And under the chaos of life, when I slip beneath its surface, the light, it calls, just as it did before, not urgently nor demanding, but softly, gently, reminding me that while I may momentarily flirt with human form, the light it is always there, waiting to bring me back home.
Maybe that is life:
Breaking out of the cocoon of innocence while holding the ability to stay soft - despite all the sharp objects that surround us.
To be. To be anything at all. How very strange it all is when you stop. When you stop and find yourself outside of your normal routine. Outside of what you have become accustomed to. What has come to define you. It’s trippy to get so rooted into a routine and suddenly the sky opens and you don’t know what tomorrow will look like. You don’t know what it will feel like. You don’t know who you yourself will be. And you realize you never really knew, you were merely caught in the illusion that you know what was ahead. It’s a wonder to be alive at all, a bizzare and strange wonder.
To create art outside of oneself is a noble, penultimate pursuit. To embody the art into the fabric of your daily life is the ultimate creation.
External art and the making of such has been a way for me to make my own clearing - to forge the path my soul was destined to walk through. While there is no point of arrival, there is one of eternal arrival. Eternal arrival is found through embodying that which was once sought.
True art does not lie in outer materialization, but in one’s inner perception, in invisible embodiment.
I’m not interested in being a voice of the time. That voice is temporal, fleeting. I am interested solely in allowing the voice of the timeless to speak through me.
Dreams,
Dreams,
Jelly beans.
I toss and turn
Like a laundry machine.
I dance in the night
Unafraid of the curse.
I smile in the sun
Knowing I’m my cure.
Love is here in my very bones
Wrapping me in blankets
Like an oversized coat.
The plane floats away
As the leaves turn green.
The train passes by,
Oh what a strange dream.
Divinely intertwined
Tangled in cotton
The window is open
The air is crisp
The Full Moon rises
Now this is bliss
I feel held together by threadbare shoe strings
And worn out elastic
But he said I spin the finest of silks
_
I reside beneath the guise of personality
A busy mind makes a foggy mirror
Spirit is synonymous with light
You are spirit disguised as human
My brother
Michael is dead.
I danced around him
In a blue tutu as children.
I snuck him sweet chocolate
And we rode the rocking horse.
Our parents took us to the zoo,
He was always smiling, my silly,
Sarcastic, sensitive little brother.
He could not speak but he spoke
My name when we were children.
He taught me the wordless gift of
intuition and what the spirit world was like.
We would watch his eyes and know that he
Was dancing with the angels in divine light.
Oh brother, I love you so
We shared more than blood,
We shared a light-filled soul.
An ineffable bond I could not know,
Not truly until you went back home.
But now that you’re there,
I sense your presence everywhere.
I feel the thread between your soul and mine,
One day we will dance together in the great divine.
Blue swirls drown my soul
As we sit and wait for the unknown toll.
I anguish in a green taxi waiting in traffic -
I see the beauty in her mismatched outfit.
The pain of your death is searing
And yet somehow it helps me see more clearly.
All that is real, true and worth the most
Is that which no man or mind can compose.
“How Infectious!”
Infection!
Get the jab or die!
FEAR! DIVISION! ANGER!
(The changing faces of suffering)
What has happened to this world?
He was only talking about
The infectious affect
Of her radiant smile.
She told him,
“With a world as dark as ours,
We have to be our own sunshine.”
Different stories
Same past
Who says
This life is last?
We are diaphanous spirits
Drifting in worlds unknown,
Even to ourselves,
Ever dying into
Our highest becoming.
Ah, how wonderful a teacher emotional pain can be, if we allow it! How marvelous the fear of what will happen, the grappling with moments of life when that dark heavy cloud refuses to leave you alone, how beautiful, how wonderful, if we allow it. Ram Dass called these types of experiences ‘grist for the mill,’ helping us to refine, refine, refine. Darkness helps the light to crystallize. Darkness helps to wake us up, to let us see how much light we were ungratefully basking in prior to its arrival, if we let it. Darkness is not inherently bad, for without it our dualistic minds cannot know light. The deeper the darkness, the stronger the light. So long as we are humans, we must work with our minds, so better than to wish for a life free of darkness (fear, anger, agitation, worry, doubt, etc.), enlightened are you who seek truth, to embrace all, to push away nothing, to allow all things to unfold naturally. Beyond the mind, there is no dark and light, beyond the mind, we understand they are birthed from the same source. All is one, but when we engage in this life, caught up in its game, duality pervades all. Learn to flow like water, to dance with the ebbs and flows. Even if life is not how you think it ought to be, trust that it is how it ought to be, as it is, in this moment.
Self-Portrait at the Laundry Mat, Astoria, NY (2023)
