solid remains

Currently

You are hanging by a string. You crave odd objects, not just food. A damp hand cloth folded neatly across your face, torn up bits of construction paper, rice cakes at midnight.

You are being strangled by your own omission. It's like you are trying to remember where you buried your feet in the sand, but can't walk around to find them. And you can't remember if the waves washed up these used cigarettes or if you smoked every last one of them out of a stagnant boredom (because there is such a thing as active, animated boredom).

But things are getting messy now. Your stage fright is becoming unbearable, the front row littered with matches, dropped programs soaked with gasoline. You are a little giddy, you admit it.

Presently

Products of wood combustion, dried bone fragments, compounds that remain, rituals. A love affair with the memory of the rapid oxidation of a material.

I think a plane just landed on my head.

A thing to ponder:

Why did I laugh at the summary of Madame Bovary? It's not a particulary funny or uplifting book. Yet for some reason it struck me as wacky. I am actually fairly excited to read it! Lovers! Financial ruin! Extravagence! Suicide! A laugh a minute, folks.

A thing to wonder:

"Wonderwall." Great song.

A thing:

Giraffes.

why do you need to know anything else except your ABCs?

When I went to the U of U waaay back in 2002, I would come home from class every day and watch an episode of Kindergarten, an HBO documentary following a, well, Kindergarten class in New York state. I fell in love.

To this day I am still in love with the show. I adore each of the children, who are so tragically no longer five and six years old, but so totally the bratty ages of 14 and 15. A part of me wishes to see the people they are today, but a larger part of me longs to freeze them in time and not have to think of them (or see them) inching towards adulthood, pimpled out and depressed.

kompletely krazy for cangaroos

things that drive me crazy:
*that spam in some Asian language that always leaves comments on my posts-- always gets my hopes up
*accidentally wearing patriotic colors on the fake 4th of July (today, the 5th)
*insomnia

things that drive me non-crazy:
*my ever growing Buddhist library
*newly discovered (to me) author Edith Nesbit
*almond milk

things that drive:
*a chariot
*a stagecoach
*a mule-drawn barge

3 June 2010

written while on my retreat:

Last day, want to write poems, could this be a poem? If you say so.

Sitting in the stupa in front of a gigantic Buddha with Western features. A man's man, but also a girl's girl. The Buddha is hollow and filled with blessing wrapped around incense and some prayers that are packaged to unintentionally resemble packages of Top Ramen. Was the Buddha a starving college student? I will stop joking, more sacred. (But laughter could be the most holy of all.)

Kept seeing Disney characters in the Stupa's marble floor during my ommm time. A bluebird from Cinderella and at first a cat (Cheshire?), but then the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. I swear. Interestingly enough, I saw the smallest (not likely, but at the moment), cutest (debatable), lightest grayest (sure, if I say so) bunny on my way up here. It hid from me, I should have followed it. Or maybe it raced (and beat) me up here.

Oh little bunny, what blessings have you offered?

I dedicated today to gentleness, specifically gentleness to myself. I struggle to feel okay with "just" focusing on myself, which is another reason I need to focus on myself. Gentleness breeds gentleness and bunnies breed constantly.

And what is my lineage? I'm not sure. My automatic response is, "Oh, probably Zen." But today I claimed my lineage to be the lineage of poets.

Allen Ginsberg, you are on my mind.

Emily, I recall the dream where you whispered to me.

Rumi, you romantic, ancient son-of-a-bitch (excuse me).

I asked for their blessings, for the blessing of inspiration and maybe something else.

Where is my hat? On the chair behind me. No hat in the Stupa-- I can respect that. So that means no pocket watch for you, bunny.

You will meditate indefinitely.

And so I keep writing without time or a cover for my head. Let's expand, like space, like mind. Oh, there's the mysterious bluebird. I keep mentioning the disappearing rabbit, but this bluebird stays hidden in the open.

Observant flight, static.

The bluebird's enneagram number is probably a five. Of course, a five (me) always sees the five in everyone else. Bluebird, care for some tea for exactly one hour? Then back to our castles, back to you acting like a clothespin for the ungrateful Cinder.

Her mopping could be her meditation, her scrubbing her savior (read that how you will).

Will today's cursive be full of the abstract? Or will the sun at noon crack like the hard boiled egg I should have had at breakfast?

Exactly.