screams, whispers and songs from planet earth

Category: Musings

trust

every once in a while
the universe decides that something is correct
a decision you’ve made; a course of action
however inadvertent and clumsy it may have seemed at the time.
everything falls into place.
and once it does, it cannot be stopped or undone,
despite your best intentions.
self-sabotage, self-doubt, fear of success…
it doesn’t matter.
fate or free will? in that rare moment, they align.
you’re dragged along by the river’s certain flow
and you’re left feeling puzzled.
“i wanted this?” i wanted this.
i just need to be reminded.
do i know what i want? what i need?
it comes down to trust.

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toss of a coin

i was lying in bed, trying to surround myself
with pleasant thoughts,
enough to ease myself into
the menacing new day.
when i heard a knock on the door
i was alarmed –
who would disturb me like this?

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you never wrote

even when we were together
you never wrote for me.
your poetry was about any number
of mundane things
but not of love; or if so, love abstract
not of me.
i didn’t inspire – i was only “good enough”
that’ll do, i suppose.

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The Tree

He arrived to trim the giant blue spruce in front of my house. He must have been an arborist, a ‘professional man’ as my mother might say. I was at some higher vantage point, my mind engaged elsewhere. I think I was on the roof. Why was I on the roof?

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the haircut

If you’ve visited my “about” page, you’ve already been sufficiently warned. Consider this a first dipping of my toe into a very cold and curious ocean. There will be more, muse willing. Have no fear; I’ll continue to promote musicians I like, and to make feeble attempts to keep up with Boston-area bands as well as, inexplicably, those 2,983 miles away from me. But for now…

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not a good day…

transcendental meditation, crystals, sun salutations, i-ching, tarot cards, past life regressions. crying, screaming, dancing. consultations with psychics, with astrologers, with psychologists, with charlatans. clean diet, exercise, qigong, drugs, drinking, no drugs, no drinking. live music, bird-watching, getting lost in the woods, getting lost in a book. self-analysis, mindlink, manic mind, empty mind. gardening, ouija boards, going to the movies, long drives, walking around in a crowded city, sitting in a darkened room. i have a home depot full of fancy tools, and sometimes i can’t hammer a fucking nail into a board.

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The audacity of hope – and the power of negative thinking

So with a title like that, this is either about Barack Obama, or it’s a compendium of all those self-help books from the 1970s, right? Well… no. Or maybe yes, but in a way that is filtered through the warped mind and understandings of someone who was brought up amidst the rantings of child psychologists, people trying to “find themselves” and “better themselves”, and then the media onslaught kicked into overdrive in the 1990s with the introduction of Internet For The Poor Huddled Masses. I’d never been a happy person. No, that’s wrong. Let me rephrase it. I’d always found it excruciatingly difficult to be a happy person. Some people just flow through life. I writhed and scraped and twisted and clutched.

Ironically now, I find myself the happy one, or at least the hopeful one, bookended by two very important people in my life – my best friend, and my dad – who are burdened by their own sense of truth and weighted down by what they see to be immovable realities in their lives. I feel the heaviness in their vocal tones and inflections, as I bounce exuberantly towards them in our conversations and am walloped in the head with a brick wall. The i-Ching, of which I am sometimes a reluctant student, teaches that in all our life situations and relationships, there are times to advance and times to retreat. Not to give up, mind you, but more a thoughtful and knowing “waiting it out”.

A forward motion, without ambition or striving.

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foghorn

Gray, drizzly morning, fog thick on the harbor, shrouding secret cruise ships, tankers, military vessels — or perhaps something even more sinister. No one knows, in the mysterious, sensuous gloom. But you feel they’re out there, stealthily lurking to and fro with their unknown cargo. Later on in the morning, foghorns cry their mournful song, harmonizing with the seagulls. These are perfect sorts of days for me, standing on my porch with a cup of tea. Thoughtful, wistful, vaguely sad, though I find it does not depress. On the contrary, I welcome it like a comforting shawl that wraps itself securely around me.

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Carnival Ducks

The pursuit of happiness feels to me like a game in a carnival. So difficult. So random. So elusive. All those endless floating ducks circling past you, and you know that one – only one – has your dreams, your desires, your hopes, casually revealed on its bottom. So you put your money down, and pluck one up. Nope, not that one. And more money, and again. No. And still more money, more effort, as time slips by, the hours, the days, the years. You try to concentrate, you try not to concentrate. To focus, to not focus. To clear the mind, to meditate, to approach the matter in a Zen-like, irreverent fashion. They’re not ducks, they’re grains of sand, or toy soldiers, or jellybeans. And this isn’t important, this isn’t your happiness at stake, not the purpose of your life, but a child’s fancy. Let it go, release the expectations, release the fears, release the sense of struggle, the sense of anything. But in trying not to try, you’re caught up in that eternal riddle.

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