willingness, intelligence, and love of the Creator, who created us out of tears of joy and sorrow. Tears whetted by the fluidity and soul of the Universe. I understand a secret I am unaccustomed at making practice. I understand the answer, but forgot how to communicate the question. My roots are my soul's decent into the warm mantle of the Earth and her motherly kindness. She caresses my desire with a mirrored desire to give birth, to create. You and I, we have laughed together, but we have not yet learned to cry together. We are at our defenses, watchful of the slightest sight or assumption of indiscretion. Our hearts beat "hurt." Our knuckles are white with anger. Our pain bears fruit of an unseemly and unjust creator. Frustrated with the misunderstanding of the force that guides us, we spin our webs in anger. What follows makes little sense, and soon we begin to notice the web of confusion that was spun in doubt. What was once a simple road is now a discouraging detour. Mistrust and fear, and all that it sparks and spoils, describes our toil. We fear what we want most because we don't believe we deserve it. We doubt life has in store for us the good we desire. We fear failure. We continue to spin our wheels and webs of confusion. Eventually, we'll beat our heads hard enough against the wall, and our hearts will have to take over. Out of confusion comes realization. Out of struggle comes wholeness and new life. Out of wood becomes lumber. Out of this lumber, we build a house. Out of this house, with love, faith, trust, responsibility, kindness, patience, and commitment, we create a home. Out of our home, where we live, grow, and nurture and support a family, we create a temple. Our temple stands as a testament to the labor of our love. Through our fear, we'll never imagine an oasis, a home made refuge out of our labor and love. We will burn down each house we build together until we create a home that, when we enter, out of mutual trust and respect, we wipe our feet and leave our shoes and fears at the door. There is reckoning, and it only comes by the storm of action and awareness. Movement comes from within, not without. It is dependent on your energy for its life. You bear it like only an attentive, loving parent would. Give it what it needs.

Expectant Sinks With Expectation

People have expectations of us. No doubt. Some are high. Some are low. Some people just take it as it comes, with a grain of salt, and accept whatever you have to give. Often, relationships with these people are characterized by ease. Eventually, even these relationships experience a "snag." The snag is most likely due to a failed expectation--their disappointment and your failure to do or be what is wanted, needed, or expected. True friends are able to get passed this snag. They can "see" a person clearly and can easily understand that failed expectations have little to do with the person in question, but have to do with failed communication or acceptance of what is. And sometimes, we have our own reasons for denying a person what she thinks we owe her. Maybe we don't have it to give. Maybe we don't think this expectation comes from need but, instead, from personal desire. Or maybe we just plain don't want to give it.

I've been on both sides of having expectations and not being able to meet expectations. In both instances, there was a lack of desire and even an ability to give, maybe because a kind of poverty, emotionally or otherwise. We aren't always able to be there for others. And the reasons are many. Does that make us bad friends? Maybe. Does it mean we don't care? Maybe and maybe on the contrary. What conditions prevail? We have to take into account individual freedom and will.

Take unrequited love. At some point, we may expect to be loved in return because we feel we deserve it or simply because it's what we want. We may even become angry that we are not loved in return. We may find ourselves in the throes of war because we feel rejected, jilted, slighted. But, whose purpose is it to love us anyway? Who has to love us?

No one does. No one was created to give us exactly what we want when we want it. There's a kind of grace that goes along with reciprocity, with give and take, with accepting and rejecting. An expectation places a condition on something and says it isn't free. It is expected. Expectations fall just short of being demanded. The only expectation that goes without saying is something like treat others how you want to be treated. Human affairs require the generosity of respect, even if without understanding. You may not understand why I do the things I do, but all humans deserve "respect for the dignity of [their] humanity," according to Emmanuel Kant. This is a very basic requirement, a necessity, and need not be called an "expectation." Anything more becomes frill, but not unimportant. Respecting you does not demand that I love you or pay your bills or help you fulfill your wants. The frill of expectation demands that I love you, pay your bills, and fulfill your wants.

You do not owe me a thing. The most essential ingredient to peace, near or far, is respect. Our mutual benefit from and belief in respecting one another is the only requirement for proving it's legitimacy as a necessity.

The rest is given because it wants to be given. You want to give to me, despite any foreknowledge of or acquiescence to my expectations. And I want you to want to give to me. I don't want you to feel, in any way, coerced into giving me what I want. It is then that the gift is not a gift, is not free, but is payment upon obligation.

I've disappointed some people in my short time. I've failed to meet certain expectations and didn't give what another most likely could have given (or did give). At times, I've been remiss, without excuse, except for ignorance. At other times, I just didn't have it to give. And at other other times, I either had a different idea of what I needed to give or just really didn't want to give it, with no thought of how the other person would perceive it.

Not taking things personally is a healthy perspective here. We meet people we want to form relationships with, and we aren't always on equal footing. We may have different ideas about giving and receiving, and we may have different things to give. Circumstances are conditional, consequences are causal, and life is temporal. Our individual wills dictate that we will decide, now and in the future, what we're willing to accept and to give and what expectations we will cast on others. Without judging and holding on, we can be lenient and open. We can allow others the room to give what they have to give, or let them go when we don't think it is enough.

In the mean time, we, too, can sit and think about ways in which we've wronged others and ask for forgiveness, even if our search for forgiveness stays within the realms of our own minds and with other sounding boards. We can be honest about our need for forgiveness and may more easily give it to others. We can forgive ourselves for being human, and forgive others. Then, we can move on, keeping with the flow of conditionality, causality, and temporality.

Gravitas

From June 11, 2010

Connection is the gravitas of human relationships.

Without it, we continue on, starving, haunted by a thirst that can only be quenched by grace, fueled by a need that can only be met when spontaneously given, and unable to experience the release of death, the relief of unbridled acceptance. We go on living, but living without nourishment.

Our mouths seek the mother breast, the milk and honey of intimacy. Without it, we are adults in the desert of inopportune timing. Clocks tick fast or slow. Cups have holes. We're early or late, wet and dry.

Notes on Man For Himself, Erich Fromm

Humanistic Ethics

Man For Himself—An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

Authoritarian Ethics

· denies man's capacity to know what is good/bad

· the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual

· answers the question of good and bad in terms of authority's interests

· child/adult relationship-

"a thing is good if it is good for the person who uses it"

· ordains main virtue-obedience; main sin-disobedience

· Old Testament

· "virtue"=self-denial and obedience, suppression of individuality rather than full expression

Humanistic Ethics

· "the applied science of the 'art of living' based upon the theoretical 'science of man'"

· only man himself can determine criterion for virtue and sin, not authority (formally)

· "good" is what is good for man; "evil" is what is detrimental

· sole criterion is man's welfare

· "virtue" is unique individuality lived to fullest

· nothing higher and nothing more dignified than human existence

· man finds his fulfillment and happiness only in relatedness to and solidarity with his fellow man

· love is his own power by which he relates to the world and makes it truly his

· in order to know what is "good" we have to know his nature

· the excellence of one's achievements is proportional to the knowledge one has of the science of man and to one's skill and practice

· the knowledge of man is the basis of establishing norms and ethics

• Need for objective criterion
• Is it possible to establish norms of conduct and value judgments which are objectively valid for all men and yet postulated by man himself and not by an authority transcending him?
• note: in all arts a system of objectively valid norms constitutes the theory of practice based on theoretical science
• living itself is an art
  • process of developing into that which one is potentially
  • man is both the artist and he object of his art

• "The drive to live is inherent in every organism, and man cannot help wanting to live regardless of what he would like to think about it. The choice between life and death is more apparent than real; man's real choice is that between a good life and bad life"
• Why has our time lost the concept of life as an art?
  • Modern man seems to think, "living is something so simple that no particular effort is required to learn how to do it" while the belief that becoming an architect, etc. warrants considerable study

• "Modern society, in spite of all the emphasis it puts upon happiness, individuality, and self-interest, has taught man to feel that not his happiness (or if we were to use a theological term, his salvation) is the aim of life, but the fulfillment of his duty to work, or his success. Money, prestige, and power have become his incentives and ends. He acts under the illusion that his actions benefit his self-interest, though he actually serves everything else but the interest of his real self. Everything is important to him except his life and the art of living"
  • "[Man] is for everything except himself"

"If ethics constitutes the body of norms for achieving excellence in performing the art of living, its most general principles must follow from the nature of life in general and of human existence in particular"

• The nature of life is to preserve and affirm its own existence
  • Respect for life
  • Inherent tendency to protect own life
  • First "duty," to be alive
    • "a dynamic, not static, concept"
  • "Existence and the unfolding of the specific powers of an organism are one and the same"
    • To actualize specific potentialities
    • "The aim of man's life is to be understood as the unfolding of his powers according to the laws of his nature"
      • Duty of living is the duty to become oneself, singular and particular

"Good"

ü "the affirmation of life, the unfolding of man's powers"

Ø "Virtue"

§ "responsibility toward his own existence"

"Evil"

ü "crippling of man's powers"

Ø "Vice"

§ "irresponsibility toward himself"

The Science of Man (Human nature)

Ø Man exists and there is a human nature characteristic of the species

Ø Authoritarian thinkers

Ø Human nature fixed and unchangeable

Ø Progressive thinkers

Ø Infinite malleability of human nature

Ø Both untenable

Ø Man can adapt himself to almost any cultural pattern

Ø But he develops mental and emotional disturbances if these are contradictory to his nature

Ø Man is not a blank sheet

Ø Man is an entity charged with energy and structured in specific ways

Ø "If man had adapted himself to external conditions autoplastically, by changing his own nature, like an animal, and were fit to live under only one set of conditions to which he developed a special adaptation, he would have reached the blind alley of specialization which is the fate of every animal species, thus precluding history. If, on the other hand, man could adapt himself to all conditions without fighting those which are against his nature, he would have no history either"

Ø "Human evolution is rooted in man's adaptability and in certain indestructible qualities of his nature which compel him never to cease his search for conditions better adjusted to his intrinsic needs"

Robert Pinsky's "ABC" Poem

ABC

Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,

Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.

Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:

X=your zenith.

Poem: Woman is a Womb

[Masochist], speak.
Your mouth is bloody from chewing the tree,
and savoring every thorn, passiflora incarnata,
the Christ vine.

[Sadist], with ease. Aspirin can't relieve blasphemy—
a swollen tongue and limp dick—
or redeem you from the sins you've eaten for a fee.
You've desecrated the hand that feeds:
Tota mulier in utero*.

[Fascist], release, you devil.
Kneel before Humility.
Pry your teeth from my tit.
A woman has to eat to feed.


December 4, 2008


*"Woman is a womb": The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir.

Pinkie, The Elephant

It's time for a very small revolution of reckoning. It's time to state the obvious and name the proverbial pink elephant in the room.

We often choose to ignore reality or to address a more serious issue, for the sake of wanting to protect someone, be it ourselves or others. The hard-to-miss pink elephant flaunts itself, yet we continue unperturbed, often focusing on unimportant and trivial matters. We even create diversions to aid our and others' denial. Perhaps, what needs to be addressed places us in an uncomfortable position, or it "out"s the other. Whatever the case, we must all take a step towards liberating that pink elephant by calling it out.

"You, sir, are a PINK ELEPHANT! Let's have tea!"

Some usual pink elephants include, that one flaming gay who swears he's not gay and follows it with a hair flip; the middle child who always covers her arms and legs to hide tiny scars; the middle-aged woman who pops pills for sleeping, eating, and waking; the twentysomething who buys a BMW but does not file a tax return; the neighbor who somehow ends up with exact tools you're missing and doesn't mind using them in front of you; the girlfriend or wife who talks on the phone in secret, receives random midnight texts, breaks up with you for every little thing, or picks fights with you over "nothing"; the husband who spends an inordinate amount of time in the garage or surfing the internet and becomes angry or aloof each time you greet his behavior with curiosity; the significant other who swears you are cheating, only to project her own indiscretions on to you. The list is endless, for it covers every kind of avoided addiction.

Essentially, a pink elephant is a thing, an issue, that can keep couples from intimacy and individuals from the road to recovery. Not naming the pink elephant is a fail-proof way of destroying what could be healthy relationships. Over time, denial fuels the break-down in communication in couples and healing in individuals. Naming the pink elephant creates a starting point for dealing with the issue at hand. It is a way of knowing and exerting dominion over, in the likes of a steward. It is the opposite of neglect. Soon, naming leads to handling and handling leads to understanding. Change is possible. No longer is there a need to avoid the obvious.

"You can go home now, pink elephant. We don't need you anymore."

Today's Muse

Go hard.

Don't waste your time on people who waste your time.

Wanting and liking are not the same thing. If she's hard to get, trust me, she's not worth it.

No great "catch" wants to 'wrap you around her finger'--a great catch, naturally and without resistance, wraps around yours.

Games are for children. Grow up.

Productively obsess. At will. Passions tend to come to life and create new life when you obsess.

Be willing to pounce on a new opportunity, like the king of the jungle after her prey, even if it means giving up something you're "set" on.

A lived life is built upon roads that twist and turn. Narrow-mindedness leads only to missed opportunities.

Luck is Chance's flexible will. Take a chance!

If it's killing you, quit it!

"Quitting is actually incredibly empowering. It's a reminder that you control the situation. Sometimes it's the bravest option, because it requires you to face your failures." -Tina Seelig

Face your failures. And your fears. Empower yourself to see reality as is. Fantasies are meant for the bedroom.

Desire for control is the handmaiden of the weak. Self-control is characteristic of the strong. However, never underestimate your own impulse control. Some of us just really love chocolate. = )

Narcissism isn't really 'love of self.' In fact, narcissists not only do not love themselves, they hate humanity, starting with their own.

Inevitably, we'll face the decision to either keep doing things our way--when we want and for ourselves--or take into account what others want as well. Mutuality, in keeping with healthy relationship standards, dictates that we sometimes do things purely for the sake of another, despite that it's not what we'd usually do or how we'd usually do it.

Go on! Do that thing because you simply and genuinely want to see another happy.

Happiness is not wanting anything more than what you have.

Ambition is best in small doses. Following through creates the tastiest desserts.

On Giving

Giving isn't about ways and opportunities in which you abandon yourself for the sake of another. It is about ways and opportunities in which you give what is most present and connected in you for the sake of another.

No Absolution, No Pardon

There ain't no destiny about that there choice. No authority will grant you absolution from your obligation to choose for and be yourself. Though you may create the illusion of independence and individuality, your dependence on things you consider greater than your own will keeps you stuck: powerless, yet comfy. You abandon yourself in servitude out of your fear of being responsible for your own life. A simple word like "own" means "possession." So, own it and own up to it. No fortune cookie will pardon you from the charge that you have not been creative and courageous enough to write your own destiny. In the end, you'll die alone. This is both your greatest fear and your only path to salvation. There ain't no destiny about salvation. How fortunate you are to choose!

On Facades

Some people spend most of their time and energy creating facades for those in their lives that don't matter, instead of spending it wisely on those who do. They would rather hide behind a persona that is a seemingly better version of themselves than be exactly whom they are, out in the open. Some people also spend most of their time diverting others' attention away from ways in which they suck and do wrong, instead of being honest and honestly changing. They spend their whole lives focused on one thing: how to hide, without anyone, including themselves, noticing.

Not everyone is so blind or naive or soft. And not everyone has the courage to walk the high road.

Exerpt from The Art of Being

From Erich Fromm's The Art of Being:

"The basis for any approach to self-transformation is an ever-increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of illusions. Illusions contaminate even the most wonderful-sounding teaching to make it poisonous. I am not referring here to possible errors in the teaching. The Buddha's teachings are not contaminated because one does not believe that transmigration exists, nor is the biblical text contaminated because it contrasts with the more realistic knowledge of the history of earth and the evolution of man. There are, however, intrinsic untruths and deceptions that do contaminate teaching, such as announcing that great results can be achieved without effort, or that the craving for fame can go together with egolessness, or that methods of mass suggestion are compatible with independence.

"To be naive and easily deceived is impermissible, today more than ever, when the prevailing untruths may lead to a catastrophe because they blind people to real dangers and real possibilities.

"The 'realists' believe, of those who strive for kindness, that these latter mean well but that they are ingenuous, full of illusions--briefly, fools. And they are not entirely wrong. Many of those who abhor violence, hate, and selfishness are naive. They need their belief in everyone's innate 'goodness' in order to sustain that belief. Their faith is not strong enough to believe in the fertile possibilities of man without shutting their eyes to the ugliness and viciousness of individuals and groups. As long as they do so, their attempts to achieve an optimum of well-being must fail; any intense disappointment will convince them that they were wrong or will drive them into a depression, because they do not then know what to believe.

"Faith in life, in oneself, in others must be built on the hard rock of realism; that is to say, on the capacity to see evil where it is, to see swindle, destructiveness, and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in their many disguises and rationalizations. Indeed, faith, love, and hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the attitude 'cynicism.' And cynical it is, when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed. But this kind of cynicism is not cynicism; it is uncompromisingly critical, a refusal to play the game in a system of deception. Meister Eckhart expressed this briefly when he said...'He does not deceive but he is not deceived.'

"Indeed, neither the Buddha, nor the Prophets, nor Jesus, nor Eckhart, nor Spinoza, nor Marx, nor Schweitzer were 'softies.' On the contrary, they were hardheaded realists and most of them were persecuted and maligned not because they preached virtue but because they spoke truth. They did not respect power, titles, or fame, and they knew that the emperor was naked; and they knew that power can kill the 'truth-sayers.'"

Present Moment For Sale

Present moment for sale. Brand new. Never been used. One of a kind. Affordable. Priceless. A perfect gift for friends, lovers, enemies, yourself, or any occasion. Act fast! Your awareness, presence, and integrity desired. O.B.O.

March of the Sycophant

It's that time again. Smoke stacks billow short breaths; it's all the same, of suffocation [parts per million]. The future-mortified mortality-hiding out in the basement, an imperial regime. Million-fan march: aliyah, your mecca, your promised land, Sycophant--solipsistic craving and immemorial Maya-fix. "The feeling is global. Thank you." A space needle in every city, rising ever higher to the glory of the idolater, the moneylender. Hand out, mouth open: Your house is on fire, Vampire. Acid rain fuels the flame. Loss prevention in lieu of the gift of giving. In-dis-trust-rial revolution: Left face, march! Man-infested destiny. Right face, march! Rise of the SS, national crest, watermark. Forward, march! [Slice of] bread with a barcode. "Slave labor is up--prices are down." Buy low; sell high, 'cause everyone's doing it. Negative externalities: If a tree fall in the forest, 57, ooo gallons of H2O feed the hungry flood, per capita. 0.08, the gold standard [ppm]. Save lives: Don't breathe or drive. Word: "sustainability." Violent, Careless Gods Devour 'Ancient Sunlight,' 'Current Sunlight' Harmful at High Exposures. Next-Wave Energy Crisis. Cancer is light literally leaving the body. A naturally cohesive state in distress. A modern scab for the disease of technology. Cells under Darth-Vadar attack. "The [static] source is polluted. Communication [static] down." Death and decay is only natural. Every major war, small battle, or police action is a slink in the slinky of time. The "butterfly effect" at full rhyme. Downstream, estuary hiccups a drop in the ocean, and dead-zones extend thousands of miles. "Man, it's fuckin' hot out here. And it's already November. I remember freezing my balls off mid-October." [robot voice] "Internal thermostat set to self-destruct." "You said it, brother. We're plained fucked." Pharmaceutical Companies NOW Offer Relatively Inexpensive Cure for Depression, Anxiety, PTSD. "Pill-poppers unite! Free yourselves from the inconvenience of remembering. Results and side effects may vary." XX: If the world were a turtle, would its heart go on beating even after its head was severed? XY: For a day. In light years, that ain't much. A fraction of a fragment of the time we need to revive each other. XX: Do turtles mate for life? XY: What's that got to do with anything? XX: Everything. It's got everything to do with anything. http://www.biomimicry.net http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html

Oh, Death

Oh, Death, how you remind us that living beneath the veil does no more for us than drinking out of an empty cup.

When You're Looking For Spring, Look Only to Yourself

The human being should be an artist. There is an art to living and an art to loving. The greatest of arts. Then, there are lesser arts but arts, nonetheless, in need of no less than artists to guide as hands do. Less can assume more. Even the warrior is an artist. Even the smallest of seeds creates beauty likened to art. Even the comedian, with his crude speech and brash ways, tailors the art of our humanity into humor. His art creates joy.

There is an art to this thing. That's why when we lose focus and concentration, we fail to create works of art, as the artist fails to create without a steady hand and discipline, surely leaving his muse lonely and his love without expression. The human and the artist fail to be artists without commitment and discipline to their art. The artist is not worthy of such art if he only chooses to abandon his art, as he abandons himself.

Fromm wrote that we need to study life and love in theory AND in practice. We only become artists through that kind of discipline. If I am to know you, what better way than to pay the homage of witness through my steady devotion and discipline? How else am I to know what's behind those eyes and beneath each intent, impulse, or action? My love becomes art, even in the everyday ordinariness of you.

Like any artist, the warrior must know his craft: his opponent. The comedian must know people, especially her audience. She must pay special attention to human imperfection and each fall from grace, the obvious and subtle. The lover must not be afraid to love or to know the beloved. The lover also must not be afraid to know herself. To know the nature of each and the environment.

The true artist is neither afraid to know herself nor can she avoid doing so. She finds herself in her creations and at the end of her own sentences. Rilke wrote, "Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it only comes to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast."

The lover waits patiently for the beloved to reveal her secret. She waits patiently for her beloved to open like a cryptic poem written in a foreign language that had only become accessible through a timely dream in which the Rosetta stone had been given and she had accepted. And now sits patiently before the beloved's eternity and "unconcernedly silent and vast" ocean of unknowing she can't escape and may choose to meet.

You see, this patience is not without faith, an essential confidence and trust. All true artists create in this sphere. They are gathering dust.

However, eternity is not only the soul that can't be seen, it is the soul that can be seen. Simple truths and lesser arts. And you shall know them by their fruits. Give her time to ripen or that love to bloom or an end to finally wish you fare thee well. Look only to yourself.

Little Against

I could just let these tunes, melodies, empty my brain, but there's no getting around it...

You ask me to come here, tell you a story, write you some poetry, sing you a song, but I can't...

I know you're not listening. Who listens these days, anyway?

It's already tomorrow. I forgot to mail that love letter yesterday. And the milk's old, about two days ago.

I expect your call soon. I think it could bode well--there could be some kind of reconciliation, some kind of good news. But who knows--it might take some time to tell.

I don't know. I learned to read at an early age, but I'm stuck here, still trying to decipher your language...a mouthful of rage...

Aren't you tired of "but"s, because I am. "Pero no." Pero si.

But, yes...

I'm a frantic flier. Fly-by-er. I stretch my skin as far as it will go. And still, it ain't tight enough.

My heart beats "churn," like the butter under a rotor, goes 'round 'round, and thickens, like skin beaten beneath a wide frown and a bleeding heart worn on a sleeve.

Ah, do you even remember me? My scent? You carrying my keys?

There's no raspberry or cherry or secret slippin' from these lips. You might want to catch up, give me a kiss.

We all die sooner rather than later. I hate to be the bearer of such bad news.
What happens then? When worse comes to worst, what happens when?!

I smile at you because we both know that everything ends up alright. All the meaninglessness in the world can't break a striving fool's fight for time.

Can't you hear it?

It's that dream you had but tried to deny. It's that small hope that your love will bury you alive. It's that bigger-than-life symphony of singing seeds. The rapture.

It's you and me.

Don't be a pussy. I got your number.

You can see me inside, I suppose.
Come outside, already.

Your good Lord knows.

I hold so little against you. And the things I carry are light.
You're lucky I'm easy. I won't put up much of a fight...