cycles

dear friend and fellow monk, dear departed, dear you. you wanted to know how it is going, and what it is that i have to tell, and what it is that i will tell. i have seen you at the distance, and i have avoided you when i could. the trouble is, you have been right, and you have been wrong, and i am damn tired of the judgements over right and wrong.

i know what i feel now, and i know i have felt it before, and i know that i have repressed it before. repressed feelings, the scholars would say. i say, it is not repressed feelings, it is the just glory of the mechanism of repression. repression comes out of need. to contain the tumult of the vortex of emergence, there are times that if the frame is not going to fall apart, you must repress what wants to emerge. you keep yourself pregnant, and you put that strong emotional hyper-energy in hibernation. some die without ever giving it expression, others, the warriors, they leave a trail burnt by that energy that emerges out of the sensory gut of your psyche. it is seldom a pretty picture, and on occasions it is a glorious and magnificent display of all that is noble. humanly noble! what a strange concept, this one is!

there are words that i refuse to use. there are sentiments that i can not express. there are needs that i can not represent. i live within the crevices of the unrepresentable, yet i live. i exist. on the best of days i amuse myself with the desperation of the struggle to just exist. on most days, existence is nothing that i care about.

this is the point where i go back to my armored cocoon. watch what tunnels on the other side of a reality that i have hidden from you, but can not hide from my self. the warrior returned.

grounded in the city

last week i returned to the city that harbours memories of rough and unadulterated rawness. radical changes follow my visits to the city. there is an after, after this city. it is the one for wine, music, horses and theatre. did i mention sugar and coffee? it is a city first explored with a mystery on tow, and where i started to remember what i had forgotten while distracted. this time...

it all started with not making compromises. then the roughness of a morning that torpedoed all good intentions of bravery, and for a few days i lost track of time and academic preoccupations. a long standing relationship from the early sunny days of graduate school was transformed beyond recognition. back then, in that summer when the plug was pulled on the illusion, i got the physical taste of what i rarely experience: the roughness and the power. force, the abandon to force and the surrender to the air that we breathe. after that, once more i chose the monk's life; it was not easy to understand. it goes on. another time it was work and the city hall kind of thing, the usual, as routine as my usual is, but nothing to write about. then it all crashed, and like a few weeks back, once more i pulled a few more plugs from their sockets.

now. different circumstances, different people, different restaurants, different beds. it all changes. it does. i am thinking of that morning and the rawness of it.

noise...

just noise. i had my doubts. i asked. how is it really. i asked. it is tough, he said. he said it, it is tough. then he asked, he really asked. he asked the right question. he asked, what would i do if i found him. i think that he wants to be found, he thought that the other wants to be found. i think he is afraid. but what would i do. what would i do if i found him? i was stumped, totally stumped. what would i do?

i have no wrath. i have seen the pretty pictures. the pictures are pretty. i am not impressed by pretty pictures. i had a dream last night again, again the man's face shows up. the crystal wall is still there.

there is a picture hanging on the wall. i met the painter of that picture today at lunch. i overheard some conversations. i sat in the office of my buddy. i walked across the hall with determination. i thought of her face. i thought of her contained face, the smooth skin. i saw the vibrancy that contained emotion renders. i thought of the last line in his poem. i thought of my last line.

doing nothing is action.

not man, not even the man

one day you wake up and discover that it is in you. it is not even yours. it also did not come from the outside. it is nothing that you picked up along the way either. you were born for it to exist. your own life has no other purpose. you are not important. it is what is in you that is not yours, and you were born to give it expression. that is the sense that there is to the whole of the comedy. there is no life, just comedy. that ordered state of matter that brainless and spineless invertebrate intellectuals call life does not exist. the abstract is absolute, deal with it.

questions

where are you, she asked.

he was silent. he is always silent.

she insisted, he insisted, they stayed.

what are you, he asked

she was silent, she is always silent.

he insisted, she insisted, they remained.

silver, marble and water.

not now

no.

that is all: no.

it is a block of stone

chisel away

incomplete.

fury and freedom

i have not been at this place for a while. i like hell, and i like dark places. intensity has been missing. i speak in staccato, or i do not speak at all. i give imperatives, or i do not give at all. discovery is miracle, and invention is salvation. i do not believe in anything at all!

it is one of those days when all that i can think of is rocks. rocks, not oxford cloth. rocks. it is one of those days when a migraine is a blessing, and penury is a beach resort. life is good, i fight. i am blind! blind. totally blind.

the wind

the wind gives away its secrets. it tells me your secrets, and it tells me his secrets. the wind tells all secrets. the wind has no secrets, it gives them all away. it is the wind that whispers in my ears. it is the wind that tells me all. how was i to know about the wind?

it was not on a train, it was not under the shower, and it was not where i was looking for it. i often look in the wrong places to find the right things. it was not one, and it was not what i thought it might be: they are stories. it has been more than two years, and i feared the distraction and i denied the distraction. distraction became obsession: i fought. then, within a few days all the pieces of the puzzle fall together: this is the present. one piece of information adjunct to another, the veil falls, the obsession ceases. i am back feeling that fear that i had touched three summers ago.

i want to know how it can be that you love me so when i myself can not even start to believe that love exists?

in the midst of emotional thunder, i call to you. you arrive and carry me on silk and feathers, you turn my fiction into reality. i'll dare you! who has given you permission to love me so?

i did not want love to exist, and i did not want my illusion to shatter. to complain and suffer would be so much easier. to have it be impossible, would have been so much more reasonable! who has given you permission to accept me so?

freedom, you have given me freedom! i'll dare you!

undone

truly undone.

all undone.

you were here one day, and gone the next.

a memory remains.

a faint memory.

i do not want any of what i am feeling now.

i am feeling memories.

it is time for a burial.

de bene esse

but who knows, or better yet, who cares? you are dead. dead. i can not and will not comprehend any of it. just about a week ago we held hands for the last time and neither of us knew that it would be the last time. each time that i walked out the door, i did wonder if i would ever return. after all, i reasoned, anything could happen to me and make me a statistic in a natural catastrophe or of a technical mishap. we have all been waiting for your death, and nobody ever dared to ask how long it would take until you were relieved from feeling your fast decaying body yield to disfunction. remember when your diagnosis came and we discussed suicide? you were afraid of the pain and the suffering; morphine helped. you never read what i wrote, and that was just fine with me; i liked this foreignness in our relationship. i brought you books written by my favorite authors and you read them. i shared with you a bit of my world, or at least i tried.

just about six months ago i showed you a corner of my life that i had never shared before, we had tea. i took you to a corner of my world, a world that was very foreign to you, and a world that disoriented you. we shared a room on occasions, and on others i made you endure my culinary diversions, you gave frank comment and pointed critic, and often we laughed about my experimentation. now one thing stands for sure, and that is that that picnic we had planned is just not going to take place.

what i wonder now is how quickly you resigned to your ill fate, you knew that you did not have much longer to live, you were paralyzed, you could barely speak, and you did not loose your sense of humour. there was no rage and anger in you, you just endured the suffering, rejoiced at the pretty faces of the medical staff, and you held my hand.

thank you for holding my hand, and sharing my world.

love not!

i love the night.

i am ignoring death.

death can wait; it always does.

i love the water.

i am drunk with the wind.

we return.

night

sat away from the levee.

felt my hands warm. thought of you.
whispers.
just whispers of a summer night.

returned

it is coming back. it. will it push me over the edge this time?

i feel its tempestuous will inside my disembowelled prejudices, and this time, like in other times, there is nothing that i can foresee about its nature. it.  

human

from one despair to the next, we joke and laugh. we pretend and we hide, and at the end of the day there aren't even the ashes to prove anything at all. despair, drama, competition and the naked truth of being totally insignificant. humans are an energetic saddle point at the mercy of another manifold of glorious fluctuating information. one is the reality, the other is the illusion. life is illusion pure, and human is the comedy of the despair. the reality and the truth are twins, and the twins are whores. in the illusion of life, it is good to know how to dance with the real whores.

the universe forgets, and humans die. i like this universe of ours that is forgetful and vibrant. we thought that it then meant something, and then it was not even smoke, nor air, nor ether. it was nothing at all, and i loved the whole of that nothing.

when the sun rises, and once more we face another day after the laughter has died down, the sleep has smoothed out the emotional excitation and the cognitive wildfires, then there is another blossom and a whisper of that breeze that reminds me that on occasions i forget the whole of the universe. we forget, the universe and i.

when

when will this old fool learn?

just a while ago the old fool called in desperation, the kind of desperation that emotion untamed brings, the fool called a brother. that brother is a gentle soul, one of the many best of friends. a brother that gives a hug and the hug is just a hug and it means nothing more than just that the brother cares.

when will this old fool learn?

just yesterday the old fool walked along the lake on a sunny promise of spring and returned today to find itself so very touched by all of another, and so very tempted to get itself so very entangled in another. the fool feels safe when that another is in turn entangled elsewhere as then there is no danger of their own entanglement. another, that other, is another open book.

when will this old fool learn?

just now the fool took action about on a promise of a few days. the action was overdue like many actions in this fool's cabinet are overdue. then the fool is reminded that it always forgets. this fool forgets, and this fool does not promise.

when will the old fool learn?

just today the fool confessed that now that the loneliness is gone, the desire is to be alone. these are the choices of the fool. in the confessions the fool never confesses, not all, not even in fiction does the fool confess. the fool never confesses. the fool is greedy for its own thoughts and the fool does not share.

this fool does not know.

freedom

there are times when we cut the strings

there are times when we run away

there are times when we leave

there are times when we do not return

there are times when we mourn

there are times when we search

there are times when we regret

there are times when we return

return

you have been dancing, drunk...

happy?

happiness is a chimera!

exclaimed...

euphoric?

no.

not euphoric.

not happy.

returned.

the chimera fantastic

the chimera virtual

the chimera imagined

returned.

reassembled.

the caduceus reappears

the waters

deep waters are churning

the eye of the storm

unpredictable and irreversible

mourning

regretting

loving

the primate

this primate is wondering. it is not god, or is it?

last night in a midnight fury i wrote it. i wrote that there is really not much more to say. i had been warned of this, and i have long looked for it. it happened today. finally i figured out that one piece of the puzzle that had me wondering. finally! it is good to feel freedom again.

how many years has it been? i forget, but it is something like twenty years that we have known each other. i do not remember that far back do i?

no. yes. maybe. i lied to you. i have regretted that decision that i made long ago. i also remember years later visiting you and your new found life, and then walking across a park in paris in tears. like i could not forget the sculptor's atelier, i could not forget those tears and what moved me then.

i have walked the strangest places in tears, and my tears turn to joy in me. tears are warm and moist. sadness was when i could not shed any tears and for years my eyes remained dry.

when i allow myself to feel all the emotion, then i feel the regret. all the emotion is just information, it is nothing much too important. emotion is information and it is energy. it is the kind of energy that i thrive on. i did not want to feel the regret, today i allowed myself to feel the regret.

intimacy is a precious gift, and is one that we have shared for many years. i have experienced it rather intensely. i do experience it with not just one person. the one special person has no place in my life. you know this well, and you have known it all along, for all those years. you have seen the comings and goings in my life, the valleys and the peaks, the glory and the defeat. i have cried on your shoulder, and you have cried on mine. we have laughed and gone to the comédie française, and somehow i have managed to skip the opera with you. you are mourning, and i mourn with you the loss of the sculptor who taught us about love.

some say that i can not love, and that i am made of stone. perhaps that is true, this is nothing that i would know. perhaps i am made of stone, and this stone can feel. was i just another piece of stone that the sculptor shaped?

intimacy and sex are not on the same page in my book. it is normal, although it is not everybody's preference, to have sex with people with whom one shares neither emotional nor spiritual intimacy. i just wanted to make it clear that it is intimacy, not sex, that i am talking about. it is in intimacy that we grow and develop. intimacy can give us the emotional information of our plasticity. being intimate partners does involve showing one's vulnerabilities, but it also involves respect and trust. it is a line that is not always easy to navigate.

a promise is an externalisation of something that one can not find in one' self. i never make promises. i know that promises are words, and i love words and live by words. but what am i to do with a promise? what am i going to do if a promise is demanded of me and that promise involves the breach of a loyalty bond elsewhere?

what am i going to do with one who promises me this and that? this and that are just band-aids for fears. neither is the wound healed with those band-aids, nor is the one free. why would i want one who is not free to share life with me?

perversion

pure. now. i woke up and my first thought turned to you. i must write, you are my fiction and without my fiction, i do not exist.

i like sunny days up in the mountains, walking on the snow, slipping on the ice underneath. feeling my body tense up and then reminding myself of the total futility of that reaction of tensing up. if there is one skill that i command, it is the one of slipping and falling. the primate imprinting is mine too, but somehow that is no consolation. this primate would rather be god, not human!