Robert Colpitts

Her fist made a one time authority pump only to find out that nothing in life was as it seemed.   Faith, being a sometimes mathematician, took the sparkles out of her hair and put on reading glasses.  She gathered the know how she knew how to do, and started calculating the improbable merging of pi and the sun.  She did this while I massaged her back and told her she was beautiful.

I masterfully mention to her that only a woman who is firmly in love with me would allow me to be this close to her, and she says, “It’s not you, Jimmy, it’s the math.”

I am confused, so I ask, “What do you mean Gumdrop?”

She does not respond, but I can tell by the increase in her heart rate that she would have said, “The math is massaging me, not you,” if she did not think I were so smart.

A third mind enters the room and wonders why I cannot make Faith and I a couple even though I am writing these stories.  It suggests that I make her 38 years old and fat.  I do not respond to this inane comment.  Third mind vanishes in despair.

In the meantime, Faith has discovered a right angle.  She screams, “Virgin!”  I look down at her paper, and I see 3′s and 8′s and 2′s and 1′s and circles and I cannot see what she sees.  Then it appears to me like God on a bad coffee day:  a ’4′ written with a right angle.

Can you write a 4 with a right angle?

Faith turns around and squeezes my cheek and says, “You’re so cute.”

I blush and offer ice cream.

This is not a love story.

Now I feel now
Feels so permanent
FOREVER

How different it is
This moment
From the last

There is heat
In my chest

A droopy feeling
In my face

I disappear
For a mobile moment

And when I return
I remember

Red hot
Sadness

Now
I’m awake
And
Ok

Now sucks forever
Remember
Yesterday
I think’d that too

Just not true

I’m not here to preach
Or to earn a meta-punch
I’m here to tell you Orange
‘Bout your lover, Star-faced Munch

I say so little

You, hungry
Ask me for more

Snow appears

So you eat
And ask for more
And more
And more
And more
And more
And more
And more
And more
And more
And more

Me too
But I try
To stop

She didn’t
No
Never
No
She never forgets
To say
Hello
Except
When
She’s
Stoned

Watch that they
They that Watch
Ignore that thing
You never watched

It doesn’t exist
No not at all
It’s Christmas time
Let’s have a ball!

This one sweet time
The world is good
Bad doesn’t exist

Unless of course

We do something
Right

And

Someone tell me
What to say

Oh how it feels
Once living
Once learning
One day at a time

Those days of
Ouch Ooof Boom
Of Self Subsistence
Of Oneness Only

They do
Ever so do
Reward you
In the end
With something
Always better
And Better
And BETTER

I am nice

Today I think
Your photo
Of you and your lover
Happy
Is Cute

It’s possible
That it’s true
Too

Oh man, I did not want to write this today.  I woke up this morning with a very bad case of life is horrific and awful.  I did not think I could possibly come up with something beneficial to offer the world.  This is not a story of overcoming those feelings.

The first class I attended at IDP was taught by Ethan Nichtern, and the discussion was centered around Pema Chödrön’s book When Things Fall Apart.  During one of the classes, Ethan said something in passing (though I do not remember his exact words) that in all its darkness resonates with me right now:  suicide is not the answer to suffering because you cannot escape your suffering that way. 

Feelings of sadness and loneliness are crafty and intelligent.  They are resistant to phrases like, “Cheer up,” or, “Things will get better,” or “Meditate and it will disappear.”  Dark feelings feel more than any other type of emotion permanent.  As Buddhism teaches us, nothing is permanent; say that to me when I am really sad, and my sadness deepen and become sharper–my sadness is smarter than that.

But there are so many things in Buddhism that my darkest thoughts and feelings cannot resist.  The idea that suicide will not stop suffering silences many of my sad thoughts and feelings.  I am going to have to deal with all of the clutter in my mind at some point: whether in this life or the next, it is me and me facing off on the meditation cushion.  Why does that make sense?  Do I have a deeply developed understanding of karma and reincarnation?  No.  It just makes sense.  There is no escape.  Yeah.  That seems right.  Does that make me feel better?  No.  But things are clearer.

In a recent blog post on this website, Ethan presented this quote by Mingyur Rinpoche: “Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of being aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”  That is not “cheer up sad person.”  The quote makes it clear that life is pretty crappy: things suck or they suck.  But despite that perilous binary, I will would rather be aware of my thoughts than be ruled by them.  Why?  I don’t know.  It just seems right.

Ultimately there is no solution to feeling bad.  Buddhism does not offer me respite.  Meditation does not really either.  But time and again I read one sentence that just seems so right that no amount of mental gymnastics can combat it.

Do you have a favorite Buddhist phrase or expression that rings so true that you have never been able to argue against it?

____

Visit http://theidproject.org/users/robertcolpitts to see all of my ID Project blog posts.  While you are there, check out IDP too!

You may think, being who you are today, that balloons have nothing to do with love.  How wrong you are.  Look at your hand.  In it is a balloon.  Do you think that your hands have nothing to do with love?  I thought not.  Then why is it holding a balloon?  Shocked at the proficiency of my argument?  Let us stand no longer on the pedestal of our tremulous foresight.  Let us move forward–dare I say onward–to the next filament of our discussion:  flummoxing. 

Yes, you heard me:  flummoxing.  Some define it as ‘to confuse.’  Are they confused?  It clearly means that your shoes are untied.  Did I just flummox you?  Ha!  There you see again my proficiency.  It is, along with candy canes, the delight of my mornings.  Without it, I would be nothing more than a rock under your shoe. 

We’ve forgotten about your appointment!  Here you are just reading away, when you know you should be doing something else!  How is it that you’ve come this far anyway?  Are you under a spell?  Do you demean yourself just for my sake?  Hmmmmm?

Truly, I’ve lost the thing I was supposed to have having been born a man:  furry hands.

You can go now.  I’ve totally lost sight of why it is that I asked you to come.  Come back tomorrow.  I bet I’ll remember then.