i, i, i i

"For the Sufi, the spiritual life involves gradually letting go of everything we identify with as 'I'...letting go even of the letting go...even as things around you seem to be falling away...the divine life remains to resurrect a different sense of 'I am'.

-- Neil Douglas-Klotz, The Sufi Book of Life

Love does remain. Love with a capital L. Ever, always, wholly, unceasing, within, without, invisible, and always, also, available to be found.

Not for the first time, this book ever so kindly reminds me of something important I was neglecting. And opens to it at just the moment it's needed. Still marinating in that powerful Joan Osborne lyric I quoted last week. And also how intense a response I had to it. It's really how I feel: both the lyric, and my question in response to it. But that question - what if nothing remains? - is also, of course, limiting the view.

Friends who aren't reading Sufi thought but someone like Eckhart Tolle, perhaps, will probably recognize the understanding quoted above. There's 'I' and then there's 'I'. Or rather, there's 'i', right? There's that little, struggling, not-yet-complete 'i' that wants so badly - and so with the best of intentions - to live and love and grow and give and receive. And sometimes that dovetails with 'I', and sometimes it doesn't. And when the doesn't happens, sometimes the burning does.

This is to say nothing about the actions of other people in this process. About which, I will try not to say either. Except that what may not remain for me is trust, or hope, in certain realms of human relation. But this is, for the moment, about the bigger picture and what can, and does, interact there. 'i' am almost nothing, right now. 'i' am perhaps more nothing than i have ever been before. And yet. I had the great privilege of chanting with Sufis the other night. Dear friends have graced my home for dinner, and lively life-affirming conversation. Shimmering ancestral spirits danced around an opening portal in someone else's dream inside my dreamtime. A group of kids called me 'neighbor' on a delivery, and included me in their elated conversation about, of all things, trapping a possum on their front sidewalk. Time, energy, and work are, for blessed once, all available at the same time. For all these things, i will try to remain, for the Love that also is.

heard it on the radio 2

Also heard this on the radio yesterday, on a different note. Santa Fe is starting an hours/local barter program! They use a term I hadn't heard in other places, but that describes it well: 'timebank'. The kickoff meeting is tomorrow afternoon. Way to go Santa Fe! Check it out at www.santafetimebank.org. And when are we gonna do this in Albuquerque?

heard it on the radio

I am neither willing nor able to comment at any length on politics. I'm just unable to see what most of it has to do with human beings. But once in awhile a shred of something comes through that gives the subject an almost human face. Heard this last night on NPR. The story was the possible corruption of the upcoming elections in Iraq. Apparently it is being suggested that the government, in trying to exclude direct former supporters of Saddam Hussein, has done far too good a job, excluding supporters of positions other than their own while they're at it. Experts were of course consulted, and then, for the man-on-the-street perspective, they went to a 21-year-old waiter in Baghdad, who said this: "I'm sure the elections will go on, but how do we tell the honorable people from the thieves and liars?" I waited, holding my breath, at this. I so wanted the commentator to end the piece with, "And so we see that America has at last truly brought democracy to Iraq." But I guess they're not allowed to go that far with their comments, even on NPR. So I'll say it for 'em.

booking it

Just ending week three of Job #3 (for the moment): phonebook delivery. They go out every year at this time. This is my third season doing it, and the second in Albuquerque. It's not easy work, but it's lots of fun, for the somewhat compulsive, driven personality. You load a few hundred heavy bundles, bound in super-resistant plastic, into your vehicle. Bag up three books together, and carry them to the doorstep of every house, on every street, in a given neighborhood. I've been doing about 200 houses per day. I crash super-early every night, full of muscleaches, and wake still stiff and tired, with some idea of how it is to be 80. But it's honest labor, for sure. And it's saving my sanity: simultaneous soul and body detox. Miles of walking outdoors, sometimes jogging, balanced with several hours a day of weight-lifting (I figured, the first year, that half a block's worth of books in their bags weighs 50 pounds). And it meets those all-important criteria for the gypsy vocation: variety, motion, room to think, new faces every day.

I learned this year that there's more to the gypsy circuit than I knew: the company has a few dozen free-footed people who sign on year-round, and follow the outfit nationwide. Most of them live in RV's, or camp trailers. They rent space in a park, or find someplace to park in each city. I was into the idea until I learned it doesn't pay any better than the local work: independent contractor rates, which means you're paid per route, not per hour. Which means your wage depends precisely on the extent to which you are willing to haul ass. Which of course, I do, and I calculate it just at living-wage, most of the time. But there are no travel expenses provided for the gypsies. And that wouldn't make the migration worth it, unless you just really had a reason to get outta town already. Or you really had nothing better to do. But it's a fine picture, for that: Albuquerque in January, Tucson in February, Phoenix in April, Seattle in June... Albuquerque and Portland, apparently, are booked at the same time. Further confirming my suspicion of that portal connecting the two.

This week I got a route that covers 4th Street from Osuna to Los Ranchos, and all of its barely-paved side roads. Deep North Valley. I forgot how it's more like rural Texas up there, almost, than New Mexico. Feed stores and boot stores and meat dealers and trailer parks. Old homes turned into antique/junk shops. An equine hospital whose sign reads, "Now accepting horses and mules". I've found a fascinating way to travel without spending any money, for sure...don't know if this is exactly where I wanted to GO... Guess workers can't always be choosers though. If you had to be in Texas, this is a nice time of year for it.

dream: the poker game

Excitement runs high in the small, crowded room, where the poker game is going way better than we hoped it would. We all sit or sprawl on the carpet: there doesn't seem to be any furniture in this place. Just people, about 20 of us, all good friends and fellow communitarians. The dim lights and the warmth add to the sense of comraderie. There are quite a few players in this game, and some of them - all those we're competing against - don't seem to be here in the room. Apparently we're playing on teams, and also remotely - perhaps by telepathy. There aren't any communication devices in sight, but we're in contact with all the others. We can hear their voices, although we can't see them.

We started the game off slow. Played it safe. Small, careful bets. Then all of us, collectively, started tuning in to our luck and our intuition. There's a flow here, and we joined it, and we can all dig it, and it's beautiful. Now we're making bigger, crazier wagers on every hand, and they're paying off. Every time. There are shouts, exclamations, voices cheering each other on, as the elation builds. Then it's the final round, and yes! we won the whole pot! All of us, together. Lot of way-to-go's and back-slapping and laughter. It's a small fortune we have between us. More than anybody's seen in a long time. Everybody's talking at once about what they're gonna to do with their share. One guy's paying off his debts. Next to me, three people talk about pooling their money, and buying two shops that are for sale in our neighborhood - get involved in the creative local economy. They sound so happy about the job security and the sense of participation this will bring them. I've been real cheerful about my own wins, until I hear these guys. Then I realize we're not having quite the same conversation. Though it was a cooperative effort, and we all played the same game, made the same bets, and shared the same success, somehow it worked out different for me. My big win is $40. I decide not to tell anybody this, and go on smiling and congratulating as the others make their plans. But I make some general comment about the outcome to one friend, watching surprised as he pockets a thick stack of cash (I thought he was among the ones I know who aspire to a life of voluntary poverty). He replies, smiling, "Yeah, poker can be pretty lucrative..."

I don't think this is about money. Sure, there are feelings there I could look at. How my life compares with others. How the choices that I've made with money have played out, or not. But I think the theme here is something more elemental. Like maybe opportunity. Or energy. "You've been living small-time, you should play for higher stakes"? "Pool your resources more with others, even if they're insignificant?" I don't know. It's not like I was cheated or anything. My bets were as risky as anybody's, but there was some reason the winnings worked out like they did. But the sadness is the feeling I wake with: we had so been all in this together, and suddenly, it seems, we're not...

backward: quote

If the preceding quote is my present, maybe this one is aspiration: release, clarity of mind, if not of heart... Maybe it's a thought of a seed of a start of a maybe of where it goes from this moment...forward or backward? Maybe. Anyway, it's more found-fragments lifted from Hillman.

Culture
generation fermentation decay
looks backward and reaches back
for invisibilities, to make them present
to peel, flail, excite individual sensitivity
so that it can again
notice the again
be in touch with these invisibles
orient life by their compass

the back wards display the backwards
recurring forms that do not change
which repeat in every age
these forms of chronic disorder
are the gods in disguise
seeing through to them
is a grounding act of culture
see through the manifestations of time
into the eternal patterns

think again of your own backward back ward
the timeless incurable aspect of the soul
nursing it and sitting with it
tracing the invisible mystery in it
letting compassion come for your own chronic disorder
moves you from future thinking to essential thinking
upon life's meaning and death's
upon love and its failure
upon what is truly important
upon the small things
necessitated by the limitations
begin to hear differently
watch differently
absorb more
confronted with the unbearable in my own nature
I show more trepidation
which is after all the first piece of compassion

Finally
I come to appreciate the chronic itself
more than slowing down
more than an occasion for tolerance
or instruction in survival
I come to see that things chronic
have nothing to do with civilized time
either future time when it will be better
or present time and adjustment
rather
the timeless structures of being which accompany us
keep company with us
may continue beyond
in the shadows of the gods
are the very gods themselves

-- James Hillman, from an essay called "Chronic Disorder"

*

Suns are in the sky now
Suns are in my veins
Throw me in the fire
Love is what remains

-- Joan Osborne, "Hallelujah in the City"

And if nothing remains?