bishamonten (lord protector of the north) at 5 a.m.

i was dreaming of walking through a garden, contemplating a statue of bishamonten (japanese) or vajravana (sanskrit) when i was rudely awakened by a loud rapping sound. it was 5 a.m. time to wake up but turning on the lights would have been sufficient. when i stood up, i had the thought in my mind that i would have liked to have had in my hands the bow and arrow that bishamonten often is seen depicted with to use in fending off demons from the kingdom.



i looked around for targets but they had already quickly vanquished themselves from the sanctuary. i suppose they don't believe that they would be safe on sanctuary grounds. they generally exhibit some signs of intelligence before they head to the kitchen, turn on the tv and start talking crack. crack talk and testosterone in the morning...my nemesis. i try hard to recall what little mindfulness instruction i have and breathe out the growing impatience accumulating. i remind myself that they are just empty shells reciting empty mantras of kitchen table, over-sugared cereal, shallow morning tv show philosophy and discourses on what the female meteorologists look like. that is not even to mention the fact that they are middle aged males flouting the departed audacity of their past adventures. why do men feel that there is something positively affective in boasting to other men. do they think the "guys" are impressed? by boasting as such, do they think they are going to "score" when they go out in public today?

wow i woke up a bitch this morning...

but i was having wonderful dreams of going back to the old country and visiting old places and homes of my grandparents. there were lush gardens and many buddhist sculptures and artwork on the walls that i don't quite recall. the dream reality was a split vision of a temple and an old house. curious that my mind was blending the two. perhaps old influences from the ancestors' altars in the house in saigon surfacing. anyway, to be awakened by loud rapping started me as a knife's edge...

a hot shower and coffee away from the sapiens imitating parrot teachers changed my mood. outside there is a pale blue sky playing hide and seek with grey and platinum skies. the low clouds glow differently when the earth is glossed by water, reflecting gleaming asphalt and verdant borders.

i need still waters and intelligent conversation. give me this and i'll write you a poem.

--

evening. 9:21 p.m.

back at sanctuary with the crack talkers. there is strange behavior going on, but they are others' strange behaviors and not mine. this is a good thing. there are definitely people here who ought to go to emotions anonymous. no kidding.

they walk this life without living, mimicking the motions from moving screens and muttering the phrases of talking heads.

II

"The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.
 

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands."

--T.S. Eliot. from Preludes