Winter Solstice

The shortest day of the year and the longest night of the year. It is my favorite day.

This morning greeted me with rain clouds and heaven's tears. The angels must be crying for those who are lonely and aren't loved. The cold and damp of grieving hearts seep through the air through the glass of my windows and into my muscle and bones like sharp shards of heaven cast from above. Faith is something one believes in without proof. Being human is the conditioning of familiarity to all things even if they make one suffer. Do I want to be a person of faith or a human being? This is the question.

This season of holidays and such seem redolent of bringing these types of thoughts out of me. Each year the period between Thanksgiving through Christmas seems to me more of a journey of walking barefeet on fallen cactus or beds of hell's coals. Some say that happiness is a choice, I did choose to be happy today. However, often I find that being happy and being sad are not mutually exclusive. It doesn't sound nice but in my experience it is the truth as I have experienced it.

So I am left to try to find the beauty in the sadness, all things that are beautiful are not pretty. This is today's measure of surity...

Those who (have) transformed

It's grandpa's beanie. I put it on this morning because it was cold. And then I thought of him...

Years ago when I was about 14 years old, I was preparing to take a trip with my uncle and cousins to the Grand Canyon. He told me it would be a wonderful trip and that I should write down my memories, my experiences. He gave me a note book. I had never kept a journal before. I took the book but really didn't put much down in it. I didn't know how to translate my experiences and thoughts into language that another could read and understand.

At the end of the trip there were some notes in there, dates, places and most likely some doodles. I always doodled then as I do to this day. I didn't realize until much later that in each of my doodles were encapsulated the experience I was living through in that moment. I can look at a doodle or sketch and recall entire volumes of what was going on in that moment, people, faces, images, words, pages of books, conversations, feelings, etc. Some people use mnemonic devices, I used drawings; my own language of hieroglyphs.

Some time after that trip, I started to try and keep a journal. It was strange and difficult at first – this thing with language. Being a perfectionist, it was hard at first to write down the perfect thought because I viewed the journal as something special, almost sacred so each sentence had to be perfect, as if what if someone read it one day? I got over that eventually.

26 years later, I still keep journals and try to record things. Well not so much things or events, there are better ways of recording those. I try to record the events and emotions that go on inside my mind, my heart. The funny moments, the happy moments, the anger, frustration, disappointment and so often, the heartbreaks.

This journey, process, commitment has led me to places in the world and in the cities of my interior that I could not have imagined. Uncertainty has been the only constant, I have learned that surprise is independent of good or evil, happiness or sadness. Uncertainty has become my friend because no matter how sure something is, our surity in the very thing we have faith in that it won't change is very likely to be the thing that unravels us like a hemp cord overburdened in an artic storm.

Every moment in my life I am reminded of these simple lessons.

It is heartening, poignant, sweet and sometimes bitter that the gentle words of an old man who has now left this physical world still vibrates in me like the hum of my arteries pumping blood through my tissues. I am reminded that life is not made up of grandeur but of meekness and little details that often reside in corners out of our line of sight or in partial shadow. I am reminded that this universe we live in is made up of astronomically tiny pieces of sometimes matter that change in the very event of us trying to observe them.

I think grandpa too has transformed into those little Quantum packets and he is out there in the universe exploring the stars. No doubt he is mapping everything, but that is another story...

Bodies of water and strange faces

Last night I had another dream with a large body of water, I think it was a sea or ocean. I know it ran North-South and the water was to the West. Don't ask, I just know. I am always oriented in my dreams. I always know which ways the cardinal directions are. Maybe I was a navigator in a past life and I did something horrid and was cursed to keep certain aspects of that life: constant wandering and never being able to be lost into something I love. Anyway, the place was coastal. There was a very large, modern house in the dream. I was staying there but it was not my home. Again, I was a chaperone or escort or bodyguard or some sort. Me, a mercenary; funny as hell. But this time it was a little different, I was in charge of two young women in this dream. They were sisters and one of them, the older one was some kind of performer. We kept going back and forth to a huge old theatre of some kind. It was beautiful. I didn't understand why their parents were not around as they were not adults yet. At the end of the dream, we were preparing for a long journey to somewhere. I didn't know where, that was the end of the dream.

In writing this entry, it struck me that what if I was not a hired hand and this was in the future and the girls were my children? Yikes! I have had many prescient dreams before but at the time I didn't know it. They sometimes come true in days, weeks or in most cases, years after the dreams. Hmm, something to ponder...

Slipping through water

Had a dream last night that I was somewhere with mom and Khoi near a large body of water. I was canoeing. I remember my thighs being sore from kneeling. I talked to mom, didn't talk to Khoi.

Later in another dream, the body of water was larger. I was in a house on an island in a sound or something like that. Bernie and some others were there, he got his hands on a canoe that didn't seem all that worthy but he wanted to go out. I looked at the water and the sky and saw that there was a lot of wind and cautioned him against it but he went anyway.

You can throw someone a flotation ring but you can't make them hang on to it.

Condensation on glass

When I opened the blinds this morning, there was condensation on the glass. It is the first time of the season. It is a little strange how I've paid attention to the first's of the season this autumn. Not that I'm ever inattentive or ignorant of little things but it feels that I'm paying a different kind of eye to them now. Something inside has changed in the last months, even in the last days, I have perhaps crossed some kind of threshold. Perhaps life is coming back to me or I have wandered back into its domain.

I had dreams of doing something that required the taking of blood from patients in a hospital or clinic. That in itself is not odd though what was odd was that I was queasy about it. I am in real life never queasy about blood nor needles. The entire
dream had a feeling of discomfort. Odd really.

But the best thing that happened last night was right before I went to sleep I got a message from me dear friend Hilary that I had lost contact with for a long time. I was too tired to reply in full but sent a message to say hi and say I would write more today. I had the biggest smile on my face in a long time falling asleep...

In a raging river

I come into Friday morning with Oolong tea and the scent of Meyer lemons. It is not such a bad start. Outside it is grey with hints of cyan, the blue sky trying in earnest to break through but in honesty I don't mind a bit of gloom.

The last dream I recall clearly was endowed with water, no surprise. But there was a lot of water, a deluge. I was at some sort of research facility. It looked like an old NASA lab. Everything was old, nine inch monitors, old analog phones, men in white short sleeve button shirts and thick black framed plastic glasses. I was there to find a message, do a pick up. I am not sure if I found the message or not. It turned out the entire facility sat on pilings in the middle of a huge river like the Mekong or the Amazon. And for whatever reason, it was cresting and tearing everything apart. Tsunami? Perhaps. The building we were in was coming lose from its pilings and we were trying to evacuate. Debris, huge debris were flowing upriver, the current reversed violently. Trees, man made detritus flowed and tumbled all around us. I don't know if we made it out...

Certainty and Uncertainty

Wednesday has passed like a cloud moving over cold water.

Time spent sometimes feels like it is not spent well in the moment until one has had a moment to ponder what was just experienced. Then, then everything seems to have a purpose whereas hours or minutes before seemed pointless. Is all understanding only in hindsight?

I like to think not but certainty is a strange companion. She is steadfast only in her uncertainty. She always keeps one on their toes. Perhaps this is why she is so enchanting, we like to think that we like knowns but deep within the universe of our hearts we harbor an affection for what we aren't sure of, what we don't know.

It is like the temptation of opening Pandora's box.

Why do I personify certainty as a woman? Perhaps it is a woman that I think of as certainty/uncertainty...

Rainy Tuesday Morning

Sleep did not last as long as I would liked last night but I don't feel too fatigued. I woke up in the middle of the night to the "tid, tip, tup" of rain drops on the roof. The rain has been steady since sometimes after midnight. I tend to sleep better with the rain but last night wasn't so. Nevertheless I did go into REM sleep. The dream I recall was odd. Well, all my dreams are odd.

I was on some sort of school campus with a number of people with 4x4 vehicles. It was some sort of camp out. We were to spend the night spread out across the grounds of this place. There was a grass quad, tables, benches and chairs. I remember staking out a spot for my tent after a conversation with some people. I put a green folding plastic and metal chair to hold my spot. I then left to go back to my old apartment. I rang the bell. A young woman came to the door. I apologized that I had not come back to fetch all my things and asked if it was okay that I did it now? She let me in and we walked upstairs into the flat. It was much as I left it. As I entered the living room, my old cat Stoopid who I thought was lost came up to me. His fur was beautiful, soft and blue grey as I remembered him. He snuggled up to me affectionately. The young woman said he'd been waiting for me. I picked him up, held him close and smelled him. He was the same as I had remembered. That was the end of the dream.

Alas, when I woke Stoopid was still lost to me. I am sure he has either died or living happily with newly adopted parents. I had left him with a cousin during a period when I was moving around a lot. My cousin went to Burning Man and left the care of his animals to a friend. The witless friend accidentally let the cat out onto the street and he was never seen again. I was very angry and sad. Stoopid had been through so much with me over the years and to lose him like that... I never wanted to know who my cousin's friend was because I would have hurt him. And ever since, I've had a hatred towards Burning Man.

The presence of those you love through loss is something you never shake...

Rainy Monday

Monday's morning came softly like random half droplets of moisture shed by heaven. The light filtered by grey clouds remained soft and encouraged me to stay in bed longer than I might have. I was coming out of a series of dreams.

Again there were people I didn't recognize, I'm sure I would meet one day. It always happens like that. The recall of the dreams were not particularly clear this morning. The only one that is clear in my memory is that of me being in a desert town and riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle. That was a laugh! But it was like the Harleys of today, it was futuristic and more advanced. The bike was not painted at all. The entire finish was bare metal or polished metal. It was surprisingly light looking for a Harley. The people traveling with me were in cars or SUV's. I was the only one with two wheels. I remember a red lighted intersection where the signals were hung from cables across the intersection, like in the desert in Southern California. That is all I remember...

Mint

There is chalky dust on the windowsill;
traces of glory of a story that has ended.
Though it leaves its pigment behind, faded.
What was once emerald is now faded mint,
the hue reminds my eyes of faded photos
like the ones sitting in the shoe box in the closet.
I keep those hidden away, in the dark;
I say it is to keep them from dust, from light
to prevent the fading of memories; visions,
but it is really to protect myself from nostalgia.
To protect myself from living ghosts now gone
like a pagan's exorcism of the fire that lives within.

(December 2006)

She Brought Me

I sat at my desk, dippling paper with a pigment laden brush
wondering what this new day might bring,
having crossed a threshold in my mind and heart
then I heard shuffling of gentle footsteps behind me,
a familiar swooshing and tap, tap-tap; I turned,
it was grandma standing there, all dressed and ready.
She brought me bread and pepper roasted chicken for brunch,
said she'd be back in the afternoon to fetch me for our outing;
later we strolled in a place that brought back memories
like the plenitude of petals and vibrancy of Spring colors.

(October 2006)

Demon Lover

for Susan

There are places where he doesn't go
because it obscures the glow of her face.

He avoids certain colors of light
because it mistreats the hue of her eyes.

In the darkness he can sit for hours
to gaze into the warm light of her soul.

In the dawn's light he finds close comfort
and holds her alabaster skin in his vision;

for moment upon moment through time
and lets her soul seep into his skin.

Pomegranates

Pomegranates

I ask myself
why I've not

eaten pomegranates
given to me

and I realize
because when I smell

their sweet and tart
I will betray myself.

(2006)

Narrow Daylight

The narrow sense of daylight
can't explain the way i'm feeling.
And the turmoil that comes to me
when Southern Cross is high

which calls for me to take up on
efforts better left to a Seraphim.
But this is where I am and
the stars are my instructions.

They want me to turn Demons
with this melancholy visage and
they expect me to change scripture
with this downtrodden, drone voice.

Grappa

There are moments in experience
when all that you have sensed,
all that you have felt and endured
comes to the feeling of grape seeds
pressed and raped against the liquor
of your drying and precious life.

There are moments in lasting breaths
of other angels you haven't met;
they scribble unknowns on the walls.
They have unknown seeds in their gums
and cry scraping notes god has not heard.
They wait for us to lead them to rest.

There are moments in between
when everything seems to make sense;
when all the fear and all the anger
can be described in a single scribble
written on frail age old papyrus; then
I decide, they can learn it on their own.

i have no life

i have no life
it's what i tell people
knowing the life i have

is in a box
within another box
somewhere in another place

collected as images
tidbits of words
expressions in lyric

the minds has got to wonder
what the eyes are going to see
when the hands open those boxes

unpacking that life
re-reading that history
will the stories have changed

will pleasantries be stripped
the gloss of photos
replaced by expressions of regret

i have no life
like the life i've lived
the life i live remembers no past

the whispers in my head
are all my own
re-renderings passages gone

(july 2003)

Suicide Tears

In the thin air between
the sadness and confusion,
a silver cloud with a grey lining
follows his steps like an obedient pet.

He casts no shadow beneath his pains.
He recognizes no gems among the thorn laden path.

In the hoarse breath between the fear and anger,
an orange mandala with a white core
collages itself to the vestiges of wings.
He feels not the heat that can bring comfort;

He senses no gentleness of a kind god;
He walks a path of paradox with each step.

In the shudders that rack his frail frame,
his tears commit suicide in each of their falls.
Leaving a trail of rubies, sapphires and emeralds
in his lonely slushy footfalls in the soft peat.

the taboo of our egos

he looks like his mother
though less solid
and more like a statuette,

but he is fluid
on the inside not
really reliable for

our needs, not stone.
even wood can furnish,
even rotten wood holds

at least for the grain,
this won't do at all,
this idea of heart shall

fail.
we are a forest
of scalloped leaves

meaning "what was left" –
the wanderings of the mind
the treasures of the heart.

the taboo of our egos
can't possibly bear sunlight
damn them...

wrap them

in our burlap comfort.
hold them until their
turbulent breath

is quiet as least as ours...

Nothing happens by accident

Early this morning, before sunrise I woke up in a bit of a panicked state. I was thinking I was supposed to be leaving for Switzerland in a day or so and there was so much that was unprepared. Then I realized it had been a dream, a very realistic dream at that. I had been dreaming that I was moving back to Switzerland for school or something and that there was a lot to do yet.

I was in a cold sweat. I breathed deeply then fell back asleep within a couple of minutes.

As it often happens, when I'm having lucid dreams they come in series. When I was asleep I went back into the same dream. The dream continued and I had departed and was now in Vevey, the town I used to live in. It was full of trepidation as I realized I hadn't arranged for an apartment and my papers weren't in order. The experience continued and I guess things worked themselves out. I was walking along the lake again but found that the water level was much higher than normal. The paved path that I used to walk on was flooded and I was walking on grass instead. The giant sycamores were partially flooded. My old apartment was still there. Nothing else had changed except for the water level.

It was a nice reminescence. When I woke up again, the first feelings were that I really was going to Switzerland.

Later today, I was looking at a design for a friend and giving feedback. Surprisingly or not, one of the possible solutions for the piece was to use deconstructed Swiss style typography.

Nothing happens by accident, we just have to understand what the purpose of events, situations and people are for...

Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep

watercolor and graphite on paper, 5"x7". 2006. view large


I Am in Need of Music

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

Elizabeth Bishop