Not Quite the Bluebird of Happiness But Close

Rock Logic

The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction) Part 48

So I am reading, and in one case listening to, books on anger.

Yesterday after work I curled up in a big pile of blankets and listened for three hours, half dreamed Don’t Bite the Hook, a workshop on the patience narrative from, chapter 5 written by Shantideva .

Afterwards Ross took me out to Sweet Masterpiece for a hot chocolate, as I hadn’t eaten all day and he wanted to celebrate the time change.

I was telling him about the part in the workshop where Pema Chödrön talks about this thing a translator named Gunther Some-body-or-other told her... that Westerners use Rock Logic. (this is this and that is that…) hard logic and that Tibetans use Water Logic.

I like the idea of Water Logic. A flowing mutable thing.

Audrey Elizabeth was telling me this week about this amazing book she just finished reading Good Calories Bad Calories. She says that he says in the book that they used to shoot anorexics like me up with insulin to make them hungry.

I suppose that is better than my father (the year both my parents died) throwing a hot cup of coffee at my back as I was leaning over the huge unabridged dictionary in his study because he was so frustrated at me for not eating.

I’d much rather have a hot chocolate and the ensuing truffle than a shot of insulin, truly I would.

Apparently this book is just amazingly radical and subversive, kind of like the koans I’ve been working with.

Obviously, a tendency towards anger is as hereditary as are huge honking hips.

I’ll take the anger any day.

I think I’ll try water logic and flow around that idea and see if I can find a way to work with it that gives me some relief.

White Camellias Across the Way

The Rockrose Moon (A Serial Fiction) Part 47

Yesterday I wasn’t exactly whining… it was more like a reflective commentary on my life, about the fact that I am not writing. Christian suggested I just start writing a book. I laughed because that is what he is doing and he always recommends that I do what he is doing.

All for one, one for all but you know he is doing that old man thing; the thing Eliot did, turning to God. He is writing a book about the Gospels and Jesus. I renewed his library books online the other day. He still has the Christina Rossetti book of poems out; the one he lost about two years ago and 17 books on Jesus.

He’s always complained about Buddhism, even though he has a Vajra and an Endless (Meander) knot tattooed on his forearms but lately he is giving me space because he says what ever I am doing, the yoga, the half-assed meditation practice and lately working with a koan is making me much easier and more pleasant to be around.

And other than the not writing and not being in love I am pretty happy these days.

I went to a koan workshop at the Unitarian church where I go sometimes to hear music and be shown off a few weekends ago. I took the day off work. It was cool. The teacher John Tarrant is a real poet, not one of these sort of Anglo Buddhist I write small jewel like things that sound profound but I wouldn’t know a real poem if it accosted me in broad daylight kind of guys.

Like Peter. He was there of course for the Friday night session. He teaches koans himself, I was late and sat behind him and I don’t think he saw me.

My biggest darkest hurt with Peter was that it was me he liked, He never understood about the poetry. Crazy as it sounds I feel I would much rather have someone like my poems than me. I am not important. The work is.

Tarrant was as familiar with Eliot and Rilke as he was with Basho. And he is really funny. I finally understood about the subversive work koans do and like the chanting acts as a prophylactic against the sharp barbed little judgmental commentary one runs all the time in one’s head, the koan drops into the heart and turns it towards the light.

In a wonderfully mysterious way.

Heck, I haven’t a clue what I am doing with my life, let alone my poetry, this blog, my friends, all those endless middle-aged men.

Maybe I just need to surrender to the aforementioned mystery and roll around in the unknown, a cat on newly warmed tarmac on an early spring day.