INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + HAAG'S BIO
Ahmad Lahori was chief architect of the Taj.
Mumtaz died of her
fourteenth child. "Stop fucking with me!"
she must have cried just
before she died.
At consciousness's root lies the urge to experience.
Again
and again unto death. We love each other
to death. "All
consciousness is of conflict." "Pain is
the price of pleasure,
pleasure is the reward
of pain." They are one. Build the Taj Mahal.
Inlay it with jewels, with bliss, with birth's
searing pain,
death's gentle peace, scope for the builder's
craft. Live in the black
Taj on
the opposite bank, desiring Mumtaz's body alive -- to fuck.
"I ask nothing, refuse nothing, keep nothing."
What you do doesn't
matter. Live in harmony and peace.
Harm no one. Enjoy uncaused
happiness. Keep in
mind what you do not know until it reveals
its
secrets. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Like the drum,
wild in the
night, accelerating, growing louder, magnified until
the universe is
filled with thundering, convicted silence.
Start again in the morning
with tap tap tap.
Sunlight through the leaves dances on the
walls.
Note the utter silence surrounding the dawn bird's song,
the
stillness of the leaves unfolding grey
to green, nothing to something, hear the sap rising.
"Those who make plans will be born
to carry them out. Those who make
no plans
need not be born." There's "...nowhere to go,
nothing to
do, nothing to become." I wait to
receive the mirror that will double
memory's hall,
the dried-blood-red floor, ducted ceiling, golden
walls. I wait
to purchase the mirror that'll read the sky
and
towered world, the reflecting lake, bluer than mirage,
as precisely
defined as awareness, silver as moonlight.
You can't skip your
sadhana.
Become the world. Nothing
exists alone. The moon remains the moon
regardless of its rippling-reflected clone. Recognize it as you.
We were so important then -- convinced what
we were doing mattered.
Thinking the world would
alter its course if we shifted our weight,
if we complete this necessity or neglected that
worthy.
Entertaining, it happened, it did, it wildly was
for awhile.
The drama, the stress added, tang, wonder
to life -- noble causes,
sweet problems, needy worlds.
Now even the names are gone -- of the
worshipped,
the movie stars, directors, producers, money-bags,
executives, wunderkin.
We were executives. We executed.
Executed people, planned wakes,
stormed ideas, circumambulated the
galaxies. Now whirlwinds,
shapes, images having dissolved, I sleep at night wonderfully.
But I have always been detached, aloof,
apart! and afraid! "...desire
nothing, for you lack
nothing." "Anything you do for the sake of
enlightenment takes you nearer." "...realize your mind is
a part
of nature, the duality will cease."
Injunctions, all quite real, quite
like the diamond in
the mine, coal black and needing to be
cleaved, release clarity, enhance the shimmer, the refractive factor,
the sparkle. Achieve contentment in the rubble of
your matrix.
Cleave to what is. Never mind rain,
nor growth, nor withering nor
dissolution. All
will be what it was, is as it is.
You can do nothing to bring it about.
Let life be, let it happen
without you.
Make no effort, rest, be at peace, watch.
The
tulips bloom and die, the sun shines
or does not shine, the sky is
infinitely
blue, the rain is always wet. Once in
reality, you
stay. The child does not return
to the womb. The brain goes to sleep
concentrating
on nothing, non-engagement, painlessness,
pleasurelessness, we are not
a process. Reality is an explosion.
Think of being
born. The world arrives, instantaneously, whole. It's
a dream. You are whole before you are born.
"The purpose of your experience is to
know who you are."
Linda via Shirley via
Gurumayi -- and worth repeating. Don't let others tell
you who you are. Yesterday: a white moon-crescented-at-the-top
gate against a green/black holly hedge, the lilacs
scenting the
air, the inpenetrable non-excitement of one's
teacher. Contain your
bliss. It is for no
one but you. Filled with bliss, illumination will
fill the air. Be a garden for others
to walk through.
Mystery/murder relaxes the mind. Illumination eliminates
the mind. A
flower is a vision
of god. Steal lilacs if you must. Smell them.
It's like drinking coffee: I need coffee
to wake my brain, activity,
poems, energy. And,
having wakened, I realize that caffeine induced
insight,
creation, joy, is caffeine induced. Without coffee I
am
blank, energyless, with no ability to create.
I need, I desire, I cry
out for
the power to create. I do not know
the purpose of living
if I am unable
to create. So I drink coffee to multiply/divide
a
caffeine induced world into visions, poems, hopes,
desires, fears.
For I fear to lie
toad-like on the pond's slippery edge croaking, croaking, croaking.
Restrictions and limitations define a person. Self
imposed, they come
and go. Discard the idea
that one is nameable and describable. The sun
does not know darkness. "...everything is as it
is, because the
entire universe is as it
is." The whole world is here because I
open my eyes and look at it. I
close my eyes and the sun does not
shine. I sit beside Yusef, making decisions, making
sure what is
is. He is the scrapper
in my soul. The tulips fade to
pale translucence and maroon-scarf-red -- dried blood color --
green-stemmed.
The tulips partake of the same molecules
as my feet in a bath of
salt
and oil, the tulips breathe in the same
air as the birds
in the greened-from-grey cottonwoods
and the poplar. "Awareness of
being is bliss."
Bliss is not a word of the West.
Bliss is not
condoned in the Western world.
Stress is preferred -- anxiety,
fame, power, the jazzed-upness
of coffee, drugs, the anesthesias of
action, luxury,
possessions. We analyze the protein, the genome's
structure
expecting to find what? Nothingness. For only
nothingness,
the tabula rasa, can accommodate our dream's multiplicity.
To walk in the cool damp air is
to stroll an illusion. We used to
say:
"It's the rain!" ...the freshening rain pattering on
the
spring-green trees. Today we attribute its intoxicating
effect to
the generating of negative ions. We
have fancier names for
everything. Musing quietly at
the bus stop in the refreshed
afternoon, I
saw a mirage of civilizations older than ours,
more stable, lasting hundreds-of-thousand of years: Homo
Sapiens
in harmony with the world, no more need
to change
than the Bristlecone pine has changed
in the four-thousand-seven-hundred years it has watched us.
"Awareness is unattached and unshaken. It is lucid,
alert, silent,
peaceful, unafraid, without desire and fear."
"When the ribbon is
removed..." from the typewriter,
nothing appears on the page. You
can't compute
without the "on" switch. Wait patiently. Do not
bug yourself. Let the glitches pass. "If you
want peace and
harmony in the world, you
must have peace and harmony in your
hearts
and minds." As long as I have my
eyes closed, I wake
into darkness. All theories
for explaining things -- life -- are
plausible, none are
true. "Let anything happen -- good or bad.
Again, to my surprise, I find that I
am known beyond, that my
actions live, breathe
in the minds of others. Last night
an
Autism lecture -- surely that is me. And afterwards
X--
revealing to me that Y-- was really
pissed at me for knocking on her
door
early Saturday morning in emergency. I had forgotten
my
surprise at her sullenness. She has broadcast
my opening of her door
as transgression tantamount
to revealing her inmost secrets. Life is
full
of angers, fears, surprises, remembrances. Remember in
sharp-focus: "The known is [always] the past."
Sleep, sleep, sleep -- at last, I wake again.
Yesterday, enormous
anxiety -- until I heard the police
siren, saw the car speeding
along Pacific, then
fire engines, at least four, and four support
vehicle rushing on to campus. Curiosity rose. Anxiety
died.
But I didn't jump from the bus
and no news came from the radio.
Sick
with food and too much brain work, I
slept. Again today, I
record the birds. I
cannot lock my windows. I am vulnerable.
Nobody knows -- and yet we spend our
lives telling each other what to do.
"Ecstasies come and go...everything pulsates..." Life's pattern:
don't prevent it. Return again and again to
silence. The blue sky
does not chatter or
emote. Even behind the thunder, the stabs and
feints of lightening, the blue sky, nothingness, void
remains.
Sunspots erupt, comets whiz by, nirvana remains.
Think, feel and act
in harmony. Remain blissful.
Transported in the ecstasy of laughter, a
child,
waking to the world, fed, watchful is.
Is.
Concentrate on
is -- be -- being -- is.
The funny little words make the
connections.
You needn't become. Just don't resist. Be.
I am so tired of the whine of
the Western World's transactional concept
of love. I
abhor using the word, for I find it
meaningless. Even the
idea of love is comfortless.
What I called love as a young woman
was
addiction, desire to have someone pay attention
to me, take care of me,
do what
my parents had not done too well.
But soon I realized I
was alone.
Whatever I was to do I would
do alone. I can love
you all
I want. The world hungers for love.
"Walk, and if you cannot walk, don't travel."
So all my adventuring
has come to this:
Stay home, keep your mouth shut, be silent.
Or
walk around the world. Trust the sterility,
emptiness of your life.
Let the soul cast
its moorings. "The unexpected is bound to happen..."
Tonight is full moon, give up your
last dream. Tie your silken
thread to
the sphere, let it slip to either
side. Rest on the pink
clouds lit
from the cityscape beneath. It could be
a volcano, it might be roses blooming.
I've struggled my way back from believing in
absolutely nothing to
listening to, trying to understand
Nisargadatta. As I read, as I
write, as
I breathe softly beneath covers in the warmth
after
dawn, the sun, the leaf rustling shadows
of Populus albus,
Populus nigra italica invade
my eyrie. But nothing is the
goal!
Not a goal of refusing, but a
goal of accepting peace -- of
lying in
morning's warmth, in the sun, in shadows,
in slowly
breathing harmony, carrying only the
burden of nothingness to work each day.
Entr'acte III
INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART