In Dog We Trust

...had a yoga teacher once who talked a lot about the tailbone...as yoga teachers are wont to do...pointing out that it’s an evolutionary vestige...meant to control the tails we no longer have...unfortunately...

...with tails, he said, dishonesty would be impossible...imagine playing hard-to-get with tail wagging vigorously...or, conversely, trying desperately but failing to make it move while emitting false, empty I-love-you’s...

...looking after my friend Bella...pictured, above...for the week...a chance to renew my abiding faith and trust in...dog...

turning out the lights,
I hear a thump thump thumping
on the wooden floor

Mindful Distraction

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams.
Don DeLillo

...old loneliness unearthed like shattered tablets or multiple-amputee goddesses who don’t seem to notice...photos of long-dead people as smiling children...ladies’ shoes found incongruously on uninhabited south sea islands...coffin lids scraped by desperate fingernails...vampires, figurative and otherwise...legions of slaves buried intentionally if, no doubt, unwillingly, with their kings...organic waste turning gradually to petroleum while petroleum products don’t seem to be turning to anything any time soon...flowers and dreams we hope will bloom again come spring...landmines left over from almost forgotten wars, potent as ever...

...recently read about a guy who spent years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner in...I think...China....when he came out, people were surprised at how calm and centered he seemed following such an ordeal....he credited meditation with getting him through it...though, he said, finding time to meditate was a constant struggle...even stuck as he was by himself in a cell all day, every day...

...of course, these meditative disciplines mostly come from places—India, China, Japan—that, despite romantic pastoral images in western minds, have been really, really crowded and noisy for a long, long time...maybe that’s not a coincidence...

Weirdness Meditation #1

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson

...I think we can ride out the weirdness of it all, said my friend...I’ve been riding out weirdness all my life, I replied...

...try to find an essential balance between thinking things through and getting through thinking...don’t know how an exception can ever actually prove a rule...but guess that, if you really need your rules proven, almost anything can be made to work...may have been out sick the day they taught the standard rules of living within my social and historical context...most don’t make sense to me no matter how meticulously they’re explained...and, almost invariably, by the time I know I’m breaking them they’ve already become habits...

...I don’t understand most of the acronyms people use on the internet...always assume everybody else does, but could be wrong...perhaps everybody’s just been popping klytukl and snzitpui into all their emails, updates, texts, and tweets because that’s what everybody else is doing...not wanting to feel left out...just assuming everybody else knows what they’re talking about...which may be how language started in the first place...maybe everybody just kept coming up with their own words and misunderstanding one another until somehow all the misunderstandings became accepted as truths...and that’s how we got to where we are now...

Nothing is more natural to drunkards than ellipses, for they are the zig-zags of language.
Victor Hugo

....have never really understood the difference between creative writing and writing...got ideas without words, and words without ideas...got friends with dogs, and dogs with friends...got an aquarium full of fish that can swim like Michael Phelps...got body parts that speak abstract poetry I don’t understand...and the reverse seems to be true, as well...am concerned sometimes that people won’t understand what I write, and, other times, that they understand too much...

You know it’s gonna get stranger, so let’s get on with the show...
John Perry Barlow




*for whatever it’s worth, have been writing slightly less strange stuff at Elephant Journal, about gay marriage, world music, Humphrey Bogart doing yoga, and other stuff...

Five Years Gone

You were so tall,
how could you fall?
Billy Bragg, Tank Park Salute

The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
W. Whitman

...spent Sunday, August 14, 2005, with friends at the beach...used a broken yellow plastic sand mold found at the water’s edge to dig a hole deep enough their little son could stand up in it...

...back at their place, enjoyed a seafood cookout, and sat reading their copy of the second-to-last Harry Potter book...R.I.P., Dumbledore the wizard...finishing it some time after midnight...

...had left my cell-phone on the bedside table in the guest room that morning....getting ready for sleep, saw there were two messages and a text...each from my older brother...each saying the same thing, repeatedly...call me, tonight...with a sense of urgency that made me want to put the phone back down, go to bed, pretend I knew even less than I did...

...less than a week before, handed in grades for my summer course at Cornell...effectively marking the end of my academic career....without regrets...I’d be getting home the next day, Monday, August 15, 2005, to an editing project a friend hooked me up with, and lots of ideas...day one of the whole new thing just waiting to dawn as I made the call...

...some things we think we know will happen, but really don’t...not until they actually do...and even then, it can take a while...and even when we think we do again, there’s layer upon layer of knowing and unknowing, like a cosmic onion ever-unpeeling...

...a car accident...mom was okay...you were not...

...Saturday morning, August 13th, had breakfast with you and mom at McGlade’s on the boardwalk, then left to drive north, stopping to visit friends for a day or two before heading home...neither of you really clear on my career plans, so I explained, again...was gonna try to do what I’d always wanted, work free-lance, write...venture off into the unknown, the untold want...see what happens...

...mom was apprehensive, but you, surprisingly, weren’t...seeming to step away from habitual pessimism, the criticism and negativity that kept me at such distance...in our last minutes together, you smiled almost boyishly, told me how excited you were about what I was doing...proud...happy...

...thank you...

Roadmaps for the Soul

...the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul to the old folks home and the college...
Bob Dylan

...was teaching this freshman writing class and started talking about the next paper assignment...said something like I’m not sure what the topic’s gonna be...and, before I could continue with but, it’s gonna be along the general lines of...one of the kids said how ‘bout whatever we want?...and was quickly echoed by other voices in the room...yeah, whatever we want!...whatever we want!...

...I, needless to say, was about to smile and say no...like teachers generally do when students express a desire to do whatever they feel like...but paused and thought for a second or two...then said okay...whatever you want....

...the kids, of course, were thrilled to be granted so much freedom...amazed at what a cool teacher they had....

...a week later, though, when I asked how the project was going, there was an uncomfortable silence...until, finally, the same kid who came up with the idea said this is a lot harder...

...I smiled, said yeah, I know...

Truth is a pathless land...
J. Krishnamurti