dlp

home, exile, charnal grounds & infinity pools

Our homes are mirrors of ourselves. They reflect our interests, our beliefs, our hesitations, our spirit and our passion. They tell a story about how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. A home is more than a place where you can lay your head and seek comfort with the elements. It is a place where you can interface with the universe. It is a crossing point in time and space that can attract energy or repel energy.

You home can be a place of renewal and hope. It can be a sanctuary withing which you can retreat and recharge during the changing times, an oasis of peace amidst turmoil. Homes can be places of healing and regeneration. Not only can your home help to strengthen and heal you, but your home can be a template of harmony within which you and all who enter can be invited to step up to a higher level of spiritual frequency.

Denise Linn, "Home as Being," Sacred Space, 1.

I was thinking about housing foreclosures and the whole sub-prime ripple effect on the lives of people in this country. If you strip someone of home, they lose – unless they can against all odds reestablish it within themselves, a tall order – that place of renewal and hope. Translate the mortgage crisis into a spiritual crisis. Exile. Being on the run. No longer being safe in your own space – gypsies, jews preceding and up to the very end of WWII, Palestinians today. Iraqis. The money game of now you have it now you don't, or as tom waits says "the large print giveth and the fine print taketh away." Tibetans in exile. Camps of homeless exiles in Africa. The common denominator is the stripping of this spiritual base from the people on the part of those in power, in an effort to continue only chaos, defocus us from Spirit, Source Energy (Abraham), the Great Central Sun (Arcturian). These efforts to deracinate and exile are ultimately futile, but short term the graph of suffering spikes even as the Wall Street charts plummet. Change is coming faster than those in power can imagine in their wildest dreams.

I like in the vajrayana how certain tantric practices direct us to the "charnal grounds." These too are important places – liminal zones where the ego must face its demons and overcome. The practice of Chö, invented by Machik Lapdrön, encourages the "cutting" of comfort even with owning a body; the practice takes place traditionally in charnal grounds. We see young goth kids hang out in graveyards. While they are certainly romancing death, sorrow and a kind of vampiric sexuality, they are also perhaps honoring the dead and practicing a liminal spirituality not much honored in this country. In a way, goths are more dark hippies than ethereal punks.

It is easy for me to think: Well, I like five star hotels, infinity pools and labyrinthian mansions made by cross-breeding Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi, Hundertwasser and Escher. I would rather sit in first class in an airplane – but have I ever done so? Does it really matter? Physical spaces that mold into the earth rather than try to dominate it are more impressive to me. The Hobbits had it right. The Balinese have it right; their brand of feng shui, named bagua, is a powerful cosmic system of respect for the land and the spirits translated into living spaces. Have you ever wondered why many prefer macs today over windows? It's the space; the same rules that apply to physical space apply to virtual space. Clutter breeds neurosis; decluttering engenders peace of mind.

risingson

Toy-like people make me boy-like
They're invisible, when the trip it flips
They get physical, way below my lips
And everything you got hoi-poloi like
Now you're lost and you're lethal
And now's about the time you gotta leave all
These good people...dream on

- Massive Attack, "Risingson," Mezzanine

starbeing

As opposed to the materialistic views prevailing today, we ourselves regard the stars as colonies of Spiritual Beings. This seems strange and far-fetched to the ears of a modern man who has not the remotest inkling that when he gazes at the stars he is gazing at Beings related in certain respects with his own life and inhabiting the stars just as we ourselves inhabit the earth.

– Rudolf Steiner, Karmic Relationships, 32-33

sleepwork

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.

– Heraclitus

sudden peace

for mm

naxos they gather at the nexus
when the bar
spills them out on the street
of island number two
already it is over
poignant he is smitten and must
let her go off with another
after days of skin her aroma her rose
between two dreams
walking his way
he gestures the acceptance
of femme fatality
he is leaving the next morning
on the ferry (she remaining)
stage one
of the return to berlin
and longs for her
eyes upon the restless
mediterranean where all voyages
are round trips
while she weaves and unweaves
till time moves neither
forward nor back
and his home subtly morphed
under the accumulation
of days
the weight of absence
sex impatience

her clothes are scattered
on every surface bath
bed and balcony
and he gathers them
like grammarless words
into a duffel bag dictionary
deposited with the clueless
concierge
for eventual retrieval

"eine deutsche frau
hat nicht
so lange haare"
- a german woman
does not have
such long hair -
first words upon acquaintance
echo the black beaches
of santorini
island number one
cornrow styled
with extensions
already his lense zoomed
on her exclusive
full focus on the ferry
anonymous promise

and you anton
anubis identified
she showered for us both
one otherwise eventless afternoon
enveloped amid
a week wondering if we're
still drunk or already
hungover
and for me
throughout
the german cold from hell

a man smashing octopus
against the rock

that nasty german cold
that won't quit
acquired
specifically suspiciously
in schoenefeld
paradoxical port of berlin ost
hungarian airlines malev
having somehow three syllables

strip search
in the narrow passage
toward a vacation
their citizens denied

he comes up
on the computers
their bureaucrats denied
once they photocopied
the pandemonium of his journal
marginless black scrawl
once upon a watercolor
ideogram
and grew suspicion in the soil
of his full flowering german
and healthy wealthy stipend

sore throats for the cia
a trick up the sleeve
of the dullest of gray
uniforms

silver rings for the smallest finger
a shop he will forever wish
to find again
around mazecurves
of the old town naxos
self sufficient island
needing no imports

both back in deutschland
she sends pictures
none of her
two of him
of which in one
his hand encircles
a big black stone
homeless ribcage dogs lurk
just beyond
the rectangle of her eye
the imprint of her film
the lapse of her image
the loss of her lips

on a balinese futon
in a soft coal fueled room
in the booklined avenue
in charlottenburg her
fishbone t-shirt arrives
it becomes his
outfit for dreamtime
until one day it vanishes
in one of twenty moves

letting her be just who she is
time number two
her hair all different
who could have known but
it was the last year
of west berlin
island number three

letting her be
'cause the judge is crazy
said judy

letting her beyond
up to the razor's edge
of nearly letting go
just so he
touches her in a place
beyond the easy opening
of sex to strangers
I know
she still remembers
how she ran most oblique
with luck
into love

on the ubahn
on a mission
to score hash she says
"du bist ein poet"
after she brought the british punk
chinese cook
small time auto crook
met the night before
with her on her visit
again he sends her off
to sleep with another
his heart in knots
this too weaves them
tighter together
makes possible
a finale still hovering
in the neighborhood
of happy ever after

flash forward to frankfurt flughafen
she meets his plane
they have half an hour
for one whole kiss
interrupted only
by reckless swallows
of still chilled champagne
consumed on the spot
for
mad laughter has waited
a lifetime

right up to the
mad dash to the gate
dizzy with her

her plan may have been born
on the phone
as she says
just days before
"… trauig, dass du den Kontinent
verlässt…" sad that you are leaving the continent
another string of words
sculpted like a rose
etched indelible
even to today

[lived march 1988—july 1989 | written march 2002]

d'accord

Rudolf Steiner was much more than a "spiritualist," first of all. He was a profound philosopher and visionary who offered a vast cosmology and reading of the Akashic Record. I think that Steiner could be as important for the Twenty First Century as Nietzsche was for the Twentieth. He is a kind of prophet or advance man for a new type of thinking and a new type of doing.

– Daniel Pinchbeck, "The Way In Is The Way Out: An Interview with Daniel Pinchbeck," redicecreations.com

greet them

Greet them with the flag of generosity,
Appeal to them with gentle speech,
Aspire their confidence by acting with consistency,
Attune yourself to them and give them perfect advice.

– Gyalse Thogme,quoted in Dilge Kyentse, The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva, 12.

silverthreaded

Picture a golden apple in the net of silver thread. It says in proverbs, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in filigree work of silver." Kaballah is that golden heavenly apple, wrapped in silver thread, bound up in complicated rules and human skills - as is the case with goldsmiths' work, when they skillfully ornament a sweet-smelling golden apple yet do not mask it completely in silver. They leave holes in the silver latticework which let the color of the apple shine through and the scent of amber drift out. If you look at the apple from a distance you see the covering and think it is all silver, but on closer inspection you discover the gold.

– Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabballah | De Arte Cabalistica , trans. Martin & Sarah Goodman, Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1983, 95

potter's field

well you can buy me a drink and i'll tell you what i seen
and i'll give you a bargain from the edge of a maniac's dream
that buys a black widow spider with a riddle in his yarn
that's clinging to the furrow of a blindman's brow
i'll start talking from the brim of a thimble full of whiskey
on a train through the bronx that will take you just as far
as the empty of a bottle to the highway of a scar
that stretched across the blacktop of my cheek like that
and then ducks beneath the brim of a fugitive's hat
and you'll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face
that ever left his shadow down on saint marks place

hell i'd double cross my mother if it was whiskey that they payed
and so an early bird says nightsticks on the hit parade
and he ain't got a prayer and his days are numbered
and you'll track him down like a dog
well it's a tough customer you're getting in this trade
cause the nightstick's heart pumps lemonade
well whiskey keeps a blindman talkin alright
and i'm the only one who knows just where he stayed last night

he was in a wreckin yard in a switchblade storm
in a wheelbarrow with nothing but revenge to keep him warm
and a half a million dollars in unmarked bills
was the nightstick's blanket in a febuary chill
and as the buzzard drove a crooked sky
he was dealin high chicago in the mud
and stackin' the deck against a dragnet's eye
a shivering nightstick in a miserable heap
with the siren for a lullaby singing him to sleep
he was bleeding from a buttonhole
torn by a slug fired from the barrel of a two dollar gun
that scorched a blister on the grip of a punk by now
is learnin what you have to pay to be a hero anyhow

he dressed the hole in his gut with a hundred dollar bandage
a king's ransom for a bedspread that don't amount to nuttin
just cobweb strings on a busted ukulele
and the nightstick leaned on a black shillelagh
with the poison of a junkie's broken promise on his lip

he staggered in the shadows screaming i ain't never been afraid
and he shot out every street light on the promenade
past the frozen ham and eggers at the penny arcade
throwin out handfuls of a blood stained salary
they were dead in their tracks at the shootin gallery
and they fired off a twenty one gun salute
and from the corner of his eye he caught the alabaster orbs
and from a dime a dance hall girl and stuffed a thousand dollar bill
in her blouse and caught the cruel and unusual punishment of her smile
and the nightstick winked beneath a rainsoaked brim
ain't no one seen hide nor hair of him see
no one but a spade on rikers island and me
and so if you're mad enough to listen to a full of whiskey blindman
then you're mad enough to look beyond where bloodhounds dare to go
so if you want to know just where the nightstick's hidin out
you be down at the ferry landin oh let's say bout half past a nightmare
when it's twisted on a clock you tell 'em nickels sentcha
whiskey always makes him talk
and you ask for captain charon with the mud on his kicks
he's the skipper of the deadline steamer
and she sails from the bronx across the river styx
and a riddle's just a ticket for a dreamer

cause when the weathervane's sleepin and the moon turns his back
you crawl on your belly long the railroad tracks
and cross your heart and hope to die and stick a needle in your eye
cause he'd cut my bleedin heart out if he found out that i squealed
cause you see a scarecrow's just a hoodlum
who marked the cards that he dealed
and pulled a gypsy switch
out on the edge of potter's field

- Tom Waits, "Potter's Field"

...

There is no poverty when all is impoverished
and we're all rich with nothing
sprouting hair out every organ
like a last ditch protection
last bitch injection
of toxin
which runs down the lip bloodlike
and final
with that corroded rusty waterlogged
asymmetrical smile

[circa 1992]