i dream of alternate lives. have for as long as i can remember. i often wonder if those dreams are the real life or if this one is. i cannot say i always know. things are different, even as they are the same. me and the ‘generic’ you… in all our amazing possibility… sometimes, you and i are married. sometimes, we have only just met. sometimes, we never meet, not in a grocery, not at the library, not on a street corner, not at all. or, if we do, it’s strangers passing one another without awareness. for all i know […]
soaps and strangeness
i dreamt of you. just now. the first time in almost a year. i don’t know why. it doesn’t matter, i suppose. why, that is. in my dream, i was at work. the fellow sitting next to me was a co-worked barely known. he was telling me of a soap the bank was giving to its depositors. i laughed and told him it was so they could feel better about the bath the economy was giving us all. he didn’t get it. i sighed. his story was about they bank had messed up and the soaps they ordered wouldn’t fit […]
bamboo garden
as if it didn’t matter at all, laughing at the kitchen counter, severing sinew from bone, making dinner, sacrifice of living things to the hunger. i never knew him such a callous cannibal until i watched as he cheerfully cut that piece of meat, all that was left of what once was a wild and tender thing. i closed my eyes, ducked my head. bit back the scream and waited for the image to pass. i wandered like that for some time; blind and stumbling and happy to be so if it meant i would not again see such gleeful […]
saudade, sunday, and safe travels
it’s odd how sometimes, farewells feel so heavy. i’m not quite sure why it is that way, except there is a part of me that always wants sharing and proximity to remain. attachment, i suppose, in the strict and most buddhist sense… i call it of that saudade variety because it’s a pleasant sadness and a pensive delight. hard to explain. i take a lot of heat from my friends here and there for loving everyone. they’re not harsh about it, just somewhat exasperated with me. i think perhaps they think maybe if i didn’t, i would not so often […]
mahamudra – the space beyond the page
perspective really is everything and nothing at all. isn’t it curious how we hold them? or refuse to? a diamond is just another rock to the man stuck in the mines… he knows someone is enjoying it, but it surely isn’t him, there, in the dark deeps with danger and dust that is choking his life away every second so some young girl can feel loved and a young man, proud that he can afford to make her feel so. my grandmother… she was just another body to wash to the nurse. she was an angel to the people she […]
Compassion, definitions of the moment
To be silent rather than add to the burden of another. To spend anger in meditation rather than on others. To care more that hurt is not given than that is is felt. To understand that responsibility is held only when it is accepted. To realize that all acts, when motivated by good intent, are, eventually, beneficial. To be content with what is, as it is, be it for oneself as well as for others.
difficulties on the path (4 of 4)
well… homestretch. i find this oddly exhilarating. kind of scary. but also kind of a relief. and i’m actually a little surprised i’ve stuck with it. kindly. kindly. but no less insistent. i’d give myself a cookie, but there are none here. ok. enough of that. onward.
difficulties on the path (3 of 4)
it is after midnight, and i am torn between continuing or sleeping and letting this percolate until the morning. part of me feels somewhat compelled to complete it now. but i chuckle… for this is likely the best sign that i should be exceedingly mindful, and wait… and take it up on the morrow. so… i relent. 12:15am and to bed with me. what is written beyond this will be so in the morning. i’ll adjust the time stamp as needed.
difficulties on the path (2 of 4)
continuing from the previous, the next four of the twenty difficulties and my own admissions and thoughts… lessons for learning… i hope.