The open mouth
It speaks
It spills
It let’s go
Everything all at once
The ears pick up
On it too late
Everything’s been said
Revealed
Imposed
The surprised body
Stands in judgment
Shocking!
Oops.
A Few Good Men.
Apropos.
In other news,
drama can be saved,
for writing,
so I may cuddle
In peace.
He’s at it again. This time showing off his machismo in his always endearing style.
Today I got to speak with him. He said, “…….” I thought it was very fitting for him to be so silent during our interview. Tough guy.
“You idiot. You will shrivel and die without a constant stream of conversation.”
I want to say that some people think there is beauty in being able to sit silently together, but I’ve never believed that. Instead I ask Faith if she wants a sandwich.
“Do you have any relish?” I don’t. “Any ketchup?” No. “Baklava?” Yes, I have that, but that wouldn’t make a very good sandwich; she asks for it anyway.
“And can I give you further advice?” Faith asks. I nod. “Don’t apologize. Ever. You are an apology addict.”
I really don’t like Faith this morning. I make her weird sandwich anyway.
I ask her: “Do you shouldn’t said these you things by are saying?”
Faith frowns. I’ve seen that frown before. It is the frown of the death of happiness. It kills happiness. A giant grumpy, I’d-rather-see-the-world-as-sucky polar bear’s fat ass crushes a skinny, happy-just-to-be-here-and-sing seal’s body.
Faith eats her sandwich and stares at me like a moron. I think she is trying to teach me a lesson. I won’t learn. On purpose.
A doubtful statement: death is a part of life. A second doubtful statement: old age is the opposite of youth. A truthful statement: there is suffering.
I have what many Americans have: no health insurance. I don’t have what many people have: sickness. I am thirty two, and for the last, I don’t know, seven years or so, I haven’t gone to a doctor. A dentist, a couple of times, yes, but not a doctor. I haven’t had to. I am very lucky (and I eat a lot of peanut butter). On the other hand, I am human, so I must face the fact that eventually my luck (and peanut butter) will run out.
While reflecting upon my this, I am reminded that suffering is part of life. I am also reminded that suffering is not due to the fact, necessarily, that my back hurts, that I am old, that I am unwell, or that a family member has died. For the past few weeks, I have been reading and contemplating Andy Karr’s book Contemplating Reality, and if I can say anything from that experience, it is that my suffering is probably sitting on the bench next to my fear of understanding what he is asking me to contemplate.
But, heck, when everyday life gets difficult, it becomes even more difficult to do philosophical contemplation. There are days on the train when I am so tired or weary that I cannot get through a paragraph–I just fall asleep. I can only imagine what it would be like if a child of mine were terminally ill, or I were struggling with the loss of my house after a natural disaster, or I found myself fighting cancer. Would I be able to find the time, energy, and focus to contemplate Karr’s book?
This week, I gave up a seat for an older woman on the subway. I am normally a heartless seat grabber–in New York it is every person for him or herself in my opinion–but I had a momentary understanding that as a human it is hard enough to get through old age, knee pain, cancer, relationship trouble, etc, that adding Buddhism to the mix can be trying. But if those painful things could just be cushioned slightly, then contemplation and meditation might be easier. I am thinking a lot about adding the question, “Can I help you?” to my list of things I say to strangers. In some ways, the benefit of having other human beings around is that we can take care of each other: those who are capable can help those who are not. This, in many ways, leaves space for us all to meditate, contemplate, and listen.
It is because there are other people there for us, that we may not need health insurance, or doctors, or the federal government, or our homes, our bodies, or our egos. But without others, it is very hard to deepen our understanding.
I hope that you are there for me when my luck runs out. I’ll be there for you.
Yikes. That is so hard to say. Why?
It may as well
A Sunday been
Without a big balloon
A waste of time
It seems to me
To hope for some
Big bloom
That is because
At my age
There is naught
But kabloom
Sleep comes
Nigh
Too soon
Seems to me
Sleep is where
It’s at
Yo
Mr. Engineer Sir
Your bridgey bridge
Has slidey slidey
Down down down.
The better Luck
Inside me
Says, “Don’t
Hope so
Much the
Bridge is
Fine that
You Ignore
You’re Right.”
If she
Just for
A moment
Looked at
You as
She does
Me
You would
Know
What it
Is like
To see
Your own
Soul
Stripped
Bare
She is
So
Beautiful
If you
Can
Love
Her
Free
And
Go
Live
Faith sits me down for a carnivorous chat. We attempt to eat live pigs. They are squealing. It is gross. I cannot help but bite into my pig, but my jaw is not strong enough to pierce the pig’s skin, and besides, the pig is kicking me in the crotch and running away, so how am I supposed to eat it I ask. It is passion, Faith says. Passion governs all. If you do not have passion for your cause, your cause will slip away. I mention the subtle feeling of having something missing, and maybe the pig was it. She mentions that I should meditate. When I say that that is silly, she tosses back that that is the point. Our debate ends. I don’t know how she does it, but she is still eating her pig. She grotesquely (or ironically) asks me if I want to make out, and I tell her that even in my dreams Faith does not make out with me, no less with dead pig in her mouth. I find it unappealing, I tell her, to even consider the idea, and won’t she wipe up the blood that is all over her face. Faith says that love is not something that survives without passion; just like the pig, she will slip away if my passion dies. That scares the hell out of me. Faith offers again to make out with me, but has my mind changed? The pig I let go is back now, and I ask it if it would prefer to be a pig, or a sign from God. The pig sniffs the area just far enough away from my chair to have no significance. The question, it seems to me, is how to tell the difference between a back rub, and someone trying to eat your back? The taste of pig skin is still in my mouth. Faith is still eating, and she has grown fatter. I ask her how she is feeling, because it looks like she is full, and she says this is what passion is, you can’t stop, you don’t know why, and you will get fat and explode because of it. I mention that I’d rather we met under different circumstances, and she says that we all have to walk the path alone. I disagree, but she says, ultimately, alone. She asks me if I still love her. I start playing with the pig in the grass. The pig is surprisingly receptive to my energy, and we rejoice until Faith throws some chewed up pig meat at us, and my pig starts eating her pig, which grosses me out so badly that I want to stop writing this. I turn to Faith and she is dressed like Cinderella and is eating a pastry. Do you love me now, she asks. I understand hypocrisy better than most men, but still I say yes. Faith points out everything I already know with a smile. I want to throw my pig at her, but my pig is now some dude with a tuxedo, and they walk off together, and I’m so jealous I want to kill that pig, but that guy was my pig, and I realize I should have eaten him before he turned into a man with a tux and walked away with the love of my life until I calm down and realize how could I ever have known that.
Why am I
So worried?
Like a knife
That fears
Butter,
Or a raft
That fears
Water,
I tremble
At every
Wave or
Poke.
Conditioned
Loss
I suppose.
Someone
Sponge me.
I am
Clearly
Too
Shallow
To
Swim.
Jump
Idiot
Jump
Cause
You forgot
You were
Drowning
You spent
Your fortune
On anger
Better pray
She
Forgives you
Or
Regretful
Meditation
Or just jump
You moron
Sleep, in the third inning of a baseball game called spite, swings his bat, and flings it across the periwise popsichord. The dubious misnomer markerhead does not parley that tat a rat, so deuces the pitch’in pan that creeps the belly wreep, and does not, WILL NOT, despite it’s motion liver and all that, spit and spat. How about you choke on that your lying—
We interrupt this meaninglessness to say that Robert should sleep now.
If you are still his fan, look to the person to your up, and say, “Woop dilly dolly that’s a come around and dance a thon.”
Seriously, this confusion and hurt SUCKS. I’m TRYING to write it all away, but it’s REALLY NOT WORKING.
Just you wait. Soon, I won’t care. Soon.
Sleep, by the way, is what I am supposed to be doing. Which is why, by the way, I wrote this in the first place.
Go to bed. Mental laxatives are bad for business.
I like writing ODD THINGS! It has a certain flair, don’t you agree?
“Here you go, you twerp,” she says as she hands me a $5 bill, “Use it to buy yourself a dream.”
I take the $5 bill, but I still talk back to her, “I will not use it at all. I will wipe my hands with it.”
Faith, aware that a counter-offer would only serve to extend this blog post, walks away.
“Wait!” I scream. “I want this blog post to be longer.”
I follow Faith.
There is no one here now.
It begins in the morning,
Like a secret in my neck;
Before I’ve had my breakfast,
My day’s course is party set.
Ibuprofen comes right away,
Then a plan if it gets worse:
To eat some nasty McDonald’s
A cure that often works.
The pain itself–a tiny whisper–
A plan that might come true;
I barely feel it, in my neck,
Right side, down low, “Hello you.”
By noon, I often decide,
Whether or not to eat fast food,
Because by then it has grown or not
From a whisper to a warning to a full blown mood.
In a few hours time, after the meal,
The pain is usually gone;
I give thanks to whatever God
Put McDonald’s on this earth.
But today, as it happened,
None of that worked,
And this brain of mine
That thinks these thoughts
Is trying to explode my neckeyehead.
My last resort
Is to drown myself:
Put my head underwater
And hold my breath.
But that only works, until I’m out;
The pain is back (but I am clean).
So now I sit,
As I do sometimes,
In pain and nothing has worked.
I looked at it;
It still hurts;
That’s how it is;
I’ve done the work.
I cannot do that all night.
At least not yet.