Silent, Holy Night

Mother moon was waxing a blue Gibbous light.  The jungle at night filled with the faintest rattlings of a saucepan and the vibrato echoes of a goathide drum.  Hours of soft holy glow lit the mudstone route.  Emerging from the canopy of rustling shadows, a dome of stars held the Christmas sky in place - thousands of quartz crystal pins.

A Russian rocket scientist spends his days on top of this Himalayan mountain, in a stone room.  Nearly naked, caked deeply with dust and smoke, he makes Ayurvedic tea over his firewood stove.  Copper and iron cookware, piles of hand-split firewood, a few worn blankets and rags, and shelves of medicine from the mountain.  Nearly 8 months out of the year he is in a vow of silence, collecting his own foods from the jungle and living his own high altitude lifestyle.  My Christmas Eve was eating a crumbling root-bread and drinking herbal tea with this silent Baba (holy grandfather).  Only upon returning to the town did I learn of his life from those who repeatedly visit and sometimes converse with him.

I left him at the witching hour, to make a fire of my own on the bald mountain.  Lying next to the nightlong blaze, staring into the shapes and smoke, drinking my own herbal tea made from mint, ginger, nettle and ganga, the holy night passed in a neolithic dream.  Flute light and drum mellow rumbled in my empty bellows:

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar
Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star

 O Star of wonder, star of night
Star with royal beauty bright
Westward leading, still proceeding
Guide us to Thy perfect light

~

Good for Something

"Things get out of hand."

That's pretty much the last thing I learned on this crazy planet.  Last as in the most recent and last as in the Be-All-End-All. 
 
When I was a boy, the moon was home
comfortable in my lunar dreams
Now I live in a giant plastic egg besides the sea
spending the warm evenings on my hill of clover flowers practicing headstands
spinning socks full of sand to strengthen my shoulders
looking one way into the colorful glow of light-polluted Tokyo
looking the other way, a cypress forest enclosed in a black protective mesh and the sounds of the tetraheydron concrete enclosed ocean shore washing weakly at the crusty scab of a city;
a well dressed scab
straight ahead, barely visible, is the brown-rouge outline of Fuji
one thing never changes
wherever I go

Better for it, I can't climb mountains with a bird in my hand. 

-

Wild dreams while sleeping on the floor of a university classroom:

We are falling
you and I
But thats not necessarily a dream
The dream is that I taught us how to fly

I flew home
and I had it all
the perfect house
more relatives and friends than I could count
wealth, style, and security
and I was terribly sad
"I just want to go to Nepal," I thought
as I ran streaks through the rich Scotch alcohol with my manicured index finger
A sort of anemic sadness
until I woke up
overjoyed
that I was homeless

-

Its out of my hands - bloody as they are
I can't catalog the accumulated experience of my absence from the world
I dropped the rope on the tug of war between understanding and experience
I'm not even sure which side I was standing on

Whatever, let it roll
these changing winds
it's the only thing that makes sense
when things get this out of hand
why try to capture with pen and paper
what even the full force of the mind is incapable of surrounding?


I can't say its all a waste of time
Why, just this afternoon
I used my journal as shoehorn

Real Travelers

"Those were the real Travelers - no money to barter, no planes or buses, no internet to check whether there is a war going on or not.  Every day by the sword, in the nervous morning squatting behind another man's tree with little to eat and stomach illness from god-knows-what.  Foreign tongues with no Rosetta Stone software or collegiate education.  No Google Maps. Ignorant and murderous bandits.  Scurvy.  Those were the real travellers.."

Staring up at the ceiling, mine as well not be talking to anyone. Thinking lays on a top bunk.

But there was Someone.  Someone slowly taking a smoldering home rolled cigarette out of his bearded mouth. A  gnarly and wiry arm, covered in bold tribal tattoos, brushed the hair on his dark chin.  He said,

"makes you look like a bit of a twat, duh'en'it?"

--
Dear M.S.

I thought you'd like that.  Characters are fictional, of course.  Have you still got yellow grapefruit peels in your bathroom sink?

I'm happy you are still trying to write.  Keep your chin up; desparity and writers go hand in hand.  Although it seems that usually writers fall in desparity because they are passionate about writing whereas it seems you are trying to write because you have fallen into desparity.  Regardless, there must be some reactive element in the combination.  Maybe you need to take a plunge?  Or set yourself on fire?

By the way, for my own personal interests, I'd like to know the next time you get that 'feeling'.  You mentioned it was always at night, and that it is sometimes loosely accompanied with a tottering dizziness, like you weren't sure if it was a real earthquake or not.  Just, if you can check the time next time, lets begin to build a data set.  Try to chart some trajectory, make some sense of all this.

I feel your frustration in the Fuckitooem column, but keep in mind you can always find something you don't want to do.  If you are a slave to wants, it doesn't matter what the issues are.  I am not suggesting you do those things, but beware the aversive passion.  Even avoiding what you deem as negative, as harmless as it sounds, still has baked within it a recipe for suffering.  You are wanting something that isn't and you are cutting the world into negatives and positives.  Double karmic honeycombing.


Love you bro,
Timing is everything.
On this shore or another,

R.L.

The last link to a heavy chain of memories

Sorry for waiting so long to read your belated response,

I know how it gets so hectic, so busy, so drone-like, so rhythmic.  I suppose it's these times when I feel blessed:  Arrhythmic energies, deftly out of synch with the modern progress machine.  I work in the morning, eat breakfast during work, sleep during lunch, prepare my work on the bus, daydream during my prep time, go to work before my boss and sneak out too early, exercise under the moon and relax in the sun.  And when I should be doing 'this' I am doing 'that'.  The only thing that separates 'this' and 'that' is a loophole most of the time.  Loopholes are my thing.  And being flexible.

So, Old Friend,

Thanks for writing, whenever it is.

I was once told in a sultry whisper that,

"Hope and Nostalgia stand equally in the way of authentic experience"

Sweaty curves, incense and pheromones.  Cool air sank in through a pane-less window into a dim candle lit room.  Somewhere in Asia.  No one really knows. 
It was her way to take me and leave me without having to feel any guilt.  I have used it ever since, as a sort of cruel magic charm to say to women, both pre-emptively abandoning them and warning them.  It saves time.  Abandoning all, on the burning bridges of life.

That being said,

I am glad you wrote.  So glad that I am looking forward to the next writing.

How are the kids?  The mortgage? The job(s)?  How are those things?

When you forget a idea, does it cease to exist?
Does the subconscious mind control my bodily movements more often than the conscious mind? 
Do we spend more time asking "What is it?" or "What should we do about it?"
The animate reflects the essence of the inanimate.
Develop a taste for the unknown and never go hungry again.

Fuck Loans
Fuck Work
Fuck Taxes
Fuck Bills
Fuck Upgrades
Fuck Fees
Fuck Pin Numbers
Fuck Passwords
Fuck Visas
Fuck Liscenses
Fuck Permits
Fuck Rules
Fuck "Have-To"s
Fuck Paperwork
Fuck Offices
Fuck Loudspeakers
Fuck Prescription Drugs
Neckties, Fuck 'em
...
to name a few.

It feels good to say Fuckitoo'em.
Feels even better to just avoid 'em.
I didn't know I wasn't the only one trying to figure out how.  Or that I was trying to be the only one who isn't trying to make things less confusing than they don't have to be.

(?)

-M.S.

Dream Birds

Frequency range	Name	Usually associated with:
> 40 Hz	Gamma waves	Higher mental activity, including perception, problem solving, fear, and consciousness
13–39 Hz	Beta waves	Active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition, and or paranoia
7–13 Hz	Alpha waves	Relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness, REM sleep, Dreams
4–7 Hz	Theta waves	deep meditation/relaxation, NREM sleep
< 4 Hz	Delta waves	Deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness

the dream birds fly in the licorice of eve
dodging orange and yellow hues
ochre stone and ashen leaves
underneath a scarlet moon

animated rainbows dancing to-and-fro through forms
dyslexia of common waves are norm and anti-norm

this language is a dance of which our tongues and pens partake
t'will tango about nothingness and boogie at our wake

walls were made to conquer
hills were made to climb
in our gateless prison the wardens name is 'time'

Crazy is Beautiful

Remember the days

When crazy was beautiful?

 The sky was green

and every thing you`d say

Wasso strange

 a monkey off the chain

(Exotic Potato)

I swear to you that life is beautiful

The stars change with every passing day 

You`ve got to keep yourself together

Don`t let depression eat your brains

(Erotic Tomato)

Reach out and touch your future self
send him a message not to wait
on you
it might drive him insane

Fall into the rainbow rabbit hole
the moon is full and everything you say
is in vain
taste the texture of your pain

because the past wont come again.

Regrets

The view of the room from within the flower vase
A warped rainbow
A curving echo
"I don't want to be me", you said
"I want to be the Void, the Universe, and everything in it!"

Well,
That's a lot of water to hold

Our little vase would shatter

We can be all those things
...just...
We can never bring them back

We can swim in the ocean
...but...
never carry it with us

Does this ease your regret?

I know not why the caged bird sings

Passing out in the middle of a conversation about Leonardo Da Vinchi`s gay lover.  What skin I`m in.  When I look at the necktie image, the sleek physique and well groomed man before me, a smirk. I`ve got the backstory:

A grubby bum in beard and Borneo. 
Mountains crisp and white and clean
Bamboo flute under the moon
Freedom is a curious thing

Nora dora neko killa'
A wild raoming Tom I be
And twistin' language to my will
T`express the rhymes inside of me

Mother ocean hiss and shoosh me
Juanlito`s eyes are mirror-ing
A lovebird on its own is hopeless
I know not why the caged bird sings

Nor why to me
A peace
It brings.

Eclepsy

Coffee and Jazz.  Doctor's orders.

The dis-ease?
  Fatigue and ma-nah-tony
To be precise, millions of monotonies.
But a monotony
is just the way we see
the living, changing ever-be

In which direction does the mindflow go?
the glyph of its trajectory
can be read by
only me:

The melody of life is funny
it's never how it dreams to be
stimulate and knock you down
transform you irrevocably

the remedy for stress is honey
I squeeze it from your hexagon
after 60 days I worry
your honey will be all gone

'cuz the melody of love is funny
it never goes where you think its going to go...

---

Sometimes I get the feeling that there is no big picture - that it is merely a collage of billions of little lives that somehow blend together into this magnificent humanity.  Not merely society, which is just the tip of the iceberg of human mass potential; No, not merely society, but humanity as a superorganism.  It throbs with consciousness and sense far beyond the comprehension of the individual, and yet arises wholly from within us; a network of busy little lives.

The consciousness here is so different.  The expectations attached to every little action are aligned on a different grid.  The reasoning behind actions is unthinkably illogical by my standards.  The ability to intuit into others minds is in disarray.  Of course, the days and weeks and months and years that pile up in foreign countries are full of dull little annoyances - symptoms of the underlying misunderstandings - but the root is in the differing frequencies of consciousness  If our minds are a radio, we must learn to tune in, but can we tune back?

Maybe I've never really tuned in to begin with.  What I came to find, and whatever it is I found, was change within myself.  The illusions of virtue I placed on the people and customs around me are ethereal and corrupt.   I came to find discipline, respect, and a sense of beauty unlike what I have ever seen.  If I face the truth, it isn't discipline that I find out here. Not in the least.  It is more akin to banal automatism forced pedantically from the top down. 

Bureaucratic hell

  the prison of security

    which may prevent catastrophe

      but 

        ensures mediocrity.  

I know at last that I don't belong here.

Joy, in its random outbursts and chaotic dissolution of barriers.  Joy is a threat to be preempted.  Stick a cultural muffler on it.  I sense a preference for congested misery and subservience to The Code.  Earthquake island full of robots.

There are no women here
only fashions and models
no working men
just suits in motion
what a notion!

the gestures we wear

are just as important

as salon styled hair

its a cold and friendless world out there

what

on earth

am i doing here?

would it matter if i reappear

somewhere on the terra-sphere?

"wherever you go, there you are"

it's the same condition everywhere

on the other hand...

the air is the breath which fills the man

what air i breathe

in Asian lands?

that this life is not going to go as dreamed
nor disappoint as feared


What would Bob say?

"Mope, don't mope.  Be sad, be happy.  Whatever.  Suffering is a choice.  Resistance is pain.  It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it.  Observe and analyze.  Understand the reactions of cause and effect and, naturally, you will do what needs to be done - and that isn't very much"

May 14th

a dog barks
a baby cries
people yell
a silent train

a busy restaurant
listening to music
going to school in the rain

going to work
getting older
learning not to complain

I know the sound of one hand clapping
alone on May14th
again~

Kami Nomi Zo Shiru

I set out just to lose myself
a long time ago
where I'll end up
only god really knows
kaminomi zo shiru yo (only god only knows)

I searched but could not find my soul
inside hollow bones
who we really are
only god really knows
kaminomi zo shiru yo
-
my journey has just begun
with the rising of the sun
going wherever the wind blows
say goodbye to the people I meet
only strangers on my street
where I'm going got to take my own feet
-
I traveled far to find the truth
and what do you know?
it's sitting right here at the tip of my nose
sittin in a place only god really knows
-
my journey has just begun
with the rising of the sun
going wherever the wind blows
say goodbye to the people I meet
only strangers on my street
where I'm going got to take my own feet
-
if you thought that your life was worth more than gold
well its not
life ain't worth much more than the breath with which your stories being told
and its the same old air whether we're young or we're old - fresh from the mold
save your breath
leave your stories untold
-
kaminomi zo shiru yo
where I'll end up only god really knows

Transition

Six Pomeranians are walking down a shiny wet alley late after the rain.  The super-moon shines on the remarkable night.  I unwrap a cellophane orb of apple flavored peanut-oil based fruit substitute and dream of crisp Galas.  The thought of myself sitting in a shoebox and dreaming of biting into the crisp, fresh and slightly tangy skin of a Gala apple ignites an image.  Utter poverty.  My shoes are shiny black, in my pressed cotton shirts adorned with silk ties - but I can't get the simple fruit of the earth.  I can taste vacuum sealed sweet-potato lozenges or watch 3D baseball on my cellphone, but can find no patch of unkempt grass in which to toss my lazy bones. 

Transition.  It is a major part of travel; the lag that effects the traveler as he holds on to the past as the new environment washes over him.  Some call it culture shock, but that's only a part of it.  I'm transitioning from a life of wonton and self-centered fancy to dutiful service.  The sooner I let go - the sooner I arrive.

--

Under eternal cherry blossoms
in the Spring valley of Southwest China
is a wise man who has ridden pain and jealousy to the ends of the earth
he has laid nude with addiction
burned and scarred himself on the flames of desire
and lost all of value

He sits now
in a small room on a cushion
low to the floor
past his window streaks a bird now and again
sometimes a person comes to the door
he has a smoke
takes a nap
and suffers no more

"Suffering is Optional!",
he scolds
"Resistance is Pain"
"Is that so?" to all accusations
"I don't know" he answers
"let it go" in vain.

---

The sooner I let it go - the sooner I arrive.  Balance is the goal, not a destination but an equilibrium that can sustain in harmony.  In this new environment, I must drop the heavy load of "I" if I am to get anywhere near helping these students through themselves.

日本に２日。 １：５５朝時間。 茅ヶ崎。

”ｲｲｲｲｲﾔｱｱｶﾞｱｱｱ"
｡｡｡

何だこれは。朝早いすぎで

「窓からチェックして」

誰もいない
静かな道
黒雨光る通りの上に

その声どこから来たんですか？
声。。。
「眠いになる」
。。。
あなたの声？

僕思い出す。。。夢にあんたの声
幻愛
私達会ったことは奇跡
でも
通常山の上に人はつかの間の夢です
残念だ
僕の感時間は蝶のように飛び回って
夜中の混乱
それだけいいのにな

「パソコン音」


誰の声。。。
俺？！

Move Along

Me: "You don't need to check my guitar in the luggage hold" (*waves hand in an arch with mystical panache)
Singapore Air Stewardess: "I don't need to check ...your guitar...in the luggage hold?"
Me: "It will fit in the overhead compartment just fine"
SAS: "It will fit just fine"
Me: "Move along"
SAS: "Move along"

waltzing ma' ~  

24 hours later I am eating raw scallops off of a conveyor belt listening to cartoon chickens squawking "SU-GO-I!". Walking home I can hear the dim hum of the 2gram chrome ball gambling machines locked inside a chamber of high-tempo LED pornography. The smoke from the sizzled brains of hopelessly addicted workaholics steams alongside miso soup and kimchee beef bowls. I'm not turning Japanese; do you think I'm insane? I'm just a foreigner living his role in this rain-washed computer chip of a city.

 Living my role. That's a development. All the places, the Borneo jungles, China sewers, Bali beaches, New Zealand fern mountains... what was that all about? Some damn fool idealistic crusade. Because I got what I was looking for - I always do - and I'll be goddamned if it wasn't at the tip of my nose. If there ever is an end to all that..."deepness" (I was in some deep shit), I've come to it.

ahem*
the dying of the flame
stage 2
shadow dark
deep blue
deep deep blue
like the deep blue dark of my soul ...

BAHAHAHAHA
these toys are too much for you

-t

iHive

All hail the QueenBee
whose shrines are at the entrance to all subsectors of the great halogen hive
woven from porcelain and titanium

We drink her libations in aide of the virtues of the iHive:


Chatter: to connect and share all information however trite, fickle, petty or redundant, and to share it ceaselessly.

Scatter: Zip and skip too and fro, idly, absent mindendly. Tease the 2 second attention span with constant stimulus from advertisment and entertainment. Don't think; just walk and you will arrive where you didn't even know you were supposeed to go.

Mercurial Whimsy: Feel a hollow dissatisfaction with all the electric shining things and at the same time desire an endless influx of the next generation of electric shining things.



Do not take my criticism of this iHive life as coming from a negative mind. I am not against it per se; I do not wish to topple it or to oppose it. I simply do not wish to be a part of it. A positive withdrawl.

I see what it has to offer. I see the grey laquer behind the dull irises of its iDrones - the constant dissapointment masked by habit - the suffocation in the eyes of the real people when they have arrived to behold the glories of the modern era and find more concrete, more shopping malls, a mere facade plastered on to consumerist ideals. It is apparent they are not nourished by the neon. I am starved.





A Dancing Bee belongs in the uncertain fields of clover,
under the changing moon.
Cool by the contours of the meandering brooke,
in the shadows of the granite hill at noon.
Alone if it must be,
as it almost always is,
A stranger amidst automata
-their blind lives-
-lost in the iHive-
of Metropolis.



But 'alone' is only a term used to describe seperation from the source of life. Alone is everywhere in the busy grid. What is left to live off of when the organism is stripped of all connections to life? Bloody animals on meathooks, oil fried grain pulp, exhaust fumes, asphault; there is no lifeforce there. Only the other prisoners of the maze have any drops of life left, and so ensues the push-and-pull of energies, vampirism, confusion, suffocation, gossip, all in desperate attempt to drain some small morsel of the mango nectar of life from one another in the veritable desert of the city. Rats in Prada picking the flesh off of eachother's tails - so far from the light, these canibals live in the shadows. Maybe we should all go do yoga with the yaks.



The women make me most sad of all. The prettier they are, the more sad I become upon seeing them. All the Coach Gucchi in the world cannot lift their heads and generate a simple smile on their Chanel clodded faces. Iceberg lettuce drowned in gourmet dressing. Stumbling akwardly, as if forced to bind their feet in stillettos, constantly on the defensive against anyone who may expose the fragile and insecure nature of their icicle existence. Embalmed before death in petroleum fibres and laboratory synthesized chemicals, their malnourished faces buried in lithium charged plasma glass rectangles, hiding like voles from the sun.

The iPhone dies if not plugged into the wall.
The Spirit dies if not plugged into the Earth.

"Spirit? What is that anyways?", you ask?
Take that as a warning that your batteries are dangerously depleted.


It is Awesome
I am In Awe
How many it takes to build a city
yet,
How few can build themselves.


-



Dear Hong Kong,

Thank you. I am full of cynical jet-fuel for a dive into the the rainforest.

Best Regards,

-t

Om Namo Gaia: Aotearoa - Hail to the Earth and the Land of Zeal

The moon is made of ice
when it floats above a glacier peak
and you are alone
in the crystal sky
with only the alpine parrots to sing of your victory over pain and loneliness



How it becomes me:

Earthquake wrecked city
Friends with open hearts
Goodwill towards man
Generosity and Curoisity
Apple orchard dawn
New Zealand
My healthy heart
Reborn

A purge of parasites
A purge of laziness
A fighter goes to the mountains to burn the fat off of his body
As I travel to burn the fat off of my soul~

The Earth rejuvinated me
Her soil energies absorbed through my thinly clod soul
Her sharp mountain aires an ascorbic spray on my sticky thoughts
But it is nothing special
Nothing out of the ordinary
to be healed by the giving Earth.
What is unbelievable and extraordinary
is that we can survive so seperated from the nutrients of nature
that our minds are not totally clogged and warped
without long walks in the woods.

A river runs through me

Gently wandering without destination or care
More comfortable on the roadside than in the townhouse
More clean in a mountain stream than in any shower
Vigor and vitality unchecked by comfort
grows up towards the sun
as any leaf of a striving fern
uncoils in the golden day






A Ninja on the moon
Penance of my sin
Shedding worries of the future and murky regrets
Snakeskin
Soulskin
Not "I" who has wronged
When, God? When?!
Now
Again
Begin
Again


~



The curious Tanuki Tomtit

The flute in the meadow

Storyteller trees


Purple mushrooms on the trail in the Lost Woods
A bed of Lupin flowers


The shrine of the Rainbow Shell




A single white flower when I lose hope




Woven of these random wisps of colored smoke
life is a dream
it seems just like it seems
but its only a dream...



MEZAMERA!
WAKE UP!