I was lying on the couch with H this afternoon, when I was hit with an overwhelming feeling. She’s leaving tonight to spend the next few days with her mother, who is going in for her second major surgery in less than a year.

We have watched H’s mom go from an active, vibrant women who lived for operas, plays and her volunteer work at the museum to a women who lives in the shadows of her former self.

I won’t go into all the gory, sordid details, but over and over again I am constantly being given reminders lately of life’s absolute impermanence. Death’s cold breath has been giving me metaphysical goose bumps on the back of my neck.

About a year ago, I saw this movie on TV that took the footage of the moon missions in the 60’s and 70’s and added current commentary by the astronauts. It was fascinating to hear the reflections of old men as they watched their younger selves dance on the moon.

One of them said that being up there was like holding on to life by a string over the abyss of space. The dance on the moon was a dance with death, as they literally were kept alive by a small tube tied to a tin can. And yet, he said, it was the most alive he has ever felt, looking at the earth from a little rock in the vacuum of space.

Lying with H on that couch I felt the warm of her skin on mine and the rise and fall of her exquisite chest. I could almost hear the blood moving through her veins. Normally, this kind of physical awareness would move me. But I felt a calm stillness. A completeness in her arms that is normally reserved for when we lie together late at night after sex, not before.

I looked at her and felt as if I was looking into the face of the whole world from a little rock in the vacuum of space. I was brought down on my emotional knees by the shear beauty and total impermanence of it all. Of her, of her mother, of me, of my mother, of our love, of our lives, of your life, of this whole spinning blue ball in space.

I kissed her. We got up. She packed a small suitcase. And left.

I was hit with this overwhelming feeling today,
like breathing in a cold winter night,
like the warmth in my chest after a sip of single malt scotch,
like falling up into the expanse of a western sky,
like the simple sadness of a child,
like the death of an old, old friend,
like the shock of a scorpion sting,
like the closed fisted tension of my lover’s body just before she opens to release,
like an exposed palm with extended fingers spinning round and round in vast emptiness.

Like dancing on the moon.

Ever have that feeling?

In the late 80’s early 90’s at the rip old age of my mid 20’s I loved a song called “I’m An Adult Now” by a Canadian powerpop band called The Pursuit of Happiness. I would drive in my car singing along with the chorus, “I’m an adult now. I’ve got the problems of an adult on my head and my shoulders. I’m an adult now.” Ahh the arrogance of youth. As I drift deeper into adulthood I find myself empathizing more with those ahead of me than behind. I remember Kurt Cobain (he and I were born the same year) once saying that he hoped he would never get to the point where he would find himself re-recording his old hits as new easy listening tunes like Eric Clapton. Well Kurt, you solved that problem for yourself, but those of us still moving within flesh and blood must deal with the indignity of eating the words of our youth. Another line from that Pursuit of Happiness song comes to mind. “I can’t take too much loud music. I mean I like to play it, but I sure don’t like the racket.” I’m just not the punk and metal fan I used to be. I tend to like music now that goes down smooth. Bande A Part, by Nouvelle Vague, is the smoothest disk I’ve heard in a while. 80’s tunes re-interpreted by a French band as 60’s style Bossa Pop. http://www.nouvellesvagues.com/ If sailing through an album of re-tooled nostalgia for the past gets to be too much, check out Dark Globe’s Nostalgia For The Future. Silja, one of the singers from Nouvelle Vague sings on several of the tracks. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=46665667 Nouvelle Vague Dark Globe

That’s what they called it in the new film The Science of Sleep. Jung called it synchronicity. So did Sting. One of my favorite authors, Paul Auster, wrote a small collection of stories, The Red Notebook, about it. All I know is that I love it. I’m going along living the daily drama that is unfolding before me, and then without warning I fall through a tear in the fabric of everyday life and am face to face with the wonder of the unknown. You know, that shit that you just can’t explain away no matter how hard you try, and you’re not sure exactly what “it” means but you know “it” means something, or does it? Here are two of my most recent “meaningful acausal coincidences.” One: I have been friends with V. for twelve years, maybe longer. We go through periods when we see each other a lot and then periods when we don’t. Usually, V. moves away for a while and we lose contact. The funny thing is, V. and I always seem to run into each other within a few weeks after she comes back to town. In the past, I could have written it off as the fact that the Phoenix art scene is small and we hang at similar gigs. Maybe eight years ago that was true but now we are running into each other at even the most mundane settings, like at a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. She’s here until March, and then it’s off to Spain. This also seems to happen within days after V. has quite prominently popped back into my head and I wonder what she’s up too. I have other old friends even an x-wife who still live in Phoenix. They pop up in my mind from time to time too, but I never run into them. Why V.? Two: L. and I met this summer at a study retreat with Roshi Bernie in Massachusetts. We sat zazen next to each other for about five hours a day for four days and had some great conversations off the cushions. After the retreat ended L. went home to Jersey and I went to New York City to visit family and friends. About a week later, I was supposed to meet a friend on the Upper East Side for lunch. She had to cancel at the last minute, and since I was already in the neighborhood I went to the MOMA to check out a Dada exhibit. I spent several hours enthralled with early twentieth century ready-mades and cut-ups. I tried to take a picture of Duchamp’s R. Mutt with my cell phone but the guard wouldn’t let me. Before I left the museum, I went out to the gardens to feel the sun as I checked in with my wife. I’m sitting on a bench about to dial the phone when someone says my name inflected with a question. I turn around and there is L. with his wife. L. hadn’t been to the MOMA since he was a kid and wasn’t even a fan of Dada. I live in Phoenix, Arizona and don’t get to the MOMA that often myself. Like me, they came on a whim. I stood there amazed at this chance encounter in the middle of a tiny island in the midst of millions of people. And yet, if this encounter had happened a week earlier, we would have passed each other as strangers. These moments leave me with an itch in my mind that I just can’t reach to scratch. I want them to mean something. They are mysterious and leave me in wonder. I want them to be part of a greater context. But, I just don’t know. Maybe, "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." G.K. Chesterton: The Man Who Was Orthodox

I was cleaning out my cell phone photo files and found this little gem. It’s a pudding wresting contest from a white trash carnival I went to here in Phoenix last winter. The participants were raising money for charity. I love the mind and its ability to reach states of higher consciousness or in my case here higher states of unconsciousness.

The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” This koan was given to me by life (thank you Jean-Marc) and I have been struggling with it for about two weeks. I read that the “official” answer is, “You take the next step.” According to Bernie Glassman in his book, Instructions to the Cook, it means you “live fully.” Okay, live fully or take the next step, what the hell does that mean if you’re at the top of a hundred foot pole! Even Glassman says these little “official” answers are just a beginning. “You have to go further. You have to demonstrate the answer. You have to embody the answer. You have to show the Zen master how you live fully in the moment. You have to manifest the answer in your life.” For days, I kept thinking about how I could step off the pole without falling. I thought, like a bird; I could figure a way to fly into the horizon. Or maybe I could just stay up there. But flying off is a daydream, and holding on is paralysis. Either option feels like the avoidance of life and to step off feels like death. So, how did I proceed? The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” Answer: You step off, fall, hit the ground, and die. I know this because I finally stepped off the pole on Monday, 9/11 – 2006 that is. I hadn’t really planned on taking time to think about what occurred five years ago on that day, but an image entered my mind that morning and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I kept thinking about the people who jumped from the towers. (The media quickly stopped airing that footage.) What I kept remembering was the length of time it took those who jumped to fall. How they moved through the air. Some curled up into a fetal position. Others did flips. One man jumped like a swimmer off a high dive, head first with hands pointing down like an arrow. I imagined both the exhilaration and terror of that moment. Those people had made a choice. They knew they were going to die up there and chose one last wild ride down instead of asphyxiation under a desk or annihilation in the towers’ crushing fall. They took the next step. On Monday, I jumped too. Obviously, my fall was not the same as theirs, but the images of their deaths in my head five years later lead me to the answer of my koan. The priest Sekiso said, “You're on the top of a hundred-foot pole. Now, how do you advance?” Answer: You step off, die, fall, and hit the ground. I suffered from broken bones and internal bleeding. Still, a hundred feet was not enough to kill me on impact. As I lay, I look up at the sky and dissolved into it. A leap of faith (Thank you Kierkegaard) into vast sky will always result in a fall to the ground of vast emptiness. Some people, I imagine, interpret this as an exhilarating flight. Others a terrifying drop. Either way, a jump into the air eventually leads to an impact of great measure. Transformation requires a death before rebirth; however, the death is not necessarily in the crash. It is in taking the next step.

In honor of my Dharma name Ho-en or Phoenix Flame I ordered a pair of Lucchese boots from Texas last April that would fit the title. Finally, they finished making them and when I came home yesterday the nice UPS man gave them to me. They're garish, I know, but then so am I. Poor H. I wanted to wear them to bed last night.