Communion

Walking, walking, I am only

finally, a self and soon no self

walking...

the gift of now is moving off the map

and out of time's entanglement

awed and stealthy, I approach

great spiral-branching ponderosa

press third eye to its broad trunk and hope

for sudden rush of visioning of all this tree has

known above ground and below

Nothing rushes in. It's All Good.

Only, then, a souvenir

a slip of bark from this soft lap of earth

It's Sunday and this is my only communion

my one small sliver of thanksgiving

my stolen bite of fruit forbidden

inclusion scarce but never all denied

never All denied

on the rising path I meet others

all are wrapped in their own silence

offer them quiet, cautious greeting

wary of disturbing that inherent peace

where they've for just one moment found themselves

if my souljourney's baggage gets too heavy

if the weight of all its labels (past and present)

and their sad centuries of accumulating loss

is too much heartache to carry further

(and if I need replacements for the set)

there's one I'd maybe yet engage

not for identity – that's another story

but for the dialogue that labels,

if used carefully, unlock

the word is Pagan

in all intriguing senses of its use

one who lives closer to the ground

outside the city, declining borders

the outsider, who's "not one of us”

and one who best knows Earth for her Divine

and one who doesn't know.

Voice of conquerors, establishers, insiders, will identify me

as they have before, as Other

I'll put my lot in with the notknowing

that beautiful limbo that's already been my home

all these unravelling and remaking years

I'll testify: I've known the Nothing –

it's been a good force

perhaps a God force

certainly a kind forgiving and embracing one.

Out of the treebasin, back on the plateau

The clouds to the west all have silver linings.

Where does that perspective come from?

Why linings? Why only within?

I am the one inside, for now, just opposite the silver.

I am wrapped in cloud, and looking out into the Light.

Wind presses on me, crawls into my lungs.

resuscitates, and whispers, BREATHE.

Thoughts go out to all the fellow travellers

who too are rich in nothing

who might embrace the label of know-Nothings

we've taught each other just by being

no more than our selves

with no more than we know

teachers, companions, portals to the infinite

in light of their own looking to light

walking blind with the sun in their eyes

walking on the true inside, looking out

calling me out of my shadow

into brilliance, and still calling

if

for Wayne, my brother on the Journey...

If some wise voice had told us

back in the beginning

run this far

dream this conscious

work the body to this end of exhaustion

we would do it, willingly

If the soul could make love

If the heart alone could create connection

we would already live

in such a sparking sparkling web of linking

of soul-sharing, of bright thinking

to leave enlightened abstract teachings

dull and lightless by comparison

No distance travelled will find us there

only ever more here – our truer goal

no river of tears will sail us

though it might avail us of the greater Flow

this is a journey each must see through

and we will in time and freedom from illusions

see through it indeed

and we will bring

to whatever other side of this

such heartfire as is seldom lit

such intention as deprivation only can distill

such Beauty as this sleeping world still dreams

and that – Love willing –

some kindred in this life's time

will have deep privilege of returning

wondering

Will wonders

never cease

opening

pain to perception

dull to quickening

knowing to nothing

moment to ever

Will disconnect ever give

way to connection

revealing

this vast secret of collective

guarded mystery of belonging

inside joke of interdependence

Life does give

and I am given over

and over

but cannot seem to really offer

Love does make

and I am unmade

and remade

a thousand wrenching times

I would even say reborn

still knowing next to nothing

of love or of making

How do people find it

possible to spin these sticky webs

and keep on living in them

How give all to weaving

these fragile finite fraying lives

then unravel them and start again?

How such facile words

of any life or lives outside of this

when this one shudders, shivers

grinds its gears

slips out of Motion and back in

and reincarnates here in this continuum

yet again

Life gives

Whose life is this? It's one crazy waking dream. But if it's mine, I want to keep it...I think....

This time last night Life and I were not on the best of terms. Those cold currents of experience it can bring in its flow. Undertows, at times. What seemed like a simple check-in with one of my housemates (who I see about once a week) suddenly expanded into an astonishing list of failures and offenses I had committed against her, both inadvertent and intentional. Half of which were not events I recognized or even remembered. The rapid escalation of hurt, and the seeming one-sidedness of the perspective, was like too many relationships out of my past, and too many memories crowded into the moment, totally uninvited. My mother, for 7 years of tragedy, blame, and drama. The ex who wouldn't give up, and was never wrong. The best friend of 10 years who turned on me, with a similar list of unforgivables. The other ex, who broke up with me by email with no warning, no explanation, and no room to talk about it anymore. After 20 minutes of this shock from my housemate, attempting various responses while trying to hold off the inner demons, I left the house barely holding it together. Forcing out the few clear words of explanation I could find, that may or may not have made any sense.

This probably sounds like victim talk. God, I hope not. Of course, all these people in my life had their perspectives. Their reasons. Their deep roots, and the earth they were growing in. Of course, I had a part, because I'm far from perfection myself. Of course, we can't ever truly know another's pain. But what hurts, and the reason the hurt is deep and slow to heal, is that in all but the final case, of the past situations, I put heart and soul and guts and sweat and tears into trying to work it out. And it wasn't enough. Sometimes, we just can't know another's pain. Sometimes, we don't get to know anything at all. But I wish to God I could know why I keep getting so closely connected with people who repress, who store up such intense hurt, and then unleash it, in this way. There's gotta be something I'm supposed to learn from this.

But after way too many years, I am finally finding it possible, if not to do perfect communication under pressure, at least to ask for a few things that I need. When the weight of that pressure gets too heavy to carry alone. This has literally taken all of my life, so far, to learn. But last night, and today, I remembered, just a little bit. I held up my hands and said, to Life and to a few good friends: Can I have a kind listening ear, and a safe space for a couple hours? Can I have a few minutes of your thoughtful feedback, over the longdistance phone? Can I have another of those hugs that lifts my spirits so well? And, in every case, Life - and the friends - said, Yes, you can.

And English class, this morning, was a beautiful, peaceful, workable space in the chaos. We were three, for the first time today. Both women are motivated, curious, open, fun. Ready to go. Lots of questions, lots of initiative, lots of tangential discussion of the oddities of spelling and grammar (try owning all of your language's irregular verbs sometime, if you want to ease into engagement with the collective weight and obstruction of the human condition).

I hope I make it worth their while, these 2 hours a week. They're sure gonna make it worth mine. And keep me on my toes, too. L., the new student, smiled at me using scraps of paper to write spelling examples on, and volunteered to bring her kid's little chalkboard to the next class.

Go with the flow. The flow was something to be trusted again, by today. Let the conversations build, and rebuild the moments. Let the students create the class, too, with their questions and needs and interests. I knew that flexibility is what would make tutoring work, but didn't really feel it happening until today. We were talking so much, covering so much new ground, that we didn't get to most of the activities I had planned. Have to save health vocabulary, phoning the doctor, and Body Parts Bingo til next week.

inauguration

Is this just one of the odd come-together events happening around the country today, or is this just us - our little remnant of the wild wild West - here in Santa Fe? The only public place I could find to watch the Inauguration was a bar. It opened at 8 a.m. for the occasion, and served some drinks even. At any rate, it was a fine, shoulder-to-shoulder human celebration.

There was a little of the jeering and the bashing that I so hope we can get past now. Guess the people gotta vent their feelings, in whatever vocabulary they've got. When Bush appeared on the many TV screens around the room, there was a round of "BOO"'s, and a local drag queen (one of the hosts of the event) ran to the nearest screen and lobbed a shoe at it. Alright, that was a great move. A bit later, Cheney was rolled out in his wheelchair (wow! The implications - the vindications - of that sight. That's just too heavy to speak of, man). The voice on the PA announced the - sorry, I didn't catch the proper terminology - the un-swearing? swearing off? of the Vice President. A guy next to me yelled out, "CHENEY GOES FIRST!" and there was a cheer that shook the rafters. Alright, now we're done with the jeers...

On TV, one of the commentators gets caught up in the moment: "This is ALL REALLY HAPPENING."

Best crowd shot, on the Mall: a guy throws open his jacket to show off his T-shirt, which reads, "YES WE DID".

I won't try to recall all the beautiful lines from President Obama's address. Only to say I heard that sweet approaching music of Change, even now. Not just the change of government, of organization, of legislation. The change of essential things, within us and around the world. Let it be so...

Mobius trip

This latest bout with word/play (I'm not sure yet who won) was provoked by a passing disgruntled thought: is anybody out there actually reading my other blog, or am I putting all these earnest ideas into the Current for no reason? I know, it's mostly just ideas. But some of them do connect to tangible and relevant actions. Then I turned the thought back on myself: do these ideas really have anything to do with me? Can I have or claim any kind of attachment to them, when I'm barely playing a walk-on role in the human race right now?

My goal was to have these two blogs, one for the inner/creating/feeling world, and one for the outer/doing/change-effecting one. But, not for the first time, engagement with the social-political realm (apart from the most basic, necessary work like food rescue) just feels like the ego seeking a soapbox. And, living apart at present from a community, I'm really not doing that much. This page is presuming to have and to share these fascinating divergent sides of me, but maybe, in fact, I've only got one side to speak of: the inside.

Thinking of one-sided entities brought Mobius strips to mind, and I looked the term up online (if it's on wikipedia, it's the truth, right? Ha.). What follows is partly a wikipedia found-poem. Probably too I should cite a much earlier influence, and thank Neil Peart for tuning me in, with many a Rush lyric, to all the wonderfully analogous elements of humanity and science. An influence further nurtured by five years' work in the field of artificial intelligence research and computer language processing, surrounded by geeky geniuses and their excellent wordplaying abilities. So, this might not be my final answer, if there is one, but it's an effort to settle the internal argument – am I really doing anything here that matters? - at least for the moment...

And, on that note of seeking and significance: happy First Day of Aquarius!

Just one initiating twist

creates uncategoried shape

with one true edge

one boundary – though paper-thin -

one persevering surface

one open pathway returning

to beginning with no borders crossed

with all the effort we expend

to define, improve, identify, and differentiate

does any making, turning or intent

manifest a truly expanded state...

with all the soul I test and tend

resisting always unexamined word and deed

do my best turns of phrase, of thought, of seeing

have really any offering to this world's need?

wikipedia describes a Mobius strip

as “a non-orientable surface”

by which is meant a figure

that cannot be repositioned

to appear its own mirror image

in fact, wiki further affirms

that the shape may be considered

“the source of all non-orientability.”

(Hard words for us lopsided self-reflective shapes

still seeking our trajectory on this plane)

However, the figure gains high praise

for its many practical applications

“A device called a Mobius resistor

is an electronic circuit element which has

the property of canceling its own inductive reactance.”

(Certainly a tendency that I would like to cancel

and someday reroute those wary generalizing energies

toward more productive, less reactionary use of power)

And this:

“The Mobius strip is the configuration space

of two unordered points on a circle.

Consequently, in music theory,

the space of all two note chords

known as dyads

takes the shape of a Mobius strip.”

(I cannot begin to fathom this

but the effort is a joyful dance through imagination)

The expositions continue and

the links are nearly limitless

and let us not begin even to click on

compact resonators

helical magnetism

high transition temperatures or

inductionless resistance

charged particles (it reads)

caught in earth's magnetic field

can move on a Mobius band

(it's all one Everything, always here, right?)

Yes! See:

“the Universal Recycling Symbol

is a form of Mobius strip”

all this rich data

embodies just a moment's idle theory:

all my efforts to grow and to acquire depth

still seem to leave me flat, one-sided

and unevenly reflective

but that one side's the inner side

and at the least it knows its source and inclination

though I may traverse it at ant-speed

with no attachment to point of arrival

despite the wish of ego and ideals for

clear and tangible accomplishment

there may not be an outer plane here

I only really know this one developable surface

rejoined at the center and wound around infinity

Tibetan monks and indie church

Ho boy. I went to church today. But, let me explain.

The motivation to visit this place, a local indie church that meets in a conference room of an office park, was their notice in the paper: 10 Tibetan monks would be their guests today, presenting "Sacred Chanting and multiphonic singing". The monks are in town on a national tour in support of their "refugee monastery" (their fascinating and sadly descriptive term) in southern India. The church is a DIY effort, organized by volunteers and led by consensus, that seeks to affirm the sacredness of all spiritual paths and the divine in each person. A great intention, for sure. But I could tell right away that my antisocial side (waxing toward the full, lately) was gonna have a little trouble getting through this. Friendly greetings, eye contact, so many hands to shake, optimistic brotherlylove singing with piano and guitar. And, too: fluorescent lights. Straightback chairs. Such close physical proximity to others. Yeah, this isn't easy. I want to leave already, and it's only just started. But at the same time, it's worth the effort of being here, in the grip of all these shallow discomforts, for this little insight: much of the stuff that makes me, and I think many others, uncomfortable in churches has nothing really to do with churches. It's the same stuff that makes me uncomfortable in classrooms, and in banks, and in doctor's offices: the well-meaning but artificial "comforts" of climate control, organization, predictability, and interpersonal social constructs that we've taken on by living far too much in cities, and buildings, and institutions. In structures, of whatever kind.

But I had to stay, and not only because this seemed a worthy and unusual human experience. I had to stay because of a dream. Years ago, after I had left the sad, sterile, intellect-suffocated church in which I spent all my younger years, I embarked on its healing and my own, in a series of dreams. In one of these, a row of monks, in coarse brown robes that looked Franciscan, stood at the front of the old church, and bathed all its members in a wash of light and sound, humming and chanting that shook the floors, stretched the walls like they were breathing, lit up the roof with a light like the sun's, both more brilliant and infinitely more gentle, and reverberated in my chest like ocean, like deep earth, like sound as a living being, even after I woke up. This was years before I had ever heard throat singing, or any monks' chants. I didn't even know much about Franciscans then. I only knew, for the first of many many times, that there was beautypower and lifebreath out there, that could so outshine and heal through all the impoverished experiences I had so far endured in the name of religion. This dream assured me, and was one of many such knowings that kept me alive to the hopeful search. So. I had to stick it out, today, and see if the singing of these monks, in a setting of similiarly absurd contrast, would prove as vibrant, as life-bringing.

And it does. The monks most definitely erase the momentary unease of the rest of the service. A solid line of scarlet and saffron, one singing bowl, one small chime, and one microphone for the monk who seems to be the lead voice. And a wave of sonic healing that swooshes across and shushes and subsumes the room for 25 minutes. Deep, vibrating, round tones, like a massive engine powering up, that I associate with the Tuvan throat singing with which I'm more familiar. Solid middle-level hums and beams of sound, sometimes shaped into syllables, the most frequently occurring of which sounds like "JOY". And a thread of higher pitch that weaves in and out of the music, barely audible, often like a coyote's howl, and sometimes very much like the spirally static noise you might get while tuning through an old radio late at night, in between stations.

They move easily, eyes closed, between all these realms of sound, standing in complete stillness. The song is one long, spacious house with many different rooms, which are not separated by doors. At one moment the middle-hum rises, dives, lofts and the JOY! swoops toward the ceiling, almost gets away! like a balloon a kid has just let go. But it's caught, reeled in, smoothed down to silence, and suddenly the chant is over. They give us the blessing of 5 minutes of total silence afterward, for which the entire room is tangibly grateful, so intense was the sound, and its leaving, and our need now for a space to find re-entry.

I ended my visit as I've done more than once at such gatherings: sneaking out, from my last-row seat, before it ended. So as not to endure any more kindness from friendly extroverted strangers. So as not to lose contact with the healing just brought to the mind by way of the body. So as to continue the dream of grace, life, and healing, that travels so far into the places where words just don't go.