Back at the Ashram

Today was one of those sublime, glorious, beautiful days.

In the orchard this morning, I was thinning the apples to help the fruit grow better. I was lost in the arms of the trees. The three-dimensional juxtaposition on my field of vision of the many branches of varying distances, all seeming to move at different rates when I turned my head, as well as the veins of the leaves glowing at me backlit by the sun, illuminated with tiny reflective hairs at their edges, all combined to give me that feeling of awe that Reality Itself is all around me and that I am really here, really alive on this planet.

Thinning the apples, as an activity, also gave me some reflections. Taking off the apples that are diseased or that aren't getting enough light allows the tree to channel the energy more efficiently, for better fruit. That is pretty much what I am trying to do with myself, here, only ideally without attachment to the fruit!

Sometimes, there would be two or more apples in the terminal growth that all looked strong and healthy and good, but I would have to choose just one to keep. I'd have to make a choice. It reminded me of how, in my life, I often try almost compulsively to keep as many options open as possible, sometimes going out of my way or wasting energy to do so. With the apples, I have to have confidence that whichever one I choose to keep will be the right one, and in life it's faith that reminds me I'm safe and protected, even without every door open. I don't really need that many escape routes from myself, after all, and besides, if I spend all my time holding all those doors open, how will I ever walk through one?

Desperate Poetry Before The End Of Time

desperate poetry before the end of time

kneel, poets, before the end of time!
kneel, poets, surrender to your defeat!

at the far edge of a still expanding universe
lurks the inevitable heat-death of all creation

reality will melt and words will lose their reference
when language itself pales and trembles before god!

his molten flaming dance subjugates all grammar
as he stomps on the crushed skulls of tense and number,
snaps under his slender feet the fragile grasp of every clause,
scatters word order like dust across the stage

this dance, the ultimate act of god, destroying, destroying absolutely

surrender, poets!
admit that your words and language
the very grammar of your minds
will always be outdone
you may weave words to deceive
to make believe knowledge
some primitive security
but you will all be slain
when the inexorable inexpressible
onslaught of reality
carries you away

surrender, poets!
and admit that you, yes you
you love this killer

reality’s final breakdown will be a grammatically challenged moment that never subsides, a moment of perception that can literally never be named or ever even approximate being named because what it signifies is the end of time and the end of space and the end of life and the end of everything which has a meaning, a moment we can only hint at, because naming it would mean knowing it, and knowing it would mean that even faith would evaporate, and the self would be decapitated. then even if god’s words still existed, we’d have nothing to speak them through or with. even these pronouns, we, and verbs, have, would evaporate, poof poof! like people mysteriously fading from photographs in those time-travel movies you saw as a child.

memories disappear, meanings dissolve, minds unravel

your words slow to a crawl, kick once, then are still

god is all

West Oakland: "The Animals Don't Wake Up Until Later"

Early Monday morning I walked from Jack London Square Station for an hour to the place in West Oakland where I was planning to stay. The place had been hooked up for me through a friend of a friend's friend. I have since decided that three degrees of separation is too many.

I didn't know I was going into fifty cent's neighbourhood, I didn't know West Oakland was basically a ghetto! I just walked there innocently singing om dum durgaya namaha, jaya durga ma to a melody I'd invented on the train that morning. Everyone greeted me just like on Sesame Street. The twirling children in the schoolyards were laughing and adorable, and my heart was melting in the sun reflected off the shining white teeth in the smiles of their little brown faces.

"The animals don't wake up until later," said an old man to me. Whatever, I thought, this place is lovely. But the morning sun hides all ills, making each day seem fresh and new. Later comes later.

The house where I was supposed to stay had eleven people in it. Eleven people of varying degrees of negativity with varying amounts of steel stuck through various body parts, various jobs as (macabre?) circus performers, and code names like "Trinity" (as usual). None of them, it turned out, actually knew I was coming, so I had to explain myself to the three pit bulls at the door. The mug from which I drank my bhoomi amalaki had a graphic of a skull and the word "havoc" written with blood dripping from each letter in that font usually appearing on Halloween products. This seemed emblematic of the household overall.

The room where I stayed had parts of dead animals strewn across the floor - taxidermied parts, not decomposing or anything, but still! - and was painted with chaotic red and green swirls that looked like tangled yarn stuck all over the walls... except for where the visual cacaphony coalesced into the semi-recognizable figures of that cultural cliche, the gray alien. And when I moved the dirty cloth off the head of the mattress, underneath was a humongous veiny dildo and at least five used condoms. Fuck!

The leader of this den went over the stories of every house on the block for me, dealer-dealer-whorehouse, dealer-dealer-whorehouse. This one saw his father kill his mother with a knife, that one sells her body to send her son to school... then I was briefed with the rules and tactics for negotiating the streets and their denizens if coming home after dinner. "If [complex social cue], then [apply social skill set beyond my comprehension]."

(And I'm thinking: Yeah, you anarchist kids are so fucking cool for living in hell! Yeah you are really proving your solidarity, good for you. But you can't fool me. The glee with which you recount these stories of horrors not your own betrays your tourist mentality. The truth is you are a child of privilege and you are slumming it, motivated partly by guilt it's true, but still, partly for kicks and for ego... and so I now apply that criticism most stinging to the young and idealistic: You Will Grow Out Of It!)

And they judge me cool for seeming to take it all in stride. Every item of clothing I own is brightly coloured and my face is a smile, in contrast to their affected scowls and unwashed, unravelling, black garments. Yet still I am judged cool because I am unruffled. Externally at any rate. I realized this was a test I had to pass, so I pretended that I didn't give a shit about anything.

But, dear reader, in fact I am SO cool that what I really give no shit for is seeming cool. Test still freshly passed, I quickly outed myself as a totally uncool enjoyer of life: "So where do i go to look for clues left for me by the beatniks and the hippies?" Shocked eyes stared at me. "Not for me personally of course. I mean clues in the general sense... inspiration. I'm not crazy." A glimmer of light seemed to dawn. (And I think to myself: how can you live without inspiration?!)

I left my backpack in the dildo room and lit through the neighbourhood to rapid-transit myself across the Bay to San Francisco, the former capital of music, peace, and love...