Flipping through post-it notes and journal entries:

The First Line

A friend in distress asked me for a life vest in the form of creative inspiration. Help, give me a writing exercise. I responded with some words to start off a reverie:

Inside we travel distances to arrive at our beginning...

How does yours end?

Tea Parties and Carrot Offerings

My niece was on her plastic cell phone speaking with Princess Belle about dinner--she wanted to relay that she’s running a bit behind schedule and Belle and the Beast shouldn’t wait on her. To my precious niece, who is wise beyond her two years, a smiley face constitutes a person’s full portrait. To the untrained eye, each face looks the same, but to any artist with a seasoned imagination and keen perception like Ashley’s, it is clear that each one is distinct from the other.

In Ashley’s world, everything is animated and personified. One afternoon we hosted an impromptu birthday celebration for her bunny. While consolidating her tea set and bringing play food items to the table, I heard her call out, “Cake? Cake where are you?!” To her, everything has a consciousness, an identity, and a life force of its own that she acknowledges with profound respect.

Every detachable car seat opens a portal to a new world. Every activity is filled to the brim with infinite and fantastical possibilities. Every action is accompanied by a custom-designed theme song made up of “doo doo doos,” “la la las,” “wee wee wees,” and “yes’s.” When Ashley tires of running, she rocks on her horse. When the horse needs a break, she leaves toy carrots at his feet and carries on. Life is never certain, never structured, and never dull... and she seems to have it all under control.

Wisteria in the Rain
from Haikus about Love

forgiving each other
with only a look--
wisteria in the rain

yurushi au manazashi sumishi fuji no ame

Getting from A to B(e)

So much of our lives is about getting from point A to point B(e)--a mindless routine that anyone with a pulse could maneuver after being nudged in a certain direction by an outside force. People have forgotten what it feels like to live one hour, completely, without dreading or experiencing some shade of pain, fear, anxiety, desperation, or temporary distraction from their personal curtain call. People have forgotten how to breathe life into one single hour, let alone all twenty-four that are graced by a day.

I looked up while waiting in line to buy a sympathy card and noticed a sweet, innocent little girl who looked just like the dame with blonde hair on the Morton Salt label. She was perfectly content to be propped up in her mother’s shopping cart, wearing some oversized rain galoshes and a sheepish grin. In her hands were some crayons and a coloring sheet with an image of a monkey eating a banana--it made me wonder: how far have we come from this stage of our evolution? Far enough to color it in with primaries and post it on a grocery store wall alongside the work of other attention-deprived children who are bombarded with more sensory stimulation than any other generation to date?

I personally don’t believe we descended so seamlessly from apes, though I do love them very much and think it’s no small coincidence that I share my birthday with Jane Goodall. I think something much wider than any of us can wrap our minds and hearts around helped us arrive at this place where we’ve forgotten the value of awareness and conscious living. Maybe we’ve here to decide whether or not we really want to wake back up and move out of a color-by-number lull into some kind of radical tye-dye dream.

Rainer Maria Rilke: The Fourth Elegy, p. 99

We’re conscious of blossoming and withering
both at once.
And somewhere lions rove, all unaware,
while still in their splendor, of any weakness.

Kali Yuga
(Devanāgarī: कलियुग, lit. "age of (the male demon) Kali", or "age of vice") is the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas described in the Indian scriptures;

The end of Kali Yuga
"When flowers will be begot within flowers, and fruits within fruits, then will the Yuga come to an end. And the clouds will pour rain unseasonably when the end of the Yuga approaches."

Satya Yuga
(Devanagari: सत्य युग), also called Sat Yuga, Krta Yuga and Krita Yuga in Hinduism, is the "Yuga (Age or Era) of Truth", when mankind is governed by gods, and every manifestation or work is close to the purest ideal and mankind will allow intrinsic goodness to rule supreme. It is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age."

Scribbling in Church

A long time ago in San Francisco, while I was listening to Ariel rehearse for a performance with the orchestra at Castro's Metropolitan Community Church, I noticed the girl sitting next to me in the pew scribbling incoherent lines like her life depended on it. She thrashed at each page with her black ballpoint pen like she was illustrating a battle strategy or drawing up plans for a time machine whose necessity was beyond urgent. I remember how silly it all looked and how beautiful at once... I remember wishing I cared about something (even if it made no sense on paper) so much that I would employ every fiber in every muscle of my being just to get it out of me.

Now here I am in this bookstore, jotting down lines of poetry that aren't mine, taking notes on language translations, and collecting wisdom that I may not ever put to use... writing just as quickly as she was back then... who am I to judge the value of her jotted incoherencies? Maybe her notes mean more than mine. Maybe the real value is in the stroke of the pen, the breaths taken between syllables, or the silence that accompanies speaking to another soul without ever saying a word out loud. Whatever we write must always look like scribbles and hieroglyphics to someone. It's an awesome power we each harness to assign meaning to what we iterate, illustrate, and fabricate.