This month diverse
Tai Chi hobbies
platforms for activities
learning coding
to help
literary pursuits
a list to seize desire
The long awaited prequel
is an adventure
after being a mercenary group
the mystery arises behind a
sleepy town bookshop
the life left well
behind. This
lays the foundation
to love, lust, &
nostolgia. Serves those
who found themselves
a warm friendship
finding it well.
— interogate the passion fruit
— condemn the potato
— confront the wild dogs
— harbor the fugitive puffin
— eat locusts & honey
— dance in martian twilight
— watch dawn through obsidian
— breath with a lion's heartbeat
— hear the wind's muzurk
— know which way the wind blows
1.IX.03, Commonplace Book 2
today you'll sip the morning
you'll wear the afternoon in your hair
you'll eat the evening
the mist ponders your heartbeat
an owl meditates on your eyes
the sea breathes through your lips
i come to you as a supplicant
i come through my faded dreams
i light many candles
i rest on your bosom
you open your eyes
the song begins
From the archive,Commonplace Book no. 2
At the edge of fitful dreams
I pray for the trees,
trees in light, trees in dark
I pray for Saturn; and for the moons,
the many moons circling
the Spiro Mounds
I pray for you, my darling,
I pray for your smile
and give thanks for your laughter
14.VI.2023
I am full of worries, and have no peace
I am stressed by the noise of the world
My heart trembles, I fear & tremble
I call upon the Holy One
Morning, noon, and night
And put my trust in the Compassionate One
4.III.2023
Have you forgotten me?
How long must I be perplexed?
Give light to these dimming eyes;
Breath upon these stopped ears
And open them to your voice.
Yet, in my wanderings
I trust in your Word
And will direct my song to You.
From Psalm 13
21.IV.2023
Because I am not gay
I have no fashion sense:
I’ll wear white after Labor Day,
Bermuda shorts, and socks
with my Birkenstocks.
Because I am not gay
you won't find me on the dance floor;
I ain't got no booty,
and I don't know how to shake it.
If I have to dance,
I'll do the white man's overbite.
Because I am not gay
I’ll never love like a woman
or weep like the angels.
I won’t fully appreciate Edith Piaf,
Judy, or Babs, and maybe not
even Taylor Swift.
Because I am not gay
I’ll never know a woman
as a friend.
I’ll never look her in her eyes,
and not her bosom.
I’ll never embrace a man
whole-heartedly.
I’ll never be banned from the bookstores,
the library, the church, or the bar.
Because I am not gay
I won’t know the aroma of the pyre,
but I think I can smell the embers.
It all began Wednesday week. Which is to say, a week ago this past Wednesday, April 19. It was an up day. There was an issue of training that seemed would be helpful to the office, so I spent about an hour and a half creating a step-by-step guide, with screenshots. I confirmed with a few co-workers that the instructions were clear & understandable, and each one said it helped and thanked me for the effort. I then e-mailed the instructions to the entire office, most of whom are working remotely.
That felt pretty good.
The rest of the day was similar. I was hitting all cylinders, as I like to say. Then – an unpleasant experience at a local business, which need not be detailed here.
That contretemps had the potential of spoiling a very pleasant and energizing day. I thought I might break the spell by going to a potent temptation zone: a bookstore. The closest was Half Priced Books.
So, in I go, wandering the aisles — as is my wont. A gentleman was next to me in the fiction aisle. I looked professional (still dressed from work), so maybe that’s why he asked me: “Can you help? I’m looking for War of the Worlds.”
“Try science fiction.”
“Oh! Good idea! I didn’t think of that!”
A few minutes pass. I’m in a different aisle, a few yards north of the cash register. There’s a young lady - possibly a college freshman - and the gentleman hands her the book, and she thanks him. He notices me, points me out and says that I deserved the credit. She smiled; I nodded & smiled in return.
Purely by chance, I ended up in line behind her. She had three books — War of the Worlds, Of Mice and Men, and Huck Finn. I asked her why she was buying these (I had assumed they were school related). She said she was re-reading things she had enjoyed when she was younger, as well as some classics she’d been curious about.
I don’t know what came over me: “Well, if you like Huck Finn, you might also like Pudd’nhead Wilson. It’s like Prince and the Pauper, except the children are slave and free.”
She thanked me, and we each went our way. Oh, by the way, I bought two books from the discount section.
Now, back to that notorious anniversary: my church, St Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, is about a block away from the original Federal Building. Our church experienced severe damage - the sanctuary was declared unsafe for use, and the congregation held services in the parish hall for about two years.
Two of our members were wounded; one worked in the Journal Record building, the other in the Veterans’ Administration, in the Federal Building. They shared their individual stories that evening, as well as their faith journey from that day to the present. This was also energizing, and uplifting.
So: I was wound up when I got home, a little after 8, and had a restless night. But Thursday went well, though I was punchy. Left work at noon, because a computer glitch prevented me from doing my job. Once I got to Norman, I changed into my lawn-work gear, and mowed Debra’s yard.
By the way, I had brought an impressive stack of books with me (mostly Neruda-related), which ended up piled on a chair in Debra’s living room.
I had a lot of energy through the weekend. I’d balance yard work with creative work with reading. But I was beginning to feel exhausted. I was not sleeping well. I haven’t had my average ~7 hours of sleep since that Wednesday. I felt like I’m running on adrenaline.
March was a challenge for me. As my Primary Care Physician (PCP) has put it, multiple stressors created a “perfect storm.” There’s the on-going stress of my job, the stress of loving someone also stressed (by a relative’s dementia), and the sixth anniversary of Brother Dave’s death. I reported all this in early March to my PCP, and indicated I thought I needed temporary pharmaceutical assistance. He agreed, and prescribed a generic formulation of Cymbalta ®.
At that same appointment, I wondered aloud whether I might be manic-depressive. He did a brief assessment - maybe five questions - and felt that my symptoms did not meet the criteria. And, since I have been going to work every day, and have not had any socially-unacceptable behaviors, I accepted that diagnosis.
By that Friday, I began to wonder if the heightened energy and mood was elevated as a side-effect of the medication. Happily, I had an appointment to see my PCP this past Tuesday. I reminded him of our previous discussion about the possibility of bipolar disorder. Given this more chronic expression of “mania”, he said it was possible I have cyclothemia (AKA, Bipolar Disorder III), and that Cymbalta increases the severity of the symptoms. He gave me permission to decrease how often I take my medication; I’ve been taking it every day, in the morning. For now, I’m skipping a dose every other day.
Yesterday was less manic. But I woke up with a sour stomach, and wonder if it’s adrenaline.
The story continues.
The morning moon wears a crooked smile
and she recites from the book of ancient discipline:
From blood to blood her intent is a sliver of light, so
she sets her face against the mouth of morning.
Who can say what the moon knows, wearing her wry smile?
Who can say, but the cat in the window, or the dog in the manger?
Who can smile on this dark path, this foreign night —
but sister moon? Sister moon, questioning the
Aurora; daring Apollo’s chariot, the hundred arrows,
the last dip in watery discipline, the heart on the sleeve,
and the sleeping cat by the secret hearth. She dares
with her knowing smile. She blesses the living
And the ghostly memories. She blesses the haunts
And the virgin dreams. She blesses the book and
The silver candle. The morning moon, not yet
gone to bed. Will she wait for the sun? Ah,
she will return, with her smile, back into the night.
2.XII.2022
Rev. Don Owens, former chaplain to St. Anselm of Canterbury Church of Norman, Oklahoma – the Episcopal college ministry for the University of Oklahoma – once broke prayer into four forms: verbal, physical, contemplation, and visualization.
Verbal prayer is the form most familiar to us. The Episcopal Catechism describes seven kinds of prayer, any of which could be verbal. Additionally, St. Augustine of Hippo said that singing is praying twice [paraphrased], which means that when we chant the Psalms or sing the hymns, we are also praying.
The second form is through our physical actions. This could be through whatever liturgical actions (e.g., kneeling or bowing our head) we observe during corporate worship; remembering that the word “liturgy” is Greek, and is translated as “the work FOR the people” or “the work OF the people.”
This holy work could also occur when we serve others. This is exemplified by Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker’s Movement, which was founded during the Depression, and continues to provide direct aid to the poor and homeless. The Episcopal Church observes her passing into God’s Glory on November 29.
Another physically active style of prayer is the prayer walk, which is best represented by the labyrinth. St. Paul’s is planning a labyrinth walk to take place during Advent. I encourage you to watch for the date, and sample this type of prayer.
Another form of prayer that involves physical action is the use of prayer beads. The two types of prayer beads you’ll find in our bookstore are the Roman Catholic Rosary and the Anglican Chaplet (which goes by several names). You’ll note the Roman Catholic version has a different design, with more beads. This version meditates on a set cycle of scenes from the life of Jesus while alternating between multiple recitations of the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. By contrast, the Anglican version is very Protestant, in that the person praying determines which prayer(s) are repeated on the beads.
The repetition used with prayer beads could lead to what the Rev. Ron Del Bene calls “breath prayer” – this is the point where whatever prayer you’ve chosen gets written on your heart (to borrow a phrase from the prophet Jeremiah). This type of prayer typically leads to the third type of prayer, contemplation.
This third type of prayer is a prayer beyond words. The author of the fourteenth century English guide The Cloud of Unknowing described this contemplative style of prayer as aiming the heart to God, like an arrow. There are a five kinds of prayer listed in our Catechism which could be contemplative: adoration, praise, thanksgiving, and oblation. You might also be meditate on various types of iconography – from the cross in our sanctuary, or our stained glass windows, or even formal Icons (most from the Orthodox tradition). Be mindful that you are using this iconography as a sort of window to God; you are not worshiping the object – you are using the object as a sort of spiritual technology (to borrow the Dali Lama’s phrase) to lead you to the divine.
The final form is Ignation Contemplation. In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius of Loyola directed his students to use all five of their senses to contemplate a scene from the life of Jesus. You might apply this version of contemplation to the scenes used in the Roman Catholic Rosary (which are called Mysteries in that context).
Why do we pray? I like the answer given in the book Walk in Love by Scott Gunn and Melody Wilson Shobe: to build our relationship with God. There is no right way to pray. All that is required is to show up, with an intention to focus our attention on the High Holy One.
Dreams are portable axes mundi. An axis mundi is another term for what the Celts called a Thin Place, where worlds meet, that liminal space where we become aware of both the phenomenal and noumenous. Tellingly, the Australian aborigines call it the Dreaming.
In the introduction to his latest collection, Failed State: Haibun, Dave Bonta tells us this collection was drawn from a dream journal. When we are attentive to our dreams, we journey into what Jung called the Collective Unconscious. The symbols we encounter are both personal and universal. The environment of the Collective Unconscious is affected (or infected) by the concerns and events of Waking Life – again, both personal and global.
The front cover image on Failed State is titled 'waiting room,’ credited to Robert Couse-Baker. Slightly off-center in a black-and-white waiting room is a color image of a television with flames displayed on its screen. My immediate assumption was the poems would reflect the 2020 dumpster fire. But no, in his introduction Bonta tells us he began work on this collection five years ago. These haibun reflect ripples from Syria, Somalia, and Libya. And the orange-tinted flames of our own little corner of chaos.
But Dave does not begin his collection with political concerns, at least not in the traditional sense. He begins from his front porch. One of my daily delights is following his Twitter thread, Morning Porch, in which he daily records what he sees from his porch each morning. It is typically refined, honed, and particular. This prosody is reflected in much of Dave’s poetic work, including the first poem in this collection, “From the Spring and Autumn Annals”:
A falling leaf reversed course and flew. It sailed up over the trees and didn't stop until it reached a forest inside a cloud in Mexico. You were left with a double loss: of the leaf it wasn't and of the warbler it was. These are the kinds of subterfuges you recognize from dreams.
After two more equally poetic paragraphs, Bonta responds with a haiku:
pure spring
water bottle
floating
This mix of prose and haiku continues throughout the collection, in a form called haibun. This descriptor follows the title on the third page. The form is best known from Narrow Road to a Far Province, by Basho, considered by many the master of Japanese haiku.
Which begs the question: What is haiku? In high school, we were taught a syllable count for each line: five / seven / five, with an emphasis on nature imagery. Digging deeper the student learns the Japanese syllable is nothing like an English syllable, and may move toward Imagism, qua Ezra Pound, or a free American form, as practiced by Jack Kerouac. Dave Bonta’s haiku is closer to Kerouac than the formal syllabic method I was taught. It often captures my personal definition of haiku: an emotional picture postcard (in your free time, check out Woodrat photohaiku for other examples).
These haibun imply a dialogue between the prose section and the haiku. I have found at least four variations: Distillation, Reflection, Commentary, and Philosophic. You can see all three combined in “World Bank” (page 11;), which is also a classic nightmare scenario of being lost in a foreign locale. The final paragraph has this distillation:
trapped inside
a moth’s day-time dream
of being human
This daydream is undoubtedly related to the story of the monk who dreamed he was a butterfly and was uncertain, upon waking, of whether he was a monk who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly who dreamed it was a human.
Certainly, the title World Bank reflects a sort of nightmare, and almost requires a trigger warning for liberals like me.
Nightmares are the dark side of the dreaming. Joseph Campbell, among others, would tell us it’s best to confront them and plumb their depths. This collection certainly plumbs those depths, becoming increasingly nightmarish in each section.
For me, the nightmare reaches its climax in the Human Resources section, which applies the practice of “found poetry” to the CIA’s Human Resources Training Manual of 1983. Just the fact that such a document exists is nightmarish enough, but we can read (if we dare) clinical descriptions of the best time to make an arrest (early morning) to the most effect methods of torture. Then we can be shocked by the poetry found in the selected paragraph. For example, “The Torture Situation” yields this:
torture
may actually intensify
resistance
it
is no
thing but
a show
of strength
Then, we wake. Troubled by dreams and visitations. We rise, turn on the radio, and hear of our failed state. The title section of Bonta’s collection returns us to nature, to a degree. But there’s an edge here:
“And now for today’s forecast…. You’ll see a rabbit sprawled in the shaded driveway: its left foot points toward hidden water. You’ll learn to ignore the spreading desert in your living room…. You’ll pretend those are mice scrabbling in the kitchen and not dispossessed migrants laboring to convert rainforest into soybean plantations.” [from Don’t Need a Weatherman, page 78]
This may sound like a frightening journey, but it is worthwhile. Join Dave Bonta in exploring these dreams and confronting these nightmares. In the end, you might find yourself at the center of the world, on a front porch, admiring the woods.
Order Failed State by Dave Bonta
Because I am not Baptist,
I can never know God;
I can’t be friends with Jesus;
I’ll never be saved.
Because I am not Baptist,
I won’t be elected to the Rotary Board;
I won’t make the right business connections;
I better buy fire insurance now.
Thing is, in my privilege, I could pass.
I’m no Phillip Green; I need not say:
‘I’m an Episcopalian.”
I am an unrecognized foreigner.
Because I am not Baptist,
I need not judge love;
I need not place myself
On the role of life by
Condemning others to Hell.
Because I am not Baptist,
I am as comfortable in a Quonset hut
In a poorly maintained field
As in a lavish cathedral.
Because I am not Baptist,
I will let my lips declare the Love
That brings Love, the Love
that brings true friends together.
Inspired by a poem by Hermann Hesse; his was "Because I am not Catholic."
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat:
all I can hear are the whispers of pain,
and the sunrise is pink fog in the street.
There's a broken crucifix at my feet.
The storm was dismissed by a hurricane.
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat.
I saw a black crow flying sixty feet
into the dawn. He didn't stop to explain.
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.
The twin rainbows in the dawn sky task sweet,
but like ancient dye they will wash away.
Again, the world seems to be mad and beat.
You look like all the people I could meet,
but you left your hat behind just the same.
And the sunrise is pink fog in the street.
"My escape," you say sadly, "must be fleet."
A handshake, then the bus takes you away.
Again, the world seems mad and beat
and the sunrise is pink fog in the street.
10.May.1978 (revised)
At the Crow’s Laugh Inn
Dancers strobe by the bar
The electric body pulses
As the dealer smokes his fat cigar
Crow’s Laugh was founded in 1784
With ale and lager and wine
Now men hold each other
And form a chorus line
King George was the object
Of that ancient corvid’s scorn
Now women watch each other
Slow dance into the morn
Soon, the crow will be laughing
At another madman’s fall —
You’ll see my body moving
On the floor with the lovers all
You stand at the doorway
in your motley coat of rust and gold and blue
You stand at the doorway
almost smiling at the semitones dancing
on the wind
You wait, and you wonder
There at the doorway
What do you offer?
A hollow thanksgiving?
What do you offer?
Appolonaire’s trench war nightmares?
You look behind you where the Scorpion dwells
you look before you to the hand of the Archer
Why wait for the solstice
Why wait on the sun
Why not pray there at the door sill
that this endless year be done?
You stand at the doorway
perhaps I can see you smile
You wait upon winter
with autumn standing by
We pray with you there at the door sill
pray with ghosts & smoke & leaves
We pray with holy intention
for the healing yet to be.
3.IX.20
