Learn to Breathe

It is presumptuous for me to speak about death’s after-life. I breathe; and as a result, know only the first veil. It is not, however, presumptuous to seek understanding. Too often we stand help-less against the specter of death – as if it lurks in the shadows and any mention of its name will send its cruel henchmen after you. This is not the case. Death, if it were to stand naked before you, would be no more than a frail body. Much of its mythology is of our own making –our own egos standing before us drenched in words and half-banal truths. But what do we know? Death is the haunting grounds of the living –A place for grief and tears and familiar embraces; a well worn name; and; life that still could have been lived. That is the true crux of death’s iron-vise grip upon our consciousness and imaginations. The sense that more could have somehow been coaxed out of life; that we can cheat death out of a few last glorious gasps of air. But what do we gain out of the last breathe? Nothing more but that which we now posses, breathe. We can cower and do all we can to thwart the inevitable. We can beat our cheats and commit feats to convince ourselves of our bravery and fortitude. But the inevitable will occur. You will stop breathing. That is all. You –Nothing more than that and nothing less. It is a large word; a world in and of itself. Certainly, to the individual it holds certain worth and platitudes. With a bit of discerning taste one could argue that you might even be good, or, full of moral vigor. So what? You can keep composure better than him or her, you know a certain rule of living and the governing principles, You lived for lack of a better term a “good” life. And I ask again; So what? Centuries from now your body will be the compost for others to ohh and ahh over while patting themselves on the back for how far they have come. You know the true worth of civilization when it can hold itself in the mirror and arrogantly pronounce I can do it better. Only the real question is: When am I; when are you; when are they; going to live? And what does that mean? Consult experts and texts and sages and fools; none of them can argue with one simple rule. Breathing. That is the simple fact of living. No matter the manner in which you go gallivanting about the town with your breath, you must have it. The perfect drug, so to speak. Well, what of it? It is a wonder isn’t it –how little we realize and how fragile this whole universe seems; always teetering on the edges of disaster, when the only disaster is not realizing the wonder of what we have. No one is immortal. No civilization, no person, no artist, no Man or Woman can fight that. We can try –The Mayans, The Romans, The Egyptians, all proud bearers of that attempt; and all failures. We are just part of the latest failure. Don’t delude yourself into thinking anything else. But we can live: learn, laugh, cry, hate, achieve, passionately pursue and disastrously desire. We can look to shoulder the world and carry burdens and make burdens of ourselves. We can share foods and warmth and conversation and intimacy. And we should. Always with the full strength of standing and saying “I am living.” When it is all done it will be done. No matter how you “left” or, if you were brave or a coward. In the end the only real coward is the person who did not stop and fully appreciate the capacity it is we have to wonder, and be wondered about. And when you realize this, then you can stand before death and undress it. It is nothing to fear and/or revere. It is merely an old friend, a lone whistler, a weary worker, embittered lovers, an empty bottle of wine. Yes, an empty bottle of wine. And the wine? Drunk. Drunk and Drunk. I drank. I will drink. I have drunk. I once drank. And we are drunk on the nectar of life –A grape to be plucked and enjoyed in harvest. Drape it in definitive definitions, give yourself the illusion of thinking you have penetrated the mysteries; And all I see then is a fool. It is the mysteries that make it worth while –not the answer, but seeking an answer and the lives that will be lived in pursuant of whatever it is that lays on the horizon. Then you are not stagnant, not waiting for death to come, but embracing it because you realize that death; death in all its forms is what makes living. Death, in its own right, is light.

Selah

I do not think that the measure of a civilizationis how tall its buildings of concrete are,but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.

chippewa medicine man - sun bear

A small Meaning (Meaning Everything)

Lately it seems that everyday I am surprised by how little I know, how wrong I have been and will continue to be, and how much of a dichotomy the human experience is. Preparing for the world is such a demanding task and the toll only becomes higher as we mature and face the battles of trying to live a life with meaning. Even deciphering the meaning is a task that many better men and women have failed at. It is hard to not feel small and overrun by the forces that mount before me; from corporate drudgery, environmental disasters, failing education, poverty; and; friends losing grip, family members aging and passing, feeding myself … Even the daily hustle of waking up and shuffling through a day when it seems there is no light and that all the words I comfort my soul with are just as cheap as porn dialogue belittles me. You have to remind yourself of simple joys, at least I do. Moments when a stranger or friend said the right word, a small and beautiful present, and the strange perplexing wonder that existing is. I will never be the person I wish to become. I hope I never do. That sense of striving to better myself keeps me riveted to a future that is both daunting and exciting. I fail so often that I can no longer worry about what it means. Still, fear is my constant companion. Fear that I am not going to be loved, fear that I will fail someone I love, fear of failing my convictions. Maybe most of it is a transient smile and fading memories of friends and lovers; just a haphazard confusion of dust and gas. It is possible. I’ll accept anything as possible. It is in the execution of what is possible that I find my executioner. Too many negative thoughts, not the right gene structure, not enough time, man-power, ideas and so on. Trying to make sense of this is asking too much. Still, I would like to believe, that that does not give us a license to merely get by. Time for me and you and everyone is so frantically uncaring that without a question, a hunger, or a curiosity, it will be just as Thomas Hobbes once said, “Short, nasty and brutish.” I do hope I will love someone new, that maybe they will love me, that I can learn how to dance, to fulfill a lover’s desire, to build a home, to bake cakes, to shoot a gun … This is not a career path, not a life-plan with a 401k retirement plan. I know that. I just would suffocate any other way. I wish I could do it all. I know I never will. Even now I fail to convey to my friends and family and teachers their worth. Even now I waste time knowing how precious it is. I use Styrofoam, don’t make conscious decisions, and fall in line. So many days and nights have passed in a hopeless stupor. And many more undoubtedly will. But I keep moving, knowing how futile and small and unsuccessful I am and will be. It is all I have. That and the strange grace of people who help me along the way, despite what is my obvious undeserving person; But even that I don’t always believe. I don’t think there is one thing I can produce that deserves unfailing belief. For me I would not see the point to it. Once you discover a treasure you have nothing left to look for. Just meeting life is enough, even if it is my small cruelties, my warm conversations, my past indiscretions, my honest moments, and with hope, a moment where I give something of worth to someone else.

Pursuit

We waste infinite time on our vanity. The collection of trinkets, the perceptions of others, the pursuit of our fleeting pleasures, build everything we know. To question this is wrong. There is no other alternative, seemingly. From minute one we are bombarded by the images of this pursuit and the traps created to coincide with our desires. There are feasts everywhere, for everyone privileged enough. Worth is wealth and wealth is the only measure of worth. The soul does not exist and will never exist in such a world. We know ghost-like glimpses of this idea. In song, in book, in broken mornings, in religious fervors; the soul will whistle by. That we never keep it is the fault of grasp, the fault of our greed seeking to gain from something that does not understand consumption. The soul burrows deep and knows only the paths of empathy as it shines in the molten core of our world. Warmth is the center. Warmth is life and a gift. From fire, to sex, to love, to companionship, to walls of a house; we pursue warmth. Not as a measure of greatness but as a means to live. We seek warmth with relentless vigor at times, because we are degenerating, constantly moving towards death and fearing the results. Never realizing, as we hurtled on, that death is precisely what brings us life and illuminates the precious beauty of its frailty. What worth is the mountain that will not crumble? Or the tree that does not rot? We are ephemeral. Transient and small, meant only to pass on our seeds to the next phase. Soon we will be nothing, and in nothing will return to everything. Our names will be lost, our bodies decomposed and I will be destroyed and in doing so we will return to the heat of the earth’s core; cycling back to become the mountain, the soil, the tree, the bird, the man, and the woman. Always always always always always recycling into the warmth of the core.

Year Reflections

The hotel opened up like a delightful grand maze. The colonial architecture only fortified the idea. With just enough imagination I managed to melt away the obvious signs of modernity and feel the same warm distinct night of the Conquistador roaming his hallways. The metamorphosis is instant and unsettling. It takes a certain amount of concentration though to ignore the primal shouts and whoops of the party-goers I arrived with. The clock was slowly winding down for the year and in the back of my mind I know it is only seven days more for 2007. The leap seems inconsequential. They always do.
What is the truly frightening aspect are the internal rages that fueled the year. At which point I wonder, did the Conquistador challenge the same neurosis? Was the self he fought greater? More simple? The question slithers me into the skin of Ghenis Khan, conqueror of many lands. The words he discovered thousands of years before echo loudly in the artificial Colonial Mansion that was really just a hotel. After achieving his monumental campaign throughout the Asian continent and knowing the riches of the great kingdoms the Khan could only scribble on a pillar, “I turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity.” I wonder: Can I achieve this? What would it take? I may spend years chasing that dream, coming closer and closer only to realize that time has no regard for my quest and interests.
So 2007 becomes 2008 and I mark it with everyone else: 2008, only seven days away. Compiling a list of my accomplishments and failure is cruel and mind-wrenching. How do you explain spiritual resurgence? Can you simply mark-down new found strength? The deed is hard, unbearably hard. No, only history makes sense in the soft light of the Mexican night, roaming hallways like a ghost while your friends rot away their liver with liquor. History and the forces that drive it and the numerous failures and the numerous successes are all that matter. But why lie? There is more and I know it. I know that the year brought something new and that sorting the mess out is a daunting task. A list obviously won’t cut. So I sit and compose a story, a poem, a long winded memoir; grasping at some central idea or thought that could piece this year together.
All that comes is a phrase: I eat, sleep, shit, and the rest is guess work. Just that phrase, a dim-witted one at best. There is so much to put; lessons, new adventures, new challenges … even the tears. Like the success of my first scuba dive or the haunting visible deterioration of my Grandparents. You can not quantify or convey it fully. These things are personal and, in light of the sand, minor. Instead what erupts is a wounded idea about Conquistadors, Genghis Khan, and the redemption of a pillar. That is what drives my year-end reflection. Ugh, how serious and moribund. And finally after all that walking, with an empty bottle of beer, I decide to sit down. I find a grandiose patio that retains a sensuous charm. And just there, on the edge, overlooking the vast obsidian ocean is a chair. I sit down and I realize: The chair is soaking wet.
So I laughed. Here I was considering myself so grand and compelling when it took a cosmic joke to remind me I was never special. I had a wet ass. That was my year, all of it: an endless search for a wet chair.
The lesson is the laughing. You need it. When you do laugh, at yourself first, you can relax and pay attention to the beauty. This is a sensation history knows, the simplicity of watching a beautiful scene, whatever that may be. In this case; a black night, a restless ocean, and a lonely wet chair I spent a year searching for.

Should Death take me, for we never know...

To those left behind- This is a life fulfilled. Life is always fulfilled when you live. Time is short. I am writing this as I go. Not to any place a ticket will take you. This is for family, friends, and lovers. Will there be wisdom in these words? Maybe. Pain, probably. Love, certainly. It is all I have to give, love. My meager words must shine with the deep well of love I hold for each and every one of you those past, those here and those to come. I won’t apologize. I did the best I could as I improvised my way. Some days were good. Some days I surprised myself, both in cruelty and in goodness. Others, well, how mundane. But I loved and fought with my heart. Never could you say better for me. Don’t cry when I leave. Leave I must. Don’t waste sadness for the place I have left unfilled. Smile that you knew my presence once sparked your creativity. I only wanted to ease the process of imagination to free you from the pain it can bring. I have no words on how to live your life. Only you can find the path. Just recall that even in my fear I followed the voice of my soul, sometimes without reason, always scared, but never did I turn away. So with a smile, madness and a dream plunge into the path your soul has deemed destiny. Do not let it pass for it would be the biggest insult you could ever give to my memory. Worse still, it would be an insult to the image reflecting in your mirror.

Love

Love is strange. Try and define it, categorize it, bottle it and you will try forever. You can only feel it. Like the breeze in the sweltering sun, the consoling touch of a friend, or the wetness left behind from a lover's kiss. Love will find you only when are ready to accept its flow. You can not force -- You can appreciatte. You will be baffled. Love will enlighten, as if the all the world is cast anew in the light of a sleepy eyed dawn. You will remember what it is to be the child who wobbles scared with eyes wide open. You will be challeneged. Love will never leave you the same.

The Moment of Truth

The clock ticks. The clock tocks. You stare limply at your watch. Mintues to hours, hours in minutes. You think. And think some more. The decision was made. You know. Sense it. Sense your fear. Below, the glimmer of giddy rebellion simmers. Like a fever. Waves of madness, coupled with rational sadness. If you are wrong? Too late. Your eyes never leave the clock; As if the synchronized movements will soothe your nervous flights of fancy. You wonder where to begin. You wonder when it began. There is no guide or map. Either way everything has changed.

To My Unborn Daughter

Dear Daughter Yet to be Born,

I mended your wound, the one you have yet to have. Kissed it once for pain and once for the soul. You were still small, even now before you have come. The first day of school you cried so hard you almost never went. How could I send you to school covered in a flood of fear! But go you will, to learn and be, make friends and love the summer ease. My sweetest. My love. Only your mother I have yet to know can claim such a place inside this heart. Daughter of mine, name still unknown, I already feel your beauty will rival the world. The first bike I've yet to give, your first love I've yet to meet. The world is harsh, cruel and unkind. I will protect you in this house of love. I will make mistakes, this I know. Yell or Snap, the kind of tactics one should never resort towards. Please forgive this, it is just, I have grown old. You will come and shine but rain as well. Nights of worry have me worried already ... When you are still young, yet growing so old. I know one day you will become a woman in full. Be a lover to someone, seek there arms in the cold, enjoy your first drinks and many more. If only you could never suffer disappointments ire. Never experiance a hang over, nor a broken heart. O Daughter I have yet to know. I make this promise before you are conceived, for your mother and the house yet to be. Destroying is quick, a task so easy. But I will work to build, listen and learn to create our home. The work will be hard, but worth the load. To bring you into this world in a family with love and hope. So to my Daughter yet to be born, know I will scour the world to give you a warm place to grow.

Your Father Unknown,

Mark

To the Ocean!

I am bringing my Illusions
and
All of life's confusion

You bring your baggage,
full of wounded wings and sadness

We shall hike a mile, or two
Till we meet the ocean blue

Over the cliffs our belongings go

Down
Down
Down

to drown ... in the ocean blue
Let it go, no longer to bother you

Then we'll smile and dance so sweet
And we'll remember:
To laugh
And that life really is a gift.

Love is a Hard Rain

"Love is a hard rain"

I am not sure what it means,
That is what she told me
Just before she decided to leave.

When the door closed behind her
I went searching for dreams,
Till I found I was chasing
nothing
But schemes

I returned stronger, thinking:
'Now I believe!'
So I chased down new lovers --
Only to be left with no cover

Now I wait, patient, for what chance has to offer.