Steven Soderbergh's talk on the state of cinema.

                               A few (too many) words about Ryokan’s Poetry

A little essay thing I wrote, and maybe can act as a kind of precursor to some longer essay that’ll be coming at HTMLGIANT soon:

As a (sometimes, very rarely) teacher of literature, I’m constantly trying to explain to students that they should not figure out what a poem means.  To stop figuring out poems.  To not even think there’s something to figure out. Most of us all know this, but typically people new to poems/literature in general always think of a poem as puzzle (especially in the west) – how do all these parts fit together and what does it all mean?

It’s pretty much the same mistake we make with life. 

That being said, I love playing with a poem’s meaning and making meaning out of myself from the poem, or at other times just being with a poem, while at still other times going deeply into and disappearing with a poem – it all depends on the poem. 

But this is just a little introduction to what I’d really like to talk about for a few minutes: Ryokan and what a Ryokan poem does.  In other words, what Ryokan’s poems do to me.  See, I think it’s a lot more helpful to talk about poetry, and art in general, as a thing which does something to (or maybe better put, with) the audience/reader, or as a thing which is done between audience and artist and art-object, all together at once, doing together, being done.  So, the easiest way to talk about this is to talk about what Ryokan’s poems do to me, this little limited self with his little limited views.  So let’s begin with a line or two from Ryokan, from some of his “Chinese” poems, the first stanza from One Robe, One Bowl:

            One narrow path surrounded by a dense forest;

            On all sides, mountains lie in darkness.

            The autumn leaves have already fallen.           

            No rain, but still the rocks are dark with moss.

            Returning to my hermitage along a way known to few,

            Carrying a basket of fresh mushrooms

            And a jar of pure water from the temple well.

Before I say too much, I want to indicate that I understand that just the idea of talking of poetry like this, which is profound and simple, as clear and pure as the pure water in Ryokan’s jug, is fraught with complexities.  How does one talk about pure water, blue sky?  But I’m a writer and part of my job (and I see it as much more than a job, more than just a hobby, and also, at the same time, of no importance at all) is this: to say that what this poem does to me is make me live some other life, allow a glimpse of some simple and profound and also lonely “way” that is “known to few”; what this poem, two hundred and fifty years old, does is bring me to that “narrow path” on the way to Ryokan’s “hermitage” – it pulls me into this near-winter forest, returning to my (now reading myself as Ryokan; Ryokan and I one) lonely place; what’s paradoxical here is that while the poem transports me to Japan, probably sometime in the late 1700’s, it also makes me fully present now, here, wherever I might be, present with what is, which is just another way of saying the poem gets me gone a little.  Please know, also, that all of this is instantaneous. It just happens, and it’s only upon reflection that I realize (or think I realize) what has happened.  And furthermore, it’s only through language that whatever this poem does instantly in the moment gets turned into a kind of chronological thing (which seems to be three things, all at once, all perfectly simple, but which in language I can only express chronologically and linearly and complexly: 1) it transports me to the past, 2) turns me into a simple hermit, and 3) opens me up to what is, no more me, everything just as it is).  So, this very simple experience with Ryokan’s poem gets turned into something that seems fairly complex upon reflection, and that is sometimes seen as a negative thing: too complex, you know?  But all this complexity really is is my playing with a poem – and this is the thing that I try to convey to my literature students (please don’t think I’m trying to teach anything now, I’m just sharing): that the best way to engage with a poem is to be with it and let it be you and then to play.  Maybe you’ll make some meaning and maybe you won’t, but what will certainly happen is you and the poem. 

           

            As a kind of addition to the above thoughts, and a more pointedly Zennie aspect of these thoughts on Ryokan, I’d like to add that I often read something before sitting Zazen.  I especially like to read a poem of Ryokan’s and as Jundo often says, Sit with that.  Zazen, Shikantaza, is not an attitude.  But I think it’s very beautiful (and possibly helpful) to approach sitting with a certain attitude.  Maybe this is what Dogen calls Way-seeking Mind, though that, I think, is probably something much bigger than attitude (please excuse me: now that we’re into Zen talk and not poetry, I know very very little).  But for me, it’s all much simpler: if I sit with an attitude of awareness, let-go-Mind allows itself to be itself.  So, I like reading a little before sitting because if I don’t, sometimes it’s easy for me to think: “Okay, I have to go sit now, crap, I have to make dinner and do laundry and get ready for work tomorrow and grade papers,” etc.  And that seems to be the wrong mind to sit with.  I don’t mean it’s bad; we all must sit this way sometimes.  But if I’m always sitting this way, I’m more of a bump on the log, not present or aware at all, not sharp, and I’m really missing something and I’m probably not really sitting Zazen (though there’s no wrong Zazen).  So for this reason, I like to read something like this:

           

            The vicissitudes of this world are like the movements of the clouds.

            Fifty years of life are nothing but one long dream.

            Sparse rain: in my desolate hermitage at night,

            Quietly I clutch my robe and lean against the empty window.  

These lines do a number of things: they remind me that Ryokan’s “desolate hermitage” is also mine, is all of ours, and Ryokan, who was often joyful and playful, also gave us poems of great loneliness, and that is felt here; and they also remind me that we’re all, however lonely/alone, also clutching the Buddha’s robe and leaning against the “empty window,” everything empty.  And so I think these lines, and others like them from Ryokan, allow us to consider: where is our desolate, lonely hermitage? Where is our robe?  Where are the mountains in the rain in our life?  Where the moon and where the dream?  

An article from concert pianist James Rhodes is circulating among people right now.  It's a kind of carpe diem article called "Find What You Love and Let It Kill You," advising everyone to do something creative, rather than be another, you know, rat in the rat-race  Make some extra time and don't sulk it away doing something culturally vapid like watching television or something.  Here are the, uh, penultimate paragraphs:

          "Do the maths. We can function - sometimes quite brilliantly - on six hours' sleep a night. Eight hours of work was more than good enough for centuries (oh the desperate irony that we actually work longer hours since the invention of the internet and smartphones). Four hours will amply cover picking the kids up, cleaning the flat, eating, washing and the various etceteras. We are left with six hours. 360 minutes to do whatever we want. Is what we want simply to numb out and give Simon Cowell even more money? To scroll through Twitter and Facebook looking for romance, bromance, cats, weather reports, obituaries and gossip? To get nostalgically, painfully drunk in a pub where you can't even smoke…

         What if for a couple of hundred quid you could get an old upright on eBay delivered? And then you were told that with the right teacher and 40 minutes proper practice a day you could learn a piece you've always wanted to play within a few short weeks. Is that not worth exploring?

         What if rather than a book club you joined a writer's club? Where every week you had to (really had to) bring three pages of your novel, novella, screenplay and read them aloud?"

And you know, a lot of people are responding with: I got up earlier today and I spent more time doing something I cared about, or I did something new today, or I pushed myself to try a new thing.  To some extent, this is pretty wonderful, and Rhodes' advice is well-taken, but only to a point.  Because in the end the article is still about reward.  Rhodes gives up a City Job, chasing after security (money) and self-worth to become a concert pianist.  He then describes, however vaguely, his trials, depressions (mental hospital stay), no money, etc, all in the name of his art.  But what's weird is that it seems like the pianist thing is pretty much the same as the City Job, except instead of looking for some success which seems to come externally (money, respect of others, namely women), Rhodes explains that he's now impressing himself: in fact, he finds his achievements extraordinary and they continually astonish him (see the last paragraph).  What's weird here is that Rhodes substitutes one kind of success for another, one kind of reward for another.  It seems to me that this can be a decidedly mistaken way to go about things.  The article also betrays a kind of obvious and self-inflated judgment of others: that most people are wasting away their lives in bars or shit jobs or on the internet and their humaneness is pretty much whirling down the toilet with the rest of the shit, while Rhodes is playing music that most people can't even make sense of.  Still though, I don't mean to bash the guy - no matter what, our cultural ideology tells us to succeed.  And while succeeding in a bank job might feel culturally vapid, and playing piano might seem culturally profound, both aspirations are still based on kind of need for success: one is just external and the other, seemingly, internal.  Also, it's not that his advice is bad advice: it's just the same type of advice wearing different clothes.  

So, the big problem I see with the article is that it's still the same kind of cultural message we get all the time, the kind of head on approach: do something!  The problem with it, to me, is that it suggests all people can do something.  I mean, it's so intensely egalitarian as to be almost insulting, and this coming from someone who's also sickeningly egalitarian.  But more importantly, the head on approach of "do something with your life" is just the same version of what our society already gives us.  Get success!  Be good at a thing!  Be talented!  Go to heaven!  It seems to me that the first step in all of this isn't stepping away from the computer or tv or bar and then learning to play classical guitar or painting - the first step, and this isn't psychology, is to shut the fuck up.  While on the surface, tv and fb and the bar seem to be kind of mind numbing activities, what they really are are activities that allow for particular and easy thought-patterns.  As much as we like to think that a human turns off completely while watching tv, this isn't the case: most people think, laugh, mock, parody, get moved, etc, when watching tv.  There's a lot of thinking, and often feeling, happening in situations like tv watching, internet surfing, and bar crawling.  The answer isn't: do something!  which is just another prescription for thinking, albeit maybe in a different way.  In fact, there's not really an answer, however inspiring Rhodes' piece seems to be, but a good starting place is not more doing; it's actually less doing.  Stopping.  Shutting up.  Turning off the tv, not going to the bar, not interneting, and certainly not just doing another thing.  To me, this is a huge thing our current world misses: that moment where stopping is an option, because it's in the stopping where something new opens up, and it's in the opening where the potentiality of newness is, of doing is, of creating is.  Because if you just move from one doing, however prescribed and limited, to another doing however seemingly expanded and profound, it's still  just you there trying to get something, reward either external or internal, endlessly running in circles, without ever seeing clearly what is and isn't really there. 

a few notes on my state of mind

feel really stupid when i type my password into gmail and it doesn't let me into my mail and a little red message appears which says: you changed your password five months ago.

during my spring break, i didn't talk to anyone for the entire week.

thought several times this week: gluten free poo.

thought several times this week: man, been having some really good shits this week.

thought several times this week: probably should just give up writing and die and email every place that is publishing one of my stories in the next few months and tell them, look, i'm really sorry, but i have to withdraw my story, i'm dead.

had a dream where a man was having sex with a woman, which caused her to give birth, and the baby born was an alien baby, which they handed to me, and which i was like, is it going to live? and someone said, i think my mom, no honey, it's definitely going to die, and i was like, oh, and the alien baby was seriously creepy looking (think of stuff from that movie existenz) and then the alien baby was like killing people with a weird tentacle thing or turning them into aliens and we had to kill the baby and then kill all the people it turned into aliens and then its tentacle got me and turned me into an alien and i tried to hide from everyone, but my tongue was turning long and white and glowing and people saw the glowing in my mouth and so i said, okay, just kill me, and someone shot me in the head, like several times, and they said, yep, there's nothing in there, referring to the cavity in my head, which was apparently empty.  really wonder what freud would have to say about this.  probably would latch onto the mother thing.

the book i'm working on, needless to say, is causing me serious dread and anxiety.  

the point of twitter is to make people think they are the funniest/cleverest people alive but then, through the following of others, send people into a kind of despairing loneliness in which they scrutinize and self-analyze and sincerely question whether they are truly the funniest/cleverest people alive, which in turn causes them to have a great need to prove, both to themselves and others, that they are in fact very funny and clever, and that others are not, which of course turns into a kind of vicious and desperate cycle (not unlike irl) where people are constantly comparing their quality of cleverness/funniness to the same quality in others, thus perpetuating the twitter 'universe' and ending with all of us at war, as we've always been, but this time not over religion or oil or territory, but over who is the funniest/cleverest twitterer, millions of little personal wars, probably with kitchen utensils as basic weaponry, thin, pale, clever, funny people, arguing sarcastically at one another until they all end up trying to strangle each other, all strangling each other simultaneously, which will be the end of mankind, a twitter revolution, in which the few remaining morons step away from their screens to populate the planet with dumber, technologically disinclined beings, who will live peacefully forever.

the other house is gone now, for me anyway.  we have moved, several blocks only, and yet a world or something, and also nowhere at all.  it both matters and doesn't matter where one is: how is that?  we are both here and not is how that is.  what is here?  where is it?  now now now.  the dog cried for two days then settled.  a big german shepherd baby - i like him very much, he's a good friend, and i'll miss him when he's gone, if he's gone before me.  one of the cats is still making a nightlong journey to the other house, the left behind house, the poor monster, and yet i'm like him a little: where will i do this stuff of putting some words into a blank document, casting some consciousness in some light or dark, where will i sit when i sit, what wall will i stare at for hours (which is a thing i do).  my wife is better at being and doing than i am, nothing to say beyond that - she was here the day we were here.  after some time, i don't know how much, wherever one has been is no longer where one has been, and the only place is the place one is in.  don't be fooled: we like to believe that our pasts are with us, and they are, but only as long as we let them be.  we help make our traps, set them for ourselves.  the worst kind of story is that kind with the proper freudian flashback that explains everything.  even worse: believing in that shit in one's life.  the past is always with us some movie says and not done with us; somebody else says it's like some wound that'll never heal - i say it's just the debris of our life, like the bag of old clothes i gave away, the old pots and pans, those used but not finished shoes, the things we don't want to lose but also just things to be let go of, no other way.

no one is reading this blog.  there is no one reading this blog.  this is absolutely okay with me.  if there were many people reading this blog, i would probably feel either some anxiety or some compulsion to post or maybe if there were too many, i would have to quit.  this blog is in a lot of ways metaphorical.  it's out there on the internet and yet is unnoticed and goes unnoticed pleasantly, and this mostly is how i am in the world: going unnoticed pleasantly watching.  this blog pleasantly watches.  i don't even read much on the internet anymore.  i don't have a twitter or a facebook or a tumblr - i used to believe these things were like bad or something, but these are just things, and i just don't care for them.  it's a preference.  i have an aversion.  is it possible for me to say here that i'm more drawn to a book than an online literary journal?  i'm more drawn to a soccer ball than an author interview?  if there's a soccer ball visible in the room, i would play with it before reading an author interview.  if there was a meditation cushion in the room, i would sit on it and shut up before i had a need to read anything.  writing is different - there is something compelling me there, i can't help it.  just a word processor and not internet would be fine, but also too easy.  the internet serves to make things available faster.  we can watch our minds going faster and faster, compelled by the web, but i like watching mine stop.  we like watching ourselves spin.  we like to watch ourselves spin, our minds.  to watch something spinning in order to understand its continued spinning is not to know it.  to watch something spinning until it stops is to know that which spins and that which doesn't.  that it's even a possibility, this stopping, that's what the internet never allows us to know. 

When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same ... then you will enter the Kingdom.

-Gnostic Gospel of Thomas

That the self advances and confirms the myriad things is called delusion;
That the myriad things advance and confirm the self is enlightenment.
-Dogen

i almost always forget.

this is what i was going to write for the profile on this web page, finally, but i was informed there were too many words, and so anyway, here is my profile description: the thing about any being is that they are not reducible to their name, whether a proper name or a name which is like a category, and so therefore, since any being is not only not reducible, nor like limited by any name or category given, there is not much place for something like a profile description of such beings.  and yet this is a profile description, a problematic one, because even if i wanted to avoid any proper name or something, maybe like using the word being for myself, as well as all beings, the problem is still that the word being is still an example of such a labeling and/or naming and/or categorization, and thus even this should not be trusted too much, if you happen to be reading this.  creature, maybe, is okay for its kind of playful attitude and awareness of the problem of naming things, in particular, beings, though of course that word still comes with all the aforementioned problems, but is at least a small bit more aware, if applied correctly.  human being is certainly bad and reductive, along with just human, and being is not too bad, as mentioned, for it connotes as well as denotes actual like existing, like present existing, though this of course becomes problematic when, you know, existing is all done (though is it really ever?), and also being is too serious and somehow seems not so self-aware.   now that we're here though, on this subject of not existing, can one creature ever actually be separated from others, which also happen to be existing, and so, if no, not really, if we believe such a separation can't be said to be truly possible, isn't it also the case that then no thing can ever go out of existence if it is always related to other things which are already in existence or are arriving in an existing state?

the other elliot, i guess

i like how it's vhs tape, too.

If everyone who owned a gun just shot themselves there wouldn't be a problem.

was sick for some days and then when i was no longer sick it was very grey out and i still felt sick.  and then the next thing that happened was that i knew it was january 1, which i believed somehow through some error was a monday, and for the next three days i thought it was one day before it actually was even though i knew the date (monday instead of tuesday, etc).  and so even though i knew the date, say, on january 3, i still thought it was wednesday, until i talked to my wife and she reminded me to pick her up at the airport, to which i was like, i don't understand, you are coming home on thursday, and she was like, it is thursday dumbhead, and i was like, you're completely insane, let me check my computer, and i did, and she was right.  in this way the thing got sorted out and depressed me. and so, no longer sick, i felt even sicker, because i somehow had lost a day of my life and would have to go back to teaching again sooner than i had originally believed or conceived, though in actuality i knew the real and actual date and the date i would begin teaching again (jan 14) and so i knew the amount of days before i would begin teaching because i knew the current date (jan 3), but still because i had the days of the week wrong, i felt desperately as though i had lost a day and probably the rest of my life.

Know that the world of sitting practice is far different from other worlds.  Clarify this, then activate the way-seeking mind [...] Study the world at the very moment of sitting.  Is it vertical or horizontal?  At the very moment of sitting, what is sitting?  Is it an acrobat's graceful somersault or the rapid darting of a fish?  Is it thinking or not thinking? Is it doing or not doing? Is it sitting within sitting?  Is it sitting within body-mind?  Is it sitting letting go of sitting within sitting, or letting go of sitting within body-mind? Investigate this in every possible way [...] There is sitting with the mind, which is not the same as sitting with the body.  There is sitting with the body, which is not the same as sitting with the mind.  There is sitting letting go of body-mind, which is not the same as sitting letting go of body-mind.

-Dogen

Leaping beyond the boundary of delusion and enlightenment, free from the paths of ordinary and sacred, unconstrained by ordinary thinking, immediately wander at ease, enriched with great enlightenment.  When you practice in this way, how can those who are concerned with the traps and snares of words and letters be compared with you?

-Dogen

Things I remind myself of:

Do no be a writer.  Do not wish to become a writer.  Do not even write yourself.  Do not explain to yourself why you write.  Do not believe that writing has something to do with you.  Do not believe that writing will make you whole or destroy you - it will do neither; don't think it will do anything for anyone else.  You won't save anyone and you won't be saved, but also: there is no one in need of saving, so write or chop wood or climb or run, whatever, fully.  Do not believe that writing will make you satisfied and do not believe that it will somehow be unsatisfactory - how can chopping wood be satisfactory or unsatisfactory; how can a tree growing be satisfactory or unsatisfactory; whole or not?  Do not be trapped by your writing or by being a writer - aim at nothing and then there will be something larger than you that is there already.  A writer is not a writer, but if we were to call her a writer, she neither loves the dark nor fumbles around in the light; she isn't even a writer; she just accepts all things and lets them go through her - as soon as you say light and dark you are trapped.  Do not be fooled by language and do not think that truth can be conveyed in language; know instead that language itself is reality in the same way that the wordless sky is reality.  Do not want to be great, a great shark, not a great writer or a great person; be a cloud blown about which will soon disperse; it's what you are no matter what, even those supposed great ones, and words are both merely words and something else just as we are merely ourselves and something else.  No need to be great, not a writer, no need to be anything.

Our channels of habitual thinking are deeply cut, and the links of association are tight and almost inevitable.  When the gecko calls, do you think about the gecko?  Do you think about the geckos at your house?  Here comes another call! Sparks to light your Dharma candle go off one after another. The storeroom, the gate!

Thus things of the world are not drugs in themselves.  They become drugs by our use of them.

-Robert Aitken

Fall

Last summer storm.

A cicada’s singing fades

leaving no trace.

My neighbor is

burning leaves again.

Autumn fires.  

The coyote saw you 

on the highway tonight.

His eyes like fires.  

To make a fire for all out there in all that dark and all that cold and though it may be impossible for all to get to that fire, or impossible for us to make one large enough for all, or impossible it seems to even make anything but just a flicker, really we are all that fire and all are like coals scattered from that fire, and so we are all lighting our own little ones and in that lighting coming together. 

New Skin

the summer issue of Corium is out, with a summer story of mine in it.  lot's of awesome work in this always awesome spot.   the ones that have really pulled me in so far were the short shorts, from Sparks, Roe, and Wells; music, hearbreak, and weirdness.  read or no but definitely do, don't think.

we are not ideas, okay

as soon as we say we are something we are no longer ourselves.  as soon as we say we are a feminist or a marxist or a liberal, we are no longer ourselves.  if i say i am a writer, i am no longer myself.  all these things are merely ideas, concepts, at the least descriptors of activities, and if we go into the world saying we are these things then what we are really saying is that we need something to define ourselves.  what we are really saying is that we are afraid that we are nothing, which is what we are.  it's okay to be nothing.  we don't think this could be the truth, so we need something to define that which cannot be defined.  also, as soon as we say i am this or i am that, then we set ourselves up for a fight.  we are ready to fight against that which is not us.  liberal vs conservative.  atheist vs believer.  capitalist vs socialist.  as soon as we say, i am this, we have limited ourselves, backed ourselves into a little box.  these concepts, these -isms, are helpful only insofar as we understand that they are words which describe ideas - it's a stupid thing to consider oneself an idea, though it's equally stupid to think one doesn't have some ideas and that ideas and concepts aren't useful.  better to use these ideas in a kind of flowing way, circumstantially and openly, rather than proclaiming oneself an idea. 

Forty Stories

Okay, so here is this wonderful thing I am a part of, Forty Stories, from Harper Perennial.  I mean, I usually hate names, but look at those names.  And be sure to know that these stories will open your head and heart some, with names like these, will make you tangle with yourself until you're untangled and not yourself anymore.  Which is probably what we should all be hoping for all the time, to always be a little less ourselves so that we can be more ourselves.  I'm going to wander through this collection this weekend, please come join me, and we can wander together, which is what we're doing anyway.  Love, alan. 

i want

a glimpse of anyone who doesn't try to make their own space, who doesn't try to fill their body with their body, who doesn't mask their face with some face, who doesn't speak out instead of in, who doesn't want to show their show, who doesn't care for their words or want their want, who remembers how to let in that homeless moan, some wandering wind, not high or low or dark or light or anything. who remembers they aren't there. who just lets a lot of things go and isn't so pushing a thing that can't be pushed. only a quick look of the little touch or hands down and folded or the moon cutting the rain or the run the dogs make in snow.

old school

1. i stood in the hallway, waiting for students to complete an evaluation about me. i had a book and stood against the wall reading. somebody was talking in a nearby office, another teacher, i realized, talking to a girl. i glanced in the room and saw only him, reclined in his chair, white hair and white beard, severely overweight. i stepped back to my corner. he was saying, "I can look at any girl in our class and tell if they've had sex. I can look at any girl in our class and tell if she's had oral sex. Do you see what I mean?" the girl laughed, crazily and nervously. "What I mean is," the teacher said, "what I have is insight. You have to get that into your speech." then he began talking about her speech, telling her that it was her lack of insight which accounted for her poor grade. then he dismissed her.

2. a friend told me that when she grew up, she went to a catholic school. the nuns told all the girls, from ages 8 to 12 that they weren't allowed to eat hot dogs, bananas, or eggs in front of boys.

Three Steps, No Steps

The monkey is reaching for the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him he'll never give up.
If he'd let go the branch and disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine with dazzling pureness.

-Hakuin, "The Monkey"

Overwhelmed, exhausted, all thought and emotion beaten out of me, I lost my sense of self, the heartbeat I heard was the heart of the world, I breathed with the mighty risings and declines of the earth, and this evanscence seemed less frightening than exalting. Afterward, there was the pain of loss - loss of what, I wondered, understanding nothing.

-Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

To learn the Buddha’s truth is to learn ourselves. To learn ourselves is to forget ourselves. To forget ourselves is to be experienced by the myriad dharmas. To be experienced by the myriad dharmas is to let our own body and mind, and the body and mind of the external world, fall away.

Dogen, "Genjo-Koan," Shobogenzo

away haiku

1.
ice on the windshield.
i chip and scrape
until my hands are blue.

2.
the blinds cut the evening
sun onto the wall.
waiting for you to return.

3.
stranded roadside
smoke billows from the engine.
starlings black against the sky.

4.
the refrigerator hums,
the heater clicks on.
the house without you.

5.
headlights pass over walls.
even the dog
perks his ears for you.

6.
a cold moon
hangs in the window.
your pillow still bare.

still here haiku

1.
bald monk on my screen
while rain makes the road a mist.
watching more nothing.

2.
frost on windows.
the cat licking her butt,
then falling asleep on me.

3.
i don't remember
the last time i simply
wanted to touch you.

4.
i said i was sad.
You said that was sad but okay
because that's all it was.

5.
taking the trash out
to forget this zen.
dead dog on the wet road.

6.
our cat
quietly mauls a squirrel.
nothing to do.

no book changed your life

i don't trust anyone who says a book changed their life.

it's so confusing: the red kool-aid in Malick's The Tree of life.

if someone says they get a good meditation in in the morning before they start their day, they're not meditating. they're masturbating.

when you're hating or liking a book know that it wasn't written by anyone.

the most difficult thing to do is stop. the most difficult thing to understand without having stopped is that stopping is something which cannot be done.

first i wanted to be writer, drinking whisky, talking loudly. then i wanted to be a monk, living in the rainforests, going on rounds for alms. then i wanted to not want. now there's nothing to do.

if you think someone is beautiful, thinking of their poop will end that illusion for you pretty quick.

the present is a darkness which goes further into darkness. by which i mean, take some time to die.

bliss is a lot like coke: there's nothing to like. surrendering is a lot like withdrawal: there's nothing to not like.

reality was no longer boring when i realized i had never been in it.

spirituality: there is no higher spirituality to channel.

the activity of the mind is unceasing and stupid, a lot like a fat man eating whoppers. stopping is a thing to consider. how to: just watch some.

i don't know, gratefully.

nothing to improve. my farting cat is proof.

Wow. Sepak Takraw. Kung Fu Soccer.

watch closely.

Blip

grateful to be among some fine stories on Blip Magazine, the new Mississippi Review (if you haven't heard, which of course you have, whoever you are): Summer 2011 Issue.

just saw a car drive by which read "COUGAR" along the side but sadly was driven by a man.

didn't drink coffee for days and thought, Cool, i get to have a big coffee.

been having some serious cramping in left leg while running and my wife keeps saying, Maybe you have diabetus.

really want to play on a grass tennis court.

i like walking out on a tennis court before a match and feeling the court under me and being on it and being in the world of a new kind of awareness.

a baby racoon lived in our house for a night.

saw a man make a shack in the woods near our house.

a woman tossed a check at me today at work.

had a dream where there was a great wind and all the buildings were shaking greatly in the wind and i was riding a bike in an unknown city searching for someone i didn't know.

the cicadas work in the morning but take afternoons off, i thought insanely today. i've seen their skins still holding onto trees and it made me wish people molted. people shapes climbing trees or laying on the sidewalk or holding a lampost but no one there.

what there is, sometimes

the only thing to learn from stories are stories. or paragraphs. or sentences. or words. stories are in this world but always about another. someone has said dreams and everyone hates that.

western philosophy is always about another world. the one made up by the philosopher, ha. here it is best to debate which philosophy is more accurate. existentialists like to win.

when i read a story, i look at the mind through which the story was created. then maybe the publication information or the typeface and often read the last sentence first and wait for it like a wave seen far away. sometimes that sentence gets louder and sometimes it comes in just a brush of skin, which is okay.

watch the mind enough and some stillness reveals itself. it's the same with a story or driving on a motorcycle the very first time. one should, if driving a motorcycle the very first time, wear the proper gear (helmet, etc) and do the proper low-wave and wear the proper face, for people can tell.

it is the wanting that is the problem and then it isn't. a lot like raining or a train going.

there is a homeless man who wears cyclist gear and rides around our town. he is properly dressed for what he is doing and yet everyone knows what he is, i think, because he doesn't really hide it. we like to hide it: that we are just wandering around. i want to often just wander around and then there it is, wanting, and then there it is gone, just wandering, again, oh yeah.

the sameness between stories and mind is this: an imagined ego. here we go again: the individual, the personal and the breaking through of that or the fear of the breaking through of that or the looming of the breaking. oh, not the doors.

as soon as we say it's all about the emotion or the sentence or the language or the rhythm we say what or how? say craft or say write or say lose yourself or say read.