AS TIME GOES BY

There are some days I wake up focused--clear brained.  And there are days when my head, as well as the outside air is muddled by smog.  Too many voices talking at once bidding for my attention and creating a cacophony of confusion.

On those mornings, with agitation growing, I pause and try to get my thoughts to become more linear.  I inhale deeply as I go through this jungle in my head--scything away--trying to clear the overbearing distractions intruding on my brain.

I am finally able to "talk myself" down.  Find my spinal cord--my center--and venture out with a clear head--if not a clearer direction.  My brain is like my computer.  It carries a cache that needs to be emptied.  I've used up all my ram space and the rom is also full.

I joke about Alzheimer's.  I have the opposite.  My short-term memory is fine.  It's the long term that I am losing.

All the old show tunes I used to be able to sing have now lost their notes and lyrics.  All the poems I was able to recite, now remained buried.  Al the books and history I've read and experienced has become scattered and lost in misfiling.  Oh, how I wish I could call up my Mac "spotlight" to easily find what's hidden in my brain, as I'm able to do on my computer.  I now rely on "Google" to help my vague recollection to find those lost poems, the titles and authors of books and the stars of those movies I so loved.  My brain is like Wikepedia--it might have some information, but I cannot trust its reliability.


Last month we celebrated July 4th at my son's in laws.  Here we were, 10 people swimming in the afternoon and then, after dinner out came the iPads.  My son's niece, 13, asked her father, "Where is the old people's game app?"  "What old people's game?" I asked.  She said she called it that because her Nana said it was an old people's game.  It turned out it was a picture comparison game where you have to detect the differences in two similar pictures.  Three generations and 4 iPads started to play the game.  We all did well.  How reassuring.  There was a time when kids and adults would compare their various collections.  We sat with our iPads exchanging and comparing applications.


Has my computer become an extension of my brain--remembering for me all that I can no longer absorb?  Maybe there is some way to create an application for Alzheimer patients to be able to help them in their recall.  It is certainly working for us CRS (can't remember s--t) sufferers.

Please Call Me By My True Names

Please Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving

to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive,

in order to laugh and to cry,

to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart

is the birth and death of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing

on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird

that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily

in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass-snake

that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,

selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate.

and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, 
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, 
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, 
so I can wake up, 
and so the door of my heart can be left open, 
the door of compassion.

And what is my name?  A rose is a rose is a rose—and by any other name it remains a rose.  Like an onion my names are pulled off layer by layer.

The young child, quietly seated off by herself in a corner—contemplating—as she listens to the arguing adults, wishing she were elsewhere.  Then scrounging through the family’s important papers, hoping to find the documents attesting to the fact that she was not of their blood.

The young girl, writing poetry of life’s seeming abyss.  Marking time.  Awaiting adulthood, allowing escape, to find her own way.  Counting her losses as it forces her independence.

The young adult, assuming responsibilities beyond her years—caring for 2 motherless children and their bereaved father, while escaping into a clandestine love affair with a mentor 30 years her senior.

The young woman, coming into her own, upon graduating, traveling across country and into Mexico to find a new felt freedom to alight in California for months, then return to the “Big Apple”, slipping till becoming a woman and opening her heart and soul to another mentorer—eventually having him slip a ring onto her left hand as she blossomed into the person she wanted to become.

Peel of another layer as she evolved into her career and motherhood, only to be shattered by the reality of not being able to “have it all” as her marriage ship crashed and she had to let go of the life ring in order for her son’s and her survival.

Then the names, ex wife, single mother, sole supporter.  Names she kept as years sped by and age spots started to appear.

Then maturity, new loves, lost loves, loves that have moved on, outliving deaths, baton passing, as the name Survivor stays.

Thoughts inspired by Rumi

Sorrow prepares you for joy by Jalaluddin Rumi

Sorrow prepares you for joy,

It violently sweeps everything out of your house,

so that new joy can find space to enter.

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart,

so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place.

It pulls up the rotten roots,

so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow.

Whatever Sorrow shakes from your heart,

far better things will take their place.

Rumi writes that sorrow prepares you for joy.  It violently sweeps everything out of your house.

My problem is that I am a terrible housekeeper and along with not sweeping away the dust and mess, I feel I am also unable to rid my heart of sorrow.

I’ve been thinking recently about the fact I used to be a kinder person—non-judgmental and more accepting and, I am trying to figure out what became of that part of me.  When did I start to change?

I never was aware of space, although I was always aware of my boundaries.  I tried never to cross other people’s boundaries.  I always allowed intrusions into mine, usually unaware.  Now, I find I have put barriers around my space and perhaps am more protective of my boundaries, but have I, in order for my own protection, built walls separating me completely.  I draw lines where I never did before.  I spend more time marching and keeping a watchful eye out for intruders.  I have dug a moat around the castle of self.

Spring is here with its expansiveness of beauty with its new blooms of flowers and I think of that person 20 years ago who wrote of what she wanted in this poem:

Send Me Flowers Of All Different Hues To Highlight the Feelings by Alyss 

I want violets of passion,

Roses of nettle

Gladiolas of growth

Sweet peas of tenderness

Jasmine of fervor

Forget-me-nots of caring

Buttercups of sunshine and happy days

Will-o-the wisp of adventure

Orchids of yearning

Gardenias of fragility

Asters of foreboding strength

An umbel bouquet rendering love,

P.S.  But I might settle for daisies.

 Ode to Spring by Alyss

Sip the wine, toast the world, do a jig.

Spring has sprung

Its pollen is flying

Kerchoo, kerchoo, kerchoo

Random Thoughts

For the past three years, on Monday mornings I attend a writing group. We begin with a poem and then write for 40 minutes about anything. At times the poem might inspire us. Thereafter, we have the option to read and share what we have written or stay silent. This is not a critical writers' group. We leave the inner and outer critic outside of our group. I thought I would post some of my musing here with the disclaimer that these were written a few years ago, so my mood and feelings of today may be quite different.

The Heat of Midnight Tears by Mirabai

If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water

I would have asked to be born a fish in this life

If we could reach him through nothing but berries and wild nuts

Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from eh womb?

If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves

Then the goats would surely get to the Holy One before us?

If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,

I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.

Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.

Does one think of a higher power only in the time of crisis and sadness? Is religion one of need only when we ourselves are needy?

I myself think only of a higher power or reach out to that unknown power when I am seeking all types of enlightenment--it is one of many as I transverse thru life.

Mostly, the association with that so called higher power is in mockery—“God Damn It?”, “Jesus Christ”, etc., but again mingled with many Fuck You’s, Shits, Assholes, Jesus H. Christ’s.

I do believe that that higher power rests within me and only I can answer the calls of my own distraught. A quiet inner voice—reassuring and supportive and, only at times, available to be called on.

I sometime dance to a different drummer. I move up the down staircase, enter when I should be exiting, and advance rather than retreat and vice verse. Yet, I don’t feel out of step. I feel on the edge.

Trying for a new perspective. Turning the world ever so slightly for a different view. Beyond the given dimension. Revising the written word, redefining the painting, altering the recipe—not to improve but to give a different vantage of taste, sound and look.

Reaching out and altering the axis.

Play an atonal sound. Off shore, create a cacophony, only to be able to relax afterwards.