WIP CCE - Blue Coyote and Interstice

in

The emptiness was warm and dark, like waking up wrapped in 600 count sheets at 3:30 on an early spring morning. This is what she was made for; made from. Quietly waiting between space and action, enveloped in sleepy potential, lending no definition to time or motion. Those things wanted her, wanted to sink their barbs deep into her being, but that wasn't what she was made for. She closed her eyes, took something like a deep breath, and pushed through.

Blue Coyote was waiting on the other side. Sitting on a round red leather stool in an Oakland diner playing some strange homebrew on a beat up PSP. He casually thumbed buttons as a cartoon indian chased down hapless cowboys, hogtied them, then threw them in front of a bison stampede. It looked like you got points for both the wrangling and the trampling.

"A kid on the Oklahoma res made it," he chuckled when he noticed her squinting at the screen. "Could use some tweaks in the interface, but the concepts funny as hell, yeah?"

Her brows contracted in a way he was overly familiar with: the body language equivalent of "whatever", so he shrugged his shoulders and pocketed the device. White folk were always too tightly wound, too focused. Their loss.

"I had an interesting conversation with a fed last night. The guy gave me this," pulling out the little baggie with his offering in it, shaking it gently at her. She shook her head, he shrugged again and took one of the little capsules for himself.

"And this means what to me?" she said.

My New Mantra

in

To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin . . .- Martin Buber

I usually use little PostIt flags to mark passages in books I'm reading. I tried using highlighters for a while, but I was never able to get around the disturbing feeling I was somehow vandalizing the authors work every time I drug that blocky fluorescent sponge across the words which were having such impact on me.

So I use flags instead, and oft times end up with a tome whose edges have gone fuzzy with white and yellow and blue bits of tape waving about, calling "Look here! Look here!".

When I'm done I open up whichever word processor I'm currently favouring and go back through the book, carefully removing the enthusiastic markers for reuse, taking down the notes and quotes I felt added to the wonder in my life.

But I've yet to grab a set of flags out for Buber, and seem to be coming here to store the distilled bits of wisdom flowing out of Meetings.

Don't Curtail My Reality, Man

in

Two more bits I want to remember from my slow crawl through Buber's Meetings: . . . "faith" is not a feeling in the soul of man but an entrance into reality, an entrance into the whole reality without reduction and curtailment.

and

Real listening has become rare in our time. It is found most often among workers who are not indeed concerned about the person speaking, as is so often the case with the bourgeois public, but about what he has to say.

UD WIP - Safer In Wool

in

Bringing fruit from the blooming

Of dark, hopeful lips;

From a pause,

To a purse,

To a soft airy phrase;

Pushed past rose

In the simplest prose,

A tender disclose

Belying its hue.

Couched in a quirk;

A brief dimpled twitch:

A question,

An answer,

A sweet imposition,

A challenge to leave

Or stay and believe

Lupine intentions

Are safer in wool.

(A raven-like veil

Drawn in a blink

Lifted

Returned)

(Feline intemp'rance

And eight lives to go

Safety forsaken

In order to know)

I liked the idea of the original last two lines of the first stanza, but I just couldn't make the language work with the rhythm.  I'm still not sure I'm sold on the new last line, but it's growing on me.

One of the biggest problems I have coming back to a poem and trying to add to it, as opposed to simply editing what's already there, is attempting to rediscover the patterns and schemes of the original pieces so that the new pieces match.  Today, on this one, I'm failing completely.

"Love Your Neighbor As Yourself"

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"But moral laws bind us together and make it possible to build a society based on the common good. They keep us from honoring the false covenants of greed, celebrity and power that destroy us. These false covenants have a powerful appeal. They offer feelings of strength, status and a false sense of belonging. They tempt us to be God. They tell us the things we want to hear and believe. They appear to make us the center of the universe. But these false covenants, covenants built around exclusive communities of race, gender, class, religion and nation, inevitably carry within them the denigration and abuse of others. These false covenants divide us."- Chris Hedges, The False Idol of Unfettered Capitalism

How Mysterious

in

“. . . Mystery is a great challenge it’s an invitation and it’s a wonderful companion, actually . . .” - Dr. Robert Coles, from Speaking of Faith 1/1/09 On my best days I live in mystery. The mystery of hope, love, and grace. The mystery of Christ and the Church. The mystery of I and Thou, and how the dialectic of self and selfless defines and defies every relationship I have.

It is a mystery that fuels all hope of knowing and truth, and yet allows a profoundness and peace even when facts and understanding have changed zip codes and are nowhere to be found.

Everything in my life worth holding is tinted and flavoured with mystery, and I thank Dr. Coles for reminding me of that.