Friday, February 24, 2012

spinning missing vulture

somewhere to write the words--that think themselves out loud when in the activity of moving the fingers across the keyboard--its a kind of truth serum, i suspect.  its a kind of wording of words that order themselves when the opportunity is made--when the intention is set for them to come.  i am here now.  i am here in this hearing and clearing saying what there is to be said.  i didn't know--didn't realize the real lies i was living.  so many still to fall away.  i am learning to tell the uncomfortable truths.  i am learning not to hide or apologize or pretend or take back any of the things said in anger--as they are finally said when the anger gets to live itself out.  like fire.  fire.  can you imagine telling a little fire to stay little--when it knows it is supposed to grow up and be a forest fire? to clear the landscape? to re-fertilize the earth? can you imagine, if that little fire was turned into a plastic candle? with a fake light? how did all the light in the world get to be fake light? what is this thing caging electricity has done to us all? do you remember when we had to protect the fire? to carry it with us from place to place inside a glass hurricane, sure it would live between us all the day long as we brought our spirits to the room of our togetherness and let loose all that would come unglued? why is it we glue down the most precious bits of ourselves? keep them carefully tucked away? oh, yes--so the ones who can't see won't.  and the ones who can see and would steal what is beautiful and make it dirty, lonely, ugly, bad, wrong, won't get the chance.  we keep what is beautiful.  we keep it tucked in forests and hiding in caves and buried deep in the darkest earth.  we keep what is beautiful in storehouses of locked away.  we keep what is treasured in chests so heavily laden with armor and locks and keys that the keys have all lost their way to the locks that unlock the treasures so buried inside the coffins of unbreatheable that live all the way away from what is whole and good in a living life.  i am here, in my living life.  i am here in my fashioned living room.  i am here, looking at all i have been a party to creating--things on a shelf, stuff in a jar, storehouses of wine and possibility, courage, loss, lost.  i am here.  on the precipice of now.  having witnessed, in my way, the changing of the guard, the passing of an era, the letting go of that which has let go of this life.  i am choosing my hallways carefully now--as that is where all the living is--the hallways of coming and going from destination to destination, chair to chair, futon to futon, life to life.  art to life to work to life to train to life to corridor and hallway of happenstance connection to holding chamber of teeth and tongue--if i commit to a schedule of performances at open mics around the bay will i be famous in a year? will i be a hack? hackneyed or hockneyed or lockneed or lock jawed or lonely? will i be lonely? if i let myself be alone? whitney took the pills and drank the booze and let herself slip into oblivion.  it is such an interesting slip, is it not? i am interested in tongues and slipping and the accidental honesties they tell alongside lies.  i can not find my vulture.  our vulture is missing.  was safe in the freezer and now gone.  i have interrogated the interrogatable--the one mind spinning in the mind spinning place of the up up stairs.  i am ready for that mind to leave.  it must take its body with it.  i want my vulture back.  i eat the pomegranate seeds covered in dark chocolate from trader joe's.  i prepare for my many meetings that take place this day.  i begin at my beginning to begin again at reclaiming my life, my things, my space, my stories, my work.  mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.  mine.  it is a mine--this life.  i am still and always descended from miners working the coal in newcastle digging up the first dark stuff of the earth.  coal lead to diamonds and diamonds to oil--but there is salt in there, too, isn't there.  there is always salt in the wounds of the earth.  can you feel it? taste it? perhaps it is time, again, to pay a visit to the sea.  ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, where is this life taking me? a boat, i think--my queendom for a boat and a moat and a castle when i want it and a draw bridge i can draw--follow directions--every day i write my book.

and here it is today again.

Friday, February 10, 2012

working it out: the presence of absence

here we are in the middle of this space and place of possibility--working out the willingness to do and not do what can be done and not done in this undone of doable what? i am thinking of daniel goldstein's sculptures and the presence of absence he talks about and the surrounding halo of medicine bottles and lumped glass and string and the architectural element of the grate or gird or grid that allows all the places that hang down to hang down and i begin at this beginning to wonder what happens in the happening bits.  what is this space and place of wonder? what is this hour of now? what is this courage? courageous? what is this real of real realing its reel of time--wound up in strings--casting into the endlessness of rivers not yet crossed--what can come of this? thisness? what can come of this place and way of waves? what can come of this coming? and going? what can be here in the now of this container that contains what? precious heart. pumping heart. bloody heart. inhale and exhale of breath.  wider dream.  worldfilled thing of things that thing themselves into being things that attempt what is human? is human any attempt at being it? is human the animal of itself? is human the component parts of itself? is there more compassion in a human once a pig's heart has replaced the broken pump of the human one? is there love? in this space? of trying? working? moving? dreaming? thinking into the feeling of something? love? wonder? life? intimidating life? feeling life? real life? reeling life? what is this place of thisness? what is this journey? what is this safety? what is this place? what is this courage? what is this courageousness? what is this hour of now unfolding across minutes and seconds of time in the mystery of what can not be mysterious in the something of spoken light.  in the unspoken shadows, there is still a place to stock and store the dream.  in the spoken light, there is exposure, visibility, seeing things that can be seen.  is this the way of it, then? is this the here and now of it? is this the wilderness of what was wild? is this the thing? that things itself? onto? into? courage? i am here, now, where i have always been.  i am here.  in this here there is the wilderness and wondrousness of love.  it is all and only love.  but it doesn't always feel like it.  the presence of absence...the absence of presence...the willing forgetfulness of what was once whatever it was that was what it was when it was what it was.  here is the now of it.  hearing itself speak up for itself in its own space of what lives.  here.  what lives here lives.  ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, so that is it.  what lives here lives.

this, too, is alive.  still.  in the now of this hour.  in the space of this time.