Who Dad?!

On the Homefront

For the next few days though, there was a tension between us, as if something was wrong that we weren't ready to talk about. On my side, I had no idea of what else to say. I only remembered some drumming, some banter, and then going for a spontaneous walk. After that, everything was blank until I woke up in the middle of the night and in the back of my truck.

In the weeks that followed, I became obsessed with my old notebooks and journals. I stopped watching the news, but would take peeks, without commenting, on social media. I'd find myself looking at photos and then go into a trance of remembering: an exuberant laugh; the electrifying way he ran; her bouncing black hair; so many simple moments from long ago.

November came and with it cold weather. Susan and I were slow to get up the mountain to witness the coloring of leaves. When we did, all we could do was kick around the rustling and crumpling notes from trees on the ground. We'd pick up a few to read, with more appreciation than understanding, but pretended we could translate these letters from the trees. And so we laughed, felt closer to each other. Perhaps not everything need be downhill in a landscape transformed by imagination?

I found myself wishing that humans never took the concept of god out of this creation, wishing that all those who worshipped, prayed, or practiced any religion, put god back into the created: back into the land, the sky, and into all the creatures that inhabited the world.

And then the weather got really cold. And, I hoped my writing would reveal something to me I needed to know.

In Tucson and wondering about the weather. It's been colder than I ever remember it being. It adds to my desire to just stay indoors and hide from life. And yet, these notebooks, files, and boxes full of my scribblings are in here with me. I know I once knew something, but I can't make sense of these notes to myself. What am I looking for? What am I hoping to find? How could I have been both so prolific and so incomplete with all that I have begun and left unfinished?

There is a clue even in that. Something about remembering and forgetting. An old revelation that has stayed with me: remembering is like the expansion of the universe; forgetting is the contraction. That's all there is: expansion and contraction; remembering and forgetting. And, like in this cold weather, I just shiver and shrink from the truth.

There is something I must remember. I know there is. I go for walks. I get up in the middle of the night and write.

Star Stuff

Wrestling again with this hard to train animal, Attention.

Even as someone who can now stay home with cats,

Quiet is elusive.

I get up early

often in the darkness

when all who can be

are asleep.

It is peaceful to be awake in the dream filled ether

when streets are empty, phones are off and charging,

rather than radiating through the atmosphere.

During the day, we see what sunlight reveals.

But at night, Creation itself is on display.

Incomprehensible distances

make our concepts of time meaningless.

Our conscious minds can't fully grasp it all.

We must sleep to allow ourselves to merge

back into this vast magnificence.

As with our phones, we recharge when plugged

back into the Source.

In the dreamworld, without the body's limitations,

there is a deep communion between our connections.

And, like the light from extinguished stars

that still reaches us from millions of years past,

those we've known who have surrendered their

physical forms participate.

And so I get up early

moving carefully in the dark

so as not to fully stir,

holding on to star and dream fragments

to weave into the light.

After watching an internet video clip of a guy who seemingly passed through a glass pane without breaking it, I tried to figure out what the trick was, but instead found myself remembering a night long ago when I believed myself to be floating, somersaulting, moving in several directions simultaneously, all above the ground, without having jumped from an airplane or having used any mechanical device. It is an impossible memory, but where did it come from?

It is not my memory! It couldn't be, and yet I am fully awake and remembering it as if it were mine.