Robert Colpitts

On a whim
With a whoosh
And what I say

Is

It is better
To eat
Than

Kill
Bugs

Just enough
To ease the pain
So I may sit
And see again

Just enough
To make me smile
So I remember
It’s not all trials

Just enough
To help me breathe
So I may help
All those in need

Because
It may be nothing
And hard to see
But just enough
Makes me happy

And that
Energetically
Makes it
Easier
To
Just be

In about an hour and forty minutes, New York is supposed to experience a catastrophe, according to some people (yep, the rapture).  Other locations in the world already hit the 6pm mark that was supposed to signal the beginning of the end of the world.  I pondered earlier if the earth would become a giant ball of wiggling jello, its innards a wave of earthquakes and storms, its wobbling body maneuvering through space in a concordance of mushy wackiness.

There was a young woman on the A train I was on this morning weeping as she screamed Christian philosophy and dogma at the passengers.  Naturally, today being the day of rapture, I wondered if she had been sent out by others, and if those others had sent out others on other trains, to other people, to make one last ditch attempt to save the souls of those who are lost.

From what I have seen, people who do not believe the end of the world is coming are either ambivalent about the idea, or find it humorous (and in that light hearted manner reject it).  Those who believe it embrace it.  So, is the choice about the idea of rapture either to embrace it, ignore it, or reject it?

As I sat listening to that young woman, I tried to look past my immediate preconceptions of how to interpret the moment.  Instead, I just tried to accept her in a different way. I wondered who she was, and what she was feeling.  She was crying.  She wanted to help us.  She wanted to save us, and, as far as the subway eye could see, no one wanted the help.  That made her sad.  At the heart of it, right or wrong, there it was, that different energy, calling my attention, grabbing my thoughts, and conducting a bit of my experience.

I come back to the question:   is the choice about the idea of rapture either to embrace it, ignore it, or reject it?  Is the argument we will have about it whether it was right, wrong, or silly to discuss?

I listened to that young woman in a way that I did not perfect, but moved in a direction that I think is appropriate.  There was a very determined and sincere energy coming from that person.  Are her conceptions any less deluded than my own?  Does rapture exist any less than my picture of the hungry ghost realm?  How about my dinner (the one I will eat at about 6pm)?  Is the kielbasa and peppers on a wheat roll, right now, as I write this, and you read it, any less real than rapture?  When I eat it, is the taste of keilbasa going to be more real than what happened at 6pm on May 21st?  All of it, is a projection in my mind (and now yours for a brief spell). 

The day of rapture is a good time to reevaluate our relationship to any idea, person, thing, or experience, no matter how real or foreign it seems to us.  That was not a woman on the train trying to convince me to save my soul before rapture.  That is not what it was.  Am I willing to look at what it IS?

I wonder what it might be like to see that rapture is not her and I at all, but all of…

Title tile smile
Sharpen the Sun
Sunny Stones
Speak up Patient
Slimy Sunny
Story Stones
Patients
Of the One Time
There toom
Cooooorto
News Anchor Then
Love Sunny Patient
Nothing Sits
Missing the Point
Simple Funny Things
Simple Fun(ny) Things
Just Silly
Silly Stones (in Milk)
Dignity of Morning
Austere Mention of Me
Split the Head in Two-Five-Three
Graduation Now Now

Universe Skip
Suntering Stone
Your White Happy
Mixed up chip
You like chocolate, don’t you?
Sincerely Stoney
To be a Healer
Slimly Happy
Dashing Pith
Sitting Stoney Simple
Corantly
Corantly Skipng
Please Pebble
Pebble Pubble Poo
One day, one stone
The hair smash
Start to skip
Once upon a stone
Starry shinning imagination
Do there listen to
I must
Tilllllllllll
Real Up and Down
Stories of a Pebble
Pebble Stories
Universe in Pebs
Pijes and Pebs
No Way to Spell Lonely
All the Only Yip
Yip Yap Yep, the Stone Goes Splat
Not As Cute as You
Better Butter Groom
There Once Up
There you too
There up and down
Inside Backwards Frown
Bring your consciousness back in
Solid Body
Solid stony
Transparent Stones
Time and Stones
Forever Living Stone
Once More Line and I’m Done
Frame Title Here and Stir
Motion Framing
Title Tile Smile

Your Ownership Manual
A Debt to Walk On
Feelings Treelings
Temperate Wishing
Filly the Felly
Silly Goose Rabbit
Artichoke
Is That a Word?
Breat-ing
Fire Lamp
Smelly Smelly Feet
Tremble Up Green
Stink Hoo Hoo
Yes.  You Should.
Dominate This!
To paraphrase the Moon Man.
Speak Not Write Speak
Where the Wander Wonder
Go the Roof
To Market Zombies
Zombie Stones
Zombies are Popular
Zombies and Lip Gloss
You Got a Theme
Motorcross Lip Gloss
Spending time with Sheen
Coor bean Soup
Penchantly obstonterous
No one knows either
Do Not Buy This
The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Seen
Hop Lip Motor Gloss
Can You Snig Ot Em?
Watch Pen Phone
Remote Con-bowl
Sounds like Look
On the Training Sea
Funny funny one
Step to the one Goo bowl
Sneeze a page
Water the notion
Coiuld the Yordee
No totototototo huh
Make sense and party
Party Stones
Stones of Power
S_itting Stones
Computer Energy Fun
Seven is a stucky
Feeling Poor Tremble Zone
Can the She Land
Borooooooo
Comely Device of Reading
Ready Aim Patience!
Good goosey Tooooooo
Stumble Running But Fly Too

Mother’s Day is tomorrow, and for some of us it is time to celebrate and give thanks to our mothers.  For some of us, whose mother is not around anymore, or who, perhaps, never knew their mother, it might be a day just to celebrate mothers in general.  But what makes an essential mother?  What qualities should we celebrate in our mothers?

There is no essential mother.  However, it is not difficult when searching online to find legions of books and articles about motherhood, each of which proposes some answer to the question:  What is a mother?  You can find things from the left, from the right, from religion, from psychologists, from editorialists, from journalists, and many, many more.  If you seek to find a book about why mothers are strong, you can find it.  If you want to find an article about why mothers are loving, no problem.  If you want to find an article about why mothers should work, that will take no time.  Mothers cooking or not cooking, mothers being strong or sensitive, mothers working alone, or working with their partners–take but a minute of your day, and you’ll find exactly the definition you are looking for.

MOTHER is a word that promulgates endless discussion.  Yet, there is no such thing as a mother.  No thing at all.

So why identify “mothers?”  Why qualify it?  Why try to identify it?  Why the plethora of books and articles about “motherhood?”  Why should we categorize it at all?

The most generous answer I can give is that I categorize myself in order to celebrate myself.  As a mother I read a book about motherhood because I want to celebrate myself.  As a black man I read a book about being black in order to celebrate myself.  As a woman I celebrate my womanhood because I want to celebrate myself.   Why not celebrate the good qualities that make up these categories?

Creating categories and identifying with them prepares me to pass judgment on my group, and, more likely, those not in my group.  If I am an American, and I want to celebrate that Americans are smart and hard-working, then there must be some other country with citizens who are less intelligent and less hard working.  If mothers are loving and nurturing, then fathers are probably something else (if they weren’t something else, they would be mothers, right?).  If mothers spend time with their family, then if I am traveling, I must not be a mother (or at least a good one).

Moreover, categorizing myself leads me away from the truth.  I have no mother, and I never did or will.  There is no person, place, or thing, that is essentially mother.  There is no category with enough flexibility to hold the truth of any word or category at all.  If I hang on to my identity as mother, I miss the truth that even the word “I” and the ego that associates with it is an illusion.

If by chance tomorrow you are celebrating a person who fits within the category of mother, I wonder if you can see her without that label.  Can you celebrate that person for her basic wisdom, and not for the children she raised?  Can you celebrate that person for negotiating samsara, and not for nurturing and caring?  Can you thank that person for all the wonderful things she has done without once saying, “You were a wonderful mother?”

I look
Drat!
I remember
The talk
The reason
For no no
And I say
Thank
Goo

She says
She didn’t say
The word
Floating
There
In the
Saliva
Pool
In her
Mouth

It looks
Like a
Goldfish

It tastes like
You

Shh
Breathe
Look
Be

Shh
Shh
Quiet

Listen

A distinct lack of content
To keep me
Electrified
Plops down
And says,
“Spite!”