INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + HAAG'S BIO
Where the window is, the wall is absent.
Because it's empty, it gives
light and air.
Sit silently with sorrow and suffering. Do nothing.
If
you want to help others, keep away.
"Just understand yourself -- that
itself is eternity."
This morning I read "jelly roll" in
a book. I see
the yellow, eggy,
absorbent cake spiralling around bright crimson jelly.
I never liked jelly rolls when they
existed. The imagined presence
creates remembrance, judgement.
Slip it back into its forty years'
absence. Forgetting forms the window of memory.
Last night the helicopter's light threw blue/white shadows
through the
wind-driven, soughing cottonwood leaves, across my
polished floor
flickering in black/white negative patterns searching
for the long-gone
boys, who had pranced
on the sloping, sheer-sided roof at midnight
enjoying the liquid sounds, the glittering lights,
the mind-expanding,
universal view from a hundred
feet above the city-scape's soaring zenith
in
the fresh, cool air. Dare-deviltry emblazoning memories
on life's
mundane, earth-bound background which did
not include nor care about the
woken
old woman who, amused/envious/safety-conscious, roused the cops.
Yesterday, the chest came home. Too much furniture.
The white walls
become obscured by things, too
many things, the blankness is gone, the
being.
And the spiders have moved in. It
must be summer. Scuttling
from my bed
on the floor to the dazzlingly buffed
ancient English
chest, bronze pulls, trim complete.
Anchored. I now feel anchored by
fondness
filaments for something I don't want to
own. But
Nisargadatta says: "The essence of
saintliness is total acceptance of
the present
moment, harmony with things as they happen."
Hearing Swapanji drum for the first time, I
noted: Perfection is
attainable and There is
no such thing as a mistake.
Sitting
in satsang with him for three years,
his being/drumming
changed my soul's structure, substance.
Even his rejection -- my
perception of rejection --
was grace. It was time for solitary
work to begin, to mirror his grace,
patience, disciplined
perfection in my being. This
had nothing to do with Swapanji's
person.
What I sought in spiritual enquiry, I
found through the infinity of his music.
Walk on uneven ground, barefoot, as often
as possible. I have walked
unshod in
India, in the dust and heat. Now,
I walk here, with
naked feet, around
Greenlake, in the grass, wet with
dew.
Nisargadatta says: "The body knows its measure,
but the mind
does not. Its appetites
are numberless and limitless." Do not pursue
pleasure. Do not avoid pain. Accept both.
The unobstructed Self
will end in bliss.
But you don't have to believe me.
I am still here painfully suffering, rejoicing.
If writing is not to record one's
thoughts and feelings for
posterity*... Why
do it? To play the illusory game
of each
entertaining the other? All weaving
spider's sheets to encircle the
cricket-elusive explanation
of what is. What is? Nothing that
you
think it is. Getting your own
karma in order concludes your work.
"You
end where you start -- in the Absolute."
Why the rigmarole
creating mysteries, solving them?
Do you kill the flower, the baby
to save it the bother of living?
This morning, my mind runs in circles.
like a Stonehenge, an eagle,
hawk,
crow, an eddy spiraling me down into
the murk beyond,
beneath the surface.
Intensely interested, the mind becomes the poem.
"Sadhana is effortless." Perfection is now.
Do not ask for
love, give it.
Be the sun in overcast Seattle. Be
the wind. Be the
ice cold summer.
Wisteria, rhododendron, valerian bloom extravagantly
-- be one.
Be one, be the other, love weather.
The chilled heart will still. Breathe gently.
Longing for the Theosophical Library off Broadway,
Longing for the
Ashram in Emeryville,
Poignancy for the past pervades my morning.
The fog shrouds the city towers completely.
Times past. Time --
what does it mean?
As if memory were The Supreme
My heart expands
into Pain/Bliss/Enlightenment.
My breath moves up, down, gently,
As if I were strolling the path,
Winding experience's double
strand into awareness.
Will I reach the outer limit before
My time? -- disappear suddenly into clear air?
Does Nisargadatta contradict himself, saying "I am"
is the source of
all trouble?
Before he said it was "the key
which can open the
door out
of the world." Or does he just
not like the kids having
visited
other gurus? "As long as you have
the idea of influencing
events, liberation
is not for you..." Did I speak
from "full
insight into the situation"
yesterday with my sister. Certainly not
passion
or persuasion, certainly to define.
I've had my last bout
with desire for fame. And lost.
Now I can be
free and live
and live my life simply -- as
Jan, the obscure, in
my cave, working.
Nothing to maintain, no more effort.
What
pleases me is the sun, rising
through the cottonwoods, birds, further
off
now that summer has come. It's a
week and a day to midsummer.
At last the sun stays all day
and I sleep at night.
I'm too quiet to write
this morning. I can only
quote. Blank
mind, blank body, the poplar
reflected in my computer screen,
tall, noble, shimmering in the wind, sun
hiding in the cloud
cover... Yesterday,
canoeing in the lagoon, it was ninety-six
degrees, hot enough to burn away
one's karma. Great blue heron as
quiet
as we, poised at the edge
of black water and tall, yellow
iris
slightly swaying to passing boats...
"Truth gives no advantage. It
gives you no higher status,
no
power over others; all you get
is truth..." -- the booby prize.
Who needs it in this kool world
of "with it," high technology,
no reason not to lie your way
to the top, own everyone's genes,
own their food, own their eight hour
day at minimum wage, own
each
other's love. Possess! So what's your interest
in this odd smelt: Truth?
"... you are the universal consciousness
itself -- and in full
control..."
The world behaves as it does because
you have opened
your eyes.
If you want to change it, change
yourself. The diamond
is cleaved,
the stone is abraded -- do you mourn
for the
splinters, the dust?
Well you might. It is you have
created the
evil of beauty.
Let diamonds lie encrusted, let stones remain
patinated, polish your own soul.
The body lives on fuel.
A little more each day
is turned to flame,
reason
and delight, consuming its substance
to create poem,
unexpected sneeze, dread of
night, the shifting interference patterns
of the holographic past. Living to realize
that lila, in
joy, created
pleasure universally balanced by sorrow, one feels
the need to die. Dormant
flame within twig, tree, consciousness,
golden, searing,
licking, inevitably, spontaneously, combusts again.
I am neither the image
nor its mirror, I am
"infinite focused in a
body."
I am all desire, all
fear. I am not what
I am. Change
will happen.
I'll say: "Nothing is wrong with
me any longer."
I'll be
myself, I'll watch myself express in action.
Being is in
the gaps,
the forgotten. Encourage memory-less-ness. Be. Go within.
"In identity no thought survives."
I am inventing the world
and it is wearing me
out. Nisargadatta
says: "You must
unlearn everything..." -- to become God
Do I want
to be
God? "You create the world
and then worry about it."
Where I walk, the miraculous
happens -- but not to me, not
miraculous
things I want most. Unconsciously
God or Gnani
choose. "You are already
perfect..." -- cease believing it's otherwise.
I always feel I am
starting -- afresh -- today -- from now
on.
Resolutions surge up in
the morning sunshine. Today, will
I
become, suddenly, the splendor
of the universe? I wonder.
Only a
particle -- dissolved into
the universe -- part of every
particle
of the universe? "...you
give reality instead of getting
it..."
You are. Stop accepting things as
they are, they will dissolve.
"...what is the use of
this endless anxiety of choice?"
"...there
is nothing you need.
"...eliminate the poison and be
free of this
burning thirst..."
"In Hinduism the very idea
of free will is
non-existent..."
"...pecking...breaks the shell from
within and
liberates the chick."
Less and less to say,
the mirror is down,
reflection
is gone. Go canoeing, breathe.
Entr'acte IV
INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART