The road unravels.

Images float past my fingertips
What can a word convey
What can a sound conjure
What can a vision mean

So much, so much, so much
Much more than the world can contain
Much more than the rain falling in my paper cup
The strum of a guitar string

The road that unravels in front of you
The river that flows beneath
the peace that settles within
and then gently leaves

Find it. You go find it and bring it back.
But we never float in the same place twice.
It's always new, now find that. and that.
I challenge you. To a meeting of the heart.

studies in movement.

Once there was a boy who lived in Yang Zi. He spent his days sowing the seeds in the fields.

Place the seed, cover with dirt…and move on to the next one. Place the seed, cover with dirt...and move on to the next one. There was no time to watch the seeds as they unfolded delicately in the golden light. There was work to be done. Things were either going to grow or they weren't.

This boy loved a girl. 

This girl lived in a castle. She spent her days reading books. Cultivating relationships with them. Getting lost inside and taking the time to have daydreams and see what could come of the ideas that had planted themselves in her brain.

This girl loved nature. She would stare outside of her window for hours and in her view was the boy who she would watch while he planted. And the boy would glance up at her, in her window, so still like a painting and he created stories in his mind about her.

One day this boy was fatefully sent to the castle to take some of his goods to sell. He there ran into the girl in the courtyard, which was in full bloom and filled the air with it's fragrance. They stared at each other for what seemed like eternity and shared what felt to be deep love. 

The boy, he had to move, unsure of the still and the waiting. The girl, she was left to wonder at the quickness with which he moved. Could it mean that he hadn't loved her at all? 

The river that flowed throughout the land flowed gracefully on. Except in the places where it flowed at different speeds and temperatures and in those places, it could pull you under with a force. 

Bloom.

Excerpts from Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth…

"Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. 

When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to our life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.

A depth returns to your life. Things regain their newness, their freshness. 

Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn't very much. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?"

I love words. I've played with them since I was a child. Copied them out of books, made them up, put stories together with them. But I want to use them to open the world up, not to close it off and make it something that I'm grasping in my tight little fists. 

Considering the words we use and the beliefs that they formulate within our minds and bodies, immediately closing us off to the infinite possibilities and miracles that surround us every day through those faces in our lives that the Universe assumes as our friends, family, lovers, nature, etc… 

Blooming like that flower out there in Spring. Sometimes blooming is scary, sometimes it's painful. But it's always worth it. Join the bloom. 

Joseph Campbell

Reading Joseph Campbell tonight and he's blowing my mind, one line at a time.

"And the cherubims at the gate, who are they? At the Buddhist shrines you'll see one has his mouth open, the other has his mouth closed- fear and desire, a pair of opposites. If you're approaching a garden like that, and those two figures there are real to you and threaten you, if you have fear for your life, you are still outside the garden. But if you are no longer attached to your ego existence, but see (it) as a function of a larger, eternal totality, and you favor the larger against the smaller, then you won't be afraid of those two figures and you will go through. We're kept out of the Garden by our own fear and desire in relation to what we think to be the goods of our life." 

"I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off."

Heart.

Red and blue.

Brown, marroon...

What colors conjure up the heart?

What lies within?

What space contains?

In which direction does it point?

Can we hold it in our hands?

Can we see it with our eyes?

Can we give it consciously to someone

While it stays lodged & firmly embodied?

Can someone take it from us

When it remains softly floating in that same place?

Singular and yet touching everything

Within us and without.

There is no coming close to it 

Without getting messy.

Blood on our hands

and fire in our souls.

We know now that 

scar tissue is the strongest.

Yet the heart

beats on

beats on

beats on

to the sound of it's own unique beauty.

ghosts.

No locks can keep you out. No keys open doors for you. 

Your ghost is with me always. I whisper your name and it is as if you lie directly on my lips. I feel you there and, as if to prove it, I bring my fingers to touch them. I may not find you there physically. But yes, there you lie.

I think it is my fate to die with you there. And while it drives me crazy, I cannot let you go. 

(an old journal entry I found today)...

Is there something in your life that you feel this way about? If so, how can you bring that thing, person, concept, place... more into your life? If it's not going away, it wants attention. Meditate. Do some yoga and then do what you need to do. 

Namaste.

Within and Without. (story idea).

  

“Yeah, I come from a simple place. From a place that smells of land and sweat and twice worn clothing. Smiles are fewer where I come from than they are here, but when they spread across a face, it’s a moment worth remembering. Not this half assed idea of a smile these people give you. With their eyes watching you, and at the same time watching their selves. As they move the muscles over the bones of their faces, pulling them up like the sail of a ship. Like it’s aiming to take them somewhere. Nah. I’m talking about a smile so pure, you felt like you just drank a big gulp of ice cold, fresh cut lemon lemonade after shoveling out a whole barn’s worth of manure. That kind of refreshing." He paused as he looked at something off in the distance. Something that wasn't there but inside the playbook of his mind.  When he continued, his voice was just a bit softer. "What I wouldn’t give for Margie’s smile, right now. Worth gold, it was. Worth pure gold.” 

“Why don’t you go back there, old man, if you miss it so much. Why did you ever leave,” the young man said to him. The young man hated it when the old man talked of this place he’d never been to. It pained him to think that there was a time, a better time, one that he could never get ahold of. One that he may never be able to duplicate in his own life. Regardless of the fact that he had more than double the amount of days, by any logic you could use, than the old man had left to live, he envied him greatly. But he wouldn’t show it, never. He would take that feeling to his grave if he had to. 

A dark cloud passed over the old man’s face as the young man had expected it would. “You know I can’t go back. I’ve told you and told you. Quit asking me.” 

And with that, the old man seemed to wither within. Seemed like a sea crab, the hermit kind, retreating into the outer layer of his shell. And then he was gone even as he sat there living. And there would be no reaching him for at least a day or two. That was just fine by the young man. He’d had more than enough of the old man’s vocal meanderings. He would be happy to just sit still in this world of silence for a while. 

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