Today's Ten Thoughts (2)

Rolling with the heat is a lot easier than whining about it all the time.  Also, it helps keep you cool.

After doing one epic sit up on too great an angle, I find my abdomen is sore for days and I begin to reconsider my ability to achieve ‘rock hard’ abs.

Swimming underneath the ocean with goggles on is even more fun than it was when I was a kid.  I keep asking myself: Can I see more, or less now?

I wear my broad-brimmed hat when I ride in the sun, sometimes.  If a police officer pulls me over, I plan to tell them that I would prefer to not get burnt by the sun than wear a helmet and get burnt.  I’m not sure how they would take this.

Rocking back and forth on a swing in a park makes me feel like a pendulum that should theoretically never stop.

When we ask each other, in common parlance, why we are afraid of certain things (like spiders or junkies), we don’t often realise just how deep the answer would have to be to even scrape the surface of that fear.

Often in the writing courses I have partaken in over the years, teachers and peers would refer to what it is to be a writer; what writers need to do to be defined such.  I’m not so sure what I think about all this these days.

If a stapler could speak, what kind of timbre would its utterances have?  What do you think it would think when you go to staple something and just mangle the staple?  I can’t see it being happy about this.

When I intuit socially-conditioned shame in those I love, I feel like hugging them forever and damning the disease infesting this place.  Then I remember that this is moving forward.

Book them, and they will come.

Today's Ten Thoughts

For a long time I stopped having conversations with the waves that break by the seashore.  Now we speak heaps.

Some girls on the beach look like fish out of water.  Their bikinis are often too tight, or too loose; and herein lay the problem for Man.

Medicine streams through my ears and into my soul — that’s just where the wire leads, apparently.  It feels empowering because it reminds me that we’re all gods, doing our best in utter perfection.  Most of the time.

There were a few blank spots from last night that I feel to have been quite healing; though I might have just had a really bad time and forgotten what really happened.  But they’re the same, those.  Same-same.

When I help you and you help me we aren’t helping each other, really.  The thing is just healing itself.

I look silly with this bike helmet on, but the air against me and the sun beating down seem not to worry about silliness—they’re so silly, so incredibly absurd, that the bike helmet just doesn’t really seem to be worth noting.  I still feel a bit silly though.

Love is everywhere seen.  If one is more aware of this, there’s very little need to lash out.  There are reasons for mirrors being extra-terrifying while you’re on a psychedelic substance.

As I sing this song, even as it comes to an end, I feel the effects of processes.  I feel better and so do those around me.  We feel lighter now.

On the beach, people are afraid of groups of middle-aged people with lots of tattoos, especially if they’re drinking beer.  It’s okay, though; they’re generally really nice.  Like homeless people.

Goodnight, mirror.

We Learn From Each Other

Digging a hole and making a mud pool with my older brother now makes me think of suffocating in dirt and water.  We still made mud pools, though; and it was great because as kids we had no qualms with being covered head-to-toe in earth.  They never caved in, either – except on little plastic army men who Mum still finds today, over a decade later, in unusually well upkeep considering the time they’ve spent in underground warfare.

Fear can be of making mistakes and thinking that it means something much worse than it does – it doesn’t, most of the time.  Maybe never.  We just think it does because out minds chatter away at a thousand thoughts per second, leaving our hearts a little bit lonely, their bursting artery-like hands half-raised in the air – not really being listened to.  Fear was often coloured with playfulness back when you weren’t an adult, but now the element of play is for most people gone or distant; all that’s left is the raw fear.  People talk about “consequences”, “responsibility”.  Heavy, weighty things.  A lot of which is aimed at making you scared stiff.

Were we taught to decide with our hearts, or with our minds?  Maybe most fear comes from the mind, having been built up and reinforced over the years; from memory, because we’re stuck in neurotic old lessons that aren’t relevant anymore but which could have remained relevant if they were taught relatively, or maybe just differently.  And maybe then our minds exponentially grow in rules and regulations, which our experience struggles constantly to align itself with.  And then we become a little bit schizophrenic.  Not too schizophrenic, though.  Just enough to make us feel heavier than we once were.  Then we can grow sort of preoccupied, perpetually and constantly going about dealing with this new and ever-changing weight, rather than seeing the beauty of life manifesting about us.

You are perfect.  Imagine if they told you that all the way through life.  Follow your heart; you’re doing great, even if you can’t understand this; no, you don’t need to do that, but you can if you want to.  I’ll help you help yourself because that helps me and in turn helps everyone and everything.  You are a beautiful creature, like me; lets use this moment to create change together, without thinking of anything else.

Now, perhaps, for some of us — maybe most — there are big congregations gathered, all over our mind-bodies, stressing them out, telling of good, bad, do this, do that.  Even if you’ve managed to swing right around and face the music, there still seems to be an endless workload.  And then something someone built into your shoulder or neck, like a little radio, emitting a nasty frequency — you shouldn’t be doing that; you should be doing this.

The frequency can say lots of things.  It takes a while to learn how to turn the volume down, but it’s possible.  Most things are.

Now is the time.  If I think about it, now has already passed; and that’s where anxieties come in, because I might feel I have to do it or that it might be “too late”.  There are lots of reasons we can make for things, but mostly no one really ever has to.  Spontaneity plays a bigger role than that.  Feel with your heart-tentacles and see that this organism works together, whether you like it or not.  No one makes an independent decision in any literal sense.  You are not a-lone being, I promise.

Everything will be all right, even in the face of the most horrid fear.  Worse comes to worst you’ll cry and cry or hurt and hurt, maybe not even make it a quarter the way to the bar; but you did well, anyway.  Perfectly, even; you always do.  You’re doing it right now.

It’s not always easy, but often it can be.

If I saw the world as a foreign body, unable to be traversed, I would be full of fear.  Luckily, I no longer understand that notion (unfortunately, fear has infinite mediums to manifest in, thus I am, to be sure, not fear-free just yet).  How can I be looking at something foreign, when I am an active part of it?  When it looks back at me and communicates with me?  When the wind rustles the leaves, it isn’t a noise; it’s something speaking to you.  When a little child waves at you, it’s more than nice to wave back.  It makes both of you smile.  And we all like to smile; it’s like our hearts are connecting again.

When a bad situation arises, it is often explained away by referring to other things.  If it’s a good situation, it doesn’t seem to call for as much explaining.  If you follow causality outwards from a situation, you’ll likely get really confused.  Understandably.  It just keeps going — for ages.  I can’t see where it ends.  Can you?  This situation is here, now; it is synchronous and what “caused” it might, sometimes, just be an idea we make to explain things away.  But you created the situation too; you and lots of other things.  We are Creators, after all; it shouldn’t be so easy to forget that.

Perhaps the test is not to be responsible for what is created, but to accept and be conscious of what you’ve helped bring about and what you potentially can bring about, be it good, bad or really, nastily ugly.  It is what it is. Look it in the eye and say hello, because if you walk right past it you’ll never know.  She might have been thinking the same thing.

If I had a child and it said, “Dad, what’s something that might help me through life?”  I’d reply by saying, “Well, when you point your finger at someone, try to be aware — most of the time you’re pointing it at yourself.  But that’s all right; it’s an old habit, hard to deviate from.  Just keep it in mind and realise that we learn from each other because we are each other, in a sense.  Fear tends to come from oneself.”

The child might look at me boggle-eyed and laugh, but nonetheless that’s one little key I’d try to pass on over time (A key I’d make sure I refined if it got a little rusty and stopped opening doors).  And in turn, hopefully, the kid would tell me not to take everything so damn seriously and to always remember to have a laugh.  And I’d be looking myself right in the eyes when I did have a laugh in response.  Because it’s a funny game, this thing we play with one another and with the world.  When we were kids, it wasn’t nearly as scary though, was it?

We learn from each other.

Lovers (C.E for J.B)

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

- Rumi

My breathing is heavy;
I don’t know where I’m going,
or what I’m doing,
or who’s actually doing it.

Not yet.

I know very little,
but I feel so much.

And in there, in some form,
you float about,
a butterfly in my belly
pushing tears up through my eyes.

Little symbols, meandering down my face,

into the sides of my lips,

whispering to me over and over:

She is always with you;

you learnt that a long time ago.

I’m far, far away,
in a distant, alien place.

Searching for something,

for something…

Your face is still,
in my mind.

I can almost touch it.

—

Moments of compassion,

clearly and unequivocally

evoked from you;

enigmatic presence,

more mysterious than the stars,

just as curious.

When tears drop from your eyes

and reflexively stream from mine,

I feel no separation.

All the more when it is our pain.

—

Please grow, my lover,

my friend.

We were meant to grow

and grow and grow,

but I don’t quite see you now,

in that flow of things…

Up and up you are meant to go!

You were a seed once too,

you know.

Way up high in the sky,

so one day,
you will seed your own;

sewn and grown in the sweetest soil

—a healthier strain,

far, far from all this pain.

And like a goddess

the pieces of you will sprout,
spread, and be the earth;
be all things but each also just one,

far less in need of healing
than the trees and shrubs of suburbia.

Please grow and grow,

my lover, my friend;

for I cannot bloom, with rigour,

without you, growing too.

In the end, in the end,

please grow, my lover,
my friend.

—

As much as I love you,

your life is not me;

your love not just mine.

Your heart is needed out there.

Seeds in the wind,
spreading to eternity.

I know these words cannot hold you,

touch you, warm you;

be strong in forgetting me a while,
for your memories are mere wisps of smoke

—the fire burns elsewhere, for now.

The blue sea is always there for you;

I am not the creator of the sun’s warmth.

Be calm, lover;

the ocean sweeps all from the sand,
and we are just two sets of hands,

grasping at what we’ve always had.

—

Years of slight turmoil,

and then

—a smooth patch;

a patch that in turn turned,
into a quilt.

A rather large quilt.

I don’t know,

But feel that I love you;

to claim to know much has always seemed,

to me,

a rather handsome mistake.

So sadly, perhaps, for you,

I know nothing
(let alone that);

but rest peacefully in the thoughts,
that I value what I feel more than what I know.

It’s a hard thing, all this;

but the deeper breaths I get,
when I’m with you,

make it difficult to imagine another.

Of course, of course…(the chorus chant)

One moment at a time.

—

Know that I am a man of music,

drifting, drifting, ever drifting;
held sound only by conscious attachments,
elusive grains of sand
on a windswept beach.

They’re all little games to me, sometimes;
some are just more serious than others.

The only concession I can make,
in this regard,

comes as a question:

Would you like to dance awhile, with me?

Even in my absence
(I certainly can’t dance well, anyway),

you certainly do have the moves…

—

That clever kind of warmth,

you wield over me like a mother;

how pointless to resist (with a smiley face).

Curled up, joker’s smile,

forever at peace if at arm’s length.

A hearth and fire if ever I saw one.

A creature fathomless as all are,

all its ups and downs, yeas and nays;

its folding forms, epic highs and drawn-out troughs.

Lucky enough to be with and hold you,

through the moments;

the moments themselves.

—

Sometimes it is hard,

to be around you and not touching;

to be speaking, but not feeling.

Those periods of wax and wane,

no acquaintances can healthily avert.

I am a moody creature,

—though aren’t we all?

The weight of the world seals that envelope…

The weight can drag, but

with awareness, can grow as light as emptiness;

for with you, and you, and you

I have felt so much

—and been relieved in thinking less.

Some kind of feminine touch,

radiated to me from your unique soul.

A femininity that, long ago,

this creature noticed had been missing for quite a while.

—

And amidst the constant low-hum of my own inner ramblings,

your image arrives easily yet again:

Head-to-toe wet, standing like a little girl in the shower;

hair flat, so you look kind of like a cute fur seal,

washing and cleaning, scrubbing away,
and all the while not knowing,

that you’re going to be ‘the cutest of the lot’,

as they say.

You always were!

But you scrub-a-dub-dub,
anyway.

—

What we all seem to do,

to a certain extent,

is attach ourselves to things

—to concepts, forms, instances of patterns…

We try and we try to find whatever it is we are looking for;

grasping at sand, hoping none of it falls through our tiny hands.

‘I’ won’t return from where I’m going.

But someone will come back,

to hold you.

—

If you miss me when I’m gone,
promise me that—in spite of anything—
you will allow yourself to cry,
your tears to come forth.

For to deny us that,
would prove endlessly sad,
endlessly lonely and painful.

My tears, then, would have no one to talk to.

—

Follow your feelings around every bend;

let them settle where they please

and be careful questioning them
—they are not minds,
but gut aches, pains, ecstasies and joys.

Be gentle with your being,

it supports you as you do it;

love as much as you love me,

and you will have a thousand lovers,

and nothing in-between.

—