Mary Had a What...!?

Easter...the resurrection; if you read my most pinged vignette, you know where I'm at vis-a-vis the lamb...I have many off-color blasphemies/witticisms for this, I choose to put those somewhere else. Funny though, really, you missed a few chuckles even if you take yourself waaayyyyyy too seriously.

On the context: Any reading (thats what it is, any emotion there is probably a program you didnt write or a gap you had to fill...willing to talk about this, s'not like I know) that moves you to the middle, away from suffering as a crossy extremity (it's not, it's bread and butter, gravity and friction writ large in our synapses, every day)...the pillar of Mercy looks across the body/heart/mind right at the pillar of Severity...she looks back, gazes transmitting information like neurotransmitters in us <-- how's that for anthropomorphising?. If you've got Christian hangups (can you not if you got indoctrinated before you could think/feel completely?)...hungup as in can't reach past the metaphor for the message (which solves many dilemmas, truth in the philosophy without doubt) or can't look at other ways to inform your's cause you're conditioned to consider it cheating,  then you self-deny a host of allies/kindred and friends that have been there, e.g. a Lao Zi, Cleary's translations, the commentary is really the jewel for the Western mind at first, makes it accessible and prevents the inevitable simplifications. Ok, so scared to get caught getting happy soul satisfaction elsewhere? Then try staying inside and touching your spiritual self; some recommend finding hominorder through Origen, Aquinas, St Fancis, St Augustine, ...the greatest hits from when Christianity wasn't convenient, twisted, or neutered. All of those guys can move the needle on understanding that life-is-pain-but-that's-why-it's-beautiful; common theme of martyrdom, imposed or chosen. Full circle to a Golgathan spectacle; self-sacrifice, giving up the little-e go bits bits that rail and protest...a nugget buried in all faiths. Nothing wrong with Easter.

Road less taken: maybe we should just listen to the folks around us radiating inclusive right..."Hi, your light is showing, mind if I rest here...?" Ref: The more methodical ruminations of Joseph Campbell perhaps*? He was  Methodist I believe, so close to Episcopal dogma at the source and therefore an easy palate.

Haters in the story, haters around us right now...so long as they're non-violent we have to put up with 'em as citizens...even though some of us would love to go one-on-one with each and every one of them and talk about why they can only feel significant if they are unlikely central figures in whatever cosmic please-dont-let-me-be-as-small-as-I-feel drama. Some folk can't handle their insignificance, our insignificance, so we ham it up, attach that performing urge to our endocrine system so that we flush with fight-or-flight potions whenever we walk outside, then socialize it with herd-mentality rigor and scream/snark our fear as anger to reinforce it. Passes the time I guess; imqo...those indulging in outrage sans victims contribute nothing but fear and pain, working for the thing they fear the most and dont seem to know it...almost like the Body of us all is signalling that something is wrong...loud little pain indicators, but they don't know where it hurts...will now need penance for my hubris I think, but I mean it...

And the ending/beginning/ending...convenient Eschatology no? Buyin' a literal there? Lets hope not, we all have things to do. Like a dear friend of mine said, it's (define what you can grasp here) been ending (changing) since it started. The inescapable brevity of us, our ecosystem, is a simple fact...the unconsciously-early-now-pretty-predictable known problem has been heralded so many times in so many ways, I'm numb. Shoudn't we all be? For me, I have a real feeling for Northern European spiritual...I dont know...vibrations around this. Ragnarok - Bad guys all get loose and organized by a betrayer (blackest hells for that poor person in all faiths), the champions kill each other off, everything burns down (as ordained)...then, there's a shining new world. Better story than the Four Horsemen dirge; more buckles swashed, dashing and derring-do; real heresy here: also better monsters.

Reiterating: not against any teaching vehicle really, even the most rigid and dogmatic provided extremes are ostracized; my what-you-got rebel was put down long ago. During nouveau expressions of ancient festivals like this egg-laden lagomorphic hijacking of some serious debauchery, since we're dissing empiricism and pretending we're not all scared brainless (the common thread), why not allow any story that howls for a victory? I am pretty sure that there is nothing going on today that is worse than the plague-ridden Europe, the Taiping rebellion, the brutal rape and murder that used to be so sudden and constant for everybody and the God-doesn't-love-us-anymore life-swallowing disasters like Ice Ages, Santorini, the bursting of the Black Sea bowl (sorry for the late addition of controversial cataclysm, but I have to give a nod to the Flood, Easter and all). You know we all love that stuff; you can tell cause even in the these enlightened days, when we haven't had a good plague in a long time for example, we need/want to make up pleasure-only Zombie movies, vampirism as a sexy STD, genetic accidents creeping and snatching everyone but the pretty lead...things we want, cause they're knowable-ish? Expected-esque? Better than the (imagined poorly) abyss if you have vertigo I suppose. Profitable too...another time.

That all said, my plain truth: Doesn't change my world-view; if a giant rock hits us again, the planet or sun hiccups and snuffs us all, we manage to poison ourselves with biologicals, or nano-technology (or other) runs amok...do we really think we have anything to do with most of that? Fight the good fight, do right and abjure wrong, be as happy and content as you can manage, and dont be afraid if that's a lot...health, wealth, and wisdom for and from your friends, family, neighbors...and I suppose strangers and enemies (though I struggle with that last one, my hate blooms and blossoms like kudzu if I feel wronged and it gets out its cage). The message behind a fertility festival, no matter where you find 'em. I never say that out loud really...how'd you do that?

Imbecilic addendum: Mayan calendar?...incomplete social evolution and unfinished math is no excuse to give away all your stuff and go stand in a crop circle waiting for a fiery chariot ride that statistically-speakin'...aint comin'. Gonna be a long revolution round the Sun till 2013 for the chuckleheads that need that kind of drama.

* "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being."

Miami Risotto?

Back to Florida last week; new year (professionally we round the sun in April), new team, new management…basically my company has a compulsive need to demonstrate activity. Not progress, not improvement, not striving to smell like metabolized lessons-learned…just flailing arms negating high-dollar consulted practice (where we are advised to not change for change sake), the same ol’ thing again and we’re new. Anyway, went to Miami, and soon to the Orlando orbit…again.

Now if you remember, I went to Ft Lauderdale and had some lifestyle immersion at the hotel bar. Well, this time was mandofunquestered the entire time. Not a bad thing, I have a rowdy crowd of confederates always willing to create a story or two, and shy…well, not many. Took a bus on night one from Dadeland to Perricone’s. Yes, we went to the continental tip of the Eastern seaboard, 600 years a Latin stronghold, thousands of years of native culinary culture before that…to eat Italian. Was bowed up to throw my thin red sauce and overachieved veal-chicken-marsala-picatta-parm into the most convenient planter nearby…but, lo, the food was good. Dynamite bruschette leading, good antipasta (they are also a food market), well-managed fried calamari with zucchini straws, simple salad, the oh-so-traditional vodkatonicawithalime-a(s) …then, a big hunk of sea bass with a tomato-aged balsamic drizzle on risotto that did not suck. Stepped off the bus dubious, but the place disarmed me right away with a large tented garden for casual dining, subdivided with translucent walls, large old trees wrapped in lights twinkling, hidden benches along little paths near the street, the warm, slightly humid feel of Miami alive on a Monday night just a few feet away; in short, my inner-creole-cuban-carib-child was comfortable eating something unexpected. Open mic swiped from the driver on the safe-to-be-drunken commute home, impressions and stories, odd urban vistas, nice.

So, another adventure in a state I hear nothing good about, but much enjoy the multiple times a year I go there. Some of our friendliest teammates there, others who may read this that have kicked some sand around there too. Eventually, I think I run the risk of accepting that it’s all good for a careful, well-heeled tourist in NY South.

Surrender

The last of the cycle, the riddle, the winding of the world...do you know?

--------------------

Seen from afar, the marriage of two

Becomes one against a shattered horizon

Closer now, our fingertips lightly pressed

Reach a little, sparks kindled, hinting

Mirrored, amplified and returned

Self-light reflecting from self

Face-to-face, love’s gaze

This is no time to be shy

The world pours through us, so be at ease

The stream cannot be gripped

Time passing, life’s flowing beauty

Bursting, bouncing, swimming, soaring

The source and vessel urges reversal

Counsel to reclaim the ghosts of thought’s confusion

Tame and bring them home

You cannot share what you do not have

And so the patterns are broken

In final happy endings

One motion for both

To find a remaking of bliss past the world’s end

Home again, loving

Home again, growing

Foundations and eaves of grace

Immovable, inviolate haven for purpose, for new fire's race

He Shoulda' Armed Himself...

More on me writing, anyone that doesn't want to get some on 'em, better head on out the back.

There are times in your life (I hope for your sake, I'm lucky, very very lucky) when you suddenly find yourself in a rhythm and flood with someone else; an effusion of conversation and connection wholly unlooked for though not surprising, with a cadence so comfortable that you stop noticing it altogether. Topics range, hearts and minds evoked...curious and real. The natural results are questions you havent thought of - simple questions that bridge what you know with what you say in a way you probably would miss if you were slavish to solitude. Somebody reads something you shared, just a game of pitch and catch like when relationships weren't much more complicated than that, and you glove a question about how you write, how deliberately the noise orders itself to the medium. It drew a thought from me...

I mostly just pour, and any quality of sound that sneaks in is probably cause I'm about half singing some of it...I like a roll repeated, and rhymes remembered...that bubble up out of well-meant waters. I do pass back through and edit out parentheticals that go nowhere, typos (that I notice at least) or word-choices that could be easily misconstrued, but mostly, wysiwyg.

...I'm not obliquely sayin' anything, am sayin'...conversation when it's real, when guard is dropped, weapons are down, rare and priceless... but writing, texting, even chatting rarely makes it there...here. When self-editing is more present than self-expression, personas pass for people and it's a virtual state of words; rhythms and exchanges governed by convenience and sheltered by a lack of consequence; in the ether, no one can hear you erase.

The mind free of gesture maybe? Beautiful letters are a big part of the Western canon, drawn and measured, read with feeling...beautiful even...I am more and more compelled to write day-by-day, even if I sometimes lose the edge of my bladed muse and saw dully for a while. Poetry though is the wild mind-heart truth, I just wish I'd known that in my wastrel youth. <--- that goes on for a bit, doggerel panting for a drink, spared ya'.

Got scolded by somebody (hi HS) for "letting the juice of your writing seep on to too many pages"...and hoarding thoughts...the more I thought about that while raindrop-drowsing (Note: it was raining, that's not a nascent children's story device) last night the more I was certain that's not so. I talk too much, granted, but I get fusion from sharing with people that share back, an excess to fuel my next reaction. Take that o critic of nectar! I thought in thunder, then sleep.

Sub-Sequiturial Salutations

Been a while, not that I'm not writing, just not sharing...hold on, non-sequiturs ahead

Studied Serotonin in college ...conned my way into a Graduate-level course on psychopharmocolgy after pre-conning my way into a Freud seminar. I came away with this: most unusual (to us), unique (to us), inexplicable leaps (glorious and furious) in the human pool can all pretty much be traced back to too much of this or not enough of that, receptors full or empty. Every monkey-one of us needs therapy and some occasional potion support, though we wont admit it. I increasingly understand the simple point about balancing, about homeostasis both emotional and physical (no one here is so foolish to try and separate them, right?) , and I know striking it is no simple thing; I can barely control my own blood sugar (and it's attendant mood swings), and it's easy as far as the pharm goes...hell, I can measure it, get a number any time I want...so I think there are less quantifiable, more uncontrollable life challenges which dwarf any of mine; I feel sheepish even mentioning them in the same sentence...not timid, just aware.

 Recently, some conversations with others (some present) have been about the furia; the feeling, the emotional voltage, transforming, stepping down, too little, too much...I guess I've never had a feeling-too-little problem. I burn all the time (300% more blood sugar than a normal human may play a role), my game is keeping the lava underground and hoping the crust is thick enough for safe-ish walking; making fertile soil if time gets a chance to work it's entropic magic. It comes through when I pour thoughts to media. Some of what I write is imqo light but puissant, ebullient, playful...that's when I'm soothed...some is vitriolic, vicious...it seethes, almost resentful about being restrained or evoked, mindful chaos. I dont make value judgments on any of that, a lot of what gets said is not...well, good, or even readable. Between 'em though, when they agree not to compete for attention, I get this great friction and my best pours up channels and down courses, splashes out to my tongue or my hands.

I haven't traditionally liked all that friction; in me it's been indiscriminate and ungovernable...outlets truncated, ignored, undervalued...a little self-hating maybe? Voices planted in my head when I was too young to put up a fight that are unnatural additions to my clockwork. Pulling myself apart was once my only passion, I went after my bad wiring with both hands (early...too much so maybe?), then I got material and connected and wanted nothing more than to build...now, full circle, so much demolition left undone, and as it turns out I feel more and better when  I've pulled down some elaborate, rickety construct (poor craftsmen in my past fo'sure) and something simpler, more...I hate to say elegant...clean maybe? is waiting underneath. As soon as I start pouring myself through the old/new...that balanced charge I'm looking for gets easier to transmit.

It turns out (I may be the only bonehead that is just getting this) that I need things I eschewed, want things I am just beginning to know, and my feeling in general is not what I thought it was.

I'd standby to standby here...