no knowing

I know next to nothing about anything. And less every day. Every new day leaves the mind's load lighter. And often, for this, the heart's heavier.

I don't know how to breathe well. How to listen with complete attention. How to laugh aloud, spontaneously. How to make really good bread. How to get meaningful work. How to make eye contact. How to shape some thing of beauty with my hands, or to dream it before making. How to maintain sufficient connection with earth. How to ask for the kindness that I need.

I don't know how to sleep: this skill seems a complete luck of the draw, and tonight I drew the low card, and nevermind the pills, and the teas, and the meditations: that's that.

I don't know how to pray. Though soul holds a channel always open. Though heart surfs constant tides of gratitude and need. Though senses stretch toward every greengold whisper spoken in earthtime and in dreamtime. Though in afternoon, when sunshot skies of a sudden folded soft into clouds, like two peaceful hands coming together, and I beneath the five diamond drops of rain that fell as an afterthought was clasped in the center of a prayer, it wasn't my prayer, but the sky's. But that, in the moment, was certainly more than enough.

I can only pray that earth and sky haven't forgotten what they know: that aside from their infinities, they know me as well. As well as they did, back when we were so connected I never stopped to think about what I didn't know.

quote: accept

"He had no choice."
"He did. It was as hard as hell, but he could have gone on. Gone on making himself more and more unhappy. But what he chose to do instead was to go to the brink and look beyond. And he saw what was there and he chose to accept it...Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater..."
-- Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer

house/sitting

There is no television in this house. No microwave, and no stereo except a portable player, currently unplugged. There was no computer til I brought in my laptop. Outside there are no barking dogs, no music or loud voices to show that the neighbors are home. Inside, the heater isn't running nonstop: in fact it's a little chilly here, but it's quiet. Oh, so quiet.

There are no children in this house. No running feet echoing the floors, no singing or nonsense noises, no fighting, shrieking, screaming, or crying. No sounds at all, except the whirbling of this laptop and an occasional staccato from the corner, where a rabbit sits in a cage. Those are the only sounds. Really. I have to listen again to convince myself it's true.

This house has nearly equal amounts of space and stuff. The part that makes it most beautiful to me. That, and all the stuff seems to be here for a reason. There is one couch only, in the living room. One large plant by the window. Blinds on the windows that face the street, and not on those facing the fenced back yard. Matched handmade pottery bowls on open kitchen shelves. Unvarnished wood counters and stainless-steel appliances. It's a kitchen to be in for a reason. Gourmet cooking, or maybe writing. Or maybe thinking about my own reasons for being here. Not 'here' in any existential sense. Here, instead of the house in which I normally live. In which I normally survive.

The saddest part of survival mode is getting used to thinking in not's. First there's the extras that you negate. Purchases, dreams, soul-nutrition: the category of 'extra' is expansive, and always expandable. Not right now, we can't do that. Not this month. Not this season. Not this year. Then there's the not-rationalization, where you try to feel better about your situation, and perhaps about your choices (if you acknowledge such things as part of the situation). At least we're not ___. At least we didn't do ___. At least ___ didn't happen. At least we have it better than ___.

Sure there's some intention of gratitude in those negatives. But my point is, there are so many lovely yes's in this world, waiting to be appreciated as well. So many powerful yes's, waiting to be given life. When do they get their turn?
When in holding one's own does growth become an option?
Where in the struggle for us does compassion for others get an invitation?
When, in the constant sound, does silence get its moment?
Where in the nonstop asking does gratitude get its place?
Where in the tangle of electrical wires and piped-in entertainment do we find acceptance of all we can live without - and all we can let go?
Where in the giving-up and going-without is there a welcome to all the potential yet invited to live with us?

There are no visible yes's in this house. Nothing that I need to plan, intend, or be on time for. Nothing to which I am asked to adjust or commit or contribute. Only bring in the mail, turn on a few lights, feed the rabbit. There are no no's here either. It's a fine place to rest, in the absence of both answers, until something comes a little clearer.

unraveling

sleep's an unraveling blanket
already barely sufficient for cover
already thin enough for cold wind to discover
every gap in your frayed but implacable conscience

rest is a word about surplus
supposed companion to sleep
supposed reward of a long hard day's labor
too often a luxury for the already-unconscious

present's a gift so misleading
all of the wisdom you thought you were heeding
all of the subleties of pattern repeating
until you step backward uncovered exposed to the whole

relationship's essence is weaving
cross-purposing filaments filling the void between two
no rest can't avoid this arresting design on your life
that uncovers the hidden the unworked the holes
all your frayed threads, afraid nots, offenses
you enter the fray only half-clothed, defenseless
like the dreams where you're trying to dress and redress
while you follow confounding guidance to find
ravel inverted to marvel and wonder
attempt the astounding and maybe impossible
to wake up, rewoven, together

*******

And for my partner-in-lucha, for the first time, I tried translating this using GoogleTranslate. It's not the most intuitive application, so I reworked a lot of this on my own. The wordplays never translate - or perhaps that's only a reflection of my level of Spanish. Maybe if anybody bilingual sees this they can tell me how far off I am.
*******

enredo

el sueño es una manta desenredando
ya apenas suficiente para que cubre
ya bastante delgada que el viento frío descubre
cada hueco en la conciencia deteriorada pero implacable

el descanso es una palabra acerca de sobra
compañera supuesta a dormir
recompensa supuesta de un dia larga de labor
con demasiada frecuencia un lujo para las ya inconscientes

el presente es un regalo tan engañoso
toda la sabiduría a que pensabas que atendaste
todas las sutilezas del patrón que se repiten
hasta que el paso hacia atrás, no mas cubierto, expuesto al todo

la esencia de la relación es tejeduría
filamentos de propositos cruzados llenan el vacío entre dos
no hay descanso, no se puede evitar este diseño que arresta tu vida
que descubre lo oculto el bruto y los agujeros
todos los hilos rotos, las ofensas y los miedos
tu la entras en la refriega sólo media vestida, indefensa
como los sueños en que tratas de vestirte y de remediar
mientras sigas la dirección confundente para encontrar
enredo invertido para la maravilla y el asombro
el intento al pasmoso y tal vez lo imposible:
para despertarse, retejido, juntos

rot2

"...if everything were to decompose at the same speed, the end product would not be so valuable."
-- Stu Campbell, Let It Rot!

It's just a nice simple 70's book on composting. But for some reason, the metaphorical implications - the personal or the interpersonal implications, perhaps - of this one sentence have fascinated me more than anything I've read in the last week.

joining

One of those very basic paradoxes that comes along...so basic that it goes unnoticed, and finds a dim corner, and settles in...and you know how paradoxes, unrecognized (only seen in the rushed halflight of everyday barelyconsciousness) can drain the soul's energies...but how, acknowledged, they can catalyze, energize, help to real-ize....or do you know? And do I know? I can't actually explain this, in so many words, but I think I know it...

Anyway, my (current) paradox seems to be this: that in pursuit of the earnest goal of avoiding conflict, I frequently find myself generating more. In its unrecognized form, simple: the avoidance, and the fact that avoidance is often impossible, creates constant conflict. By definition. A definition that yes, many already know. But the paradox, once acknowledged: joining the battle, as it were, I join Life as well. Life being never either static or stagnant. Life being never avoidant (also, perhaps, by definition). Life being at times a battle, in a manner of seeing. Between free wills. Among mutually exclusive possibilities. Between diverse lives, all seeking to continue. Among near-infinite complexities of systems, populations, ecologies.

Joining: I wanted to find it, first, possible to stop fighting. Anything. Altogether. But this I didn't find. Only a turning, a whirling actually, an about-face. Instead of turning my back to the chaos, turning my energies into it. Standing ground instead of running, in small part. Engaging conflict (of whatever kind, on whatever level) instead of fleeing it, more. Reversing the flow, I hope, eventually. Or only my little current in the flow. Joining the battle and finding how many of us, in how many moments of shattering illusions, are in fact fighting on the same side. Arriving at a point of confluence, convergence that negates any concept of conflict. Simply because currents unite as we fight for, and for nothing less than, our lives...

I'm not saying I know anything here. Not, at least, anything new. Just trying to see a little more clearly. See my way to joining.

rot

Todo tiene que morir
para al fin
vivir
-- Charanga Cakewalk, "Vida Magica"

"Yes, rot is the word. Rot means death, and without death and rot there can be no new life... Nature never loses anything: she preserves and protects herself. It is only a fool man who squanders his substance and makes himself poor, and everybody around him, and the land he lives on too."
-- anonymous letter, quoted by Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture


One of permaculture's first principles, as I understand it, is this: don't do any work yourself that the earth is willing to do for you. In a practice concerned with the conservation of energies of all kinds, this makes perfect sense. Permaculture sites reflect this ideal in home-centric planting designs, landform-conscious erosion controls, and gravity-supported water recycling. To give just a few examples.

To stretch this principle only a bit, there are at any moment in this heedless headlong society many people who can do some of the work for us, too. And we the ones who can utilize the momentum of their less-than-conscious actions. All the food that gets made and then trashed -- or, now and then, donated -- there for those of us willing to collect and redistribute it instead of purchasing. All the designer clothes worn twice and then left for us at Goodwill. All of the earth's original and extravagant gifts to us, labelled "waste". Then treated as such, after any other understanding gets forgotten. Wealth on every side, worked for and then discarded, disregarded.

In the past couple of weeks, I've found entertainment and a small sense of purpose in stealing the bagged leaves of the citizens of Albuquerque. I suppose, if I had wanted to gather organic matter honestly, I could've started my own landscaping service and gone door-to-door asking to rake people's yards in trade for the takings. But they're already hiring somebody else to do the work. And then discarding the wealth of potential that's collected from their own backyards. And although I recently learned that a city composting facility exists, and although our municipal website (cabq.gov) assures its readers that collected 'green waste' is used in local parks, I'm skeptical. Due to the degree of manicuring that I see in almost all of this city's parks (where it does not seem very likely that composted organic material would fit with those mowed expanses of grass, which should not even exist in New Mexico). And due to the astonishing numbers of garbage bags that I've been seeing all over town, on my daily delivery routes. I'm skeptical that this is a city ready to recycle on such a level. Some "single family dwellings" have been supporting black-bag populations of over 20 by my count, thanks to the fantastic efficiency of hired leaf-blowers and the level of disconnect that requires every fallen object to be removed from the "landscape". Without any realization that it's part of that landscape for a reason. Part of a system created to recycle itself beautifully every fall, by means of the natural elements which people have renamed "waste". These homes, in fact, are in some of the city's most prosperous neighborhoods. But this kind of occupation of a space -- depriving one's homeground of the very materials that sustain its wellbeing -- is in my view (and Wendell Berry's) a poverty of the most essential kind.

So at this point, 20-30 large bags of "waste" have found a new home in my garden, which is about a quarter of an acre. The goal is to sheet-mulch as much of the area as possible, before the ground freezes and before the bags are all taken away from the curbs. (The next best thing for the land, I'm hoping, since I moved into the place too late in the year to think about cover crops.) Opening each plastic package, once on site, has been just a little Christmas-like. Many of the bags were filled with clean, dry cottonwood leaves that sang with a lovely raspy rustle as they sifted out. Three or four from the first house held the remains of somebody's-last-year's garden: mummified chile and tomato plants, which perhaps will tell their sun-stories to the bare ground as it waits for its own turn to support new life. One bag spilled out a cascade of elm seeds: our favorite garden plague around here. That one went right back to the trash. Another bag turned out to be filled with fresh green English ivy cuttings. Since the property where I live is surrounded by bare chainlink fences that could use some cover, I filled a 5-gallon bucket with some of the vines to see if they'll root and be transplantable later.

The next step in the mulching process was going to be an unimaginable number of trips with a heavy bucket, to water it down and give the decomposition process a jump-start. Since at present my only garden hose would be better used as a drip-irrigation system, so cracked and full of holes it is. And since in New Mexico we don't normally count on precipitation to help these processes along. But, happily, this morning proved me wrong in that regard. It's raining today: a precious, light, silvery fall that I think is what the Navajos call "female rain". The kind that brings no pressure or destructive force -- only quiet nurture. I was on the way out the door to work, but when I saw the rain I ran outside in my work clothes, and ripped open another dozen of the still-bagged leaves. Scattered them on the beds that were uncovered, and left the rain (with much gratitude) to do the rest of the work for me. Let the decomposition commence. Let the rot begin. Let death have its original, rightful place after the season of life and growth. Let Creation's gifts have their respect again, reclaimed from the denial of this consumptive, disposable, and (saddest of all) forgetful society. And let the giving earth offer the renewing work that it's here -- if we let it -- to do for us.