Who Dad?!

Back and Forth

Midnight mind

unconcerned with sleep

lists neglected friendships.

Unlike sheep,

there is no tiring comfort

in this accounting.

Out of bed

understanding holiday and birthday cards

as absolution,

I wonder if electronic offerings

from the dark of night

might suffice . . .

I marvel at those who cut off their past

like changing clothes,

envy those who keep a place for all.

But there is a disruptive chaos in creation

followed by a return to order.

The galaxies are what they are

because of both impulses.

Dare I admire the most distant star

without need for contact nor response?

Besides, where do such desires satisfied lead?

Time, it seems, however imaginary,

is all we have to keep each other separate,

keep us from colliding back

to where it all began.

Days, then weeks went by, with normalcy alternating with living in Bizarro world. Somehow, life continued. People acclimated to the strange and unexpected behavior. We are an adaptable lot. Driving though became increasingly difficult as traffic signals and stop signs were seldom obeyed. It was a free-for-all, and good luck finding a police officer, or an insurance agent, or anyone to repair anything.

As for me, I could seldom keep my mind focused long enough to keep up daily writing. However, I'd find notes scribbled in my handwriting that kept surprising and confounding me.

My attention is clear and silent

like an assassin, stalking my desk

and all that comes my way.

The enemy is relentless

the hero is drunk

and I sell watches at their border

from the back of my trunk.

Even more freakish would be when I would sit down to write one thing and then another thing altogether would show up on the paper! For example, I was thinking about how life is divided into three parts: I Want; I Have; and I Am. The first 25-30 years of life were about pursuing one's desires. Then the middle stage was where one put family ahead of self, and was able to give to others from a place of fullness; then, in the last third of life, one would be ready to contemplate the spiritual and to dissolve the separation of duality. So, that's what I intended to write about, but here's what came out:

While walking in the cool morning air, golden palo verde blossoms dancing around my feet, I saw a jogger in the distance. For a moment, I imagined it was you. Even still, I couldn't catch up, had to grasp with my imagination what these hands want to say.

What the heck?! In normal times, I'd check myself in somewhere to have my head examined, but where could one go? There was no help for anything, and all bets were off in these tumbling days.

These ripples in our pond might be more than just a tear in the pool liner: It felt like some tidal force was moving through everything. Nobody had a clue what was happening.
Whatever it was, it can't be legislated, voted on, negotiated, coerced, bought, or lassoed to go any particular way. It was out of our control. Perhaps an oceanic melding of our global unconscious in participation with the living planet could make a difference, but how to arrange something like that?

I wondered what it would be like to let go and see if this thing lifted us and left us in place like with the surge before a wave breaks, or took us someplace else, like crashing against the rocks, or a beach landing, or adrift on endless seas.

I am the beachcomber picking through the driftwood pieces of the place I once lived,

the ghost of the man who filled these pages, the amnesiac who discovered his lost journals

but searches still for the soul he knows is still missing.

It seems to be the era that promises the destruction of most things. I don't expect to have this luxury of contemplation and writing for much longer. Besides, there is no story to tell that will change anything. No one is listening. Words are suspect. Emotions reign. Our greatest achievements, our most divine-like gifts, now serve only the appetites, the feelings. We descend.

This last journey, the "I Am" I tried to write about earlier, is inside myself. It is the time to listen to hints, memories, clues, and the flashes of insight that my higher self once readily shared with me.

I am preparing myself for death, and I would like to go there, childlike, hand in hand with whatever is above me as well as what is below me.

My mind wanders

my words are squeezed out

through the cheesecloth wrinkles of my brain.

The essence remains lost in the folds.

What drips through is what I say to you.

Not my point but the words that carried my point.

Even now, even this, cannot be said.

I woke up recently with a dream that 9/11 was happening again, over and over. Why was that event coming back to me so often, so vividly?

I used to know things without a map, but there was a map, somewhere.

Now there is a broken smile skyline with two teeth knocked out.

It was the day the old maps were burned.

Certainly, everything changed that day. I have forgotten who I was in that world. What else collapsed into dust and rubble?

It wasn't just the horror of a moment, but everything since. America has long cast a powerful light. As a result, it has an enormous shadow which we have chased around the globe. Thousands of tons of explosive material later, we are still trying to bomb our own shadow to smithereens.

We have been avoiding the dark bullet of prophecy for many decades; perhaps we have now turned to take it in the teeth. There has been a magnetic shift of sorts. Old compasses of right and wrong, of justice and fairness, no longer read true. Values and truth have been turned upside down. If there ever were a source of divine inspiration, that plug has been pulled. All channels are shut down. Nada. Radio silence. We are on our own.

I wanted to write a book about this called Broadcast God. Not likely anymore, but I do so long for a presence I once felt. Whatever it was, it gave direction and meaning to my days.

Now, wrapped up in not-knowing, as the Earth does whatever dance this is, punctuated by periodic catastrophe, we can point fingers, or suck on them. It doesn't seem to matter much.

I've been told that the work isn't really about the results. It's just the work, and the type of person one wants to be, or be with — living in the best fleeting moment one can imagine.
Perhaps whatever of humanity that does not fit will be sloughed off in the days to come. Perhaps we will hook up to our machines and populate the stars.
Maybe some will wake up into some awareness that transcends the body and its limitations, traveling at the speed of thought throughout creation.
Our beloved Earth, like a body, is but another vehicle hurtling through space.
Love it, and then leave it.