Mountains (never molehills).

If I have an adjustable hat and the notch it’s been set at no longer fits my head, what would I do? Some people just keep trying to make the thing fit, but it won’t. What do you do when a hat outgrows you?

What’s it called when you make excuses for failure and shine an extra bright light on the successes? These little mountain towns creep me out. It has everything to do with my having spent the first two dozen years of my life shackled behind the city gates. I come to places like the one I’m at now and realize that what I’ve seen in the movies isn’t all just hokey fiction. Oh, so people actually do put cattle skulls on their front fences. The closest store to where I am currently is about a half hour down the mountain, and at this particular store I could have purchased a hunting rifle (replete with requisite gear), fishing gear, groceries, a fresh-made hero, glass statues and figurines, and mailed a package to New York. I never realized how many sexual innuendos can be applied to fishing.

I woke at five this morning and wrote out on the porch while watching the sun rise through the trees and over the mountain. This evening, after driving a half hour down the mountain to a lake down in the rolling green valley, I watched the sun set back into the mountains and from their collision exploded a stunning spectrum of colors across the black water. The black sky is now ablaze with millions of radiating stars. Bugs are creeping and crawling all over my laptop screen, but I still see the bullshit.

Two evenings ago, in the middle of the woods, I was trying to explain why people are so afraid of me. Look in your heart and you’ll find out. This evening I was asked what type of writer I am, a poet or an essayist. Why do I have to brand myself as one or the other? To be a writer of poetry does not make you a poet. Is it strange when I tell people that, truly, what I’m interested in is the poetics of existence? Why should I not be? We are, after all, wrapped forever in its arms. (Oh, look, get it now?) This is the God I worship. The God of life. What? Who said June? The same who meditated and chanted with me in the sunrise.

Violetta.

I am sitting on a couch in the lounge area outside the bar in the Sunset Tower Hotel. I’m in a midnight blue De La Renta suit, having seen only a few hours prior a production of La Traviata at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, with a royal blue dress shirt and a tie spun from fine Italian silk–a gift from my mother several years prior. To my left, on the same couch, is Peter, a recent but very dear friend of mine who seems to “get” me in a way others do not, who is not scared off by my rituals and antics and persistence; on the adjacent, smaller couch is Ryann, a young screenwriter who is at the same time both interesting and intriguing, whom I had met the night before and would like to get to know further. I am situated comfortably, one leg crossed over the other, my left arm placed in an L on the back of the couch, my head resting in its palm; my right arm draped going the other way. On the table before us sits a Kettle One martini, dry, with three olives (mine), two glasses of red wine for the others, a few napkins, and a steel tray containing kalamata olives, kettle chips, peanuts, and garbanzo beans. A grand piano sits unaccompanied next to the bar. Through the windows around me I see the lights of the L.A. night gleam. The lounge is empty save for us and a small party of three foreign women who are later joined by two males. It is late. I am not tired, though I may seem so.

We talk consistently but I am thinking mostly about the past year. The anticipation of the coming emergence swirling beneath the fatigued, craven exterior of a latent, leashed soul; the unforeseen arms which plunged deep, uninhibited, and pulled that soul to the air; breathing in the air; watching life begin again. As these little periods are emblematic of the larger scale scheme of all things, so can a day be of phases. I can sum up my entire year, so to speak, in one day in late August of the year 2008. But I won’t. Not here.

I think about liberation from all, but it takes almost a year to realize that more than anything what I needed to liberate myself from was myself. I am plagued by two problems: one, my metaphysical mind; two, that I can always see the finished product before the process actually begins. The fusion of these two make for a long, Gordian equation of inevitably disastrous consequence. I take the former and try to force the latter. Maybe you can call this idealistic. Whatever.

Here I am, wondering why nothing can be what I want it to be, the way I picture it, why all stars burn out in my hand, and there I’ve been trying to force things love and learning. The only agency we may possess over growth is awe, confidence, respect. The ability to accept life as it is and as it becomes. Be one with it. Nothing more.

Aw-ral.

Here comes the sound of the rocknroll mew-sack raging towards ya in bee-bops buzzin’ in waves led by the queen to the caves and it’s comincomincomin til’ it’s here do you hear? I said, do you hear? Who is the life of this rocknroll part-hey? Where you Atman? Oh here it comes again and away we go!

Ok let’s get one thing straight, straight as the bumble bee lines. (Do you hear the chorus sounds? I said, do you hear?) I roam you roam we all roam for ice cream, life seems something like light beams from the starzzz, from the sunson, from ol’ silver hair herself. I look up she looks down we meet in a frown. There’s a point to this, the ol’ silver linin’ round the black words. But maybe you don’t see it because all you see is yourself, whatever that is. Computer screen mirror. But what do you see–yea, YOU. You see me and thus you becomes me but I’m me so you can’t be me. Get it? The Self is not someone other than you. So stop trying to be me, you hear? I said, do you hear? Yea, I hear you. I heard you before you spoke. Now hear me. For once.

Back to my point. Way way back. Before I began. There is my point. Before and after. Don’t you know by now my point? No, of course not: like I mentioned back in the winter’s fall of some December night one year more than one year ago, I scream into voids. No matter; it’s not about you. It’s about me. But I am you, you are me, we are one, a part of this all, a part of me all. Oh, fiddles. I’ve gone and confused myself again. So said Shandilya. There is my point. Right there on my flesh: the meaning of June, the explanation of everything; the indivisible, right there on the man-made flesh; the imperishable upon the finite cave. But you don’t see that; you’re too busy thinking up silly games to satisfy your misguided ego. A child in a mucked up sandbox. Oh happy day. Oh sad day.

Let us direct our deepest desires to realize the Self.

Nuff-4-now. Too much for you. I walk in light towards light, the dark above me below me not before me. Go to the light of the Self. Look at all these things I can do. If you draw pictures can I write words? Or can I write words and you draw pictures? How about an Adam Kadmon for the 21st century? Follow Adam when he begins to speak. If he hasn’t already. Our language begins before we are born if we are born at all we are born into it as it. Ok? Ok.

What happened to the rocknroll? It rolls on in spite of you, I guess. I can’t explain this, but I’ll try, he’ll try, we’ll all try for ice cream.

Clearly I have a lot to say, so LISTEN TO ME. You hear? I said, do you hear?

(ihearatweetinthedistance)

Between.

The darkness broke with a snap. 7 AM, Pacific. I arose, brain pulsing slightly inside its chamber–whether still lingering from yesterday’s constant ache, or from last evening’s festivities in Hollywood, or some merging form of the two, I don’t know–washed the sleep from my face, brushed my teeth, tossed on shorts and sweater, and sneaked out the slider door into the morning air. I closed my eyes and breathed in for a moment, settling myself amidst the stillness of dawning daylight. Walking around the marina in which my hotel is located I watched eager captains prepping their boats for the day’s venture, a team of rowers striding in tandem through the still harbor, the hills on one side of me, the city on the other. Such silence in this centerpoint, I thought, such stillness between the bedlam of the beacons. And how embracing is stillness.

From the marina I walked up to Highway 1, the long, famed, path along which one can see many worlds. Wrapped still in the calm, soothing emptiness of the morning, I came upon a pristine little shopping center, popped into Starbucks and ordered my normal soy latte. I glanced briefly at both the New York and Los Angeles Times but purchased neither. The divide between the two cities, I thought, is exemplified so precisely by the styles of the two papers.

With my latte and banana, but no paper, I sat at one of the metal tables arranged on the pretty little patio replete with token fountain and obscure statues. There was one other man seated two tables over from me, dressed like a director in black jeans, black polo, sport coat and baseball cap. He was a middle-aged man and he stared off blankly into the distance before him, towards buildings, the highway, shops. I don’t think it mattered much precisely what occupied his direct line of sight.

Before long I did the same. Not buying the newspapers was a conscious decision. But when I reached in my pocket for a pen so that I may write in my notebook, I realized I had not brought either. Each remained, along with one of the books I am currently reading, on the nightstand beside my bed back at the hotel. I had not even the little pad of paper that I often take with me when I can’t bring my notebook. This was not a conscious move. Something with pages and some sort of implement filled with ink or lead come naturally attached to me, like extra appendages. This time, sitting in the cool morning air of Los Angeles, amidst the fountain and boutiques and metal tables and contemplating director, I had nothing. Nothing but myself. So I leaned my head slightly back, closed my eyes, and breathed in deep the calm around me. It will not last long.

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Formless.

I fall into the end. Vacancy in stillborn night. Don’t try to shape this. Flick a switch, not a thing, just the sound of switch flicking, me breathing, earth turning. Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina quando fiam uti chelidon. All to do. Where to start. How about here. Gather round. Fire kicks, crackles, kicks. Listen close. Once upon a time. Again and again. In the end it was enough.

I wonder if this could be me. Seeping, sinewy afterbirth of dream. Marigolds across the heart. Alluvium. Alleviate. All of this. Escher has too much on me. Sip wine, make love by the flicker of candle light. Camp fire light. This is the story. Howls behind me, upon me. Howls scowls, helter skelter. Into the distance recede like the sun into its nocturnal cavern. Oblivion lovechild. Smile shapes ark up rainbow after rain mist in my head. Whose earth is this I hold in my hand?

A heart. Gold, fragmented, adjoined, sojourned, gazing, bursting, loving, hurt, one more, one more, breaking, melding. To the spirit of a waking dream’s concerto. Coda brings what. She moves across stargazers unbreaking unbending unfolding into the open arms of Amaterasu. Cradle broken child. Conjoin. Make us shine in the night. All embrace. All in grace.

March along with the gilded days together with the glory of ghosts behind you. Echoes of heroes and harlots dance in the whispers of mortality. Your silhouette upon the back wall bleeds formless. Shadow smudge. Rorschach. I once was this was that now not. My god my dream my heart. Gleaming trinity upon mountain peaks. Peak of the night it comes again. A shadow sweeping across aurora light.

The Last Rose.

The dark. Not a buzz, a blink; a belief. A star, distant, lost, shining. Not here. Dark. Infinite dark. Finite dark. A smile, far away, like the star. I don’t see it; only the frown, in front of me, upon me, within me. The night warms around me. I am upon a bench in Red Hook, the bay before me, my future, calm like waves, calm like night. I am with you. I am with you. Who are you? Who are you? Which is which? I am in a garden, surrounded by metal, water, traffic. No star here, just holes. Dark holes. The same holes. A garden, yes, in the rain, yes, I picked this for you. The color of dawn. For you. Dusk now. Only dusk. Endless dusk. Moon home. Dark, no light, moon. Rain, rinse, repeat. Same old, same old.

What is the purpose of this? A dream. Deferred, real? Deferred. A dawn deferred. Again and again. Goes back now, before you, before time, this time, that time, to my time. In a basement, concrete cold against bare bottom. Figure there. Figure here. Let’s try. Mom don’t leave. Wood cold against cheek, tears puddle, drown. Don’t know what it is. Born into. Silence. Dusk. Gay. Not gay. Straight no chaser. Chase me. I chased you now you chase me. One road, two road. Back, forward. Through Red Hook, Hills West, Hills Cobble, gardens, pyramids, seas, fields, meadows, streams, around the basin, in the tide, in the rain, sunbeams, rose petal planks. Down. Look, there’s my heart upon that thorn. Never here. Never there. Always was. Same old, same old.

A.O.I.

Between sensation and bedrock lies the courage of man to determine bonds of derivative journeying. What could be of this if I follow the projection of the sun? What of the sea? I see this odd category of impeachment, of vaulting a few languid stones in order to languish a triffle or two. Don’t stop there. I see her coruscate through the trees, bursting rays spliced with affection and intrigue and desire: all these things that look like gold, feel like gold, weigh like gold. Oh, heaven, I look your way but feel only the dark abyss looks back. Shall I stretch my body out further to you, dear Sol? Has not my mind stretched enough? It is the other I need, to breathe her silver light upon me.

All and nothing, you say? Philalethes, you humble me, startle me, abandon me. I watched her come and go; I hear her speak. She dreams: How far are the bounds of human knowledge?

Solutio.

Samadhi.

Blink.

I find myself upon an ocean. I am as calm as the waters–crystalline blue, motionless, deep. I am beneath a bridge, it seems, for I am at its pier. But the pillar–I can’t see upwards. There are stones: rectangular, pristine, floating, lined as soldiers. I leap from the base of the bridge’s pier towards a stone. We sink, the stone and I. We float back. I leap towards the next stone. The same. Holding the stone now like a raft, my body suspends in the water. I wade my legs. I tilt my head. I feel something. Yes, I know these waters well. The bridge is gone now. Just water. Infinite, endless, tranquil water. And June. Where the sun sets into the ocean there is June, bursting from the blaze of elemental convergence. She has been gone, dead even, but she comes now in my night, paralyzed in the midst of infinity. Her hair no longer alive, no longer crimson. Her face sheathed in tattered silk. Eyes burn behind the veil. She moves no longer upon moonbeams, but now on lotus petal. But it is June, this I know. Are you alive? I whisper. She reaches out.

Blink. Daylight.

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