August 2, 2009 - Posted by kymtkv - 2 Comments
I have glided through sixteen light-and-dark spells so far, and softness runs through me.
Miles Davis’s lips spin silk from his brass trumpet. TBD says the tune I’m groovin’ to is “Sketches of Spain” from Kind of Blue. The sounds shape space into pillows and grass and arms, the sort of things you can rest your head on after a day of Milk and Poop. Blibl.
cool - soft and hard
TBD says Miles became a hard man. Stardom and heroin and unbridled desire, he says, can make a man so. It’s hard, he says, for a man to live in softness. Take the two Western classics TBD had his family watch last week - Shane and Red River. In Shane, the title character tried to give up his gun-slinging days. In the name of justice, to help a man, his wife, and their boy, Shane wields a pistol and kills a man again. He kills a man because he has a soft spot for the family. In Red River, Montgomery Clift plays a young cowboy who has a good heart. He survives the hard hearts around him even though some cowboys think he’ll perish. In a pivotal scene, after weeks of a daunting cattle drive from Texas to Missouri, the cattle drive leader John Wayne is all hardness and whiskey and ego and paranoia. The swaggering cowboy is going to hang a Mexican cowboy for trying to run from him. Montgomery Clift stands up to his mentor John Wayne and takes over the cattle drive. Eventually he softens his mentor John Wayne’s heart. The River was annoyed with the woman character in the film, but she also softens men’s hearts. It’s an odd world I’ve entered. But I knew it before I arrived.
Clift - soft & strong on the range
This mix of softness and hardness is the way of things. That’s what I’ve tried to tell TBD lately. He gets worried because when he works hard he hardens. His mind dives into holding his family together and keeping things in order. His neck cramps, and he doesn’t cradle me the same way. He says, “I must be soft with you.” Shift that hardness to strength and sturdiness, I try to tell TBD at night when he’s asleep. Rivers need mountains, that’s the Zen way. Yin needs Yang. Water needs fire. Then the next morning he flows into his yoga, and he is what he is.
I am all pink mush. This is what I hear when the River and TBD take me out to places like Morning Brew and Chefs on Fire. “You are all pink mush,” a woman says. I hear her. I am softness, the part of Miles Davis that won over Cicely Tyson, the texture of milk pudding, the kissess TBD smothers me with each morning, the padding in the River’s arms, mist caressing mountains. I am that.
In Yogic ways, this softness is called sukham in Sanskrit. It sounds like “sugar” because the word comes from that same Sanskrit syllable all of these centuries later. Sukham is sweetness, easefulness, the ability to go with the flow. It wells up naturally. It’s not something you can force or try on.
But all mush all the time lacks substance and form. All sweetness rots the teeth and taints the palate. All vowels make no spells. Strength shapes things and holds things up. It’s Paul Chambers on bass keeping the earth beat while Miles Davis’s trumpet lifts off and around the air like a barn swallow diving for insects.
On some days, TBD holds things steady so the River can flow. On other days, the River plays bass so TBD can improvise. Things work out that way.
Rain falls again this morning. My sixteen cycles have been full of Milk and Poop, Music and Rain. TBD and the River open the back door and hold me so my heart can hear the rain, so my skin can swallow rain. It peckles and spleets. My skin bossles and floops in response. Gbgl. BRWK! (I can be hard and strong, too.)
The Dine people believe that rain is their ancestors visiting for a spell. The Dine call jagged rain masculine. They call pattering rain feminine. They need them both. You can’t call all men hard and strong and all women soft, either. That sort of thing annoys the River and TBD. TBD’s great-grandmother Mudder could be kind of hard. His great-grandfather Papa could be soft.
This morning, it rains Miles and John Wayne, Mudder and Shane, Papa and Coltrane.
When the two work and play together, when softness has strength, when strength has softness, they make jazz and justice, love and rain. And a family. Brbl.
Jai GOO!
July 23, 2009 - Posted by kymtkv - 2 Comments
I have moved through five light-and-dark spells, and music moves through me. Time passes through cycles of Poop and Milk, Milk and Poop, and there is a regular time when light softens, cardinals click, and The River rumbles on Her own. It’s at this time that The Bearded Disciple often swaddles me, takes me for a walk, or sits in a big chair and reads to me.
Dahlia and TBD
Chris Botti plays trumpet at this moment. The brass blurts ripple my skin, cool wind on my pond. Sometimes, when TBD puts on his favorite music and rocks me to his own rhythm, my body vanishes into the blanket, and I am all goo and bubbles and fizzle. Greblgu. TBD likes Botti. He strokes my cheek and says Botti is a romantic. Says his music is full of desire. That he’s not afraid of desire. He can handle it like an instrument and transmute it into music. Then for no apparent reason, he talks about ragas. Raga, which in Sanskrit means “song” and also “desire,” refers to special, ancient songs with intricate rhythms, each designed to reflect and respond to and carry out the rhythms of a particular season, a particular time of day, and its corresponding emotions. So, one raga might be right for this July misty morning. Another for a January afternoon by the fire. That kind of connected song. That kind of desire. Steve Gorn, TBD says, knows this kind of desire. He’s a neighbor, he says. I’ll meet him some day. TBD says all of this to me, as if I didn’t know it already, while Botti finishes the last notes to “Someone to Watch Over Me.”
Then, TBD does something else. With Botti’s brass brushing the background, he opens a book and begins reading to me. His voice, a bass strumming a stream, pleases me. The sounds swipe if not rattle, brisk scythe swatches in the back of the throat. It’s German, TBD tells me. Rainer Maria Rilke, he says. Sonnets to Orpheus. He reads each one, first in German, then in English, the syllables clacking like golden marbles in my moon mound. Und fast ein Madchen wars und ging hervor/aus diesem einigen Gluck von Sang und leier…und machte sich ein Bett in meinem Ohr. Hear what I mean? Never mind the meaning. Sound is meaning. “And it was almost a girl and came to be/out of this single joy of song and lyre…and made herself a bed inside my ear.” My eyes close, and I slip deep into a stream made from dusk and voice and stroke.
And then TBD reads the third sonnet. Gesang, wie du ihn lehrst, ist nicht Begehr….In Wahrheit singen, ist ein andrer Hauch. Ein Hauch um nichts. Ein Wehn im Gott. Ein Wind. “Song, as you have taught it, is not desire….True singing is a different breath, about/nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.” And he tells me of Baird Hersey, of Prana, of a way of voice that is desire and more than desire, of breath behind the breath, as if I didn’t know all this. He says I will meet Baird someday, too.
TBD’s walking me down the long driveway now, here among birch and maple and oak. My body jiggles to the crunch of gravel and the drum of cicada. TBD kisses my feet. He follows my grbls and heeds my rubls, a trail of notes my body makes that he tracks into the woods at dusk, my Radhe lulled by my flute notes. He’s a good disciple. Ganesh recorded Shiva’s notes on Yoga in his book. TBD is my Ganesh. TBD knows that more than him teaching me things that I am reminding him of things, of things that stir deep within him like wind among the apple tree and pines he loves. He knows I remind him of so much he relishes in this world - namely the music of spoons and pink feet and soil, sweet soil, of deep purple light sketched between maple branches, of just this one brush of flesh and just this one breath.
There is a melody we play together and both crawl into. It is desire and more than desire.
Jai Goo Pa
July 22, 2009 - Posted by kymtkv - 0 Comments
Light cracks this misty morning, and my eyes squirm. The Bearded Disciple reads me a poem, and I drift back into that other misty space.
The River strokes my cheek. The River and The Bearded Disciple speak in flow. Chris Botti plays jazz. The Bearded Disciple swings me for a dance. A scarlet tanager and wood thrush trade songs. A breeze blows through the window. A candle casts a shadow. The River sings. The Bearded Disciple chants.
All of it, somewhere, I absorb. Everything makes an impression.
Do we infants take in the pitch of voices? The intentions of actions? The harshness or softness of your words toward one another? Do you not think it makes a difference whether I spend my days in front of a screen or in front of trees? That my mind and eyes engage pixels versus peonies? I wonder. This woman thinks so. Even at 6-months-old, some of us prefer compassionate versus competitive acts according to these folks. At heart, we are compassionate creatures. And if we’ve forgotten that core, we can remember it. And practice it. And become it. Again.
Nothing to worry or feel guilty about. Just something to wonder about.
And I wonder how long The River and The Bearded Disciple can hold up this watery bliss.
Jai Goo.
July 21, 2009 - Posted by kymtkv - 0 Comments
Rain falls. It pats and pits the grass outside.
I am awake. It is afternoon. Gleebl.
I have lived through four light-and-dark cycles, and I want to say a few things about The River. There is within us a river, a deep river. Can you hear it?
I live near and on the River. Once, I lived in Her. I sleep, and She is there. I wake, and She is there. I cry, and She is there. I suckle, and – boy, oh, boy – is She there! I burp, and She is there. I like to burp.
Chins mirroring
I lay next to the River, and I am. My eyes cannot yet make out Her form, but feeling more than seeing Her is what matters. I can feel Her warmth. Her ebb and flow. Her voice-ripples. Her laugh-jiggles. My fingers brush her Breast, and I know I am home.
The Bearded Disciple took these photographs of The River and me. Behind us is The River’s gardens, including other dahlias. TBD says the garden is The River’s Heaven. He says I will come to know this Heaven intimately. The River, the dahlias, the zuccini, the wind, the rain, we are all connected.
Sit next to The River, and she will speak. I heard Her speak to the Bearded Disciple today. Rain soaked the leaves outside the open window, and a light breeze blew in, and I could hear the River speak. “You know,” she said. “I get all that talk about sacrifice now. My nipples are killing me, and I don’t care. I’ve been up most of the night, and I don’t care. My back aches, and I don’t care. As long as she gets the Milk [caps mine] she needs.” The River is like that.
I often call The River Sarasvati-ji. The Sarasvati River flowed along Northern India many moons ago. The Rig Veda (an ancient text rife with gorgeous hymns) calls this river “best mother, best river, best goddess.” (2.41.16, ámbitame nádītame dévitame sárasvati) That says a mouthful. A Milky mouthful. It is said that from Sarasvati pours milk and ghee. The River, my Sarasvati-ji, is Life.
Many moons later, Sarasvati became personified as a gorgeous goddess who strides a white peacock and plays a lute. This Sarasvati holds grace in her hands, learning in her mind, songs and literature on her tongue. The River, my Sarasvati-ji, is Flow.
Langston Hughes says he knows rivers.
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world
and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,* and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
*Lincoln’s determination to end slavery was said to have started when, as a young man, he visited New Orleans for the first time.
This beautiful man, his ancestors slaves, speaks of a deep knowing, of deep memory, of that space I flow into when rain falls and The River breathes and I drift between wake and dream. Why would adults want to Twitter themselves out of that deep knowing? Grblgu.
Sit next to The River, and She speaks. Herman Hesse knows it. In Hesse’s novel Siddhartha (“one who attains his aim”), Siddhartha meets a ferryman Vasudeva, a wise man who had reached enlightenment by sitting next to a river. Siddhartha did likewise. And The River speaks:
He looked around, as if he was seeing the world … for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colorful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya…. Blue was blue, river was river…. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewherebehind the things, they were in them, in everything.
Everything comes back to The River. This, too, from Hesse:
“As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.”
This late afternoon, all is still. And all moves. Rain has stopped. Breeze blows. The River speaks with breath and touch and a deep knowing.
Do you remember what it was like to live near and on a river? Do you? The memory is in you. To see the world anew is in you. To blossom, free and light and beautiful, is in you.
Please share this ode with anyone who might need reminding or who reminds you of your source.
Jai Goo Ma Grbl
I live next to The River.
July 20, 2009 - Posted by kymtkv - 7 Comments
One eye closed. One eye open. The way to see things as they are.
The Dahlia Daily: Wonder & Wisdom from the Infant In-Between State
My name’s Dahlia. I’ve been in this world for two dark and light spells. A warm person holds me close. I call her The River. She’s steady and fluid. Another person also holds me, tells stories, and sings songs. I call him The Bearded Disciple (aka TBD aka Goofball). The reasons are obvious.
I have been awake during this past entire dark spell. For seven hours, I have focused constantly on one thing: getting milk to flow from The River. Light’s cracking the dark spell, and a thrush song glides on light. Four Gurgle Truths have come to me. May they serve you.
1. Life is Poop. Some say life is Dukkha, a word which means suffering, which sounds like dookie, which brings us back to poop. A nurse says I have monster poops. Cleaning poop helps the Bearded Disciple feel useful. I poop a lot, but I don’t like it. It just seems to be the way things go.
2. Milk is the Source of it all. The River’s veins break as light grows, and I strike white gold. Gushing, gushing, nothing but white gold, I gulp and gulp and gulp. Really, milk is my blood and my shield. Milk is bliss. Burp. The more Milk, the more Poop. Milk and Poop, Milk and Poop. It’s a cycle. But I get attached to the Nipple. I want more and more and more white gold. The River takes me away from the Nipple, and I cry. I cry really loud. I cry until my whole body shakes and my face turns the color of placenta and the Bearded Disciple comes tumbling in and over my white Gund Bear to try to shush and swing me into sleep. Shush shuuuush, The Bearded Disciple blows into my ear to try to woo me away from the Nipple. But I will have none of it. I want Milk. Milk is all. Milk is desire. I am Milk. Burp.
3. Sleep is a Break from the Cycle. The River snores. Really, sometimes the River roars bellow breaths. The windows shake a little. The birds quiet. I like it. It reminds me of Home. When I was Home, asleep in the Deep Red Tent, the River rumbled and shook the Deep Red Tent and the water where I floated, and my body would vibrate like a symphony, like morning light, and I would zone out in the deepest, sweetest sleep that you just cannot imagine where there is no Poop and there is no Milk and there is just this breath and this one and this one and this one long, pulsing snore. In that place, I am all vibrations and stillness. That’s a place I can get to still. Even sometimes with my eyes open and even without the River rumbling. Sometimes I just open my moon eyes wide and gaze upon a form like the Bearded One and don’t let my pupils focus, and for a second or three or ten, I am there in that Deep Sleep state beyond Poop and Milk. I am free.
4. The Path Unfolds into a Question Mark. I came into this world knowing quite a bit, tapped in as I was to the languages of star and light and Deep Memory and raven tongues and gurgle wisdom. And I came in knowing nothing. Take your pick. There are no Eight Steps or Seven Habits or Four Preparations. And there are. Take your pick. Grgl.
Jai Goo!
