On Being Ill (a collaboration with Virginia Woolf)

Perhaps the great wars the body wages against us unravel the noble doings of the mind, leaving us slave to the solitude of the bedroom, hardened by our discomfort, imprisoned within the inevitable catastrophe of shiver and headache – our sleepless needs and fears tethered to the echo of every midnight groan.

Or maybe in illness we are finally freed to float as sticks down a sparkling stream, scatter with a gathering of dead leaves across the lawn – or like a self-possessed rose – gently tilt our head to the breeze and deliberately fall, petal by petal, in a swirl of dignity and indifference, all scent and flavor, framed in a festival of golden shafts, blue shadows, and creamy, voluptuous clouds.

all this, all that

Perhaps all this talk of despair emits the irresistible fragrance of regretting a life looked back on, a framed photograph kept in a room you enter daily – yet like a road closure during the morning commute, it’s only worth remarking on once.

Maybe all that remains to be finished provides you the only hope you need to continue on, for when you pay attention to that miraculous desolation called the everyday you will no doubt detect a sliver of blessed light from the closest star falling cleanly across the arms of the elderly couple in the supermarket hotly debating which brand of canned soup to buy.

Shadow and Light

Perhaps as translucent trees gather the last of a lingering light, a discontinuity floods my eyes, and I wonder, what is it moving down my face? Single, glassy beads of sweat or tear drops?

Maybe feeling sad feels sad yet this little concern of mine, a mere shadow tracing the smooth, black lower framed edge of the kitchen drawer – skips across the counter and escapes the open door, coming to rest on a sweltering leaf sprinkled with hints of green, faithful servant sent to illuminate this resting place for dragonflies.

Sparrow and Robin (as told to Francis of Assisi)

Perhaps a sparrow says, "I am but a bread crumb in his beard, a snippet of his speech, yet enough to nourish the world until its end."

Maybe a robin replies, "I am a spot of wine on his shirt, the cheerful bloom of a tulip in his hand, a burst of laughter at the return of spring."

A Happy Balance

Perhaps we learn best from words in this book made of air, receiving its freshness a little at a time, our thoughts scattering the sand of its phrases through our fingers in a flood of ink and wind.

Or maybe, like the wandering dog that finds a happy balance between the warm spring sun and the longest hair on its tail, wisdom comes from simple attention to the simple, humble attention to humble things, and living attention to all that lives.

Ambivalence vs. Certainty (a collaboration with Emerson)

Perhaps ambivalence, accepting the jangle of contrary tendencies while preferring not to judge, is a bird which alights nowhere but hops perpetually from bough to bough - a power which abides in no man and in no woman, but for a moment speaks from this one, and for another moment from that one.

Maybe human life is a golden impossibility, as there never was any one right course of action anyhow, and certainty will almost certainly end up in the sad state of a splitting headache, much as the wise woman, through the excess of her exceptional wisdom, is made a fool when she crosses the line we all must walk.

Camouflage

Perhaps everything in this life happens as a breathing, an incarnate give-and-take that filters the world through contact with the palpable substance of things that we yearn to study the inside of and take our nourishment from.

And maybe this tendency toward arranging words to describe the participatory sensuality of this gifted state arises from a clever self-defense, found in the deep-seated desire to confess something very ordinary and obvious to ourselves.

Wonder

Perhaps saying yes to what's legible in any light cloaks the worth of great white shapes that boom and shout and throw gigantic handfuls of salty froth our way at the luminous center of our shifting reflection's black bull's eye.

Maybe everything around us has a question inside, and the answer may have something exceptional to tell us about marking time – as if walking outside to watch rain falling on a driftwood fencepost were a sight to be seen only once in a lifetime.

The First Experience (guest blogger Tess Pfeifer)

Perhaps the first experience shocks the being's brain and novelty is a momentary pleasure compelling us to revisit the first event like a fatalistic love we bore in our bone.

Or maybe first experience is a window to our capacity to love and renews that very spirit which, to anyone who is told, gives pleasure.

From The Mouth

Perhaps, while driving home on the freeway, the dentist happily meditates on the day she will perform a mass excavation of millions of toxic amalgam silver fillings and save humankind from a fate worse than watering the lawn - all the while envisioning a kinder, gentler world in which the painstaking construction of composite tooth-colored porcelain onlay, (which allows her to preserve more of the original tooth structure, by the way) will restore countless teeth that have been neglected over the years, worn by grinding, or broken with age, to an elevated level of wellness and health.

Or maybe the shot of novacaine not only numbed the left side of my mouth, but invaded my mind as well, sending wildly obsessive thoughts spiraling to the surface to play out in an infinite array of “what if” scenarios before freezing them…mid image…to be culled in a cascade of liquid ozone.

Everything Matters (guest blogger Meister Eckhart - Teacher and Preacher)

Perhaps everything which is distinguished by indistinction is the more distinct the more indistinct it is, because it is distinguished by its own indistinction.

Or maybe something is more indistinct the more distinct it is because it is distinguished by its own distinction from what is indistinct, leading therefore to nothing being as indistinct from anything as from that from which it is indistinguished by its own distinction.

Pronouns

Perhaps the acceptability of a pronoun presented in isolation will mirror how much difficulty we may have upon encountering her in a more realistic setting.

Or maybe pronouns, while avoiding the pitfalls of proper names, are no more than freaks of nature; sneaky critters oftentimes avoiding agreement while replacing, and before you know it the whole sentence is over and there we are heading straight for the placeholder of some vague idea rather than risk the host of associations potentially involved with what might sound fine to us but isn’t.

Astonishment

Perhaps astonishment is a fly arising from an act of my mind with little direct correspondence to what I really feel.

Maybe astonishment is the strange feeling of being referred to as a pronoun while in the presence of someone else.


Or perhaps astonishment is the green plastic stick that slips into the sipping hole of the lid to keep the hot coffee in while being transported on a bumpy road

Or maybe astonishment is my son’s pronouncement: “Why would I want to see a problem I can’t do anything about?”

My Disquiet

Perhaps my disquiet is a drumming rain which speaks to me of a trick of the nature of truth that in order to survive we must rise from the table where that child’s game of the troubled self is being played and turn our attention away from the shadow that slides across the white wall of the beautiful light we see by for no reason other than to ensure its own survival.

Or maybe my disquiet is to be found in images of fingernails bitten raw, a late night stomach’s unfurling struggle, the terrifying tic of the wind-up alarm clock voicing the darkened room into a narrow plank poised over the final moments of a blindfolded descent into a watery contempt for my own inspiration’s incommensurable value.

Happy Problems

Perhaps I write to discover the shock of clear words that best express the daily wonders, sentence by sentence, in mosaic glimpses of improvisation – playing life as it has never been played before.

Maybe each poem is a vehicle for better understanding what happens, a rearrangement of known elements of events unfolding around me, spawning a voice I don’t yet know, becoming a messenger onto myself.

Written vs. Spoken

Perhaps the written word is a stone that tells us that it has nothing at all to tell us

Whereas maybe the ever-shifting currents of the spoken word are most readily found in the disorderly commotion of a moth

Faith and Doubt

Perhaps faith brings the world to me
Maybe doubt brings me to the world

Miracles (after Whitman)

Perhaps a miracle is the story of a single seashell, outer skeleton composed of crystals squeezed from blood knit in tight rows to form a single dark line of amazing strength that spirals back to the very moment it was born.

Or maybe a miracle is the mourning dove bathing under the lawn sprinkler’s spray this hot summer’s day as the hot air balloon of my daydreaming carries me across a constellation of shining flight that washes me in to shore and out to sea countless times in a single flicker of thought.

No Pain, No Gain

Perhaps pain is a roaring ocean against the will, a whirlpool of historical burden stretching across the globe under cover of the know-it-all sky

Maybe gain is the music in its roar, and when reflected in our eyes extends its reach under the disapproving gaze of a loneliness that will never be satisfied

Here and Now

Perhaps here is the closest we ever get to sharing the distance created, no fault of our own, when morning becomes afternoon
in a whispering triumph over human isolation.

Maybe now isn’t such the unexpected burden we expected
it to be, swimming upstream amidst a myriad of miscellaneous experiential odds and ends, knee-deep in the unsaid.