how strange it is to be anything at all

I start my internship at Yoga Now today, and I am looking forward to spending a few hours washing their baseboards and listening to new age music. with possible top 40 r&b dance breaks. After that, I am deep cleaning my dear friends' house, which is pretty dank due more to landlord negligence than too much slobbery on their part.

There is something so purifying to spend hours cleaning, especially when you use nothing but peroxide, Citra-solv and peppermint Dr Bronner's. Peppermint's cooling scent soothes my constant summer headache and loosens my asthma-tightened lungs

It's not as effortless for me as it was back in 2002, when I first started doing green cleaning back home. I have to be especially patient because my wrist and hand are still very stiff and can't be used to do more than supporting and guiding of light weights.

My life has a pattern to it now, even if it's just as simple as wake up, go sit by the water and meditate for 25 minutes (I can't say I actually meditate for more than a few seconds at a time, but I sit in easy peace for the whole time) and then see where the day takes me from there.

There are disappointments and obstacles in every day, but I seem to have recovered a steady footing. It's as easy as taking a deep breath and knowing it's not the end of the world.

The urologist put me on an anti-spasmodic, and between that, the Marinol, and the tryptophan, I'm able to actually look forward to things again.

My nurse practitioner at the queer clinic was kind enough to write me a Marinol prescription today. It's prohibitively expensive, but it leveled off the pain within an hour with minimal spaciness and I was finally able to stop crying. As far as cost, even with the fantastic discount I got through the clinic, it's comparable to the Weed Maintenance Program, without the excruciating claustrophobia and mind-on-a-hamster-wheel thinking, but I am hopeful I can find a website that sells it cheaper. it's certainly a better option than going back on Lyrica or Cymbalta. so far as I can tell the only side effect is increased appetite. I dropped down to 117 last week, what I weighed in high school, because I've had such problems with nausea and anxiety about eating, so I'm looking forward to being a little less gaunt.

I went to the temple to do work practice. Sat for a while and was delighted to be greeted mid-sit by the nun's cat, who has snuck out of living quarters. The idea of being able to bring Tachi with me if I one day choose to live in a temple or monastery setting hadn't occurred to me and now I find myself already longing to take up residence there when my lease is up. I somehow doubt my parents would approve, so I'd have to work out a way to pay for my rent, but it's a lovely daydream to have.

Even after just two days of adhering to a regular practice I feel so much more at peace. it was
such a pleasant experience to chant the Heart Sutra (as unfamiliar as it is in Korean) and then to work in the garden for an hour. I learned so much from just weeding.

it's good to have hope again, to have a place to take refuge.

I spent several hours yesterday at the Zen Temple yesterday. The early service was two 25 minute sittings separated by a brief chanting of the three refuges in Korean, followed by a Dharma talk.

I was disconcerted by my complete inability to stop crying. I have been really emotionally worn out these past 24 hours, after overdoing it physically Friday and Saturday. After the service we had tea downstairs. One of the members struck up a conversation with me as we washed out our tecups, and when he noticed my distress he told me I could go sit back upstairs in the temple. I sat up there and sobbed for probably half an hour. Sometimes there is nothing else to do but sit and keep my pain company. I try not to judge it or let it overwhelm me. I sat and looked at the Buddha statue and let the pain flow through me.

I went back later in the day for the afternoon service, which is just one sitting meditation followed by the three refuges, chanting of Ma-um, and a question and answer session.

It has become very clear to be that the only way to take arms against this sea of troubles is by sitting still and doing nothing at all. My mind is over-run by monkeys and my body is falling apart. I can't go on like this.

Poem for Monday, July 28, 2008

The nightingale sings



by Eqrem Basha



Who is that bird singing on a branch alone
And where is its flock
Which is the plaintive song
And which is the season


That bird has a voice adept
At singing on a solitary branch
No friends no family
It has come to earth on its own
With a flute in its beak and anguish
Which is neither a wound
Nor a song


What is that mourning so near which belongs to us
Sing to us nightingale sing










Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

mantra

I've been singing this song to myself a lot lately.

It's taking a lot of energy and even more faith, but I am finally back in the center of my path, back to where can believe it.

I let things slip back, I neglected my heart, I forgot to gather wood for my campfire and the wolves came and surrounded me.

I am done letting the sickness win.

After some serious bike riding, and a lot of long talks with myself, my shrink, and my friends, and a couple of days of tryptophan supplements, I can finally see the path again. The shadows are lifting.

Yes, there is pain. There is weariness, loneliness, sometimes even deep sadness. But there is also joy, gratitude, and so much love. All these will arise, and all these will be swept away.


Best Critical Mass ever. Thank you, universe. I am being sent such blessings.


(this video sucks, but it's the only one I could find.)

For over half my life I've been battling serious depression. When I'm depressed my mind tends to fixate on things and I worry at them until I feel raw inside. Yesterday I burned the roof of my mouth on my lunch (Wild Trout roasted with Summer Squash and Carrots in garlic and ginger over brown jasmine rice) and today it's been impossible to stop probing the sore place between two of my teeth with my tongue.

My heart is the same way. I want more than I can have, and always from the wrong person. It's very difficult for me to be happy unless I am busy all the time. I haven't really had a job for about 10 months and my mind is starting to consume itself. I spend way too much time fretting about being alone, about possibilities that never existed and never will exist, about being abandoned by people I need and love right now when I need them most.

I have to constantly stop and talk myself down. I burst into tears several times a day. I'm in so much pain from the lack of exercise and the possible interstitial cystitis that I am really struggling to keep my head above water. My pain is so urgent, so present, and I have little to distract me from it. I agonize about what people think of me because of how I am handling this.

Rationally I know that when school starts in a month my life will change drastically. I had been planning to start volunteering at the queer health clinic's thrift store, but it's become very apparent (especially after the grueling experience I just had this weekend at Pitchfork) to me that I'm not able to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes on my feet without a severe increase in discomfort.

I'm trying hard to find people to spend time with. When I can't do that I read at the lake until the horseflies drive me off. I try to remember to breathe.

I've lost my center. I'm alone and in pain so much of the time and my body stays in panic mode until I wear myself out.

God I miss riding a bike.

dog bless tudou

Night. Kate and Angel are sitting side by side outside in the garden court of the Hyperion.
Kate: "I feel like such an idiot."
Angel: "A lot of that going around."
Kate: "I just couldn't... - My whole life has been about being a cop. If I'm not part of the force it's like nothing I do means anything."
Angel, still looking pretty beat up: "It doesn't."
Kate: "Doesn't what?"
Angel: "Mean anything. In the greater scheme or the big picture, nothing we do matters. There's no grand plan, no big win."
Kate: "You seem kind of chipper about that."
Angel: "Well, I guess I kinda - worked it out. If there is no great glorious end to all this, if - nothing we do matters, - then all that matters is what we do. 'cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. - I fought for so long. For redemption, for a reward - finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it."
Kate: "And now you do?"
Angel: "Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because - I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness - is the greatest thing in the world."
Kate: "Yikes. It sounds like you had an epiphany."
Angel: "I keep saying that. But nobody's listening."
Kate: "Well, I'm pretty much convinced, since I'm alive to be convinced."
Angel: "You know you don't have to be a cop to be..."
Kate: "I'm okay. - Anyway, I'm not headed towards another pillathon. - I'm very grateful. - I never thought you'd come for me, but... I got cut a huge break and I believe... - I don't know what I believe, but I - have - faith. - I think maybe we're not alone in this."
Angel: "Why?"
Kate: "Because I never invited you in."

Poem for Monday, July 14, 2008

So Many Things

by Guy Goffette

All winter you neglected

the strong red umbrella

let its ribs rust in the grass and mud

let the north wind crush the birdhouse

without uttering a word, you gave up

on the rose beds, the apple

that rounded off the earth.

By indigence or distraction you left,

let so many things die off

the only place to set your gaze

is on the draft slicing through your house

and you’re surprised, still, surprised when

cold seizes you from summer’s very arms

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

it's been a rough couple of weeks since I had my hand repaired, but I just have to make it until September. just 6 more weeks.

I've been in the grips of a panic attack or surrounded by wolves or consumed by dread or whatever you want to call it for about a week straight. boredom and claustrophobia and pain and insomnia. incessant thoughts about self-injuring. trouble breathing. I can't stop crying.

I make myself leave whenever I can. usually I go to the lake. I read, I cry, I go home and pace and go back out. I am on the verge of explosion.

at least I have the internets again.

Poem for Monday, June 23, 2008

The Will to Divest

by Kay Ryan

Action creates

a taste

for itself.

Meaning: once

you’ve swept

the shelves

of spoons

and plates

you kept

for guests,

it gets harder

not to also

simplify the larder,

not to dismiss

rooms, not to

divest yourself

of all the chairs

but one, not

to test what

singleness can bear,

once you’ve begun.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, June 9, 2008

Summertime

by George Gershwin and Dubose Heyward

Summertime an’ the livin’ is easy,

Fish are jumpin’ an the cotton is high.

Oh, yo daddy’s rich, an yo mama’s good-lookin’,

So hush, little lady, don’ you cry.

One of these mornin’s you goin’ to rise up singin’,

Then you’ll spread yo wings an’ you’ll take the sky.

But till that mornin’ there’s a-nothin’ can harm you

With Daddy an’ Mammy standin’ by.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday, June 2, 2008

The Sleepless Grape

by Li-Young Lee

Like any ready fruit, I woke

falling toward beginning and

welcome, all of night

the only safe place.

Spoken for, I knew

a near hand would meet me

everywhere I heard my name

and the stillness ripening

around it. I found my inborn minutes

decreed, my death appointed

and appointing. And singing

gathers the earth

about my rest,

making of my heart a way home

the stars hold open.

Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

Poem for Monday on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

Carry

by Billy Collins



I want to carry you
and for you to carry me
the way voices are said to carry over water.


Just this morning on the shore,
I could hear two people talking quietly
in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.


They were talking about fishing,
then one changed the subject,
and, I swear, they began talking about you.







Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

and sometimes, it lets me breathe

and then there are glorious nights, full of trees and wind and birds and the sound of your breathing and tires whirring on dry pavement.

every moment is an epiphany. over and over the universe is throwing object lessons at me and i try to be grateful and humble and brave. try and fail, mostly. still, i learn as much as i can hold.

every now and then, though, it does let me catch my breath. nights with easy words and laughter and none of the worrying and projecting. even the pain backs off a little. things just happen and i can just sit back and watch myself breathe my way through it.

the lake is vast and i lay next to it feeling my heart thumping almost out of my chest, the city glow scorching the clouds, the water dark and black and heavingly alive. mars was bright. so was my face. i felt like my smile was projecting batsignals onto the clouds. huge scudding shadows the shape of my heart.

i have to believe it keeps getting better.

big pharma is in your face, all the time.

drive slow

My life has slowed to a crawl. I sign the lease on a new apartment tomorrow, closer to the water, to an independent natural food store,, a yoga studio, and to friends. I scan craigslist for jobs I could be physically capable of performing, I read, I bike out to acupuncture once a week, to therapy, and to watch Lost with my best friend here. I drink tea, I try to remember to stretch and shower every day, and I wait for things to get better.

I am rereading Thich Nhat Hanh's biography of the Buddha,Old Path, White Clouds. It's been almost a decade since Zach, may he find peace, first pressed it on me. I can't believe how long ago it seems. I remember being blown away and being fairly gung-ho about Buddhism for several years, although I balked at the precepts prohibiting intoxicants and casual sex. I've been very very lazy in my practice for far too long now, and the suffering has definitely caught up with me.

It has become quite clear to me which path I must follow now, and in many ways, it has been made easier. My social life is no longer based around intoxicants, and I'm no longer interested in sex as a way of escaping/punishing my body. I'm quite lucky, I guess, to have had these desires stripped away, even if it was not my choice.

I am trying to view my pain as a tool to help me prune my life. I can't imagine that plants enjoy being pruned, but when they grow straight and tall, how joyful they are.

Poem for Monday, May 12, 2008

Names







by Lyn Lifshin







Lately I become

whatever you call

me, the way some

Indians do. First

I couldn’t say

your because

it belonged to

someone who’d

turned me into

who I wasn’t.

When you called

me love near the

rag shop on Caroline,

I tried to remember

the spell Iroquois

put on names to

make them stay.














Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

I am tired. I am true of heart! You are tired. You are true of heart!

the pain is my constant companion. sometimes it withdraws a little and I am able to go socialize with the neurotypicals, but for every hour spent in the garage at the lyndale rats' messing with bikes, there are seven hours spent in bed listening to the pain gnaw away at my body, tiny fire ants crazing my bones to dust. worrying about the future and waiting for sleep, and oblivion.

I have reached the point where I no longer remember what it was like before the pain.

I try to tell myself that there is something I must learn from all this, that I am coal being crushed to diamond. Were I to believe in Powers that Be I would be praying for grace and guidance and for whatever wisdom there is to be gleaned from the unrelenting boredom and loneliness to manifest itself in my heart. this is an exercise in trust, and in patience, and in acceptance.

I want to believe that I am not missing out on anything living in the slow lane, hobbling along with my heavy heavy load, I want to believe that I am shedding karma and learning to be true of heart. I want to believe that my suffering will inspire love and compassion in those around me. I want to believe that one day I will be self-sufficient again, that I will be rewarded for these long dark teatimes of the soul, that there is in fact an end to pain.

I can no longer ask for mercy. it has clearly been denied. for now, at least. all I can ask is for patience, and faith. and hope.

may all beings be at peace and free from suffering. and may I one day be one of them.

reading back through old livejournals from 2003, I feel a sort of tender condescension toward my younger self. I cared so much more about what people thought of me, and I hadn't really formed a concept of a future in which I would be alone and ok with it. I was so raw and ripped open still from ending an engagement that I just wanted to have that hole in my chest filled with sand. or removed entirely.

years later, I have grown used to perpetual brokenheartedness. I try to channel my love and pain into a feeling of compassion toward all I encounter, rather than try to pin it on one person as if their wanting me back could be the one thing finally capable of healing me.

my cat sits in the window looking down at the street, flicking his tail at the flies. I wish I could clear my mind enough to live on his level, free from jealousy or hurt or unrequited romantic passion. He seems to spend most of his time in silent contemplation. I suppose I must be earning good karma by supporting him while he lives in comfortable happiness.

I try to tell myself that surely there is something good and bright and shiny in my future but it seems so murky right now.