hi

dear blog,
i feel like we've fallen a bit out of touch... but i want you to know i'm still here, and my fingers still work.

i'm listening to the nip/tuck soundtrack. the song is "so damn beautiful." what a beautiful sentiment. someone is so beautiful they're damn beautiful. so damn beautiful. does this speak to the power we feel someone has over us when we find them attractive? the vulnerability that we experience? perhaps being in love is the state of being not only mutually vulnerable but hopefully equally assured of the other's vulnerability and interest?

the interesting thing the actual state of in love, however we define it. does it diminish? does it deepen? this is the question... and what circumstances lead to those states?

do we really expect love to last? in some cases, it seems to. i'm wondering if in those cases the couple experiences continual growth, probably despite what they share economically... i would think they would have to be mutually invested in something other than a bank account... maybe vacations? kids? pets? but those are outer things... is there a set of conditions/compatibility that leads to the continued positive emotions?

my therapist pete said ideally both members of the couple maintain one another at their highest level of happiness and function (while still being human)... i guess in order to do this, both parties would have to feel secure... i was looking at a friend's e-harmony site, and one of the guys of her potential suitors said he's looking for 100%... this is an interesting idea... he said he could handle 80% or 90%... how would he know, say, if she was really 75%, and would he then be out of there? he said he wanted to allow for just off-days... are those days really off, though? maybe those are the real days... this is sounding pessimistic...

pete also says that you should make decisions regarding relationships from a positive place... this is assuming one can always get to a positive place regardless of their status within the relationship... hopefully this is true... but sometimes people are in these constant states of turmoil, though... what then?

well, turmoil probably does wane in times of pleasure... does that mean we should privilege pleasure? i think i have all kinds of questions...

i cleaned an important instrument tonight. i think clarity could be a cool name for a child... this cd is quite sexy to be listening to myself... i'm liking it... i find myself a fun person to hang out with by myself... this is a cool thing to learn... witnessing my own consciousness appear on a computer screen is sort of fun.

i'm taking a fiction class, and jack kerouac has some great advice... wanna hear some?

(lyrics: you give me fever when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight... fever in the morning... fever all through the night... everybody's got the fever (wouldn't that be nice)... that is something you oughta know (they say)... (they say) fever started long ago... (i guess so to have such a world population)....

if you could adopt a child for free, like you would never have to pay anything (all paid for by the government maybe, even toys/education) -- would you? well, it would be cool if we could take shifts with the kids... like there would be a pool of kids that we could go pick up (not that we would keep them in pools, but they could use them)... and kids would be exposed to all kinds of good people because we would be all kinds of people... but, in the long-run the idea of parents is okay... not that we stay connected to our parents like a placenta forever, but it is nice that these people who hopefully loved each other in some kind of way get a kick out of you coming from their genes together, so they give you more attention than anyone else and hope you develop well... i just think we'd get better outcomes if all of that were free... i just wish everything were free... could an economy work like that? where people volunteer to do things? i'll live in the big house, i'll live in the small one, i'll build a new one with that wood... like if we all just worked what we felt like working... why should anyone's time be more valuable than anyone else's? why should we have all of this anxiety over money? god, it's crazy. i mean we live once... now, without money, maybe we'd all be volunteering to travel all the time, and then we'd run out of gas, but some people would enjoy learning about new forms of energy... i mean, it would just be a learning/experiencing world...

what do you think about dancing? why will we do it by ourselves, or maybe in front of some people, but not others? does this go back to the idea of having one lover with whom we might have a kid, and then we're parents together, but only the lovers can see each other dance (or not, if they're embarrassed, but maybe they only have sex in the dark)

i think the world could be really different if we start thinking about it/our experiences really differently...

i like the idea of positive thoughts... i used to think it was bologna for people to try to think positive thoughts... like, hey, if you're not feeling it, don't fake it... but we do choose which positive thoughts we have, and we do want to be going in a positive direction all the time...

it's interesting how people choose between such positive thoughts as, for example, i'm gonna love this guy, i'm gonna move to california, i'm gonna apply for this job, i'm gonna live in this place... the idea of intuition, following yourself is something... to make decisions, i try to imagine how i'd feel if i did the other thing... or, i might get in my car and see if i'm ready to drive to california. if not, i think about what i'm staying here for and how powerful that is... if we didn't have money to worry about, we'd all work like this. but, i'm afraid i'd be in santa fe one week, portland the next... i'm just wondering where we'd all end up if we traveled freely... if we didn't have money, then maybe no one would have to be a nurse... but if we had good public transportation and we took good care of ourselves, maybe we wouldn't need nurses? well, some people might still enjoy "nursing"...

we would still have musicians for sure... would we have actors? would it be nearly as fun if they weren't being paid and could travel freely? i wonder if we could ever get rid of money. like what if we just said this doesn't count anymore. i guess it would come down to growing food... but again, i just like the volunteer idea. how could we get that passed?

last word for now

A thousand half-loves
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.

Lovers don't finally
meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

OPEN SECRET

Love is an open secret, the most obvious thing in the world and the most hidden, with no why to how it keeps its mystery. Sufis say the genesis of lovers meeting is God's sweetest secret.

There is a truth that comes with following the energies, and there is a love, a truth-knowing essence, in the innermost heart.


Bawa Muhaiyaddeen says,
Do not ever fight or argue, because for God there are no fights and no arguments. For that One everything is love; everything is in the form of love, compassion, and truth. May God provide you with the blessings and grace to live in that state.

TWO WAYS OF RUNNING

A certain man had a jealous wife and a very
appealing maidservant.
The wife was careful not to leave
them alone, ever.
For six years they were never left
in a room together.
But then, one day at the public bath
the wife remembered she'd left
her silver basin at home.
"Please, go get the basin,"
she told her maid. The girl jumped to the task knowing she
would finally get to be alone with the master.

She ran joyfully. She flew. Desire took them both
so quickly they didn't latch the door.
With great speed
they joined. When bodies blend in copulation,
spirits also merge.
Meanwhile, the wife back
at the bathhouse is washing her hair.
"What have I done!"
I've set cotton wool on fire! I've put the ram in
with the ewe!"

She washed the clay soap off and ran, fixing
her chador about her as she went.
The maid ran for love.
The wife ran out of jealousy and fear.

There is a great difference.
A mystic lover flies moment to moment. The fearful
ascetic drags along month to month.
The length of a day
for a lover may be fifty thousand years!
There's no way to understand this
with your mind. You must burst open!
Love is a quality
of God. Fear is an attribute of those who think
they serve GOd,
but actually they're preoccupied with the penis
and vagina.
Rule-keepers run on foot along the surface.
Lovers move like lightning and wind.
No contest.
Theologians mumble, rumble-dumble, necessity and free
will, while lover and beloved
pull themselves into each other.
The worried wife
reaches the door and opens it.
The maid is
disheveled, flushed, unable to speak.
The husband begins his five-times
prayer. As though experimenting
with clothes, he holds up some flaps and edges. She sees
his testicles and penis so wet,
semen still dribbling out,
spurts of jism and vaginal juices
of the maid.
The wife slaps him
on the side of the head,
"Is this the way a man prays,
with his balls? Does your penis
long for union like this?
Is that why her legs are so covered
with this stuff?"
These are good questions.
People who repress desires
often turn, suddenly,
into hypocrites.

sacrifice

Attar says that if you want to learn the secrets of love that your soul can know, "You will sacrifice evertyhing. You will lose what you have considered valuable, but eventually you'll hear the voice you've most wanted to hear saying, Yes. Come in."

Another Sufi, Junnaiyd, recommends that we JUMP! "Plunge headfirst into the ocean of your loving. Then look around patiently for the pearl that is yours."

Really there is no end to love's unfolding, and no one can tell you how yours should or will go.

Everyone has in them the great love that Rumi's poetry comes out of. It is the given that never goes away.

Grief

Fierce Grace (now #1 in my Netflix queue), a film about Ram Dass's life and particularly the stroke, focuses on the use of the starkest tragedies, not just his, to open the heart and help us find the vital core of consciousness, the soul... In it, a woman's lover dies, and in her dream she asks him where he has gone. He says, "Listen. The love we had was wonderful, but that is small peanuts to what's ahead for you, and when that love comes, I'll be part of it.

Ram Dass (according to Rumi's translator) ecstatically tastes the truth of what the dead lover says. No sticky possessiveness, no hanging on to the past. Grief opens us to more love, and the new love builds with the former, and there's miraculous expansion. Rumi's translator says that this rare movie gives off the fragrance of enlightened love.

NO BETTER GIFT

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry, at once, quickly,
for God's sake!

Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching
will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.

~

This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

~

The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's a window
that opens from one mind to another,

but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.

~

A thousand half-loves
must be forsaken to take
one whole heart home.

the superabundance of ordinary being

Says Rumi's translator: Love is the connection with spirit, and one way it flows is through form. That's the state of rapture Rumi praises, the joy of being inside an intersection with the divine, which is what this world is.
"Truly being here is glorious," says Rilke in the Seventh Duino Elegy, and in the Ninth,"
Isn't it the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may
shudder with joy?

This resonant trembling of the earth with lovers, if the suberabundance of being...

Response to Your Question

Why ask about behavior when you are soul-essence,
and a way of seeing into presence!
Plus you're with us!
How could you worry?
You may as well free a few words from
your vocabulary.
Why and how and impossible. Open
the mouth-cage
and let those fly away.
We were all born by
accident, but still this wandering caravan
will make camp in perfection.

Forget the nonsense categories of there and here,
race, nation, religion,
starting point and destination.

You are soul, and you are love,
not a sprite or an angel or a human being!
You're a
Godman-womanGod-manGod-Godwoman!
No more questions now
as to what it is we're doing here.


~~~~

If you want what visible reality can give,
you're an employee.

If you want the unseen world,
you're not living your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,
but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is
love's confusing joy.

Rexroth's late afternoon love poem

"When We With Sappho"

Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Your grace is as beautiful as a sleep.

You move against me like a wave
That moves in sleep
Your body spreads across my brain
Like a bird-filled summer;
Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
But like a nimbus that hovers
Over every other thing in all the world.



Sufis say there are three ways of being with the mystery: prayer, then a step up from that, meditation, and a step up from that, conversation, the mystical exchange they call sohbet.

Who You Talking To?

Rumi's translator says:

I have a friend who, when she wants to know who I am seeing, who I am in love with, asks, Who you talking to? The exchange of deep friendship makes a fine entrance into love and trust, into the mysterious action that moves through the eyes, the voice, the heart.

Rumi wonders, Can you see these escapees, the ones who have gotten free of their personalities and into the true self? He celebrates the freedom of those escapees, how their friendship dissolves into everything: what anybody says, whatever happens.

Where You Love From

Look inside and find where a person
loves from. That's the reality,
not what they say.

. . . .

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

. . . .

rumi's wandering

rumi's translator says: "Rumi is way happier than sex and orgasms, his wandering more conscious and free."

~

Excuse my wandering
How can one be orderly with this?
It's like counting leaves in a garden,

along with the song notes of partridges,
and crows. Sometimes organization
and computation become absurd.

~

FIVE THINGS

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist, nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?

So the lover speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

elegy

father meditation
mother yoga
partner of utopia
i give birth
to new layers
of myself
watch myself
blossom
an unfolding lotus

try not to
focus
on the uncertainties
of my own burgeoning
fertile desires
of continuing childhood
amidst a
budding adulthood
loving relationship

while seeds of security
sprout within
soft, white roots
poke their way out
searching for rich soil
free of pesticides
that would wither
my spark
or yours

i want to
be believed
cherished
have my hand held
body caressed
watched with
growing delight
as i dance

give me the security
of tomorrow
visions of
fertile decades
even if you're
not sure
how many
you've got

i want
to take root
here
and grow
not some
continuing stream
but a path
with you whose
yellow brick road
leads in and out
always home
to the same place
as we people
our tribe
together

purple
our hearts
in the blooming
of each others' irises

you are god
and so am i

. . .

for five months
i watched
as we formed
a chrysallis
around an
unexpected
gestating love

one weekend
we wanted to
spend together
i listened furtively
as the calls came in
about your departure

an unexpected arrival
on a sunday

i had a child friend here
to receive you
and we wondered
together
how you would come

you had spent
hours driving
from your first home
to what i hoped
would be your next

as your mind twirled
through your past, present,
future an unknown
but a new destination
tonight

. . .

so many nights
i dreamed
you would be here

now you are
and i know not
what to dream

except that your feet
will keep reaching
beyond the boundaries
of the bed
your soft skin
will stay close
your voice will speak
to me every day
and i will speak, listen,
laugh, stay still, and grow
into my next
formation
let you unfold
into yours

as we dance
and sing the
songs of two hearts
who happened upon
what was bigger
than a mushroom
in a forest
bigger than
a best-selling novel
or a movie on a screen

it was a transformation
of more years
than i have lived
and its duration
direction are uncertain
but now we are
here

. . .

dear flower
lying next to
each other
in the field
of our bed
i tried to give
you my sun
til your sweet
snore grew soft
when i touched
you with love
you wakened
slightly
and i could feel
the waves of
you, your sun
warmed me
with feeling
of your
peaceful force
mind over matter
the persistence
of your freedom-
loving love

a snore
a whinny
is it
a sleeping prayer
for easier breathing?

may not my
lofting dreams
press you
may our stillness
grow
our communion
foster
life, of who
beyond us
we do not know
because it all
matters.

from today's morning almanac (on the way to yoga)

VII

by Wendell Berry

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.

"VII" from the poem "1994" by Wendell Berry, from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997. © Counterpoint, 1998. Reprinted with permission.