The last February Days

 

February 21, 2011

All the ways I've learned to pray have become stale. Those words don't get me to God. Not the Our Father, nor the Hail Mary. When I feel troubled and I ask for things, like taking away the cup of suffering, I feel ignored. The only thing that seems to work is meditating on the word, God. The mantra of the word seems to clear the space, part the minutia of arrows.

Today there was the image of the willow tree in the backyard of my apartment in Watertown. There, after a particularly painful breakup, I was left with a life that didn't suit me. I got on my path of loneliness. So sitting today, I thought of the long, winding path of loneliness, how I traveled in blindly, filled with self pity, filled with confusion, filled with illusion and magical thinking. (Ah magical thinking, you caused me a great deal of distress. Part imagination, part romanticism, part desire, magical thinking is the primary component of the path of loneliness, because it is a token of illusion) Pema Chodrin says, “That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem.” Oh yes, very serious. When you're steeped in magical thinking and the keen awareness that all around you is NOT magical, you have a problem.

Here is my life, stark naked standing before me. Rise up, I say, and walk.

February 22, 2011

I went for a walk still filled with a dream. I put on the necessary elements, scarf, hat, gloves, extra socks and I took my dog and we walked the hills. The sun had spring light and the ravens still ruled. Above them gulls circled. There weren't many cars. Snow bank ice crystals, still high. Garbage out for pick up, my dog, preoccupied with every last can. I pull, stamp my feet, get 'er moving. We climb one hill; there are SUVs running, warming up for their drivers.

We climb a second hill, the third, make it toward the home stretch. I swing my arms back and forth, think about the dream, the black girl and the greyhound and the Greek church outside our dorm. I was at UNH and the campus had wedding cake-like buildings. There was a crowd gathered in the middle of campus where they were putting on a Shakespearean play. There was a mongoloid child beating up his mother, I took his hand and gently said, “stop”. He listened. The black girl, the greyhound and I moved on toward our dorm which turned out to not be a dorm at all but an apartment. There were men inside, mafioso, the black girl knew them, wanted to hang out with them. They chuckled about private jokes, wore black in striped suits. I told my roommate the Black girl I wanted to go home, I was taking Dolly the greyhound with me. I asked her if she was coming. She said she wanted to wait awhile. I told her that she didn't have to come; I didn't want her to come, I wanted to go home alone. I wanted to get away from those bad men who knew how to kill. Somewhere, maybe not in the apartment, there was a black and white rabbit on a table. His rabbit ears were long, and his eye wandered. So I wake up, after interrupted sleep, restless, ridiculous sleep and I try to meditate and all I think is no way. I'm filled with the symbols in the dream, I'm filled with the absurdity of the dream, I'm filled with dissatisfaction for my life.

The snow is pure white now, gleaming. My face is burned with the cold.

February 23, 2011

I sit down on the mat, weary. What's the difference between this and the bed? You think there, you think here, you think everywhere. Ego pushes for greatness in thinking, greatness that will get you recognized, that will make you money because right now you're making diddly squat and it bothers you. You there, the industrious Capricorn; you're bothered. But ego is giving me an ulcer. The difference between the mat and the bed is I can somehow find compassion on the mat. It takes me awhile, but eventually it comes and I feel better. I think it has to do with intention. My intention for the mat is strictly compassion; my intention for the bed is sleep, which lately I'm fighting for, due to medical reasons. The mat is my safe zone. I can arrange for that there.

Also, ego, you're fired. I'm more content writing only for myself than writing for the blog. No one is reading the blog, and, I feel too self conscious about it. I don't want to have to impress people and feel stress. So no more blog. Pema Chodrin says, “You're the only one who knows when you're using things to protect yourself (or raise yourself) and keep your ego together (and happy) and when you're opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is- working with it rather than struggling against it.” I'm going to let the blog thing fall apart.

February 24, 2011

My heart is heavy with grief and there's nothing I can do about it. There's nothing you can do when the old life visits you in your dreams and the people you love fill a house with warmth. I felt their bodies close by, heard the softness in their voices. Of course it was my grandmother's house, the bilevel on Cheshire Street that's now gone, sold to another family. But it's still available to me at night. Now it's filled with ghosts and every time I'm there I wonder if I'm dead or alive. Last night I was looking for secrets to mental health in coffee grains. My great uncle Rudy was there, the psychoanalyst and we were reading the quality of people's mental states in a pot of coffee. I was the one responsible for making the coffee. I filled the vessel with grains, placed it in the pot, cooked it in water and then spread them out onto pieces of filter paper for scrutiny. There was a formula to go with the grains: 2R = R/100,000. I told my uncle Fred, another psychoanalyst, the formula did not make sense. Also, we had no way of knowing what the numbers meant, because there was no range of mental illness given, i.e. what number indicated what state of mental illness. He agreed. By this time Uncle Rudy was drunk and losing interest in the procedure. We had only made it through about four people and with the whole house full, we had many more to go. Then the party ended and it was the next day. My grandmother asked us when we were leaving. My sister, mother and I would leave right away, our stuff was packed in pink fluffy suitcases in the guest room. My brother wanted to wait another day. I thought of him traveling the bridges alone, the Throgs Neck, the George Washington, big colossuses of steel over torrent water. I woke up broken hearted. This how I wake up when I dream of my grandmother's house. The grief is lodged in my throat and heart like a splint. I can't, I say on the mat. I can't feel compassion. Not today. My heart is buried in dirt and sand. My loved ones are dead and my esophagus is filled with coffee grains. The old life is dead, dead, dead.

A vision comes then, a close up of my esophagus filled with black dirt. A thin green stem moves upward and sprouts leaves.

February 25, 2011

For the novel:

Here

in the world of partial faces

and figments

one must tell oneself

are blue or indigo,

the workings of Algebra

do not apply

nor do falling apples

or the apogees and perigees

of ellipses.

Here

where snakes are seraphim

and time, an afterthought

steel bridges dissolve like salt

in the fog

as

the sun speaks at three fingers

above the horizon

before it melts thrice

in a pool of shade.

Here

we do not eat

or drink,

subsist by memory of taste

and impulse alone-

we wait for slow moving

vessels, their masts

tethered with the faces

of orchids, their cargo,

captive vagrant spirits and lovers

who descend weary and wary,

perplexed by phantom limbs

and eyes and ears.

I

allow the newly initiated

their wanderings

their discovery of hollow places

upon entering their names

in papyrus ledgers.

Here

they call me queen

but I am more the interloper

the partially abducted,

staid, until the grain above is gilded

and forthright

by my mother's hand.

I heed when She rises

from mournful slumber

in a gown sewn from silken flax

and milkweed, strolling

orchards swollen with scent,

the ecstasy of her faith

poised on her lips

as a kiss.

February 26, 2011

Mother, I hear your feet

above me

step softly amongst the straw

your bruised heart, a forgotten fruit

past ripe for plucking

your eyes have worn your cheek raw.

I have slipped again

through the cleft

due west of the cresting waves

where ships carry

a cargo of souls

who bemoan the stone

of their graves.

Mother, the blood of these seeds

still stains my lips

and the taste is bitter, like sin

But I have learned to shine

my own light,

the Blessed feminine.