to find out what you love to do demands a great deal of intelligence, because, if you are afraid of not being able to earn a livelihood, or not being able to fit into this rotten society, then you will never find out.

k.

where is lily? i thought and wondered to mister, 
i heard she was ill. then nada.
 it's so calm this morning 
i thought and wondered aloud 
to mister,
i can almost see her there
like a little curly haired sea pony
gliding through the particled 
blue-green water. 
but she was almost definitely not there.  
and i just wanna assume
that no news is good news 
when it comes to
lily.  

i begin with simple things
seeing the world, seeing humanity, 
the 'me', and the necessity of a total, radical revolution,
how is it possible to bring it about?
it can only be brought about when the observer
no longer makes an effort to change,
because he himself is part 
of what he tries to change.
therefore all action on the part of the observer
ceases totally,
and in this total inaction
there is quite a different action.
there is nothing mysterious or mystical about all this.
it is a simple fact that i begin 
not at the extreme end of the problem,
which is the cessation of the observer;
i begin with simple things.
can i look at a flower by the wayside
without all the thoughts arising?
can i just observe without the observer?

krishnamurti


* so i found a dvd of k. at my sister's book store. and r. talked to tom about his daily quotes, and started sending same to me, and i thought the first time i saw him talking the is talking directly to me, not in an insane way, simply that he talks clearly and directly and i happen to be tuning in at the same time, which is all times, then and now, and somebody that is posting these daily quotes, somebody is selecting these particular things, and speaking with his voice, or k. is speaking through this somebody, to this time, and the people of this time, which time being all time, he knew, what was happening then would be happening now, even more so, coming to dreadful fruition, and the need for us to wake up all the more dire.

did i say that out loud? i didn't mean to say it aloud. i meant to say older.  

we met this feller and his wife who was shy from detroit sounds like i think china but he says detroit and sure he's been there since '89 so he's from detroit. his daughter works a shelter and wants him to get a dog and he wanted to send her a picture so i called mister over and took one with his camera and then mine but i forgot to give my address so i hope he comes back tomorrow with his trunks and his wife and maybe daughter who works for bp but has a social conscience anyway.

then this feller from detroit said you want me to take a picture of you and he took this picture. i think. or maybe it was me.

mister was balancing his ball on his head and sara was not paying attention. twice i said look at mister and then she said wow! and he flipped his nose and caught the ball. this is no parlor trick, kids, this bespeaks his great god-calm and centeredness. godda love this dog.

who calms the waters

goo'morning jasper.

 my lookout.


when you start very near, with the nearest, which is you,
then the whole world is open, for you are the world,
and the world beyond you is only nature.
nature is not imaginary, it is actual, 
and what is happening to you now is actual.
from the actual you must begin-
with what is happening now.




-krishnamurti 


*i was thinking blank, especially after that harrowing marathon book the last day and a half. i think, wow, i am truly blank as frank. and i grab a bough and i might get a crab-apple, might be worm, or handful of leaves.  but that's what i like, discomfiting as it can be. that memoir of violence was that way, starting out every day, the dailiness, after cataclysm, day to day.

the wind let up and we got back in. i cleared a bunch of rubble 
and made a freshwater tidepool, 
then i lay down behind a shallow limestone wall.  
i finished kalven's book with relief. it's a sad ordeal 
ending in a tender qualified darkness. it was an obsession 
while it lasted and now it rejoins the warp and weave 
of myriad trauma personal and environmental, 
flora, fauna and species trauma that sadly animate 
my tired noggin today. i grieved with the book, though it now rests 
in the past. it's still restless, still wants reading, 
and connects with the present lived book i spect.  
i wished for a sequel, but it was probably finished there, 
a place to put everything that could have curtailed in silence.
and i was tired of it, as probably he was.  
i move on to the quarry fox, and other critters. 
she talks about being a naturalist amazed by bluestone, 
the bottom of the ancient sea formed by streams 
from the acadian mountains. sea receded and left 
bluestone mountains, which became my dad's old house 
for a time til his second marriage doomed. 
nick cave talks of narrative disintegrating, fracturing, maybe eroding, 
like old mountains, maybe lopped off these days, blasted, 
and kalven talks of the need for narrative that won't really come, 
just an accretion of particle days, etc, etc.  
erosion has been happening for ages, 
but it's so head-spinning now, man-made. 
and trauma, the natural kind has been turbo-charged, 
the chaos a sick deliberation, etc. etc.  
i said how i wanted to disappear as a kid, and that lasted, 
but the gist of reading the specific traumas of fellow 
creatures makes me long to appear.  
when i see how we can so easily be disappeared. 
i feel the strange need to apologize, and the stranger pride to blab on.

i don't wanna grow up.

when i'm lyin in my bed at night
i don't wanna grow up
nothin ever seems to turn out right
i don't wanna grow up
how do you move in a world of fog
that's always changing things
makes me wish that i could be a dog
when i see the price that you pay
i don't wanna grow up
i don't ever want to be that way
i don't wanna grow up
some folks turn into things 
that they'd never want
the only thing is to live for today
i don't wanna grow up


tom waits

mister annoints the foot of aluminum man.

shadow hand and dog touch the flowers along the path.

we watched a film about people trying to save trees, and the savage treatment they received. they were so strong and brave, facing the overwhelming and savage power of the government and industry. they were treated like criminals for trying save life. like terrorists by the terror state. and i just wanted to cry, yet these events are already past, and other events, that will be viewed in the future, unfold violently now. how will we ever break this evil spell.

i went between the giant stones to have a pee and saw this bumble bee suspended by a spider thread spinning slowly in the breeze.

not self improvement.

the one who wants to improve oneself can never be aware, because improvement implies condemnation and the achievement of a result. whereas...

 

 

 

                                                                                                          krishnamurti


* i can imagine the man who leapt into the wave today was not burdened with thoughts of self-improvement. it is great when you are lit, he said. yes, i envied him the beer and the waves, and the hale and hearty swagger. tomorrow no one knows.

 the waves, they were crushingly beautiful today. i watched with envy a heavy drunk man rush in.
 

 r. said, it's so beautiful, it's almost sad. i know, i know. almost. i had a vision of being crushed and impaled under the beautiful green wave.

have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? it is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. and the struggle breeds memory. that memory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. there is no such thing as freedom of thought. it is sheer nonsense.


*i have to think about this. rewriting i can see the writing as kin to my own. i wrote that, though krishnamurti wrote it first. but what did it mean? if it's true it's also a thought and not free. interesting to think there is no free thinking, so no free thinkers. and it takes some curious and thoughtful thinking to think a thinker thought of that. i've always felt nonsense is most refreshing and liberating. how we need to think of ways to employ our brains while our nonsensical souls sneak out to play like free animals would.

my dad always wanted me to write what he didn't write and wanted to write. he wanted me to write his unwritten novel. he said what i did write was shameful. later, after he had been diagnosed, he called and said, you're talking to a dead man. then he said he was writing again. what, he wouldn't say, but it was at around 20,000 words. on his death it vanished unwitnessed down the same hole as his early novel i suppose, down the bottomless bottom drawer, never to be mentioned again. leaving me wishing, yet with the sickly feeling of invented non-existence. i'm reading jamie kalven's book, and wondering what his dad might have said. suzanne was reminded of the one she burned. my uncle burned a trunkful on mount tam, but no one saw it before the smoke, and only in their mind. i admire the personal stuff, the stuff that does make a difference, if it sees the light of day, and isn't a phantom of ego or burnt ember. i feel like a victim, but i feel like i try. i don't make it up to burn it righteously in shame. i wish i could be clearer. i wish the light could make me healed, whole, who i am. but all i got is that i don't write dad's wish, but mine, i think. dad would not be proud, but he had too much false pride already, and i still want to shame his ghost and say, where's the god damned manuscript, old man? it takes some chutzpah to write personal stuff, even in this day and age, and i applaud anyone who does. if i stopped and waited for my novel to come i'd die unwritten like my dad. i prefer to write my shame, if shame it is, than to go blind trying to read his ghost tome.

go into the rabbit warren, lay in the wildflowers, make dinosaur hand puppet shadows on mister.

pictures of yesterday carry words today. rescue is every day. 

the lake was a massive critter today, performing for everyone. i saw the dog blixa with a different man, after seeing nick cave's new film last night. the man told me nick cave's son arthur had fallen to his death from a cliff. and he that he was a twin. in the film it was not told. they showed arthur's painting of a windmill and said it was the place he died, as if he had painted his death. he said the end of narrative had come, the world was fractured since. is narrative the attempt to meld the fractures then? i feel that too, like someone has died, that all the fractures are a network forming, re-forming, a planet of living fractures. 
i saw greg, having a beer, leaping into the wild surf, the ex-minnesota twin, and he talked of network too. i thought of the fracture of the remaining twin. i thought of the rape of the planet, and the love that holds us together yet. the fractured planet of love beyond death.
 

beautiful rescue. 
from the outer you
get to the inner,
secret and open.
a clock without hands
washed up on the tide.
i'm gonna give it to you.
mind,
the gift of no time.
mind.
 

let's hang on to what we've got.

people wanna control you and curb your dog too.

people lost try to give other people bad direction.

most of us don't want to change. we keep on being ourselves. versions of ourselves. but what happens when an event occurs that is catastrophic, that you just change from one day to the next?

we change from the known person to an unknown person, so when you look in the mirror, you recognize the person that you were, but the person inside the skin is a different person.

so that when you go outside the world is the same, but now you are a different person, and you have to renegotiate your position in the world.

                                                                                                      nick cave

yesterday we saw a hummingbird sip a flower and head out to sea through the wild wind and over the waves. the feeling i get when i see a hummingbird always joins the feeling i got when i found one on my pillow by the window with the white plum trees chorus beyond.

i don't believe in the narrative anymore.
                                                                              nick cave

i feel so emotional.

can we give ourselves the gift of time or is it only given.

i was always afraid of people. dogs came into that void.

it was the unlikely crustacean whose foreignness fascinated me.

i hold you up briefly while i can.

my way is lost.

 my way is lost again.

whose ancestors are we.

what does it mean when your tailbone hurts.

come see affection.