Doorways

Often my life seems to mirror the lament penned by T. S. Eliot “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

Sometimes we are given the opportunity to say exactly what we mean. (only to have it fall on deaf ears)

I wonder. (who is deaf)

Today I was given the chance to present work that I done in the last six months.

“Amaturish”

“Formulaic”

“Unrefined”

It was a hard, grueling experience, which, to my credit, I weathered pretty well. I fought down the urge to “defend” and tried to keep the tone “conversational.” But the end, I felt sick. I felt like crying. I felt angry and mostly I felt misunderstood. “I’m not going to drive home right away” I later told J. on the phone. “I think I am going to give myself some time. I think I am going to let it be a hard, grueling experience, and not try to chase that away. Getting in my car right now would be like locking me up in a sensory deprevation chamber and watching my sanity slowly melt away.”

Some moments are hard. Wisdom can teach us to stear clear of them. Experience can teach us to prepare for them. But nothing makes the hard go away. Nothing takes the sting out of the of the hornet. Acceptance tells me that. Accepting how I am right now makes being who I am right now palletable. Not that it is enjoyable. I am going to get real comfortable with this 'being uncomfortable.' I am going to allow myself to feel this.

I tend to think that if something is wrong I can fix it and it will be right. This is god-like thinking, and I am not God. Some situations cannot be fixed. Some deaths cannot be avoided. Some expereinces just have to be felt, and in feeling them I am myself. Truly. Wholly. Honestly.

This is a doorway. I am going to walk through. There may be another side, or there may be nothing. I do not concern myself with these choices. Today I am going to work on just walking through.

three quotes

I. In Zen Enlightenment, the discovery of the “original face before you were born” is the discovery not that one sees Buddha but that one is Buddha and that Buddha is not what the images in the temple had led one to expect: for there is no longer an image and consequently nothing to see no one to see it and a void in which no image is even conceivable. “The true seeing” said Shen Hui, “is when there is no seeing.” -Thomas Merton

II. The immortals know no care, yet the lot they spin for man is full of sorrow; on the floor of Zeus' palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Zeus the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Zeus sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men. –Homer

III. When a baby is taken from the wet nurse,
it easily forgets her
and starts eating solid food.

Seeds feed awhile on ground,
then lift up into the sun.

So you should taste the filtered light
and work your way toward wisdom
with no personal covering.

That's how you came here, like a star
without a name. Move across the night sky
with those anonymous lights. –Rumi

cloudy with a chance of muse

Dear reader, I know that so many of my blog post don’t make any sense but then again, they really aren’t supposed to make any sense to anyone but myself and even I have a hard time rereading a few of them. One upset someone close to me the other day and my first thought was, "this is my life, my thoughts, what do I have to be sorry about?" Except that this kind of thinking feels so conceited and selfish that it is hard to hold on to, and I end up feeling like I ought to make a better apology... Incidentally the one I made was something like “I’m not sorry I said it, I’m just sorry you got hurt” and right away I knew that this apology was way crappy and that I needed to go back to the drawing board, but then so much of what I say and do is like this that the drawing board is full most of the time and I think "forget it, I’ll get back to it later."

J. sometimes says, half jokingly, that I lack in internal auditor, and maybe this is true, but most of the time I feel that the auditor is so busy dealing with yesterdays business that today’s doesn’t stand a chance. It's like one of those horrible New York Times articles that has some poor beleaguered S.O.B. sitting behind a desk with his out box empty and his in box full and the caption reads “I’ll get to that tomorrow” except that I don’t want to get to it tomorrow, not when it is important, and, after all, isn’t right now important? Isn’t why my inbox is so full and my outbox so empty because I have been neglecting this moment for so long. What is happening to me right now?

(Crickets chirping)

What is my emotional-self saying right now? I mean, other than, “I’m tired” and “why won’t you just let me go to sleep?”

“Pipe down!” I say.

J. and I got into an argument today. Apparently neither one of us was listening to the other. Or, at least, I was so busy trying to find an emotional center that I found it almost impossible to concentrate on anything else, and the things that I was able to concentrate on didn’t sound like anything that I was talking about. In retrospect I think we were both working really hard on a solution and were impatient with the other. I know when I get impatient people tell me I look angry. It is hard to look composed when you are disagreeing. It takes skill. I haven’t got that skill. I feel all befuddled. Nothing makes sense. Part of me wants to run, the other part wants to dig in his heels. Nothing is accomplished here.

Someone recently told me that their blog was compromised by it readership. OMG! Yes! Yes! Yes! I know exactly what you mean. I mean, we want readers, but then when we have invited our friends, family, co-workers, the occasional student, and an internet full of strangers into our house that is our brain, how it is not compromised? It is all compromised. Still, can I say “Dude. I know where you are coming from but you are driving me crazy.” Or do I just let it lie?

(Pause)

So here is the thing. I know where my emotional-self is and most of the time it lives in the question, “Am I a failure?” Now before you rush to judgment or rush to type the heart warming comments to the contrary, you should know that a fear of failure is a huge motivator for me. It gets me out of bed, it usually pays the bills, it forces those half baked apologies from me, and usually allows for more heart felt ones, it makes me paint, it helps me teach, it drives me to read and to the grocery store and most of the time it keeps me alive.

Not that this is any way to live. It is not a philosophy I recommend.

“No shit” says the casual reader. But I tell you, it is a thought as addictive as any drug, as powerful as any emotion, it will not let you sleep, not let you settle, not let you doubt, though doubt you will, and all the time until you find some type of closure.

Some might think I am being sorry for myself, but I don't feel that way at all. In fact, I am really rather amused at the way in which my mind (which as it turns out isn't trying to kill me at all) has somehow managed to turn this blaring character defect into an asset. As sort of internal "try, try again." You might even say I am channeling my inner Holden Caulfield.

I stand before the canvas, the canvas yawns back at me. It’s bored. It wants amusement. It waggers a stiletto knife at me and taunts “is that all you have? Why don’t you give me your wallet and we’ll call it even. “ I recoil. My palms are sweaty. I don’t fear death. I fear ignobility. The hand wavers. The knife slackens. I reach out making a furtive gesture to wave him off but my hand makes contact with the blade and it snaps in two. I am terrified. My assailant doesn’t know what to do. On the one hand I should die, on the other I have to upper hand. The knife is broken. He sees into my eyes, and knows my terror. “I’ll let you off this time, but just until we meet again. Then you are mine!” As he leaves I bend down and pick up the broken blade and push it into the palm till it draws blood. I wonder, what was I afraid of, and in the same moment, know, with a dread certainty, that I will be afraid again.

four

Little Elle can climb. Little S. can tumble. G. can run and scream and put the fear of god in you and D. swims like a shark.

(sigh)

It drives me crazy when I tell people I have four daughters and they look at me like I am some poor dumb guy who doesn't stand a chance.

They repeat after me: “Four?”

I hate it when they say “four.”

Four.

Foooooouuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Seriously, it makes me crazy and I wish they would stop the parroting. "Yes, I have four daughters. Why? Is it written somewhere that having four girls is bad?"

Seriously. I want to punch them. I mean what are they saying anyway?

I also hear this one a lot: “Four daughter is a lot of work.”

?????????????

My favorite responce to this is a line a friend of mine gave me: "You go from man to man to a zone defense."

It is better than the cynical, derisive comments that I want to say:

“You poor stupid bastards, you don’t have daughters, do you?”

Daughters are awesome. I wish I had twenty and I am so, so, so glad I had four.

They make me laugh, they make me cry, and most of all, they make me glad.

There was a time when I loved three… but four is the magic number.

reverence for

Listen! Listen! The king is in the counting house, counting out, counting out. The king is in the counting house, counting all the money. One. Two. Three. Four. All ready?
Looks like we made it
Or I thought so, till today
Until you were there,
Everywhere, and all I could taste was love the way we made it.
Well, you're a fishmonger! You're my everything, you are my sunshine, you're old and grey and full of sleep. You're my pickle-faced, consumptive Mary Jane!

Boredom, sleep and full of pain, “you don’t sleep well, do you.”
“No, I never do.”

You have to read this.

[rant]
There are things that we take for granted, things that we celebrate because we are so proud of who we have become. We allow ourselves a certain pride because there isn’t anytime in human civilization when so many have lived so well, knew so much, had the opportunity to live so well… what complete bullshit.

Where is the authenticity? Ok I am completely saturated in Television and Internet and media and I know so much more than my father, or my mother or more than anyone else in history (except that this is hubris and there are so many people who know so much more than I do)

“Today's amature knows more than the experts of one hundred years ago. “ Absolute nonsense.
[end rant]

One. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three.

Eyelids flutter. The mind achieves a kind of focus. “I know this. This is so familiar.” Mindfulness is replaced by awareness. I am, and I am, and I am. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So incredibly bored with ourselves that we seek to be entertained all the time. “O.K. world, Wow me!”

Monday. Tuesday. (so predictable) Wednesday (profound insight) Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. Thursday. Thursday, FriSatSunday.

Those of us who know are scored by our elders as knowing only what is vapid and banal; what I did what clever, but clever by regurgitating what I have heard over and over and over until everything I know is merely a convenient truth and everything I say is (yes clever) not what I mean.

It is impossible to say exactly what I mean.
We who are tired of the sarcasm, of the arrogance of the ingenuous criticisn of life that has become so ubiquitous.

O.K., O.K. I get it. The world is bad. Life is evil, consumerist or greedy or self absorbed. But there is also something very simple at the root of this. There is a voice within the voice. There is a point at which criticism stops cutting and start sounding like a pained, helpless moment of endurance for those who treat plan old human troubles and emotions and with reverence and conviction.

There is no longer a why.. nor is there a how. Modern. Post mOdern. These definitions no longer seem to fit. We find outselves levitating in the moment wondering if anyone is noticing and wondering how this moment could be possible. (The levitation, after all, seems natural)

I am not an arrant god, nor was meant to be.

Profound truth.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Mirror games

So, if you are a patient, faithful reader, you will know that one of my big “discoveries” of the past year has been that my brain is not trying to kill me. Rather, my brain is working extra hard to try and figure things out for me, look at the really hard, painful stuff of my life and try to make sense of it. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. Most of the time I don’t want to see it. So I blame my brain for my… well for my shortcomings. My brain, it turns out, is not trying to kill me. Who Knew?

If you are a patient, faithful reader, you are still reading.

Favorite movie quotes.

One. “A spear” and two “it helps, it really helps.” One is from “Apocalypse Now”, and the second is from “Harry Potter: Prisoner from Azkaban”. Why bring them up here?

Imagine if you will the shock I experienced when my life long companion, no, not my wife, but the voice inside my head, turned out not to be my enemy but my friend.

“A spear” Chief Phillips looks at his mortal enemy and realizes that it was not his perceived foe, but a random act of savage violence, that would end his life.

“It helps, it really helps” Professor Lupin offers Harry a piece of chocolate after his first dementor attack. Sometimes the simple creature comforts are cures for those things that ail us.

You know. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that are wrong in my life. I think about fame and fortune and everything thing that goes with it. I want them all.

One night in college I had a lot to drink. I stumbled back to my dorm room and slipped into my bathrobe. I was about to turn out the light when I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was dirty. My hair, unkept. But the more I looked, that more I became engaged with the image of myself. I stared until all I could see where my own eye looking back at me and still I continued to stare. My vision blurred, my eyes waters and still I continued to stare, I could see the faint red lines of the veins in my pupils. I could see them pulsing. I could see the pock marks on my skin, the hairs in my lashes. I have later discovered that this kind of intense focus is not hard to arrive at, but at the time, perhaps because of excessive drink, I thought it was amazing.

“This is who I am” I thought to myself. “This is me.”

I have to tell you, I am pretty sure I went through the same kind of experience when I was thinking about the way I thought about myself. “My brain is not trying to kill me!”

Neither is a vision of who I am.
Remarkable.

Recently I rekindled a relationship with a friend of twenty years. I won’t go into the details here but at the end of a recent conversation, my friend pointed out the similarities that existed between us then and now. “Some things have changed and some things are still the same.” Eerie. It is funny but, in a moment I realized I am so much more than these parts.

Damn it! Now I have to go back and reevaluate the whole thing all over!

Sarama

Someone has stolen the sacred cows
and hidden them among the mountain caves.
They dwell on the far side of the river
that separates the world of gods and men
from the world of demons.

Prophets have told of the decline.
We either live in an age of poverty,
Or one of great abundance.
There is hardly a distinction
In the World as Will and Idea.

The Panis have stolen something of ours.
“These are the cows which you desire,
lovely lady, having flown beyond the ends of the skies,
who would give them up to you without a fight?”

It is hard to imagine a people
who have no language of their own.
Harder still to imagine the vanquished
Who have never known battle, only prayer.
Does modern life have a place for poets?
For Homer? For Goerthe?

“Your words are no armies.
Your evil bodies may be proof against our arrows.
But where you go we will follow,
Where you hide you will not be spared.”

There is little reflection. Oh Muse!
You are as fickle as the night,
As constant as the dawn!
What we admire we lavish only in its decline.
To do else-wise would impede your progress.
We criticize what we cannot hope to understand.