The Sentinel

To be a sentinel in the darkest

   silence, of your presence. 
Soft release, a mist of hope
   Inward drawn as essence.

So the breaths of lovers curl
   In moonlight, cast aglow 
Melodic dreams to blend and purl
   A sweet diminuendo.

Wrapped in night, as you sleep

   Soul stirs and comes untied

To lead your dreams to wander

   Far, my heart close by your side.

We can either resigns ourselves to continue to destruct, or concede defeat and rebuild.

…For some the meaning of life is murmured over dinner plates in silent torpor… it’s purpose, startled into realization between clinking wine glasses. For others, it is to see deeply into our present and to skirt the pulsing stars, to find beauty in momentum and embrace our presence in the amber-lit windows that frame the lives of others. Wherever we are heading, is kindly guided by the certainty of where we are now.



Photo: http://www.lostateminor.com/2011/03/08/surreal-storytelling-by-robert-and-shana-parkeharrison/

And I tell you, when you get there – it doesn’t flash like a light, no backlit Hollywood hero on horseback. It mellows in quickly and you feel it, you know? It’s, uh, it’s…well anyway. There’s nothing more important than knowing you can - than knowing what it’s like to give from the WHOLE person you realize you are. You know it the moment you know yourself. Hm. And however much magical beer you – um – drink, if you sprinkle pepper on a rock, it still tastes like a rock… just more peppery.

A Gold Dipped Metaphor

Were it not for a volcano exploding in Asia and shifting the earth for moment,

I’d not have caught my balance on a cliffs edge in North America.

So certain was I that plate tectonics was my guardian angel;
and why not, gravity has served me mercifully in the past.

I snuck behind her back to do battle with the daemons that she didn’t see hiding behind her angels.
Deep dumb blinking of trauma all around me.

Where the wounded go for comfort, to ruminate and heal, their “state of existence”
I’m not particularly dogmatic...I hybridize everything.

...and then I choose to spend a month writing on a beach.
For some reason, quality is an undertone felt more than seen. And we behave in undertones.

Jovial languages westernized for straight men. His was a plan to vanquish the human trade industry...I was a ploy. I don’t speak Chinese. But anyway, I have spent just a little time in a lot of places I didn’t want to go

and I kept quiet; there is no sense rushing a world war, right?

My grandparents were incredibly kind and generous. They have passed – dead – dead for their good deeds. They were cooks with equity in the casserole...

Standing before a great mountain skirted lake, steaming for photographers, is just a reminder of a perfect place for the fulcrum of Nirvana; one that balances the condition of living responsibly and loving uncontrollably.

I really don’t know anything at all actually!

Yes, three words in our feeble attempt to bottle the jeanie only seem to whisk it along as the world grows more tender beneath our feet.

Like philosophy seeks to destroy itself, I want a gold dipped metaphor for why NOT to write.

Ode to the Conquerer of Great Distance and Time

Prelude:  As We Arrive

Your love found me, as if two suns rose from the east and west at the same time.  Where their rays met would be indistinguishable, and why even understand it. What we feel in touch is not skin and when we kiss it is not your lips meeting mine; it is not our bodies intertwined, nor mere pulsing words landing softly in our ears...it is not the nostalgic aroma, or the groaning floorboards beneath our ambling feet.  None of this, for what meets at the nexus is the soulful intent of a love that traces back to the timeless depths of your being – a touch that connects an infinite past to an infinite future.  This which we hold dearly, is the untamed wind between us, inhaled in a moment as a prelude to a kiss –exchanged in the warm home of the others heart, and released anew in an effervescing exhale as our lips part. Embraced, our spirits slowly wrestle along the frontiers of unexplored human wilderness; twisting in confluence like eddies playing on the surface of a still night lake; braiding banyan vines cling gently to quell our shivering…our words are sighs of relinquishment to the desperation of loves inexpressible exclamations resonating within caverns of expectation, filled with pristine imaginings.

Interlude:  As We Go

Love is where we go, when we go, how we go and why we go…it’s anguish and rejoice in a timeless dance, spiraling out lingering memories that rain nourishment on as many weeds as colored flowers.  And our lives in this way, are forever sweetly tending to the astounding meaning of subtle acts.  There in a garden we’ll pull the weeds to feed the soil which gives them life and till the dirt that receives the rain to quench the roots.  And as dusk settles in, we’ll sift the flower bed; and we’ll build a breathtaking path of byzantine patterns from the extracted cobbles of an inconvenient past set in mortar mixed from a forever blooming love.

Postlude:  As We Part

That when you feel the cold steel of disquiet awkwardness and your breath has temporarily seized – I will draw in a breath to fill us both up.  …That when words fail you, I will solemnly circle in the swirling eddies of your soul and pluck soft petals of thought as parchment and scribe your poetry with many hues of understanding and kindness.  If your heart is weary and teetering in confusion, I promise to kiss the arcing sun and moon so that as they trade their places through cycles of the days and nights, you are left with both waking and lullaby dreams.  If the circling voices are deafeningly loud or silence becomes your enemy, I will take my post close by your side as your compassionate and soothing warrior, your agile shark…to stir gentle notes on melodies until a beautiful undulating dolphin shoots the waves over sky and moon.

The shelter within, is affixed with all you need to search and restore life, tended by the passion of your own true love, with green thatches to catch and divert the rain and smooth cobbles to line the path for when you are ready to take to the road again.

Destiny worries not for you, you should not worry destiny.  It does not stand in the distance and wait for you, you should spring headlong onto its runner of endless moments and create the trail of your art.  Go, and leave behind you the signs of all your happiness and I will find you.  And if you find yourself having little to leave behind for me to follow, then look up my precious love, because I’m standing right here before you.  Take my hand, I have enough signs to cast for both of us.

Refrain and Fade Out:

For all the love in the world you need
can be fit on the tip of a pin…
as vast as the bounty of earth, wind and sea,
it will sooner get under your skin.

All the Love in the World

All the love in the world we need
    can be fit on the tip of a pin
more than the bounty of earth, sky, and sea

    it would sooner get under our skin.

VALENTINES DAY DIALECTIC 2012

Haecceity

it is what is of what ---  it is that of what is


We always break it down to surrendering to our destiny, be that our compulsions to roll with its uncertain and vicarious plan for ALL of us – OR, in haecceity, to enthusiastically grab up our chattels and trek on in vigilance toward a quite specific future moment held firmly in our INDIVIDUAL perceptions. It would seem that we cannot surrender to destiny, but to only our choices. And for others, perhaps it’s just a bittersweet surrender to numb ourselves to the zeal of an evangelist, who’s destiny is to align toward themselves everything their path, like iron filings to a passing magnet. But then again, aren’t our choices made from the same "stuff" of destiny. 



There are infinite directions taken by infinite souls, each an individual ray of light emanating from the very center of a large translucent glass sphere; each inevitably intersects the glass at an infinite number of unique locations, in boundless patterns. The path within the sphere is variegated, streaked with diversity – a bittersweet chaos – the collective quiddity of life. The surface is a layer of self-other revelation, one encased future after another; the universe an atom. We leap like electrons to the next outer shell of realization...seeking stability, answers, or just engagement. And it is among those that travel farthest from the nucleus, those with the most energy, that best characterize their reactions with the world around them. It is ironic, yet fitting, that destiny seems to loosen it’s grip on us the further we journey from it's center; slipping "...the surly bonds of earth…" (no, not Ronald Reagan, but John Gillespie Magee's poem, "High Flight." Note that pilot officer Magee was killed in a midair collision 3 months after writing this, he was only 19 when he died. His poems were inspired by his only true and unrequited love for Elinor Lyon with whom he remained friends…he wrote of her, but chose another deeper relationship… but that is another subject altogether).

The victory in surrendering (to love, to pathos, to greatness, or whatever garb your destiny wears) is that of choosing another human, both for theirs and out of your unique essence, to exclusively share in its (loves) execution before the journey ends. But does it? It is said that love never wanes or ceases to spark from the core, it just persistently seeks to reach the surface – to be seen, to be shared, to be celebrated. 

Love travels in the deep hulls of a human being; and yet we are all quite unseaworthy vessels for such a precious cargo. Perhaps our pilot would agree for those who fly with love.

THE QUIDDITY, (George Herbert)

God, a verse is not a crown,

No point of honour, or gay suit,

No hawk, or banquet, or renown,

Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute.

It cannot vault, or dance, or play,

It never was in France or Spain,

Nor can it entertain the day,

With a great stable or domain.

It is no office, art, or news,

Nor the Exchange, or busy Hall,

But it is that which, while I use,

I am with Thee: and Most take all.

A Night in the Window

“Say that again,”  he said.

Interrupting her sip of beer, she replied,   “mm - say what?”

             “- Say whatever it was you said, because it made a perfect arc between our lips.” 

She just smiled, looking over the top to her bottle,

 “…and THIS is your prelude to a kiss?  And what if love fell like rain from the clouds?” 

He revealed a quick soft smile, for her question was as good as a kiss, and lifting his glass to his lips, he paused,

“…well, that would make you a six year old girl in a new dress and shoes walking down a street filled with mud puddles…”   

She understood.  “Yep, I’d jump in every one!”

The next morning he woke before her, brushed away a trestle of hair and kissed her softly on the cheek.  He rose and made his way to the computer and wrote this as a study of certainty vs. uncertainty in ascertaining the Meaning and Purpose of Life:

…I mused last night…on the meaning of life and what leaves me with the most certainty… that being both birth and death; as well as that which gives me the least certainty, the life that falls in between. And we unfurl parchments of love, like recipes conjured through charts and maps by wayfaring spirits in their navigation of uncertainty; with it’s pendulous swells and troughs, writhing storms to the curved horizon of placidity. In our ecstasy or agony, whichever compels us to reach to the heavens for answers, from the black firmament, rains down the white light of stars. Besotted with beauty, we invent our own answers – swinging angrily at our own words, despairing, disillusioned or disinterested. It is not what we hear, but that we listen – “purpose” is the captain of our ship. The journey is long, and the captain seeks only the safe passage of moments in the timeless sea of uncertainty. The meaning of our lives is unveiled through the examination of purpose in others...the mirror of meaning.

From my dinner table by the window I watched the ambling and noisy passerby’s – and I became deluded by my own idea that happiness is an infrequent preoccupation of life, a proverbial “comma” to a long-winded sentence; a quick paradise of dust kicked up by God stepping through the desert. I thought how a moment of happiness seems to pass so quickly and yet, how our disappointments seem to echo through deep valleys of consciousness. As life progresses there is this proclivity to toil with the recollection of our sadness, leaving us amidst a talus of strife. I asked myself, could it be that the altar of happiness is built on the ruins of sorrow? That the happiness we deserve is measured by the high mark of our grief – and oh how we labor the years to build those layers…

I sat still in the crossfire of clanking from silverware on china. I was peering out into the street through the window, compelled by the din of diners and their thick and expanding cacophony of uncertainty. I leaned closer to the glass, and with bleached out emotion, looked up at the clouds drifting en echelon. I can still make out their blushing in the moonlight, disappearing behind tall building rooftops. Mesmerizing…one wave after the other, lost.

There in the restaurant, something odd began to happen. A break in the mottled night parade of clouds reveals a chorus of stars fading into view until such clarity. Each winks in the implicit silence of heaven and the voices around me begin to rescind. All presence in the room dissipates into the shadows and my eyes fill with starlight as I clench the captains wheel. I could tell that life was about to deliver me into another moment of certainty in an ocean of doubt and I could feel my ship list in the wake while waves leap through the stanchions. Where is my beacon in this night – and how could I be lost in the promise of certainty at a moment like this. Holding fast, the winds whip the sheets and whistle through the halyards; all the while the stars wink on. I was at sea. The darkness hurling everything mystery could offer, I deflected peril with rationale, fought one fear with another greater fear. I leaned forward on the wheel, turning the bow into the wind - keeping my knees slightly bent for balance. The ocean heaves in slow motion like the rising and falling chest of Neptune deeply dreaming. The clanking of swivels and bolt-snaps against the mast tap out a persistent "mayday, mayday" – its slapdash beat is a sweet companion but I’m certain no one hears it but me. And I begin to wish for company even more so than for the seas to calm.

I’m shaking while the ships clamoring rises in chaos – there is no chance she’ll capsize I hear an imaginary voice say. I holler back, “I know! I know!” With my eyes clenched shut to the guiding stars, I pray fiercely as my own self-induced darkness starts to take it’s toll on my spirit. And amidst the rush I begin to make out the faint pulse of the dining room and their murmurs growling through the gusts. I can no longer bear it and my eyes and hands spring open, the wheel slips from my grip and spins furiously, the ship comes about quickly, and the room lurches. I shudder back to reality at the sound of a window rattling – a group of kids run off laughing, they were pounding on it to stir my attention. I was uncertain where I’d been and for how long.

Wincing my eyes to bring the street lamps into focus, I could almost hear their hum of electricity. From across the street, I could feel the amber glow coming from the inside the window at Café Montserrat. I’d returned. I‘d returned. I was here in the “now” with this elusive sense of enlightenment only hinted at by subtle signs of tiny flames lit and rising within my heart. And at that moment, “certainty” happened. Looking out, I saw her, in the window of the café, looking back at me. Transfixed in the moment, her eyes had been locked on mine, twin-cased stars glimmering through deep mahogany brown. In that moment, destiny unraveled in 15 meters and a split second. Gazing through the transparency of the pedestrians passing between our windows, we recognized each other through our journey and I looked up at the stars and then back to see her doing the same – and her eyes returned to mine, filled with tears, that fell as our smiles quivered like crying and laughing all at once.

…For some the meaning of life is spoken in silence over dinner plates… it’s purpose, clinked into realization between toasting wine glasses. For others, it is to see deeply into our present and to sail the pulsing stars, to find beauty in momentum and embrace our presence in the window to the lives of others. Wherever we are heading, is kindly guided by the certainty of where we are now.

...I cannot be removed from Being...

having endured the heat and pressure and time 

to become so crystalline and cardinal. 

Everything in conflux lights a distance - 

                                                yours and mine...