quote

"I will tell you a little more, but you must understand that any answer brings about limitation. The truth is on-going and beyond explanation, so it is better to be left with a question than to be given an answer."
- Reshad Feild, The Last Barrier: A Journey Through the World of Sufi Teaching

fragment

unfinished, from a week ago...but it's about being unfinished. So.

fall off the earth
fall back on again
feet become roots become
not yet known being

change through the channels
feel through the frequencies
fly through the freedoms
mend through the memories
train through the tendencies
strong through what stretches
yes

cruise the current now
back to the place where the rivers converge
lose their names and their fames and become
only flow once again
out in the space where the highways diverge
lose their magnetic drag and their salvation whisper
become only pathways again
into the race where the feelings still urge
open windows and invitations all

all these are roads
not just the paved roads
all these are ways
not just approved ways
all calling Life
and waiting for a reply

SFe plaza liberated

Over the past several years, there's been some debate in Santa Fe about the role its old Plaza plays in the life of the city. Loyal preservation voices speak out on behalf of history and community-building potential, while others lament crime, litter, and the perils of unconfined teenagers and wandering musicians. During some of this time, its benches have sat empty, and its green spaces were left barren, dry, unwelcoming. I don't know if city policies have changed, the last year or so, or if I've just been there in the wrong season. A month ago, a visit showed lush new grass covering the open spaces between the sidewalks. However, "KEEP OFF" signs had sprouted among them like overbearing weeds, leaving the Plaza a microcosm of much of Santa Fe: aesthetically near-perfect, but not really habitable by actual human beings. One newspaper editorial suggested, a little bitterly, that perhaps the city should just fence off the entire downtown and tell people to keep out, in the name of preservation.

But yesterday, something has changed: everybody's there. And they're On The Grass! Out of a lapis sky drifting with luminous silverwhite clouds, sun dazzles all, filtering through leafgreen tree ceiling. The patchwork of grassy wedges is occupied by serious students with books, homeless men with backpacks, a woman in a wheelchair conversing with her family, and three teenage girls with perfectly tanned legs and crowns of yellow flowers in their hair. Two kids run by, pausing to pull up handfuls of grass, as the little boy exclaims, "This will be great to throw at them when they're not looking!" Voices can be heard in Spanish, French, British English, New York English. Across San Francisco Street, grannies in pink t-shirts enter Haagen-Das, arm in arm. A tall Native American goth/punk/metal guy, shirtless with bicep tattoos and hair flowing to his waist, crosses against the traffic, finds a spot under a tree, and begins a series of fantastical yoga contortions.

And there are musicians, appearing at equidistant points like brighter constellations in this people-space. At the center are 3 guitarists; off to one side are a pair who are rocking the gypsy sound with just a violin and an accordion. A fiftyish man pauses, asks, "That's Hungarian music, right? I was born there!" "Really!" exclaims the violin player with a smile. "Then teach us some more songs!" "I don't know any songs!" replies the man, and stays to listen.

A stout, bleached-blonde woman in black velveteen pantaloons and a long flowered jacket fringed in red takes the arm of a man in leopard-print pants, who carries a bouquet of mylar balloons in every color of the rainbow. He holds them high over his head, like a kid would hold them. A chubby dark-eyed girl rolls in the grass, as her mother and sisters eat roasted corn and frito pies. An elderly man, no youthful insecurities about his masculinity, holds his wife's hand while he carries her large pink patent leather purse in the other. The gypsy musicians are gathering a crowd. They attempt more and more complicated pieces, as applause grows and tips fall into their basket. The Hungarian man puts his arms around the waist of the woman who has joined him, whispers into her ear, smiles. Tourist of all ages, races, and income statuses point cameras at each other, leaving those of us who live and work here smiling just outside the frame. The birds of the air and the leaves on the trees laugh with delight, and recognition: just once in a while, the people finally get it.

overheard

The week's prize-winner for Best Overheard Conversation:

I'm stopping at a gas station, on a delivery. Out front, sitting astride a gorgeous red gold and black Harley, is a man who is the image of the New Mexico Biker. 40ish, dark clothes, dark skin, superdark sunglasses. Shaved head, goatee. Heavyset, heavy boots planted on the pavement as he talks on a cell phone. His voice, however, does not quite fit the stereotype I am painting of him. It is calm, friendly, kind of soft-spoken, just a little higher-pitched than I'd have expected. A Nice Guy kinda voice. And what he is saying into the phone really doesn't fit the image: "My sister let me borrow her bike! Yeah!"

on detachment

More words giving a beautiful face to the cultivation of a sense of detachment:

"I must learn to exclude it all in full consciousness..."
- Irina Tweedie in The Chasm of Fire

"DO NOT CARE ABOUT ANYTHING EVER;
THE GRACE OF GOD IS IN EVERY SHAPE AROUND."
- the guru, same book

"LOVE IS THE ROOT AND, LIKE A TREE, IT HAS MANY BRANCHES SPREADING."
- the guru

a correction

Saw my serendipitous younger/older friend again this morning at Winnings. The one who informed me, at our last meeting, that my mind is an army of love and compassion. Today she exclaimed, "I was hoping to see you!" and offered a small yellow booklet, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag. It title was "The Thirty-Seven Bodhisattva Practices".

We had a little while to talk before I headed north to start my work week. The words wandered between subjects: uncluttering one's inner life, gardening, English as a second language, sustainable developments around the world, and the current economic "situation". At this point she startled me awake with one of her illuminating word choices. "I think what's going on, really," she remarked, "is that we're being offered a CORRECTION." "You mean," I asked, "a chance to re-examine our priorities, maybe take them back, and maybe choose different ones?" "Yes", she replied. "It's like Life is saying, 'YOU CAN DO BETTER...', and we know this, and we want to try..."

Doing better, she went on to suggest, might just mean better sharing of what we've already got. This linked me with another conversation the day before, two friends also pondering the "economic situation", and the emptiness in general of what the mass mind is saying about it. My response to them was that it's not really getting harder to make a living, only to keep the same old definition that we've always had for that phrase. Those of us finding hope in the Now are, I think, transforming that tired expression "make a living" into "make a life". That's our work now. And it's not (very much) about money. It's all about sharing. It's all about simplifying. It's all about making/growing/building for yourself (ourselves). And it's about remembering (like sleepers finally waking up) how much of our lives, in quality and content, that we do have the ability to choose, and to create, and to make room for...

Practice #2 of the Bodhisattvas speaks to me about remembering priorities, and so regaining freedom: "The mind of attachment to loved ones wavers like water. The mind of hatred of enemies burns like fire. The mind of ignorance which forgets what to adopt and what to discard is greatly obscured. Abandoning one's homeland is the Bodhisattvas' practice."

I wonder what the writer of these words meant by "homeland"...as a guess, I could replace it with several words, such as "routine", "comfort zone", "familiarity" or even "agenda". Even "knowledge"... All things which, when abandoned, have certainly been found to make room for tremendous (if challenging) freedom.

And this one, #27, has to be written for all of us service industry workers: "To Bodhisattvas who desire the pleasures of virtue, all those who do harm are like a precious treasure. Therefore, cultivating patience devoid of hostility is the Bodhisattvas' practice."

And now, I'm off to visit all of my precious treasures in the pizza business...

thought:quote:thought

"If truth be told, her thoughts are not that clear, for thought...is like a great ball of thread coiled around itself, loose in places, taut in others, inside our head. It is impossible to know its full extent, one would have to unwind and then measure it, but however hard one tries or pretends to try, this cannot be done without assistance. One day, someone will come and tell us where to cut the cord that ties man to his navel and thought to its origin."
-- Jose Saramago

en route

Slept in the second-best camping spot last night, the one by the school. As often happens, the mindbody takes a full half of the night to fall asleep, just to be convinced that we're actually serious about slowing down after work. What, you really mean it? No more driving? No more music, food, caffeine to keep us frantic frenetic and ever-so-focused on the road? No more mind wandering, hoping to draw or drag the body somewhere anywhere other than here? Is it really alright to breathe deep now, and be less than perfectly present? After 4 or 5 hours' work of translating action to stillness, it grants me maybe 2 or 3 of dreamtime (and this is why I'm so distracted-frustrated-and-not-quite-here, so much of the time). This night's first dream fragment, though, was supercool, if way too short: a scene like a grainy old movie that's been colorized, in which a pointy-mustached magician in a blue suit levitated smoky gold hoops through each other in the air, as we all looked on with admiration and excitement. There was that familiar sense of impending expanding potential wafting through - if he can do this, now, who knows what we'll all do in the next moment??

Woke late - sun well into the sky - to an electronic chime ringing softly, 3 times, and a woman's voice, syrupy but kind, intoning, "Good Morning, Everyone!" Wow. Late for school already. So glad to be done with that feeling forever. Thanks for the wake-up call though. Had to lie low in the camper awhile, til the street cleared of scurrying parents and kids.

Back now to the focus of another work shift: gather all the available energies into the goal of controlled speed, courteous detachment, and maximized efficiency in each movement and moment. Try not to notice if the atmospheric pressure opens portals into some other state, or some other dimension. Try not to calculate how far into the Northwest you could be by now, if you laid all these deliveries end to end. Or how deep into Mexico you could've travelled, if you added up all the minutes just spent waiting for people to answer their doors and find their wallets. Or what fantastic writing you could've done by now if you used the hours spent working to write, instead of only the minutes spent drinking coffee, en route to work again. Try to carry that magician's wiggling eyebrows and conspiratorial smile in mind: keep an eye out for levitating things and winking-open possibilities. And give them the admiring recognition they merit as they fly by, even if they're only flying by, as you pass each other, in-between the dreams.

where we exist

On the to-do list for this week, I wanted to include the intention of getting some seedlings in the ground at my new little homestead. This is easier said than done because, although we have the space to garden, we don't really have the soil. Or we do, but it's definitely not what I'd call "organic". My housemates recently uncovered a trash heap, just beneath the edges of their own new plantings, left by some former resident. And after they finished pulling bottles, cans, dishes, and even more toxic-looking items out of their excavation, the place looked more like an archeological site than a garden. And I was dramatically less interested in sharing in the planting effort. But, there's 2/3 of an acre altogether. There must be some clean corner of earth left on the place. So, on my list, I wrote, "Look for a plot". And then laughed at the tendency of mundane words to keep reaching for metaphorical implications.

What is the plot here? If my life right now got sent as a manuscript to an editor, it would promptly be returned with this notation: "Too many story lines, too many loose ends; this wanders all over the place. Clean it up and focus on just one plot!" Right now I successfully, if distractedly, live and work in two cities at once. I plant seeds and dream always of uprooting self, and travelling again. There are several places where I'm welcome to land, between migrations, and none of them as yet really feel like home. I have a companion whose company, whose way of being, brings me joy that is more than I know what to do with - and still I seek more solitude, and plan my days (from years of habit) like a solitary person. New Mexico is home, and it inspires such admiration for its grassroots efforts, and its stubborn righteous hold on its past, its poverty, its potential. But, all those other states still have their open frequency as well. Today it's Colorado tuning me in, thanks to the cobalt sky and green humidity, the gifts of last night's rain. I think of Portland a lot, too. Not least because of the dozen newslists that still send me their visions of life up there (I want to go hear music and spoken word under the Morrison Bridge, an open jam in the truest sense: in solidarity with the homeless! I wish I could camp out and plant gardens and flowers with the friendly demonstration/occupation at the old abandoned high school, that they're STILL not using for transitional housing!)

At work this week I was trying to joke with my coworker from El Salvador. He had just come back from a bothersome delivery in which the customer gave him the wrong address (this happens amazingly often). I meant to say, "The people don't know where they are!" but instead, confusing donde and cuando once again, as well as the right "be" verb, I said, "The people don't know when they exist!" Now there's a sentence reaching for a bigger meaning...

Although the desert supports a beautiful diversity of lives, they have this ability in common: they know when to exist. They conserve their precious energy in between the rains. They're as alive as the elements will support, not seeking for more. The plants hold back their growth, or their bloom; the animals go underground, or go dormant; and I'd like to think we people have learned a little from them in our years of home here. Rest during the day's strongest heat; let overabundant plantings die back during seasons of drought; draw solid urban boundaries based on available water levels (okay, we haven't learned it all yet). But to these I add the more personal: try not to focus on the joy of rain when it's not here. Perhaps this means to see it as a brilliant plot twist, rather than the main story line. Which means that when it does grace us, I think I know how those little brother and sister desert-dwellers feel: immediately, immanently, exponentially more alive. I know when I exist, in the fullest sense: when it rains, in the desert. And it would make life so much easier if I could find a way to conserve that joy, in the meantime, like the precious resource that it is. Cause there's way too much waiting for the luminous oxygen-creosote-lightning-bloom of days like yesterday, when mind and heart return with a start to full, intense awakeness and gratitude...

I love the desert. I might live out my life here (though the highway virus will assert itself again, and again). I just wish it was easier to find the level of gratitude and awakening that only the rains bring. For today, I guess I have last night's neighbor to thank, for sharing his own bit of present wakefulness. I camped out again in my new favorite Santa Fe spot. It's further out, intensely quiet, radiantly green. It's exactly the sort of liminal space I seek, and then some: I'm pretty sure it rests on a seam between dimensions. The Dreamtime takes it over, when night falls, and overlays its hillsides with lakes, cities, people, and portentious actions that seem to show its truer nature. But last night, I had company there before I made it into dreams. A man was camped by the river, just across the dirt road from my truck. I didn't see him until morning, but I heard him through the trees. He had nothing but a sleeping bag (caught a glimpse of him, or the bundle that was him, still sleeping). And he sang himself to sleep, at intervals until deep into the night. I couldn't understand any words, if there were any. But he sang loud, peaceful, and strong. Like somebody who, whatever in-between he occupied, knew when he existed.