In Bondage

And yet, in another form it dwells. There are so many rocks on the shore, all from the same massive cliffs. It is gray and hard with some dark caves that hide the whispers. And he stands at the podium, a well dressed man. Lights all around. Reporters and cameras. The talk, the strings of words and punctuation that wrap around and form a concept. The pack of brilliant speech writers who so blindly follow a man. Or they follow the money, or the ideology, or the power. Those sentences, they convince the majority of young boys to pick up a pen, then hold a gun. Then run and follow and sleep and yell and smoke. And maybe they’ll come back. Maybe they won’t. Maybe just a part of them will make it back, just a small part of their brain or body. They are so young, so eager to make their claim on the world. So eager for adventure, so eager to die, to spill over and into the unknown that waits with white and yellow and red explosions. But they are slaves to the machine of bondage and slaves to the force of war and corporate power. They have been convinced. With simple words, simple phrases that reach out to them with purple tentacles that clasp onto the things they know as ideals. Those words attach themselves, they bite with venom and they stay, they linger and they pull the strings. These are the boys that will give their lives. Give their lives for a carefully devised speech, for a carefully devised strategy that requires force and brute strength. What this country wants requires taking. They need guns, steel, ammo. They must be a sacrifice, and there is a willing martyr. An army in fatigues will lay down and die so that American corporations can gain access to new markets. They will die so that America can gain more power. They will die all so that a very few, so very few, can control more. And they are the pawns, the fatigues in bondage. The young eager men who moved without choice, without freedom. They give their breath for a machine that knows no limits, love, reason. They sit and listen and march. They move in tandem with a larger force. Men behind closed doors design their fate. It was never for freedom, never for democracy. Those words are meaningless, meaningless for the men in the suites that sit behind locked doors, men who are always safe. It is others that give their lives for their simulated ideals, others that die for an idea of something, perhaps never really knowing what it is. They are in bondage. Boys who move for the strength of American power. The ones who thought, perhaps ever so faintly, that they were doing something great. But they were the bodies. Simply bodies. Bodies moving for a larger force, a larger cause that knows no human interest. It is the pursuit of power. Always more power. And power, that elusive word that seems to have no real definition. Only the traces of its movement can be seen, like a streaking cloud. Is it tangible? Can it be seen or touched or felt by those who do not have it? America, the great brutalizer. America, the great bully. America, the great weapon maker. They are asked to give their lives, to die for the accumulation of another man’s power. And they say yes, as they have nothing else left to say.

The Elephant in the Well

In late August 2008, a baby elephant fell into a well in north central Sri Lanka. The concerned villagers knocked down a section of the cement well so the elephant could escape. After crawling out, the elephant began charging the very villagers who had rescued it.
I’ve fallen in…into the realm where words define all shapes. Where I truly believe I am Me. I’ve been in here for years, swimming in small circles within this cage. Between breaths I look up and see the sky, I see the people in rags that peer over the sides, throwing down bits of food and small orange flowers. I keep swimming, never quite dying, but never really living. The walls are high….cool and smooth stones form the walls of my circular home. I keep paddling, knowing no other way. There is nothing to grab onto, no crevasse in which to burrow. I’ve fallen into the largest of holes, the water is at my neck, and if it rains, I’ll be covered for sure. I look up from the bottom of a towering well, the light of day is bright and visible. Above, I can hear a few voices, faint and singing soft melodies. They have sent down an orange flower, cradled in the beak of a small song bird. The sky changes, I see blue, then clouds of red, then wisps of passing rainbows. But I am at the bottom, in the hole of water dug deep into the red earth.
My falling…it happened without thought. I cannot remember another way. Was it my first breath which began the fall? I am in deep murky water, and yet, those that offer me help, those that break the walls so I may run and breathe…it is those people I run to destroy. I do not run to the poachers or the politicians, I charge towards the ones closest to me, the ones that still clutch rocks and hammers they used to break me free. These are the ones near my feet, the ones I can kill with a breath. Within me I just cannot see the people that have sacrificed a part of themselves so that I might touch land once again. After their work, after their gifts, I run towards them with all my force, unable to control my habits of the wild.
Truly, I am unaware of my self. I run to kill the first threat. Just a baby, but I see danger everywhere. In the smiling man, in the song I cannot sing. In the fog as it rolls towards me, bringing disguised shadows and darker fears. I am drowning in the waters of my own creation, but I am unable to see the glittering plates stacked high with gifts and knowledge, held by the most beautiful of hands. Take your freedom and use it they chant. But the quest for water does not leave. Thirst deeper than my mouth, thirst deeper than the most water-less of deserts creeps, and I go looking for the watery filled wells. It is my habit to fall. Sometimes I wait for a willing hand, but will they come again? If they do, this time, will I remember their sacrifice?

Distractions

"Rrrrhhhhhhhhhhh," he screams with the cry of a gutted animal. He has been screaming like this in intervals all afternoon, an emotional reaction to the interactive video game he plays with his friends. They all shout and yell at their chosen 2 dimensional characters on the flat-screen TV, but one has far superior lungs. I can hear them laughing, I can hear the joy in their voices as they collectively identify with their games of war and strategy. And yet, each shout, so loud that it reverberates in each room of this small house, is enough to make me cringe. As much as I would like to concentrate on my writing tasks at hand, I find myself preoccupied with their assembly. Instead of focusing on myself, I sit here, tense, waiting for another cry…the moments of silence are thick with suspended animation…and when the "rrrraaaaahhhhhrrrrr" inevitably comes, my body contorts, my face scrunches with the guttural squeal. I think about marching to the living room and asking them to maintain quiet, I find myself getting angry, coming up with excuses why I can’t seem to write, why I can’t enjoy space or complete my task. And my machine says, "It’s because of them…their noise, their presence." And perhaps, a small glimmer of this is true. But true freedom comes from being able to Work within any setting, to maintain composure and control my machine and its reactions within any setting. There will always be places, forces, and people we can consider obstacles, annoyances, and distractions; but inner will is developed by remaining steady and following through, despite the things that will work to distract you. Sounds and people, weather and mood…so much stimulus comes from the outside, but it is truly OUR reaction to these things that matters. We can chose to either use these sounds and people for our practice or chose to identify with them and lose focus. Distractions flow like a torrential river, moving unabated through our physical and physic realms. THIS JUST IS, it cannot be changed…it can only be escaped by isolated living in the mountains or monasteries or creating sound-free chambers…but even these would do little to stop the distractions of our own minds. These forces all come from within. We allow ourselves to be annoyed, we allow ourselves to become identified and preoccupied with the person laughing loudly in the movie theatre. We allow our nice dinner to be spoiled by the table of semi-drunk middle aged women in the far corner of the restaurant, oblivious to evil eye stares and exasperated sighs of those around them. These people are not there to harm you, however clueless they may be of their effect on others in the same space. Our goal is not to change others, to show them how to become better, more aware people. Our objective is to work on ourselves, in every moment we are conscious enough to do so. The shouting teenagers, the hyena laughing movie patrons, they are real opportunities for our Work, opportunities to maintain awareness and steady breathing. We cannot maintain anything outside ourselves, indeed, it is a lifetime of work to maintain the landscape within, you may as well give up any fantasy of controlling anything beyond the fleshy walls of your machine. Submit to the sounds, sacrifice the twinges and evil looks, they only serve to keep you asleep. It is your Work, your breathing, your objectives that You must focus on. Allow the distractions, and the energy that they evoke, to flow into you and be transformed… use it, allow the annoyances to energize you towards a higher creative state.