Truth, Straight Up, No Ice

This entire post actually arrived in my head a while back.   My failure to put it online involved self censorship and precipitated a long and deep depression.  Well, I climbed out of that hole and something wild was waiting for me: myself.  I began to feel a rush deep, deep down and I looked in the mirror like I did on LSD forty years ago.  Once again I saw that energy and consciousness are the only tools in our box lunches and if, like 99.9% of the human race, we quickly turn them over to clergy of any stripe we may as well put a gun in our mouths and pull the trigger.  There is what is and any attempt to spread a layer of spiritual or religious paint over reality is foolish, paralyzing and ultimately destructive.  J. Krishnmurti, the great Indian thinker of the last century, had a very famous debate with a well known Indian swami.  K, as he referred to himself, had been found as a child by two famous Theosophists, Annie Besant and a Col. Ledbetter, after they had both dreamt of finding a great world teacher.  With his poor Brahmin parent's permission they took him to England to educate and train him for this great destiny.  An organization of hundreds of thousands of followers grew to hear and worship this young messiah.  When he was twenty nine, however, his beloved brother died and in his grief K realized that no one could ever teach another human being to be totally alive.  No teachers or teaching, no books or traditions or mantras or get ups or crystals or candles or gods or goddesses or ceremonies or so called sacred anything.  Everyone had to discover truth through seeing life as it happens and that the aloneness of the mind had to be accepted.  There was no path to follow but life as it unfolded and mountain ranges of spiritual pretensions couldn't make even a single leaf fall from a tree until it was ready.  At the height of the debate with the swami Krishnamurti stated unequivocally that no spiritual teacher could ever or would ever enlighten anyone, especially themselves.  The swami challenged this utterly sacreligious  statement and in the height of frustration told K that surely someone in the history of spiritual teachers and traditions must have had the good of mankind in their hearts!  Krishnamurti ended the debate by looking at the exasperated monk and saying:" I am not at all sure, Sir, I am not at all sure."  And neither am I. The following is the story I didn't publish, told entirely in the haiku narrative that came to me as it happened.


Posters everywhere
Advertise Dalai Lama
Radio City!


Our daughter said go
Buddhist interests and all
Then buys us tickets 


Frenzy on Ebay
More scalping than injuns did
Subtle sense of dread


What do people seek?
Holographic holy men?
Freeze dried angel dust?


Will they sell yak tea?
Heat the hall with sacred dung?
Disneyland Tibet


'twas the night before
Will I ever be the same?
Wear something orange!


Whispering goodnight
Goodnight to the old lady
Whispering sutras


Approaching the hall
Funny sixties memory
Watched Fantasia stoned


Funky pilgrimage
Rosetta stone Tibetans
Lock on holy grins


Where did all this start?
Yogananda's flying dreams?
Acid did its bit


Kennedy got shot
Beatles let the sunshine in
Martin's speeches rang


Kent State horror
Sirhan midwives Tricky Dick
Vietnam's nightmare


Waves of Indians
Taming hippies' hookah dreams
Sandalwood sachet


Possibilities
Mantras whispered in our ears
Next stop last lifetime


Average human
Confronting reality
Reach exceeding grasp


Vegas to Tibet
Morphed from mods to magical
Muzak with sitars


Entering the hall
Stone faced body guards scan crowd
Packing heat not warmth


Former special ops
Protecting Dalai Lama
Violent statues


Thousands seeking truth
Tickets charged on Mastercharge
Pray now pay later


Endless ritual
Seekers showing off their faith
Prostration nation


Dalai Lama speaks
Massive screens on either side
God knows we love huge


Monks and Richard Gere
Faith and entertainers, too
Access Hollywood


Elaborate throne
Four more days and I'll go mad
Praying for Rockettes


Mind numbing teaching
Tibetan English yak goulash
Viral yawning spreads


Feigning attention
Twelve thousand eyelids drooping
Networks would cancel


Cannot even write
Ink in pen planning to strike 
Brain cells walking out


I get up to pee
Profound feeling of relief
Men's room as temple


Whether to return
Cell phone junkies pound out text
Centripetal force


Was Jesus this dull?
Did Mohammad induce sleep?
Half off dogma sale


Brain dead start to leave
Eyes sting with disappointment
Mutter half baked wows


How did I get here?
Jersey birth must have been bad
Blame the Mafia!


I did not go back
Gave my tickets to a friend
Gave her my fake smile


Always loved the truth
Advice to Dalai Lama
Marry, get a job


Stop being reborn
Buddha would have laughed out  loud
Metal detectors!


Minds stuffed with concepts
No room left for here and now
Human tragedy


Live life without rules
Laughter sounding through it all
Not from concentrate


Living and dying
Inhalation's rising sun
Exhalation's night


Next time, Holiness
Take the time to watch me be
Life knows my address

Dark Matter

The very word, abyss, can send a chill through the mind.  It lacks particular definition but it evokes that which is vast, unfathomable  and immeasurable.  One thinks of dark and frozen space or black water whose depths are literally unknowable.  Invariably, whatever or whoever inhabits these infernal and uncharted spaces arouses our deepest fears, passions and occasionally the madness which normally lies sleeping deep in the subconscious.  In fact, it seems to me that the abyss is that which lies just beyond the borders of our sanity, our longings, and the familiar illusion we think of as our lives.
     The abyss begins at the point beyond which control is lost, beyond which who we think we are ceases to exists;  it is the silence into which our minds will not go, the perfect stillness in which our egos, strutting and arrogant, lose their bearings.  It begins at the threshold between the known, the predictable, the familiar and the randomness and chaos of the unknown.  The abyss is the place on ancient maps where cartographers ominously wrote: Beyond Here there be Dragons.  I have entered into several dialogues with the abyss on this blog- silence, time, writing, even death.  Recently, I felt a deep need to enter into a dialogue with something which has haunted and baffled me since I was very young: the mind of the tyrant/torturer.  The history of the human race has been stained and scarred  countless times by these malignant souls and I have decided to enter the world in which they dwell to find answers.  When a right wing politician like Sharon Angell of Nevada is quoted as saying "It might be time for violence" if she doesn't defeat Harry Reid the soil in which such monsters grow might be more fertile than we think...

Mammalian brain
Homeland insecurity
Armed and dangerous


Burmese child soldiers
Gentle people trapped in hell
Smiles will be punished!


A knock on the door
Sudden screams and shattered glass
Last thing many hear


Idi Amin's eyes
Hitler, Saddam, Pinochet
Hearts made of metal


Guernica's cow shrieks
Evil's hissing rain of fire
Love gasping for air

(I am S.- he is TT.)


S.
I have hated you all my life.
TT.
Ah, so proud, so heroic, so totally stupid. Hatred binds you to the thing you hate.  Beware.
S.
What about the people you hate.
TT. 
I never hate.  I eliminate.  All you do is think.
S.
I am furious that you exist.
TT.
So what?  Do something about me.
S.
I will name you as evil.  
TT.
I beg you.  Anything but that.  
S.
You think it's funny?
TT.
Do I think it's funny?
S. 
You heard me.
TT.
Forgive me.  I was thinking how you would look if your ears were sliced off.
S.
Is that supposed to frighten me?
TT.
No. To humor me.  If I wanted to frighten you your chair would smell like shit.
S.
So you think that's funny.
TT.
I don't think anything is funny.  If I see my enemies or smell them or sense them or lick the air and taste them on my tongue every cell in my body screams for their elimination.
S.
So your afraid of everything.
TT.
On the contrary.  I have no fear.  I am fear.
S.
Why?
TT.
Listen to me.  I'll only say this once.  Nothing lives in my world without my permission.
S.
What gives you that right?
TT.
What gives me that right?  Nothing.  I take it.  It's who I am.  My people want me to have that right.  I am their father.  My control is my love for them.
S.
Your people hate you.
TT.
Fear and love often sleep together.
S.
What about your death? You can't control that.
TT.
I don't need to.  Death will be too busy with my victims.
S.
Forever?
TT.
Forever! I rule now. And now.  And NOW!!  Forever deals in hope.  Hope is weakness.
S. 
They say the meek shall inherit the earth.
TT. 
Yes.  When I'm finished with it
S.
Is that why you need to torture?
TT.
I don't need to torture.  I love to torture.
S.
Do you ever think of the, I don't even know how to describe it, of the unbearable pain you have caused.
TT.
I'm not the one in pain.  I'm the one in control.
S.
How do you feel when you torture someone?
TT.
In a word?  Ecstatic.
S.
That is disgusting.
TT.
I'm not the one in pain.  I'm the one in control.
S.
Don't their tears, their screams begging you to stop ever affect you?
TT.
Those screams are music to me.
S.
Do you know how incredibly sick that is?
TT.
Why?  Because you say so.  They feed me.  My power grows with their fear and pain.  When they are about to die, you can't begin to imagine the pleasure it gives me to look into their eyes.  Eyes without hope are the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
S.
Do you love anything?
TT.
You're not listening.  I've told you what I love.
S.
What about children?  You're children.
TT.
I adore them.
S.
What if they defy you?
TT.
You don't understand.  They are loved.  They are safe because they don't defy me.
S.
So you're a tyrant in your own family.
TT.
I am their protector.  They can feel my love.
S.
At the price of freedom.
TT. 
Freedom is a gift from me.
S.
What if you lose your precious control?
TT.
I will never lose control and this is why.  When I hold a man's testicles in one hand and a knife in the other no one ever believes I will do it.  But when I cut them off you cannot imagine the horror in their eyes.  Do that with a smile on your face and you will never lose control.
S.
You've done that?
TT.
More times than I can remember.  That is my secret.  I never hesitate to do the thing?
S.
The thing?
TT.
Whatever I need to do to collect terrified souls.  It is my art, my purest beauty.  My mind is a museum which collects fear.  I am a curator, a connoiseur of fear.  I smell it,  I swirl it on my tongue, I literally tremble with the thrill of it.  I never stop searching for the purest fear imaginable.
S.
Are you afraid of anything?
TT.
Yes.
S. 
And what is that?
TT.
That that perfect fear will escape me.  But, I am patient.  That is why I torture.  I torture to hear the perfect symphony of screams.
S.
Can anything stop you?
TT.
That is, if I may say, the dilemma of the human race?  It's almost like mathematics.  I am the perfect negative number.  Only the perfect positive number can stop me.

Tangled Skeins

Yearning is a thick, dense, exquisite, piercingly clear hunger for that which is gone, or never really happened but might happen eventually.  It can be for a person, a place, a condition or thing or for that matter any combination of the four.  It can be for love, for power, for sexual ecstasy, for freedom of the body or of the mind, for money, for fame, for enlightenment, for recognition, for anything.  The arrival of anything for which we feel that trembling desire exists in the mind as an image perfect in every conceivable detail- how it looks, tastes, feels, smells, sounds, moves, even how it thinks on its journey to meet us as a dream entering our dream, giving birth to that moment when we leap out of the endless sea of ordinary life to embrace our prize in the sun heated air of infinite potential.
       This wild, giddy sense of who we have been or who we might be or who we will be once again is the secret spark which sustains every human life.  We may call it God if our sense and certainty of its presence seems beyond our limited capacity to comprehend and wield its immense power.  But ultimately we are all destined to hold and thrill to its astonishing force as a child learns to crawl and walk and run and eventually fly with the pure joy of creation itself.  It is a well from which we can and will drink forever.   It is a well whose water will nourish and cleanse and heal and teach us that the Sea of Possibility is our one and only home.  The journey to this sea is an odyssey fraught with fear and often grave doubt; it can involve terrible pain and loss and sadness and many deaths of many bodies, our own and those we love. We can feel as if we have strayed from the path for eons and suddenly the startling sense of the ancient and familiar fills our lonely minds and hearts.  A deep love can trigger memory and knowledge of our true selves and even the agony of grief can remind  us of the bliss which lurks within us all as the awful sting of sadness slowly fades.  Eventually, if we stay awake, stand under every possible feeling from the pure joy of childhood to the ache of aging and the taunting mystery of dying, a small stream begins to flow through our souls.  It grows stronger and harder until its sheer power strips away the false to leave in its place  only light and love and life which never dies.

Lives like tangled skeins

Missed connections everywhere

Screams echo within

Karma's taming power

Holding passion's lions tight

Yearning for release

Sad myth of freedom

Arrogant identities

Like punching water

Mapquest ecstasy

Infinite miles and lifetimes

Circle forever

A group of players

Holding mirrors to nature

As if nature cares

Bodies become one

Burning ego's effigy

Evil loathes laughter

If I could hold you 

Kiss you, touch you, enter you

Bullshit would dissolve

Loyalty is strange

If you love they must love back

Myths in love with myths

Loving the caldron

Passion for his emptiness

Priests grow fat on people's fear

Be utterly still

What if I don't give a shit?

Give me kisses' bliss

Not much lovemaking

So much longed for ecstasy 

Fuck enlightenment

My translation blues

Here's the truth as I see it

Next lifetime I guess

No easy answers

Obscure pain of countless deaths

Life which never dies

Darkness before dawn

Hopeless blackness born of pain

Sudden birth of light

Perfect creation

Wonder what our path should be?

Continue breathing

Always heading home

Innocence personified

Dream on beams of light

Knock, knock. Who's there? Knock, knock. Who's there? Knock...

Practice makes perfect
Do something a million times
See what I mean?


A bundle of nerves
Knock, check, tap, whistle, click and hum
Don't stop or you'll DIE!!!


Stepping on a crack
Medicare's biggest nightmare
Orthopaedist's dream


A Dialogue with Obsession and Compulsion ( I'm S. They're O. and C.)


S.
How does it feel to be you two?
O.
Don't get us started.
C.
He's right.  Don't.
S.
No, seriously, how does it feel?
O.
You tell him.
C.
Serious as a heart attack.
O.
No, seriously, this is our job. Our purpose.  Trust me, if I get into your head he's all over you like flies on shit.
C.
That's a fact.  Once I move in it's damn hard to move me out.  But, seriously, people are damn lucky to have us.
S.
And how is that?
O. and C.
Are you kidding? Do you know what could go wrong if we weren't around?
S.
No, tell me.
O.
You tell him.
C.
Stoves could explode in droves.
S.
Oh, my God, I better run home and check.
O.
You think that's funny?  I have seen stoves explode and it's not a pretty picture. I've seen thieves break in when people didn't go back and check locks.
C
And check and check and check.
O.
You can say that again.
C.
And check and check and check.
O.
I've seen people fall over dead when they didn't knock on wood.  I've seen perfectly healthy children get hit by trucks..
C.
Eighteen wheelers!
O.
...when they're mothers didn't spin around and tap their foot three times at every curb.
C.
I knew a man whose entire family got cancer and died horrible deaths within a month.  You know why?
S.
I can't imagine.
C.
He forgot to hum the Star Spangled Banner when the dog farted.
S.
Just once?
O. and C.
What can we say.  Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
S.
You still haven't answered my question.  What does it feel like to be you?
O.
I'll take this one. It's like this.  It's like holding sand in your fist.  A couple of grains fall down and you catch them before they hit the floor.  And then a few more and you catch them and then a few more and you catch them and then you...
S.
And when do you stop?
C.
You don't stop.  Remember the Plague?
S.
Somebody stopped?
O.
No, some idiot didn't tap his elbows with a spoon when the cat threw up.
C.
It's the little things.
O.
Can't stress it enough.
S.
And the sand?
C.
Thank God that woman has been diligent.  I could kiss her.
S.
What if she falls asleep?
C.
She did.
O.
Once.
S.
And?
O. and C.
Bill Gates was born.
O.
Nah.  Just kidding.
C.
We love the guy.
O.
Believe me.  Hall of Famer.  First round.
C.
You can say that again.
O.
Believe me.  Hall of Famer. First round.
S.
O.K., O.K. Really, though.  Who needs you.  So many millions of people are miserable because of you two.  They have to live forty eight hours every day just checking and worrying over and over and over.  It's a nightmare.
C.
Forty eight hours?
O.
In our world that's part time.
S.
I mean it.  It's an absolute nightmare for people and their families.
O.
Should I wait for the violin music?  No?
S.
It's not even remotely funny.
O.
No, I'll tell you what's not even remotely funny.  Life without us.  That's what.  Here's a question for you.
How many ways can you serve cold mastodon?  Huh? Think about it.  Thank God we got into that one Neanderthal's head.
C.
Oh,man, I love this story.
O.
He took those two sticks and rubbed them together.  Nothing.  Then he thought about that disgustingly cold mastodon and he rubbed and he rubbed and he rubbed and just when he was about to faint,  Bingo!
Fire.
S.
I'm sure his mother was proud.
C.
Not nearly as proud as when his brother went to hell and back to find salt.
O.
She made a briscuit that would make you cry.
S.
But what about peace of mind?  Just being able to live without being driven crazy by you.  People get to the point of suicide when they can't stand it any more.
C.
Can we describe history without us?  No pyramids,  No Roman Empire,  No ancient Greece.  No Buddha
No nothing without us.  Believe it, you're looking at the two greatest midwives in the world.  Oh, no, I almost forgot the Dark Ages.  We were totally unemployed.  Those shmucks couldn't even get excited about picking lice off their heads.  And washing their hands?  Forget it.
S.
Wouldn't we have found our way without you?
O.
Oh, yeah.
C.
In about a billion years.  And turn out the light when you leave.  But, what am I thinking?  If Edison hadn't tried TEN THOUSAND TIMES you wouldn't even have a lightbulb.  And let's not even mention the internal combustion engine.  Right?
O.
You said not to mention it.
C.
It was a figure of speech, you idiot!  Face it, my friend, while most people were staring at their bellybuttons our kind of people invented everything.
O.
And wrote everything.  Guttenberg was copying the Bible with a pencil before he met us.  And Shakespeare was thinking what...maybe a couple of one acts.  Need we say more.
S.
Right...and your people have bombed everything, polluted everything, destroyed everything in an insane urge to conquer and control everything.
C.
Oh, excuse us, but we didn't realize you drove here in a car instead of a magic carpet.  And while we're talking history why don't you give everything back to the Native Americans.  You know why?  Because you love what we've done for you?
S.
Really?  With everything beginning to crumble.  Your handiwork is beginning to collapse all over the earth.
O. and C.
Thank God, our Second Coming!  Show us who doesn't need us know!
S.
And most people have been knocking on wood forever and what has it got them.
O.
Formica, my friend, formica.  Not the same.  With  formica you need six finger snaps while you spell your mother's maiden backwards.
C.
But who reads directions?
S.
Well. I suppose you better get to work saving the planet.
O.
Now you get it.  Start the car.  We'll be right out.
S.
We don't have any time to waste.
O.
Believe me, if we don't check the stove.
C.
There won't be any time.
O.
Knock on wood.

We're late, we're late, for a very important...

Running out of time!
Lies told by ticking tyrants
Now is all there is


Time is the worst lie
Where is it?  Bring it to me now?
Now is all we have


Absolute stillness
Futures pouring into now
Life will never end


I have been thinking a great deal lately about obsession ( and addiction and madness- the mind's unholy trinity).  We are often characterized as an obsessed race of people.  Obsessed with sex, with power, with food, with money and, at least in the West, with youth.  I think, however, the thing we are most obsessed with is time. It haunts our every waking hour.  We make time.  We kill time.  We buy time.  We spend time.  The alarm clock rings.  We race through everything to get to work on...time.  The rest of the day is chopped into endless bits of time-work, eat, sleep, have fun, have sex, have anything- all carefully parceled out according to how much time they take.  We stumble through our lives like exhausted hurdlers leaping over an endless string of deadlines.  And then we get sick.  How much time do I have, Doctor?  And finally we die.  What time's the funeral?  None of our obsessions will ever receive as much time as...time.  Think about it.  If you can spare the time.   Maybe next time.  When I have the time.  How much time will it take?  Gee, I don't know.  How much time do you have?  I WISH I HAD THE TIME!!! Well, since we will all run out of time someday I though it might be time for an episode of: 
MEET YOUR DICTATOR- A DIALOGUE WITH TIME! 
(Don't worry about the time- he only had a few minutes to spare before he had to get back to running our lives.  I'm S. He's T)


S:  How would you describe yourself?
T:  I am not anything.
S:  Then why do you exist?
T:  I don't always exist.
S:  When do you exist?
T:  When consciousness requires a sense of 
      movement.
S:  And how do you do that?
T:  I am infinite portraits of every conceivable
     here and now falling one after another in 
     every imaginable direction in perfect 
     sequence. Is that clear?
S: As if an infinite number of film projectors 
     running every frame of anything imaginable
     played until the illusion was completed. 
     Yes?
T: More or less.
S: But that would mean everything everywhere 
     is an illusion.
T: You didn't ask if I was real.
S: Are you real?
T: Not really.
S: Then why are we absolutely obsessed with
     you?  Your like a massive drum pounding out 
     seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, 
     months, years of everything that lives?  Were
     terrified of whatever you are.
T: That's a choice you make.  A very poor
     choice.
S: Why do we even need you?
T: Because the space in which consciousness 
     manifests agrees to play by these rules?
S: Otherwise we'd all be late for work?
T: Otherwise life would not recognize itself.
S: I don't understand.
T: Every atom that has ever been dances to
    what you call time.  They assemble to appear
    as anything imaginable until the illusion is 
    complete.  The creation of that illusion takes 
    what you call time.
S: Am I an illusion?
T: Absolutely.
S: So you're saying that I am just atoms 
     temporarily united into what I call me in
     time?
T: Yes.  They're never fixed and they never 
     actually touch.  You could not exist out of
     time.
S: Not even for one lifetime?
T: For which lifetime? You as a baby?  A child?
     A man?  Old someday?  Dead?
S: And everything is just a dance of atoms?
T: In a word?  Yes.
S: Then why don't we see it or feel it?  Look.
    What if I take a knife and cut my arm?
T: Assembled atoms called a knife would open
     atoms  called your skin releasing other atoms
     called your blood.  And sometime the atoms
     can be seen.  With drugs like LSD, for
     example. In profound meditation. 
     Sometimes in madness.
S: What if I could suddenly see these atoms in
     this furious movement you describe?
T: You would probably be arrested by atoms
     you call the police and taken away by other 
     assembled atoms in white coats.
S: But why do we need clocks?
T: Only to express the agreed upon
     measurement of movement in this
     experience.
S: There are other times?
T: You can't imagine.
S: Is there some sort of time everywhere?
T: That's impossible to say.
S: Why?
T: Because infinity never ends.  It has no time.
S: That's beyond creepy.
T: But incredibly elegant.
S: What would happen if I stepped into another
     time?
T: You would disappear.
S: But couldn't the atoms I call me adapt?
T: Yes, but who you think you are would 
     instantly cease to exist.
S:  Is there time after death?  
T: There is really no such thing before what you 
     call death.  Everything exists at once.
S: What happens to all the atoms in the
     Universe when it dies?
T: They apply for unemployment. 
S: Seriously.
T: The dancing never stops.  The band just
     plays a different tune.
S: But in a different time.
T: Without missing a beat.