Vibrato

Should I wake up limitless,

I will, you can be sure,

Sample of the various heavens,

(Muslim, Norse, Pure Land Buddhism, Ancient Greek)

And will surely add my own flare and be

Decadently self-righteous for a time,

And then I will maybe crave my old

Blessed parameters,

The structure adolescents need so they can push against it,

So that when there is a moment,

(It was Arizona, I was 17)

It can be my moment,

My memory,

My achievement and my small-mind secret,

And when there is a poem about limits

(Here, now) 

it has mental context,

Can bump the needle off that Super-low B flat

For its brief space,

Right itself, reset, resurrect 

(About an hour after writing this, I was reading a letter from Alan Watts to Christmas Humphreys, wherein Alan writes of the divine sacrifice that something he alternately calls God and Sunyata makes in order to give us life. Something about God having the freedom to move in all directions at once, but giving up that freedom in order to pick a particular direction, move within certain parameters, give us/Himself this life to experience and to accept (because that acceptance itself is the very root of our lives). He said that if we live under the assumption that life is based on unmoving principles, there would be no need for gratitude, because principles have no choice but to be what they are. But as this is a voluntary sacrifice, an appropriate response is gratitude. And that non dualism and God have room for beings other than God within them. Whereas pantheism only allows for oneness, which is a term largely unused, because it excludes the many (and he made references to nazism and talked about how the earth does not orbit the sun in a neat 360 days). So it is not absurd for us to be grateful to Sunyata/God, for we can be within God and other than God at the same time. After reading that, I was (firstly, struck by how often I'll come across something in line with what I've been recently thinking, but also) humbled by how cavalierly I had compared myself to God. Giving a nod of understanding to the sacrifice, yes, but also speaking rather lightly of something which may be Infinitely holier and beyond me.  That said, in later talks Alan Watts also speaks pretty lightly of God being us and thinking as we think, so maybe his thinking changes, but I hadn't heard this particular take on it and the gratitude/God-Having-Room-For-Beings-Other-Than-God piece really resonates with me).

Slip...

... of a thing in Spring

... ping tween trees bare feet grass-greened

... clinging to sweat sheen

Just Messing Around

And she wondered when
She had stopped being
The hero of her own story,

And in realizing it,
A stab of loss so sharp
And swift

She was a moment
Catching her breath

How I Wonder What You Are

The Master's hand poised, pulsating, the most pregnant pause there will ever be,

Then, legs spread wide, white bell bottoms seething with energy, a windmill-arm motion to strum the six super strings and Bang!

The one becoming the infinitely many,  harmonics by the trillions taking their turn in the limelight, reverberating, fading,

Like galaxies, like stars, like lives or days, or like the A which she meant to be a G and will correct the next time around,

My daughter teasing twinkle twinkle little star from the old cracked Baldwin, singing to remember the tune, voice as of yet still clear and free as space itself

I am circling back on years missed,
Prudence dictates that I train for my marathon at night,
While kids sleep and employment relents
(Marathons are more-appropriate insanity,)


No time to write. Must ride ny bike. Dark. Night. Air. Youth. Cement. Grass.

Don't Ever be Afraid to be Embarrassed

To live is to be
An asshole to some extent,
Jesus ain't hiring

A kid once told me I should be a butler,
Guess I'm polite, subservient, relatively well-spoken
And I've been one of sorts for years,
Taking rich kids to the airport,
Walking them to the gate,
Carrying their luggage to keep their hands
Free to play with screens,
Texting their Hollywood royalty parents
When I have watched their plane take off,
And returning to the treatment center resort,

But today,

Today it's just me and my backpack
Breezing through security,
Popping on headphones,
Sipping coffee,
Ignoring anyone I please,
Until I rise with the new sun
And head closer to the ocean
And the woman waiting there

There may or may not be a phrase in the bible about a potter having the privilege of using some pots for noble purposes and others for base or common purposes. And it utterly ruined christianity for my young world-saving self. Cause we are equal, dammit. And there's a bit of a memory I have wherein a very young version of myself is writing out a sort of personal constitution and the one thing I knew for sure was that we all start out on a level playing field. And my mom chimed in with 'well, we don't really though do we?' Stuck with me for some reason. And I guess the conflict may have had something to do with confusing purpose with value. The pot may be an oil lamp or a bedpan.  And their respective value is a very separate thing from their intended purposes.

I feel, considering the aforementioned stuff and some other possible bible verse about man being in God's image and Bjork's comment about having a universe inside her (which I love although I cannot stand her music), that I might be an ear in this incarnation. Maybe. And maybe listening is my intended purpose, base or noble or otherwise.

Negative Space

Negative space
Is a term that always sounds pretentious,
Much like the word "pretentious"
And people who use it,
Especially in writing
Where you can't dumb it down as easily
With a "ya know?" Or a "or whatever the word is."

But what I wanted to say was something about a place
Being so familiar that it blends into the background
Like Compton sirens,
So that you no longer search for the feeling
You had as a child when you crossed the street
At that one certain spot on your way to get a slurpee,
But instead you search for a feeling of the time
When you still could remember that feeling,
Seeing if there's still an echo of the echo, or something like that

And then feeling guilty for searching at all in the dusty past,
When maybe, just maybe, you can still make new echoes
Now,
Small ones yes, but for starters you realize you've been bicycling
Surrounded by migrating monarch butterflies,
Which seems like it should be worth remembering

 I had had the answer and it had made people mad
 So I started walking west.

And when I got out west I met a Presbyterian boy
Jaded since age 8

We made love, and the answer lost its crispness.

Later, I was run over

By a born again Christian who would leave her cell phone at home
When we spent time together.

And it was barely visible,

I shook hands with a bright-eyed Pakistani man and
Questions overshadowed

And I wondered

What story to start now that
My old thread was spent.

An alien who both forgot his mission

and

Burned his means of return.

I think maybe it's not just that meaning is relative but that relative meaning can be ascribed in any amount at whatever level of life's magnification you're zoomed in on. So if it's a child's birth or the opening of a can of soda, a feeling of value can be experienced, savored, noted, soliloquized, whatever, if conditions are right for that. This impression was strong under psychedelics, if not very admirable, when I would say, believe sincerely that the opening screen of Zelda where you name your character, was some sort of universal cipher, or when I was worse than absent from a baby shower for my son, because I was engrossed in the idea of emotions being a physical thing... I could go on... So the sensitivity to meaning was maybe turned up a bit high, but still I find it comforting when struggling to feel much of anything, that those impressions can indeed be felt within any moment, any object, any incident. And the non-specificity of the catalysts, rather than leading me to nihilism, suggests to me that the universe can in fact be the scent of bitter almonds, or whatever poetic/mundane/astronomical thing.

My sister and I have bonded over running. She's a real runner and I'm someone in his thirties who is acknowledging that he's been overweight for a decade and needs to move more. She asks me often if I like running, I think hoping that my answer will change. This morning, the answer was something like 'I'm starting to, yeah'

She got a look that was far more wistful than she usually allows herself, and said 'I've always liked it. Do you ever feel like running really really far? Like, running while the sky changes over you, day to night?'

I don't believe in records any more. The vinyl, music-playing variety. I can see that they work, and I have read the explanations of why they work, but I do not believe that they should work. And probably I'd feel the same way about electricity or most things that Edison dabbled in, but I'm more comfortable expressing heresy in the audio realm. I don't care how elaborate those squiggles are on that live Don McLean album, they should not be able to make a sound wave at all recognizable as originating from lungs, a mouth, a wood guitar, a harmonica. And having decided this, I wonder what else we have agreed to overlook and accept as real, in this group hallucination. And do I care? Should I care? Should I tell someone? Do they already know?

Love Language

And now conspiratorial
Seems every word we share,
Words which from any other
Would elicit 'I Don't Care.'

Seen objectively I think I, and probably you, have arrived. We are actually living the dream. By which I mean, if Anthony Bourdain had done an episode about my town, and had come to my home for a meal, I would get that feeling when I watched my scene that I get every time I watch him interact with anyone: basically, that the simple and complex rhythms, culture, and desires of any individual are beautiful and do not require anything else to make them perfect or whole. They're complete and interesting and worthy of love.

Jon Bentley is A thirty one year old father of three, who spends his time working with families wracked by mental illness, and shares his own experiences with substance abuse and depression to offer hope and insight to them. He loves the ocean and would love to move closer to one, but money has always been tight, and his son lives nearby and moving away from him is just not something that's gonna happen. When the kids are grown though, he and his partner Ally talk of living in an RV and criss-crossing the country ad infinitum, or buying a little land in Argentina, where he can make his music and she can grow organic vegetables, herbs, and whatever else she desires. Jon's father is a teacher and poet and his mother is a meditation instructor, democrat, and Mormon. Jon joins her for meditation twice a week before hitting the gym, and he and his father have been sharing their writings for decades. Today Ally has made us her grandmother's pumpkin soup, cooked inside of the actual pumpkin....

Now seen subjectively, it's more of a: bored, annoyed, horny, ashamed, hungry, too full, try to be mindful, reading, stupid boss, lazy co-workers, oh that was a good thought I should write it down, why are the people closer to us, harder to understand and be patient with? Is that because we ourselves are our biggest mystery and that mystery dissipates the further away people are from us emotionally? Hungry, tired, push the kids more, be more understanding with the kids, be nicer, be more assertive, think less, ashamed....

Yeah, not a perfect analogy, cause Anthony had that way of speaking to our time that highlighted lovable things and there's something to be said for looking for the beauty in everything, but yes that's not really objective. But if we wanna open that can of worms, how could anything be objective after being filtered through a brain grown from certain genes, but not others, fed with certain beliefs, but not others, colored with certain experiences but not others etc etc.... and if true objectivity is a meaningless phrase, perhaps I will choose a new view for myself. And it might sound like a tweaked Golden Rule. Think of yourself as you like to think of strangers, or something like that.

Once when coming down from an overdose and sitting with my mother in the ER, she said something about 'of course you can choose what to to believe, Jon'. She was referring to religion and I thought this cynical at the time. I thought, you know, that for belief to be real you can't choose it. And as far as that sort of belief goes, I've never gotten much farther than ' the universe knows what it's doing and things will be all right.' But if you swap out the idea of 'truth' and replace it with 'helpfulness', I can get behind that, Ma.

Hours and days and years playing with a yo yo and hacky-sack, and still I believed that a high could last, that there's something to achieve, that new energy can be created, that hedonic adaptation need not apply to me, and also, thinking that without this belief, the game would not be worth playing!

So this inflation of bigger, more, higher, louder, which as a novelty was all right, but which also was inherently numbing and degrading and destructive and made me forget that the whole thing that excited and energized me in the first place was the SUBTLETY. the nonchalance. The humble condescension of sharing your bit of mastery of the given (and embraced) parameters, ostensibly reluctant while subconsciously exultant

The parched glissando of moonglow.

I was tempted to call 'resonance' a valid measure of goodness,

You know the conversations where you can tell they're not feigning interest and the connection seems genuine. Resonates.

Until I remembered Glen Hansard's caricature of a lovelorn Irish busker, rending hearts and vocal cords on a sidewalk. No reverb, no resonance, dead audio, or even a lone old-timer holding fast to marriage being a thing only a man and a woman are entitled to, as she and her words are swept under the tide of a tolerant, sound-proofed mob,

So that bucks my theory

And again, my attempt at a fixed idea is quickly made irrelevant, and I'm reduced to silence... momentarily

This was supposed to be a happy poem

When the wind blows from the west, bringing the salt lake's smell, and the clouds are low and heavy, and perhaps a gull passes overhead, hurrying to shelter in the relative warmth and calm before the rain begins, 

There is an ocean nearby, just on the other side of the Planet Fitness, and the one horse town I never left is no longer hemmed in by the cost of living, the familial responsibility, or the sprawling succubus of modern Mormon culture,

And I think of the last scene of some required reading, where she walks out to sea and smiles when she realizes she has gone too far to make it back to shore, blind Paul Atreides gone into a coriolis storm,

Remember my own vain attempts to return to the wild

They were not skillful, sober, or quite unreturnable, and I will not repeat them, but I bow to the desperate last-ditch drive that I obeyed, diluted, impotent, sincere

Before returning to write self-pitying poetry and to forge more links for my heroic and ponderous chain

Pronoid Synchronicities

The dream was mostly about a giant refrigerator

Which held tons of food but was not cold enough, so brand new jugs of milk had flecks of mold floating in them. Dutifully I crawled under the monstrosity to where the cooling elements were.

Side note: My utter lack of handyman knowledge was made clear to me, as apparently my unconscious understanding of a refrigerator is that there are fans underneath a box blowing cold air upwards... this is how the food stays cold.

In any case there were too many fans plugged in and the circuit kept tripping.  I tried to space them out and find new outlets to plug into, but never got far. Brand new food was going to waste and my family and I were suffering for it (wasted money, eating potentially spoiled food).

I woke at 4 this morning and hit the gym as I had to be back home in time for my wife to get to work by 6. I've recently started re-watching episodes of Sherlock (why did I pick Sherlock?) to make the treadmill more bearable.

On today's episode, Cumberbatch explained that he only keeps things in his mind that are really important. There's finite room in his mental hard drive so unnecessary things (in his case the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun) have to go.

Yesterday I deleted my music app to make room for a game to entertain a fussy 1 year old at a work appointment. So during breakfast I did not have my algorithm-made personalized playlist and had to use youtube and actually decide what music I wanted to listen to. Stone age...

Anyway, I felt like listening to Mason Jennings during breakfast and learned he has a new album out. It's called 'Songs From When We Met.' I haven't finished the whole album, but I like what I've heard so far

I think his name was Boethius, and his fate was much more dramatic and extreme than most, yet maybe universal in its themes and emotion.

And he apparently found salvation through the Goddess of Wisdom and more power to him if she really helped

Against her advice I often find myself pleading to the muses for support through poetry and music, which yeah, might just give the pitiful more fuel for the fire

But I've also called on Wisdom, and awareness, and detachment followed by immersion, and the elusive middle way between them

And the present moment and the Christian God, and the more defined Mormon one, and a smattering of indigenous, Eastern, and Jungian deities

The spirit of the depth, the unconscious, Jesus, psychedelics and stimulants and Johns O'Donahue and Steinbeck, mom and dad and son and daughter

And they all told me that they felt it too and that I needn't try so hard to make it sound important and original. This is hard. And I'm not sure how or if it will get better. And if it doesn't, I'm not sure there's enough left to go on

But look, the cat's come over to cozy up, and done so in that very cat-like way which says, you need this more than I do, but I'll let you think you're doing me a service. Thank you and you're welcome

There's a fenced off preserve in heaven, populated by all the plants and animals I've eaten, worn, caught baseball's with... or that were the baseballs.

There's a small army of tuna, cows and chickens, a lone reindeer, acres of cotton and bamboo, soybean, rice, quinoa

Even two parakeets which I did not eat but did keep in a cage briefly until they died from boredom or over feeding or lack of perceived purpose

And is it a good exchange? Can it be? Is there some unseen value in this daily transaction which justifies it somehow? I can see the need for a Jesus when I think of it this way.

Conversely

I will not be the hero of international relations - no- world peace will not come from me

I may not be the selfless first responder, though I did ace the curriculum (both written and practical portions)

I will in all likelihood not be mother Earth's savior, and the rhinos will indeed go extinct

I am certainly not my bright-eyed younger self's hero, for I have made no genre-defying hits, and not once has Letterman gotten off his pretentious ass to shake my hand

But I can handle a spilled cup of water, a dry pajama top, a reassurance that things can be good again, or, that at least the attempt to make them so will be worth the effort.

The worst part of life

A sharp cry from her bedroom,

More babyish than she normally sounds now,

Confused and denuded, sheets soaked,

Working to right the cup with wet hands,wet nose, wet face, blurry half asleep eyes,

Between heaving, betrayed, embarassed sobs:

I was thirsty