5/22   Last night saw a notice that a poet I know in town, fine poet, wonderful guy, real active, multi-medial (seems like a number of poets these days work in a couple media, including visual and performance art) has some readings coming up on the east coast including st marks poetry center, which means to me he’s a bigger time guy than I realized, which makes me think of all the poets in town here with various connections—people come here, they go other places, europe even, win prizes. Usually news of others success (especially when I’m trying for the same thing) makes me feel a little jealous, but mostly down on myself for lack of success, effort, skills. This time it was like the universe opened up and I saw the motes we all are, the interacting world, some more than others, an abstract but visceral moment, overall calming.

then reality settled back, but I didn’t let myself get too down. rolling with the tao, projecting whatever positive into the roiling maelstrom. waiting til the words come.

5/20    maybe with the onset of good weather a constant barrage of readings and book parties happening, so many people are writing, performing, giving workshops [my next ones in july] and publishing. this is good, yes? I think of how many people are talking more, wherever they are, with friends, cohorts, etc. this growth in communication must be leading to better relations, better deals, more words to get lost in.

my friend Roscoe was talking about making an effort to get his work (most prolific he is) into print before print is no longer there—growth of digital books, increased cost of paper (analog?) books & their transport, and the expected falling apart of chunks of our political, economic and ecological systems. (are books sustainable?) do we get local, back to samizdat, depending on how the networks hold out. how far back to oral tradition? where do you keep what you’ve created?

poetry/revelation/connection. reading Chi, a small book by Master Waysun Liao. he says we’re born with our yin, yang and tao in perfect balance. but by relating to a world outside ourselves, we lost that inner balance. people are a lot more alike each other than not, many political issues (universal health care, rich paying more taxes) around 80% agreeing. we all have in us the Buddha nature. every chance we get to catch a glimmer of it, to hear that tone/chord/arpeggio, like the sun-glistening water dispersing into thousands of drops falling over 90 foot tumalo falls. every poem/song/painting/creation has the potential to get us back to that balance, being of the main stream, shedding the false gravity and costumes of our lives

we each need to find our radiance, how we pucker the localest parameters. finding the now in the walk from here to there, shoes against pavement, wind through the screen I am. instead of waves of me gong out to the immediate future why not bring whats about to come to where I open my petals?

5/19  art expands the mind, shows more of our senses potential, the worlds potential, clarifies/ahas. natural beauty does this as well, filling with a positive energy, a clarifying, etc. was couple days ago at Tumalo falls 10 miles west of Bend (OR). Spring water running hard, sun out beautiful. the falls is 90 feet with a viewing spot at the top. seeing the well-li8t water sparkling apart as it goes over the edge, momentum meets gravity with wind & water’s cohesion. all that light can say. trying to follow a drop as far as I can. tying to slow time the tiniest bit. add to that seeing the water approaching the edge, its sped and clarity, a siren call from that water, wanting to jump in and know the inevitable flight and smash. the yang to the crystalline beauty, to join with and be nothing more than water and air.
seeing connections no one else does, brain dependent on what. art takes us to a split-second universe-gapping experience/hint. since now is an illusion, what else is possible. but our bodies, our sparks support systems, are tuned with the now and all its rules. maybe some forms of insanity are your perceptions/consciousness going into a space that isn’t here and now, where some of the rules/truths are different.  while the body’s still here, swimming through.

I would not want to constantly have the perceptions of the voice of my poetry. look what at did to van gogh (or because other things going in van goghs brain his art is what it is. art. something special and inherently non-rational. I distinguish tween then non- & the  ir-, non- in the tao/zen sense. not a challenge just that my perceptions differ from yours.

reading Angelmaker by nick harkaway. much enjoyed his first novel, gone away world. Angelmaker involves a dooms day weapon that works by so increasing everyone’s ability to see the truth that they cannot function. our evolution inside this micro-dimension leads some folks some of the time to perceive beyond the norm, to translate that difference as best as we can, tempted by it, like the beauty and momentum of the waterfall, to be of that same moment/infinity as that water droplet going over

5/14   yesterday’s poem could be called a muse poem. I write them occasionally, inspired by a woman, who gets some physical description but soon the poem is talking about other women, other things, phenomena, as all the poems tend to do

I do not sit down and write intentionally. I feel I could write a poem any minute if only. Some of the if onlys involve the when and how—do I have pen and paper, can I get in physical space where I can focus, am I still relatively sober. but even given all the needed physical conditions, there has to b a spark, an inspiration. its like muse is a subset of inspiration, loaded with some traditional, quasi-romantic sense of, sourcing back to sonnet sequences, courtly love. and what is love if not moving up a quantum of consciousness/life-energy?

for me the spark can come just because my head is so clear form being involved in a movie or performance. some words have to be the first ones and can’t be forced, some times I am so eager I’ll hop on whatever pops into my head and hope that takes me somewhere real. some times just being around the house, often early morning, maybe my head in  neutral mood as I just woke up (I rarely remember dreams) and a phrase or something can spark me. just don’t know when it will happen.

5/13   reading this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17537845 about Gyani Maiya Sen, from Western Nepal (where the borders blur with tibet, china, india, kashmir, pakistan, mustang) the last know speaker of  Kusunda, which has little connection to other languages in its structure, syntax, etc. like a galaxy that’s about to be sucked up into dark matter or void space, de-energized. or maybe its just one of hundreds of other successful franchises in other dimensions, an attempt at outposting that didn’t take.

logic tends to bring me down, especially when throwing in value judgments—I mean, there have to be standards. but we can only see/logic the games of the know, seeing the same dynamics at a higher level of interaction and effect is what we call intuition/ genius / lucky. I postulate that it always better to seek a richer energy level. maybe not right now, as the ching is always ready to say. but ive never seen a step backwards advised. maybe when you’re in so tight reverse is the only available.

a spate of sunny, 80 degrees and I’m ready to beam a little (be am). let me throw in yesterdays poem, in the beaming, especially with many dark clouds across me when the light was brought out, so to pass some of these multi-level photons on—

Her Hair is the Sun (for maryrose)

She says her yellow & green snakeskin is perfect, loose & cool

amid the goodwills, laundromats & 7-11s of saturday morning america

the perky and sparkling with their lists, their shops,

while the heavy-headed glide frictionless & partly elsewhere,

questions of time, posture, parts clicking together fate

yes we’re filling the sky with our spontaneous sunshine

the gloomers in washington, new york berlin, beijjing

are losing motivation—we’ll dance even if the music stops

which it cant since we’re permeated with it.

you can hear my air guitar blocks away, the resonance inside my head

lets each car sings its tune, that much metal is never silent,

always listening and sending back, always touched and changed: 

may we all collect royalties from our city’s song

this glorious, ordinary day