Once, a while ago, when the rhythm took me,
(sorry, sorry, sorry,
lo siento, mea culpa;
have you seen all the ways
we learn to apologize
for being alive?)
it was Los Lobos,
and it was Spring,
and I was in the kitchen,
and I was told to stop screwing off.
The next day, I drove past a graveyard.
Most days now,
I’m guilty of screwing off.
(especially where rhythm is concerned)
Lo siento.
In case you ever again enter
the winter of forgotten things,
listen-
You are of the transcendent.
You are of the wild and hopeful,
of the beautiful and terrifying Light.
You are of the rising storm.
You are of the running herd,
and hawk on the wing,
and fin cutting the waves,
and the pack-howl at night.
You are cloaked in honor,
you are of the ardent-hearted,
and the sword and the plough
and of the green, growing things.
You speak for those who have no voice.
You are worthy, and I am worthy,
and every single thing is worthy,
and it was deemed so
in the forges of fading suns
containing every single atom
of yourself
and myself,
aeons ago.
In case you ever forget-
are you listening?
“Battling your demons,”
they call it.
Fighting the monsters.
Taming the beast.
Or, perhaps,
rebuking the Devil.
You must cleanse yourself.
You must take this pill.
You must do yoga.
You must read this book.
You must.
I suppose I can’t lie;
shedding the past is good.
However…
do you remember?
Think back.
Before you were told what to fear.
Before you were told what to hate.
Before you were told what was wrong with you.
Before you were told who to be.
I’ll tell you true,
cross my heart, hope to die-
’cause I seem to recall a boy,
whose demons brought him food,
whose monsters came out from under the bed
and gathered ’round for story time,
whose beasts ran with him
past the high school lockers,
and who walked the prairies and woods
with Lucifer and Jesus both;
we shared Canadian whiskey,
Dominican cigars,
and harmed not ourselves
nor any soul,
traipsing the beat
in the heart of creation.
Hope. Change. Love. Transformation. Luck. Finally.
Did these words bounce around in your mind as the clock rolled over to the new year?
I don’t blame you. Not one bit.
Our new culture is saturated with keys, triggers, signs; easy nuggets of hope that in turn saturate our subconscious, leaving us salivating for beautiful fruits that may never bear.
It’s ok, folks. I’m telling you, right here, right now, it’s ok.
I have walked with the hopeful, with the dreamers, with the expectant mothers and purposed fathers, with the wish-makers and wayfinders. I have also walked with the hopeless, with the downtrodden, the abused, the reckless and disillusioned, the cast-off chaff of this new world who’ve all but given up their faith in humanity.
Still, I say: it’s ok.
Are you calling me out on my BS yet? Please do.
Bring me your broken dreams. Bring me your deaths. Bring me your fear. Bring me your burdens of blackness, your wreckage that writhes and grins at you in the night.
Do you truly believe, in your deep-heart, that an arbitrary number has anything to do with the timing of the universe, with the random dance of molecules or economies?
I don’t think you do. But it’s nice to believe, isn’t it?
That’s my point. Right there. I don’t care what you believe in. Just believe. The fact the you WANT to believe tells me your heart isn’t dead.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the symbolism. “New year, new you.” Fair enough. But I need you to do me a favor.
Accept that a new year, in and of itself, won’t change a damn thing.
Trust me. Knock it off. Don’t set yourself up for disappointment.
Set goals, yes. Retain hope in the future, yes. But you’ve just been handed an empty box.
Much like a new relationship, a new year comes with an empty box. What you get out is what you put in. It doesn’t come with anything. And this empty space is what’s important.
We place value on the structure, but the space is what we use.
So what will you fill yours with?
I can’t stress how vitally important it is to define this concept. “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”? When did we become so lost in our hearts? It’s not wrong to hope, nor to have a back-up plan, but I’ll challenge you right here and now to “hope for what you want, but prepare for what you need”.
You hate this already. I can tell. You don’t need death. You don’t need disease. You don’t need loss. You don’t need breakups, financial hardship, hatred, betrayal, anxiety.
What you need is the hope of the undying.
Allow me to set you up for the pain of the coming year right now.
Ready?
Some of you, this year, will lose something. Your car will get stolen. You’ll get divorced. Someone will die. You’ll experience betrayal. You’ll get diagnosed with something. You won’t get the job.
Can hardly wait, right?
Are any of you thinking of what could go RIGHT, though?
Hear me now.
In fact, how could we appreciate all that is Good without the absence of it? How could we grow in mind, in body, in heart, in spirit, without being broken on the altar of life? Without being hammered on its anvil? Would you wish for an easy life, or for the strength to endure a difficult one?
Better still, would you wish to walk through the flames and STILL COME OUT shining your light to the world, to hold out your scarred hand to a beaten soul and say, “come with me, for there is still Life up ahead”?
Would you wish, instead of being broken and clinging to your brokenness, of staring at your brokenness with resentment, to allow the light within yourself to shine through the cracks?
Only by being broken can we transform. In being broken, in being dealt a bad hand, we are given a choice; perhaps the most important choice in our lives.
You can choose to say “I didn’t deserve to be broken. I won’t trust life any more. I will exact revenge where I can, so I can reclaim some of what was stolen from me”…
…or you can choose to say, “I didn’t want to be broken, but I’m grateful that I did. Life has threshed my wheat from my chaff, has hammered my impurities from my metal, and if I alone can be broken again and again and AGAIN and walk away laughing, to love and hope and offer an outstretched hand, then I am glad.”
Peace is not found in what you get. It’s found in what you do with what you’re given.
Right here, right now, witness that I renounce all claims to what I think I deserve. I am not special. But nor am I a coward for losing faith, for wanting to give up. I am given a calling and a priceless gift. If I get what I desire, I will be grateful. If I do not, I will also be grateful.
I will be lifted up on wings, and dashed on the rocks. My soul will dance at the coming dawn, and I will weep in my pain as I am broken again. I am being hammered on the anvil. I am losing myself, and I am becoming myself.
I will use my tears to wash the dirt from another’s face.
The universe will deal me the absolute worst hand, and I’ll say “Here, take my money. It’s time to play chess instead.”
I was so sure blackjack was the answer. But perhaps chess is the better path.
I renounce and refute my human inclination to be hurt by loss, to curl inwards, away from the world. To die from the inside out.
If my house is destroyed, I will wonder what my next house will look like.
Because if I don’t, if I hold on to my innate ability as a human for pattern recognition, and I apply THAT to what happens to me… can you guess what comes next?
Let me tell you. Listen.
I will be the victim of my own self-fulfilling prophecy.
“See? It didn’t happen. I knew it wouldn’t.”
Bull. Shit.
I’m not advocating a relentless, creepy happiness. I’m not saying “be positive”. Nothing so trite and meaningless. In fact, I’d encourage you to stay as far as possible from sources that promote blind positivity. Or blind negativity, for that matter.
There is a middle path. And you need to walk it.
Good and Bad are cyclical. Sometimes, one wins out more than the other. And there is NOTHING, no matter what, that can take away your hope and the love hidden in your deep-heart unless you allow it to.
There’s always a choice.
We are such beautiful and horrendous creatures. Pitiful and incredible, we sacrifice out of love and wreak atrocities on each other in the same day.
Living for such a brief speck of cosmic time, staring out at the universe, we wonder. Why? If you find an answer that works for you, and you can be truly satisfied in your soul, then I commend you. If you don’t, then let me tell you again: it’s ok.
You need merely ask the question. That, in and of itself, is the mystery and the answer all in one.
The fact that you can ask is beautiful, even without a clear answer. The closure you seek may never come. But the closure you need comes from forging a new path, and to keep asking regardless.
Animals are blameless and pure. The angels some believe in are that also.
So here we stand. Brilliant and flawed, halfway between the ape and the angel, staring up at the night sky in hope. Ready to love and ready to fight in the same breath.
So as you watch the stars in this new year, and for the rest of your life, you might say “I wish for my shooting star, but it never comes. Maybe it never will.”
And you are right.
But this is not cause for despair.
Your strength lies in the ability to unceasingly watch the night sky, time after time after time, marveling at its beauty, drowning in the mystery and audacity of hope so that you might learn to breathe again.
And when someone else comes along, saddened and beaten, wishing for a star that may never come, you can say:
“Look! My God, just look at the stars! Can you believe we get to watch them one more night?”
This, then, is my only resolution I offer you: become a beacon of hope to yourself, and to others.
Unfurl your banners of Light and watch the armies of death break themselves on your shields.
————————-
“Some day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
— C.S. Lewis
Sitting on the shores of time,
after I’d awakened to the sounds
of migrations, erosions, tides;
the songs of eons, the pulsing of life,
the voice of the deep-heart
did cull my chaff from my wheat;
and there by the waves
I knelt down and wept,
for I had to throw my mask into the sea,
my only worldly possession,
my inheritance;
and it was fine and well-crafted,
and precious to me;
still I threw it,
and watched the water devour it.
There were waves of liquid,
and of the temporal,
and there were tears
as the ocean inside me came out
to meet its mother;
even then I went mad.
But after the noontide of this age,
I felt the hand of the Sun
cradle my face,
and I lifted my head,
and the Sun asked:
“My child, why do you weep so?”
And I said:
“I’ve thrown away my mask. I had to.”
“Ahhh, I see,” said the Sun,
“this must have been quite the mask.”
“There is no other like it,” I explained.
“Then let me tell you why I’m happy,”
said the Sun,
“for every day,
for more cycles
than even you can comprehend,
I reflected off the ocean
and shone on the shores
and raised great forests
from the reactions of my heart.
Yet only now can I see your face,
and I have missed you greatly.”
And there by the waves,
I laid down and slept.
Passion is a discontinued brand.
Yes?
Can you give me some agreement on a Saturday night?
Can I get an AMEN from the front row,
and possibly a HALLELUJAH from the back?
Say you all so?
Now goddamn stand and speak, the lot of you.
Stand, and be counted, and hold thyself not a hypocrite,
for you wander not in the land of Sodom or Gomorrah;
you are made of flame and pulse and must break yourself
on the rocks of the liquid shore.
Cry foul,
cry pardon,
cut loose,
cut low;
let slip the dog days of summer
out the still winter of thine own blood,
for you are always treading the plains of milk and honey;
and I have seen the future ripe, and full,
and for what you want,
I say surely you shall not perish,
but rise,
rise in shaking ecstasy at the light of dawn.
Now goddamn stand and speak.
I am sorry, please…
I have the pressure
of waterfalls inside me;
of the hart and the wolf,
both needing food,
both needing mate;
of the colt unbroken,
shaking his rider against sky of thunder;
of the pregnant twilight
past the city,
over the range,
breaking treelines;
saying,
“Oh, it’s ok.
You’re human.
Rest here awhile.”
“I’m gonna get my mom flowers for her birthday.”
The little one I’m watching for the evening
is telling me her secrets
as we drive home in the summer heat.
“From where?”
I’m curious.
“From my garden.
That’s where the flowers grow!”
“They do?”
“Yes! And love.
I’m going to give her love.”
She turns her palms up, imploring.
“That’s where the flowers grow.”
“I had no idea.”
She brushes the bundle of peonies
against my ear;
the scent of a mild sweetness
politely invades my nostrils.
“Where is my grandpa?”
Her grandmother
continues gazing out the window.
She was born on the other side of the world.
“He go to see God.”
As if it were a road trip.
The little one
looks out her own window.
“Oh.”
(A day before he passed,
my own grandfather opened his eyes,
cognizant,
searching for a window.
The blinds were shut.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“Because.
I know I’ll never see her again.”
She had passed
a few years before.)
We tell our children
there are no such things as monsters.
The little one clears her throat.
Raucous stormclouds gather in rising fists
towards heaven.
The heat outside is hell.
“The storms are spirits!”
“What?”
I wasn’t aware of this.
She leans in to tell me her secret.
“The storms… are all made of spirits.”
She points
at the approaching immensity
of water and air
bringing gifts of life and of fire.
She whispers,
“That’s where the thunder grows.”
Years later,
he feels the vial
against his chest
that holds
the only fragment of lightsong
given freely to him.
At night, sometimes,
he drifts
to a dead and thankful sleep,
as it melts,
the glass unvitrified,
the sand photonic
hourglassing inside him.
Always,
the next morning
it is whole,
emanating the piece
of the light
of the heart
of the hand
that sought to clasp his;
and even to raise him up
out of darkness
everblack.
Shaking his head,
he pushes forward,
raising his shield;
the demon is already swinging.
So,
I do not think
any longer should wonder
be entertained
in this waking dream
as we apart
seek that bridge that spans aeons
and even stellar cradles.
I have figured it
in the alchemy of
quantum entanglement,
on the blackboard of the heart,
inside the mandala of time.
Listen,
for water seeks to give.
Waves throw themselves
on the shore of the land.
Rain falls to the skin of the earth,
liquid seeking the embrace
of the deep
and sanctuary of the bedrock;
and roots to drink it,
feeding the hungry pulse of life.
Water gives; so what is water
without a heart-receiver
but only a universal solvent?
Into water one may throw
infinite strikes;
ever will it resume its shape.
Onto water one may project
mountains of rage,
and it will only reflect
what you already know.
Fire,
fire is simpler still,
and only seeks a hearth
with the fuel of an endless heartbeat.
So,
while the free winds
strike their vastness upon the sky,
and paint what they will,
a vessel of water and flame
would be only placed at the altar
before the ancient tree
whose roots grow deep
into the sod and stone…
…combusting growth into dreams
and gifts eternal and warmth in winter;
and silently,
offering a song of praise
for the birth
of earth on earth.
Litany_of_the_Lost 