Eulogy for a Language - Epilogue: Faithful Companions (or Sky 外有 Sky)

The special thing about planets aligning 


is they don't stay that way for long.

The night I gave up my placelessness, was also the night that the sky started falling.

You'd told me a secret;
said you were wearing my shirt
turns out it was a little too tight.
I had no idea.

The stars turn to water on my face under a gray evening sky
There are many ways that stars can go down
Stubbornly, we love the darkness they leave; the star we can't see.
As if we had authority to house-arrest a memory.

It's good
that tonight there are clouds, or perhaps I'd stubbornly love the empty dark behind them.

You thanked me for walking you home.

I wasn't expecting your hand on my back, as though gently sending me off
I wish I'd taken your hand while departing; a picture of faithful companions to stars.

Even if stars could stay put, the sky is still constantly changing.
I walked home alone to my own kingdom through fields in muddy shoes 
amid cold, falling stars coming down in tiny multitudes.

The frozen earth is gently cradled in white blankets.

Lost in the silent din of a widening gyre outside,
I think of my shirt tight around you,
holding you together where I failed.

I tell myself that even when it falls,

behind the sky,
there is still more sky.

identity

Sometimes you're Theseus

Sometimes, his ship.

Sometimes you're Magellan,

and sometimes, the Victoria.

Learning to walk

In the beginning
The land fell away on both sides

I walked a tightrope
I watched a horizon

This is the only way not to fall:
to put each step exactly where it goes and nowhere else.

The waves rose up. The air stormed.
Still,
only one put to place each foot.

The stars did not waver
Then, all was calm around me
The storm was yet outside
just distracting: a horizontal pillar of cloud and of fire
I walked through the Eye
until placing one foot in front of the next was second nature.

Then the rope became an open field
After all, with practice, what's the difference when regardless of terrain, you have only two feet and one path?

Speed skaters know the only place for each narrow blade is beneath the center of gravity.
We balance on an intersection with reality.
This walking is a meditation.
It no longer matters whether I follow the thread or it follows me.
From outside, it looks precarious.

I remember a chess player stating that he thinks only one move ahead - the best move.
The field may be wide.
The path is narrow.
And in each moment, only one step.
I find this comforting.
Even liberating.

Eulogy for a Language - Part I: Genesis - There was Evening and there was Morning

A language and its culture grow together.

(Part I) Genesis



Ours

was a language of lips and of legs, smooth

punctuated by bedsheets

bellybuttons pressed tightly under night

skin seeking fusion

telling songs of how long we'd waited,

what we'd wanted,

hadn't spoken

for so long

Answering silently NOW

to foreign questions like, "why oh why didnt we ..."

We were suddenly fluent

in the present tense

sheltered alone together

under our own covers

exploring the grammar of looks and of touches

in a common native tongue

Acoustics of hollow arrows

What if Cupid shot you with a hollow arrow
and you broke it off,

would the part of the tube
still set deep within you

resonate with the sound of a voice?

It's like even after I
pulled the fletching from my side
some of the hollow shaft remains
a tunnel straight to my heart

and that's how his words bypass my ears.


And,
what if Cupid aimed
not for the heart,
but the mind?

Confessing Regrets

I've done many things wrong in my life,
things I sometimes wish that I could change,
but few things that I regret.



Each to different people,
different times,
different places:

(1)

Your voice and your eyes asked if I'd stay for another drink and more conversation, but I felt compelled to keep a promise to myself to start the next morning early. I thought I did the right thing, so why did I feel only regret?

You accepted my decision,
but I never have.

In my thoughts, I go back and say, Yes, of course
of course.

(2)

On early morning of the first and last night that we kissed, we were both standing there, but I'd already moved on into the next day.
I should have kissed you back.

(3)

You held me in your arms in our pile of nightfall covers,
and I heard your voice, saying with a touch of wonder,
"What did I do to deserve this?"

You weren't asking me.

Fool that I am,
prodded by memories of times I should have spoken up,
I tried to answer.

I wish I'd let the silence hold us.

Ninh Binh weather report: days so dark it's like the world didn't want to wake up

For the last two days,
the Earth has seemed unwilling
to open its eyes.

Thank you

Giving me a better chance to dwell in an empty cave within fog
and notice what patterns arise from the mist

The trivial perception:
mapping me to myself.

(I've found you in the past.
Our lives will be a hide and seek.

Please, remember the many tiny lights, and gratitude for what reflects them)

A memory of unseen gritty streets

Now how did he put it...

It may have been a gritty Shanghai night,
unrinsed rain coating the city streets.
I think he was asking, why choose? Why couldn't you love everyone?

The one you love to talk with for hours
The one you are sleeping with
The one you wish you could wake up beside

I may have tilted my head under the streetlights.
We'd been talking for hours, walking along our own maps.
I balanced empty beer cans like offerings on windowsills, utility boxes, dented cars.

I loved him with my very veins,
crisscrossing like streets
under hidden stars.

Wanted: Found Travel Collage

I watch
I learn
I travel
I wander through landscapes of unperceived chaos,
mapping the metaphors,
patching together the photos like on the Truman Show,
looking up at the sky like it was a throneroom; as if the stars were your mirror.

Sharing my collage, asking everyone I see,
"Have you seen me?" I'm lost.

I'm looking for a girl
who is making a collage.

She left, you see, because she knows that we can only percieve
what we already understand.

She's looking for me
Trying to understand everything
so that she'll be able to see.

And, I miss her.

The Quest (or, how to find yourself a muse)

(discovered in the notebook, probably written on the train between Hue and Ninh Binh, probably around Dec 11, 2017)
(I don't remember writing this; it must have been part of the dream, and near the Source)

... It is interesting to see what hallucinations rise up out of emptiness.

I think these are potentium dreams. When we want to disconnect into nothingness, yes, it is to touch that primal energetic chaos of creation. But it's not all chaos; perhaps just undifferentiated signal.

You have to wade into it.
That's The Quest.

You have to wade into the nothing.
The nothing that is the seed of everything.
And, you have to become nothing enough
for the chaos to accept you as one of its own,
for you to accept the nothing as yourself
and see, at that point, that it's not really nothing...

It's an energetic nothing
A bundle of everything
humming, softly dormant
without a shape

That's where you come in.

Your curse
is that, being something, you cannot fully return to nothingness,
you can only befriend it.

But relax and let your chest be hollow.
As the energetic nothing accepts your body, it tunes its hum to fit.

It listens to you,
listening to it.

Quiet down.
Learn to listen to the energetic hum
of shapeless everything.

Noise is not chaos, but signals out of place,
ungroomed, uncivilized,
running rogue.

Let your chest be empty
and observe the nothings that make you hum.

They will not come at once.
They are timid and quiet. Wait for them like rabbits.

They will not come in an orderly way. Some will not stay.
Do not try to catch the first you see.
Tempting as it may be,
you'll scare it and the others.

Let your hollow chest become a stage.

Watch their dreams rise and fall, and ask yourself:
What shape must my heart be
such that these nothings
choose to visit? Which persist?

Your empty body is a flute
a singing bowl
a taught, but silent string.

Provide the tension.
Pay attention

to hear which nothings sing.


[...]


These visions are not meant to be futures; only possibilities.
They allow me to consider potential realities without commitment.

I try to listen to all the harmonies that make up my own voice.

The Quest is to retrieve something from the primal chaos: a signal
You are the vessel.

Quiet yourself to receive the signal. Listen carefully to its guidance.
When the hum of every/nothing has chosen a song in you,
Arise and depart. Return to the village with your gift:
a song in the shape of your heart.

An adopted energetic something
filling your empty chest.

This is not all predestined. The songs fit between your ribs like hermit crabs in shells.

It takes another level of patience, but if you can change the shape of your heart,
then different songs will choose to stay.

You can sample different signals. Give them time to rise and fall.
When they grow strong enough, you'll begin to see yourself expressing them.

Retain the quarantine
Allow them to grow stronger.
Practice singing them back to yourself before leaving the cave,
this energetic,
silent chaos.

Nothing is not empty
Nothing is future everything.

It is your sanctuary.
Let your body be a temple
Let your mind be a priest
Let your heart be a choir,
an organ

Breathe

Become a conductor
of the songs that choose you.

Breathe

Become a vessel
that harbors the music.

Listen
to what they tell you
Watch
the dance of potentials
Carve
your body
like a violin maker
and listen to the nothings that hum within your frame.

This is your Quest

To learn to sing your songs
First to hear them,
then to sing them to yourself,
then with others.

Observe
what gets your attention
what gives you energy
and what you begin to naturally produce.

Too much
static and we begin to see shapes
silence and we begin to hear voices
nothing and we begin to manifest patterns

Chaos is a fertile nothing
given a seed,
it cannot but drink the energy that matches it.

The Quest
is none other than man's effot
to unearth a sliver of valuable
signal from a sea of noise.


Some people mistake Potentium Dreams for instructions. They may be instructional, but they are not instructions. They merely reveal your wishes.

Watch their dance and learn from them. Do not obey them. They are not your gods any more than the trees and weather are.

But, ask yourself
why you allowed them to appear, and what their signal means to you, these mirages.

Wait for the consistent hum.
Its patience outlives the others.
This will be your heartbeat. Observe yourself with curiosity.

[...]

An energetic nothing makes it easier to hear
the rhythms I would like to have
and to practice.

descending a mountain of snakes

I dreamed them, one early morning
My body lying beside you in bed
My dream-mind still with you, picking its way along a mountain slope
And then there were the snakes

Looking down at my feet,
they seemed to leak from and over the rocks like a spring
already flooding over my ankles, swimming over each other towards the way I'd already come.
My heart fluttered panic, then still.

They seemed not to notice;
fixed unblinking eyes on their own horizon.
They hadn't come for me.

I could choose to fear them, and in doing so, cause commotion.
I focused on my own horizon; let them keep theirs.

A fate that has not come for you has no fangs.
My mind focused on their faces. Snakes of all different colors and sizes.
Smooth like grass and rough like flowing boulders.

My dream-fears, seeking confirmation of danger, identified one in particular
an adder or rattle-shape, cheeks fat with poison
yellow slit eyes staring straight ahead; not at me.
I was but a boulder in his landscape.

I breathed a sigh of relief atop my own mental tightrope.
One misstep could prompt a thousand poisoned teeth.
But, only if I drew attention with fear.
I breathed in and out in this valley. The sun was out.

These fates were not mine unless I chose to demand their attention.
I breathe out again, grateful for tightrope practice
and content to keep the egos of my fears invisible.

Grateful that I can look to my own horizon and let my fears choose theirs.
Grateful for being exactly where and when I am:
Descending a mountain, with snakes not meant for me.

One by one,
I respectfully lifted my feet,
and hopped down the rocks to join you.

This world is a glove

In the space between, it's easier to see an all.
That tree, that cat, those people.
Perhaps only as different from each other
as the pinky on my right hand
from my left thumb
from my ear.

What, in this world, is reincarnation?
What sense does it make to think of switching places,
When you lose the illusion of discretely separate lives?

The surface of this world is like a glove,
that life wears when it goes out.
What sense does it make to think of switching fingers?

keep waking

He told me of his dreams
Of how they're nightmares.
Of how he doesn't want to sleep.

I do not want to sleep,
Because I fear that I'll have dreams,
From which I do not want to wake.

What shall I do, but return to cultivating the space
between stimulus and response
in which a pilgrim soul may wander?

清明节

你知道吗？
我的外婆最喜欢的颜色青色。
她说过 是因为活的，生长的，青色
In which I am grateful for homemade qingtuan and tiny lights.

The time between

Somewhen in my imagined past

There is a girl still waiting
by the driveway
for her dad
to take her in his pickup truck to the dump, to the store, to the local racing club
knowing they'll to talk about science, about college, about people, about the future
real things, she knew.
She didn't know how she knew, but she knew, and she would save the memories for discussions.

neither the girl nor her father could know that for the next decade, he would leave each month without knowing how to say goodbye. And, she would get used to saying goodbye without knowing that he'd left.

She would spend the next few decades finding men who couldn't recognize her; who had a certain brand of humor and critical nature, and learning, painfully, by trial and error, to stop waiting and leave them instead.

"Just how lonely ARE you?" asked the Voice
The Heart stayed silent, knowing that the Voice speaks from the overflow


It is no wonder
that while Odysseus stole the stage at the time,
the character from the Odyssey I will always remember is the unnamed hound who,
on recognizing the disguised Master he lost when a puppy
wagged his heavy tail in joy, and finally died.


Filling the time between
there is a loneliness
The mission is to drain it until the empty space is just that and nothing more

no more salt,
no more water
just the space and time

The space between

Last year, the image was water
the kind that runs down a mountain, searching for a stream
the kind that reacts in perfect measure, no more, no less, to a dropped and sinking stone.
the kind that calmly accepts an obstacle and, in embracing it, flows unimpeded
the kind that is not ice

The image was water
and we made it down the mountain to a lake.

This year, I wondered whether there would be a new image
And there is.

It is the non-image. The emptiness, the void, the gap, the non-often-recognized-yet-structured space between.

In keeping with that theme, we ask ourselves what is not.

When I encounter a given situation with a given person
- what is not happening?
- who is not speaking?
- which voices am I not hearing?
- who is the other person not?
and at last,
- who am I not?

What at first seems inefficient becomes quickly clarifying.
In describing what is not the stone,
I finally see (and absorb) only the stone that falls
and nothing else

3/14/16

The pi day of the century, I spent it well

Would Einstein like Asahi?
We should have poured one out for him.

Crisscrossing streets through Shanghai,
An exercise in linguistic chemistry:
Adventures in Potentium,
An unexpected gedanken experiment
in the emergent alchemic triad

A steam-punk vat laden with purple possibility
a silver paint of reflective perception
the lightless black of non-negotiable that-which-simply-is
And the pack of Diogenic monks that herd these dreams into glowing vats or painted maps
in an allegorical territory following the physics of presocratic philosophy

all while warding off the maw that goes on consuming and is never consumed

There's a story
trying to tell itself
as we fumble for the images
And yet,
we find them.
Finding them, we test them and they hold.

The streetlamp flickered and went out. I witnessed receipt of the message before he left.

Have you ever realized that you're on the other side? An antipode of the very world that you once (and still do) walked?

"You can do it," I thought toward the darkened light, on behalf of a previous world.

The streetlamp hummed back to orange, then yellow-white before he returned.

I want to hear this story.

The Cave is a long tunnel under a roof of stars

Lyrics

It's empty in the valley of your heart
The sun, it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears
And all the faults you've left behind

The harvest left no food for you to eat
You cannibal, you meat-eater, you see
But I have seen the same
I know the shame in your defeat

But I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

'Cause I have other things to fill my time
You take what is yours and I'll take mine
Now let me at the truth
Which will refresh my broken mind

So tie me to a post and block my ears
I can see widows and orphans through my tears
I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

But I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

So come out of your cave walking on your hands
And see the world hanging upside down
You can understand dependence
When you know the maker's hand

So make your siren's call
And sing all you want
I will not hear what you have to say

'Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it's meant to be

And I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

From alabaster, through a tunnel of silent lightning colors. Walking a Tightrope of Serenity. Accompanied by a jellyfish. It is stunningly beautiful.

All heavy laden acquainted with sorrow
May Christ in our marrow, carry us home
From alabaster come blessings of laughter
A fragrance of passion and joy from the truth

Grant the unbroken tears ever flowing
From hearts of contrition only for You
May sin never hold true that love never broke through
For God's mercy holds us and we are His own

This road that we travel, may it be the straight and narrow
God give us peace and grace from You, all the day
Shelter with fire, our voices we raise still higher
God give us peace and grace from You, all the day through

Serendipitous Wine

All day I think it, and last/night I say it.

I love you.

I loveyou
i love you

At times, I believe that all of creation is the attempt to both say and hear these words; is wrapped around the channel that sends and delivers these words; is a facet of this singularity.
I feel grateful and honored and humbled to be spoken through.

More importantly,
I know that you heard it.

The cosmos breathes
banners fly and flutes
hum with their hollow hearts
----

In which direction, I wanted to know, do I shout my gratitude to the universe?
Tell yourself, he said with a smile.
But later, (since the sky is a mirror) we both yelled gleefully towards the stars
in thanks for serendipitous wine.