Dreams I Can Only Imagine

Well, I decline the invitation and end up just sitting in bed like an old man, reading and writing at 2 a.m., happy enough, actually more than happy, while the old dog dozes and farts her way through dreams I can only imagine. Would it have been different if - when briefly drawing the curtain - there was either moonlight or stars? Yet by morning more snow is falling - fat flakes mixed with tiny flakes - not driven so much as lazy - as in "we'll get there when we get there" - and my back aches extra in anticipation of shoveling but so what. The coffee tastes pretty damn good and for once I'm not a bunch of guys writing but just this one guy. As a matter of fact, I will have a burger with those fries, and also extra fries. Rereading Faraday's The Chemical History of A Candle, which prompts Chrisoula to say "I bet he was a lot of fun in the dark," to which there is clearly a subtext but not one I immediately understand, being more Faradayish than not. Also Husserl's Introduction to Transcendental Phenomenology while taking notes, which Chrisoula understands means don't interrupt, don't make jokes. You can't head North forever! Christ it's a lot of work doing nothing, getting nowhere.

Insistence Itself

One wants to declare the parts matter, or retreat somehow to a polished shell (turtles, always turtles), or simply be paid a decent wage to live in a cottage and "read until the end." The monastic fantasy is only problematic when we decline to examine the underlying projection. Otherwise, why not? What happens in the river is up to the river but that doesn't mean we aren't participants, or presents maybe. The one way to say it matters, is perhaps one way to say it but I am starting to see there are others. Persephone at last understood as a mode of insistence not on cycles or seasons or greenery but on insistence itself. This vs. that. Nobody is going anywhere but on the other hand it sure is nice to be busy. Thank Christ for writing, which is optional of course, but still. You want to have something to say, even if it doesn't need to be said. Thus this. Thus what passes, passing.

One Struggles, One Does

The dreamless sleep is most helpful in terms of examining the requisite metaphysics (of attention, awareness, et cetera). What is reality when we are not aware of it? Am I only conscious of elephants when I see them/read about them/think about them? Or is consciousness the whole, regardless of our piecemeal methods? And so forth. Oh! What is Spring when I am on my knees in the snow? Clouds care nothing for the moon they obscure, as the moon is alive - or subject to entropy anyway - but not sentient, or "sentient differently" as I put it from certain corners (albeit ones I visit less and less). Certain adults in my life used to say "there's more where that came from," a sentiment I now associate mainly with scientists. We are never finished, in the strict sense that one cannot know what one doesn't know. Humility is almost never a bad idea, though one struggles, one does. February is a kind of darkness, while happiness - even the shallow kind, which is to say the wordy kind, which is to say, the only kind I can manage - is a kind of light. Even a forty watt bulb can put a lonesome heart at ease! Meanwhile, vast assemblies of snow silence Watts Brook, yet in another sense I can hear it still - and do - which explains perhaps this enduring, this fructive relationship with quietude.

The Dog to the North

Three a.m. or a bit earlier I lean on the shovel and smile, feeling temporarily clear and silent, precisely the way I didn't in those days of whiskey and lost women who welcomed me to their travels. What a storm in which to be so happy! Is it the end of confusion or something else entirely? When clearly what so long counted as error no longer does. You have to let go of everything, including the idea that you have to let go of everything. And yet I never get tired of saying it! Every snowflake seems to be possessed of its own wild desire, welcoming ecstatically that which it alights upon - shoulders, tree limbs, drifts of blowing snow. I hear the dog to the North, just past the barn, her tags ringing in the susurrating dark. This life is enough simply because it literally asks nothing of us. When we see this unconditional being - clearly, unequivocally, without writing anything else onto or into it - then peace does indeed flow exactly like a river. But you know this and you know you know this! So? Sew buttons! I push a little more snow into the rising banks, grateful for the dream of hot tea just beginning to emerge. Throw a little more water in the soup! There's no thin broth you can't enliven, just by coming around. As for me, I can't stop smiling, which makes me laugh. A real laugh - a belly laugh. Maybe you heard, all the way out in the forest. Even now - lifetimes later, a thousand lifetimes later - I am still only this acquiescence, this softening, I am this going nowhere alone.

Unraveling At Such A Dizzy Pace

The dog and I go out at 3 a.m. expecting frigidity but it's not so bad or maybe I'm dressed right for once. Well, you do what you can, and let entropy handle the rest, which it always does. I slip a little here and there, mostly while squinting for the moon, which isn't even a perceptible blur behind all these clouds promising snow. The forest creaks and moans and half a mile into it I start wishing I'd worn thicker socks, which pleases me in the sense that I still sometimes fall for that old lie about suffering. But also, I am ready now to be happy, even if I can't say how, even if I can't say with who. Such a strange life to lead, unraveling at such a dizzy pace no matter how much you try to manage it! It eats whatever meaning you toss it, as if hunger were not a virtue, as if there weren't these many details, each more extravagant than the last. Keep it simple I tell myself as we turn back, watched by owls, studied by deer. If you are lost then follow a dog is one way to look at it but I know now there are others. If you think you can hold my attention - if you believe there is something you can offer - then by all means bring it. We are at that juncture where hesitation begets no grace. I am setting the table with two spoons and two bowls, I am sitting up at odd hours, lonesome but vigilant, learning how to tend the tiny fire given all of us.