My Life As A Leaf

I held onto that tree branch, suckling where my lips met the bark, clinging, holding.  Thousands more like me, clinging, waiting. 
Which will it be?  Pale blue light?  Soft yellow? 
The tunnels stand, eternally waiting.  A choice made minute after minute- for the beings die by the thousands.

I move through the tunnel- I have chosen. A rock, a white house, a dimension where the work has taken root- I cannot tell. 
I am folded into the darkness, one with the shadows that hide my lifetime.  It comes- it is there, eternally ready.

Fluttering.  There is a maelstrom of currents pushing me in all directions. 
I am not dying.  I am living. 
I breathe. But do I live? 
There must be more than breathing, simply existing.  Must be more- did I chose that place? 

The ground is near.  I see it coming.
The ground blares even from the tree branch- so far and just a blink away.
I move towards it slowly, I move towards it quickly. 
I shudder and I am there. 
I turn around and my edges are yellow and red and crinkled. 
It comes and there I am, touching the earth once again.  swoosh.  
I am in the void.  The clear light. 
Nothing. Nothing.  Everything.  Nothing.

And then there is consciousness once again. 
I look back at the fading clear light. 
I am falling.  Falling, falling. 
Soon I will have to choose once again.
I will be that leaf, clinging.
It’s coming.

Soon I will decide. 
The tunnel is there once again-
a million of them leading to rocks or thirst, yellow of white, clear or brilliant.
There will be breathing, perhaps life once again.

I am falling, falling. 
The clear light is ahead. 

Art And Perception

It is opening night in the SomArts gallery and the covered walls are still fresh with the first round of energy and enthusiastic eyes that fill the large room. In one particular corner, at the far end of the gallery, are two small pictures covered in glass and surrounded by a thin wooden frame. The drawings speak for themselves, yet they do not have a mouth or tongue or voice. But they do speak clearly to those that see. To those that look with a second’s glance. They speak clearly to those that take in their shape and color and let the lines filter in through the layers of experience and mind and consciousness. They go in, turning and twisting, becoming new things in the subconscious of the viewer. They flow like smooth driftwood in the river of the mind, hitting stones and spinning wildly through tiny rapids. Art speaks through the interaction. Each new interpretation is a communication. It happens with each single person looking at it. Each person, who brings their own world understanding and luggage of signifiers and interprets the drawing in their own way. They don’t even have to think about it, the shapes move in like a quick fire, transmuting before the eye can blink. Just a single glance is needed, the mind does the rest, moving the shapes like a multidimensional Rubik’s Cube and spitting out dreams. And just like a river, the painting is never the same. On first glance, it looks like the same stagnant piece. The men look at the same two drawing as the other couple before them. The image hasn’t moved. There are still two penises, one shaped into a high heel shoe, the other creating the barrel of a gun. Moments later, when the two men leave, the drawings will stay in their corner of the gallery….only…something new will jump when a new set of eyes come to rest on them. It is the nature of art, alive in the perception of it. Born anew each moment through attention. The drawings on the wall switch from moment to moment, from person to person, from eye to mind. Art carries itself, rising up from a piece of paper like a flag blowing in the wind. It is the painting, the image and lines and color that talks without sounds and without a body. It speaks independently of the artist. The long forgotten hand and brush mean little any more. That hand was merely the vehicle for creation, the body for birth. Once finished, framed, hung…it changes. It moves. It talks. It gives over and over. A new meaning, a new word. From body to body, it changes.

The Attempt

The school is closed on this early Sunday morning. The imposing shapes of the administration buildings stand silent in the background, and just a vague sense of silenced authority finds its way to the parking lot. On this weekend, as with all weekends, there are no cars in the lot, and the recently paved black asphalt is the perfect floor for an education without curriculum and standardization. This is the self-created flat-land of trial and error. The place where there is only will and peer pressure and broken bones and the decision to try it again.

Two dozen teenagers are gathered on the periphery of the asphalt, close to the sidewalk that wraps around it like a thick barrier. They stand there, patient and attentive, but with their hands on their own skateboards, ready in an instant to step into the sacred space.

In the center of the lot are metal rails and obstacles meant to be jumped onto or over, or coasted against. They have brought them here, carried in backpacks and bicycles, easily assembled and built for the moment. These are self-imposed obstacles, and they’re here to be used. To hit, to land, to wail against.

In the center is a young man. His slim-fitting black pants do nothing to prevent him from attempting another trick. He has tried it over and over, weekend after weekend. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he pushes himself with his right leg and rolls over the asphalt gaining speed until he is just a few feet from the metal bar. Then he puts a little more weight on the back tail of the board and uses his right foot to push the wooden board up just a little higher. Sometimes he gets it. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and then falls off. Sometimes he makes it to the rail and grinds the bottom of his board against it till it ends. Sometimes he even lands on the ground with both feet on the board. Sometimes he falls off halfway through. After all the attempts, he has still not got it quite right, not enough to be consistent. So he tries it again.

His loose black T-shirt billows with the force of the wind. This is the moment. The gathered on-lookers watch him, and though he has made it to the rail, nearly to the end, he looses his balance. His arms are still out to the sides for balance, his right foot tilts awkwardly on the board, just about to fall off the platform completely. His right foot is bent and raised slightly towards his chest. He knows what’s coming, and he smiles.

The trick has failed. There will be a fall, he will have to roll as he always does and duck his head, and just as he feels his entire body shifting with gravity, he smiles. Another attempt that has failed. But after the fall, he will try again. There will be a line of guys, they’ll attempt the same trick. And he’ll be standing there, watching them, as they watch him now. As he waits for another turn, he’ll watch their footing, the speed with which they approach the rail, the timing and pressure on the nose of the board. He’ll watch it all, looking for another subtle movement to use and push him along. It’s balance, timing. Above all, it is will. There is so much to remember and execute, he has to do it within seconds. If they are watching him from the sidelines, they’re learning from his mistake, just as he learns from them. He smiles. It was a good attempt, another jump into the unknown, taking all the knowledge he could remember and use. And though he jumped, though he ground the wheels for a few feet, it just wasn’t right. When he falls, the sun will still be shining. The clouds will still be scattered. He will be one jump wiser. If he can just remember it all, he can try it again.

For the brief moment, he is suspended, not quite the victor, not quite the fallen. He knows his mistake. He smiles and waits for the crash.

Moon Water Heart

I was born of water. In its wet cave I sparkled to life. Within its slippery grasp I grew and formed a beating heart. On the full moon, I felt the pull and began to swim, towards land, towards a realm which distinguishes between day and night. The people of air greeted me with a slap and a gulp full of moist oxygen and I opened myself to their ways.
And here, on earth, the moon calls to me twice a month, calling me with relentless screams when the tides are at their peak. The arms of the cypresses point me to the waves, to the power that keeps coming and coming, stopping at nothing to reach shore. I stand ankle deep in the biting water, it tries to find its way in, searching for an orifice that will bring it to the center of my watery heart. “Try if you must, but know that we are the same, you needn’t yearn so much! I am here, brother, I am standing within you. Feel my beat, my lunar pull!”
The skies open and shower me with the semen of a bearded god. The sea rises in its nightly lust and coats me in its desire. The center of my chest pushes out, moving through every thin vein, reaching fingertips and tiny toes, trying just a little harder to extend beyond the barrier of flesh.
“We are here,” the tide murmurs, “you needn’t cry so hard! You stand amongst the waters of the womb, you rise tall above the hot liquid of earth and below the sweet tears of the sun. You are one among us!”
The night is without a moon and I run in circles around the boulder in the sand. I run til the water in my heart begins to boil and I run until my knees begin to drip. I run on all fours, chasing mountains of white foam and sheets of mist that tousle my unkempt mane. I orbit the rock like a satellite, speeding like a dying star, howling like a rabid dog.
I collapse in the arms of peaking waves. They hold me while the black sky kisses my eyelids and while the absent moon sends down crows with secret signals and while little bubbles tickle the sides of my cheek. The waters rise higher still, entering my mouth in salty rivers that carry news from the deep. Hold me my love, my brother, let me live just a little longer.

Amma

I ran over to touch her little feet. They were miniature toes with even tinier nails, she was just ten weeks old and still looking shocked to be in a world of sunlight and sounds that come from all directions. She looked at me with gray-blue eyes. I had been wearing my glasses all day while working in the bright rays of spring, but as I looked at her, I remembered to take my glasses off instantly. It was as if another well of knowledge opened up, the part of me that knew this was different, that this required contact without barriers.
I looked at her while her dad held still, maybe she felt his breathing, she was suspended on his chest, but whatever he was thinking about or doing, he held still and Amma and I looked at each other until she looked away. Her father wore her like a precious necklace upon his chest, or perhaps the tangible creation of his love, worn right above his heart. The baby smelled of milk and newness.
This little thing did not exist 11 months ago. Her material form, her body, her eyes, her crying, her name…none of it was here. And then she came, from a place I wish I could remember, a place I wish she could recount in colorful stories that would paint my dreams in extra dimensions. But is the price of travel paid for in language? Or did she come from a place that spoke in other ways? Without a shared language between us now, I look into her eyes and hope she sees the stars that have collided. I search in her grayness for the missing pieces of the sentence.
She is a piece of this earth now. A piece of matter that breathes and cries and sleeps and looks at her surroundings. She grew inside of a woman and came out into arms that were waiting. She took a breath and began her life here, in this place, with that little body, to these particular parents.
Is it the smallness of her, the helpless body that needs constant nourishment and attention to survive, is that what strikes me? Is it the strange materialization of a new human that is so natural and yet, so completely surreal? Where did you come from, Amma?
She looks at the trees and the faces that coo at her without judgement, she seems without character, without personality. An empty vessel which will quickly be filled with words and ideas and thoughts and taught how to count and tell time. Soon she will be polluted and the smell of milk will fade, will she be able to remember why she came and what she left behind? Will she learn to use her new language to describe her experience coming through the tunnel and filling her lungs with air?
I am filled with questions which cannot be answered with words. So I wait, and work. Soon, I will journey through that tunnel again. Maybe next time I will remember.

Precious Moment

The day sparkles with freshness, made new by gusts of forceful wind that rustles silvery leaves without rest. The light is high overhead, the brightness of a wish just past. My heart has been aching since the morning, noticed in a moment of stillness when all I could feel was the pounding in my toes and the ache of my wrists and the extra pressure in the center of my chest. It stays in me, a continuing presence as long as I can maintain this quiet in my mind. The sacrifices are made, held tightly inside, and I look for my ring of keys.
The day is bright, the sun is high overhead, winking its rays through the glass of the car, through the tinted lens above my eyes, through the delicate membranes that are my windows to the world. The light is clear, I feel myself in the car, aware of each turn of the wheel, aware of the narrow road down the hill with five sharp turns. I move out beyond the dotted yellow line, there are no cars coming and I’m safe, but I feel the strength of the car, I feel the weight moving at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to smash the delicate connections between fiber and blood.
There are three stop signs before I get to Mission St and as I brake at each one, the sensation of fragility compounds. Maybe it’s the man wheeling around his trashcans to the curb, maybe the woman walking across the street talking into her cell phone, or the man sitting in his car at the red light beside me.
Something comes thorough me, coming in, moving out, twirling inside. I do not name the cause, I wouldn’t reveal the source, I can only recognize the moment.
Without the radio on, without yammering or melodies…the day seems brighter, harsh in its generous opening. It’s not the strength of a fight or the pounding of a bat, it’s more like the opening of a sun that has remained shrouded in petals, the glow is harsh, the reality is painful. My chest thumps with more pain than I usually a notice, a nice, dull, achy pain that sits well, a feeling I have begun to consider a long lost friend that I welcome with a smile.
“Oh, you’re back! It’s great to have you home!”
The skin surrounding me seems so temporary… I feel the forceful weight of the car, I feel the fragility of the moment like an egg shell rolling down the street. The mortality of the breath, the temporal nature of me.
The other day, she loudly laughed and then she said, “You don’t know when you’re going to die!”
“Oh yeah,” I thought… “I can’t count on eighty more years.”
One wrong move, now, and everything could be altered. I imagine myself in the hospital on a ventilator.
I hear his voice, “We might be able to be together after this, depending on how much progress we’ve made during this cycle.”
I scan the crosswalk carefully for walkers. I check the rear view mirror. Time is precious, the body is precious. The moment is precious and delicate and I feel it as though for the first time, in the brightness of a sun high overhead, in the freshness brought about by the wind and an aching heart.

From The Grave

The long wooden coffin sat six feet in the ground, regulation depth. It was made of a pretty light wood, not at all glossy, with deeper colored wood grain running from top to bottom. On either end of the coffin was a triangle, a kind of light embellishment. The base of the triangle was parallel to the end of the coffin’s edge and the pointed crown faced into the center of the long box. Within the two triangles, separated by five feet of smooth blond wood, the wooden grains ran perpendicular and created a beautiful juxtaposition of shapes. On top of the coffin, in the space where the heart center might be if the body’s head was closer to the blacktop drive and the gathered mourners in black, was a wooden star of David, which was about the size of a man’s outstretched hand. The coffin was simple and humble and made of matter easily absorbed into the earth. The female rabbi stood beside the rectangular hole, facing the small group that had their backs towards the empty cemetery drive, empty except for the limo parked five feet away and the four other midsize cars that stood parked and silent. The rabbi wore an outdated dress from the early 90s, made of mostly purple fabric that had abundant square swatches different colors and multiple pockets. She led the people in prayer. Twenty voices lifted into the air, a low mumbling of vowels and consonants…
Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba….
Their eyes were fixed on the small piece of cardstock that the cemetery officiate had handed them.
They said it in unison. The left side of the card was in Hebrew, the other was the phonetical translation of the prayer into English letters.
I did not say the prayer, the words had no more meaning than if I had been watching a Korean soap opera. I did not fall back into the pleasant embrace of a half hearted ritual that I had memorized twenty years ago. I heard the prayer buzzing in the background and I heard the sobbing of the widow on my right. Someone handed me a box of tissues and I wiped some fallen tears from her eyes. I held the box of Kleenex with both hands and stared at the coffin. I let my gaze soften and focused on the feeling of pain and energy that radiated and pulsed in my chest. I looked at the box in the ground, containing a man, a Being in transit. I saw a box just a little below the surface of the earth. "The EARTH!" I thought to myself. And the feeling of amazement and wonder coursed through me. This is the earth. It seems like such a simple statement, such an ordinary fact, but the realization that we are indeed upon a sustainable mound of soil and magma and liquid fire that continually transforms itself felt infinitely more real as I looked at the box which contained my grandfather. I felt the ground under my thin shoes a bit more distinctly. The smallness of our state hit me like a loving hand and my mind quieted.
The cut ground was a rectangular hole surrounded by a bright lawn of green grass dotted by simple whitish-gray headstones. At the far end of the open grave was a pile of soil, the mound of rich earth just waiting to be returned to its rightful place. To make room for the coffin, the soil had been cut in an inverted triangular shape, so that the perimeter closest to the surface was larger than the smaller space which held the body. Long sticks of thin metal rebar held the neatly severed earth from tumbling. In moments when the mourners paused and the rabbi took a few breaths, I heard small chunks of earth break from the holds of the rebar. Small bits of soil fell and broke across the wooden coffin, making pretty, delicate thumping sounds as the pieces scattered across the smooth wood. The little clusters spoke to me, singing soft lullabies of the living soil that awaited. The earth was barely patient enough to wait for the mourners to finish their chants and return to their waiting cars, it yearned to fill in the gaping hole. To move to the lowest point, the point of least resistance, the point of stability, is the Law of Falling, and the soil would not follow the wishes of the humans that had gathered to cry.
The earth, though patient at times, calmly breathing even after cement has flooded its surface, is ultimately without mercy. Its compassion is objective. There is no sentimentality sprouting from its folds. We come forth though its devices and nutrients, we come from its stone and water and air, and to it, we return, like lost little children finally coming home to sleep.

In The Twilight

Flying high above the clouds, progress may seem endless, continuous and uninterrupted. Since there are no obstacles in sight, you may come to believe that there truly won’t be any. But look below. There are clouds right beneath you. A slight loss of altitude will bring you into the heart of them, where the sky won’t be visible anymore and the ground will be calling. To slide downwards a bit does not necessarily mean that all is lost, but your machine might say so. It will say: "The downward spiral has begun and there’s no way to break it now. Set your motors towards a total catastrophe!" This is a trick. The machine knows that when you fall, it takes over. It gets to do all the things it likes to do, it can relax, indulge, dream away the moments without turning back. So any excuse will do. A mistake will be an excuse for another, and that one will make the excuse for yet another… and the chain itself will be used to signify that the process can’t be stopped and that you shouldn’t even try.
It is important to come to understand that this is not true. You can stabilize and slide back up. It will seem unnatural. It will seem like something is wrong, something doesn’t fit right, something is flowing the wrong way. All of these statements are literally true.
My old teacher told me a story. A monkey has a handful of peanuts in a jar. As he walks through the forest, bouncing up and down with happiness at his luck, one of the peanuts falls over and is lost in the bushes. When he bends over to try to find it, the jar tips and he lets another one fall. This means further bending and further tipping. Pretty soon, the whole handful of peanuts is lost and he sits crying at his terrible luck. None of it would have happened if he had simply allowed the first peanut to be lost. If he had only let go of that one little peanut.
This story applies to our work in a very direct and practical way. It is not some kind of vague moral teaching. It has to do with our moment to moment shifts in attention. When the machine starts to take over, we will begin to be lost in thoughts, in daydreams, in hard identifications (the kind that come with solid justifications and logical arguments), in emotional pain ready to be attached to the nearest possible cause, in lost desires, in nostalgia for moments that are now only images, in physical pain that presses against your nerves and pulls you down and out of life… this will happen from one moment to the next.
One instant you will be vibrant and clear about what you are doing. The next you will be lost in a complex swamp of identification and stress and pain and desire. When the slide down begins to happen, these two spaces may be about even, one moment for one, one moment for the other. As the machine justifies itself, it will say: "we already lost these 2 moments, we may as well lose another one… and another one now…". If we can release the lost moments and concentrate on the present instant, we can expand our attention through our machine and bring it back to Life. But as long as we punish ourselves internally for the moments that were lost, we will have no hope and the descent will continue.
In the twilight, you must be careful as to what door you step through. Know that the doorways will open and they will lead to places you would much rather not go… but they will be so tempting. The more attractive the doorway, the more you should resist it. Here in this twilight space all offers of rest and pleasure are to be suspected and rejected. Step away from the open doorways. If you have already stepped through, but a foot is still behind, take a moment, breath calmly and step back. This can be done.
AN OPEN REBIRTH DOOR CAN BE CLOSED
It is not easy. It takes a lot of practice. But there is no way to learn to do it other than by actually attempting it. When you step back, there will be a gap, a space of nothingness. The part of you that had already found itself on the other side, the part of you that had already identified with the new world, will call for help, will feel the closing jaws of final death tightening around it. Let it die. Let it dissolve. Step back and let the nothingness replace it until the doorway disappears into the Void once more. Let the nothingness itself become a burning sun in your solar plexus that will lead you back to Life.
You are only in the clouds. You have not truly fallen. Rise up once again. Step back from the inviting doorway and rise. Rise above it. Fly again. Rise.

A Thousand Years

I have strolled here for a thousand years.
Moving beside these blue mountains like a shadow in hiding,
moving in the darkness to escape my own face.
The mirror is frightening, each glimpse becomes a new horror
of hollowed eyes and flaming hair.
I escape myself at each turn,
and each lifetime piles upon the next.
Piles and stacks, mostly of red and yellow,
but faint sparks of blue shine from the furthest star.
Un-countable, like the bodies of battle,
but these have suffered from sleep.
With each new birth, my image becomes an ingenious disguise.
Like all the others I buried,
the enormity of Darkness always seems to settle upon my skin.
Each pore moves softly to accept the dew,
like a whore with a thousand open mouths, we drink.
We drink the waterfalls that pour from us.
From engraved goblets, the dragons toast their assent,
they curse my fall.
They await my rising.
Laugh at my death.
Dance at my birth.