the wet morning after a full moon
    as she grows slimmer
    on the other side of the waters

the sun shines brightly
    peeking through so many trees
    seeking me out
finding the skin of my eyelids
    and shoulder blades

the phenomenon of a warm unanticipated
    touch from the sky

.

and now searching becomes the focal point

journeying, always
    are we

is there a moment of rest
    ,truly?

if forward is all there is

where is now?

.

i like to battle the elements
    with tiny movements
whenever i can

pushing up against gravity,
    resisting its pull

talking back to pain

reflecting on death,
     even as i breathe
    ;

the little things which prove our power,
    though we are small
   
aren't these our strange miracles?

picking up that which has fallen,
    setting it back to rights

the beauty of a car swerving around you so it doesn't hit you as you walk home~ that's gotta mean something, right? your life meant enough to something else in the world that they made a conscious effort to make sure you stayed alive.

words from the floating world

hello, blank journal entry - where have you been all my life? i'm up later than usual and i urge my consciousness to vomit forth data from its depths else i will surely perish. i challenge the concept of meaning to show me its exact size and vastness. the small and sensual sounds of mouths licking lips and articulating words, the language of sounds in between words the crackling hiss and pop of vinyl, a time capsule containing the full spectrum of human emotion lost to the sands of time

arabesque

i have been drinking. a lot. i guess it's okay to admit that here, to myself, even though i'd rather it not be the case.

v.v

it calls to me - the substance, the feeling, the rapture of it - and i feel its pull. at first i was chuffed that i could detect its peculiar voice and somehow resist, like the good moralistic being i am or wish to be... but after some time has passed it seems as though the strength to resist is falling prey to natural order.

many of us are, after all, divided beings. we recognize the realms within us that war among themselves, sometimes benevolently and at others quite viciously. the desire to be good vs. the desire to ... fall into abyss. each of our inner wars, our exact shades of light and dark, are different. i know my own demons almost by name, and though we are working on being friends i still dislike them greatly when it comes right down to it.

the truth is, i want to be good. i want to reap the benefits of living honorably. to me, living honorably means acknowledging that we are not alone here. our lives are interwoven with an untold number of beings who depend on us like the fifth ripple from the center of the dropped stone in a still pond depends on the fourth for it to exist at all. i for so long did not realize this basic fact. i grew up surrounded by humans, yes, but did my all to forget that they were there. for whatever reason i built a cocoon around myself where nothing else existed - believing, actually believing, that my actions did not have consequences for anyone but myself.

life does this thing where it teaches you lessons. often, they are painful. i'm not sure how else hard-won lessons could be adopted with complete faith unless a former mode of existence is ruptured, making way for a new and better state. i am a raw and new being with each passing moment, each passing battle which is waged then won or lost but ends; they always end. i am always simultaneously victorious and wounded - having discovered a new height of being a new low opens up before me. these paradoxes begin to feel completely natural, the completeness of a complementary life.

lately my practice has been increasing in rewards, and i am pleased, though i acknowledge that work is never completed in regards to the maintenance of the soul - there is always more work to be done. i say "work," but i see it more as maintenance than work. necessary repairs and upkeep - the pleasures of having something so precious as this life that it becomes a sacred duty just to devote the time and energy to keep it running smoothly.

here i am again. at the altar of self, the window before which countless past selves have laid their burdens, rested their weary limbs, and bowed their heads in reverence to the sky. it is an honor to be back here, at this place of having and wanting nothing, desiring all and nothing. i wish to speak of this storm within, as well as all those beautiful blooms and losses.

time goes on. the struggle is still present, but nature herself continues expanding, always outward, without the same assurance that i keep expecting of the universe.

this is a perpetual no-man's land.

being released from the chains of modern thought, of convention and even civilization, in a regular and moderate fashion is essential for sanity.

sometimes when my head hurts from all of the nonsense of our daily routine i am reminded of the times when the chains were broken and my spirit flew, unrestrained, in an ethereal void where thought and concept swam beside me, but not as part of me.

everyone arrives at their destination, or in some cases the destination (if such a thing even exists), from a different path. we all walk completely paths, because we are not wired the same, not designed, and through our design and our origination point is how she shape ourselves. it is kind of like a video game, if you really think about it - you are born as a particular character, in a particular place, none of which is your decision. where you live has its own levels of difficulty related to survival and development as a "functional human being" - or at least "functional member of a society." additionally, with every moment that passes our personalities are shaped by what we react with and how we react to it. thus we become individuals, and as individuals we have our strengths and our burdens which we either must face or avoid for the rest of our lives.

and so i think of meditation, that mode of existence that is most often wilful, but can sometimes be thrust upon us by an unexpected spiritual experience. many people today seem to be arriving at the door of meditation from very different paths. for some, the practice was taught at an early age as part of a long historical tradition - for others, it is a safe place at which they have arrived from a long and arduous journey.

what meditation does for me is provide an instantaneous doorway to the framework of my consciousness.

wandering star

summer has begun, and the air contains the same fragrant cool greenness i remember from last year, and the year before. birds both familiar and not join together in their choral cacophony, a near-constant accompaniment to the sun's dance across the sky. shadows are cast on mountainfaces and bedsheets by shaking leaves, drifting clouds. the swirling of ephemeral lost souls caught out of the eye's corner a second too late. in the dampness of twilight an eerie orchestra of chirping frogs illuminate the forested soundscape. these sounds more than any other contribute to that peculiar feeling of a cocoon being constructed all around me, whether starry night-colored or blisteringly iridescent with the violent impulse of new. life.

each season of each year seems to contain the same incarnations of self, like four continuous trajectories which differ only in where they stand amidst the elements. my sun self, the summer self, is when my age technically advances in number. the spring self rests in its annual hibernation. memories flood back triggered by the exact impact of the sun at high noon, as heat is only this intense when it hugs me from its current position; by the exact cool warmth, or warm coolness, of water now fit for swimming when i plunge myself into its depths against my skin's first desires. the moon shows her face to me when i need her embrace, and mysteriously is kept from me when my strength is to be found within.

my capacity to wield wisdom grows and shrinks inward and shoots up after rains and is killed off with disease at irregular intervals, and that is all part of the cycle. i accept the fact that i will keep feeling lost, even after i thought i've been found. i accept that being lost is not the end, and that to remain found i will need to work harder to retain my memories of success with greater accuracy, rather than those of failure.

i sit on the porch of my mind and watch the passing wind, like a mountain. i thank those who have graced my life and are no longer here. i learn the lessons that i need to learn. i acknowledge that my mind sometimes implants memories, sometimes misremembers... and embrace impermanence.

tanaka ryohei, gingko tree

lately i have been listening to portishead almost without end. i'm surprised that this group has hardly (if ever) been given a mention here, but i think it's because i have had them simmering on the back burner of my musical awareness for years and wasn't quite giving them their due.

my favorite thing about portishead is their incredible propensity to create completely unique soundscapes. "but isn't that what every good band does?" yeah, but no. not quite like this. the quality of production of their songs renders each as an entire self-contained world with its own rules, patterns, eccentricities. my favorite music does exactly this, where the first few seconds set the stage with a set of parameters, and then the listener is walked through the world of the song in an exploratory unraveling. the feeling of "this world is somewhere i never want to leave" is what causes me to put a song on repeat, and portishead has so many songs like this, songs which create mini utopias for my mind to bathe in infinity.

too dramatic? hear for yourself~

"strangers," dummy (1994)

perfectly-placed samples which weave together distantly-connected worlds
 the places each of those worlds evoke, all at once
images flashing, painted by sound
 hazy vocals which hearken back to times long past
disjointed lyrics that provide emotional texture rather than a chronological narrative
 time that exists outside of our time

"roads," dummy (1994)

skeleton of harmony presented before being fleshed out
 bluesy loneliness translated into sound
a road stretched out for miles in the dark
 as yet unwalked

"the rip," third (2008)

this song randomly came up in my listening experience and i basically couldn't stop listening to it. from the first section, so innocent yet sad, to the sweeping majesty of the synths, i love the journey from the ground into the sky.

arthur wesley dow, the derelict

 
i claw at what has been lost too often, rather than embrace what is already in my hands. thinking too much has been my downfall. my feet know where they are to go.

the mind creates the abyss,

the heart crosses it

sun guitar

i was brought to tears this morning by an emotion quite complex, something rare and unique and unusual but so very real...

listening to the following recording, the rare collection of tracks from the 1908s collected as the album oyiwane by a group of nigerian schoolchildren, induced a variety of feelings in mine chest.



i've been drawn to the sounds of niger for a little over a year, thanks to artists such as les filles de illighadad and mdou moctar (and many others found primarily through saharan-based recording project sahel sounds), and this album fulfilled many of the same searching beings within me.

aside from the monumental rareness of the circumstances leading to this recording being available for digital streaming in 2019 (the story of how sahel sounds acquired the recordings is quite extraordinary), the sheer timbre of children's voices singing atop such sparse guitar and rhythmic accompaniment is something i didn't know i would react to quite so strongly. the lyrical content of these songs deals primarily with the current political issues of the time, and served as a message to the greater nigerian population about the need for education (for all, but especially young women).

the group's song "oyiwane" (referring to the tuareg greeting "o-yi-wan") won first prize at a musical competition held in 1985 among city schools local to agadez, niger. due to this success, a generation of all-girl groups was cultivated and a popular genre was created.

for some reason this album made me think of the beauty some humans are compelled to create. whether knowingly or not, there is plentiful evidence that a decent number of humans, when confronted with life's hardships, resorted not to violence but to art and education. it moves me to see the creation of beauty in this world when logic and all things cold demand that there be nothing more than existence, nothing more meaningful in this life of ours than struggle and survival.

not sure why that got to me so, but damn!

.

which reminds me, i have been meaning to post about the following artist, mdou moctar, for a while now. i am just now becoming re-acquainted with his solo folk album, sousoume tamachek (2017), and wanted to share the experience with you.

moctar taught himself to play a handmade guitar in secret while growing up in a village where popular music was initially frowned upon for religious and traditional reasons. after making himself known among friends and neighbors as an extremely gifted musician whose lyrics were respectful and spiritual, the attitude towards creating guitar music softened and moctar would often find himself among the people in the village performing soft and intimate songs that he had written.

this album collects, years later, these initial personal songs that moctar was playing with his friends, and it is one of my favorites for this very special reason.

i think i am going to get to see him perform live in april! the closest place he's coming to me is about 6.5 hours away, but that's not too bad. it would be cool to support something like this that i am so fascinated by.

.

once a young woman said to me:

"hafiz, what is the sign of someone who knows God?"

i became very quiet, and looked deep into her eyes, then replied:

"my dear, they have dropped the knife. someone who knows God has dropped the cruel knife that too many use upon their tender self and others."

- hafiz (translated to english by daniel ladinsky)

self-deception

we, each of us, must engage

regularly

with infinity.

our thirst for it as humans demands that we work, that we toil, that we put forth hours of our time against all odds just for that sensation some might call triumph. inspiration. we work ever harder against that which pains us, which confuses us, which causes even more of our faculties to salivate for answers, because the striving and the struggle bring forth, at unexpected intervals, pure bliss.

just the smallest tastes of it.

and it's addicting.

it's maddening.

and it all seems so utterly pointless, too, when looked at under a microscope.

/

i guess i should apologize for times when i might say "all humans feel this" or whatever and it doesn't apply to you when i can only accurately speak for myself. the oversimplifier in me likes to oversimplify, to my own detriment, meh.

\

i think over all these years i'm just sort of saying the same thing over and over in a more refined and worldly manner.

deflection has been my game for years. self-deception. i finally realize how much staring into my own eyes hurts like a bitch.

but at least it's fucking honest.

at least the pain is real, and promises one very real thing:

an eventual end to itself.

i get my best thoughts while biking through the forest. i've learned to ride with no hands, and that newfound freedom allows my back to straighten, my thoughts to tend upward, my legs to pedal machine-like and steadily onward. my arms sometimes find themselves utterly stretched out, and it's almost as if i could pedal myself into the sky. i feel like i am a tiny spark of god, of bird, of more than just myself.

the golden hour is when the sun is just about to set. on cloudless days the liquid honey light is even more potent, pervasive. the warmth that spills from the sky calls me to bask, to let my face and skin become awash with light. it is in this moment, repeated however many times throughout my life, that the boundary of my body is torn away.

i wish to speak of the all -

the kaleidoscope with which i play,
in which i swim -

this magnificent swirl, this endless color-mixing.

we are suspended over endlessness,
and out of the endless are we made.

inside us are flickers of the same light
;
have you forgotten how to feel the warmth?

these words are for you, oh trembling one,
you who often retreat to the rivers in escape from storms of the mind.

there is ground in the heart and on this patch of earth is the resting place of gods.
you may rest with them.
you may rise with them

.

in search, always -
have you forgotten what you have found?

eyes darting inward, afraid -
have you forgotten how to see?