me?
March. 19. 2012
LOL!
still not the stuff we are made of
January. 31. 2012
Revisiting an old post from September 15th 2009…two years older transcendence still evades, but the sorcery is ever more delightful.
I love you, my hope
November. 24. 2011
Purple sunset on a crisp evening walk with a friend today- unaltered I swear!
Friends often question my exuberance, asking me what makes me a happy person and I struggle to articulate that happiness is a spontaneous state of being. The list of reasons I rattle off when questioned begins with having breath and consciousness, but inevitably ends with the love I find everywhere.
I remember walking to my student job beat after three all-nighters spent dissecting form and space, on an ordinary Louisiana afternoon beaming in the bliss of just being there, then; I remember wiggling my toes in green grass on a warm evening watching a murmuration or tearing up in waking meditation simply feeling “So much joy! So much love!” That is the ecstasy of being- what is joy but synchronicity with existence and its magnificent flood? Even when it’s bad, it’s good- it’s all good. Happiness is a state of mind, I choose to exist in joy through and through the shit. And the love I have for and get from my family and friends, helps me shine on- they are my hope.
This Thanksgiving I am evermore grateful for you beautiful people who keep my life whole. Forget the miles between us, I feel the sweetness in you.
I love you, my hope- Happy Thanksgiving!
Like this:
not alone
January. 25. 2011
…but of course!
“Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.” -Viktor Frankl
smoulder
October. 23. 2010
the yogi glass
October. 4. 2010
neither half-full, nor half empty
the yogi glass
just is
I know everyone thinks I’m an optimist, but I keep it real- reality just happens to be so bloody beautiful- I really, just enjoy the being!
bounded but not confined
for how can you be,
when you are one with everything in you?
sometimes art really stirs it up- walking at the Rachofsky house one summer day.
Dallas
September. 9. 2010
I work downtown Dallas. This is the view from our parking lot- shot on a cool spring morning when I couldn’t resist tracing the jet-lines.
It’s a little surreal sometimes, when I find myself negotiating corporate culture in the heart of a city that sometimes appears more plastic than real.
What is quintessentially Dallas? I ask several people…the answers vary: anything from the Texas State Fair (fried fried food) to the Cowboys (whom I know nothing about). I have always seen Dallas for its Bling! The manicured women hanging around Highland Park Village, a thirst for designer goods, money spent of dinner that could feed a small village….or the shiny cars parked outside ritzy restaraunts…I felt like such a rebel showing up and valet-ing Miles, my ’98 Civic, paint job disappearing, beautiful rust corroding his solid surface…
In all fairness, the city and my perception of it have both evolved tremendously in the last two years I have inhabited it. My time here has reinforced what I have always known- It’s never about the place, it is about the people.
Sub-consciously wrestling stereotypes in the Big-D has taught me much about myself, and my fellow human beings. I was suffocating for just a while there before I found more people who shared the values I cherish.
But even the frigthening negation of what was my solid ground, from all the others was good for me. Having to constantly justify your point of view strengthens and solidifies your beliefs. Moreover, being forced to dissociate the core of a person from their political and religious agendas, has been a challenge and a revealation to me. It forces you to seek the soul of a person- and then the rest becomes irrelevant at some level…
I, like most of the world, take Evolution as fact- it is not a debate. I am an atheist but I realize while Jesus may have saved this bunch of people- Krishna, Allah and Buddha are just as valid to their followers. And I can’t say I understand why Palin was such a goddess to some of my friends. But in the end- even the friends who disagree with me on all this and more- remain friends…people I cherish. They have a part of my soul, and I have some of theirs.
And I have Dallas to thank for them all- who have opened their hearts so I could waltz right into them.
I recently moved to Oak Cliff in a pretentious attempt to avoid the pretentious I guess, and while I love being in less manicured territory where life feels more “real” just a little bit removed from the city lights, I do look upon them fondly. So what I can tell you about this city, is that it is still searching for its soul…it’s a great place to discover yourself- it affords one the luxury of time in many ways. It’s fantastic for you guys just graduating people- it lets you slowly get your feet wet in whatever it is you want to do. It definitely has its moments…as do I living in it. Just check out my other blog and you’ll see!
you in me in me in you
June. 26. 2010
improvisation [the namesake]
April. 15. 2010
written in a dark movie theater, watching the Namesake in Chicago, anticipating poetry class the next day in Baton Rouge…it’s funny how these things happen, the making of art from art…
Andrei Codrescu, I owe you.
Anyways, here goes (with much courage)-
Improvisation [the namesake]
Where do you want to go tonight?
Oh! I don’t know
Try it again-
there’s no previews here
but I still enjoy the watching of
a progression of things
WELCOME TO THE SHOW!
I wouldn’t dream places with him or without you
“Where are you?”
At least he went peacefully but when has that ever
ever sufficed?
We all came out of a nascent certainty
someday you’ll understand
I can do anything
You’ll see there are
no
accidents.
It’s all there I already checked-
Eyes black as blackberries.
Curious
I don’t want
to get away from this-
Remember always when you are lost that you and I went to a place from where there was nowhere left to go
aside
March. 16. 2010
photo by unknown genius + rant by me
There are people who can see beauty- recognize the sublime, and there are those who can’t.
I wonder if it’s an innate ability sometimes, but regardless, it is the in-between-ers that baffle me most; those who do recognize the universal consciousness that is good in other beings, objects and situations, but are either content with their carefully crafted illusion of joy and persist in their states, never reaching for anything higher, or worse, those who feel threatened by the same and tailor their pursuits to the reduction of the reaches of that good.
Why doesn’t everyone want to touch the edges of the beautiful especially after having caught a glimpse of it? If you know the possibilities are limitless, how is it not tempting to test them out, to be the best you can be, to nourish the good and wean the bad? Simply to reach farther in the world there is out there?
Is it tacitly programmed in us through years of being taught we ought to compromise? You’ve all heard it- you can’t have everything you want, you will never find someone who’s perfect, everything is flawed (what defines a flaw is so subjective, I can argue there is no such thing)…idealism is unreal…etc. etc. etc…it’s tiring, this battle against settling, and the best of us begin to doubt. But the question here is how will you find something you have convinced yourself doesn’t exist? In life, in love, in everything, the upper limits of what you get is set by what you demand. What you will not settle without…
We are people, and we are good and strong and beautiful, and our natural state is one of bliss, and peace, and oneness. Existence in itself is sublime. It is noble, and you as a part of it, are no less.
Call me an idiot, a dreamer or a sufi, but my optimism is unyielding and I am just tired of disillusionment coming in different packages. I am tired of the glorious human spirit being reduced to a joke, I am tired of hearing about settling, of following the norm, and I am tired of hearing people cite the “ignorance is bliss” philosophy to allow themselves to carry on just so. Since when can knowledge take away bliss? Ignorance could be de-constructed into a sheer lack of curiosity, ambition or courage (if not a combination therein), or just plain old denial. Denial doesn’t yield happiness and isn’t that the ultimate meaning of existence itself?
Delve a little deeper, ponder for a moment longer, and understand that bliss which can be denuded by knowledge, discovery, understanding, really isn’t that at all. So ingrained in the consciousness of the world- from the Adam and Eve fairy tales to taboos attached to questioning a tradition or established authority across so many cultures…this subtle acquiescence to live unquestioning, submissive lives in nefarious guises…where has it ever led?
This aside digresses, and these thoughts will need more ironing, but in the meanwhile let Tagore resonate:
Where The Mind is Without Fear
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
[ Rabindranath Tagore- Geetanjali]
the dweller
January. 10. 2010
sifting through dawn with mouthfuls of morning mist…“poetically, man dwells”
and so it goes…the search to pin down the fluid horizon
here’s the genesis of that reference, before Heidegger came along to dissect
its core:
“It is the measure of man.
Full of merit, yet poetically, man
Dwells on this earth. But no purer
Is the shade of the starry night,
If I might put it so, than
Man, who’s called an image of the godhead
Is there a measure on earth? There is
None”
-Hölderln
not the stuff we are made of
September. 15. 2009
When I was eight I asked my mother why my brain couldn’t understand itself- “I” was a blank to my self, yet I could understand the external world. I’m twenty six, and still wondering. Answers anyone? Cognitive Science is endlessly intriguing…
The fundamental question has always been who we are. What is the “I” we refer to as our “self?” People often separate our minds from our bodies- our soul from the corporeal…but what is the soul if not the sum of our consciousness- that which exists in our very cells? What makes a thing a being? What makes you you and me me? How about this for an answer:
“Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are therefore, you are not the stuff you of which you are made…”
-Richard Dawkins
(http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html)
We are, in essence, at every point in time- a confluence of numerous possibilities- never to be repeated- a rare, magical moment in the universe at any given time. Never are we the same, yet we continue to retain our “self” through this seamless aberration called life.
I always wonder why some people can see more magic in the world than others- why isn’t it more obvious to everyone how mind-blowing this existence really is?
Yes, yes, Quantum Mechanics helped explain a lot, but more importantly the field has made us stretch our imaginations with a little more abandon- and demonstrates the improbability that plagues what seems mundane.
The sorcery is delightful, and delight must be shared. Wherever this road may lead, I walk it seeking something beautiful…and hopefully sprinkle some of the magic along the way.
Where are the rest of you who seek something beautiful and won’t settle for anything less?
