Somewhere among the trials of innocence, lessons of winning and losing.

And then: that young mind, that open heart, has almost no distance to travel, from saying "I won" to "I'm right", and... ah! Then my dear hearts, dear children, you have lost your sight, your liberty of movement, and each step forward will be a step to be retraced.

I have taken a few lessons from another text. I traveled, I went as far as I was able, to Asia -- such gratitude to an early lover, who was my guide to losing self, how could I have done it alone? -- and stayed until I could not recognize my thoughts. They came and queued up at night, they spilled onto page after page of notebooks, they tripped out into the night over a bowl of gudeg and a cup of sugary tea, they danced back and forth from my west to their east, a blurry trance of who? who? who am I? I seeded doubt like a farmer seeds rye, deliberately, to defeat the ragged weeds. I embraced doubt, with love, like a man embraces his partner, or a woman embraces her mate. Ah, into that beautiful blindness.

I met a woman who looked strong in her mid-life, yet felt weak as a straw in wind. I met a woman as frail as age and ill-health could make her, battering her legs til she shook, beating her kidneys til she urinated blood, erasing her husband in a War, erasing her wealth in peace... and she was strong as the temples that stood in the ring of fire for 3000 years. I lost words. I found others that explained things better. I watched for myself in others' eyes, and sometimes... when the weather was clear... I saw both the other and myself.

I think what we lose, when we begin to believe in winners, is the ability to listen to our enemies. We lose the ability to trust there is truth, in so many shards and facets, in such ways... in ways that appear explosive, in words that sound destructive, recriminating... because we humans, you know, are not so skillful in finding coal and seeing diamond. It is only heat and time make the difference: coal is diamond. You are me. Life is death, yes, yes let's make colors out of whites and blacks, my eyes are sharper than night, and so are yours..

So the pages of the texts so difficult to decipher were those from minds seemingly so foreign from my own, that even to hear their thoughts leave the tongue was occasion for pain, such deep hurt, and the expected response of anger, or of retreat. Enemy.

I remember a time when I had thrown myself far out of my element -- ha ha!, and not the first time, nor the last, this desiring soul would step into jungle or desert or war zone to find that herb or spice or fragment of history that would help complete it! -- I had taken myself to a farm on the sprawling prairie of southwestern Minnesota to open the land, and seed it like a lover. I found the life of a farmer somewhat less romantic than that "lover" image. I also found that the landowner felt threatened by us in many ways. His behavior grew more erratic as the pressures of the season and toil began to deconstruct my Self. So many crazy words! He used fear and his palette and made demons that all wore my face. "You are dangerous! Dangerous!" He shakes with fury, with fear, he stabs his finger at me like the barrel of a gun, he is driving slowly at the end of the quarter-mile driveway, watching us, making us watch him, pacing like a trapped creature, trapped, somehow, on an endless, horizonless landscape!

Because I found the Mystery when I went to Indonesia, because in some way I left myself behind, I listened through the fog in my lessor's mind, and hear... a foghorn, why not? I heard the lesson that he held -- that insane son of a bitch -- the lesson he carried in his being, for me!

Tonight I received a similar lesson, from one whom I believed I would never accept a word again. Sometimes, those who challenge us most ferociously are in such close proximity. And because they share a space and time with you, with your body, with the currents of your mind... they know you, even if they call you "enemy", maybe because they do; even through their angers and their struggles, the mirror of the world is there, they are it, as scratched and muddied and fogged as that glass might seem: right there in front of you. Condemnation is the inability to use stillness and wisdom to dissect that stormwash of thoughts: condemnation is lack of sight and no great finesse, the ability to see diamond in a seam of coal.

So the lesson of my lesson -- no, I will not share it with you, though I am so grateful(!), to have been given a grain of truth about myself! Like one of those missing puzzle pieces you have been searching for all over, you want to finish this darned picture! and there that person is, standing beside you, hand open, with one more piece offered in an open palm...! -- the lesson of my lesson, the fact that I learned from an unexpected and personally untrustworthy source: that lack of trust closes your ears. The Teaching and the conduit for that Teaching, our teachers, they are all around us, and not always, probably not often, maybe rarely in a form we can recognize from within our fixed ideas. So I say (to myself, and why not you?): never stop listening. You can measure, but be most careful of your science when you see your mind begin to take sides. It will always side with what you already know.

Undecide there is a winner: there will be no winner, ever. It is true that in some voices, your skill may not be such (not yet?) to extract the information that you need. Leave it: you know how many voices are around you. All reciting lessons for you, an incessant mantra, a prayer, a brothers' chant. No need to waste your time, and don't waste others' time, if your ears aren't open to receive.

  *

And words, these words? Attempts to hold a few flashes of understanding, fireflies in tonight's jar. Whether we live better for our words, or worse, will be decided later, when those we did our best to love help us from this life.

(0)

There are two kinds of roads.

I see the first so clearly: I can allow my eyes to drop from the horizon for a moment, and there are my feet, one before the other, one after the other, while the world slips away underneath a pace at a time. That's about two yards, if I am running, or one if I am walking with purpose, and maybe only a foot if I am sad and feeling slow. I can close my eyes and see that progress. I can close my eyes and feel my weight, feel the world's attraction, and the gentle roll of heel-to-toe that's like a dance, we learn to stand and swing to it, and make our lives the music of accompaniment. Those magical shoes you put on early and can't take off, that dance you to joy and to sorrow, from birth to death.

I guess there have been enough paths in my history, I don't need to walk to feel the walking: here's a path of black cinder from an old lava flow, with its chalkboard scraping sounds of almost-glass against almost-glass; another trail of tumbled granite at the top of the world; and then the stairway of stone (stone again!) worn down by the feet of countless pilgrims, on their way to some temporary salvation.

There were softer roads, that felt my passage and then quickly covered it up: maybe winter's wind blew snow across my way, or ocean's wind, loose sand, or leaves or other light debris sailed across my trail, and left my footsteps scuffed, untraceable. There I was: there I was not. There are two kinds of roads, and one of them is met by the bones and by the body's sinew.

The other kind needs a guide. And you are it.

Usually, when I am traveling inward, I walk along the lighted avenues that those before me cleared so well. Usually, the inward road (where my calloused feet cannot wander) is to remembered places and comfortable benches and sunsets and glasses of sipped wine and smiling eyes... smiling eyes and those little gestures of affection, a hand that reaches just for the joy of touching me, or the play of minds as a joke unfolds like legerdemain, as much surprise for the speaker as it is for those who listen.... Usually. It is fine, really, to have places we remember here inside, where we felt warm and safe, sanctuary from the winds and waves outside, where everything is right, and our way of being and seeing is contented with small things.

The road inward has those broad avenues.

You know, though... what attracts me are the alleys and the byways, those twisting trails that lead perpendicular to my direction of travel, small tributaries or siphons that drop a few unique souls from the hinterlands onto the main highway, or steal them away from these populous regions onto a wild chase into the trees, up and over the ridge, to heaven knows where! I am attracted to the unexplored, because there is something much larger than me, larger these small ideas I carry like a moth-eaten comforter around my shoulders. Oh, there are edges of the universe too large for my conception, and an endpoint to this my life which is rather too difficult to grasp.

So, I think: there's something there will open my eyes wide. Maybe over that hill? Maybe around that curve of the road? Maybe in her arms. Maybe in the next song. Maybe tomorrow.

When I speak of the inward road, I am not talking about a particular way of going. Yes, sure, you can meditate; sometimes the eyes of the heart are more open when you are still like that. Or you can watch your feelings as they dash and spark through the mystery of yet another day alive. You meet someone, you shy away: what was that about? You meet another, and your hackles (should humans still have hackles) rise, ready for a fight. Or you can just live your life and do your best to notice what goes on, down the Well, what you can change, what you cannot; how you might open; how you might not.

I think that on the external road, you meet everything that is not you, and have to hear its echo and make its metaphor of yourself. And on the internal road, you meet nothing but yourself, and must find your echo and your metaphor in the ten thousand things that meet your eyes. If you do decide to stray from "I am perfect because I think it so", or even if you don't, sooner or later you must meet a self that is not as welcome, the tough teacher, the one who throws the windows open and shouts "Come outside!": see you, just as blind and hurtful as those you judge, just as fragile and just as strong... just such a sweet heart and just such a brute. What that road brings is a poignant clarity to all of your aches. You know what hurts: don't you feel it every day? Don't you dream it at night? The distance growing between you and your love, and you powerless to change it? The aging of your children as they become masters of their own lives; their departure from your home and from your influence... and from the warmth of your arms: no, far worse, those small and precious bundles of life that were like sunlight in your arms, you carried them as though you embraced the sun, and now... that time is past, and your arms feel useless, empty now, and cold.

What I find at times along the inward road is really quite anguished. I have to stop and give the sad creature crouched there some needed attention, some Good Samaritan nurturing, if I am able to evoke the Samaritan in me to tend myself. And other times, there are flowers and images of such beauty. Sometimes my eyes in that mirror are gentle, and so strong, and so welcoming of love. Sometimes the scars and lines on the face show a resilience and a strength of purpose that leaves me quite breathless.

Sometimes I just see a life, a stranger in the street, making his way to work.


What a preamble!

All I meant to say was that... on the inward road the other day I found another place where I was just human, after all, smaller than I imagined, and needing human help to rediscover trust, again, again, when the door of the heart has been closed against hard weather, and the body contracts like a shell around that stain.

(1)

The illusion of independence begins with the snip of the umbilical, is furthered with a slap, is fulfilled as we are weaned, walk, and then withdraw to our own beds; we lean into our own efforts, rise to our own challenges, inflate with what we perceive to be our personal successes, deflate before our personal defeats. We desire a fruit, find it, and bring it to these lips: so the feeling of hunger passes. We choose a destination, a mountain peak, and climb with these limbs, fuel this body, attain the summit. This body tires, we lay it down, and it finds rest and soon recovers. We reach and do not touch, and our heart sighs. We touch and the one we touch departs, our heart cries.

Breath as though a breath will always be. Steps as though the steps will never end. Work as though our toil invites eternity. Try as though each success were an end. Rejoice and rage as though the purse we filled and emptied was of life instead of lead. Eat as though our food were birthright instead of gift. Climb as though the summit were the sky. Sleep as though tomorrow always arrived. Reach as though we somehow are alone; cry as though departure proved we never had been one.

Appearances arrive early; and since those appearances offer the impression of being somehow incomplete, since the young body teaches the young mind, and the young body feels wants and desires so strongly, this seeming inadequacy is supported by those whose perception of isolation is greatest. When one feels very isolated, when one feels there can never be enough, the only course of action is to grasp after whatever is within reach. Sometimes the anguish is so great, the grasp relies on an incompleteness, consciously or unconsciously cultivated by a culture whose basis is never enough. The surface of things -- the surface of our wants and losses, of our hungers and satisfactions -- are children's drawings of the real world. They are the body without its marvelous organs, its miracle of being; they are stick-figure fathers and stick-figure mothers, beautifully and innocently drawn, and sticks of boys and girls, whose touch is a pencil-line, and whose connection is one-dimensional. Innocence is fine, and sweet, and deserves its place. It is in that innocence that those who have lived their childhood, to become mothers and fathers of their own, find and offer the food to fill the belly, and find and offer the toys and tools for that young body to grow and that young mind to develop.

Yet there is a place where greater learning occurs. A parent who knows enough will teach a child about having enough. Your stomach has had its fill -- look how little is needed! There are dimensions beyond the singularity of the Self. What begins as simple self-indulgence becomes gentle self-awareness, then in two dimensions the picture of another, and in three dimensions a body that moves and dances and involves your own. Beautiful, warming third dimension. And then there is time. Where the one I met and loved today is the one whose angst and struggles make them intangible tomorrow. Where the one I met and loved and lost finds support in our connection, and returns seeking me. Where the one I met and loved and learned how to be with over time -- maybe marrying? maybe giving birth to new lives? -- watches as her body ages, and tries to puzzle out what it all means.

Ah! And then beyond the river of time we swim in (and often against!)... well, it is a river. A river has banks, does it not? And a bed, with clear sky above it and outside of it, and a sun that warms its gravity-bound descent? I don't know what is beyond what I am able to perceive, but I do know that my perception is limited. What I love about limits is that, by their very nature, they guarantee a Something on the other side. So when I get tired, when the heart and the mind become weary with the passage of this river, and the splashing about that I and my good companions do in its currents, so often bumping up against one another and against those rocks, creating minor, unintended bruises... when I get tired I lie on my back and contemplate what I cannot see. But know is there.

I do wish, for example, that certain physical pains were not present in the waters tonight. Ah, stone in the river. I would prefer, as another example, that certain accompanying psychic pains were slower to reach out, that the fears which embrace us in these waters were less chill. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Sometimes, when we reach up our hand, or reach out, there is this presence beyond us that, with the greatest Grace one can imagine, reaches back.

I know there is a way to walk on water. Someone has already done it. It's just on the other side of this common understanding, on the other side of what I decided that I know.

(0)

I.

The waning moon has turned this hour above the crowns of trees, and spilled its liquid light into the yard. So this evening is accompanied by a shadow of sun's heat. That same moon that years and years ago was torn from earth's belly, born from her and borne away on some celestial tide: once blazing with the fire that gave us life, now its patient ashes spy upon our daily dance, at times shy and out of sight, at times winking at our plight, or otherwise full-faced and offering its white-washed world for our somnambulisms.

With no one's arms to hold you from these sights, the dimensions fall into each other, you join the ranks of every color-blinded creature as it flies or crawls or navigates the night employing sharper, duller vision. A leaf-rattle makes the paw pause mid-step, a stick snap shakes the courage of the smallest, while the sudden flush of air or nearly-silent slant of wing above makes cowering the act of statues whose hearts race from one moment alive to the next, still alive, alive yet still, waiting for no tooth or talon's spike to rake the nerves.

Some of us are larger, and suffer less.

But suffer even so, adventure when better ventures aren't reached by opening fingers, opened hearts. A footstep starts the body where the spirit would prefer to stop. Still. A stick snap stops the world around the boot of men: who goes there? What would a man be wanting of the night, if not a hunt of one sort or another?

The moon will not stand still; her mother moves below her, always at arms-distance. The child spins as if to turn away; the weight of their connection keeps her always falling toward the larger body. A pure, white face. Smiling as she rises, sad when she departs. A desert of desire, whose fires went out so long ago, depends on stars' impression to brightern her face.

Who wouldn't see a spark up there? Some ember that was better than its gray surround, some tiny spark of life the kindled past into a second sunrise, companion star, ga olden guide to keep us honestly awake and in each other's arms, to banish sleep in favor of a man or woman's favored sleep companion.


II.

One can speak more plainly. An apple, for example: there was nothing woman ever gave a man that was his unmaking. I need to rewrite Genesis, since its metaphor is difficult to embrace. If (for example) Eve opened Adam's eyes, it was to the preciousness of life. I guess that might be painful; but hardly an expulsion from the Garden, rather its invitation. There is some tacit assumption by the readers of those ancient writers, of a paradise that was lost, only to be regained after this body's been betrayed as temporary residence, somewhat of a slum-lord's tenement.

Paradise is every moment, but our skill in seeing it somewhat clouded by emotions or events. The paradise of creation both in the company of men and of women, building walls or taking them down, raising up pillars of life or whirling in the great river of each others' dancing, scratching at the earth or forging teams to push back need, or needing the sweet waters of ourselves to wash over that hard labor and make us one.

No, an apple, or a pomegranate, maybe have been a gift of fruit, of sustenance, of sight or of delight. The days that followed striving to maintain that paradise. If missed, at times, it cannot be mistaken that it always will exist.


III.

The television told me tonight that 1 in every 8 people in the United States suffers hunger. If that is high percentage, imagine my old friends in Indonesia, or the Sertão, or India, where population is so great or natural resource so scarce that the ratio is likely inverted. What will you do about that? Remove the idea of guilt-by-inequity. An action forced by guilt was a blind action, and a slap. Instead, imagine your wealth. The problem is not easily solved, yet making small movements to resolve it makes it easier. What if...

What if a few dollars each day went to help a nation's hunger? What if we set aside the cynicism which says "our effort makes no difference; too many plunderers between here and there; too much need in my own family". Yes, yes, yes. Still, many of us have the strength of surplus, and every effort makes a difference even in ourselves, even knowing that we have acted changes how we walk and think. There are many programs through our communities and churches which make donation less anonymous, which carry goods and capital hand to hand. And we are throwing pebbles down the mountain: gravity helps us: we are of the wealthy nations, whose small stones hit others and still others, so that once our tiny effort reaches bottom, the side of a mountain may have moved.

Something to consider. While the moon is circling overhead, telling tales of generations upon generations of humans; when a woman stands beside her man, or a man puts his arms around his woman; when night rolls into its deepest slumber, and wakeful people wonder what it means to be alive.

(0)

Here is the canvas of the sky. One long stroke of gray, you see it brushed upon the blue blue pastel of the day, it is an overhead wave, a sun-shade, a blanket pulled over the eyes, a watercolor from a sponge, a lights-decay. And then it rains, of course. It is cold as it can be, just enough energy in the shortening strands of the sunbeams to heat those flecks of ice and melt their hearts as they fall earthward. So they fall instead of float, merge instead of mass, drop instead of drift, and winter waits another week or so to make its white appearance.

Then: haaaaaaaaaa the cold blows in from the same direction, as though the sky's designer were one-handed, always wiped his slate from left to right, from sunset to sunrise. The night is black as black, and light as light, and those stars! now that the evenings are cooler and cooler still, seem bolder or less drowsy, they glimmer knife-like, spark-like, out of reach, you wish they would take flight and visit, settle their bright visage at the edge of the lawn. Why not? They are so small, a jar of lightning bugs is all. The cold cold wind blows all the sultry nonsense out of the way, and every evening's serious as geometry and careful as clocks. Tick tick, tapping from the past, leaves at the window, play-acting sleet-sounds, fleet flight to ground. Then underfoot the scent of new earth, under heel the sound of new earth.

Here's the canvas of the heart: the wealth of tears, warm rain that melts before it reaches skin, the ice it was contained within undone by the sun, however short its strands of sunbeams have become. What grace to earn theese seasons with a smile. What riches to know that winter comes then spring again, and summer, fall and winter spring, in a sprightly spin that we've the fortune to dance in. A cloud covers the blue blue horizon and spreads until it's gathered all your friends under its blanket. And then it rains, of course. Instead of floating, taken by the tide, our hands reach out and weather what weather would not leave behind. We all fall earthward with a sigh, and look to heaven for the wings of snow that await another day. Where knife-like, spark-like the wind whips flakes toward our skin, we wrap these layers round us to keep the precious loving in.

Ahhh, the wind cries at the corners of the mind, makes a small howling like the ghost of forgotten fright: all outside, all part of November's song, give thanks for the harvest of love, winter brings its bite. So quickly! we give thanks for the harvest of love, because it is the fruit of our reaching, because the full table we have offered ourselves, again and again and again, with delight, despite old winter's wind.

(0)

the eyes are a chamber of the heart
and the lips and tongue, a chamber of the heart
the fingertips and skin are a chamber of the heart
the sense of smell is a chamber of the heart
and the ears are a chamber of the heart

so near enough to see you
to taste you and to kiss you
to touch you and to feel your warmth
near enough to catch your scent
to hear "I love you"

if we don't feed our love with senses
the heart slows and sleeps
the heart bows and retreats
like a servant of the spirit
politely asked to leave

(0)

how we decorate our lives: with loves
composed of scents and colors and filigree
of the delicious dancing toward, and away
the rocking cradle of the heart
beautiful arc of the body's song
as it rises, ripens, tires and moves on

all these flowers are for you and of you
all these colors from and about you
all the lyrics sung because and by you
at the beginning and the end of days

how we decorate our lives: silks and bangles
scents and colors and filigree
because the spirit descended into form
and form is the canvas we are given
every day is paint
every touch the painter's brush
brings a blush to the surface of the skin
that everyone can witness and breathe in

the flower opens and opens
even as the petals fall away

(0)

And every lover brings as his or her gift another reflection of the quality or your loving, and the quantity of your love.

Sometimes the arc of a love is as long as years, sometimes a lifetime. Or the music of a relationship may last some months, crescendo, soften, then complete: the dancers bow to one another, and leave the floor to take a ittle rest, or step to find another dancing partner. Or there might be the shortest, sweetest meeting, like a flash of light or lightning, the flash of a camera, the flash of his smile, the flush of her face. No matter the length, all loves are transformed; all loves end. If the agent is time or illness, if the agent is fear or frailty, even if it is disinterest... all loves polish some facet of your life, show you your desires, light up the little dark places you had kept hidden, and make your loving better (if you are watching), and your being warmer and brighter (if you are watching or not).

Someone once asked me why I would approach someone, if I knew there was no chance of a future together. I thought, then answered, "How can I know the future? I only know the present." One can only watch what is unfolding, and follow whatever is opening in front of you. And try your very best to speak truth with love, or love with truth. Who knows which partnership will last for years? And which will end abruptly? The strongest passion may not withstand even one day of co-authoring a routine, while the most unassuming comfort might be just what a home requires for deeper and longer sharing.

It is always difficult to realize there is an ending, to welcome it, to embrace it, when... well, sometimes it simply has arrived. Always difficult because we grasp life and deny death, so even the little endings become traumatic. We were lovers, now we are householders. We were householders, now we are parents. We were parents, now we are alone again together and so changed... so changed! We are aging and watch our friends pass away. Little endings, let them be conscious, let the heart feel them, cry for them a bit... so that the little beginning has earth and water enough to sprout. In fact, without the endings, there is no renewal. No birth without an end to gestation; no gestation without the release of lovemaking; no lovemaking without the end of childhood... and back and back, back and back my friends! And forward and forward, don't forget, as many endings and new beginnings as there are nights and days.

The best practice we can find in ending is to embrace all the gifts that were given. Yes, it is over, yes she has left, yes, he has found someone else, or found no one else... yes yes. Look what I found: that I can love. Look what I found: that I can give love even as we separate, and walk on different roads. When I give love even as one form of love is ending... then I have lost... what I did not have. Maybe I have lost nothing at all.

Philosophy? Sure. We either raise our hearts up with practiced compassion, or lower our heads and feel inadequate in our attempt to love. Don't lower your head. The ending of love doesn't mean love doesn't exist: just as the end of a life could never deny all of the beauty that living provided. If you avoid lowering your head... who can say?... perhaps it was not the end of love, but just one facet turning away, perhaps transforming into something deeper, or greater. Maybe it is you who is growing, not love that is dying.

Let the jewel of the heart be polished, become brighter and brighter. You will attract more love just from your light.

Do I write this to comfort myself? Of course I do.

It's true, nonetheless.

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