" *

Friday, October 28, 2005

A




walk says a lot

fast and flailing
and someone commands you.

You are oblivious. I would have to meet you another way



slow
and steady, you observe; you chart your destination



we
could

talk over tea.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Zen Calendar

Opening to oneself
fully is opening to
the world.




Chogyam Trungpa

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Zen Calendar

Wealth is the number of things one can do without.






Fedor Dostoyevsky

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

A 60 Year Old Woman Get's A Rectal Exam And A Man In The Crowd

E

dgar Allen Poe wrote this tale called a ‘Man In The Crowd’ —if I’m right, it is about a story concerning a gentleman who watches and watches as life unfold outside his window. He spends his days taking in the hustle and bustle of people in this London town, turning his voyeurism into a political and social game using his eyes to settle on their clothing separating them based on their status and disposition. The glint of gold on one, the tatters on another, he watches as if he is omnipresent sailing above them not a part, but over and around them. Later he finds himself intrigued enough by one that he ventures out to follow this person, only to find that this person is no different from any one of the so called lost souls he’s imagined, and he the voyeur turns out himself to also be a man in the crowd.

Saturday night I found myself traveling the vessels of the internet unlocking its sweet and juicy secrets. I was feeling like chatting with a stranger of sorts. You know that feeling you feel like logging on and talking to someone who has no emotional connection with you, generally you talk about which way they grout their tile—ok so maybe you don’t. So here I am first with a decision on how I should attack this need for banter. I realize now with a little over ten years experience online that you have to be careful when you do anything that has direct contact with a human beings in any venue. People can have a very different idea about chatting than you do, you don’t want to find yourself in a room full of hermaphrodites who enjoy discussing the smell of latex paint, unless of course Ralph Lauren Orange does something for you. Plus today I didn’t want to be sitting naked in front of a low angle web cam. I was instead looking for a little more of a lighter appetizer. Once I had the gender down—woman, I would choose my room; no community one or special skills one. I settled on 40 or over women. I choose this decade ahead of me not because I was always attracted to women older than me, but thinking I would find at the most women who have strongly steered philosophical ships; women who have landed in all types macabe smelling potholes and navigated out it smelling like a rose. These women have earned the right deliver—and again at the most, sage advice (ok, this is my Santa Claus that I like to believe, occasionally). I was also of course willing and at the ready to type responses too mundane weather and property value monologues if need be. In the end this was still just an exercise in boredom.

Once in the room a 60 year old woman engaged me from some small European city. English was clearly her third language as she took her time typing and apologized as her sentences seem to come across a little choppy. I had no problem engaging her I saw her as different; a light breeze in the internet alleyway; a warm up act to the witching hour.

But our conversation would soon change like Chicago’s weather in September. Unlike my past appetites--in this case, I was an innocent bystander—honest, I was settling in the lull of silence of our instant messages and then she swung back explaining to me how her husband had two heart attacks and now was being attended by a nurse; she was lonely, ah lonely, here it comes. This is where the road would cross I would try to pull up on the reins; I would pull up the stakes and slowly closed down like down pours were coming. But yet she was still innocent(least in my mind); still rather polite and dissimilar from what my brain was use to as a flag. She never at anytime made any approaches towards me; she never dropped the skirt on her mind and laced me with counterfeit come on’s. She instead engages me with a tale of her 21 year old lover who played soccer in France. 21 years old who had met her in a restaurant as she sat with her friends. They would eye each other and he would later introduced himself. 21 years old. They went to dinner after that then a sexual…uh sexcapade began. She experience everything this young suitor could give, romps at her friends home when he was in town was the highlight of her month. 2 year years earlier she confessed to being just a housewife and now she was volunteering her exit for his circumcised entrance as if it was a tray of Christmas cookies her mother in law offered. She was just elated to deliver this to me; she was almost beside herself at this new found “turning out” was salvationly expressed, as if she was 19 years old and her best friend’s older brother asked her into the basement. Why at 61 must someone has to experience something that maybe a college girl 40 years younger than her chalks up as a good weekend, and why must I be a man in the crowd?

Sunday, July 24, 2005

PORN AS A PERQUISITE

A


friend of mine and I discussed 70's porn. Well it was mostly me, she is not a devotee of the... um art. It just doesn't surprise me anymore what we are going to wind up talking about when we open are mouths. She was talking about some guy she met at an AA meeting who made his living as a bean counter for a coffee company and then from out of nowhere she finds herself knee deep in my 16 year old visual escapades. Now mind you I am no expert of the hairy productions of that decade, I was a boy who stumbled onto his ole mans stash one day while looking under a mound of clothes in a sealed box under some old National Geographic magazines around the bottom of a false floor.
Everything beautiful about a woman I learned from 70's porn I learned what a real woman's body looks like; breast that dip just below the jet stream, ample thighs, grocery clerk looks. Sure you could say Kay Parker was attractive, Seka, Vanessa Del Rio, but attractive in the right ways; a woman; just a normal heavily make-uped woman who just happened to arouse me immensely with her real expressions and working class scars. No silicone required, or razors for that matter, just an awkwardly positioned body who later could easily be in the kitchen making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and doing her son's homework. Sure it was bad acting with comedy and a little drama thrown in, but I was in love and apparently in front of some sociological experiment.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

ZEN Calendar

Having no destination, I am never lost.




Ikkyu

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Monday, June 06, 2005

There is
no way for
others
to determine
my success
no car
no home
no grievances
through the glass they use
they can't
see
it,
but if they listen without their ears
they
will
see
that it is
in
my words
my feeling
my knowing

things do not matter.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Lisa & Nicholas

Lisa fingers went nervously unescorted, and guided a cigarette to her lips before an American Airlines gate attendant stop her. She quickly removed it. Sat back in her chair, and suddenly remembered she was in an airport. The huge 737’s; just in front of her; a young child screaming at the top of his lungs, and many others, feigning interest in newspapers, all should’ve kept her alerted to that fact.
Her boyfriend Christopher returned with a McDonald’s coffee, and folded newspaper. He squeezed past a suitcase, and dropped down next to her.
“Shit!” He forced, spilling a little of the hot liquid on his hand.
He shook it towards the floor and was offered a napkin from a woman across from them, reaching for it, he nodded his appreciation, and pressed it to his hand.
“You OK?” Lisa asked finding concern, and etching it across her face. She even sat up trying to emphasize this interest even more. But she found herself empty, done, all out.
“I’m OK.” He mumbled focusing on his paper. He took a sip, and settled back into the vinyl seat.

It was fitting that they were at an Airport. He was on his way to California for better job opportunities, and this was turning into an unofficial good riddance.
Just her being there, was just habit for both of them–than anything else. She was sure of this, and he was as well.
They known it each other since high school and dated for 5 years, and it started to feel just like it was based on proximity, nostalgia and their families need for them to be together—well mostly his--rather than anything substantial.
She tightened and un-tightened her legs, staring down at her knees that her summer cotton dress revealed. She traced a thin scar that ran across the top of one of them and she searched for a sad emotion and found one in her age.

She remembered receiving it as a kid after climbing a neighbors metal linked fence. The years had raised it just like her mother said it would after she failed to tell her so she could have it stiched. It drew her concentration. The harder it was for her to recall the incident the more she felt her market value plummeting.

At 32 Lisa wasn’t married or had any children. She wanted all of this on certain days of the week, and today was one of them; to hold and hug and comfort her. Christopher might have been the one, just because he knew her favorite drink, movie and where the tightness in her neck was. Small requirements, but for two people who haven’t discovered higher preferences, it was big; it was huge.
His expired job and gold out west, was God, for these two heredity victims who at the time couldn’t discover their purpose through they’re on volition.
She then easily clouded her mind with all his negativity’s to prepare her for his absence: his lateness, his inability to say, “I love you.” Even though she found herself struggling to truly mean it herself. She concentrated for more and saw his sisters brooding face coming into her mind, as they called his row number. They poured empty sentences of seeing each other again. Long drawn out sentences that were dotted with huge pauses, then they hugged. A dry kiss followed and then he disappeared through the long jet way towards the plane. She receded from its entrance as it was eventually shut and watched the plane push back and set off for the runway.
She stood a little longer and then slowly walked through the terminal, past a cache of eateries and out the sliding doors into the sunshine.

Arriving home, she dropped her keys next to living room phone, and avoided the tempting blinking light, and headed upstairs to run a bath.
She click number 12 on her CD player and BJORK’S kettle drum voice pour out of her bedroom CD player, as she now stretched out and stared at the filmy water around her. ‘You gardener you discipliner domesticly I can obey all of your rules and still be me…I never thought I would compromise.’ She caught the words and sung along, as her arm cupped the rimmed of the tub and she sighed before sliding further back till her neck was submerged.
“You’re not going to keep it together?”
“No.”
“You say that now.” Her mother chirped through the phone.
Still moist and standing in the kitchen, she peeled lemons and dropped them into a blender. Her mother went on as usual, using her 35-year marriage as an example of what a relationship should be. She put her mother’s words on mute in her mind and rested her finger on the blender’s power button.
Her parents were the greatest bad example for her, from her perspective they were seized together by nothing other than those years. They gathered them like tickets at a state fair and continued to announce this at family gatherings like it alone was the key to a successful marriage. Her mother clearly forgot–that growing up, her bedroom was twenty feet from theirs. It was where she sat on the inside, witnessing the corroded parts of their union. There were happy times, but they were always hidden behind a house full of people or at times alone with one of them–as they presented themselves like candidates, with heavily filled inconsistent philosophies to win her affection.
She stared down at her stomach; ran her thumb underneath the waistband of her underwear, waiting for a bridge in the words, so she could end the call. The bridge arrived at a familiar junction and Lisa blended her lemons and sat quietly in the living room.
She saw Christopher’s Detroit Tigers, T-shirt squeezed between the cushions and ran her fingers through a hole underneath its collar.
She saw his pensive stare when she would play her music to loud. She stared at a frayed armchair and heard his clicking fingers across his brand new wireless laptop, as she smoked and watched television. This is what she considered the good times. She didn’t know she could live her life in any other way.


Sitting on the green felt covered sofa in the house her grandmother left her and found
tears pushing there way out. She didn’t find one image they stemmed from, so they came from a bunch of them within her last few years.
Her grandmother wasn’t done with her before she died, there was still more of her truth to present to her. She felt incomplete. It was as if she started a book and stopped before she finishes the last closing chapters and she was left without her tether. More tears came as she saw her smiling in front of her. There were many times she sat across from her–in a now orange kitchen, listening to her laugh, joke, deliver wonderful meals–like she had missed her calling, and more importantly relocate complacent family ideals, with metaphoric genius. She took politically correct behavior and twisted it like a balloon at a kid’s party. Carefully she revealed this unconventional way; this Zen way as to make sure Lisa was ready to be unplugged. She would cushion the sofa of life and send her back out there to dig in as if she was some guru in a satin dress.

Friday, May 06, 2005

ZEN CALENDAR

It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of the ego. This means stepping out of the ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.


Chogyam Trungpa

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Process

Life is about the process--that is where the lessons are, not the result, 99% of our time is in a process.
A women's pregnacy is generally nine months of process the result of course is beautiful, but that moment is eventually lost to another process.
If we focus on addressing our mindset just towards the process in our life, it will dramatically improve; our results will be grandeur and blend into the flow of life allowing a constant.
If we focus on just the result we will be left empty, because results are always quick and they eventually disappear.

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

What they say

look what they say about her.
It's
gone; all gone.
It was never there.
The
world according to Ego.
She is being driven
to one place
that only
shows the other one, when she gets there.

They are saying she is easy and scandalous but her ego says she's hard and forthright.

Our mind is the same
Our perspective
is different.
The illusion
has her wrapped
in a blanket
against the cold sea's
whispering warm words of
falsehoods
and shallow praise.

A bright one
a comprehensive one
built for the world
offered a drink,
but it's an illusion
a projection
A million dollar investment to a charlatan
that

will
eventually
skip

town.
The ego whispers in her ear to mask
what they say about her.

Her
belief
makes it real.,
and it
is
her obtuse confidant:
the
Ego/herself
that says all this
about her,

anyway.




Thursday, April 21, 2005

He was reluctant at first, but now straddled her and camp out just above her lips. His fingers were entwined and rest gently over her forehead. He rubbed it with his thumb and studied her eyes, they blinked and dashed around his. He saw his portrait in them and thought the Buddhist were right 'We are all one' when we look closely in another ones eyes we clearly see ourselves.
He kissed her lips softly and she reach up and pulled his tongue into hers. There was nothing more beautiful; more serene than this moment. He strangled time trying to hold onto it, and she fought back trying not to lose herself...she would win.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

I was splayed out over the bed as a friend of mine entered the suite. I had moments ago left him at the club as he danced the night away with an eager woman. My dance partner never materialized this evening and now I was back in the room fighting sleep as he whispered behind me.
"Hey? Hey, you remember that girl I was dancing with?"
"Yea." I mumbled into the pillow.
"She's wasted and she's coming in and she has the other one with her."
"The other one?" He had my attention. This other woman he spoke of. This woman with her was this oversized slot machine that was always willing to pay off. She introduced herself to me on the dance floor and I tried pretending my height, culpled with the music seperated us. I tried to use head shakes and eyebrow touches to get the 53 year old Chester drawer built woman (with all the drawers open) to find a more suitable partner
"I will be over here when you're ready." She said in her drunken-ease as she lumbered towards the middle of the floor and attempted to imitate a bulbous hedge in a stiff breeze.
Before I could locate words they all had emptied themselves into the hotel room and his dancing partner found his bed and past out, and my nightmares were becoming literal as the vicadon popping woman found my bed and began to speak like a thousand pieces of a word puzzle had shattered to the floor...

Friday, April 08, 2005

"Love holds no grievances."












--The Disappearance Of The Universe, Gary R. Renard

Friday, April 01, 2005

Zen Calender

Pain in the knees is the taste of Zazen.

-Yamada Roshi

Thursday, March 31, 2005

One of the most sublime and hazardous moments in human experience comes when two people lock eyes and realize that they are sexually attracted to one another.

-Roger Ebert (review of Damage)

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Followers

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