... and then

…and thoughts suspend
like mermaid’s hair
dappling playful rays
of amber and jade,
against the darkness

and the deep.

Golden Wedding Gown

Robes of light
cloak and veil
anticipation
for his return.

Weaving and stitch,
painful and patient,
again tugged gently
to whisper return.

Braids and binds,
loosen, reveal,
nesting my flesh,
in welcome return.

Rope and thread
helix and whirlpool
place, moment, memory,
blood, breathing eternal
return.

The Body Breaks

The body breaks
And the body is fine
I'm open to yours
And i'm open to mine

The body aches
And that ache takes it time
But you'll get over yours
And i'll get over mine

And the sun will shine
And the moon will rise up

The body calls
Yeah, the body, it calls out
It whispers at first
But it ends with a shout

The body burns
Yeah, the body burns strong
Until mine is with yours
Then mine will burn on

My flesh sings out
It sings, "come put me out"

The body sways
Like the wind on a swing
A bridge through a hoop
Or a lake through a ring

The body stays
And then the body moves on
And I'd really rather not dwell on
When yours will be gone

But within the dark
There is a shine
One tiny spark
That's yours and mine

• Devendra Banhart

Fred & Vera

“Gotcha Keys? Gotcha Wallet?”
mutters the torture and the repetition.

Her old whiskered mouth used to
traverse treasured worlds
hidden in her crystal blue eyes
via rhymes of foxes and Tipperary,
(and bawdy ballads when Mum was out of the room).
“Roll me over in the clover, roll me over lay me down and do it again”.

“They used to call him Villain, Verner the Villain”.

Although appropriately stoic for his time,
nobody knew the old fella would take the news
with more pride than preservation.
I hadn’t been around the block enough to know
from whom we borrow time,
but given his certainty that it was in short supply,
it seemed only sensible that the otherwise spurious
book about sharks not getting cancer
and the expensive bottle of cartilage
Mum picked up was worth a shot.

He always liked an expensive bottle anyway?
Like that infamous dusty bottle of Glenfiddich she kept
locked safer than the Crown Jewels
in their hideous chipboard liquor cabinet.
"He treasured her and worked hard", Mum said,
"but men of his time weren’t taught how to listen".
Not to the kids, not to the Mrs, rarely to their conscience
trying to balance the excitement of escape before
a devastating loss on the punt.
"In the depression", Grandma said, "it didn’t take much
to lose a lot”.
No wonder then his genuine alarm when she
tore shreds off him for polishing off her retirement gift.
Working for Mr Chown in the Fine China Department
was something dazzling.
Something all her own.
A chest of private memories,
a hard-fought dignity,
too painful to lose.
Especially, that way.

“They used to call him Villain”.

Pretending it wasn’t happening seemed
to shield her from something,
but I hadn’t been around the block enough to know
that from which we seek to hide.
Although her vacant smirk
after “Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet and Watch”
was always a stretch, especially as I hit my late teens,
at least the rhyme sometimes reminded me
of resting my head on her dusty breast,
singing and dreaming about those jewels
behind her eyes.

As though I was inside those jewels.
As though her eyes and mine weren't two.

I hadn’t been around the block enough to know
those days weren’t coming back.
Her blue glint eyes were cut the same,
but in this time of unspoken goodbyes,
their clarity gone.

I just hadn’t been around long enough to know
those days weren’t coming back.

"Yeah, love. I've got 'em both".

Frog in the saucepan...

I had a great conversation with my friend Tim a few nights back about how much we're required to turn off the fullness to participate in the brand of 'gainful' em/deployment we're both inside for now. I'd been feeling the pinch back in full time work for the first time in a couple of years, but had only managed to collect my thoughts as we met. He's on his way out of his current predicament to a work-from-home gig, which'll hopefully give him a lot more spiritual space to continue his far more important seminary work.

Anyhow, all that is background for the great metaphor he used to describe his slow-burn: "it's the frog in the saucepan". I'd forgotten about that tale, and how I'd used it to try to explain the way I was feeling a couple of years ago drowning, not waving, in a sea of tax law. The association really hits the exact emotional spot of unconscious helplessness industrial society thrusts us into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

http://www.justiceplus.org/You-are-a-frog-in-hot-water.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Boiled-Frog-Syndrome-Health-Environment/dp/B000WDP5NM

Here, Bullet.

I listened to this Guardian podcast tonight. Brian Turner is a part-time poetry professor in the Bay Area and a soldier who recently served in Iraq. I was struck by what, to my mind, was an odd combination of career choices. Turns out he was another statistic of poor folk who paid for their eductation by enrolling in what seemed like a pre-9/11 peacetime army (e.g. domestic service or at best short peacekeeping operations in Bosnia), and would up on the frontline in places like Mosul or Tikrit.

He's immortalised his time in a collection of poetry entitled 'Here, Bullet'. Through the gravel in his voice, he delivered pictures of dehumanising hatred and heavenly light, each almost impossible to conceive. I wasn't bowled over, but the candid report of vistas which thankfully few of us will ever see was enough to encourage me to post the link.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/audio/2008/mar/31/book.club.brian.turner

Freely

It ain't about a heart you find
It's about the one you sight
It's about the love you hide
It's waitin' to be let outside.

Tim Hulbert - Osteopath

On recommendation from a few close friends, I had an appointment Tuesday with Osteopath Tim Hulbert at his Tamarama offices. Tim's practice includes trigger point needling, deep tissue massage, energetic work and, importantly, intensely powerful yet accurate chiropractic adjustments.

I've been seeing more therapists than an Oprah guest of late: acupuncture, energetics, Chinese med, chiro, trigger point needles, remedial massage, Thai massage, etc etc etc... but nobody's hit the same spots as Tim.

...and he's a card. We had a hilarious yarn the whole time during our appointment and so I left also feeling recharged more than just physically.

Bodywork is critical stuff for any ILP. Take a look.

More from Diane...

Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei’s interview with the Buddhist Geeks is on heavy rotation the last 24 hours. After my rant on how I felt some of Deida’s talk of ‘sexual essence’ didn’t match-up with my experience with the sheer groundlessness of our circumstance and the correspondent intentional enactment of manifestation, I thought Diane’s comments below were a cute synchronicity.

“You know, Trungpa said something to me, well not to me personally but in his teaching, that I remember and that stuck with me… he was always pointing out the basic groundlessness of our situation. How we’re always relating to reference points to secure our sense of self, and our sense of identity and our sense of safety in the world, but that if you really look at the situation clearly actually there nothing really holding us up. He took us always right into that place, and he said: “even the dharma will not sustain you in moments. There’ll be moments where you’re in absolute and utter freefall”, and that’s in some ways, exactly how my life felt”.

Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei on buddhistgeeks.com

"I had such a strong reciprocity with those teachings, with that framework, with that worldview, that I just immediately started teaching with and for I-I at the time. I some ways I consider myself a student of Ken's. If Roshi has developed the Big Mind to give people an experience of that which is beyond ordinary conceptions of self – which is unnameable, ungraspable, but durable – Ken's done the same thing theoretically. Which is a kind of interesting thing, they've both created their own Big mind processes. Roshi's is experiential and immediate and Ken's is conceptual, and he's basically asking you, or inviting you, or encouraging, or sometimes demanding, if you're being intellectually lazy, that you keep expanding your perspective – that you keep turning your experience of reality: your experience of self, your experience of other, what's objective, what's subjective, and that you discover yourself as a perspective taking being, and that enlightenment itself is always realised through the life and experience of a human being, and so, Ken would say that enlightenment itself takes on a perspective".

http://fallingfruit.tv/guests/episode-guests/dianehamilton

Who is Agency?

From what does proclivity arise?
Who creates?
Who asks?

Who decides?

Back here again, huh?!

It's only a year...

Monday, 12 March 2001

It’s only a year or so.
It’s just a financial goal.
It’s only a year or so.

It’s only the year,
and then I’ll do what I want to do
In a year or so.

It’s only a year.
Sure I’m at the beginning,
but it’s only a year.

And there’s the nights,
and the weekends,
and leave
(and on that point,
who ever decided to
name my leisure leave?).

It really is only a year.


Thursday, 17 April 2008

It’s only a year or so.
I’ve done the calculations,
and I’ll have paid the debts,
in a year or so.

I’m working out what I want to do
in a year or so when
I finish up here.

I’m making the most of my
nights, weekends, leave, which is
good. Mostly.
And it’s only a year anyhow.

Little Boxes

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

• Malvina Reynolds

Spiritual Bypassing

A great blog post from Robert Augustus Masters:

"Spiritual bypassing is the use of spiritual beliefs and/or practices to "rise above" or otherwise avoid dealing in any significant depth with our unresolved wounds and related emotional and behavioural problems. It perhaps most commonly can be seen in the minimizing or superficializing (sic) or outright negation of our "negativity," and in the taking of impersonal or prematurely transpersonal stands on personal concerns.

Spiritual bypassing is a dehumanizing practice, however much it may talk about light and love and compassion. It is the headquarters of the talking school of spirituality. As much as it goes on and on about transcending egoity, it is little more than spiritualized egoity referring to itself as "I" — it's no surprise that spiritual bypassing is especially common in spiritual paths that treat ego as something to eradicate (rather than as something to illuminate and integrate)".

http://www.robertmasters.com/Blog_HTML/BLOG_Feb08.html#spiritual

Construction of Perception on the Train

 

On the train ride home today I noticed a few distinctions in the make up of my perception.

I noticed the witnessing consciousness behind the attention. My attention had aspects within and without. Within being the flow behind my eyes and what felt inside my body. The without was the joined objects in the physical field of consciousness (time and space). Each of these could be split from each other or joined in union depending on my intent. The intent was a pre-language motivation which then translated into thought forms, and also carried a down-chain visceral response which acted as a monitor if something felt unusual or too difficult.

I was playing with joining them and disengaging them and noticing how my sub-personalities were constructed around the different relationships.

When they're all joined, I feel very high but present and rested. I feel contented, present, safe and home.

What if a gun really were to my head?

What if simplicity
is the dramatic
overture I've been waiting for?

Waiting for orchestras
might take my life.

Maybe I'm not the boy recovering,
but the man
changing?

 

Can't Stand Me Now

Cornered the boy,
kicked out at the world
The world kicked back
a lot fucking harder, now.

Trusting the Masculine

My friend Jeremy recently did the Trusting the Masculine course I did last year with Sydney teacher Trevor Grey. We caught up on Sunday night to chat about his experience, and over the last few days I’ve been reflecting on how different he seemed, how different we seemed and, mostly, how different I am, both since I did the course, and simply “these days”.

I’ve been thinking today about David Deida’s ‘three stages of masculine’ distinction, and the ways that conceptual framework speaks to my experience over the years*.

For the uninitiated, it seems to me that Deida’s stages chart his observations of the genealogical unfolding of affect and spirit in the (possibly western) human male. I consider Deida’s first stage (traditional) Man to be a cultural role defined by stoicism, denial/suppression of affect and the maintenance an illusory omniscience in the I-Thou relationship designed to intimate power, protection, performance and perfectibility (think John Wayne/Clint Eastwood). I’d describe his second stage as the post-modern fella where the socio-cultural expectations of gender are loosened and gender roles are toyed with, men opening themselves to emotion, affect, authentic relationship and other domains traditionally protected by Woman (think a pony-tailed me circa first year uni, with a goateed mouth singing protest songs on my acoustic guitar). Deida’s third stage is where it gets interesting. My exposure to his work suggests that in response to the limitations of the pluralistic second stage, we enter a space where authenticity of heart and mind become one’s predominant experience through a complex process involving a loosening of the ego, the emergence of aperspectival cognition and a deepening of present self-perception as an emergent open-system, among other things. In that new consciousness, gender needs not be narrowly defined, denied nor politicised, but rather, the complexity of its many faces is experienced as another aspect of the arising of forms. In response to that perception, we openly experience the various aspects of gender which arise in our first person experience, we surrender in devotion to the limitless gender relationships inside our sub-personalities and between those of others, and hold lightly, yet still hold, the evident faces of gender observable in our nature (from gross through all subtle realms available).

In this space, a sexual wonderland has emerged for me. I’ve been able to inhabit the fullness more completely, feeling self-preserving sexuality, self-adapting sexuality, transcendent sexuality, compassion, force, passion, commitment, care, fire, intimacy, sensuality, frivolity, heterosexuality, homosexuality, fantasy, longing, denial, trust, dismay, lust… in a ceaseless tangle of legs, sweat, breath, hearts, souls and God.

Given the transcendent opening I’ve been experiencing through sexuality, I’ve been unsteady with Deida’s notion that we have a pre-given ‘essence’ which we can locate and use as the grounding for a permanent polarisation. That hasn’t been my experience. My experience of life discloses a kosmos far more enacted than pre-given. For one, I’ve never been able to locate a stable, permanent and divinely granted basis for my existence that hasn’t been utterly ineffable. Despite all the illusory promises my perceptions provide from moment to moment, the shifting sands of the groundless ground of existence is the only promise, and a promise which can never be grasped… such is the torment of incarnation. Given the depth of realisation evidenced in his prose, I wonder if pressed, Deida would yield on this position? Given my perception of enacted realities, my experience has been deeply diverse (and correspondingly deeply confusing to a sense of self that seems to require the absence of dissonance in a naively congruent self-sense). I’ve simultaneously felt sensual and powerful, compassionate and directed, certain and submissive, dominant and emotionally intimate. I’ve felt hetero, homo and trans attraction and curiosity. I’ve felt identified as a man, and often identified much happier as one of the girls. I’ve sensed assertion and denial of my male sex…

… and yet, I’ve made a choice to enact a polarised self sense in sexual congress to dig a karma that feels trusting, rewarding and beautiful. That self sense identifies as a trustable heterosexual male interested in a deep, committed relationship. It’s limited to my sexuality, and not to the way I show up in the relationship (I’m not keen on any relationship that requires me to express the fullness of masculine tosspottery in every given moment). The basis of this choice hasn’t been pre-ordained. No ontological given. Not even close. I’ve searched high and low for the holy grail in regards to my gender/sex/sexual identity… fuck me, in regards to everything in my life… and the only thing that remained at the end of the painful journey was an exhausted self laying bare in the reality that I Am Agency in the choices about my identity and the mental/emotional/spiritual criteria for those choices. Karma is made.

I’m very different “these days”.

* Of course, as with all conceptions, there’s gradations between, around, and within these ‘stages’, but for conversational purposes around type distinctions, I find it a handy metric.

Hush Little Baby

Om Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.

A4.
Bingo!
Yeah, I'm here alone.
Yes, A single.
A-ha, I see,
oh there!.. the front of the queue.

Fuck my knees are sore.
Shit she's beautiful.
Wait on love, my back's killing me,
it'll take a second to move.

I wish I could do something like that,
Something other than that fucking bullshit façade
I've decided to skip today…

… you know, like fuck'n charity work or some shit.
It'd be great. Like all these dudes in white.
I never wear white anymore.

Wear more white.

Shit she's beautiful.
Have a go at those kids,
the little one's snuggling all the way to her nape
they'd usually be crying?

Fuck these fucking sore knees, as much as this
fucked restless mind.
I wish I'd just calm the fuck down,
take all this in like I'd planned.
How does Sass do it, those times
when her eyes turn that
different blue
and her neck gently wobbles her
ginger pigtails across her shoulders?
Shit she's beautiful.

Next to that woman?
No probs.

Ah, there's Lina.
Hey!
Things really have changed.
I'll come over and chat in a sec.

Over here? OK.
Yeah, I speak English.

I want to do something like this,
instead of that fucking white bread job.

Hand there? OK.
Arms around,
Which way?
Ah.
Jeez, she's a cuddly thing…

My Darling, my darling, my darling, my darling, my darling, my darling, aahhhh my darling.

Rose and sandalwood.
Puppy fat that never dropped away.
Goosebump whispers.
Silence and movement.
Colour and light.
Childhood glimmer that never dropped away.

My Darling, my darling, my darling, my darling,

I remember you.

my darling, my darling,

aahhhh my darling.

http://www.ammaaustralia.org.au/

I-I

'may I be I is the only prayer - not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'

- e.e.cummings

Seeds

I read her skin

like

tea leaves

patiently waiting

for her to

pour another cup.

The Creation of Stories

I picked up this beautiful little book in Newtown tonight, The Faithful Gardener, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés Ph.D. (of the famed New York Times bestseller Women Who Run With The Wolves). It's a gorgeous idea: she wants to tell a story about the unknowable, or as she calls it, 'That Which Can Never Die', but being the cantadora (keeper of the old stories) she is (as well as a Jungian Psychoanalyst) she decides that first she needs to tell the tale of her uncle the peasant farmer who survived the holocaust… but before that story makes any sense she must tell the story of "This Man" he knew in the old country… which of course makes no sense unless she first tells the story about how stories were first created, "for without the creation of stories, there would be no stories to tell at all – no story about stories, no story about my uncle, no story about "This Man", and no story about That Which Can Never Die".

Here's her beautiful creation story (apparently first told by her when she was a child and grown from a practice of trading parables with an old aunt):

How did stories come into being? Ah, stories came into the world because God was lonely.

God was lonely? Oh, yes, for you see, the void at the beginning of time was very dark. The void was so dark because it was so tightly packed with stories that not even one story stood out from the others.

Stories were therefore without form, and the face of God moved over the deep, searching and searching – for a story. And God's loneliness was very great.

Finally, a great idea rose up, and God whispered "Let there be light".

And there was light so great that God was able to reach into the void and separate the dark stories from the stories of light. As a result, clear morning stories came to life, and fine evening tales as well. And god saw that is was good.

Now God felt encouraged, and next separated the heavenly stories from the earthly stories, and these from the stories about water. Then god took great joy in creating the small and the tall trees and brilliantly coloured seeds and plants, so that there could be stories about the trees and seeds, and plants, too.

God laughed with pleasure, and from God's laughter fell the stars and the sky into their places. God set into the sky the golden light, the sun, to rule the day, and the moon, the silver light, to rule the night. And in all, God created these so that there would be stories about the stars and the moon, stories about the sun, and stories about the mysteries of the night.

God was so pleased with these that God turned to creating birds, sea monsters, and every living creature that moves, every fish and all the plants under the sea, and every winged creature, and all the cattle and creeping things, and all the beasts of the earth, according to their kind. And from all these came stories about God's winged messengers, and stories about ghosts and monsters, and tales about whales and fishes, and other stories about life before life knew itself, about all that life had now, and all that would come to life one day.

Yet with even all these wondrous creatures and all these magnificent stories, even with all the pleasures of creating, God was still lonely.

God paced and thought, and thought and paced, and finally! it came to our great Creator. "Ah. Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them care for, and be cared for in return, by all creatures of the seas, all those of the air, and all those of the earth."

So God created human beings from the dust of the ground, and breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and human beings became living souls: male and female God created them. And as these were created, suddenly, all the stories that go along with being completely human also sprang to life, millions and millions of stories. And God blessed all of these, and placed them in a garden called Eden.

Now God strode through the heavens wreathed in smiles, for at last, you see, God was lonely no more.

It was not stories that had been missing from creation, but rather, and most especially, the soulful humans that could tell them.

St Uriel the Archangel Gnostic Community has a new home...

"Enlighten your mind... Light the lamp within you. Knock on yourself as if upon a door and walk upon yourself as upon a straight road. For if you walk on the road, it is impossible for you to go astray. Open the door for you so that you may know what it is."
– Silvanus

My friend Tim has recently been given news that the Apostolic Johannite Church is to ordain him a preist in May. He's been a seminarian in the chuch for a while now, and will continue his seminary training while serving his Sydney Parish, St Uriel's, upon his return.





As part of this irrovocable new step in the path of his humanity, he has established a chuch space for services every Sunday night at the Sydney Unitarian Church (1-15 Francis St, Darlinghurst). If you're interested in authentic spirituality and are wondering how you might hold that within the frame of your own western Christian culture, St Uriel's might be a refuge worth considering along your path.

The Apostolic Johannite Church is a modern, gnostic, christian esoteric church with valid apostolic succession (all the way back to JC!). Tim's a kind, intelligent, warm man who is putting a lot of heart, mind and spirit into his development and transformation into a priest. I'm sure he'd love to see you there sometime.

Check out the blog he has created to chart his journey along this path.

Better World Books

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking".
- Jerry Seinfeld


My love recently put me on to the excellent online bookstore Better World Books.

The four huge benefits of using this resource which tickled me were:

1. A wide range: 1.8 million used books plus 500,000 new titles (and every book I've wanted has been available at prices consistently cheaper than Amazon when including delivery).


2. All sold to fund literacy (and especially in developing nations).


3. $2.97 USD shipping to anywhere in the world.


4. Carbon Neutral delivery options where you can pay a small amount (like 5c for a carbon credit to offset the delivery).

Superb stuff.

This store on arm of a larger initative which is IMHO very impressive. Check it out.

I’m not all knowing, but…

 

one of the problems is
that when most people sit down to write a poem they think
"now I am going to write a poem"
and then
they go on to write a poem
that looks like a poem
or what they think a poem should look like.

this is one of their problems.
of course, there are other problems:
those makers of poems
that look like poems
think that they must then go around
sending them to other people.

this, they say,
is done for status and recognition
(they are careful not to mention vanity
or the need for instantaneous
approbation from some sparse, addled crowd.)

the best poems
it seems to me
are made out of an ultimate need
and once the poem is made
the only need after that is to make another.

and the static
of a just-written poem
is the best response
to a finished work.

in days past
I once warned some poem-friends
of mine
about the masturbatory nature of reading poems,
done just for the applause of a handful of idiots.

"isolate yourself
and do your work
and if you must mix,
then do it with those who have no interest at all
in what you consider so important."

such anger, such a self-righteous response did I received then
from my poem friends
that it seemed to me that I had exactly proved my point.

after that, we [all] drifted apart.

and that solved just one of my problems
and I suppose just one of theirs.

• Charles Bukowski

For Memory

Sacred flames burn of late,
at last,
defiant in your autumn gale.

From this fantastic, novel vantage
it seems,
at last,
our rules have been amended.

Must we always be at odds?

Although the times may murmur
your coming wintertide,
this… no, my ineffable incandescence
at last,
lights a dewy dawn
melting goodbyes to
that
long
benumbing
season…

… and then, I remember.

I remember
laying bare
mollified in the susurrus of your gentle promises
as though our campfire high amongst your Andean tarns
would, at last, warm us both unceasingly.





http://tennysonpoetry.home.att.net/otm.htm

Error 6/92

1.1 Despite the burning toner cartridge Her cold spit laden lips smell of
a childhood lost wondering about how to meet her father’s
expectations.

1.2 Despite all evidence, I’m told She’s a
Born Multitasker
as she claws her efficient crop trying to mask
another lost moment of terrified discontent
in a storm of dandruff and uncommitted pleasantries.

“Printers do breakdown now and then I suppose”.

1.3 Through the two-way mirror of Her coke bottle spectacles
I see her see-sawing pupils
magnifying the terrors of late timesheets, late trains
later periods
her boss’ shadows down the long corridors which could end her Brilliant Career
at any moment faster than any baby.
What would Daddy say then?

1.4 She knows more about this place than anyone, and She’d Have It All
if She knew
that she already did.
If only they'd known that Daddy was terrified his little girl
might too feel her soul chill at a lost promotion
when he asked what happened to those three lost marks
on her year nine maths mid-term.

Error 692: Open Core Spool Container

1.5 Not a chance.

"You go" she gestures,
once again.