this morning, i woke with an insight of sorts. a deep calm filled me, and i thought that no matter what the world threw at me, i would be unperturbed. zen masters never feared death, or the end of the world. they had so thorough an experience of selfhood/emptiness that nothing could disturb them. their eyes open, breath flowing. i felt that, or thought i did, in the face of potential stress. concerns flitted through my mind like butterflies or dust motes. but i was in my own skin, in my own delicious space, and even if the world came crashing in on me, i would still be- this. this experiencing. this- thing...

the world is an impossibility. but yet it is. i am a miracle. i cannot understand myself, and i cannot capture my experience of time and space. but yet i/it all happens nevertheless. everything is an incomprehensible dance. we can't know the full rhythm, or when the chorus happens, or what the lyrics are saying. we just move to it all, whether we want to or not, whether we know what we're doing, or are just reacting. it all happens. i felt that this morning, and i felt alright with that...

concerns

past couple of days i've been really tired. maybe it's because i took a break from the p90x (i needed to, to get my blood test for my life insurance policy- we'll see how the results come back)...

it's been a restless kind of sleep that's drugged me and dragged me down. my dreams feel like voices that are not my own, that have been imprinted into me like a needle vibrating through wet vinyl... carving me up. i suppose that that is the worst kind of dream for me, the dreams that leave me feeling dispossessed of myself, as though i am out of control, and incoherent... last night, i thought of that whole kappa noodle story i've been working on (more like working off) for, like, forever, and i thought of ways i could tie that feeling into it... the need to find one's own voice speaking within one's own head... and later today, i thought how interesting it would be to have alternate voices speaking to me, as surrogate advisors, like the beatles (after all, i practically taught myself how to read using their lyrics) or alfred hitchcock... these, as counters to the ambiguous and sometimes nightmarish advice of the kappa...

the thing that i hate about being tired is it withdraws me away from life, and living. and there is so much of that around me.

i am reminded how antisocial i am almost every day. and the consequences of that stance. i don't necessarily want that, but i feel resigned to it. the way i react to the world is almost physical. i've come to accept things, the discomfort i feel around most people, the need to maintain a distance, and to contextualize conversations to prevent revelations of the mollusk i am inside, but at times, it is sad when people take me the wrong way. i don't mean to be aloof. in fact, i think i have chosen things to do (even if against my nature) distinctly to push me in the face of serving others. i really want to help. even if, in the process, i am disregarded.

instinctively, i react against arrogance, because i feel it is my antithesis. how is it possible for some to so deny the nature of things and the universe that they can hold themselves even for an instant above others?

i would like to speak (after a long silence) about judgment and the current it engenders, and the secret way to defeat it. there is a world of hatred and gossip and duplicity, and it can feel at times suffocating to walk within it, underestimated and hidden beneath the laughing weight of a thousand thousand words. but if you walk true, if your heart is within what you do, and if you can discover your secret art, your tie to the sacred, then you have nothing to fear. as shodo once said to me, "words are like the echoes of the cast off moltings of cicadas at the end of summer"; they are the hollow sounds of the hollow people. if you can delve into the plenitude of your silence, into the true feelings of your heart, then you can find the place that the words cannot touch. and you can find yourself, your true self, there.

it is impossible to predict what your individual art/religion/spirit is. i have, at times, glimpsed it, and felt comfort in, the feeling of brokenness, and the truth of storms. i have, at various instances, constructed constellations from the broken leavings of the world, like a crazy bower bird, and felt a certain rightness in that, in the "snapshot" of the feeling of being thrown... now that i have become a bit more domesticated, i find my greatest peace in my wife and my children, especially in watching them sleep. whatever fills you to overflowing with a feeling of oneness or "truth" is your link to god, to spirit, to sacredness. sometimes, when the hatred of the world crowds in, it is not only preferential, but vital, necessary, that one discover, rediscover it...

if you are a fellow silent walker in this world of sibilant and sycophantic whispers, then take comfort. i walk with you, even as you walk alone...