blades of grass look up and reflect everything that i cannot

morning pages 6:00 AM 11/29/12: "truth"

it is both the easiest and the hardest thing to come by depending upon many things and factors many times we don't want it because it would cause us to make decisions that are well true therefore no one could think anything else of us other than that we are wholly our own and worthy of all and any blame we could incur from our words or deeds rightfully or wrongfully because then we would finally own our actions in total and there is no veil of family or habit or comfort to hide our scared sacred bodies behind truth sheds light on parts of our psyches we feel we must keep in the dark to remain expectedly functional in this experiment called society this blind-rats-in-a-maze race truth will strip away the armor and the cracked drooping facade you wear to keep the seeming well wishers from prodding or accusing you of honesty of invoking reality too strongly which is not what anyone truly wants from you Jesus had his own version of truth and look at what the great unwashed did to him there was a person who bore their truth to the very end if we are to believe the stories bore his truth like a cross you could say he bore it he wore it over the armor of nicety truth can become your armor if you wear it right they say the truth hurts but i think its the lies that hurt us the truth only shows us that which we hold on to for comfort and security is as thin as a strand of silk that to truly exist in this world you need to go groping wildly into thorny jungles to find something true to grasp on to and youll probably bleed a little and youll get upset but those are the rules of the road no one signed up for them but surely as you will blink breathe and pump blood the rules of existence apply to all truth shows us the rulebook cleared of the editorial haze all the omissions are not really omissions but hidden by lies to fool us into thinking we can coast by on shallow seas all the while our souls are rending in rapids and rocky coasts that is why we are told truth hurts truth makes us own everything lies as i have said are what actually hurt us they sidle up a as smiling stranger and buy us drinks until we fall in love we fall in love with lies like patty hearst fell in love with her captors this is an existential stockholm syndrome of the soul we fall in love with our lies so the truth seems to hurt truth will clear out the silt from the stream show the rocky irregularities under the surface where you thought all was perfect smoothness and comfort and crossing from one side of life to the other becomes apparent to be a balancing act where you thought it was one smooth ride with no jagged edges or slippery slopes of freezing currents fear not your own truth like the frigid water of the stream if you know it is there and you must immerse yourself in it then go all in and dont look back at the bank where one second ago you were standing warm and dry that was just an illusion no one is that lucky truth does not hurt it only temporarily inconveniences if one is not willing to face temporary shame for eventual liberation then one must be ready for a lifetime of simmering resentment and bitterness a simmer that could turn into a boil denied truth doesnt go away see so at any time it could poke its head up and show you its brightness to your darkened eyes and at those moments your damaged self will erupt your denied truth will draw you out of yourself  and the result will be unpredictable and dangerous truth blinds but only those who dont have the courage to turn the lights on more often

I think I've said it. It felt good, and real, and I think I'd like to take some of that and go off somewhere with it to where I can feel like I can put it to good use. I want to think it poured out of me because it was truth. Or maybe it was a lie, a lie I've cozied up to and I am happy to be a host this parasitic being that just needs a pulse and a body around 98 degrees fahrenheit to thrive. I don't know what is true, or I just am supposed to think I don't. circular.

Santa Monica Mountains 5/30/12

seven butterflies tangle
in a flowing mass
following ancient whims

i started out in search of ordinary things

if anyone is reading this:
i am enamored with this man's music and words. and basically his entire aura. one of those artists who seems to exude elusive/illusive truths as easily as breathing.

the ocean and the wave

the day does not belong to us, much as we want to possess the light, we are not responsible for anything beyond our sphere and though our sphere of influence extends outward in all directions forever we can only control so much. there are as many factors to influence as there are factors of feeling, of sense, in the world. even within our frames there are thousands of factors and they change without us knowing it. we're walking waves of change, expanding and collapsing on ourselves and each other, and pushing and pulling everything around us. waves originate from somewhere, we don't know; something to do with the moon and the sun and the rotation of the earth. aint that just how it goes, we don't know where we came from but we're going somewhere regardless. and we have no idea where. i wonder if the waves in the ocean think about that. then again the waves, to my eyes, look perfect: no grief or want or disappointment. and a wave is no more separate from the water than a mountain is separate from the ground; just extensions, protrusions, that are always in the process of growing up and coming back to the origin. so a wave cannot necessarily think of what it means in the grand scheme, because really the wave thinks with the same mind as the wave that just broke ahead or the forming wave behind, that is to say, the totality of water, one mind, one singular though unknowable purpose. i wonder if its like that with people, too. maybe it is, there's just not an easy metaphor to be made. i'm tempted to say because we are more "complex" than the waves in the ocean, but we're really not, we're molecular and random and orderly and chaotic and coincidentally here all the same as the ocean and her waves. its just that with all our "advances" in thinking we believe we can explain the purpose of the ocean, though we have no similarly simple explanation for ourselves and some individual or collective purpose. you go so far, only to realize you left something at home; you invent micronanotechnology and self-serving robotics, yet at the heart of it you're just seeking the meaning of simple things

the geology of beaches

how far
must we be willing
to go

to sit beneath
the tree
of bodhi
and know
why it grows

to know
the weight of snow
in zero gravity

to decipher
the geology of beaches?

"empty of a separate self"

a blank page. a blank page that is born full of lines, full of full lines, lines full of curves and crosses, dashes and dots, already born and waiting for a pen to unravel the stitchwork of time, people, places, and feelings, already imbued in a sheet of dead oak, a sliver of a thousand years worth of sunlight, soil, and rain, an atom within an eternity, full of stories and wit and wisdom, blooms and blossoms and defeats. clear your eyes of remembrance and prejudice and you have yourself a blank page, an open day which is a white canvas, and a white canvas is already deep with white, ya know, not blank or open as you might think. words are written before they're thought of, thought of before they're comprehended, comprehended before they're linked with others we call "words", and before all that is the blank page, awaiting the starting pistol. we say that "life will begin when..." but its already begun and going by the time we can believe we are choosing the outcome. it begins before you awake - the page is writing itself. it can be reasonably stated that the story is compiled in utero, and back beyond to pre-inception. the page is writing itself, is written, before we have a chance to lay hand, eye, or mind upon it (it is when we enter the coliseum with each and every other already-written page that something we call "spontaneity" occurs because we are all walking our very own tightrope of evenly-spaced lineage. worlds coming together, etc...). this page was never blank, always had its own story to tell, its own life bursting from its superficial two dimensions. nothing is blank. the air around our heads could be broken up into individual atoms and recreated as a mosaic of diversity and clashing bodies. the light in our eyes can be upon our skin as waves in the ocean.

"an empty canvas, apparently really empty, that says nothing and is without significance - almost dull, in fact - in reality, is crammed with thousands of undertone tensions and full of expectancy" - Wassily Kadinsky

-


afraid of the page because of what it might have to say, and where that thought could lead us, ad noctum, into shadowy places where the real meat of life rests in coolness, waiting for the light of illumination to spoil. afraid of strangers because of what their eyes could teach us about ourselves, how they respond to our gestures and inquiries, how their response is more an indication of the real I than the maze within our heads. Gotama sat by that river because it had something to teach him, and because he brought his blank self to it, it had something to teach his open mind, to flow without words into the deep pools of his open ears and tell him more than ten thousand libraries ever could.
we're afraid of sitting calmly and just breathing, like a shark that expires if it stops moving and must devour all that stands in its way. when we sit calmly we no longer express, expell, or produce, but absorb. we have to open ourselves to the flowing of life around us to feed the flow within us. we're afraid of openness; the desert frightens whereas the forest soothes, for example. but the desert opens us as it is open, cracks us open like a clam and sucks out all the soft fatty insides, truly puts us in our place, because walking and trying to gain new vistas, new horizons, to devour, is almost futile and we're better off taking in than putting out in that space. the point being: to be humble and accepting of things as they are. no matter where we sit, stand, kneel, or lay, we are on the verge of entering a wonderfully transformative metaphysical desert, and we'd do well to enter. summits and vistas are valuable, but not so much as the climb, the climb not so valuable as sitting a mile away and dreaming of the climb, the dream not so important as the blank slate that enabled the dream in the first place.