|
|
 |
|
| Author |
 Topic  |
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 13 2013 : 5:12:50 PM
|
Ignore Me - I've Fallen, But I Got Back Up!
Running counter to your recent praise of me, you'll see a sprinkling
of darker posts filtering thru for a bit. Yes, I fell - and hard! -
bludgeoned down by a continuing stream of events and the vastness of
opposition. Life can be hard and I'm only human, but you still took
the time to remind me of higher Ideals I must
never lose sight of. So I'm back on my feet to
attempt the impossible: justification of your overly kind words.
My optimism has bounced back a bit. After all, when all
you want is a quiet little writing life with a little job
to support it, that shouldn't be impossible to achieve...
should it?
But just in case, I've written a few plaints and
battle hymns - you know, just to
screw up the ol' courage for whatever it takes.
And I will share it all so you see both sides of me
and my world, so there's nothing hidden between us.
- Ananda T. |
 |
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Aug 13 2013 : 5:34:55 PM
|
Perfect Storm
A perfect storm hit.
First came the loss of the last voice on the phone, at least
until fall. Then came the loss of my world in here, thrown
in seg for showing up in school 5 mins too early. Coming on top of all the ways
my pleas for accommodation have been flung aside, my reaction was the last thing from
calm, sad to say.
I've made a few adjustments in perspective: 1) I'm unemployable
unless and until they acknowledge the symptoms
of my medical conditions they already admit I have (!);
2) an inmate fighting on his own only becomes swallowed deeper
into the prison's entrenched attitude; 3) it's damned hard to
find outside help, even for info gathering; 4) I'm at high
risk of dying destitute and alone in prison.
With a monk's attitude, institutionalization is fine by me, but it
takes a smidgen of income to support my writing, without which my
life will descend into a living death, an unendurable struggle
for existence. My poem "Silly Goose" was not at all frivolous.
There are, however, also two kinds of supportive care units where I would be
provided a small income: the prison's, and a state hospital. Both would take
outside help or a dramatic personal gesture to accomplish, but with so much
at stake, what is not worth giving if it opens the doorway to safety and the
freedom to write? But the danger, the terror, of fighting alone is the terrible
risk of being silenced, "disappeared", thru chemical lobotomization. Is this
again my fate? Or is it as a beggar, haunting cellblock garbage cans?
I've tasted it all before, and found it a bitter substitute for the spiritual life.
-Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Aug 13 2013 5:45:39 PM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Aug 14 2013 : 4:12:47 PM
|
End Game?
"it is evil things that we shall be fighting against - brute force, bad faith,
injustice, oppression, and persecution..." - Neville Chamberlain, 1939
I've been... gone... lost in a welter of seg and SHU units, large and small. Finally
I lay completely dispirited and empty in some sort of painful waiting, as if prostrated
by a fatal illness. I wanted to get up to write, and sometimes made the attempt, but
something was broken deep inside, and like a greenstick fracture sawed at the edges
of my invisible wound any time I moved.
Then arrived your kind comments in this string. Braced and strengthened by love,
the sapling slowly stood back up, tho shamefaced over all the ways he'd fallen short
of your sentiments. Gosh, I've been writing in such "in-yer-face" rebellion against
the soulless repression I face in here and, yes, also trying to gain some sense of
control over any other form of rejection hovering about, welcoming it, reducing its
impact thru a gesture of mental jujitsu. But this hothouse flower, protected from
harsh elements by overworked moderators, instead found himself receiving the life-giving
sunlight he so badly needed. How is it you so reflexively forgave me for my misconduct?
(Steel yourself, tho, there is still a real shocker still in the pipeline.)
I confess that it did take some time for the love to fully penetrate a shell of numbness
that had formed from being bombarded by such an overpowering enemy for so long. For strength,
I had identified with the protagonist at the end of All Quiet on the Western Front:
"I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can
take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without
fear."
He had stood up. And there he died. Now I have stood up. Without fear and in the open.
I will allow no more games to be played with me. So I wrote to ask that my parole hearings
be cancelled unless they are intended to place me in a hospital, where I will be more
compassionately treated. I then wrote to a senator, a reporter, and a half-dozen federal
and state agencies to make an ADA discrimination complaint. Also, in pursuit of a lawsuit,
I wrote the ACLU and am trying to find a civil rights attorney. All this is likely
impossible, of course, sitting in prison with such limited resources. But I'll at least
try before turning to more nuclear options. *sigh* Conflict is such a phenomenal waste
of time, but it's forced upon me.
But now I'm at least back to writing, and so feeling alive. And you'll see it all here:
the good, the bad, and the ugly. For I'm an aspen on a stormy coast, tipping my umbrage
dark to light with every delight and storm-driven blow, shedding the wind in the only way
I know. You'll also read some longer pieces written in years past, a few fragments of
which I drew upon for more recent works. So I guess it's not End Game quite yet, for even
in a situation where your life seems of little value, a simple pencil can be just the
crutch you need to keep going.
-Ananda T.
|
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Aug 29 2013 : 1:30:04 PM
|
The Pastime
To each is given a Beautiful Mind, but it’s not for thinking…
thereby:
Join in celebration the celibate monk
hailing the skies with whites of eyes
singing thru his sacred conch
and swim with more indulgent gods
who find no man or worship odd...
Lo! – I bask in the Lagoon of Love like a lotus-eating
sea-cow, so pardon if my discourse breaks a bit adrift.
For in ladling my snout thru electric-blue supralogical
pools, my kelp fronds unspool and drift I indeed do,
out and away to the full Play of the Sea!
The Tides of Time flow in our veins, Immortal Swan, so come run with
me! One last sleepy breath before awaking to Dawn’s swelling pink,
cowrie toes perched with feather’d lightness upon the thunder’d brink.
Before you rolls on its foaming rim the all-seeing Blue Iris of the World! –
come drink, drink deep from this endless Lila-Bowl of Nectar Wine
and savor the refined and quenching tang of Elixir Superfine!
Then let me draw you along the Chalice Rim by your moistly
kissing skin, for its inborn penetrant
Pulsate Ring to bring you to shim’ring concupiscence! Next
dissolve and dive exalting in, for our spume-shroud nuptial bed
awaits. Anchors away! – kick up a spray! – this is alternating
current at its very best, where two hearts beat in a singl’d breast.
Verily, we shall grip like joined hands ‘round wire
the galvanic Spire to Heaven!
Nothing is risked in the Sun-kissed drumbeat tryst other
than to end up honeycomb-cupped, Love-dazed and nectar-glazed. So
are you open to Tantric erotica-mysticism? Then come show me
yours, and I’ll show you mine, just a moment in non-time, in a
long-storied line, of experience Divine, as alone in my cell, I slip
earthly hell, and fly high above, on God beats of Love, for not just
the Sea, is the rhythm you see in me! Ready?
For verily, dual-gendered Dulcet in a wet suit, I surf
a singing Tantric wave front, hot frenzy caught
flagrante delicto, poised at the peak, the peach in
mid-bite, triumph in full-flight, delight on delight
unfolding on an endless pulse of blossoms, each from the
heart of another. This wave need never break as I ride
the froth and roar of its reaching bore, sailing past the
death of self, the death of Death, slipping thru the teeth
of life’s lament and down the throat of protean pleasure,
never twice the same.
Unfurling this curl curls also the toes, for here
Tantric paths juxtapose at their least repose!
Born Again with fishy kin, I walk and waver on Holy Waters,
skimming the bending skin ‘twixt worlds: a trembling
veil scarce fit to float a pin, then swoop thru an
Amrita-lit surge that swings up and over to chute my
sugared Soul to sounding Depth!
Crownward soars a riptide’s roar as I am borne to the Deep
Unborn! Then Sea humps its back for a fresh invade, mounts and drives
in a liquid blade, cuts away all mortal sway, and frees
the Soul’s swooning slide thru Heaven’s Gate to plunge
in full lubricious spate of pleasure super-satiate so
keen and brink I outward weep and inward drink a saturate
stream of tears!
O Sweet Paradox! – sweet nectar wrung from an Agony of Ecstasy!
O Death! – where is thy sting? – your envenomed Bees so enlivened sing!
Ah! – in these electric tears of amplifying enchantment I drown,
somewhere beyond bliss, lost in whole-body mudra:
an untaught and unthought flexure of fluid motion that
mirrors the infinitely varied custom Kama Sutra I in
fever-dream perform with and for my unseen Odalisque.
You witness Her fever upon me now, Spirit and words
rising like vapor from a simmering samovar heart!
Such ecstatic radiance! I float buoyant, an animated
uncorked wineskin of sparkling rapture, a luminous vibratactile
distillation of effervescent consciousness – oof! – such a mouthful
of yeasty life, such leavened Heaven,
such heady brew indeed! Drunken tapestries of
ambrosial light shimmer, drift, and weave thru a rising
weft of inner sensation that fizzes, gushes, and sweeps
to and fro as tho by the touch of an ethereal broom.
If you are how you feel, then I’m a fructifying
Love-fruit – don’t just inspect what I write –
fall face-first and take a bite!
My chakras have become sugar-spun lotus blossoms,
petals blooming as tremulantly luminant as offertory
oil flamelets cast thru a coruscating lightning storm!
The surrounding air is electric and palpable – softly resisting
yet yielding like a dance partner or lover’s body. Tell me true:
is it much the same for me as you? For tho our Fruit may bear
a different hue, both bask in Light and taste of Dew!
Paradise glows on your lover’s face before diving in; my veil's
more thin, that’s all, before I swim thru my Chosen, my
Love Supreme, and She thru me, every stroke Olympian
perfect, every whim fulfilled ere its want is known. I become a
Fire-Seeded oyster and She my vigorously vibrating Pearl, causing a
crazily consuming itch and its curative scratch to arise as one – ah! –
so I expose both archly curved bellies to the Tide’s caress and become the
most blissful bivalve in the Sea!
My Amorist awakens and nourishes in me hitherto unknown hungers, but
also see to their satisfaction. The consummation of our Love thus becomes
Holy Communion, the shared consumption of a matrimonial
Eucharist. Lo! – to be seized and devoured by Heaven – such
compensation for a life left out in the cold!
So forget your ancient and venerated hymns, ‘tis the silly season
of inspiration: “With this body I thee wed; to my Goddess I’ve been fed!
‘Tis truly two fullness in one – was I good for you too, Love?”
As you see, I’m sick – Love-sick – and in my delirium cast
caution aside like Karmic seeds – careful where you sit lest one sprout,
a besotted sapling swirling in circadian Dance! In the meantime,
may I Kechari-kiss the Bride/Groom? Here I go, slip-sliding away…
Shakti’s patience soon runs thin, so drives deep in a centrifugal
spin to fling from my fervent kernel its slimly protesting shell:
“Ah, my Muse, is it wise to spill my Sea-salt sweet psychic
seed here and now?” For the one Supreme Wave arches upon
the next, there’s no calling back the bow-shot, the throe-shock, left in
onlookers by a seated solitary Lover in open air reaching,
Reaching - … Oh God! – She comes! She comes! – and I,
the flower-bedecked, bee-tipped arrow, dart eager for the whirling
Whorl of Her burning Heart!...
*sigh* Such Holy elevation of flesh and Spirit!
What is it to make mad, wanton Love with God? What is it
to have one’s chimes rung by God? Indeed, it seems I’ve
been forever a bell, only now to be lifted by the breath and
heart-struck! How could more rightly be desired?
But I do desire, so – oh! – Wild Thing, I know I love you --
would you be my Private Dancer? Then with
juices sizzling in hot anticipation, I watch my Lover
answer thru billowing, pillowing
clouds that surge in moistly muscular consortings
around an upfolding mountain. (Hail Shiva!) Suddenly from
their Holy Congress a new kind of Perfect is born, as in a whirl of
wildfire tresses Nataraj arrives, quickening my tissues,
drawing my flesh boneward and sinews back like bowstrings, then filling
me with a shifting medley of Dance Divine, all interwoven with abrupt
intermissions in body, breath, and volcanic explosions of hot
bastrika that wash down my body like pyroclastic flows.
Within these nacreous jets and shimmering sheets of
running Light, I Dance, brisk arabesques shrugging free
sheafs of cadmium-glow steamers that coil their strength
then spring into space with the authority of solar flares,
like arrows shot from Sarva’s bow, all from palms, fingertips
or the cupola of my ringing head. I feel like Indra, charging and
discharging lightning bolts to galvanize the World!
Bedazzled by my bright children, I somehow cause, behold,
and share in their flight, twisting and dishing out dizzying
body English as we ride our endless bungee cords of light!
Empty space has filled with a Red Sea of parting liturgical
lute-strings and the slightest twitch rubs me against
them like an ecstatic cat, all wild-eyed and bristle-tailed
as resplendent chords resonate thru my goose-bumped flesh –
rroww!
Verily, I have awakened inside a Van Gogh landscape of
inner sight, sound, and touch! Surrounded by an ocean of
sighing vortexes and coruscating spun-glass fireballs,
every moment stirs up ornate floral, foliate, and geometric
figures that trail after me thru the air. Ohh – this is the
best, as with whimpering palms I scoop skyfuls of
numinous energy up over me in a Baptism of Zest!
Lightning crackles from hands to crown, with slow
mudras and crisp flamenco wrist flourishes wrapping
my mind with untamed kudzu vines of electric pleasure –
no, it’s even more amazing! – as wave upon wave of
sharp-heeled mind spiders march like high-stepping
conga lines of tingly sea urchins over my brain-coral head –
no! –I’m a sea anemone, and a crowd of clownfish
children comb my tentacles into a delightful garden of
topiary shapes of peak sensation before playfully tromping
them down to start all over again!
When I extend my hands, a ghost pianist sits down in me to
play, phalanges of flame licking up and down a vertebral keyboard,
plucking haunting pangs of anguished pleasure from deep within my cerebral
folds. If I raise my arms just so, a sitar cuddles up close,
stings bending to the will of my musical ministrations. Never
have a man and his instrument been more closely wed as
Moonbeams reach thru me to finger-pick and weave
fibers, song, and Souls together as One. Oh, how others
stop and stare, but very little do I care,
sitting there, worrying, fretting the air – ah!
However my racing mind may interpret
the continuous play of miracles
there is such prancing detail in the inner movement that I
trataka on my wagging fingers a moment, entranced by
their wire-like entwinement with the flame-forms crushing grapes
of such tart delight in my skull. It is clearly not my life
alone I hold in these lotus hands, as with a single salute
a whole troop snaps to attention!
Then I broaden my movement and Sanskrit calligraphy begins
streaming out against the glassine serene, a flying Fantasia prayer carpet
of musical notation that unscrolls at toe-tip as I break the bonds
of earth. Now I am gone, I am God, I am Dance,
mortal frailty vivified to inexhaustible artistry! All
becomes kinesthetic line drawn like poetry thru curved
and 3-dimensional space as I carve the blue ice of the sky
with elaborate strokes, shedding iridescent beauty like a
molting peacock. As sharks must swim to live, I must push
Dance thru my gills to die – to die unto the Life Supreme!
A winter carnival of translucent forms appear in my
contrail, each one beginning in crystalline surprise
then melting back into the abiding memory of a
forgetting hyaline sky. Follow my long centrifugal proof
of Divinity until you lose yourself in it’s endless
turns and your ego sails off the slate into Silence. Here,
where logic surrenders its unmerited throne,
you encounter the instructive realm of the koan, the
Cloud of Unknowing, the Unreasonable Effectiveness
of Mathematics. My formulas existed long before man
arrived to perform them, so don’t bother to question,
don’t stop to think, just release your grip and sink!
Look also to the self-born wisdom of your prayer beads,
which have also broken free from their imprisoning thread
of decorum and now cavort madly in and thru the world. In that
running riot of color, the chaotic Dance of earthly objects, see with
unfettered eyes the Divine proof pick up and resume, for just as
God is found all around, thru the many may be seen the One.
Yes, as a ladder is climbed past each rung and gestalt grasped beyond
its sum, let Me come at you in a flood of wild born and infinite forms, spilling
like finch-flocks into your eyes until you shout in devout surprise,
cry out with awe and raw delight. There! – in the sight and sense
of fullest delight lies the Light! Tat tvam asi, shining
creature – That Art Thou!
Who am I to speak? I am He who pulls and splits the reed
of past and future to fashion the papyrus of the present!
Then I pipe and the World dances, writing a recurrent
script down my Mobius strip. You expected beginning and end?
Not in my Universe! And don’t think to master this Art thru
words: listen instead to your body, where you’ve heard the beat
of my damaru from the start, kicking up your heals in the womb,
waving your arms thru the nursery room! I bent to bestow my
Blessed Kiss to you before birth, Little One, and your giggles bubbled up
to shine in your mother’s eyes. Divinely conceived, the Secret still
sibilates in you like ginger beer, but you must grow hush to
again feel Heaven’s Drumbeat right here!
… Meanwhile, back on earth, I open mortal eyes and a vastly
foreshortened and diminished world reappears. The cell’s slit window
shows no sign of a lesser sun – good! – the mundane can wait!
So I close my eyes to burst the bars and the Eternal dawns
once more, rising like a fantastical terrarium globe within.
I sit for a moment like Brahma upon the navel-lotus, blinking
entire worlds in and out of existence. Laughing, I pick one
and topple in, to swim again a Healing Sea. On a whim
I wing back thru the silvered surface to strike against
the sky – to challenge God! – then, oh, such a sated
moth am I, falling in loosened skeins
of smoking loops till – phut! – shining minnowhood
returns.
This Multiverse, this Pantheon, of worlds and sprightly gods
sleeping so lightly in me: can I cat’s-cradle them to you with a few
magic mudras, or speak into your skin thru some hotly rhymed sign
language? (As I grasp for the key, just gasp when you feel free!)
In the meanwhile, no better time to let my fingers do the talking,
as I begin to genuflect the gestures of a thousand religions
past and present as constellations of their deities fly and fall
like meteors. Seeing that all forms pass – even gods – it is to the
Firmament above and the pageantry below that I babble and bray
my praise in countless unknown tongues. Heaven’s whore, it is
Belief itself that I believe in, and from my prison-anchored
brothel hail and ply Love’s trade with any Deva or Devata that sails by!
Now you may think me a Pagan suckled in countless creeds
outworn, or that I see Truth in possessing the omnivorous palate of
a pantheist, or even that I’m a fallen yogi who has merged with the
forces of nature. Well, I stay well fed, regardless. And tho it does
seem I’ve been falling and merging all my life, I at least now do so as
a Vedic Icarus, repeatedly falcon-stooping to pierce the Sun and Moon I
bear captive within. (Or is it not I who lies captive to you, my
Sovereign Ornaments?!)
It is anywise a gainful prize that buoys me blessed in this cursed realm,
so let us now ascend to the summit of my soul’s inspiration. Toward this
end, I bring a different weight to bear, shaping rapture like malleable clay
to a steep inner topography. Then following a wise inner guru, my tantric
Tenzing, I ascend like Sir Edmund Hillary thru a preposterous
Himalayan landscape.
First upon a mountain I climb, to squeeze this howling peak of
honeyed repletion, then release and glissade to the bee-keeping
valley below. But like Sisyphus back I return, pushing a
boulder of delight before and within me! Each advancing peak
and valley is ever higher than the previous, each antipode seeming the
end purpose of Existence, each rapturously resonant in its own
range, from crisply shivering sopranos to humidly thundering
bass. Where is the memory of my previous life as a flatlander?
Those pages are thankfully ripped from my Book of Life, and I climb
as a youth freshly initiated and flush with the sport of Sacred Mountaineering!
Tho a breathless journey (a condition in fact it demands),
a greater goal lies yet ahead. For in time, the obscuring
mists of Maya begin to part, and something akin to
Shangri-La appears like a gleaming castellated temple
at some mysterious distance. With a cry of
ecstatic joy my soul rends its mortal cage, escapes
my lips, and like a driven pheasant, thunders off
to its goal, an Immensity I am always
so surprised to find residing within myself!
A stunning qualitative shift here occurs,
one that for me transcends any possible imaginings of Heaven.
This truly above the clouds and beyond the pale
in every perfect way, for I have crested
Mount Meru to find its nectar-rayed Moon at play!
A terra incognito surpassing normal learning and
pleasure, mortals cannot create the brilliance of its numinous Light
but can place themselves in its path, and indeed, shafts of the
Holy Glance do pass, freshly shorn, thru my motionless,
pellucid and emptied form.
I reach into spirit memory for words, but find that this
wonder-filled state surpasses the power of description. Even
my normally robust fairy-wing pen has folded its flight to the dumb-tongued transparency, the silent sleep of a shed chrysalis. Where is my Luna Muse to flit
and spangle the page with tales of Thule, the utmost reach of my travel?
It is locked inside, by turns as elusive as silica sand or immobile
as packed earth within. What is left but to reduce myself to
molten glass and let a far more skilled Artisan breathe a bauble
of animate Spirit back in…
Rejoice! – now Divinely blown to a Perfect Vessel, all points
equidistant and equal to the Source, I become you and We,
nowhere yet everywhere! The body of clay is gone, ionized and
plasmacized, an ecstatic placenta lining the entire
womb-chamber, or Garbhagrah, of the World. O Lord – the
pangs have come and a Fullness demands to be born!
The Temple ceiling erupts into a lake of Fire, and in a last
self-possessed act I pinch off my Soul-candle and fling it upward…
Now! – in self-immolation I dance thru the pyres in sheet upon
sheet of howling, driving Flame. The World coalesces into
primeval Nada, but Nada writ large, bannering the vault of
Heaven! Sun storms of incandescent sound crush time to dust and ripple the
fabric of space, obscuring my face. Is it yours? The cheeky lass at the
café? The hunk at the office? The sparrow above, the worm below? I turn
and turn again before you, the Golden Compass pointing to God
in all directions, immanent, risen – Risen as well in you,
Star Child! We are both of Divine Nature, so come,
sever and fall, unmake yourself one of men, and join Me!
… Somewhere outside time and space, a figure sits
weeping and wet-faced, arm outstretched in abhaya. He is alone yet…
the furthest thing from alone – absorbed in a Hindu Apocalypse
of unspeakable intensity. Here Child, lift your quivering chin
and tell us of Engulfment.
O Lord, I see and hear but as if by whole-body braille,
for my physical organs of sense are effaced by excess light
and sound. It is thus by my entire being that I feel and see waves of the
Sacred Sound stand and intersect to form a granular matrix of Nada,
And from the Nada flow atoms in an endless Stream,
from which Waters I witness the Ten Thousand Forms emerge,
all like sand dancing into patterns on the Drumhead of the World!
There too I am danced into Divine existence as a self-born
mysticism of living stone – sentient Shivalingam –
which nothing can cast down. Within this blended pillar of
frozen Flame and Sound, all separation and pairs of opposites are
reconciled, the Key has turned in its ordained Lock, and all
of duality has woven non-dual. Sweeten me with milk,
garland me with flowers, for in this shining moment
the Fire worshipper is One with God!!
And now time and space have reconvened, and I’m
myself again. Or am I really, don’t you oft’ wonder?
For direct experiential contact with the Divine is the Biggest of Big
Love, and akin to Death by Holy Astonishment! To know this
height of flight is never to be the same, and to be left
no more satisfied with ground-dwelling than an albatross.
Thus arises the sannyasin, renunciation of earthly
pleasures, and the desire to live forever aloft.
(One day my voice too shall completely fade into the distance.)
Thus, as the caterpillar earn her wings in chrysalis absorption
and the pickle gains his tang thru seated marination
- neither to ever return to unripe condition –
so it is with the devotee and her practices.
So if these words at all lure you from the nest
you need a Flight School to learn the rest.
It’s free to board, but be forewarned
that few persevere to seize the Core
where Primal Sound becomes Sacred Shore.
How about you? Will you come to Aerial Soar?
Or perhaps your Fire of Love has long arose
and you come as One who fully Knows.
But once riding the Central Sea’s repose
welcome back Home, Cowrie Toes…!
-Ananda Tandava
|
Edited by - anandatandava on Sep 09 2013 9:21:01 PM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Aug 30 2013 : 5:48:07 PM
|
Tuned Mantras
I was all ear,
And took in strains that might create a soul
Under the ribs of Death. – John Milton, Camus
Besides being able to give more of my brash opinions,
there are many other reasons I’d love to be locked in Yogani’s
study and do an anthropological dig thru all the sources he
has drawn upon, but the AYP approach to and elucidation
of mantra-based meditation is certainly one of the biggest.
Its purpose, use of multiple frequencies, exclusion of
semantic meaning, and the timing of mantra enhancements
and lengthening are, like all else, supported by both
inner experience and modern science.
We typically begin our journey, as it were, drifting in a tippy canoe
upon a wave-tossed sea of anxiety. So what does the sensible voyageur do?
Make a bee-line to safe harbor thru the paddle-strokes of AYP mantra
and samyama! By these means we stroke, then glide into silence,
then do so again… and again… steadily pouring out a light oil
of calm until the wind and waves smooth and a sheltering yet
immense cove opens from within.
Have you reached Sanctuary yet, to be set like a gem upon a mirror,
reflecting Truth in ever-increasing proportion? Tho perfection is
something no man or gem can claim beyond a certain power of
magnification, you can know something even better: Ecstasy, where higher
perfection reigns as a self-existent force, hugging you from within like a
paradisiacal shoreline, and ringing with the sounds and sensations of
Divinity. It’s far bigger and more wonderful than any human will or ego
can possibly muster, so keep stroking your way there,
my comely Pet.
Sound, including unspoken mantra and other “unstruck sound”,
is very important to our purposes, for bliss and ecstasy are very much
a form of “listening” to a deep inner symphony we must silence
our mind sufficiently to hear. Lord Shiva advises in the
Vigyan Bhairav to “Bathe in the center of the sound,” and even the Western
clairvoyant Edgar Cayce described his trances as most akin
to a state of listening.
Aren’t we always advised to “listen to our bodies”,
and once ecstasy is rising, do we not catch
ahold of it by our newly prehensile inner ear,
simultaneously listening for and savoring the
scintillating tingle of transcendent movement and breath?
It is the ringing of our own personal temple bell:
“Listen, listen, as this beautiful sound brings us back to
our true Self.”
Everything in the universe contains vibration, from subatomic
strings to the natural resonances of planets and stars.
(“There is music in the spacing of the spheres.” [Pythagoras])
We echo many of these same frequencies in mantra and
the brainwaves found in meditation, from quiet
(theta and alpha) to ecstatic (high beta and gamma).
Coincidence? No, simple entrainment into our evolutionary
environment, the way one piano will spontaneously
“sing along with” another being played in the same room, and how
two pendulums will soon come to synchronize. (Ditto for how you end up
looking like your pet and acting like your friends, so choose wisely!)
For good reason Yogani advises the use of mantras as collections of
phonemes, or verbal sounds of a particular quality, as
opposed to words carrying specific meaning. As with musical lyrics,
meaning draws the mind into logical translation, a function of the
calculating Shallow Hal left hemisphere. Raw sound,
on the other hand, slips right by, penetrating deep into the
intuitive right hemisphere, the seat of holistic perception.
Now, who would you rather have inside you, Spock or Jesus?
(Hmm… did that come out right?)
Mantra contains both rhythm and pitch. When a person
listens attentively to a rhythm stimulus, brainwaves
modulate to match the tempo, causing changes in mood,
arousal, attention, and the release of endorphins.
Fast beats alert and excite, whereas slow beats,
such as those contained in mantra, assist in meditation
and deep emotional response.
The fullest spiritual potency of mantra, however, comes
when multiple frequencies are incorporated. Pitch and rhythm
variation, called prosody, is instinctively used to convey emotion
to others, and impacts both listener and speaker. In fact,
studies show that people who use or listen to lilted speech
score more highly on measures of empathy, a major
component of love! Of course the counter is also true, so
it stands to reason that speaking in monotone leaves your heart
monochrome and unless you speak lilted you’ll end up stilted!
Since the brain is in many ways like a muscle, becoming stronger
in the direction in which it is exercised, using mantras with prosody
increasingly strengthens and enriches our ability to empathize
and nurture, a power that can be used with or without
an object, and radiated toward both the particular and the
universal. And though the path to melting love can
walked with spoken mantra, travel becomes swifter in unspoken form,
when we run silent and deep. The ego is then much less
likely to accompany us, making sotto voce comments
on how our practice is being received by others. More important,
although what we say or hear shapes us, it is from silence that God
speaks (unless you’re friggin’ nuts like me) so we are more inclined to
listen. Then like baby birds reminded of their True Song,
we go on to sing it.
Flat intonation of a flat mantra can make
one an emotional earth dweller and the body with it. Some
traditions may seek this, but Yogani wants us to open our wings
and soar, so stresses the use and feel of sudden
and dramatic changes in pitch, again scientifically shown
to stretch our hearts to new limits.
But proof really lies no farther away than the nearest baby.
Don’t have one? They’re pretty easy to catch – you know,
just for demonstration purposes. You’ll immediately notice
that they’re real experts at belting out motivational
sound with lots of range and gusto. Being completely
dependent on others for survival, they pop into the world like
little nude master-class fishermen, and promptly begin to cast
noisy lures out over our aural gunwales, hook us
in the heart, and reel us in like mindless guppies.
Adults are almost helpless to resist, really. That’s
because babies have a trick up their jumpers:
the use of prosodic sound as an empathy tractor beam.
It’s a fetal attraction (!) and their first crib sheet
on the social world, at least until they learn to cuss
and throw rocks (just kidding). Yeah, they cheat,
darn diminutive criminals! How many times have
you yourself felt your heart stolen by one?
But it’s all to a good cause, for this
call-and-response circuitry is a deeply embedded and
necessary part of nurturing, because in isolation babies
don’t survive and adults don’t thrive. (Trust me on that.)
And speaking of adults,
multi-toned mantras are much like tantric love-making
or good music in repeatedly building, then releasing an
exquisite inner tension within us. They raise a living anticipation,
hint at its satisfaction, and then deliver the goods again and again.
You’ll swear you can actually feel the sound’s primary locus
sliding up and down inside your body and mind with the frequency.
It’s like taking a pipe-cleaner to your nervous system,
or getting a good mental flossing, digging deep into the roots
of our being to loosen and remove accumulated
mental plaque and debris.
The sensation is nothing so much as becoming a taut-strung
divine instrument, with God’s love-rosined bow being
drawn across one’s innermost fibers – gah! –
you can feel every catch and tug and long aching vibrato,
and a sense of vast Heavenly motion
rises from even the most subtle source, including
prosodic mantra. I suppose a monotone drone has its
merits, but to bring a really satisfied flush to the cheeks
there’s nothing like a strong and steady tossing on
sheets of sound or satin!
I find all I need while seated, but in its reflection
see you, Gazelle-Eyed One, stonting high in
a Samadhi sky, breaking the bonds
of mundane life and illusion. There, stroked by
the sun, soothed by the shade, a gladsome gazelle
is surely made! (Tell me ‘tis not so, my curvate Doe.)
What truly is now left to Reach, once we reside as Divine
denizens in our own Heaven-Realm, enfolded in
a 100-fold state based not on unproven assertion
but on easily-accessed and direct experience?
This is firm knowledge, not flimsy belief, so can never
come to be doubted or put aside and forgotten.
Just dip the tongue in the Sweetness to know! The sand
has been whisked from beneath our spiritual home, and we sit
secure as barnacles upon unwavering bedrock, relaxed
against the curved shell of our bliss. Come, let us drum
against our glowing nacreous home and
“…Sing the Body Electric”!
All this doesn’t happen overnight. The ripening
process has been described this way: first you speak the mantra,
then the mantra speaks itself, and finally the mantra
speaks you. Indeed, in time it dissolves into the breath
to become a God-filled frisson on the
uptake and an Angora-skein of warm love on the out.
The vibratory sensation comes then not from words or syllables,
but arrives “unstruck” and self-born from within yourself.
This is the “characteristic sign” of your inner guru,
whispering back at you. It has been there all along,
but only now are you sufficiently silent and sensitized
within to notice that the Divine is tangibly touched
on each stroke of the breath, every play of the body.
You have Awakened to find that you are literally
swimming in God (!), and every part and parcel of
life and being has become a prayer of gratitude.
Let your newfound awareness, your inner guru,
then teach thru its direct rewardings what is asked of
you in terms of practice and everyday life, for to each
is given their own time, measure, and manner. To paraphrase
Joseph Campbell, “Follow your bliss, and the rest follows.”
In my view, AYP opens our inborn ecstatic propensity
by developing both mindfulness and concentration
simultaneously. Mindfulness is the inner silence
that leads to greater sensitivity and receptivity.
It is like sunlight: all-encompassing, shining on all
things, warming and softening us inside. Concentration
is the ability to focus intently and exclusively on
one thing. It is the lens that gathers the light of
mindfulness into a single burning point, the farmer’s
seed drill that plants a divine spark into our newly
yielding and fertile ground. There may be other ways, but none so swift
and certain, to grow a Burning Bush of ecstasy of our very own!
Meditation is mostly mindfulness, but without
something to concentrate on it can,
especially in the early stages, allow our monkey-mind
to start throwing turds at us, creating wild
kundalini side-effects. But mantra and samyama
fading into ultra-fineness present a blend of concentration
and open awareness that helps inner silence comfortably
grow thru the use of retractable training wheels. Perfect!
Mantra gives our mind something to grasp and
return to, filtering out unwanted and distracting
stimuli, whether inward or outward generated.
It buoys us against the mental entropy of
day dreaming, and locks the mind into a firm
perceptual present moment.
The brain’s frontal lobes, most importantly the
left prefrontal cortex – a major happiness center (!) –
are highly active while holding this attention,
keeping our mind from wandering off task.
The insular cortex, which mediates much of our
experience of empathy, love, and warmth
(Yogani’s “melting love”) is meanwhile being
polished to a toasty lambent glow. Last but not
least, the auditory cortex works to hold a
memory of the mantra sequence, anticipating and
triggering the next repetition thru the brain’s speech
centers whether it is spoken aloud or silently.
Slow but sure, we are being fashioned into sound ecstatics!
Confused? Simply inquire within: focus intently on
the soundstage between your ears, where the headline act
tonight is Love in the guise of God – yes the
God of your choice! (Of course, it doesn’t hurt
that intent listening stimulates thru cranial
nerve pair VII connected to the middle ear.)
So cock your ears carefully, my fawn-soft dear!
As in good love-making, both stamina and subtlety
are required, and mantra/samyama develop them together.
The brain areas involved may start out relatively
weak but strengthen with practice, with long-term
consistency being more important than session length.
Increases in neural thickness and density actually become
visible in brain scans on ripened meditators.
Yogani slowly adds mantra length as our concentration
holding ability grows. To proceed too quickly would snap
the mantra’s thread as we pull it thru our minds,
and the effect would be lost. But have patience and just let that mantra
shuttle fly, for by-and-by the skill of a seamstress develops and
meditation become a silk-smooth sari of embroidered delight!
Let’s now examine mantra tones in more detail, starting
at the high end with SHREE. Ah yes, now there’s a
complex vintage wine of a sound, walking the impossible
edge of tart and sweet. Shrill and bladelike, it slices
away our mental lethargy. It’s like a female air controller’s
voice cutting thru the fog of war for mission pilots.
It snags our attention like a hangnail, piercing the most
resistant carapace of consciousness like an infant’s shriek
of distress, funereal keening, a soprano’s reach, a
bagpipe’s wall of dissonant overtones.
To our ancestral mind it’s a real monkey-prod up
the shushumna: a cry of alarm, a scream of pain, the skitter of predator
claw across stone (why we wince at fingernails on blackboard?).
It slings the nervous system to the treetops – our instinctual escape route –
but because it occurs during the relative calm of meditation,
the impetus goes toward spiritual ascension instead.
There should be no doubt where the word is aimed, for what does
SHREE sound or even look like? An onomatopoetic shriek?
Maybe I’m just a silly simian, but don’t you feel its pull into your
crown, your tippy-top branches? (Am I going too primitive on you?)
Anyway, similarly, the “I” in I AM is a gentler stimulator
used to develop your aural palette and early climbing skills,
just as AUM is a fruit best picked later, when you can peel it
with your newly-muscled kechari tongue of discernment – whoa!
The relationship between dissonant high sound and meditation has
even been verified in the lab. Most people’s brains react to a scream
in areas related to empathy and the desire to act,
but in meditators these virtuous responses become increasingly
strong in relation to practice time. Eventually a continual mindset
of compassion develops that requires only simple awareness of another’s
suffering to overtop the loving-cup, and since, like the breath,
suffering is ever-present, you’re never without a stimulus to
act! (Feel free to do so now…)
To cite a forgotten influence: just as “…the wolf’s tooth whittled
so fine / The fleet limbs of the antelope…” [Jeffers],
an edged note helps shape our minds to equally elegant
proportions. So let’s go, Michelangelo, pick up your chisel!
Now on to the bass clef – the low humming mantra sounds.
Here it’s best to let naturalist/poet Diane Ackerman speak:
“It’s like a massage from the inside, very soothing. Another reason
it is so conducive to meditation is that it creates an inner white
noise which cancels out extraneous noise, making your body a
soundproof booth… For a baby in the womb the mother’s heartbeat
performs the ultimate cradlesong of peace and plenty; the surf like
waves of her respiration lull and soothe… Do we ever forget
that sound? When babies begin talking, their first words are
usually the same sound repeated.”
Good point, Diane. How does the song go?
“De-do-do-do, de-da-da-da,
The innocence will pull me through.
De-do-do-do, de-da-da-da,
The innocence says all that’s true.” - Sting
But babies do not have exclusive prerogative over innocence!
We can all find it again, for real lotus-power arises when
high alerting and low soothing sound follow one upon
the other in a continuous cycle – prosody! A similar inner
sensation and impact on the brain results from Tibetan tonglen
practice, where the suffering of others is breathed in and
love is breathed out. Once you’ve become sufficiently sensitized,
the sensation is equally, well, ecstaticized!
It seems paradoxical for a repeating cycle of dissonant and
consonant sound or mental constructs to have a positive
spiritual effect until you consider its likely evolution in
mammalian child rearing. We all know that when an infant
cries, the mother’s instinct is to rush to its aid. She is
strongly stimulated at a subconscious level, bounding
unhesitantly up from even deep sleep, and you are ill-advised
to block her path!
Once together, sounds of distress are replaced by lower-frequency
sounds of soothing and comfort, including very mantra-like
sing-song baby talk, humming and singing. Tell the truth, Mom,
in those moments haven’t you stepped outside yourself as
profoundly as in meditation? And Baby, you who still resides in
each adult, I know you recall the crib-magic when Mother-Goddess
reached for you and all that was bitter turned to sweetness. In fact,
such is the resulting sageness of babies that they remind us how to
talk properly, and so we switch to sing-song language in their presence.
(“Baby’s Way”, indeed, Tagore). How much more clearly does lilt
go to gild a golden, guileless gilt on sound and Soul!
But back to the moment when baby and mother are reunited – pulled
back together by a lasso of sound. With the swing in sound also occur
powerful internal biological changes, not the least of which is replacement
of stress chemicals by a veritable cocktail of happy juices, principally
endorphins (pleasure), dopamine (reward), and oxytocin (love-bonding
and nurturing). This aural and internal call-and-response blankets the
nurseries of the earth, and provides the deep and ancient origins of the
multi-tone mantra I hear in AYP. Mother love was herewith born!
Designed to nurture, females hear this Song of Songs strong from the
start, and perform it with dolls until the real audience arrives. With
practice, males can become virtuosos too, becoming sutra-stitched
into cuddly Raggedy Andys. (And you’re pulling my pucker string
now, naughty child!)
Extrapolating the science further: when mammalian brains
enlarged and the young needed more maturation time
and support, the mom-child bond evolved and expanded
to hold the mating couple together to work as a parenting
team, thereby linking sex to love, and erotic energy to
spiritual energy - the blended power source of tantra yoga.
Sensual and romantic was herewith born! (Who said science
wasn’t sexy?)
For mutual protection, social mammals in turn extended
this bond to the “group”, explaining how we can feel
empathy for those to whom we are not directly related
and don’t even know, and why tantra can develop an
open, objectless love that allows us to melt and flow
effortlessly down the same neurochemical river of
reward as blissfully contented moms and excited lovers,
even when alone. (Oh, don’t I know.)
Divine Love was herewith born!
Well, that’s about enough
“singing the praises” of sing-song mantra!
Any contradictions to Yogani’s greater wisdom or
resemblance to actual fact are unintended and due
solely to my foolish overexuberance.
(But how can we rightly blame Something that floats in the
air pointing out words here and there? –huh? huh?)
-Ananda T.
|
Edited by - anandatandava on Sep 09 2013 8:59:16 PM |
|
|
|
Cate
USA
29 Posts |
Posted - Sep 01 2013 : 1:36:23 PM
|
Hi Anandatandava,
I just read your poem, The Pastime, and had to tell you it blew me away! Such a beauty, and dripping with intensity and bliss. Every line like the ocean surf lapping on shore with divinity to caress golden grains of sand to a blissful state. No sooner receding than surging forth again, into a constant pulse of divine ecstasy.
I love your rich descriptive use of words and the imagery and feelings they convey. A very enjoyable read, thank you!
Might I have your permission to share this particular work of yours at another website I visit? It is a quiet and small group of spiritually diverse people, some of whom are poets, and I believe they would very much enjoy this piece of yours.
Namasté,
Cate |
|
|
|
CarsonZi
Canada
3189 Posts |
Posted - Sep 01 2013 : 2:34:00 PM
|
Hi Cate,
Anandatandava is actually in prison at this time and unable (as far as I know) to receive any messages posted to him here at the forum. You could try sending him a personal message through his profile, but if that bounces back or goes unanswered for a week or two just send me a note and I will find a way to get in contact with him and ask him for you.
Love,
Carson  |
|
|
|
Cate
USA
29 Posts |
Posted - Sep 01 2013 : 3:24:13 PM
|
Hi Carson,
Thanks for the info. I did see that he was in prison but I didn't know he was not receiving replies from the forum. I will try to message him through his profile as you suggested, and will get back to you in a couple of weeks if there is no response. Thank you!
Namasté,
Cate |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Sep 14 2013 : 11:39:14 AM
|
Cate,
It is your own words that possess great beauty, and I'm glad you found the website where, thanks to Yogani, the fastest safe path to a very real earth-borne heaven-realm is to be found. As for me, I deserve no praise, being only a poor and forgetful interpreter of something life-saving that flies into my gloomy cell, lights it up, and proceeds to make love to me thru the pen.
I was amazed and gratified by your recognition of the surflike pulse that often autonomously emerges between written passages. (You mean it shows?!) Altho still deflecting any personal credit, I can stay that the pulse is what I feel, is all I am, as the words materialize before me. Sharing some writing with my cellie yesterday, he humored me to say much the same as you, and that the experience seemed something much deeper and fundamental than mere reading. (Yes, yes for it is born of dancing, not writing (!) - and is dancing not surflike, along with everything else we most love?!) You guys are so kind for detecting this in my pale textual intimations of the Real Thing.
On those rare occasions when things are flowing smoothly, I really have to wonder what is going on. After all, I only have half a brain and am stunningly dysfunctional outside my better periods of writing. It only makes sense thru Yogani's view that everyone contains a pulsing beacon of ecstasy that needs only to be uncovered to shine. If from time to time some small sliver of its light peeps out from me, it is only more noticeable due to the dark world I inhabit. But if you in turn recognize what radiance my unsteady little firefly is reflecting, it is because the entire Sun resides there within you. I am nothing, Cate, only a pencil pointing to the greater eclipsing power I see in You!
But back to rhythm writing: those are indeed for me the best of times, when I'm really sailing along with my crown all lit up. (It's a vibrate-mode whole body mudra! *laugh*) Sheer madness, surely, but how like tantric peak-and-valley love-making (I should think). I even feel embarrassed by all of the climatic exclamation points I leave behind like wet spots, and sometimes go back to trim some out. But then if I reread the same sentence I usually go all gaga again and - oops! (A favorite song is playing just now - oh! - please play "Cosmic Dancer" by T. Rex at Ananda T's funeral. In fact, cue it up now, if you'd be so kind.)
I'm surprised you found anything recent of mine you worth sharing. I've started catching pneumonia each time the state lays me down, and often end up too gone, delirious, or defiant to write properly. I feel very bad about the things I've subjected folks to. Are you sure "The Passtime" isn't too radical in its own way? It's not as bad as some of the eyeball-searing stuff, but...
I also apologize for the lack of polish on my posts. I could sure benefit from a word processor, but as things are, will continue to place "final" alterations and afterthoughts on my paper printouts, before storage. So if there's any gentler little thing you'd consider, I might have an improvement to it here. Let me know, perhaps via another corrlink. As you see, your last one made it fine, sailing in under my door the very next day. Sorry I have no one at present to have called in a quick online response.
Being unaccustomed to any right to privacy (even during calls of nature, where one may well receive the shouted advice of neighbors), I'm surprised you felt it necessary to ask permission to share my "interpretive delirium art". But in interest of adding more human interaction to my life, here's blanket permission to everyone to spread me like manure over any mature and prepared fields you see fit. (Any odor reminiscent of sanctity or insanity may spark a conversation - you know - like methane!) Just be sure to point the evidentiary trail to me so I can get a little mail from somewhere other than Corrections.
To finish on a really bright note, I have some great news! - I've finally recruited someone who is retired and so for who entering my posts is not such a terrible burden. Rick has known me since childhood, tho with a long hiatus in contact, so I think he's still finding this turn of events in my life sufficiently amusing to ward off keyboard fatigue (typist note - I am!). You've been seeing his high-volume efforts for some time now. And all this of course means that my selfishly demanding 400-lb gorilla Muse will no longer be setting Her fat bottom on my other relationships! (So it's safe to come out now.)
- Ananda T. |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Sep 19 2013 : 6:21:23 PM
|
Party Line
As you know, there are spectrum
disorders you never outgrow, and the yoga
has shifted me from ultraviolet to infrared
(thus not so blue and stuck in my head)
I'm still quite disabled in terms of friendship
and am tired of disappointing us both -
well, then, that's it!
So please no more take my appeals close to heart
as they're not worth the powder to blow them apart!
For tho I crave human harmony
Something always crowds in to get in the way
and 'tween mind and lips my own words they go missing
and the pen then bursts out with its own loud dehiscing
that gives all appearance of friendship's dismissal
as I listen in shock, my feelings oft' antithetical
to the Voices within that push folks around
and write all the things that mostly confound
but finally I see I must yield, I must yield...
So - lo! - marooned minstrel, I hold the Throng
at least deep within me we all get along
all creeds and races bright rainbow-hued
whatever the leaning, there's none I exclude:
angels and demons, saints and the sinners
heroes and scamps, the tramps and the winners
lightness and shade, pleasure and pain
the well and the sick, sunshine and rain
rich and poor, the cursed and the blest
the princes and pests, and throw in the rest!
You too are within me, and your voice is mine
it's you that I hear that I go on to mime;
my sleeptalking echoes the asylum back ward
while you sail along by at life's front vanguard
so tho we shan't meet, my Ships in the Night
I sit here and write, and one day just might
transcend the horizon as orator past
as time releases the hold of my caste.
But here in this fatestream there's no swimming for shore
and words clamor out for endless encore:
quick end-stopped lilts, enjambment-filled tarts
a feast of flawed reason right straight from the heart
reflecting the verve of a wild World Wide Muse
who pitches the curves for my pen to effuse!
Even well before morn She arrives heaven-born
to skewer me up, that Universal Enervator
riotous Poet-Stalker, rhythmic Poem-Talker
urging out words that I so revere
to thrum the wet topaz of your tympanic eyes
till you see what I say in 3-D chromatized!
But it's best we not meet, my dearest blest reader
or you'd too come to feel the encroaching loom
of a 400-lb gorilla in the room
as She waits to leap right straight down my throat
when I open up wide in close friendship's hope
and from my dumb gaping then sprouts Her loud aping
to trump all my goals and reach out with Her own
(What, can't you guess? - the writing! - nothing less!)
So it seems that a vacuum is more adored than abhored
as Nature there finds Her expression thru impersonation.
Ungh! - She treats me like a piece of meat, do ya think? -
riding my fibers like flesh cable links
or a laser beam down some optical wires
to flash out Her signals to shock or inspire
but beware! - all those wires sport grappling hooks
for just as on Her barbed wordcraft I hang
She wants you to do very much the same.
But truly who loves a one-minded light beam?
So better duck down when lasers do gleam
to pierce sugar-apples of compassion in your mind;
those barbs stick in quick but then tend to linger
as She pulls you in closer to type thru your fingers.
Now perhaps you'd enjoy being hugged like a trellis
providing support for Her blossoming bliss
but if entangling holds you'd rather dismiss
best slam the shutters each time you hear this:
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, throw down your hair
for I'm trapped way down here, and clawing the air!
There's no one nearby to hook 'round the waist
so 'haps thru your hands a few lines I could paste?!"
*sigh* - it just might be worse than mere words can convey
so if the picture I've even somewhat portrayed
you see whatever I say you ought stay away!
- Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Sep 26 2013 7:55:21 PM |
|
|
|
Cate
USA
29 Posts |
Posted - Sep 21 2013 : 9:26:16 PM
|
quote:
Originally posted by anandatandava
I was amazed and gratified by your recognition of the surflike pulse that often autonomously emerges between written passages. (You mean it shows?!) Altho still deflecting any personal credit, I can stay that the pulse is what I feel, is all I am, as the words materialize before me. Sharing some writing with my cellie yesterday, he humored me to say much the same as you, and that the experience seemed something much deeper and fundamental than mere reading. (Yes, yes for it is born of dancing, not writing (!) - and is dancing not surflike, along with everything else we most love?!) You guys are so kind for detecting this in my pale textual intimations of the Real Thing.
Hi Anandantandava,
Yes, I found the surf-like throbbing rhythm of that piece very apparent. And I agree with your cellie, what you wrote seems to only touch the surface of something much deeper that transcends written language. How does one translate and squeeze the fullness of something beyond the 3-dimensional into a 2-dimensional expression? It is an impossible task, and yet you have found a way with limited language to express the limitless.
Namasté
Cate
|
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 01 2013 : 2:32:03 PM
|
Still Shouting?
“If we must fail, let us fail shouting.” - Italian Air Force, WWI
Well, maybe not, not for any
sense of equanimity (as any Eastern spiritual text would
advise). The prison knows I’m on my own with a head
made of plaster, so the moment I showed any inclination toward
fighting for some reasonable treatment, I was called into a “due process” meeting
(what an oxymoron!) and had my plucky little piñata
clubbed into the mud. Every truth in the book was turned upside down and
shook out like loose change! Honestly, there were so many
shouts of “You lie!” I felt like I was giving a
State of the Union address. Once it became clear I
was only there as a guest of honor at a circular
firing squad. I gave up talking and ruminated over
what a perfectly insular Orwellian world they had
created. Then it turned out I’d been thinking out loud,
at which point I was kicked out for
“bad language”. (That seems particularly ironic
after they’d poured out so many poisonous insinuations down my ears
I felt I’d swallowed a whole hibernation ball of snakes!)
When I asked how to avoid experiencing their fine company
again I was told, “Stop asking for help.” (No shame in
their game! – and they probably played it all day long with
a succession of inmates.) So let’s see, where does that
leave me? – stuck in the SHU-box with a bunch of
desperate inmates, walking in tight circles (if at all), no
real access to job, income, schooling, health care (not even
health records!), library, a struggle to use the phone
(much less have anyone to call), no legal help,
no resources to do anything on one’s own (even if I had the wits).
Now I do appreciate the state’s cost-reduction efforts
and the fact that “might makes right,” but I might
as well be living in a 1700’s prison hulk on the Thames River!
So the result is that I’m once again hopelessly
demoralized in any material sense. But – what’s this?! –
even right in the midst of it all: the fear, the pain,
the frustration, the loneliness, the bouts of delirium, fever,
and pneumonia, the ecstasy is right there for me
like a firm loving hug, like an all-encompassing,
all-forgetting heaven-realm, and all I have to do is rouse myself enough
to open that little door, that little gesture, and *poof*!
My gosh, is this rapture not truly the triumph of experience
over hope, the Real over the imaginary?! Damn right!
(Quick – somebody coin that phrase!)
But I still need to apologize for something.
I hope I’ve gone a little ways toward explaining if not
excusing some of my wilder writing. Even a dog backed into the final
corner of his cage has his dreams – in fact his whole life can become
a sometimes too vivid dream! So when I say things that make you
uncomfortable, that’s just me biting at the bars a little, and sometimes
even a rebellious “stick it to the Man” (certainly more than to any woman).
On the other hand, SHU units are known for causing psychological decay,
so let me know when I’ve become so squirreled up I
should stop talking altogether.
-Ananda T.
|
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 05 2013 : 2:32:24 PM
|
The Silent Treatment
Okay, so shouting doesn’t work. Prisons are soundproof
booths. But that leaves Gandhi’s approach of passive
resistance. He fought for the liberation of the nation from
oppression. I fight for the liberation of my spirit, here, now,
in this world of bars (no, not of the tippling kind).
The liberation of which I speak is the ecstasy taught here,
and in its most sky-rocketing form (I’m spoiled!).
Unfortunately, between my circumstances and health,
I find I require a combination of music, coffee, and writing
to achieve the heights my flagging brain needs. I can procure much of
the first two by trading my food off (tho the body has its limits),
and I can provide the latter on my own (within the
energy constraints imposed by the reduced calorie intake).
These are distinctly felt limits, and I can understand
why not much writing comes out of hardscrabble lives
until and unless the pressure comes off. And given
the buzz-killing nature of begging, I can also see
why so much of the world’s art, especially pre-computer,
was done under patronage. Pushing a pencil is slow, and you
need a lot of available time.
I wish I still had the luxury of going with the prevailing flow,
for struggle of any kind takes a harsh toll
on one’s spirit and remaining time and energy. But I am in love
with Big Big Love, so have this wild desire to keep my brain and body going
in order to continue experiencing this wonderful ecstasy,
this very present heaven. Plus, I’ve got so many of the coolest
spiritual pieces ever! (*laugh*) still only half written.
Of course, if I think I saved the best for the last (waiting for better
circumstances), they might just fall with unfledged wings to the floor instead.
It may all be only the product of a demented
hydrocephalic mind – and thus of no import – but I would still
like to see it thru to the end (surely not much further now).
See, there’s a problem, and my untreated hydro is at its core,
both figuratively and literally. Tho it disinhibits
my pen (oft’ to your chagrin), the way it commonly
“gets” a person in the end is thru an ever-increasing
desire to sleep. Complications then set in, and *click*,
problem “solved”, you can say. People who know how
both hydro and prisons “work” tell me this is my future.
Well, the future is now, and only a strong motivation to
keep reaching for ecstasy keeps me afloat, for this
swan must kick his feet to avoid drowning in
pulmonary fluids. Aww – don’t feel bad tho, for when you have
hydro, entering the “eternal sleep” comes to sound like just another type of
ecstasy! (heh – I just had this image of being parked in a wheelchair in front
of a hospice with children trying to toss pebbles into my agape mouth (“agape”
by both its meanings)).
But, back to the passive resistance I mentioned earlier.
For now, it consists of clinging like a hedgehog to this
SHU burrow, where I at least have a plastic, el-cheapo,
but ergodynamically designed chair – my dimestore diamond.
But I need financial help. It can be done with teensy
individual donations, as I think I can survive
on a total of $50/month and not live in such anxiety of, for example,
my $4 light bulb burning out, much less any other
equally overpriced item. I do not live frivolously,
and have come to grips with the possibility I’ll never own
a TV again, or even buy a pickle (at $0.70, are you
kidding?!). Everything must serve what you see here –
the writing – even if I must live predominantly on margarine
packets chased down by anti-cholesterol meds. *laugh*
There are a number of methods for direct donation, outlined
in the Minnesota Department of Corrections - Lino Lakes website:
http://www.doc.state.mn.us/offenders/mail.htm
(Transcriber notes: money orders can be mailed to:
Roy Wahlberg – 103429
MCF – Lino Lakes
PO Box 1000
Moose Lake, MN 55767
All money orders must include the following information:
Roy Wahlberg – 103429
Sender’s first and last name
Sender’s complete street address
Sender’s city, state, zip code)
-Ananda T. |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 11 2013 : 5:12:00 PM
|
Mystical/Bedroom Rapture
A while back I took a little test that showed
where one stood on what the originator called the
"absorption scale". I felt it might carry some
predictive value as to who would most quickly reach the
ecstatic levels of meditation. (I'd tell you how absorbed
I get but can't find my hand - try back later.)
Now I've encountered more of the same fellow's insights, and
they really go straight to the whole of that taught in AYP.
This passage is from a book called Spiritual Genius,
by W. Gallagher:
Remarking on the "sexually colored" tone of many
mystics' religious experiences,
Dr. Auke Tellegen, an eminent personality psychologist at the
U of Minn. cautions against facile assumptions about the
connection: "Just as the Freudians might account for
mystical rapture as a barely disguised substitute for true
sexuality, so the Jungians might be happy to see the
reverse - sexual experience as a variety or precursor of
mystical experience... The sexuality-mysticism connection
may be infatuation/love that bonds mating pairs together
in an altered state, that worshipful, boundary-dissolving
getting lost in someone else." In a person inclined
toward transcendent states - a state he calls absorption -
infatuation is likely to be an "especially mind-altering
and near-mystical experience". For someone whose
love object is the transcendent, infatuation may be
"the psychobiological foundation for, and first step
toward, the unio mystico."
Isn't that beautiful? Of course, I also like it because it goes a
little way toward excusing my own literary "misbehaviors".
- Ananda T. |
|
|
|
Radharani
USA
843 Posts |
Posted - Oct 12 2013 : 03:34:59 AM
|
Dear brother Anandatandava,
I heard you do not receive these replies but perhaps you do, as evidenced by the above interactions.
Bro, I must say I really, truly hear you. And yet, ironically, while you are in a physical cage of man's making, I am likewise here on the outside, a serf slaving away to survive - and I am amazed at your poetry. I can barely find the time to read through it all, but what little I have read, resonates deeply. If/when you manage to escape and live here (quote/unquote) "free" on the outside, I hope you will still have the time to write your exquisite poetry. It is truly amazing.
Indeed God's bow brings forth ecstatic vibration from your innermost being to make song for the world. Namaste. |
Edited by - Radharani on Oct 12 2013 03:35:40 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 15 2013 : 6:03:06 PM
|
Daedalus Wings
Some compost in a book of Leaves
but some pass by in autumn flight
flocks of reams tight interweaved
and page on page of parchment bright
pinion scripted Daedalus wings
to disappear in a flash of Light!
- Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Oct 21 2013 6:53:39 PM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 15 2013 : 6:14:34 PM
|
Embarrassment!
Jeez - seeing my last money appeal in print got me more embarrassed than any of the wildest stuff I've been writing! To be pounded that far in the dirt when I both want to and could be self-sustaining is really ridiculous. I think I finally convinced a non-profit attorney of the severity of my situation, but we'll see. I hope it works, 'cause I'd like to spare you the spectacle of me repeating myself in ever-tightening delirious circles until I disappear (at which point it would come as a relief).
Anyway, in the meantime, I'm fully aware that an inmate begging for financial help on his own accord just smacks of a scam. To counter this impression, I'd love to share my monthly statements, but would need help scanning them online somewhere. But where? Perhaps naively, I keep thinking there's a safe and secure technology way of donating a single dollar every so often to a "cause" (presumptuousity alert!), ideally with a specific monthly cap amount. (I'm trying to watch my figure.) But where and how?!
- Ananda T. |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 27 2013 : 7:18:57 PM
|
The Guru Is In You
(Warning: personal opinions follow – may be unsettling to some.)
“Religion is the frozen thought of men out of which they build temples.”
- Krishnamurti
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.”
- Erich Fromm
“A man travels the world over in the search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
- George Moore
Perceiving no meaning or value elsewhere, all my life I had accumulated the objective knowledge and material possessions of the temporal realm. But still I felt empty and tried to fill the heart-abyss with addictions of many sorts, all of which only added to the pain. Finally seeking the only complete escape I knew of at the time, I tried to take a quiet little car trip to oblivion in a CO2-laden garage. I didn’t quite make it.
What happened instead was a profound Vedic near-death experience, despite my having had no previous exposure to Eastern thought. Nine impossible hours later, I was thrown back into life, seeming to land directly on the pavement outside, where others had dragged me to “safety”. My physical survival seemed so improbable, it immediately begged the question: “Why?” In response, the Universe simply laughed and handed me a pencil. Huh? – well, then, here’s the rest of the story….
After recovering what was left of my wits, I found that my disappointment over still being alive was overshadowed by the ultra-vivid vision that still burned brightly within me (as it surely forever will). And what I’d witnessed carried over into the material world, causing everything to sparkle with a new, deep significance. It was as tho I could now see thru the surface of things and into their Divine nature, causing a complete change of perspective and interests. Indeed, as I increasingly discarded the mundane realm in favor of – and obsession over – matters of the spirit it soon became clear that I had experienced a classic “turning about in the seat of consciousness” [Upanishads].
And so I began searching: first, for greater understanding of what I’d experienced – a framework within which to place and build upon it; second, for others who could understand or at least tolerate my stumbling descriptions; and, third, for a way of returning again to that wonderful sense of Unity – could a consistent way of achieving this be found, short of dying? If so, what was the path, the Truth that would lead me there?
Possessing no map, where could I begin looking but on the shoreline of mystery, where certainty ends. I sensed that the Truth I sought lay tantalizingly near, so looked first to the sand that glittered so invitingly at my feet. Scooping up a palmful, I held it near but immediately discovered that every grain was an individual man’s voice, each proclaiming his own version of Truth with the same utter confidence as all the others. Surrounded as I was by endless drifts of such sand, whether blown by the ceaseless winds of ego or entertainment, I understood how most men spent their entire lives in the trackless, pathless wasteland, slowly sinking out of sight. If Truth was here, it was shattered beyond recognition!
Then I noticed that along the shore lay seashells in all the world’s assorted shapes of temples. Here at least was organization among the chaos, and perhaps even what I sought! Excited, I picked one up and saw that it contained an accumulation of sand grains, all identical. And when I placed the shell to my ear I heard all those grains speak in a unified and self-assured voice as to precisely what Truth was, and that only in shells of that exact shape could it be found. “Don’t go near the others,” it whispered sidelong, “they will turn your mind with their deceits.”
So there were other versions of Truth? Curious. I picked up a different shell and found that it indeed did claim Truth to be something entirely different from the first! In fact, the only thing they shared was a similar warning about listening to other shells and the threat of severe eternal consequences if I did!
Unsettled by such unpleasant messages coming from outwardly beautiful forms, I hurried on, sampling shell after shell, only to find that whether the differences were large or small, each insisted just as strenuously on its own unique and jealously-guarded Truth. How could anyone determine which shell to listen to? It seemed to depend almost entirely on where a person was born on the beach – more a matter of accident or fate, not choice or divine influence.
Looking then down the shoreline, I saw shells scattered as far as the eye could see. Speaking in such variety, they couldn’t possibly all contain Truth. Was it then also possible that none did? Indeed, what loving Universe would present so many conflicting messages, leaving the majority of seekers lost thru no fault of their own? And why was the concern for universal love and brotherhood so quickly forgotten in favor of teaching just as much of who to hate and fear? Can an attractive shell really make up for darkness within?
Bah! – I brushed all the distracting sand from my ear and sat to think. Though all of these shells spoke of a spiritual realm, a big devil stood grinning inside their details – mutually-exclusive details, hair-splitting details, big and small details – none of which had anything to do with becoming a better, happier, more loving person, but were instead used so often and eagerly to set the entire world on fire over the most trivial differences in how one’s shell is coiled or Truth is spun.
I concluded that I simply couldn’t trust voices and words to bring me all the way to my Goal. Words, even at their best, can only hint at the Truth I’d known in its Immediacy, and are not Truth in and of themselves. I saw that to put my trust in the false certainty of words and literal readings of books over pure and absolute love would be to place my faith in men’s pens and to live someone else’s religion, not the spirituality and sublime sentiment that had been awakened within me.
But if the places I’d searched didn’t contain the answer, where else could it lie? Still remembering the taste of Ultimate Love, I felt certain that – like a salmon – I would be able to recognize and home in on its Source Waters again if I could just get near. But where to look?
Then as I sat perplexed, something entirely new caught my eye. It was a mirror, set like an obelisk in the sand. On it was etched a message: “I won’t tell you what Truth is, I’ll help you experience it for yourself. The guru is in you.” In the mirror was reflected my own face. Only then did I notice that my shoreline fronted upon an immense Ocean. Gazing out over it, I suddenly realized the direction and the Depth at which Truth lay… and so I dove…
- Ananda T.
|
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 02 2013 09:54:45 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 27 2013 : 7:31:09 PM
|
Still Life
With thoughts like dry sand, slipping away
before lips can form what I'm trying to say
a written line's meant to string them along
corralling fog to form and story allegorical
else I'd never sense any existence at all!
For what narration can be gained
And what past evinced
Retracing a beach with no print?
So I've shaped my life taking greatly pleasured pains
to sweep bright-hued sand-paintings out of tiny word grains
and once the montage was well underway
no view's been portrayed in a foreshortened way.
For the nearer the finish, the time it's grown fleet
and it cheers me to think that it just might be sweet
to lean a few still lifes on the side of my casket
or leave a bouquet in Kismet's worn basket:
from forget-me-not clusters and white baby's breath
to the truth borne in thorn-bush, to seal up my death.
(Perhaps a resurrection plant, to hedge my bets.)
And in the event you'd like to attend
please r.s.v.p. to my mortal end.
(But act now while kinetic supplies last!)
-Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 02 2013 09:37:28 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 27 2013 : 7:46:01 PM
|
The Hydrocephalic Life
(Well, it almost has "phallic" in it - happy?)
After oceans of tears both caused and shed
I found them all pooled up right here in my head!
Now every move is a dizzy cotillion
with hair set on end in a wildfire Tourbillion!
Marvels aswirl in my own privy Sea
a more commodious mind could just never be!
But when vaporously flush with fallacious success
in this maniacally public dream analysis
And fumes of fancy then bring a dull stupor
it's high time to clean out this sunken skull pooper
So quick pull my finger - no, the pen will address
my brimming bone-porcelain cranial egress!
(*giggle* Do you then find it charmin', my ticker tape Charmin?)
-Ananda T.
Errata:
Would you consider this a proper use of a person's limited time?
In contrast, as his room dimmed, Goethe's final words were: "Mehr Licht!"
I guess I take more after Mozart's scatological humor, sharing his Tourette's.
Hey, "Life's a Twitch!"
|
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 02 2013 09:38:59 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 27 2013 : 8:18:03 PM
|
American Diaspora
My sisters and brothers
the death rowers, the life without parole'ers
tribe of illimitable colors
buried lukewarm and halfway limber, soaked so long
in our echoing catacomb world of unquiet graves
our light-starved warren of kindred fallen
do we not share the same sap
the same blood, the same song
and even our dreams, which tho now lie crushed
were still dreamt once all the same?
Then I ask you (for you will always matter very much to me)
would you - if you could - still look up
to see a laughing sun unoccluded
by walls, chain link, and razors?
I think that I might - if I still recalled how
yes, and perhaps even laugh myself
oh - to be sure - till I cried.
We, a bruised and swollen American diaspora
Living far from our native clime
thrust from the warm hands of honeyed soft things
to cold concrete lands where even the very air rings rigid:
a moral sepulcher, separate and shaded from the light of reason
where fiction caulks gaps left by absence of fact
where malice masquerades as wholesome reproof -
and where tender-souled hope would be foolish to tread.
Yesterday's news, fond memory only to landfill worms
prosecutors, reporters, and politicians feeding on darkness:
shadows and scars of human sorrow stacked in tall tiers of
truth and lies, facts and innuendo, excess and minimization
all moldering in old tears, in ever-thickening silence
and it would be good to let even fitfully sleeping ghosts lie.
But that is never allowed in relentless America, nation of
professional necromancers, resurrectionists, and ghost-hunters
Who wolfed down heroes and villains like there's a famine coming
and the slightest scent of gain attracts tanker cars of
printer's ink to hydraulically disinter deep strata of pain
cutting the quiet countryside down to imaginary brimstone
and questionably true grime, pouring salt brine into faded
but now freshened wounds, and frantically fanning the flames
of the worst of human passions in even those never marked -
for nothing sells as well as hate to a populace that fears
eternal judgment but then happily hands it to others.
So it doesn't matter who we really were, will be, or are
we live in our legends, like mute bugs in glass jars
and whether leaping about or just staring out, it's all a moot distress
for those of our genus - the trophy menagerie of a loud pouting press -
and after endless entombment bleaches our worn features hueless
it's more feigned hatred that holds us, and less so the bars....
all the while life and the glass, in steady decay, flow slowly away
in this tight screw-capped grasp, right to our last gasp.
-Ananda T.
|
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 05 2013 08:24:56 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 31 2013 : 5:37:35 PM
|
Hold My Hand...?
The money is gone. I'll try to not get maudlin. But... would you hold my hand a little thru what comes next?
Unfortunately, it costs money for me to communicate too: a 15-min call is 38 cents, a letter costs 59 cents, and cutting a money order to me for those items costs like 60 cents at some places. As to amount, can you imagine what even $5 worth of human contact would mean to me, especially now? Then we could track my usage, and when it's gone you decide if it was worthwhile entertainment. Plus, it keeps me able to write.
Limit me as you want/need. Scheduling possible contact times are very important: time blocks, once a week? a month? Google Voice has built-in scheduling software and the number can be turned off when you're on vacation or gone onto other things in life. Otherwise just check caller ID and only accept when convenient.
There is an alternative way to help me. This is a rough world and I will eventually lose my books - a frightening prospect. If a gift account could be established at like Amazon, it would be ready for when I need it. Can multiple people put small donations into such things? A mind is a terrible thing to ungrace. Help!
-Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 05 2013 08:26:21 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 31 2013 : 5:51:24 PM
|
Time
Atop a soaring bluff of gneiss
perched a boulder, fissure-scored
dropped by ancient flow of ice
to live its days on lofty sward.
Gazing upon that mottled throne
I felt a curious notion
to sit on high and all alone
so partook of upward motion.
Against the lichened cliff I climbed
past stunted shrub and broken rock
to find on top a single pine
as the boulder's alpenstock.
My eyrie wore a lace of lichen
on top and sun-kissed side
while in the shade a moss was driven
as if it meant to hide.
The tree was massive, old and scarred
and had sifted down a threadbare turf
on barren ground all life looked hard
but long this mast had held its berth.
The zephyred tree then began to talk
and it spoke to me of scales of time
that my speeding blood could only balk
at the pace of a different race than mine.
It's been many years since I met that pine
but I never forgot the lesson
with longer eyes do I now view time
and with human import lessened.
-Ananda T. |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Oct 31 2013 : 6:29:42 PM
|
Radharani
(Sent to one -- meant for all)
The last time you spoke to me I tried to msg you back, but perhaps it didn't make it. But you touched me deeply then too, as does everyone here. I wish I had direct communicative contact with gobs of good people like you - especially verbal contact - for Lord knows I sure could use the practice. I pray you pause in your bright-winged flight and speak to me, bee to bee.
So you might try to read thru it all, huh? Yikes! - lots of embarrassing stuff in there, I'm sure. I wonder if you're going back to front, or front to back. I think I recognize the exact point you struck the exploding metaphor, the lotus-land mine that lifted your hands and mind to those smiling keyboard ivories that then so melodically linked our little soul-spiders together across the Web. (Sorry!)
In general, tho, everyone soon knows my writing better than I do, for I'm actually dreaming - even now. Yes, EEG tests show a constant theta background in my brainwaves, like lucid dreaming. Mostly lucid, anyway - you know how dreams are. My cellie took to calling my circuitous trips around the dayspace "sleepwalking" and said that it looked like I'm walking thru a cinema of dreams but then bonking into more substantial images now and that others do not see (but that knock me back a little). Yuppers. And I just keep reeling the images in and pasting them down on paper. So I'm more a colagist than a writer by far, even repasting my own stuff either because I remember so little or because I fall too much in love with certain images.
I realize that taste in anything is subjective, but think I go too far in things sometimes, just letting my pen have its head. So I always wonder what sorts of things I do right when I do them. For example, in your view, what constitutes "exquisite poetry"? Gee, I think I might like to write some of that! In the attempt to do so, I joined a writing class to gain a tutor, but then immediately got thrown in seg for showing up in school 5 mins too early, all excited to share a poem on love, of all things.
I caution you that any time my writing is praised, although I absolutely love the kindness and contact, there's a nagging concern that it may be done somewhat out of pity. I want to do better, if I can, but am almost afraid to probe further into my rights and wrongs for fear it might burst my little bubble. Perhaps my confusion over praise is that it lies in such strong contrast with the rest of my life. Outside this community, I've never known praise before. All I can say is, geez, keep it up when its merited, but corrlink.com me private spankings when you think I'm touching hot stoves or wandering into the street!
It sounds as if you are terribly busy simply surviving. Tho I have my own struggles, your experience reminds me that physical "freedom" is not the Promised Land, certainly not when all I want is a small writing life and a small income to support it. In fact, I'd be perfectly happy in this cell if I didn't have to worry about keeping the lights on and health care. I'm sure you have your own sort of "short list" - a final line of defense you'd fight like hell to hold. You see me at mine, and I don't see the outside world as presenting clear-cut advantages in that regard. But what do I know?
-Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 05 2013 08:28:36 AM |
|
|
|
anandatandava
USA
215 Posts |
Posted - Nov 01 2013 : 1:09:03 PM
|
Baby's Breath
Granddaughter -
This will not reach you, so will not be sent
but it must be expressed, nonetheless.
The last I heard, you were an honor student
playing violin, with dreams of dolphins and marine science.
I saw the pictures. So pretty. So much promise.
And that perfect sprinkle in your braid -
of baby's breath?
But now you are a woman - or so you think - at eighteen
flying on the dragon's wing
and lying in the arms of Morpheus
the lover with the lepar's claws.
How deeply has your soft and startled skin been marked?
Has the needle yet sucked out your glow?
All the things you know?
And the perfect twinkle in your gaze -
of baby's breath?
And what ever happened to your other dreams?
The real ones, I mean.
All scorched and gone? - just smoked thru stems, or bubbles breaking
in the wind? - or stinging the tender flesh of your nose or skin?
(Tell me: does your conscience ever sting you too? Tell me!)
You are a delicate girl, not a cyborg requiring pipe fittings!
I pray you tire of all this hollow sickness in body and soul
before hitting a fearful wrinkle in your twilight ways -
the cessation of breath
my baby's death!
-Ananda T. |
Edited by - anandatandava on Nov 11 2013 1:07:24 PM |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
|
|
| AYP Public Forum |
© Contributing Authors (opinions and advice belong to the respective authors) |
|
|
|
|
From Anandatandava
