Sestina-ku

A sestina is a closed form of poetry, meaning that there is a set number of lines without variation.  A sestina has six stanzas, where the end words repeat in a certain pattern, followed by a three line envoi which utilizes all six repeating words in their original order.  

 13

every day walking

meditation silent song

work eat sleep waken

seedeaters gather

grass as bricks sky as shingling

spring's preparations

no preparation

for lung'd catfish flop walking

dank pond scum shingling

caught fish sigh a song

filet knife blood lust gathers  

hunger awakens

nestlings awaken

to woodcutter preparations

as tree fear gathers

working men walking

dark industry's cheery song

boots with no inkling

light crude makes wings cling

dark tentacles of kraken

no more orca song

decrepit haitians

forgotten wounded walking

disregard gathers

uneasy cat herds

in the abbey nuns winking

as gods go walking

a saint's hand wakens

mocking gods preparations

and plenary songs

madmen sing of songs

as salt in creases gathers

no preparation

no truthy inkling

from which we will awaken

compassion's walking

walking songs lay waste

fear awakens faith's gather'd

wrinkling congregations

Consensual hallucination

Footsore from shattered mirror and glass, both products of drowsy night-time fumbling.
(No allusion to that joyous night-time fumbling of two -- this was a sadly solo incident; sleep the only bodily function I'd hoped for.)

Ankle aching -- past indiscretions and injuries amplified by the old-timer's mantra: there's a storm coming.

I can feel it in me bones.

Maybe this is the way of it!  Short snipings of random thoughts and lines, jotted down and entered into the fold...

Collective unconscious.  Analogous idea, cross-cultural, multilingual. The notion defies their own Babel-esque expressions.  Again, some details change; secondary, tertiary, quaternary ideas, multiple forkings of thought amplify that different-ness, but at that lowest level the kernel of truth.

So, my self is defined by my thoughts and also by (what I perceive to be) the thoughts of those that I care about and interact with.  Thoughts are brain processes that depend on electrolytic exchanges across membranes; electrical charges, action potential transmuting into action itself; axons splashing +'s and -'s onto dendrites (the particulars escape me, please forgive the imprecision).  Sentient life thinks in this way.  The same process that occurs right at this moment in my bone-dome is happening across the planet in the skulls of nearly all other meat&bone tubes extant.  Yours too, reader!  Even bridged by whatever gap of time that flowed between my fingers skittering across a grubby laptop and your moist orbs seeing and relaying this all -- still the synapses heave to.

So the point? God (and gods for that matter) do exist, but only as much as we exist (I think).  My particular meat&bone tube is real, and the dharma is real, and God and Ganesh and Krishna and Siva and Allah and Avelokitesvara and Kuanyin are real insofar as sodium and potassium ions are really sliding around up there, behind these eyes. Insofar as if we all die off, so will they.

Again, the koans express it well:

Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

http://xkcd.com/

From the ashes....

New semester about to start.

Renewed effort to post daily.

This journey. This life.

Far as I can tell, my consciousness in this form has the one chance.  Even now, 12 months into consistent, weekly study into the rigid ways of my JW kinfolk, my lack of belief remains.  I remain fairly certain that there is no God -- at least, not as perceived by religious types.  Not to overstep into the metaphysical, but I also doubt whether we truly exist as individual entities, but rather as very convincing manifestations of cerebral processes.  It is simply agreed upon that our corporeal selves are truth, and that the tubes of bone&meat we encounter are each other; separate and distinct.

Difficult to talk about this stuff without sounding cliche or unoriginal or too full of myself, but there it sits. Something about the JW view (and I guess the views of religions of the book in general) seems hubristical. This presumption that our self is unique from the zero point, and will remain so in some after life.  It seems more likely that just like stories, lives are largely analogous.  Aside from small details (where, admittedly, the devils often live, and to truly unique results) there are different archetypes or paths or skills trees that people are defined by, and aside from those devilish details, a personal story-arc is fairly unoriginal and predictable.  Not to discount these lives! Great comfort, love, family, personal struggle and growth, challenges and successes and the like can be present in the predictable. But a truly unique existence?  This is a very rare thing, methinks.

From whence we come, so shall we return.  Not sure of the origin of this phrase.  Ironically, chances are good that it comes from that very book. Or Book if you prefer.  The idea, however seems more likely to me than the hubris-laden presumption of individuality.  I picture a huge cloud, made of Brownian swirls of... what... souls? ideas?  life-forces?  Not even necessarily a physical thing, but particularly opposite of that.  What comes out of the cloud is somewhat affected by what had gone in (thus allowing for notions of karma and sin and such) but the only commonality between that which exits and that which enters is the cloud itself. The cycle is birth life death birth and that which breaks that cycle is nirvana.   Maybe because I know it best, have studied it longest, but it just feels right to me -- this philosophy is like an amorphous shroud that can conform and distort its details to fit into over and around other beliefs.  Like the video of the octopus changing its color and texture so as to be indistinguishable from the nearby coral, Buddhism is flexible yet distinct; general yet specific; speaks and feels to many things, but is truly about one thing: no thing.  mu

some poetry

10/2008

At times, the merest
of glimpses into the infinite
is just enough

The cold breath of night;
peering up at the Vast Black,
pinprick'd and unknown




4/2007
drawing parallels
tarsals tucked in surging froth
watching sandpipers



4/2007
let us not idly
sit on the shore, in the rushes
as worlds collide

Bucheon Bus Trip (stream of consciousness)

EMart again this time by bus
Bucheon beauty so close so far
Coffee pot buy aborted
Hard sellers in any hemisphere
Winestain lip phenotypical
epicanthically folded
Heavy lids swaying and ducking the handles

Saw a woman smoking today
A first in four weeks
She saw me see her, seemed
defiant
But I was merely surprised, not
judgemental
As fingers pulse across this
touchscreen now
I fit in, head nodded towards the
LCD, firmly out of
the moment -- the death of right effort

A hopeful glance from the only other
heavyweight here
I know sister, it's rough but the
donuts taste so damn good

How to read the girl's shirt behind
me, something like 1 2 so fuck you

I wonder if people realize what
their shit says...

Drunk and passed out on EMart's
lawn yet again
Swastikasa taking on new(old)
meaning here
Lotus blossoms not storm troopers

3 things Go Fuck Yourself?
More reason than this to stare at
her shirt
But damn she's a brick house -- god
bless mini skirts

20.1%

참이슬

참 : truth or verity

이슬 : dew, dewdrop; tear, teardop
: (more alarmingly) vaginal discharge?

hmmm, so I'm going to take the meaning as "Dewdrop of Truth". Not bad I guess. Along the lines of "In vino veritas" but fresher? Leaving an oh so clean feeling?

Liking the frog logo.

This stuff is not so bad, I just poured myself a Han-screwdriver, replete with Jeju Island mandarin juice -- tasty!

First impressions...

Neon piedmont mist shrouded cityscape
Mudflat fish culture amidst metropolitan bridges
Highways, the same everywhere though.


Off to find the electric converters needed to fuel my geek fix...

Hope I make it back...