Moth Seeks Her Eternal Flame

There is a muted yearning within the heart that is destined to become our passion. That muted yearning begins to break its silence as it nears the Beloved, or as the Beloved nears it. It is an awakening, a stirring, a response to a calling. It is a return—yearning serving as an internal compass, homing instinct, and timer. If muted yearning is the heart’s winter, breaking its silence is its spring. That once-muted yearning actualizes into full-bloom passion when union with the Beloved occurs. Before union, it exists as a silent witness—watching, awaiting the spark and call to passion. But that spark is only a beginning—a sprouting. It’s much like the entelechy of an acorn to become an oak tree that the blueprint and silhouette of our yearning embodies the fullness and abundance of our passion. Yearning is the root of the rose of our passion. And the potential of our passion actualizes as our joys and sorrows—the flowering of our passion as a rose in bloom. 

In the beginning, there was only One—the Source, God, Great Spirit. And there was Source’s yearning. That yearning was the magic Word, the “open, sesame.” That yearning ignited the flames of what would become Creation. Source’s yearning itself gave rise to Creation. Creation is Source’s passion, or yearning-made-manifest. We are the flowering of Source’s passion, or passion-made-manifest. We are the fruits of Source’s passion. We are Source’s joys and sorrows. If creation is the rose, we are the flowering—the rose-in-bloom. We are the rose’s beauty and sweet scent, as well as the thorns of its death and decay. We may fear sorrow and seek only joy, but the circle, cycles, and dancing spiral of life promise no end—only conclusions and completions, and wisdom gained through repetition.

From the fruits of our passion—our own lived joys and sorrows—come the catalysts for our growth and evolution: the lessons avoided, lived and learned; the karma created, evaded, balanced and cleared; and the unavoidable justice encompassed and experienced in living and making choices, positive or negative. These are the fruits of the fruits of our passion harvested and from which there is no escape. If not now, then later. There are no shortcuts. No detours. It is through these fruits that we honor what is real and are able to continue to offer up what isn’t real in sacrifice to what is real and true—only love. It is through these fruits that we refine, recycle, and renew, and thus are able to return to Source. There is no loss here. There is no death. There is no escape. Lessons learned continue to teach. Karma balanced and cleared continues to serve. And justice experienced is a merciful gift that continues to provide us with the most direct route to Source, as well as the most sober return home. Those fruits never decay. They, and we, are continually renewed, to infinity. 
If you ever feel like you’ve lost your passion, remember your yearning as a spark within and tend to it. No matter how quiet your yearning has become, its presence is always enough. Break your yearning’s silence. No matter how far away you are, you can always return home. See that a little light shines in the dark for you. Open your eyes to your yearning’s truth. Like the moth seeking her eternal flame, follow the little light of your yearning home to the eternal flame of your Beloved. Embrace your passion, while seeking balance in its extremes. Find a way to be grateful for both the bitter and sweet fruits and all of life’s expansions and contractions. 

Cry Out in Your Weakness

Cry Out in Your Weakness – Rumi

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” He or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music. . . .

Give your weakness
to One Who Helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of Loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

~Rumi

Woe to the Laborer

Woe to the "laborer" who pushes only paper and creates little value, save the ones and zeros that sustain his livelihood, pinched pennies usurped from the worth and decay of his fellows, keeping him harrowed, vacillating between life and death. Woe to the laborer who has no craft but, through intensive abandonment of self, has become the lynchman of freedom, the hatchetman of despotic will, the right hand of oligarchic tyranny, the sin-eater who absolves no one and commits himself to a terrestrial eternity of regrets and unfulfilled dreams. His life, a dribble. His imagination, wasted on false premises, bogus rules, faked power.

This has become the bankruptcy of the noble, artisanal man. A push-button for the machine that has become his heart. His pacemaker, the motor that keeps him trudging through a life without music, without poetry, without integrity, without soul. The treadmill of his existence tied up in a vault, pedometer, calorie counter, and a watch that calculates the milliseconds until his pacemaker goes kaput! His Samsara, the revolving door of dead-end jobs, of passionless ambitions, of false pretenses, of superficial relationships, of multiple credit cards, bank accounts, email addresses, identities, and sexual encounters. He dives through no wreck.* He ignores what damage has been done and the treasures that prevail.* His miserly existence befriended only by misery. His love of illusions, the warden of his cemented will. And so he dies with the regret that he was never free, never the artist of his own mystery.

*A tribute to Adrienne Rich and "Diving into the Wreck."

Nostalgia, a Love of Shadows

Nostalgia—sweet and meddlesome—announces

my love of shadows.

Moments of syncretic intimacies and chemical

knowledge imparted, a mind prostrated to the

Invisible, sovereign soul departed.

Prescient and clear, I no longer stand vigilant,

candle lit, weeping or wailing or worshipping

ghosts, a prisoner of mnemonic love, a

servant of consecrated bones.

My heart empties out, vacuous, an abyss.

Fate swirls mother of pearl in an abalone shell

borne from Necessity’s kiss.

She had tied me in a knot at birth, while

preparing a scythe to cut me loose.

She had sent an angel to keep me, while

bringing my singular rose to bloom…

February 7, 2013

Found Freedom

But maybe I grow on you and within you,
when you're not looking.

Maybe I slither up you like jasmine, yawning
across eons of stardust towards the heavens.

Maybe I embed myself in the deepest layers
of your being, because I don't have to--I'm already there.

Maybe not.

Maybe I find a way to
"no-need."

Maybe I let go just enough
to embrace "as is."

Maybe I die to my loneliness,
come out freed.

Found freedom, my only bliss.

Woman Without a Conscience

A femme fatale is not a woman you should marry. She seduces for her own power and pleasure. She is like the night—mysterious, solicitous. She promises life only through death, an intimacy that can’t be bargained with. What is raw and ravenous can only be sated when the mistress meets the bride, the holy virgin within. Until then, stay away from a woman without a conscience.

Hexagram 61 Meets the Vesica Piscis

Hexagram 61 - “Inner Truth” 

This represents the link between the I Ching: Book of Changes and Sacred Geometry, with the overlay of the Vesica Pisces and the Star of David (two interlocking triangles), which symbolize yin and yang. I drew this hexagram when asking for insight about a series of recurring dreams. On my journey to understand, I discovered a serendipitous and synchronistic connection between the Vesica Pisces and Hexagram 61.

In sacred geometry, the Vesica Pisces represents the formative principle, denoted by the square root of 3, and the first day of creation. The monad goes outside itself. In Genesis, the spirit of the creator floated over the face of the waters and said, “Let there be light.” God created light through the second sphere. When we “shed light” on a situation, we come into the know. This could simply be an inner knowing, without evidence or outer reality reflecting it. According to Robert Lawlor, the Christic principle entered into the manifest world of duality and form here. The materialization of spirit: the word becomes flesh. Through the center of the Vesica Pisces, Christ-consciousness enters the world, as does human consciousness. Schwaller de Lubicz says, “The number one is only definable through the number two: it is multiplicity which reveals unity[…]” (Lawlor).

First, we have “universal consciousness,” or “unity.” The journey outside the first sphere introduces “empirical consciousness.” Man is in the center of the two, the “balancing consciousness.” Man “partakes of both unchanging and changing principles—eternal and ephemeral; human consciousness functions as the mediator[…]unity  projects itself outward in a perfect reflection of itself[…]”  In the I Ching, man is also the mediator in Hexagram 61, which is represented by the two middle lines, and while the top two lines represent heaven and the bottom, earth. Above and below trigrams correspond to Sun (The Gentle, Wind) and Tui, (The Joyous, Lake). The first sentence in the text of Hexagram 61 is, “The wind blows over the lake and stirs the surface of the water.” Sounds eerily like Genesis. The second sentence is, “Thus visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves” (Wilhelm|Baynes, 235).

This reminds me of the eureka moment, the moment of realization, that causes an irrevocable change in the structure: a birth or rebirth, a transformation or transmutation, a shift from me to we, when the unconscious becomes conscious (what we didn’t know we didn’t know). A new world comes into being with this insight. A break-through of sorts. The Vesica Pisces represents this reality symbolically and points to the macro-level. But what about the micro? What about moments in our own lives when we come to consciousness? “As above, so below.” It also reminds me of two hearts reflecting each other perfectly. It seems like a cosmic love or twin souls. Thus, Hexagram 61 and the Vesica Pisces symbolize the most perfect form of love, where there is no disconnect. A language of light. Not to mention all that we could associate with “inner truth.” Check out http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/learn/gua/hexagrams/hexagram61.php and http://www.crystalinks.com/vesicapisces.html

Telescopes

My life is like a telescope coming in and out of focus. Soothed by the distant star. Unaffected by the futility of passing thoughts. Yet realizing the inherent power of each. My heart, a still ocean. How did I end up approaching everything with new eyes, holding fast to a warm familiarity, while greeting the unfamiliar as if I've known every single one of them before? Each moment brings the possibility of renewal or to stay stuck. But, the stuck can't hold on forever. Momentum forces us, though kicking and screaming, to an end. Whatever end. Our power is through grace. To finesse each moment as if we are courting the desired, or charming our beloved. We can love life like this. We can be gentle with it, with our moments, with our process. And in doing so, it reveals our secret. This is how we respect life. Our lives become like telescopes coming in and out of focus. We see and don't see. Everything changes. We can't keep up. Only, we don't have to. It comes anyway.

Mysterious We

I search the sky for a sign,

but all I find are stars

built like a shrine to

the thumbnail moon.

A sailor in need of her North

Star, I want to go home.

My little boat voyages the distance,

led only by the hum of Polaris and

the light of that moon.

We have abundance,

for in between us stretches

an eternity in numbered years,

and we give no words to it,

because we have no words to give--

because none will do.

It's an infinite space I send my prayers to.

I hold you like a rosary. I keep you like a prayer--

the finesse of moving lips, never to be captured,

every letter sent.

I beseech the Unknown and wait for Her to answer.

I ask Infinite Mystery to reveal Mysterious Me and Mysterious You.

But Mystery separates nothing.

Tricky Mystery, I won't argue.

In our world, Mystery conceals in order to reveal.

We give nothing away at once.

And we are discovered piece by piece.

Mystery can have its oneness.

I want the shards.

I want to know you as yourself,

an entity separate from me.

I want nothing at once.

I want creation deconstructed.

I want the "we-ness" of us.

I want the terrestrial you (and the quintessential me).

Mystery can keep its knowledge of everything.

I want obliviousness.

I want to work towards coming to consciousness.

I want to ride the arrow of time right into your heart.

I want to taste the finite in your kiss.

I want to capture the fleeting, while making memories

and giving each of our moments meaning.

In this place of demon impermanence, change comes

as a gift: little opportunities for the near-miss--

but, instead, we hit the target.

It's through impermanence that we find the indestructible within.

We seek to escape the known world for the one we

feel lies just beyond, but the known world offers 

us the eternity we seek.

Eternity sacrifices its oneness for you and me. Together.

Grief is Love Without a Friend

Dearest Solace,

My grief goes before me, like I’m a lost puppy, guiding me back to what it remembers as wholeness within and can’t forget as wholeness with the other. It thinks on the balance once felt and yet still desires. Like the cell deprived of oxygen, it motions for what it needs, making no mockery.

I am barebones, sitting with grief. It strips away the layers of denial—of misdirection and projection, of optimism and hope, of anger—I hide behind. It asks for stinging-nettle honesty. It is the wasp of reality. Though it isolates me in feeling, it frees me to go on living and pushes me to seek connection, if only I will accept its company and stay with it.

If I abandon grief, I abandon myself. And then, I am alone, out in the winter, heart freezing to death.

Grief offers itself as a blanket, not a warm wish. As a kindled flame in the darkness. Grief offers the salve of itself, with or without resolution. It spares me the disservice of avoiding the pink elephant in the room. It does not promise that all things will get better. Its only hope is that I see right through hope to the mirror that is me and into the heart of things, with or without the silver lining. It desires to toughen my soft underbelly and teach me not to roll over for every tongue and hand that commands. Discernment is my friend.

I have to allow grief to restore my faith in forgiveness, in the present and possibility, to amend inconsistencies, and to clarify my vision. Grief sternly demands my attention, presence, and obedience to its golden rule—thou shalt not deny your truth.

My power is to let grief come up from the pit of my stomach and the depth of my heart and place no barrier between it and the ocean of my being. My duty is to honor the sacredness of that ocean.

I admit, there is no blame. And though struggling, I accept change.

Love, The Rejected

xoxo

Excerpt-Love Letters On Interdependence

Letter from the editor:

The following fictional letters are meant to examine the concept of interdependence—its value and place in the world—through the lenses of particular philosophies that depict its absolute truth. As an ever-present phenomenon, interdependence destroys perceived barriers between science and religion and other labels and categories that serve to separate human beings from one another. No man is an island.[1]

Introducing Albert Einstein (b. March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955), noted German theoretical physicist and philosopher; and Albert Schweitzer (b. January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965), German-French theologian and physician.

April 24, 1937

Dear Schweitzer,

I have read your “Ethics” on reverence, and I was delighted to find that your rhetoric is concerned more with a Kantian respect for life—though you see trough his dealings with “façade problems”—and has an immeasurably generous and necessary quality essential and wanted of any ethical treatise, which proves more vital and lasting than a mechanistic religiosity, a dead view of the world, that deprives humankind of its very spirit. Simply, the spirit of your ethics is a breath of fresh air sorely needed for the world’s asthmatic lungs. But enough of my fawning. You write of achieving a “spiritual harmony,” and I could not agree more. You say, “…we want to understand life in the universe, in order to enter into harmony with it.[2]” As a philosopher asking the most essential questions, you have produced something akin to the affect of generating an equation for life, with both your logic and imagination (what is one’s intuition), as a scientist would create a mathematical formula for understanding and uncovering the underlying processes of the universe. You’ll be pleased to hear that I have found, within the folds of time and space, an equation for an organizing principle, a God principle, or “Lambda.[3]” It is yet unfinished, but I will state that it follows a formula based on the “super interdependence,”[4] or interdependence, evident in nature. It delights me to strain the whole of my mental, rather entire, Self around the notion of those hidden and apparent organizing processes. As you’ve well heard, Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle”[5] did not prove occasions of “unpredictability,” or randomness in nature, as many of my colleagues have reasoned. Instead, there are some events in nature that might be too complex for the feeble human mind to grasp and predict without advocation of an easy solution, such as the dastardly idea that events are totally random at the quantum level and completely independent of one another; however, I do believe there to be the existence of some degree of freedom and choice in the universe.[6] I am working towards a dynamic theory of interdependence and a union between the conceptual disconnect physicists are experiencing.[7] Necessarily, one must suspend disbelief for a time before jumping to an easy solution. Wouldn’t you agree, dear Schweitzer? It is my conviction that “interdependence is the rule, not the exception, especially at the quantum level”[8] And the mystery surrounding life, and the organizing processes within, may very well be the cause of all that is known and understood. What beautiful irony! Perhaps, each stem from the same “One”; or perhaps, mystery is that “One” and that which cannot be known but only for what it is not.[9] I ask, what are your notions on interdependence? I look forward to any additional provocation.

Best wishes,
Yours,

Einstein


May 31, 1937

Dearest Einstein,

First and foremost, I am grateful for the time you have taken to enter into dialogue. It is my pleasure that a scientist of your caliber and fame has taken an interest in my article. It would serve you well to read Reverence for Life, an extended version of “Ethics.” You will find more complete musings, therein. I appreciate your generous compliments.

Secondly, Kant busied himself with a class of problems that do not, though intriguing, reach the essential problems. He was more concerned with those façade problems, such as questions of the problem of knowledge and the reality of the world.[10] Kant looked for an absolute ethics and centralized the idea of the respect for the dignity of another’s humanity as his foundational motivation and tenet. Yes, Kant’s contributions were important. Yet, his interest in solving the essential questions the scientific façade were in vain, for the scientific can only lead to one thing—the mysterious. The great issue is that we want to understand this mystery and life in the universe, so as to enter into harmony with it, and to achieve a “spiritual harmony.”[11]

Thirdly, you ask about my thoughts on interdependence, and I want to press you for more on this theory within science. It seems both scientists and philosophers are seeking the essential questions and, perhaps, are finding similar answers or correlates. In a few words, the real issue is reverence for life, as I have stated, and the realization of our utter dependence on events beyond our control. Reverence for life is man’s first spiritual act; and the consequence of this is his realization of that dependence.[12] “We cannot live alone” or, as Donne has stated, “No man is an island.” Thus, we must resign to this fact, and not out of sadness, but because of the “triumph or our will-to-live over whatever happens to us.”[13] Our will-to-live is simply our meditation on ourselves. We find that all of life has this quality—it wills to live. To the extent propriety affords, we must meditate on this fact and come to revere life in ourselves and in others. What should be our attitude toward other life, if it wills to live just as we do? It seems we are one in the same in this respect and because of life’s very basic striving, which is the will-to-live. Science can only lead to the mystery of life, and our meditation upon other life will only lead to the truth about nature: “it longs for fullness and development as deeply as I do myself.”[14] This truth and fact provides unequivocal evidence of the existence of what you call “interdependence,” which I assume means that your science has discovered evidence of its existence on the material plane, and is no longer as thin and airy as the purely theoretical.

Lastly, I am acquainted with Heisenberg’s principle, and that you outright reject it or sincerely question its validity.[15] It clearly goes against the very fabric of your philosophy on life, which I’d like to know more about. What is this “Lambda” principle of which you speak? Is it an attempt to create something more tangible, concerning the Creative Force? I wonder because it seems to me as though this Creative Force is ethically neutral. It creates and destroys and works purposefully toward certain ends, but that cannot be defended. And since we are not nature’s goal, should this Creative Force be our goal?[16] Truly, we are seeking a relation to it and wanting to give meaning to life in the world. To feign independence and to admonish life as random only serves to disconnect us from our will-to-live and our ethical strivings for meaning and place and to be our best. I venture to say that you are certainly correct: We need not an easy solution and a science that supports randomness, and meaninglessness only suggests an easy solution to a surface problem. We must venture beyond and cling to life because we revere it. Support work for conceived separation, meaninglessness, and futility, or puerile skepticism—as science tends to advocate—is in tense opposition to an ethics that would prove helpful and enabling of life to attain its highest development. This other is an evil, as it chooses to annihilate, hamper, or hinder life.[17] Though what is mysterious cannot be proven, truth of its value and Mystery, itself, cannot be abandoned.[18] The “incomprehensibility” of which you speak serves to support the simple fact of consciousness—“I will to live,” not “I am life,” for “life continues to be a mystery too great to understand. I know only that I cling to it. I fear its cessation—death. I dread its diminution—pain. I seek its enlargement—joy.”[19] Mystery does not negate the evidence of life itself. We must “suspend disbelief,” as you say, and move past the “logical disconnect” between spiritually and science to a simpler groundwork. I say again, it is, “I will to live.” That is an healthy beginning.

Warmest regards to you and your wife,

Albert Schweitzer

[1] John Donne.
[2] This is one of three desires in man that Albert Schweitzer mentions in “The Ethics of Reverence For Life, ” an article he published in 1936 in the periodical Christendom, that constitute “the basis of our striving for harmony with the spiritual element” (2).
[3] Years ago, I came across a book about Albert Einstein’s scientific developments on a “dark” or an unknown fourth element or principle that he was trying to complete. The scientific community balked at his desire to prove his theory of God empirically, mathematically, and theoretically.
[4] The evolution of quantum physics has led physicists to the idea of superinterdependence; that “the message is clear […] everything in nature is interconnected and interdependent to various degrees,” according to Gary E. Schwartz and William L. Simon in The G.O.D Experiments (108). They further elucidate this concept, stating, “A system is a set of components that mutually affect one another. In the process of components joining together, interacting, and sharing information and energy, the system changes over time. The inherent property of systems to change is termed ‘dynamical’ […] anything that exists in a dynamical system is constantly changing over time through interdependence and feedback” (109). Einstein was no stranger to the profound implications superinterdependence had on our vision of the world—nature and the cosmos—scientifically and religiously.
[5] In 1927, Werner Heisenberg introduced a theoretical paper on quantum mechanics after he had applied a mathematical system, which strictly dealt with experimental data and mathematical results, to atomic processes, calling it “matrix mechanics.” His paper proved to be a turning point in physics, despite the fact that other physicists were reluctant to accept a system that didn’t provide a visual model. Puzzled over basic quantum properties of electrons, Heisenberg began to experiment with these sub-atomic particles in the lab. He found that measuring an electron’s behavior with gamma rays would change the electron’s behavior; that one could either measure the position of the particle or its momentum; that the more precisely one measured the property of one, the more the other property was affected. He dubbed his findings and theoretical paper the “uncertainty principle,” which he theorized was proof of “unpredictability” (randomness) at the quantum level. Though many resisted his idea, it eventually became accepted as a fundamental law of nature and facilitated the growth of the field as a consequence.
[6] Einstein’s beliefs about “unpredictability,” “interdependence,” and the existence of free will come from Schwartz and Simon.
[7] In 1964, J. S. bell published “Bell’s Theorem,” a theorem cast in terms of a hidden variable theory. The fundamental tenet is based on an experiment of two photons observed in the lab: “once together and now traveling in opposite directions at the speed of light—continue as if they were one […] as if there were no distance between them”; essentially, they begin together, travel to opposite ends of the universe, and what happens in one can be precisely and instantly observed in the other, which is a phenomenon known as “entanglement” (Schwartz and Simon 107-108). Furthermore, empirical evidence of what is termed “nonlocality” provokes questions in regards to the obvious logical and conceptual disconnect in the reasoning used by quantum physicists to understand quantum physics and the “logic used to apply statistical data” (Schwartz and Simon 108).
[8] Schwartz and Simon 107-114.
[9] Einstein was known to take an interest in the writings and the Jewish philosopher and codifier known as RAMBAM, an acronym for Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Moses Maimonides (1135-1204).
[10] Albert Schweitzer analyzes Immanuel Kant and his philosophical dealings with so-called façade problems, which he deems are not the “real, elementary matters” and “are [only] important looking, but not really connected with the main structure” in “The Ethics of Reverence for Life.” Copyright by permission of World Council of Churches. (1).
[11] Schweitzer 1.
[12] Schweitzer states that reverence is our real issue, and that “our dependence upon events is not absolute; it is qualified by our spiritual freedom” (5).
[13] Schweitzer deems “resignation” the “second spiritual act” and the very basis of ethics (5).
[14] This is part of Schweitzer’s argument for his ethics (7).
[15] Einstein disagreed with common interpretations of Heisenberg’s theory, charging it as incomplete if not outright wrong, and states, in 1935, “God does not play dice with the universe,” as his central objection (missing source). Einstein rejected the assumed idea of randomness, which other physicists used to explain why they were unable to predict simultaneously both the speed and momentum of quantum events, and recognized a far greater level of connectedness and interdependence, at both the “macro world of gravitational fields and the micro world of quantum fields” (Schwartz and Simon 107-108). According to Schwartz and Simon, Einstein simply imagined an as of late, still yet hidden set of complex organizing processes and could not accept independent processes within a system he believed to be intricately connected and super-organized.
[16] According to Schweitzer, man is not nature’s goal; when considering the universe, he is rather “insignificant” (5).
[17] Schweitzer’s definition of evil follows (7).
[18] Schweitzer states, “That a truth cannot be proved by argument” isn’t justification for its abandonment, as long as it, in itself, possesses value (3).
[19] Schweitzer argues for Mystery’s importance regarding our very basic human motivation. Within the text, he annihilates Descartes’ “I think” and establishes that the fact of consciousness is not enough; instead, he asserts, one must meditate on the fact of consciousness, like reflexive awareness.

We've Got It

We've got it all fucked up when the TV's higher than the temple.

We've got it all fucked up when the money symbol $ is higher than the heavens.

We've got it all fucked up when we grind ourselves to the bone into the deep blue future.

We've got it all fucked up when we've lost face to accompany the pretense of our most banal and mundane dreams.

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 ask 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.

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"