With a List

03/28/2007 7:39 PM – 7:59 PM

What’s the edge then? The list (for easy reference): non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, letting go. There. And what do we do with it then? We exist as we are and forget what we can. Remember walking in the creek on days like this. The water is too cold. If mom knew, she’d say no. But there’s no need to tell mom. There’s this. This is words. There’s tomorrow. But it’ll be today by the time it gets here.

If you can, you forget yourself and remember only enjoyment. Being in enjoyment, with or without concept of self is the solid thing, the good thing, the one good thing. We stand up and sit down. We accept the fluctuating nature of being. We accept that enjoyment runs though fingers, tight clenched or wide open. Hold fast/let go. You sit up with a start, the sound of gunfire in the distance. And once you were brave and curious and now you see the withered hands and missing feet. But for the grace of God? What grace? He has no leg. Who sinned – this man or his parents? But that is neither fair nor clear. We do what we can and God remains just because his position of power is situated in eternity. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

We cannot know, oh Spike, the nature of the thing. God is just. God is good. God is right. God is always right. He must be or we cannot move. And so he is and so we move. You get up after the shaking has thrown you to the ground. Non-judging, it just is. Patience, this too shall pass. Beginner’s mind, it is interesting. Trust, all things work together for good. Non-striving, this is enough. Acceptance, this is. Letting go, okay. We are what we are and we dream of better things to be. The color of the thing. Orange. The taste of the thing. Orange. The name of the thing. Orange. We are and see that we cannot. We are and see that we can. The day is itself. The self is fluid. The fluid is divine will. Somewhere, my true love lies. My mansion awaits in the Kingdom of Heaven. Come, Lord Jesus. The weight of the just fucking making it is heavy and I am only myself. So you breathe and feel your belly push against your shirt. Open your hands and fall. Close your eyes and know. Whatever it takes, take it with water as cold as the creek in March.

Through the Shaking

03/27/2007 8:39 PM – 9:03 PM

And there. Why? It was a good day. One worked. One did as one’s supposed to and yet there it is, sitting in one’s mind, shivering to break the house apart. So what does one do? One does what one does. Write it down. Write it away. Write it through.

We are not our thoughts. We are not our fears. We are not our bodies. What are we? One doesn’t know. One lives and, if one’s evidence is correct, one dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. You exist. And by faith, we say, “heaven.” By faith, we say, “not hell.” Then you open your hand and let it go again. I am not my thoughts. I am not my fears. Hello, my name is Spike D, and I am slightly daft. Hello, Spike. It’s been two months since my last panic attack. Twenty minutes since my last general anxiety episode. My name is Elmer P. Fudd, millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht. All of this and you know that it goes away. All of this and you know that it will be gone in a little while. Who are you then? Anyone that isn’t afraid. No. Anyone that exists to eat the whole world in a single bite.

Happy thoughts: cross-country girls, comic books, magical realism, pictures that prove that bat-boy exists, falling asleep quickly, the ringing of the chime when the bread becomes flesh and the wine becomes blood, private detective stories, olive trees, secluded beaches that honest people can lie on, lips, maps of worlds that don’t exist, albums that you can listen to all the way through, forks, rain clouds rolling across the desert, cigarettes at two in the morning on summer nights when it’s too hot to move, cold beer, boobs, coffee, finding random golf balls, houses in the country, 8 ½, long johns, lithographs, winning, gummy erasers, cold water, comfortable couches, seeing movies at the theatre, a baby smiling, Stephen King, too many books to read, Aslan. And everything is fine, see. Everything will do. Cross-country girls are hot. Forgetting the former false state, one becomes at rest.

On Falling Asleep

03/26/2007 8:10 AM – 8:31 AM

What then do you fear? Falling asleep. Odd for someone that’s spent most of his life fighting insomnia. So let yourself go and see what happens. It’s cheating, you see, because you already did and nothing really happened. You didn’t fall asleep exactly and you didn’t stay awake exactly. But perhaps it’s a metaphor, because you are afraid of the big falling asleep. Though, by faith, we apprehend the data of an eventual awakening.

And by McDonald’s faith (bigger than accepted), all awake, and, someday, we will be able to apprehend McDonald’s faith and claim it as our own in deed as well as hope. But hope will do for now and one is up and the light is out and one can feel the movement of one’s arms in one’s skin. It is enough to walk; the destination will arrive when we get there. Far enough. The smell of the incense, the inclination towards food, the beginning of the day. The fiction is real. The word is made flesh. The vampires are driven away, believing or not. The Divine is inherent, understood or not. It is enough to love a wife. It is enough to be one’s own. It is enough to be where one is the moment that one is.

What do you know? Nothing. What have you learned? Nothing. What will you know? Everything. And then? Everything will be there to be learned again. Further up and further in. The odd collected phrases come back and we open our hands and let them fall to the page. Hello, sunshine. I am my parent’s sunshine when I am less than ten, less than nine, less than eight. All moments coalesce into what it is that we are when we are ourselves alone or together. You apprehend by faith the knowledge of others and say, “this is my neighbor.” This is my neighbor. I am my own and I will learn to lend myself. One learns. These. These are just evidence of fingers hitting keys. These are just squiggles representing sounds, representing ideas, representing attempts at knowing. Perhaps we apprehend. Perhaps we don’t. We open up our hands and let go. We close our fingers and hold fast. Doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of being. It’s the long walk down the sunny road to Fillmore for a pack of cigarettes. We are what we were. We’re what we will be. The cross is the cross, history or not. Others exist even if they don’t. God is love. I know love. I know God. That will do. Jesus loves me. This I know. For the Bible tells me so. And the church. There’s more pairs of eyes to see than the two that I know intimately. We pick it up and set it down and pick it up again. There is therefore now, no condemnation, just being. Fall asleep if you need to.

On the Testimony of What Is

03/25/2007 6:24 PM – 6:44 PM

And all there is is here and tomorrow will still be. We exist and continue there is this and, whatever it tastes like, it tastes good because it’s all there is and we take existence at its word because we can do nothing else. Then we open up our hands and let it go. Let go. Let it go and fall from the cruelty of not-enough into the just-right of what is. Fire it up.

No assurances because that would take the fun out of it (and that’s as good a theory as any, so we go with it). You know that you love hot chicks. You know that hot is a subjective description. What you know is enough. It’s enough to be the holy fool, if only for yourself. All the world is epic in its tranquility (the obvious lie being the closest to the truth). We’re here. We’ll die and go to heaven. There is much that is not our concern. There’s some that is. The strength of one’s arms. The endurance of one’s love. The eternal summer of the accepting mind. “Okay,” says Joel to Clem. And also to you. Amen. We are not what we were planning on, but we are something interesting enough to hold and let go. Laugh, you sad fucks. You’ve got good bourbon and you call the devils. Then to hell with you (if we knew what it was).

No more dark thoughts of unfathomable tomorrows. This strawberry, so red, so sweet. We are not and we become. Open your hand and let go. Let go of that false god. He only gives fear. Let go your self. He only gives fear. Apprehend your true self, asleep in the bosom of Abraham. Forget your hands. No letting go. No holding fast. Only action. Only good, unlimited by perspective or definition. We come into our own. Was it only the winter nights? No. Because we can fight it. Yes. Because it rolls over and goes away. The way of all things here. The Eternal Mystery, unknowable, grasped by the testimony of the balls. Saying: it’s good. And: it’s very good. Open up your eyes to your open eyes. There is this and, by faith, we can add the Next to the figures. Love God. Love your neighbor (who’s your neighbor?). Love your self. Open your hands and let them all go. Close your hands and hold fast. No answers, just dirty jokes and good beer. Open up your hands and float the river down. Open your hands and recognize that this too shall pass. We are our own, bought with a price. We are not our own, bought with a price. Apply the mind to accepting. Who knows, understanding may yet come. This is enough till then. So red. So sweet. Yeah. This is enough.

Which Is a Slightly Vitriolic Return (Without Any Explanation for Absence)

03/21/07 - Eveningish

And how fucking crapped am I that this is the thing that I find myself doing? What is this chasing of the tail, the incessant circles to catch that which one already has? Because you want it the way you want it or you don’t want it at all. You couldn’t give a fuck about being and nothingness unless you can have that being the way that you interpreted the TV shows as telling you that it should be. And there I am. Myself again and full of fear of nothing and wishing to feel anything, even fear, to prove myself superior to the dumb and cheap and dishonest.

Cheap tricks towards childish ends and you’d fuck the gutter for a shot at that short, cute girl. If that girl came with a lifetime supply of anti-anxiety meds and opiates. Sometimes, you don’t want a Goddamn thing and sometimes you want it all and you want to eat it with a gold tongue. Open up then and tell me a story. I don’t want anything except the assurance of either heaven or non-being. Then let me fight out my life with teeth and balls for a reason to love one’s God, one’s neighbor and one’s self. Forget it. Unfold the chairs, pour the porter and set up the German board games. I’d start smoking right now if it would make me happy. Not gonna happen. Don’t congratulate me; I’m surviving the ordeal by pretending to be so far above your opinion.

What’s the cost and what’s the point? You can’t tell whose version of God is right. Elijah isn’t here to call down the fire and prove to us the greater power of YHWH. Ba’al might have won in the last few months for all we know. But. One is never excused from fulfilling the obligations of his given faith. And so. Mea Culpa, mea culpa. ‘Twas me that didst chop down the cherry tree. The office of the president was a joke invented by Jefferson and Franklin at the expense of Washington. Washington got the last laught. Ahh well and back to the tomb. Up from the gravy, a rose. Oddly, the Rose of Sharon and where he was, the empty void revealed by the rolling void. We are what we were born. Somewhere before our grandparents, our face serene, smiled upon and through by God. How far and tantalizing, the torture of the fruit tree that grows when you reach up to eat and the pool that drains when you reach down to drink. All apologies, I’m not really real lately, I’m a figment of my imaginary father’s ghost’s hell. All the world eats itself happily to death and I’m damned to the unassurance of things not seen. But there it is. You are and you have to assume or you cut your brain with your brain. Fuck it, Dude. Let go bowling. Someday, the Dude will abide and we will become whatever the hell it was that we are. On earth as it is in heaven. Amen.