Never Mind the Beasts

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lovin this  . . . got a bit of everything . . rubbin me in all the right wrong ways . . .

check it check it check it . . .

mighty fine with a good ale . .

keep this bag away from children

switched to writing short stories the last couple of months . .  . . interlinking short stories . . . I’ve written four of them . . . the short story collection is called (currently) Hot Chocolate on Bad Coffee . . some of the stories centre around being an immigrant in America  . . others are absurdist stories based in South Korea, Turkey, and Poland . .

starting a novel as well . . .

a couple of large notebooks full of material to work with . .

back to writing . .

http://knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/establishmentmag.html

Must clean my muddy boots. Leave tomorrow. .

Been working on flash fiction and short stories from travel experiences.

Slowly getting back to poetry.

Think these Polish mountains with my hot gal shd freshen things up . .

check out the new minimalist blog:

The New Never Mind the Beasts

 – – – –

think I will keep posting here though . . .

Another nice publication from Spork publications. Poems from my manuscript The Fertility Show.

Written while riding the London tube on my daily commute.

Thank you so much to the fine editors at Spork!!! Yippie!!

http://sporkpress.com/poetry/?p=387

come on out if you around. Some fun collaborations happenin . . it’s The Camarade Project Edition 3. I am reading some collaborative work with Richard Barrett. Quite a line up!!!

Persian poet Hafez Shirazi’s ghazal reworked by the fab Michael Zand. In super slow mo. The NY School is there too. Check it out: http://soundcloud.com/michael-zand/before-bitterness

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Do we know what we feel? Behind the scenes playing all the time. In the social, political, and personal.

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Last night I had dreams of my friend Andrew coming to visit. I was supposed to pick him up from a ferry. I never got to the ferry crossing. Aaron was supposed to come with my friend. Andrew had to cross many lands in an old truck to make it to the island. I was living on a island full of rum.

When Andrew showed up he was in a beat-up fruit truck. Aaron was stuck on a ferry somewhere crossing who knows what river.

I jumped in Andrew’s beat up truck. The island became a desert. I said this reminds me of America and he said yeah I know.

We drove around. Kicking up dust.

 . . . .  . . . . . . ..

Yesterday was the funeral for my brother Aaron. It was also Bloomsday. A celebration of Irish culture and literature.

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When does freedom become a prison and vice versa? When does Dionysian frenzy become a hell? Or Apollonian order become a slow death of personal or collective fascism?

………………………….

Soup is cooking in the crockpot. Crockpot reminds me of crack pot. There is everything in the crock pot. Pounds and pounds of various veggies of various colours mixed with gravy. It will cook for many hours becoming something.

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The sun is out in London. Clouds are rumoured to return in the afternoon. My flat is cold. It is almost always cold. For 3 days in the last year it wasn’t cold. It is time to put on my hat.

……………………………………

What does it mean to deal with something? Another 20 min of breaking down after seeing more pictures of Aaron and Shantell when they were little. Remembering those times. Feeling the pain of not being able to protect. The pain of not being an older brother. Aaron was so sensitive as a kid. Aaron and Shantell so close in age. Playing together. So much chaos but also hope as poor immigrants in the United States in the 1980’s in Las Vegas. Feeling lots of alienation. Lots.

My family struggling to survive and not being able to help them. Not being able to rescue. Praying for hours to help my family. Money from heaven etc. etc. Always seemingly on the verge of losing everything. And then later after god no longer made sense in a traditional sense moving away from my family. Trying to find a path.

I guess some of this pain is coming from clinging to the past. Not fully accepting change. Aaron was no longer that little boy that I remember growing up.

Does something remain of our past? Traces?

Time ticks louder and louder.

Giving up attachment to life is hard. It feels abstract.

Fear seems to be the root cause of all suffering.

How to not fear change? Being stoic is a denial. Repressing feelings is a denial. Neither has anything to do with the practical Zen Buddhism that makes sense to me.

There are plenty of tears. What is salvation? How do we work it out?

What isn’t spiritual? (like art it depends on the framing/the mind/the engagement of the person seeing).

There is no real separation between the spiritual and the mundane. The everyday and the sublime.

This morning comes in waves. Anyone that has experienced this kind of extreme loss knows about the waves.

There is no coming out of the other side. It’s the same side. There is only the practice of seeing things as they really are.

day 3 of teaching my travel literature summer intensive course. Naps after class and all time collapses. North Carolina, Bellingham, Turkey, Utah. I can see I am not the same person and all things change but larger events seem to bring about bigger changes and shifts.

2009 was the last large event that changed everything. A reconciling. Of family. Of identity. Of various origins. I realise it is always in progress but I felt more a sense of a base. More stability to work from. A home.

Now this year it is the loss of Aaron. I can look at how I thought and acted before this event. My petty worries and anxieties. I don’t want to go back to that. I know things will normalise. I know things will happen and the loss of Aaron will hit me again. I know I will have to work to see things in perspective and those petty worries and anxieties will return. I will have to work at it. I want to put things into perspective.

It is not a one time thing. But I don’t want a tragedy or living in a state of emotional emergency to be the only things that wake me up.

If everything is constantly changing (including language) and there was nothing else . . what could we talk about? How could we communicate anything? Or is constantly changing different from chaos? We live our lives with the idea of some predictability and non-change. How could we do anything without some of this?

But I guess the trouble comes with clinging to those ideas of stability and predictability.

My suffering has come as a result of trying to anticipate the change. I have had a lot of change and radical adjustments. To various countries. To isolation. To loss in various forms. To radically changing my identity and world views. Etc. etc. So now when I find any kind of life resembling some stability I have a fear of getting too comfortable. I fear I am not prepared enough for the worst.

I have been trying to work through this for the last seven years. For one year with counselling and cognitive therapy (among dealing with other issues).

How to allow for happiness without anticipating the suffering?

A lot of contemporary American Zen Buddhism makes sense to me in a practical way. Suffering will come whether or not I anticipate it. Clinging to either suffering or happiness can lead to problems.

I have to bend. Rigid things snap in the wind.

A sense of the spiritual in a larger sense also seems necessary to my well-being. A sense of purpose as well. Guess we all need that sense of purpose right? Even in the face of the absurdity of death. It’s the fella that rolls the rock up the hill only to have slide it down the other side. He rolls it back up again and again and again. Forever. Good old sisyphus.

But unlike a lot of the existentialists the Buddhist idea is not cling to the suffering and anxiety. Contemporary American Zen Buddhism seems to be existentialism without the angst.

Also learning to be and to take delight in the everyday. Those things have helped a lot. And not being detached (clinging or attachment seems to be the opposite). But rather being fully engaged in everything happening right now in mind, body, environment.

Delighting in the mysteries can lead to awe. Awe can lead to being more fully present and awake.
Taking it all with a light touch. A playful seriousness. That helps a lot.

Again not being detached but fully engaged with how the mind works. The mind is the source of suffering and happiness and all else.

Not knowing can be terrifying. Or it can be liberating.

Maybe all things are changing, including the chatter of our minds. But that something that doesn’t change is the mystery. The thing we work with to notice the chatter of our mind. The awareness/consciousness. Consciousness in both a larger collective sense and an individual sense. The thing that can be fully present.

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Kozan Ichikyo, died February 12, 1360. After writing this poem on the morning of his death, he lay down his brush and died sitting upright.

Empty-handed I entered
the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going —
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Ewa is under the kitchen window
with a plastic bag on her hair
cleaning the kingdom
of dead spiders
hiding behind the curtains

I cannot find you brother. How can I imagine you as nowhere. If I imagine you as somewhere where I can imagine you? On a cloud? Slipping back into the sea? As some kind of energy?

I like to imagine you as full of awe and wonder. Full of peace. I like to imagine you NOT suffering. NOT full of pain and worry and heartbreak. I like to imagine you free.

I want to live fully brother. More fully. I want to be awake with the love of you.  I want the love of you to help me awake to love.

I am full of silence today. Just the hum of the fan on this laptop. No music. Just the London buses passing by.

You do not suffer my brother. I am closing my eyes and seeing you. Hearing you.

You are here.

Dust motes and black mould. Stiff neck and sore back. Sipping green tea. People are mowing the grass and cutting the branches outside.

after cleaning house
staring at the clouds moving
cut grass

under the same roof
we all sleep

let us peel
the potatoes
for evening supper

bell bottom
clouds

I have borrowed
my brother’s jeans

there is no wind
to carry

the closing of spring

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Went to High Street Kensington to look for the classroom I will be teaching in on Monday. For a large part of the time I was frustrated with all the activity. The rush of shoppers and thrill seekers. Every little bit of pleasure somehow felt frustrating. We went to Whole Foods and looked around. Somehow life felt unfair. So many of us (including myself) can’t afford what is that shop. All the fresh organic food (some of it a gimmick of course). But life is unfair. Or is it fair? What is fair and unfair?

The amount of suffering seems to differ. A lot of those wealthy people walking around High Street Kensington seem to live in a different London and a different world. Ditto all the rich visiting Americans. Do they suffer less than those of us who worry about the next paycheck or having enough money to go to the doctors?

How can we measure suffering? How can use a scale to say who suffers more? How many kinds of suffering are there?

I walked past some beer. India Pale Ale. And it reminded me of last Christmas with Aaron. And the Christmas before that. Especially Christmas in 2009 in Utah. He was full of life. We laughed a lot. We got a few bottles of India Pale Ale. We shared an amazing time. And it almost made me break down in Whole Foods. Seeing those bottles of IPA. And then the coffee reminded me of Aaron as well. And I felt frustrated Aaron was not among all these people walking around seemingly carefree and enjoying themselves.

But on the tube ride back to Wood Green I was reading some Dogen. About duality and non-duality. How these terms do not exist in a hierarchal relationship. The non-duality encompasses the duality.

So how does this apply to all those wealthy people? All those people who seem to suffer less intensely?

Well I cannot know their suffering! How an I know how much they suffer or how?

These things I think are true universally:

1)  Everything changes and nothing stays the same
2) There is no such thing as “self”and that there is no immortal soul
3) We all suffer
4) There is a way to end suffering

There is no “self” in the western sense because everything depends on something else and we are constantly changing. It seems crazy and delusional to think otherwise.

The book I was reading about Dogen helped. For a while.

I must continue to practice. To see things as they really are.

Two hour nap. Fresh vegetable soup. Heading out to get fresh air. Aaron will be with me.  Love you brother!!

I try to think of Aaron as not suffering. As no longer feeling pain. When I see a picture of him I am flooded again. When I think of visiting Utah in August and not being able to talk to him, hear him, see him none of this comforts me.

I have never experienced so much crying.

There is nothing to do but lay back down. I am trying not to avoid. Trying not to distract myself.

But maybe sometimes I need to do something else.

For now there is maybe sleep.

My body went into shock. Then morning. Lots of morning. When do I stop morning? If I stop morning do I stop remembering Aaron?

I have never cried this much. Or in this way.

If I eat why am I eating? I have sat in this room since I got the news of the death of Aaron. I went outside to get a roll yesterday for 5 min.

The world outside looked strange.

But I know the world outside is no different than here.

How do I feel that? How do I get beyond this delusion of separateness?

Or to feel that other part of reality that shows me we are not separate?

Some connection comes from knowing we all suffer the death of people we love.

We will all experience this (or have experienced this).

This comfort comes and goes. This realisation comes and goes.

What is the mindfulness of feeling things through the body?

My body feels run down. Muscles tight.

What do I need to let go of?

what is a vacuum? Why am I vacuuming? What is this round plate? Why I am eating off it? What is the mug? Why am I drinking from it? What is this wind? What does it blow? What do I know? What do I not know?

Sleep is not easy. Last night I had a dream.  A friend was sitting alone on a chair. He said he was lonely. He said he last best friend was moving away. It was a big empty room for a conference. There was no conference. There was only the hug of my friend and his loneliness.

Jobs, eating, sleeping. All these things feel abstract. What does it mean? Sleep? Eat? Work?

How to go about doing all those things?

How to quiet the mind. To focus on letting my mind wander? To not figuring and planning?

To go about all the dailyness of life without getting lost in it?

Where does my attention go?

Is there someone in charge of me?

Who would that be?

I had some comforting thoughts about Aaron no longer suffering. No longer feeling the pains of this existence.

But that kind of comfort comes and goes.

Getting things done is important. But what about insight and intuition? There is something to be said about focus and not being grabbed. Giving attention with a warm heart and kindness. How is my breath my body my face? What are these things?

What are my memories of Aaron. They are warm. They are sad.

How do I choose to remember Aaron? Where is Aaron?

The ordinariness of life right now bothers me. On and off. The dump trucks and people pouring out of pubs. What is in this room?

The heart’s expression is not should or should not. It is just moved.

Where does it move? What is e-motion?

Aaron’s laugh is with me. His smile. His compassion. His understanding.

To sit with things unresolvable. To stop trying to resolve them. To hold something in the heart in a larger way.

I can’t make something happen now. I can only let what is happening happen.

We pay money to have our attention grabbed

We will engage it and give it something to do for hours

We can’t fix everything so what will we do?

What do you choose to give your attention to?

looking for the next thing that is wrong and then figure out how to fix it

I want to cure you rescue you fix you

Is there foolish compassion?

How much are we going to fix?

Look carefully at what you can actually do something about

There is discomfort and unease

Sometimes you have to be with it

Some things can’t be fixed

What will we give our attention to?

Not just grabbed by the loudest phenomena in the vacinity

We have a choice

It is the study of a lifestyle

What will you give your attention to?

the dharma is the law of the heart which has no form but contains everything

I lost my brother Aaron yesterday. He was 29. Everything seemed petty and a bit worthless after the news. It was a shock. No warning. Just gone. I was with him six months ago in Utah. We made plans. We grew up together and went through a lot. Living in Coffee Hall housing estate in Milton Keynes England and then the big move to America (Las Vegas). He would ride on the handlebars of my bike. We collected coins back in 86 and used them to buy a sundae at McDonalds and share it. A fudge sundae. I wanted to be a boxer back then and carried around a ghetto blaster and lifted rocks in the desert. The ghetto blaster had the tape to Rocky IV. A double deck. Over the years I moved around the U.S. and then around the world. We finally started reconnecting two years ago at Christmas in Utah. It was one of the greatest times of my life. To reconnect with all my family and with my brother Aaron. Last Christmas we hung out a lot. We had a great new years together. I was happy to have a small amount of savings and planned to make it to Utah once a year finally. See Aaron and my family every year. I was hoping he would get on his feet and he could come to London and I could show him around. He had it rough in his twenties. He hit rock bottom a few times. I don’t know if he was at rock bottom when he died. My mum tells me he got a haircut that day and was happy. I don’t know what he felt. If he was aware. I wanted to tell him so much more last Christmas. I keep seeing his face when we said goodbye in January this year. And his simple “love you buddy.” I promised not to leave it so long this time. It was really really hard to say goodbye to Aaron but I was sure I would see him again at Christmas. it is still unclear how he died. It is all very sudden. It will be even harder when I go to Utah in August and he will not be there. I also need my family. It will be good to be around everyone. To feel their support and love.

I am full of cliches with this suffering and sadness. It is still very raw. Stuff like: “a huge chunk has been ripped out of me.” I don’t have any metaphors on me. I feel hollow. I felt compassion. I feel great waves of sadness.

There are so many more experiences I wanted to share with my brother. Even when I am eating I am thinking he will never taste what I am tasting. He won’t ever watch what I am watching. It is all gone.

Being in London it sometimes feels unreal. Like he is still in Utah. How could he not still be in Utah. In his room.

We swapped clothes last Christmas. I have a pair of his jeans and he has my jacket. He was so excited to go out eat sushi together in Salt Lake. And his whiteboard had the date of my arrival and “brother coming.”

I am all mixed up. Anger is surfacing. Anger at no one and nothing. Just anger at how he is gone and there is nothing any of us can do.

He was full of so much energy as a kid. Running up and down the hallways for hours in Milton Keynes. He was 2 and I was 12. Always polite and gentle and sensitive to everything around him.

He was a skater in his teenage years and from what others have told me the life of the party. He didn’t fear much. A real dare devil.

My cousin Grant told me how when he visited he went with Aaron to Las Vegas and California. He said they were in a elevator in Las Vegas and Aaron had the idea to stand on their head while the elevator went down. When the door opened an Elvis appeared and they told him (while standing on their heads) this elevator was going up. The elvis said sorry sorry and didn’t get in. They rolled on the ground laughing about it.

He was full of life and energy and humour.

I missed so many years. I wanted to catch up. There is no catching up.

My uncle in Portadown put this up yesterday:

works in progress from The Creature:

The Creature

it is a project. 88 edited pages into it . . . might publish it in three parts . . .

check out unedited ones in progress here:

http://nomadicpoetics.wordpress.com/

A Hut is Constructed of Loose Stones

trying out wordpress for the simple look . . feeling minimal . . . might migrate Never Mind the Beasts over there: