scarf it up

A parade of scarves. Each on a sapling branch. Winter. Franklin Square. Solar and Plum. Fuzzy scarf. Skinny stringly one. Double-crocheted maroon orange olivered yellow lavender scarf. That one. Reserved. Proffered. Homeless. Plastic bag fastened with a safety pin. Inside it, a piece of notebook paper, roughly 3 x 5, lined in back, crayoned: "You're Blessed You will all ways Be" in cursive within three cumulus clouds. Shiny sun upper right. Blue sky. Green grass and trees, the bottom landscape.

Pick it up.

Wear it.

Keep it.

Why not.

For now.

Gleðilegt nýtt ár!

wet paint

hey you; you, not them; you; look here; don't touch me; do not touch me; touch forbidden; warning; please touch touch me; please please pretty please touch me; now; dare you; danger; stand back; come here; no harm no foul; who are They to tell you what to touch or what not to touch; it won't hurt anything; what's the harm; go ahead; WET PAINT; after all, it doesn't say touch or don't touch; it doesn't say anything like that; WET PAINT merely states a fact; but is it a fact; is it really wet and is it really paint; no command, no imperative mode; an adjective modifying a noun; reality-based; T.S. Eliot said a poem is not complete until it is read, with that in mind the declaration WET PAINT is incomplete, unfinished until the proposition is tested, is borne out, by human experience; and what about nonhumans, a bird, say, who flies headlong into the sign or into the supposedly nondry paint, such a tragedy; if Heidegger can ask 'why beings rather than nothing,' can we not query the veracity of this sign; luring, seducing, tempting, daring, cajoling, nudging, almost screaming to touch, touch furtively rapid-fire when no one is looking, no one around, running the risk of imprinting your inimitable fingerprint, your human stain, for all it's worth, now and seemingly forever
 

still small voice

You heard a voice, you say? No, I'm not smirking. I just want to know. You heard a voice. Was it loud? Soft? English-speaking? Man, woman, or child? No, I already told you, I'm not mocking. I'm aware of those who hear voices. Schizophrenics, say. I am not saying that's your story, and if it were, it's nothing to make fun of. It would not be something to make light of. You heard a voice. Was it one time? Did it happen many times? Was it a dream? Could you decipher its message and was it personal, reserved for you? Did the still small voice frighten you?

(As an aside, have you wondered how a comma inserted after "still" might alter the meaning of the phrase? That's a meal to digest at another time, señor.)

Granted, it's only logical and common sense to discover that no voice, large or small, still or wavering, can be heard in the midst of tempest, fire, earthquake, flood, blizzard, tornado, whether you are Elijah or Eddie, Elisabeth or Edie.

So we agree on that.

Stop. I'm not being argumentative. If you don't stop saying that, I'm walking out of here. So stop.

I want to know.

Did you crave or trigger the voice? Did you lay the groundwork for it, somehow fertilize the soil of your listeningness?

Wordless, you say.

I can buy that. I really can. No exact words but a voice nonetheless. I get that. I've had similar episodes, experiences, whatever you want to call them.

It's more of a feeling but just as real.

Small? I like that notion too. Like if it was not small and it was staring us right in the face, right in the ear, so to speak, then we'd pay even less attention to it. The Billboard Effect. The Train Syndrome. You know, you live next to train tracks and after a while you don't notice the rolling thunder, the rattling plates in the china cabinet, the silverware chattering like your teeth in December.

Besides, wouldn't "earth-shattering large shout" sound less poetic, less biblical, less kingly and royal?

Where were we?

But would you listen? Would I listen? Would any message, neon-blazing or decibel tsunami-ing, divine or AI or secularly sober, coded or clear, fetch a response from you or me or any modern man, woman, or child?

Tell me.

In a voice of your choosing, in a dialect, volume, and tone of your choice.

Tell me.

hole in the donut

Waiting to board an Adirondack Trailways bus bound for New York from Syracuse, I spied a sign in the distance at the Dunkin' Donuts in the regional transportation center. 

The sign read, "DO A DOZEN."

Or did it?

Now picture a doughnut, or donut, if you will, in place of each letter "O."

"D A D ZEN." 

I pointed out this oddity, coincidence, novelty, or providential message to the prospective passenger sitting in front of me on a metal bench.

"I've never been on a bus," she felt compelled to confess.

"Never? How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"How about a train?"

"No."

"Plane."

"No." Self-conscious chuckle.

"A school bus?"

"Yes."

What Dad Zen wisdom could I impart to this brave-new-worlding daughter of her dad?

A smile, a reassuring voice.

"I wonder if it's late. I'll check," Zendad offered.

What is Dad Zen? you might ask.

If there is no self, wouldn't that rule out Dad Zen, as well as Mom, Son, Daughter, Brother, or Sister Zen?

Having no self, do we become the hole in the doughnut? 

But in doing so, are we made whole?

In Step Three of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill Wilson observed that someone, especially a fledgling seeker, might be afraid of taking a leap of faith, a surrender to Somebody or Something. Such a BraveNewUniverser might be afraid of becoming "the whole in the doughnut."  

Becoming a doughnut hole isn't just a clever Dunkin' marketing ploy.

Willing to risk becoming the hole in the doughnut takes a leap of faith, as Soren Kierkegaard put it.

Who wouldn't be afraid to take a leap of faith? Where do we fall to? Who or what catches us? Are we bruised? 

And what or who are we after The Fall?

There you have it.

It?

Alan Watts says, "This is It."

So be it.

Later, having arrived in NYC, I see In front of La Mode cleaners on Broadway near 109th Street, an Asian man wearing a black baseball cap emblazoned with the word "DAD."  

Was he practicing Dad Zen? 

(Or subliminally advertising DO A DOZEN?)

I've been staying with friends on 108th Street.

There are 108 mala beads.

A baseball has 108 stitches.

It's Opening Day.

I'll have a bagel with a schmear.
 

The Envelope, Please

Awards shows create a dramatic pause by having the emcee intone, “The envelope, please.” Further drama is created by hesitations and teases before the envelope is opened. The award nominees and their entourages nervously await the anticipated announcement. “And the award goes to . . . 

Call it the envelope of tension. The tension envelope.

Years ago, I was arrested by the sight of a sign on a commercial building seen from Interstate 80 near Hackensack-ack-ack-ack, New Jersey. It's on the left as you head toward the George Washington Bridge.

Tension Envelopes, it declares.

It long ago inspired my own inner pause and reflection. Namely: the world does not suffer from a dearth of tension envelopes, does it? Aren’t we enveloped by tensions at work, at home, on the road, and in our hearts? Our inner landscapes are dotted with these tension envelopes, both individually and collectively. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Is our envelope of tension paper-thin or stretchable and impermeable?  Who affixes postage to it so that we can mail that tension to anyone, near or far? That’s easy. I’m the one in charge of dispatching my very own, specially designed, jittery-filled packages to anyone of my own choosing. Sometimes I send my tension envelopes C.O.D. (collect on delivery; capacity on demand; chew on dis; come, on dude!; change or die).

How do you send your tension envelopes? And to whom?

And are they received as “warmly” as mine? [Insert ironic emoji.]

Somewhere in the oceanic, discursive writings of Marcel Proust, I encountered his observation that the human body is a "nervous envelope." In remembrance of such a thing past, I bent the upper corner of a page. I don't know which one. But I can’t argue with Monsieur Proust’s take. We live in this envelope that begs for relief and inner peace. Our nervous envelopes seek serenity or release, distraction or diversion.

If our tension envelopes are empty, what do we fill them with? (They wouldn’t be tension envelopes if they were totally empty; by definition some tension electrons must crackle and roam around or reside there.) The candidate tension-reducers list is familiar to any wanderer of the modern world: sex, drugs, alcohol, food, work, danger, gambling, anger, other people-places-things, you-name-it ad infinitum.   

As I type it, I realize my tension-envelope mitigation (TEM) list is skewed toward the negative. It doesn’t feel complete or whole; it doesn’t possess enough dimensions for the 3-D world.

I can’t seem to connect the dots or check off the right multiple-choice answers. I need your help. Work with me here.

An alternative, or parallel, parade of TEMs might include the following: meditation, mindfulness, prayer, walking, running, painting, sculpting, gardening, woodworking, weightlifting, yoga, pilates, massage, or doing the dishes.

Agree? (Add your own.)

But I have a sheepish confession to make. The second list sounds a tad boring compared to the first. I’m embarrassed to admit this.

Does that make me “less than”? Does it reveal a personality best left kept private?

Or does it merely make me One of Us?

rain

the deliciousness of pluvial abundance pouring down no other direction for it 'cept sideways 'round through trickling rivulets sky to yawning earth running rushing to unseen fate and transport pure wanton freedom of rain its indiscriminate blanketing biblical in scale and equality "rain" one of The Beatles' most underrated songs celebratory simple childlike in delight if you will rain in my memory a clear vision the Eighties Times Square walking to my desk at Random House driving torrents rain inverting umbrellas into skeletal art cascading splashes from tires of Yellow Cabs arrested by the sight of a pedestrian inundated by a curtain of rain's results splashdown no splashup her own miniature tsunami personal impersonal and I swear she stopped and smiled even laughed as if what are you going to do might as well exult in it and here I was lamenting my soaked feet she never knew what I witnessed never will never can this benediction this rainworthy anointing

a cardinal virtue

I heard the sonorous chirp of what almost sounded like a cardinal, but somewhat off, truncated. It was as if the familiar (to me) sound loop of the male cardinal were skewed, off a few notes. No, more like it was a tape of a male cardinal being played backward, abbreviated. Picture the wind-up bird of Haruki Murakami fame being wound down or rewound.

I looked up.

High in the honey locust tree (I think it was), shading me if I were to stand under its foliage, was, yes, a male cardinal.

The sight shocked me, arrested me.

I was expecting to see a different bird, something unexpected.

But the cardinal himself stopped me, gave me pause as he went through his routine, which I had mistakenly taken to be a tad uncardinalish.

I watched him. And listened.

I wanted to do my mockingbird thing and imitate a typical cardinal song, to see if it would answer my call. (Was the perceived modified male cardinal song modified as some sort of mating ritual?)

But no.

I just stopped and listened.

I wanted to bow or make the sign of the cross through the air.

I did not.

But I was grateful enough to do either.

wrong exit

The signs were not there. Or I did not see them. Well, actually the signs were there. I misread them. I expected more overt, more blatant exit warnings. (Are they "warnings"? More like proclamations, declarations. Not so much Good News, as News. Do with the information what you will.) So I kept going. But it began to feel not quite right. Sure enough, at the rest stop I consulted a map on the wall. I had overshot the exit. I exceeded my expectation. I now had to make the wrong exit the right exit. I took a bridge, of majestic beauty, even as my anxiety rose like the bluish spires holding up the cables. I headed north. I backtracked. I found my way, even though it was not the way. I met my party. It was all relative ("all relative," an oxymoron if there ever was one). So I guess wrong was righted.

presence

I saw a sign.

I saw a sign in front of St. Ann Church, just outside the City of Syracuse -- "in the world but not of it," you might say, if you are not suburban-minded (as I am not).

The sign read:

LESS PRESENTS

MORE PRESENCE

I liked it. I like it.

Did the pastor give a Christmas homily on that?

It's a facile declaration.

Simple.

But what would it mean?

Fewer physical gifts and more staring into eyes, more hugs and holding hands?

I talk a good game.

This would be harder than I first thought.

 

the healing touch

You got there late, as is your habit, character flaw, or constant misjudgment of time constraints. St. Paul's Cathedral. Downtown Syracuse. The Hadley Chapel, a dusty taste of Olde England or late 1800s America. Four men, including yourself, scattered in straightback, wicker (?) chairs, a priest at the altar. She invites all to join her around the table. Communion. Co-union. Eucharist. Thanks. The men look sad, you think, but upon reflection find that a misperception. Sadness, yes, but a calm, subtle smiles, serenity, a hunger. You wonder, does the priest feel threatend by these four men in this cramped space? No sign of it. Besides, the sense of spiritual surrender perfumes the air like incense. After the Eucharist, the priest asks you, "Do you want the healing? You were late, and . . ." "Sure, I'm always up for some healing," you interrupt (another habit or flaw or branding characteristic). She walks up to the front. You kneel at the communion railing with its cushions. The priest, who happens to be the rector of the Cathedral parish, tells you how even if you were not present earlier, the fruits of the healing service were yours to taste. She has a small container in her hands, the holy chrism. She asks if there is any need or person you want to mention, on whose behalf you want healing extended. You are caught by surprise. You can't speak. You can name (or not name) dozens of people, endless needs, candidates for unction, salve, and balm. The emotion embarrasses you and you check it, contain it, at least outwardly. "Josephine," you say. "My mom, 98," you get out. The priest anoints your forehead with oil. Her hands touch your forehead. She lays her hands on your head, firmly, not superficially. She holds her hands on your hair, on your head, saying prayers of healing, invoking Christ to heal, repair, comfort. It's not so much the words. You may even have misheard the words. It was the human touch. You wanted to empty yourself by sobbing. Of course, you did not. (How indecorous would it be?) But this hearty touch. And when her hands lifted, you were lighter. Residual moisture rimmed the corners of your eyes. Did she know? You wondered, what if this were the moment your mother died? Does it matter? All would be well. All things would be well.

what I saw today

• a few dozen vehicles either off the road, facing the wrong way, or on the road, same calamitous circumstances, owing to the slippery slope of snow
• whitened and crystalline branches, limbs, tree trunks, and mini-palisades
• rain or snow or ice against the windshield
• windshield wipers
• the tired yet wise and kind eyes of the 98-year-old woman who gave birth to me
• my hometown, remarkably recognizable
• toll booths
• lines of people at the rest stop, also called text stop
• road signs
• heavily mascaraed and tired-beyond-years eyes of a gas station sales clerk
• a McDonald's crispy chicken sandwich
• a holiday bouquet of not-very-fresh flowers
• a coffee-to-go, from Wendy's
• apostrophes
• the digital readout of mileage on my car's dashboard surpassing 100000

vulnerable adult

I saw a sign. Upon entering the highway, Route 690 West, an electronic sign alerted motorists to a VULNERABLE ADULT, and gave a description of a vehicle, possibly accompanied a plate number. No respect or insensitivity whatsoever intended for that person or the person's loved ones (the ones whose concerns elicited the alert), but it gave me pause. Vulnerable Adult. vulnerable adult. (With or without the initial caps, with or without the proprietary nomenclature.) Are you a vulnerable adult? Am I? Yes, we are all sometimes vulnerable adults. Some of us, all the time. And we are vulnerable to the slings of time, the arrows of circumstance or history. We are at risk to fame and fortune, or at peril to poverty and perdition. And when we find ourselves vulnerable as adults, either individually or collectively, who is there to shield or save us? Should they? How? Or should our vulnerability merely introduce us to the icons of impermanence, the faceless faces of Nirvana?

I kept driving.

monarchy; the royal oui

I am walking the dog. Is it my dog? She was. Or is. (Can anyone lay claim to owning a pet? How could this lovely, loyal friend be deemed a  possession?) We are walking in Burnet Park, Syracuse, where we have walked dozens, probably hundreds, of times. It is daytime. We now walk this route less frequently in the Time of Estrangement. October sunlight. An ample, warm breeze. We are walking up the driveway, an incline, toward the golf course clubhouse, toward O'Leary Drive, where, soon, in December, the jangling bells and clipclop hooves of steaming horses will carry Christmas-celebrating families. Riding on the wind, I am arrested. (Not the dog; she keeps going, only halted by squirrels, who are busy and in abundance.) I am gasped by the sight of one monarch butterfly riding the wind, I see it glide and loop for maybe less than 3 seconds. Then gone. Not seen. A vision in broad daylight. Monarch. From the Greek, one who rules alone. Ruling the field of vision, ruling my heart and its beats. A sacramental sign. A sign of what, you ask? Of is-ness. That. Suchness. Yes.

deer me

Driving home the other day, late afternoon, early evening (who can remember any more? maybe I am making all this up as I type), near the Syracuse border with Solvay, I saw a white-tailed deer gallop off to my right, into some shrubbery, fenced off. Did I say gallop? Gallop with a dollop of prance and hurdle and gambol and leap. Seconds later: a middle-aged bearded man riding a bicycle. I try to catch the eye of the bicyclist, as if to wordlessly say, "Dude, you see that? You see that deer? You chasing it?" Even if I did catch the bicyclist's eye for a split second, he wasn't indulging me. His look was like, "I'm riding this bike. Deer? I ain't seen no deer." I made the right turn. I thought I'd intersect the path of the deer, but no sign of him. In the bush, I guess. Or else it was a very large dog or a fox. Or a figment. (It's redundant redundant to say "figment of imagination.") A 3-D figment of fantasy. But naw. It was real. It was a deer. And don't tell me the bicyclist didn't see it. I'll wager the two of 'em, Bicycle Man and Deer Me, have this bit, this act they've worked out. It's a routine. "Figment Follies."

what melts

Is it merely the temperature or a metaphysical thaw, all this melting, this evaporation, this trans-formation; where does it all go; and what is 'it' we are referring to? Not that it is something 'less' because nothing is lost, all is impermanent, the zen masters remind us; all is here, and nothing is lost; no-thing. in the vespers dusk, the scuds of clouds before this cafe window breeze leftward, it may be east or south, or both, I am not sure. These clouds (cumulus, stratus? cumulo-stratus? I forget my cloud taxonomy, from fourth grade; I need a nap, where different clouds can float by in front of a different sort of lens) of dusky gray lavender, ashy dustiness are already rehaped, gone, departed from what my fingers were tapping about moments ago. I do not lament them as lost, or found. Someone a few miles down the road is welcome to greet them. I moved a desk today. It stood in a room, for a few years. I was under that roof some twenty years. I was quick to describe my mood afterward as sad over this but one would have to ask why. Romancing a vision of some ideal that never was? Clinging with claw marks to some sort of cloudy mirage? The skeletal, bronchiated limbs of the winter trees across West Genesee Street stand silently before me. They too are as transient as those clouds above their sight line but one would not think it so readily. Those slender naked branches are eloquent. I bow before them, and them before me.

focus

It has been said the whole universe is found in a drop of water.

I saw it today.

Extending my arm out the car window to send out some cards (hand-written communication? how quaint!), under the lower-right lip of the mailbox's mouth, one plump drop of rain held itself suspended (or was held suspended), waiting, frozen but melted, pausing, seemingly still.

What I Got (And Didn't Get) From Church

We were late, after the Nicene Creed. But we were just as welcome whether we professed a set of any beliefs or not. Who is "we"? My daughter, 13; her friend, 14; and I, 61. Why were we late? (What is this, the Inquisition? The Inquisition is a favorite topic of anti-religionists, and rightly so. Of course, the anonymous touch of hospice caregivers, whether atheists or believers; the drunkards' welcome; the Samaritans' feeding of the hungry: these headline-hidden, quotidian acts are beyond inquisition and definition and category, but they are perhaps not as galvanizing for debate.) We were late owing to fatigue or lack of longing or just-plain habit or genetic determination. Go figure.

I wondered: Why here? Why now?

We had missed the Gospel. We did not hear the clarion call of good news, but our ears may have been too sleep-sodden to be roused. We heard no sermon. No one preached at us or to us. And I felt that as an absence, a missing out on erudition and insight.

As my mind wandered, looking out the window opening to the garden holding ashes of the dead and gone, the flowering crab apple, the trickling water, the redbud, in autumnal array -- a place where I will "rest"? -- I seized on the collective nature of the Eucharistic enterprise, the union of encomium. Where else do I (or anyone) do anything as a community? A sporting event, a lecture, a rally, a speech. Eating at the mall food court does not measure up to that, not quite. So, yes, we were there as a body, albeit with wandering minds and beliefs and disbeliefs and varying degrees of discrete charm of the bourgeoisie. The same can be said of lemmings, you say? I'd have to research that. And can you tell me whether lemmings are "happy"?

The Eucharist itself was a salty bread, not the papery wafer of my youth, when it would stick to the roof of my mouth as stubbornly as papal bulls cling to dogma and doctrine. A shared and silent meal. A respite among the hungry, the tired, the poor in spirit, though not poor in pocket. I sat in the pew after chewing and digesting this. And I tried to think of what? Nothing. No thing. Just tried to be grateful, in obedience to Eucharist's etymology, if nothing else.

And while we stood for the final hymn, I was suddenly nudged, elbowed by my daughter.

Look, and you shall see!

To the left, the shock of the new, or at least the unexpected: at first I figured it for a calico cat soft-pawing among the dead, among the quick, among the leaves of those left. But no! A red fox! Vulpes vulpes. And then just as quickly gone. An apparition? A natural nativity of nowness? A benediction of mirabile visu?

Amen to this sacrament of the ordinary, this all-too-predictable surprise brought to us by St. Charles Darwin & Company Ltd.

[ ]

this is a silence between posts

signage meditation

You see the gateway sign to Tipperary Hill, at the near crest of a hill in front of All Saints Elementary School and Saint John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church. The sign is a few yards in front of that Taras guy (whose last name escapes you and thank God his name is not in Cyrillic), the Ukrainian poet. Yes, Tipp Hill: not just for Irish-Americans. Ukrainian-Americans too. The letters forming "Welcome to Tipperary Hill" (were those the words?) are faded from the sign. In fact, only your memory or your expectations fill in the gestalt emptiness of the sign, which has only faded traces of letters. Fill in the blanks, the sign seems to command you. And is such a ghostly sign a challenge or statement or reflection or editorial? And what is the content of that less-than-minimalist message? If the medium is the message, what is the medium? What sign is this? You wonder: is it burnishing or memory or loss or faded glory or clean slate or buffing or distillation aiming toward perfect clarity? Fill in the blank becomes a blanket statement. Saying what? If signs are sacraments, or sacraments signs, what does this implore us to conclude regarding Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, New York, in May 2010?

See: Seesaw Seen

In East Syracuse (why is there no South Syracuse or West Syracuse?) today, I saw a yellow-background traffic warning sign depicting a black seesaw, with a symbolic creature, presumably a child, on each side of the 45-or-so-degree angled plank.

Seesaw, a simple reduplicative word, which can work as a verb, a noun, or an adjective.

I wonder.

Why a seesaw warning sign?

Beware of hurling kids?

Prepare for economic turbulence?

After all, I was en route to the bank.