8-19-2011

I am the meaning of small things. I am the devil in the details.

Memories are lost to all but dreams, as easily recaptured. A familiar raven follows me. It's huge. Its iridescent feathers are intriguing, beautiful like oil on the surface of the sea. It should burn, for leering into my soul with its black eyes. Its calls are so ugly.

I sleepwalk through my lost childhood. My old toys all stand surrounding me, for sale in glass cases, complete with their imagined personalities. The Lone Ranger triggers the now distant past, the days before they took away his mask, immortilized in plastic. Tanto, G.I. Joe, Original Star Wars figures, worse for wear, all intermingle in this surreal display.

There are Transformers too, Masters of the Universe, all the comic book heroes, rare stuff from Planet of the Apes and Dune, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, and Evel Knievel's stunt bike. I met Evel once. He said follow your dreams, even if it breaks every bone in your body. Nearly all his bones had been replaced with nuts and bolts, but he had balls.

There's a charcter from Gunsmoke here, and the toy guns still look real in the grip of cops and robber figures from the days real cops and robbers could tell the difference.

On my way home a police perimeter roadblocks the obscured scene of an officer involved shooting. The homeless mentally ill man I passed on the way to the train station the day before lies motionless in the crosswalk, shot, by a rookie lady cop, for crossing the street too slow, permadosed with Tourette's, and reaching for a gnarly twig at his side from a special tree in his world, in his childlike metaphysics, a magic wand.

The day before, he said, "Hey! You got any change?" I said, "I can't change you, man. Only you can change you." To which he replied, "Bullshit!"

8-8-2011

We are the suffering; the collateral damage of the business of governments, that is the business of warfare, that is naturally going bankrupt. This was to be expected. Reality is experience described in stark contrast to idealism, it is the big picture viewed from the bottom.

The tranquil place I often go to sit and write is, at the moment, a construction zone. And, though I've done my best to distance myself from the work in progress, I find the mystic music of inspiration drowned out by static noise, irritation.

The equipment belches, rumbles, surges forth and clashes violently with the peace of all here trying to ignore it, putting the body at odds with the mind, thereby distressing the soul.

I am discouraged. I am broken down. I am disappointed, caught off guard. I am losing control of the only thing one can completely control, how I feel. I must be satisfied with this condition, it is all I know, but at the moment, my perspective has shifted. I am still empty after I eat, but somewhere within me I know there is still a moment of joy I must move on to find. That's it! I've had enough.

I walk 'til the workday is over. It was the walk that was missing, the moments of joy in every step; quality dark chocolate filled with more chocolate, fine Earl Grey tea, fresh water, all still within my reach when I'm resourceful. I come full circle to my writing spot. The workmen have gone, the equipment sits dormant, and though the hillside is scarred, and the noise will be here tomorrow surely as the Sun will rise, there is peace again. Trees softly rustle while I nap on a bench to a chorus of birds, insects, and far away dogs. Hard earned solitude in the shade.

8-3-2011

Fortune gives a broken man a token jewel of lapis lazuli, fashioned into a tiny sphere, to be worn captured by a wire in an orbit which pierces the left ear transcendentally, to signify to him that one should listen to the Earth with the ear closest to the heart. Because gifts of fortune do not come without pain, knowledge that no pain is intolerable is a gift of fortune in itself.

Inspiration leads her man to nature, with the sanctified fragrance of Chandra, under his protection. They stand fast where water falls, and drink from mountain streams, tasting purity, momentarily clearing the palette, preparing them to subdue the intensity to come downriver. Jasmine Tea, Bergamot Tea, Star Anise with Peppercorn, Grapefruit, Cardamom, Tangerine with Cream, and so forth.

And a blue lotus marks the door to the temple. Admission is granted without knocking. The temple is within. Should one keep this to one's self?