You can’t bomb the between
~ Robert Thurman
{Translation: You can’t bomb the bardo.}

Must I walk back into the fire

Leave behind who I thought

I was to blend into a different

Consciousness without changing

Bodies as the one we’re sharing

(Those apartments off Lenore

Were once young and pretty

And aren’t completely broken down

Yet

Deteriorates, each new user burdened

With failing equipment

Yet the next one, whoever (he?) (is)

Will look just like me

For a while.

But that’s not the main thing. The main’s

The fire. I’m made of air. I can’t resist

The fire. And when it touches me

Ash explodes. The vacuum center

Sucks in heat so fast it makes bone.

I’m afraid of the pain and try

To abandon becoming

But becoming can’t be abandoned.

Call it “habitual tendency” if you must.

Call it “karma” if you will.

But no matter how I try I just

Can’t stay the same and sometimes

I’m hemmed with fire, like now

When even to do nothing

Burns and becomes.

• I like to walk in town.
• I like various walking styles:

• I like to do Thai Forest, Theravada style walking meditation.
• I like to walk fast.

I don’t like to be seen to be meditating.

• I prefer to meditate in secret or with a group of other meditators,
• I don’t like to perform traditional walking meditation in public,
• I invented my own walking meditation for meditating in public.

I’m not teaching this.

• This practice has no sanction or tradition.
• I’m not suggesting that you do it.
• It’s just something that I like to do.
• I call it meditating because that’s how I experience it.

I wear my normal casual clothes, with whatever shoes that are best for the walking experience I want at that time.

Since I prefer not to stop,

• I choose long routes that are clearly marked for pedestrians.
• For my taste, this is usually best in town.

Digression:
I used to walk around Manhattan and do this, in the evening, after most of the workers had left town for the night.
I’d nearly forgotten how much I loved this adaptation of walking meditation.

In Willits, I like to walk on Main Street, which is Highway 101.

And I like to walk elsewhere.

I choose a destination that I think is far enough away to make me tired if I walk there and back at a rapid pace. The pace will be described separately.

• While I walk, I sing the 7-Line Prayer of Padmasambhava
• in Tibetan
• to the tune Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche sang it in,
• very quietly, so nobody can hear me,
• one syllable per step.

I also visualize Padmasambhava in the sky above the mountains.

The pace, the breath, the tune

• are intimately bound together
• as are the visualization
• and the other sense impressions.

I walk

• at a pace as fast as I can walk without seeming to hurry
• or seem to be walking for exercise;
• and govern my composure.

• If I strain
• I don’t reveal it.
• Yet I walk with definite purpose
• with focus,
• not looking around,
• gaze forty feet ahead,
• a smile and greeting for anyone met,
• but no change in pace.

• I keep the pace even and brisk,
• relax the arms and chest,
• keep mind on the prayer
• and the visualization
• and the steps

as a mandala.

The rhythm of the walk with the song of the prayer are a drum beat of awareness.

When I arrive home, I sit and let my mind go free.

If it wanders,

I bring it back.

But don’t bother about that. What I’m about to relate
Is neither implausible nor true. I just keep
Remembering some guy I don’t remember ever having met
And things he did as I watched him as through from behind
His eyes were too frail and human to hardly even bother
To tell. Except, why not? Everybody who likes to tell
Stories has to have stories to tell, even if the stories
Are implausible, untrue, both, or neither.

Now… what was that story? Oh, yes. The story.
Which then is more plausible? That he strode
Rapidly forward toward the receding dusk
Greeted by sprays of nimbus shot through deep blue
Sky, or the alternative… Never mind. I’ve already decided.
The other is already dead. In fact, the other is
Beginning to decompose. I can smell it all the way over here.
Let’s not even bother reading the other one.
Thing is that he kept seeing flashes of blue,
And red, and yellow. Not lights. Cloth.
Robes becoming visible for flashes,
Different parts, all like something
In the corner of your eye.

Gesar. It seems our friend amuses him, because
Gesar is laughing. Our friend, let’s call him
Thubten, is embarrassed. When Gesar realizes this
He almost falls off his horse laughing. But Thubten only
Picks up the action in single glimpses of muted
Flash so is slow to follow the action.

I’ve been told to stop here. That last bit about
Gesar may or may not survive the cut. I get the
Impression that it’s on the cutting board. Wait.
Chopping Block. These foreigners tie my mind up
In knots. Ha! I’m kidding. Just thought I’d get
Onto the bandwagon and see the accommodations.
Not my style at all, thanks.

But I have been told that I can’t delve into the
Direction I was going without permission and
That I probably won’t get permission and I
Should just be a good boy and run along.

Well. Let me think about that for a while. A day.
Two days, whatever. I’ll decide.
Then I’ll be back. To either compliantly
Go in an entirely different direction
Or to defy karma itself, not to mention
The Special Theory of Relativity, and
Go in the direction I had intended to go
Within the grand infinitive without subject.

But I could also lie. I don’t believe that I will,
But it should be disclosed that it’s possible.
I have taken an oath not to lie, but sometimes
Well
Sometimes I break it. It’s not much use even
Apologizing, probably. But I can’t help it.
I’m a poet. Is that a valid excuse? No?
Well then I have no excuse.
But I try not to lie. And I probably won’t lie
To you in these lines. I’m pretty sure I won’t.
Ok, how about this. If I lie to you, I’ll tell you
That I’m lying to you. Of course then you’ll
Have to decide whether I’m lying to you
In order to make you think that I’m telling
The truth or to make you believe that I’m lying?
But I don’t intend to do any of that.
So you shouldn’t even have let it cross your mind.

Ciao.

Triangulation of sound and sight on objects
Gave evidence against dreams.

Dreams dumped me there, no less real for being
Thought of as not a dream, though the dream

Violates itself in memory and real is regular.
Awakened from dreams in succession,

Imagination and Quanta entangle.
This pattern arises to displace that pattern,

Now another, alike enough for the senses
To tween them in a seamless cloth

Of self-apparent continuous existence.
You were there. I saw you.

And then I didn’t see you anymore.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 17:10 PST, Willits, California

While I sat outside in my patched up pavilion and played a rough version of “Ben m’an perdut…” by Bernart de Ventadorn (PC 70,12 G fol. 14) on the guitar and tried to remember all of the words (my Old Occitan isn’t what it used to be, and it never was), I felt him there. So I said, in a friendly offhand way, as thought it happens all the time, “Ventadorn! This is your kind of day, isn’t it? I mean aside from the trucks.”

Did a breeze kick up or did he say something? It sounded like a wind from a long time ago. Since he arrived during the melody, well, that is, I perceived his presence during the melody, just the guitar by itself, I started playing again. A White Freightliner pulling two trailer loads of 90 pound concrete bags went by and drowned me out. I fumbled and felt him recede and he was gone.

There are several possible explanations for what could have been going on. In fact, there are so many that I don’t even know about all of them. There are probably explanations that have’t even been thought of yet by anybody at all, or that don’t even exist yet (or at all or ever will). I’m not saying any of them needs to be true or correct, but they do need to be explanations. My first thought was that he left because he didn’t like my playing. But it seems he came because of my playing. A young woman walked out of her house and sat on a chair on her front porch and lit a cigarette. She’s wearing sunglasses and very short shorts and skimpy top. It seems as though she is looking directly at me, but I doubt it.

Or maybe Ventadorn wasn’t really there at all. I know that’s what you think. It’s ok, I’ve known Tibetans who said that the first time someone told them about a wrist watch they thought they were being told that which is not true, as the Houyhnhnms put it. But it is possible that he was’t there. She’s walking up and down now. I mean, the entire thing could just have been my imagination. She sat back down and seems to be staring at me. But even if he was imaginary, does that mean he wasn’t real? Let’s face it, it’s been pretty well demonstrated in several cultures now that there is no actual referent for the words we use. Now she went back into the house. Not to mention the differences among languages. That no matter how precise you are, it’s still very low resolution, like Galilleo’s telescope looking at GN-108036. But we take it to be exclusive, “Nope. Can’t see it in my telescope. It doesn’t exist.”

How do I know whether or not the Ventadorn I sensed would feel pain if you cut him? What a question. I don’t even know whether you would feel pain if you cut you. For that matter, it’s possible that I just tell myself a funny story about how much it hurts me to be cut and that there isn’t actually anyone there to be hurt anyway. Oh, I see, you’re playing the odds. Ok. Pascal and all that. But wait. You’re saying that only empirically demonstrable things exist and that’s going with the odds? Hmmmm….

In any case, I was playing his song and singing his poem and I felt him. Yes. He was definitely there. No doubt about it. I felt him. He was there. But there are other explanations, of course.

Prometheus: I established blind hope in them.

Prometheus Bound (Attributed to Aeschylus)

When he cut ties

Thought

One might say “stay.”

If one noticed

None said.

At first, pain.

Just convenient,

As suspected.

Hope

Lingered,

Smoke smell

Long after fire.

He, for those

Won’t miss him?

Tears

Pass.

Potential

Returns.

Not good enough

At anything

Ever.

Too much drift,

Too many ex lovers,

Too many words.

Brief life.

Good.

Factories fascinated him. He read management magazines.

He lived in a manufactured world, everything

He touched was mass produced. In a factory.

After the eye was gone, it was time to get a job.

“You can’t do this job with one eye.” said the guy

Who did the hiring. “Give me three days.

If you don’t want me then, I’ll leave and admit it.

I can do the job.”

He had no idea what the job was.

Electronic substrate silk-sceen printing

For digital clocks and watch faces.

Must have been 1975. Digital clocks

And watches just hitting the market.

Slate black chips, electronic circuit

Lines in silver or gold paint on one side

Rows of eights in brighter ink on the other.

“3,000 chips a night.”

Night shift. Squeegee the screen.

Place chip on platen. Step on pedal.

Take chip from platen, carefully –

Don’t smear it. Use a spatula. Put the chip

On the conveyor belt between you

And woman on identical machine

Bakes for a few feet and drops three inches

15 feet away where inspectors

Seek broken lines

Through fluorescent ring around

The magnifying center glass.

Everyone had to produce. Everyone had

To inspect. Rotation. He couldn’t see

Fast enough. Then he noticed.

It’s a pattern. To look for imperfections

Is the long way home. Look instead for

Perfect patterns. Remove imperfect patterns.

Inspecting sped up. Errors ebbed.

But it was the machines. The sound patterns.

The rhythm. He sped the tempo,

To keep from getting bored

And to blot out the radio less

Like music than like someone

Shouting out the time.

The machine fused with him.

He often awoke believing he’d fallen

Asleep at work at the Machine

He could play like a drum kit.

Tempo expansion. Syncopation.

By the time his output hit 12,000 he wanted

To scream. He went to the office.

“I quit.” They said, “We’ll double your pay.”

He said, “Too late, I can’t take it.”

Of course, he just turned around and got a job

In a different factory. Jet airplane filters.

But that is a different story entirely.

And he hadn’t yet learned that there are ways

That are neither numbness nor insanity

To engage with seemingly infinite repetition.

Bartok and Mingus

II B.S. and Concerto for Orchestra complete one another. ~Anonymous

Each

Makes me

Want

The other.

Same Numbers Back

15. The number of steps for a complete breath cycle

When I was a runner

If I ran faster, I breathed faster

If I breathed faster, I ran faster

When I was 15.

44. Is a different thing altogether.

Henry Aaron’s first year in the Majors

Was the year I was born baby October

In 67 on a baseball card:

as number 44

he’d hit 44 HRs in 3 seasons

Clinched him favorite,

Yet he was obscure

In Southern California.

44 repeats

Healdsburg often

04:44 in red

Did you hear? 2′s a Voodoo power number

Why Hatian boss man’s license plate is 222

But 44 blows that away (Remington)

When he was 44 the 2nd year after 755

And asses tearing him down for Babe Ruth

Was… is… just more Selma 65.

Imaginary numbers became difficult

In about ’74 after I hit my head

When a GP taught me a mantra to recite

A million times. The strange thing

is the use of “i” for the square root of -1.

Imaginary indeed, and spelled in the manner of Cummings

his first use of lower case first personal pronoun

in print 23 I think it was, 2 before XLI and 3 before is 5

Titusville in 62 when a Titan exploded at dusk

A kid standing on a swing thought, “this is it

This is the end of the world

They’re always talking about.

And the death counts on Cronkite

With George Wallace and Werner Von Braun

In Alabama for the Apollo show

Soon to be in a theater near you

T.V. anyway. But how many years

Was Viet Nam a U.S. occupation?

How many years Iraq?