The Trapeze Swinger

Please, remember me, happily,
by the rosebush laughing
with bruises on my chin, the time when
we counted every black car passing
your house beneath the hill, and up until
someone caught us in the kitchen
with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank
a vision too removed to mention

But please remember me, fondly,
i heard from someone you're still pretty
and then they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
have such eloquent graffiti
like: "we'll meet again" and "fuck the Man"
and "tell my mother not to worry"
and angels with their great handshakes
but always done in such a hurry

and please remember me, at Halloween
making fools of all the neighbours
our faces painted white, by midnight
we'd forgotten one another
and when the morning came I was ashamed
only now it seems so silly
that season left the world and then returned
and now you're lit up by the city

so please remember me, mistakenly
in the window of the tallest tower
call, then pass us by, but much too high
to see the empty road at happy hour
gleam and resonate just like the gates
around the Holy Kingdom
with words like: "lost and found" and "don't look down"
and "someone save temptation"

and please remember me, as in the dream
we had as rug-burned babies
among the fallen trees and fast asleep
beside the lions and the ladies
that called you what you like and even might
give a gift for your behavior:
a fleeting chance to see a trapeze-
swinger high as any savior

but please remember me, my misery
and how it lost me all i wanted
those dogs that love the rain, and chasin' trains
the colored birds above there runnin'
in circles round the well, and where it spells
on the wall behind St. Peter
so bright on cinder gray in spray paint:
"who the hell can see forever?"

and please remember me, seldomly
in the car behind the carnival
my hand between your knees, you turn from me
and said the trapeze act was wonderful
but never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger
when it filled with circus dogs, the parking lot
had an element of danger

so please remember me, finally
and all my uphill clawing
my dear, but if i make the Pearly Gates
i'll do my best to make a drawing
of God and Lucifer, a boy and girl
an angel kissin' on a sinner
a monkey and a man, a marching band
all around the frightened trapeze-swinger

• Sam Beam

Dark Night

St. John of the Cross is speaking to my deepest heart this week.

I've been reading his Dark Night of the Soul, which, in just a few short lines, illuminates the sealing of the senses and passage from communion to union with the Beloved. But, there's so much more to what St Theresa of Avila called "the most angelic human being I have ever encountered". Such a powerful soul, he endured the torture of his own brethren beyond limits any mortal could endure: kept in dark and wet solitary confinement, beaten by other priests to the extent that he became permanently crippled, developed acute dysentery, not given a change of clothes nor allowed to wash for months at a time. Yet within this betrayal he managed to open his heart further to the Beloved, and pen some of his most enduring works:

"I am dying of love darling, what should I do?"

And the Beloved responded,

"Then die my sweetheart – just die. Die to all that is not us; what could be more beautiful?"

busted, broken, forgotten

 

if you're looking for a good thing
if you're looking for a clean heart
looking over this way
is not a very good start
been hanging on an old line
been living in a fixed time
been sticking to the same moves
and now I'm busted broken forgotten
old and worn and used
it's ok i know it now
and there's nothing like the truth
in anything that i can still do
in anything that i can still be
if there's a part of me that's still true
it's trying to promise what i cannot prove
so in the daylight you will see me
as not a definite or real thing
just as a shadow left to shifting
now that I'm busted broken forgotten
lost beyond all use
it's ok i know it now
and there's nothing like it
false signs and faulty lines well they may be excused
but how will time forgive me all the damage that they'll do?
so baby I'm leaving yeah I'm packing up and moving away
you'll never see me the broken boy is leavin' today
and you'll never find me from the pieces scattered all along the way
cause they're bound to fade
now that I'm busted broken forgotten
lost beyond all use
it's ok i know it now
and there's nothing like the truth

• Ollie Brown.

Integral Methodological Pluralism

After all the reading, dreaming and navel-gazing I've undertaken in the last few years, I can safely say that no single concept has unlocked my freedom as much as Integral Methodological Pluralism.

When I was a boy, I remember a moment of exhilaration after a science class when I realised that all scientific 'truth' is merely repeatable hypothesis rather than a given absolutes. It was at a time when I was developing the first stages of my cognitive autonomy, and I was so deeply struck with the arguably premature realisation that I would never truly 'know' anything again. Ontological relativism at age 10... prodigy, huh?! ;-)

After that stunning realisation, I commenced a vigorous campaign to uncover the other spheres of my boyhood awareness (which was really probably just my semantic maps, rather than some premature claim to transpersonal awareness or witness consciousness) to which this relativity could apply. It was stunning! It turned out that nothing could be known without first setting the injunctive scope of inquiry. I felt so free, and so deeply fascinated by this suddenly mysterious place I'd been thrusted into. Epistemological relativity at age 11... Doogie Howser, is that you? ;-)

I was so very lucky to have the cognitive makings of an existential crisis while I was still comprehensively under my family's wing. [muffled coughs masking calls of "wanker!" are heard from the four corners of the earth]... OK, OK, just fucking with you. They were the makings of a postmodern thought process but certainly clumsy first cuts, and from a partially scientistic frame. It certainly wasn't a realisation that all is Always Already.

Anyhoo... I never developed a language to explain my thinking, with every clumsy attempt just digging me further and further into the kook's ditch. Not a fun place for a young tucker. It remained a secret realisation that informed me for years, until the worst happened...

... I got lured into a regressive cycle. Emotional pain around work and relationship incompatabilities left me clinging to an absolutistic worldview as refuge from the dark side of relativism - the difficulty in commanding agreement. In that dark hole, I wasn't able to resolve the mind that had so lucidly living with pluralism for years, with this seemingly foreign need for givens and ultimate truths (in the relative domain). It was nonsense classification neurosis, and with no workable map to chart this far deeper aperspectival territory.

So I read books on mindfulness, Zen, nature mysticism, western psychology and psychotherapy, philosophy, the list goes on, in a mindless search for the private secret that'd hidden itself even from me.

When I devoured Ken's work on IMP I had a thousand kenshos... and I felt forever bolstered in my selfhood. You know the thing, where someone else makes seemingly legitimate what you already know simply because it's published thought! No that ain't fair, it's stunningly argued stuff, and precisely the depth of theoria which my years of IMP practice needed to be complimented with.

There's more than one benefit: learning the historical philosophical imperative for IMP and Integral Post-Metaphysics isn't just the most powerful elucidation of the structral neccessities for the support and flowering of an aperspectival worldview... I also get to be (sorta) right!*... and that makes me feel very safely myself again.

Don't ignore IMP. It's critical stuff. I want to write more about the things I've been noticing from my IMP readings. Get on my case if I don't do it soon.

L.


* within the Always Already quadratic paradigmatic limits of IMP, of course ;-p

Eternal Mercy

Dusting the cobwebs of my past always stretches me between here and then. Sometimes I go, sometimes I stay. Always, I'm stretched.

I happened upon my journal notes from road of trials across Peru in 2005 and 2006 the other night. In once sense, "I" never went to Peru. "I" was lost. I wasn't one, nor two, with my friends without and within. The lines drawn between pen and paper were the only place Luke arrived for days, to months, and sadly, years. They're lines drawn of long stretches.

Opening the notes of my past, those lines kissed me on the nose for the first time...

... I much prefer a fresh kiss than a nervous tap on my dusty shoulder.



Eternal Mercy

Tell me friends...
If you die before you die, then do you die when you die,
my friends,
'cause I don't feel so alive.

Tell me friends,
If I did this for twenty years, would I be that in twenty years,
my friends,
or twenty years behind?

What am I?

'cause I can't seem to decice...
What am I?

'cause I can't seem to decide...
Who am I?

Tell me, do I need to decide?
Do I need to decide?

I tell you friends, I don't need to decide,
when I see,
what I see,
when I see,
through these eyes.

I tell you friends, I don't need to decide,
when I hear,
what I hear,
when I hear,
through these ears.

I tell you friends, I don't need to decide,
when I feel,
what I feel,
when I feel,
deep inside.

I tell you friends, if I die before I die,
and I die,
and I die,
and I die,
man, I feel so alive.