Beneath Thought

1/1/19

Before meditation:

Close my mouth and know that all

Unfolds into whatever bend is meant

For that moment is a lifetime, a year

Only a blink in the cosmos

Yet we think holding on and exposing

Chewing up and regorging

Making witness and performing

Taking tissue and reboarding, planes

Pints and vixens dance in sentences

Before

Even the known has come

So keep the mouth closed when you thinking

What you have to say is know, and always all knowing

The light that passed through passess through and has passed

For 70,000 years, this brain has fled from lions

This brain has been led to bones, to the carcass

To the marrow, for only in the recent past has this brain

Seemed to contain the multitudes of Whitman or the

Platitudes of Deion Sanders or the laughter of the impractical jokers

Never known. Always rehearsed, if then, what then

The scourge, the pain that comes with trying to make

Thinking: the impulse behind a concept album

And all know about those, how they make us feel

Yet somewhere inside of one year was one beginning

One witness of a new year and cruelty when disturbed

When the dog sits on the wrong couch, when you let all of this flow out

And all that you know is what continues to come: wake up

Breathe

Chop wood

Carry water

The wood is what is beneath your feet

The edges of the path that

Once logs become strands of hyphae

And blessings of mycelium

And to help the children, first consider the fungi

Go first to what you call dirt

Concern yourself with waste and warranty, the latter being

A euphemism for what you get back when returning what you use

I’ll spell it out: you do not need bath salts to wake up, but

As deMello says, “You do not want to be awake”.

The pain is not reality, yet it is like an amniotic fluid

A net inside which a baby rots within the womb

Only to be pried and pulled and split into pieces

Like fried chicken on a side street or intestines

Splayed on the roadside.

Hello 2019. Bless you.

Let everything spill out in this twenty minutes

Find what is always there: dedication to sit and type

Was her name Julia? The one of The Artist’s Way?

Did she imagine what might become, how dozens of trees might drop leaves

And only this will be the only use of the word only

Used almost twenty times already on this morning of the new year

Constructed: time

Illusion: definition

Condition: twist

Bread and breadless, home and homeless

Gifts and gifted

Words and wordless. Not named and nameless

The pain of thinking decisions create results

The pain that comes with craving whether

This be a hot sausage from Gene’s or the desired quiet from thirteen year olds.

Take not so seriously what you are about to become

For you have always been this.

Bend not to the whims of the canopy.

Bend rather back to the split of sun slipping through

While embracing the clouds, for you know the value of rain

And give us our day this daily bread

For there is no other save for give us

Our crumbs these many moments

And let satiation be attended by praise for whatever weather.

Type not as an outlet for power.

Type not to change the breadth of the hour

Or take Cornish game hens and the way words connect. There

Is no reason to try to figure out what is next except Eminem

And this witness that sits gives this boiled egg reason to sip

Coffee is no different when the year flips.

Perspective is thinking that you have learned

Thinking is the very problem. Thinking that you thought up way

Thinking that you figured it out is only another cat and mouse

Trap like the quicksand in comic books or the quick laugh

Of old timey crooks where they drive from banks and shoot machine guns.

This was 1936 when they said, let’s wait.

Things will be so much better in ‘37.

Did they then make a Chevy? Did they then forge new metal

Or create a cure for cancer?

Always never sometimes forever we will be setting

The table for the company that makes us feel better

Is not the company that comes for Christmas or for

The holidays should you want to be political or for

The ones that collect the garbage and deliver the mail

Another year is only

A drop in the bucket, is only, another chance to use the word

Only

is only

The laughter of the medicine, rather than the trumpet, whether the one comes

Seeking first

To see the soil, seek first to see the gift of dust on your jeans

Know worms will devour denim

Before your body is resurrected

So think first which came: 2019 or the egg.

After:

Beneath the thought is digging

Through the recesses of clay

And weight and wait

And bubbles of air

Once unknown

Then the only time

Was once before

When the words come

Accept them

For this is what is

When the way is unknown

Beneath thought is the muse

Writing in silence

God’s only language

Writing while silent

The fire is made

When the coals come first

The end is not what is done

The end is never

Even the ash

Phosphorus

Flowers

How is that?

Questions need not be asked

Let surprise rise and rain

Let wonder sustain

Whatever comes

Consider without considering

All of this is difficult

To explain there is no explanation

Yet this must be understood:

Beneath the thought is digging

Beneath the thought is the core

Being is in the middle

Receiving silence is the answer

Prayer is not talking

Meditation is not listening

Yet they are

Not the way you might thinking:

Meaning: the talk is silent;

What is heard is silence

This is where the answers are

In silence

In now

In fire

In presence

Beneath the thought

Is the great reality

Sprung from the trap.

Take driving, for instance.

The way steering becomes second nature

Only happening

You are no longer the driver

For you are lost in a future you cannot

Possibly plan

Experience has taught you this

And yet you still consider

Why the words yet and only

Are so often used.

Perhaps in the mind of man and

The chronic typing

There must be proclamations:

The knowing that feeds

The thought beneath thinking

This witnessed condition

Of how the witness

Witnesses

To figure out the stacking of logs

Is enough

For this day

To watch rain become snow

To drive through the neighborhood

Where you once lived

As a boy

Where you rolled down hills

Where you tore your pants

Where you wanted to sing

When you didn’t know

You didn’t know everything

When your parents were wrong

No matter what they said

When you used others to make you

Feel better

Today

By seeing love

By reversing first thoughts.

Beneath thought is the notion

There is such a thing

As neuroplasticity and the ability

To rewire what has been wrought

For seventy thousand years

The mind has been trained to fight or flee

So see imminent danger in all situations

So a woman pops in

A man pops in

Children pop into

Your screen of reality and first

Thought is worst thought

For beneath thought is a digging

Pause to sidestep what you think

Spin to

Allow a different vision:

You have just rewired your brain.

Rain is a seed sprouting

Traffic an opportunity

For patience

Come what may in the middle of all of this:

Blisters are relief when seen as the beginning

And where did this thought come

From: sitting

And letting the gods in

Who are you to say

You know what you need to type

Look at the way you tried

To run your life

Through thinking

Through trying to figure things out.

The answers will not come in this manner

The answer is that there are no answers

And there is every answer

And there is no contradiction

In the speed at which the fingers move

Never taught self

Taught

Beneath thought

Beneath shelf is a self leading

To another shelf and another gain

Not lost before first thought is worst thought

Let the sitting bring what ought to come

Forgetting what you first thought

When sitting down

Release all you think you know

Listen not to confirm but to learn

Take turns when speaking

Sit quiet when filled with desire

Take tape and refrain

Take trains to reclaim

Take the station

Switch the telling from vision

The creation of wishing

And get rid of all of this

Time will not create change

Time will not ease pain

There is no need

You are right in everything

Right where you are

You need not keep digging

Thinking that beneath thought you will find

The right thought

For beneath thought is digging

In the core is silence

In the beginning was not the word.

You got that one wrong.

In the beginning the carpenter made a sound

A hammer coming down

And there was no need to make sense

Of what was heard

A dove flew and did not

Try to get through

An alleyway of design

The mind a lost spot in the hotbox

Of baseless creative thought and when

Is it you and when

Is the muse coming through

You won’t know unless you keep typing

Mind is not an ocean,

But Billy is

A Squire to: this that came just now:

Not the Muse

Or if so, then goddamn,

That muse sure do

Have a sense of humor

Playing you like a hula hoop twisted

This thought takes you to the bin

Where they sedate you because too much thought

Is sickness

A value that fidgets

And toys made by children

By nephews for kids

With too much energy

Kids that should be staring into screens

Kids that want to move and talk and create

These kids are the kids that I want to witness

These kids are the inventors

These kids are me

And I look forward to meeting myself.

Before and After Meditation

12/31/18

Before:

On the Instagram you can watch a man trim apple trees

And speak about how everybody has to find his way

To prune his own trees or not

Year after year, and how most of what

We find on the internet is not suited

For our climate with high humidity and temperatures

Is different from most places currently growing apples

He is in line with the same people who thought of paleo

With the man that wrote the book sapiens

With all of history--so in this

Do we need to consider what is in the air these days?

Do we need to consider what bugs might be resurrected?

What I might be meant to do is an offset of CRISP

Something called SOIL whereby I bring peoples’ attention back to the source

SOIL. Saving our individual lives or

Sourcing only interested liasons or more, something like this is not to be come up with immediately. Just thoughts at the end of the year. Just the ideas that have already been taken, like an indoor adult playground bar way out in the Iowa countryside when there was my idea of videos and candles and an old piano. Now I have the space to play, the space to make places to sit, a lead on stolen gate doors with a detective calling and asking whether or not I have photos. Who would return the gates were they to be retrieved?

How can I work with Mike Cornwell to buy seedlings in bulk and then plant them throughout the 9th Ward. Along those lines, what is the best way to begin planting citrus? In the shade of oak and hackberry trees? What other symbiotic relationships might take place? What about burning all of this cat’s claw and then taking the bulb as medicine? Is this tortured earth trying to save itself and us at the same time.

This is how this works, the same as when I realized that the pomegranate tree was using me to accelerate the spread of its species. I was listening to the British guy, Tony Parker maybe, even more nondual than Nisargadatta (a very dualistic proclamation!)...maybe I will have to ask Ben Shea.

There is a way that there can be organized chaos in the spread of all that is around us. This starts with a board, a group of people making decisions together about where and when to plant, a group of people that believe in letting the chickens work for us and then collecting their eggs.

Quinn’s Coops: Buckin’ Eggs.

That would be how we honor the young man caught in the trap. How to keep the space alive and well as Tank said while it continues to change, while more white people with money come. Carry the stories. Carry the water. Chop wood. Who would still be there to be interviewed? Why should my house be home base? What trees could be planted and where? When you see the life cycle of a butterfly and realize the connection between this and the inside tube of a toilet paper roll, then you will be forgiven.

To read Ross Gay and finally decide where Dad’s ashes should be spread

To carry fireplace ashes 1600 miles and descend

To bake macaroni only for a side dish because you have learned

The proper way to say pecan is out loud, but in the land

Of the praline, time knows no bounds when the trumpet sounds

And the chorus begins and everybody sings: I’ll be glad when you gone

You rascal you, and everybody knows all this is in jest

Laughter sits on the fence of sadness and unlocks the gate

Love lies wait in the waist of a worker bent to lift

A sprig of grass knows only the future beneath a breath of snow

The wild wondrous worm reaches out and splits herself into

Thoughts not body, thoughts not pain, thoughts not contained

In any prince there is the dive of division and the need for

Control, an omen lifted first from the druids, lifted first

For the fortunes of the boats without sails, lifted

to the treetops we risk like the mighty squirrel

Perched with the purpose of tracking each fallen nut

In the U.S., we call this a census, sometimes the House

Sometimes the Senate, certainly the president.

Twelve thirty-one. Eighteen

You are almost gone now--you have left behind many opportunities

So we as your subjects, as your grand denizens of the earth

Sit with a part of us ground and the rest in heaven, letting lower

Lights light light, lyres of song from oft wrong soldiers of long ago

Searching for the words meant for Muses to send-able only to receive by sitting

To trim an apple tree, to cut the branches, to be nature’s servant

To take the inside of a toilet paper roll and realize how this may

Create a butterfly. To know this.

After:

Should not the mind be clearer after sitting

In silence for twenty minutes and now

Blood running through calves, legs alive, tingling

Sensation in the shoulders, spread love to spots of pain

If in the body, then in the entire collective body

If able to shift and shape pain through thought and movement

Why not rely on this to change the consciousness of the world

The tissue through which a butterfly is created

This is what is missed: the realization that every action

Changes the world irretrievably and there must be a way

To end words and lines in verbs and prepositions arranged in a different manner

So as to start lines that pull you back to the previous

Line and forward. March. To the present. Now to the

Next order of business is witnessing the way you always remember

Ross Gay and Eminem, hashtagging the two of them, hashtagging

The spirit of Thomas Lux may have stayed on this earth longer

Were it not for the very things that drew me to him those nights in Prague

He asked Amanda Troxler why women always seem to go for the worst ones

Meaning me, and then said he would never let me meet his daughter

So here I sit almost twelve years later, at my mother’s kitchen table

Alone, thinking of ants in a sugar bowl, thinking of what Tom’s daughter looks like

Thinking of how I might tell her about his kindness and patience toward me.

What must it have been like to have given a drunken poet a summer schlorship to Sarah Lawrence only to have him show up sober and with a desire to stay sober?

Take the limes and the coconuts and let mistakes be choices that you were not aware of before you made them: the muses will come into the editing room as well, but the muses will not sit unless first you do.

So you raced the clock nearly everyday in the year 2000. What if?

You write a letter to that Zach twenty years before. Each day you read what was written

At the turn of the millenium and then discuss what you know now

Then the answer was in words. Now the answer is in silence

Then the answer was whiskey and women

Now the answer is worms and a word with “w” that will not come.

Not will. Not wisdom. Wonder might suffice.

Yes, wonder. Worms and wonder. Worms as the intestines

Of the earth we have left with the concrete blocks that block us from us

If this is the truth, should there not be a way that I can set aside my judgement

to make a living, a way that I can take my passion for the earth and for service

and for the way that death becomes life

and take this to make a curriculum that addresses the entire child.

It will be up to me to write this. It will be up to me to ask others what they think and seek help and realize the many different ways that are right before our eyes,

the ways to take a green papaya and moringa

And change the life of a child,

the way to let the chickens work with what is left from every restaurant in the neighborhood.

If you keep writing about the same things over and over then this means that is where you should be. Do not seek out the end, but have an idea. Have a way that places worth before money, a way that considers life before self, and even though self is a part of life, seeking to serve self first will only destruct self. These are only words. God sent the messengers. God sent David Wiss to discuss health and sobriety and maybe all of this is coming together for a small cabin on CRISP where alcoholics can live in the beginning, where they can get reconnected to the earth, serve the worms SERVE THE WORMS and thereby reenter into a place from which they only believed that they were separated.

A sip of coffee and a thought about second thoughts

A far flung symphony bent down beside

The gutter where the leaves collect and all we see

Is the sewer of neglect failing

To witness the system’s anomalies-

Along the curb, waste creates life.

Take now the flesh and mimic the way nature

Turns rubbish into a gift, and then realize

Rubbish is a concept in the mid of man

A setting sun prophecy that setting sun people make

Each day. A realization can take place

There are no setting sun people

Only setting sun egos. Only resting warriors

Only blinded allies and corporate lawyers

Make sense of the constables and other unnecessary words

And herd together divinity.

Manifesto

I

The hardest part of writing a manifesto is the first sentence. Next is the difficulty of pinpointing exactly what you want to say. With the former finished and the latter never known, let's move ahead and begin with this: we heal together, the earth and the people, for we were never separate.

In this nation, pain runs through the DNA of every person born on domestic soil. The children do not know this. Each morning, Steven came to me and asked if he could water the garden outside our classroom door. Administration called him autistic. I found him interested. Why does a carrot have a green top and an orange bottom? Why are there ants in the garden? He brought me the remains of a dragonfly and asked why we could see through the wings. He brought me seeds. He brought climbing pink roses that we kept in a peanut butter jar filled with water.

Native Americans found meaning in all beings. They honored the life within every form. A dragonfly, born in water, takes to the air to teach us about change and adaptation. They buzz above us to illuminate illusion. If only I could have given Steven these words. Instead, I said something simple like the wings are that way for the same reason he loved to watch water become a rainbow on its way out the can.

This manifesto is for Steven. It is for the times when the other students wiped their hands on each other and said that they had "Steven germs". It is for the times that kids refused to sit in his desk. It is for the time I didn't see his hand raised and he had to sit in his own pee. It is for the hug he gave me every morning.

I want you to know this, Steven, that much of what we see is an illusion, and that most of those that call themselves adults are confused and we know not what we do. But do not fret, for deep within each of us is a voice that asks, "Why can't I stop thinking like this?" This is the witness. This awareness is the beginning of change.

This manifesto is for you. The reader. A candle in a dark room. An appeal to the divine that exists beneath what you believe separates you from me and each other.

So before we go any further, let's stop to say for ourselves:

May you be at peace.
May your heart remain open.
May you awaken to the light of your true nature.
May you be healed of all things.
May you be a source of healing for all beings.

And let us now take one minute and think of a being that has meant something to us, that has offered love, be this a pet or a tree or an Uncle with a bad hip.

Offer this:

May you be at peace.
May your heart remain open.
May you awaken to the light of your true nature.
May you be healed of all things.
May you be a source of healing for all beings.

In the life of every man, woman, and child there exists one or more people believed to be the cause of pain. We struggle with these people, for the ego separates us from them. This manifesto will get subterranean.

For now, say these words while considering one of those persons:

May you be at peace.
May your heart remain open.
May you awaken to the light of your true nature.
May you be healed of all things.
May you be a source of healing for all beings.

II

I must ask, "Am I writing to confirm what I think I know? Or am I writing to learn something new?" I would ask you to consider why you read. When you buckle against what has been written, pause, and consider why this is. When my sense of who I am is threatened, I attack. My Western mind craves certainty.

The Revolution Will Not Be Packaged

Problems cannot be solved upon the same plane of existence which created them. Destruction of self and nature cannot be separated. The idea of the natural world as a resource at our disposal stems from the hubris that exists when man thinks he can out-science that of which he is a part. His connection has been lost. What a sad irony that the very people that understand the necessity of our communion with the land are being forced away from their own at gunpoint.

The systemic problems which exist in the United States can all be connected to this belief that human beings are separate from everything else that lives and that the world is here to serve us. Until we as a nation can see that the opposite of this is true, nothing will change. Life for homo sapiens will continue to devolve. This line of reasoning is difficult to accept in a society where success is equated with achievement at all costs, and making money is considered to be an honorable endeavor with little regard as to how that money is made.

     There are nations throughout the world that are leading the way in attempts to improve the health and livelihood of all of their citizens. Consider Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and others. This isn’t happening in the United States. What I do see happening within myself and others is a desire to understand how some of us can accept this, and furthermore, how a great many support ideas and orders that contribute to this destruction of our environment. I use that word loosely, to encompass all that is around us and all that we experience. Again, we are not separate from other living things, despite what the human ego tries to argue. Therefore, it is in the best interests of all of us to examine something I was taught long ago: to understand why a problem that holds so many in bondage continues to exist, when other options are available, we must look at who profits from the problem.

I am going to concentrate on three areas of concern and try to examine how these are tied together. That is not to say that I am unaware of all the other problems stemming from these three. (Think racism, sexism, police brutality, the industrial prison system, hate crimes, pollution, global warming, protests, religion used as an excuse for "progress", obesity, addiction--the list could go on and on.

     All of it begins, of course, with our being disconnected from the very ground on which we walk. Many of us, especially those of us residing in big cities, do not even consider that there is a harmony between all that lives. Many of us go through our days without even noticing these living creatures. Sometimes we do not notice because there is only concrete; sometimes because we are rushing from one thing to the next in an attempt to outrun our true connection; sometimes we only notice when the weather affects us, as if the world is here to serve us.

     When Earl Butz and Tricky Dick demanded that farmers "get big or get out," they took the holiest of professions and turned the American farmer into a button pusher dependent on big loans and chemicals. The moved the stewards even further away from the vision held by Native Americans, from the respect and honor they gave to Mother Earth. They kept farmers in bondage while flipping the bird of America at the all knowing Mother. And when she said, "I'll show you," they flew planes over her and sprayed chemicals that killed everything. What they did not know is that the old Mother is resilient. She sent stronger bugs and more armies that could outwit the noxious toxins and win the next round.

     So they got more planes to fly through America's spacious skies, reigning down more chemicals onto amber waves of grain. Stronger chemicals. Companies created seeds, immune to these poisons. These Frankencrops grew at a rate never seen. Progress! The American public relished in what had been sprayed and reduced to food-like substances, and as long as they contained enough sugar, fat, and/or salt, we did not care.

    Meanwhile, the earth lost more topsoil. Birds, bees, butterflies, and all forms of life began to disappear at alarming rates. The Agricultural Centers across the United States encouraged these practices. They encouraged the use of pesticides and sprays for the home gardener.  How did we get so disconnected from what the Native Americans knew, from what each of us knows deep within the soul? It is almost hard to fathom. And though a word like hubris should not be used twice in an essay this short, I can think of no better alternative.

     As a nation, we have become a conglomeration of sick, overweight zombies. We are sold the notion that this is a problem of willpower. We are sold the notion that diet and exercise will save us. The truth is that there is little upon which to dine and our lives seem to be centered around being sedentary. So we go to doctors with the hope that they will save us.

     It is my understanding that these doctors take the Hippocratic oath. Yet the very notion of what is today called "doctor" breaks this oath. The majority doles out drugs after the fact rather than trying to understand what led up to the problem. One cannot, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food, when there is no food.

     Bring on Big Pharmacy, where every symptom is treated rather than examined. For every ache and every condition "outside of the ordinary" there is a corresponding pill. The benefits of keeping people sick is of the utmost necessity to those invested in pharmaceutical drugs. And chances are that these same people have some of their money invested in what is called Healthcare, but is more appropriately understood as sick care.

It will give cause to examine those with interest in pesticides, food-like creations, and pharmaceutical drugs, yet this will do nothing to solve this overwhelming and tragic comedy where those in industries like the FDA and EPA, and any other governmental institutions revolving around these issues say things that are laughable, and yet people get behind them because they align with a word. For them, apparently, our lives are not as important as being right. You laugh, maybe even scoff, but the human ego is a beast. Have I not just explained how it thinks it has more power than nature? How it is of the belief that you are separate from every other living being?

     What does it take to heal the land and thereby heal ourselves? It will not come from the top down. It will not come from organic labels or non-gmo packaging. That has already become a ruse designed to confuse those that just want to live without being fat and sick. A problem of this magnitude cannot be solved in the same manner of thinking that caused it.

     “But we need to feed the world!”

Yes, we do. We need to feed them food. To grow food, we need to grow soil. We need to fix what years of agriculture have done. And we need to start right outside our doors. We will be apt to try what we have seen go from seed to fruit. We need to heal together by sharing what we have grown, by increasing biodiversity in our neighborhoods, by reducing our dependency on big government and fancy packages. Our addiction to fat, salt, and sugar will decrease when we see what we eat growing all around us. It will decrease even further with the feeling that comes from eating nutrient-dense food. We will grow in spirit as we heal the soil around us and thereby heal our relationships with each other.

     How is this to come about? It cannot be accomplished through a top down model. That notion has proven not to work. That notion does not take into account the individual differences of land, of people, of flora and fauna and cultural practices. If you really want to get down to it, a universal plan to serve all is impossible.

      The United States is a puzzle with millions of pieces. You and I, we are only part of one piece. Some of us have expected to be presented with a puzzle, all put together, that we might then see and understand our own part, that we might feel whole. I would counter that the way out starts with your own piece, by establishing connection to those closest to you. Each of us has something to offer our neighbor.
My commitment is to finding out what will grow without much input or effort in in my piece of the puzzle. To look at longitudes and latitudes and similar weather in the rest of the world and try growing what they grow along with what has always been grown. (If you live in Minnesota, you don't need to eat oranges. Capiche?) I commit to keep searching for healthy, life-affirming options, to give of these freely, and to do whatever I can to encourage others to do the same. My notion is to help others understand that nature knows no waste. When you say you are going to throw something away, I ask you this, "Where is away?"

     The piece of land where I am included extends from Japonica to Press Street (railroad track to railroad track) and Florida Avenue to St. Claude in the city of New Orleans. I vow to give all of myself, to thank every living creature, to pick up what people call trash and see how it might be reused. I vow to do whatever I can to help increase the diversity of all that lives and to help others whenever I am asked. I vow to use the hair of the barbers, the eggshells of breakfast cooks, the vegetable ends left after chopping, and the fish heads and guts that never made it to the plate.

This is my piece. Our piece. I hope you find yours. And I hope that someday we all connect.