On the blackboard...
Chalky traces of rememberances
questions of becoming
notes to the Friend
and poetic lists
To Do:
Christmas 2012 blessings to family and friends.
This photo is by artist and photograper Janine Vulliez. Do you notice the subtle pinks, purples and light blues in the distance behind the base of the trees in the bottom left hand corner? They are the colors of compassion and hope that bring the light in the morning, even when it has been raining. They are dedicated to Ray and to you. - Love Dawn :0)
The Simple Fool's School Manual
Waking to the Dream(If you have found your way to these words
and have the desire to become them,
then you have already begun)
To write the book that teaches you
How to wake to the dream,
You must become a wanderer.
Slow and deliberate,
Your life must become the story
That is the truth within the myth.
There are no words on a page here,
But a book holding the logos of you Life.
Open the pages of this book
That they may become for you.
Their power rests in the imagination
Their Truth in your ability to become them…
⇔
These words are not meant to bring sense to the intellect,
but an echo of imaginings to the wings of the heart.
For the mind has sinews twisting, turning tightly tangled vines about the words.
And they hold you fast through memory, like a sticky spider’s web.
With complete loops laid about the nerves, knowing and doing are fixed
(and your will, your muscle, your bone) and bound
to their own rigid structures by the strength of these ropes.
They hold proportion to the spider’s thread. And I am.
To free yourself from this riddle, step beyond the comfort of knowing.
Abandon the security of false certainty
and find your own answer to The Question. How do you find your freedom,
through the hacking of the warrior or the dissolution of the magician?
There are many paths through to the truth of these words.
The king rules and the shepherd loves. The wise one works and the fool plays.
And all the words beckon you to find yourself here
in the echo of imaginings that are the wings of the heart.
Have you arrived?…
[If you have not, I beg of you
go back to the beginning
and walk with more trust in your heart.
Find the love of creation
And the wisdom that is You
Will speak.]
…Now I can speak to you
For your heart opens to mine and we are one.
If you are listening I will hear you:
The wings of the heart fan the flames of Truth
Creating space between carbon filled matter.
In this space between, I am and You –
Your head, your hands and I am.
Your heart.
The words are sulfurous sparks
Quickening the mercurial silver of the dream
And bringing the wakefulness of imagination.
Each new image creates a light of understanding,
An explosive expansion transcending matter,
A vacuum of contraction condensing Idea.
And for one brief moment they are felt as One
And are known within the carbon weight of being.
Here now you must be awake!
Do not choke this feeling in thought
But release it as a sacrificial gift
To the Question…
And then return back here
To listening.
The Seattle Kiss
And the holy man lay beneath the city. His arms, folded across his chest, held his long white beard and his very being in graceful repose. The city towered above. It rose in beauty from the cement beneath him and there, on the sidewalk, the people stared with the certainty of death at the homeless man, fingers yellowed with nicotine, pitiful possessions scattered about. Dead, dirty and alone, he lay on his back beneath the architecture of his dilemma.No one spoke. No one cried out. No one touched him or knelt with comfort and we could feel the silence, you and I, stumbling upon this scene, truer than its reality. We saw the towering of Seattle in crisp lines of glass, steel and concrete beauty, reflecting the clear winter sunset, in the homeless man and the eyes of his witnesses. We had walked in to the timeless space that stopped the city. It wasn’t raining, and the air, the people and the “knowing of what is” were listening.
Before this there was pavement beneath our feet, a city passing by, cars, smells and conversation. There were seagulls and then there were not. There was nothing but the knowing of death and it was somehow soft and sweet and awake. Suddenly the street was not a street. The bus stop was not a bus stop and everything was still, silent, alive, crisp and clear. It was more than the matter it filled.
We had walked in to a realm beyond our skin, filling space so that we saw the scene from the outside, looking down from the sky, from within the buildings, from the sunset and through the eyes of each other. We were one with the pavement and the cars and the people and the dead man, holy beneath the city. All of reality was contained within this one city block, walked through in an instant. And yet we were deaf and blind to the moment as it happened, becoming aware only as we stepped out. Oh how I felt the truth upon leaving.
With that one step off the sidewalk in to the street, we left reality behind and condensed back in to the familiar. What was behind? - strangers waiting for the bus, the sunset and a dead man on the sidewalk. Was he really dead or yet more alive? Before, when I was in the unfamiliar of reality, I knew him somehow, in his immortality and it made me immortal too. It made us all immortal.
Yet no one cried out or bent over in grief. No one comforted or came close. We were, after all, strangers. Or were we? This was our homeless man, made holy in that instant as we realized our own homelessness and were filled with the confusing awe of timeless reality. Homeless. Immortal. Alone. What is reality? Perhaps we all wanted to cross the threshold between life and death then – to actually physically touch him there on the street, to dare to hold his hand. But no one did.
We walked on and then, “What did I just live in an instant, with you, with the strangers, with the dead man?” You were the one who said he looked holy.
It was “what is” there on the street and I wanted to turn back. I wanted to do something but was somehow stopped by the rights of what? I do not know. I wanted to act out of intuition, wonder, love, instinct or compassion. I wanted to caress him, but who would I have been to be so bold? What right did I have? And my hesitation shamed me. I was afraid to embrace my humanity. And as we felt the tension and crossed the street, I heard an ambulance quite near. It was over.
I stepped on to the curb and left the scene behind, new pavement beneath my feet. It wasn’t raining. And then I looked at you. I looked back. I looked at the scene but I was not there. I was moving forward now, more pavement, step after step – a new block, people, stores, the cool breeze, a seagull again but no rain. Seattle. My shame. My confusion. My yearning. My life.
And then, released temporarily from reality, we stumbled on in to a scene of revelry. Suddenly it was the New Year again. All the families had gone to market. A child sat on a bronze pig, the fishmongers tossed the fish and bagged them and everyone was carefree as the sun set and the old lights of Christmas past began to twinkle again. We sleepily munched on dried apples (that I fed you by hand) and stopped to listen to the street musician.
She was young and melancholic and her face was heavy with the pain of the hard life. She was tucked, full of angst, within the doorway of a closed shop and her voice was sweet and innocent. There was a small cardboard sign in the guitar case at her feet that was scrawled with loose fat red letters. It said, “Love is sharing music with strangers”.
I tried to look at her without looking at her, but we were standing so close there on the sidewalk, with all the people walking by and she know that we were listening and that I had read that sign. I wanted to love her but I was afraid. I wanted to look her in the eyes (and introduce her to the holy man) but I was shy. She was after all a street musician begging for spare change on the sidewalk. But I felt that I must know her to be standing so close. She must know us and I wanted to cross the threshold with her and feel the immortality of life. But I was afraid of my love. So I held your hand and we kissed.
I wanted to do something but was somehow stopped by the rights of what? I do not know. I wanted to act out of intuition: wonder, love, instinct and compassion. I wanted to somehow touch her but did not have the courage. Who would I have been to be so bold? What right did I have? My shame. My confusion. My death. My yearning. My life.
I whispered that we should give her a dollar. I whispered that you should kiss her on the cheek. But you hesitated within your own dilemma (what right did you have?) and whispered that I should do it. We wanted to act but did not have the courage… and we felt the tension as her song came to and end. It was over.
And then, in that instant (thanks to the holy man), I found the courage and dropped the dollar in her case. We both kissed her, one on either side of the threshold… and it tasted sweet… like death.
And she smiled.