A Well-Lit Path - Category : Food for thought

Shard

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:32:00 -0400

Somewhere among the trials of innocence, lessons of winning and losing.

And then: that young mind, that open heart, has almost no distance to travel, from saying "I won" to "I'm right", and... ah! Then my dear hearts, dear children, you have lost your sight, your liberty of movement, and each step forward will be a step to be retraced.

Trust Me

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:31:34 -0400

There are two kinds of roads.

I see the first so clearly: I can allow my eyes to drop from the horizon for a moment, and there are my feet, one before the other, one after the other, while the world slips away underneath a pace at a time. That's about two yards, if I am running, or one if I am walking with purpose, and maybe only a foot if I am sad and feeling slow. I can close my eyes and see that progress. I can close my eyes and feel my weight, feel the world's attraction, and the gentle roll of heel-to-toe that's like a dance, we learn to stand and swing to it, and make our lives the music of accompaniment. Those magical shoes you put on early and can't take off, that dance you to joy and to sorrow, from birth to death.

I guess there have been enough paths in my history, I don't need to walk to feel the walking: here's a path of black cinder from an old lava flow, with its chalkboard scraping sounds of almost-glass against almost-glass; another trail of tumbled granite at the top of the world; and then the stairway of stone (stone again!) worn down by the feet of countless pilgrims, on their way to some temporary salvation.

There were softer roads, that felt my passage and then quickly covered it up: maybe winter's wind blew snow across my way, or ocean's wind, loose sand, or leaves or other light debris sailed across my trail, and left my footsteps scuffed, untraceable. There I was: there I was not. There are two kinds of roads, and one of them is met by the bones and by the body's sinew.

The other kind needs a guide. And you are it.

Usually, when I am traveling inward, I walk along the lighted avenues that those before me cleared so well. Usually, the inward road (where my calloused feet cannot wander) is to remembered places and comfortable benches and sunsets and glasses of sipped wine and smiling eyes... smiling eyes and those little gestures of affection, a hand that reaches just for the joy of touching me, or the play of minds as a joke unfolds like legerdemain, as much surprise for the speaker as it is for those who listen.... Usually. It is fine, really, to have places we remember here inside, where we felt warm and safe, sanctuary from the winds and waves outside, where everything is right, and our way of being and seeing is contented with small things.

The road inward has those broad avenues.

You know, though... what attracts me are the alleys and the byways, those twisting trails that lead perpendicular to my direction of travel, small tributaries or siphons that drop a few unique souls from the hinterlands onto the main highway, or steal them away from these populous regions onto a wild chase into the trees, up and over the ridge, to heaven knows where! I am attracted to the unexplored, because there is something much larger than me, larger these small ideas I carry like a moth-eaten comforter around my shoulders. Oh, there are edges of the universe too large for my conception, and an endpoint to this my life which is rather too difficult to grasp.

So, I think: there's something there will open my eyes wide. Maybe over that hill? Maybe around that curve of the road? Maybe in her arms. Maybe in the next song. Maybe tomorrow.

When I speak of the inward road, I am not talking about a particular way of going. Yes, sure, you can meditate; sometimes the eyes of the heart are more open when you are still like that. Or you can watch your feelings as they dash and spark through the mystery of yet another day alive. You meet someone, you shy away: what was that about? You meet another, and your hackles (should humans still have hackles) rise, ready for a fight. Or you can just live your life and do your best to notice what goes on, down the Well, what you can change, what you cannot; how you might open; how you might not.

I think that on the external road, you meet everything that is not you, and have to hear its echo and make its metaphor of yourself. And on the internal road, you meet nothing but yourself, and must find your echo and your metaphor in the ten thousand things that meet your eyes. If you do decide to stray from "I am perfect because I think it so", or even if you don't, sooner or later you must meet a self that is not as welcome, the tough teacher, the one who throws the windows open and shouts "Come outside!": see you, just as blind and hurtful as those you judge, just as fragile and just as strong... just such a sweet heart and just such a brute. What that road brings is a poignant clarity to all of your aches. You know what hurts: don't you feel it every day? Don't you dream it at night? The distance growing between you and your love, and you powerless to change it? The aging of your children as they become masters of their own lives; their departure from your home and from your influence... and from the warmth of your arms: no, far worse, those small and precious bundles of life that were like sunlight in your arms, you carried them as though you embraced the sun, and now... that time is past, and your arms feel useless, empty now, and cold.

What I find at times along the inward road is really quite anguished. I have to stop and give the sad creature crouched there some needed attention, some Good Samaritan nurturing, if I am able to evoke the Samaritan in me to tend myself. And other times, there are flowers and images of such beauty. Sometimes my eyes in that mirror are gentle, and so strong, and so welcoming of love. Sometimes the scars and lines on the face show a resilience and a strength of purpose that leaves me quite breathless.

Sometimes I just see a life, a stranger in the street, making his way to work.

What a preamble!

All I meant to say was that... on the inward road the other day I found another place where I was just human, after all, smaller than I imagined, and needing human help to rediscover trust, again, again, when the door of the heart has been closed against hard weather, and the body contracts like a shell around that stain.

Soliloquoys

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 9 Nov 2009 01:17:32 -0400

I.

The waning moon has turned this hour above the crowns of trees, and spilled its liquid light into the yard. So this evening is accompanied by a shadow of sun's heat.

November

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 7 Nov 2009 23:52:24 -0400

Here is the canvas of the sky. One long stroke of gray, you see it brushed upon the blue blue pastel of the day, it is an overhead wave, a sun-shade, a blanket pulled over the eyes, a watercolor from a sponge, a lights-decay. And then it rains, of course. It is cold as it can be, just enough energy in the shortening strands of the sunbeams to heat those flecks of ice and melt their hearts as they fall earthward.

Every love polishes the jewel

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:19:52 -0400

And every lover brings as his or her gift another reflection of the quality or your loving, and the quantity of your love.

Sometimes the arc of a love is as long as years, sometimes a lifetime. Or the music of a relationship may last some months, crescendo, soften, then complete: the dancers bow to one another, and leave the floor to take a ittle rest, or step to find another dancing partner. Or there might be the shortest, sweetest meeting, like a flash of light or lightning, the flash of a camera, the flash of his smile, the flush of her face. No matter the length, all loves are transformed; all loves end. If the agent is time or illness, if the agent is fear or frailty, even if it is disinterest... all loves polish some facet of your life, show you your desires, light up the little dark places you had kept hidden, and make your loving better (if you are watching), and your being warmer and brighter (if you are watching or not).

Someone once asked me why I would approach someone, if I knew there was no chance of a future together. I thought, then answered, "How can I know the future? I only know the present." One can only watch what is unfolding, and follow whatever is opening in front of you. And try your very best to speak truth with love, or love with truth. Who knows which partnership will last for years? And which will end abruptly? The strongest passion may not withstand even one day of co-authoring a routine, while the most unassuming comfort might be just what a home requires for deeper and longer sharing.

It is always difficult to realize there is an ending, to welcome it, to embrace it, when... well, sometimes it simply has arrived. Always difficult because we grasp life and deny death, so even the little endings become traumatic. We were lovers, now we are householders. We were householders, now we are parents. We were parents, now we are alone again together and so changed... so changed! We are aging and watch our friends pass away. Little endings, let them be conscious, let the heart feel them, cry for them a bit... so that the little beginning has earth and water enough to sprout. In fact, without the endings, there is no renewal. No birth without an end to gestation; no gestation without the release of lovemaking; no lovemaking without the end of childhood... and back and back, back and back my friends! And forward and forward, don't forget, as many endings and new beginnings as there are nights and days.

The best practice we can find in ending is to embrace all the gifts that were given. Yes, it is over, yes she has left, yes, he has found someone else, or found no one else... yes yes. Look what I found: that I can love. Look what I found: that I can give love even as we separate, and walk on different roads. When I give love even as one form of love is ending... then I have lost... what I did not have. Maybe I have lost nothing at all.

Philosophy? Sure. We either raise our hearts up with practiced compassion, or lower our heads and feel inadequate in our attempt to love. Don't lower your head. The ending of love doesn't mean love doesn't exist: just as the end of a life could never deny all of the beauty that living provided. If you avoid lowering your head... who can say?... perhaps it was not the end of love, but just one facet turning away, perhaps transforming into something deeper, or greater. Maybe it is you who is growing, not love that is dying.

Let the jewel of the heart be polished, become brighter and brighter. You will attract more love just from your light.

Do I write this to comfort myself? Of course I do.

It's true, nonetheless.

beads of living

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The beauty of travel is not its road but instead the foot of the traveller; not the wind but in the taste on the wind; not the cathedral but the stillness its walls contain, in the cool of water that two hands cup from the river; not in the kiss, but the ...

love, not love

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

"So is it study or is it art?"

The first is a wick drawn by a practiced hand, straight through wax. Patience dipped again and again to fill out a candle's form, layer on layer for length, strength and stability. There is dedication in study, repeated practice like a mantra, mastery a form of devotion. You give yourself and you give your time, your attention. You receive something human-born, earthy, quiet.

how many springs

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 8 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

I suggested yet again that our death is introduced when we are born, the seed of our departure planted upon our arrival, and perfect darkness as a backdrop for all the colors and sights and sounds of this little, lovely (hopefully at times seen as lovely) life. Can't I just hang that one up for once?

No.

busy?

Mark T Schultz — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 00:03:50 -0400

I haven't written so many poems. Nor have I penned a single novel, though there is one waiting, and behind that one, who knows?, maybe another. I have been blessed with a few songs. I used to draw well, a lifetime ago. I am responsible for a half-carved Buddha, who patiently waits inside a few inches of wood for some courage and deftness of my hand. I have several recipes I created which really come out well.

untethered by day

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:41:13 -0400

I woke before an alarm, like a shorebird stepping in before the wave. That's more natural: a piper is never caught by the curl. Those winged fingers flit him skyward if the crash and roil of the sea comes too close. He lives on the waters: not in them. He eats what the sea has offered, running along the margin, and the sea always brings enough, if a little, if a lot; always enough for a meal, or the winged fingers reach upward and away.

Nightlight

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 8 Mar 2009 23:34:36 -0400

The moon is overhead and filling every night, so bright the world can't sleep, but rolls from dusk to dawn, trees and human objects limned by its smiling sight; into its stillness a single person sails, his water the blue-lit road and ship his own two heels. Solitude the hull's name, it move at peace, guided by the hunter who stands off in the winter sky, by the bright dog at his heel, and the call of the surf that whispers beyond a wave or two of homes.

Mr. Now

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 1 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

At a birthday party the other night. A glass of wine, a meal, a toast, easy talk, genial anecdotes, a circle of laughter, good night. Somewhere along the thread of a conversation, one of the party-goers mentioned (wistfully, patiently, perhaps resignedly) that she was wondering when she would find "Mister Right".

Anyone with some measure of intimacy with their own heart would recognize the source of that comment and, judging the intelligence and sense of the speaker, would guess this wasn't flippancy, a cliche that echoed some dull ache, but rather carried the volume of sentiment, height, length and depth. The words we use float on the surface; the waters described can be impenetrably profound.

Over the years, I have met a number of Miss Rights - and they were right. I suppose that, while I dabbled in and investigated as many facets of the world that I could find, my tendency in love was to meet a partner at many levels, and instead of delightful surface explorations which lasted a few nights or weeks, I waited until some sense of rightness and longevity was apparent in myself or between us, and so found my partners both excellent co-adventurers and teachers of relationship. Some helped me grow up, some helped me loosen up, some helped me find responsibility, some helped me shed it. Some taught dance, some taught romance. The longer relationships taught more difficult lessons.

Every single partner with whom I shared a path, every relationship found and ripened and deepened, had a life cycle. Every single rightness of connection and growth and moment also arrived at a time when it was not so right, after all, when there was work to be done, or freedom to be granted. In several relationships the values and paths were divergent to such a degree that our fingers, straining to hold fast, were unlaced, and hands pulled apart by the anti-gravity of our deflected orbits. Other times, graceful dancers that we were, we kept our balance and drew ourselves back in to that inner spiral, another turn around the sun, another set of seasons.

The point is, I guess - having to admit that guessing is about as close as those of us with Life Learner's Permits are going to get - that our fears or our sadnesses or our isolation keep us looking for a completion which is ephemeral, something on the surface of things, in the touch, the smile, the shared work, the children, the parents. My party companion was looking for that moment, and hoping for forever.

I think as we grow older, and are rather battered by hard weather, to only be warmed again by sunny days, we recognize there are fewer rights and wrongs than we once imagined. If we are honest with ourselves, Mister or Miss Right is a ghost we hold in lieu of Mister or Miss Now, the one who steps into our lives just as human and complex as we ourselves, muddies the rug, messes up the bed, leaves things quite out of control and.... changes us.

To love is to surrender some part of us, some ego-image that we feel keeps us intact, but in truth only stunts our growth. To surrender is to be changed; just as travel to distant lands (not tourism, but travel) is to allow yourself to see from other eyes, breath with another's breath, move with another's body, and sleep the sometimes restless sleep of a bed you have made adventure.

If your co-explorer shares your road, shares your meals, shares your values, and finds in his or her surrender the generosity to stay beside you... ah, then. Now was just right, after all.

A thread to string it on

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:36:38 -0400

Lately I have neither composed melody nor lyric, because music, however you follow its fragrance, requires the flower. Simple or complex, the blossom must open, the color be expressive and expressed: if that bud is all-potential, then the hand must wait for later summer, for more sun, for rain; and if the petals have stretched, dried and fallen, then the mind must imagine flowers, and the tongue will wait for spring.

An abbreviated story

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 01:10:37 -0400

My cats, of course, obey another set of spheres, and while I quiet into the solitude and the slightly muffled end of the day (even the blue TV glare has left the neighbor-houses, and the most convicted night birds have for the most part decided that sleep is ...

plucked

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 01:01:06 -0400

— No, no please; no more. Art stretched upon the canvas, the sun fallen half-way round the sky, having sweated its way to the zenith, now drying and diminishing toward the end of its day, the end. — Why? I thought the work was just beginning? I ...

Wait

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0400

"Waiting is work."

My father, on the telephone, waits for the return of my mother, away in Sweden. One fills her eyes with her history and with the world; one fills his eyes with the familiar and with a brief emptiness.

But a small emptiness echoes the greater one, just as a shadow in the sun is kin to those of the evening, those of night. And absence that ends reminds the heart that lives that there is an absence which lingers, lengthens, and deepens with the days.

In the west, my dear aunt waits while her husband works to leave. He has a few days, a few weeks, and the shadow lengthens, the absence grows louder in its silent way. This waiting is such work.

They say, "But you are doing nothing!", because the eyes see only what they see, they feel colors and they taste shapes, like a child's blocks, have never built a house, only to see it fall, the eyes see but know nothing, it is the heart that knows by learning, the lessons of waiting, the shadows of morning, and the shadows of evening, the absence that is filled, the emptiness that is not.

In the southwest, another aunt waits for tests to return, waits for hope, while expecting dread. Waiting is more work than knowing; the shadow does not give up its meaning, and a void cannot be filled with thinking or with wishing, but only with time.

Here I wait for the sale of a home; I wait for my efforts to bring return; for the heart to let go of it tears; for the sun which slipped away into carnelian evening, swallowed by its own departure, emptied into the resounding stillness of the night, to fill again like the promise of the One: that dark and light are married to a single tone; that the eyes wait for surfaces; while the heart waits for what cannot be touched, smelled, tasted, heard, or seen.

Negatives

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

"
Mountains did look in
the windows of the thin aluminum room
over loud tar paper roofs
We could see how
peaks
covered with lime or snow
backed away
a little wounded
from their literal distance
" - Mary Kinzie

I wondered, tonight, as the full moon flooded my room as it flooded the landscape around me, as it flooded the night from one limb of the horizon to the other, how it is that words describe the darkness so easily, while the light can be elusive as a star in the evening fog?

At least for myself, when the waves of a loss or a lack wash against me as against the shore of me, and one after another the grains of sand that comprise my sturdy self are swept back into the all-engendering ocean, it seems as though action describes the light, while thought picks up the edge of night, draws the arc of a meteor as it burns as it descends, the flash of the photographer's camera before what was once is revealed to the lens.

There it is: the perfect, empty forever, one single step away from the artificial daylight I call a kitchen, one threshold away into the yard, where the absence of the sun's burning bright is visible in my inability to see the outline of anything; or perhaps I can perfectly trace nothing, as nothing is all that I cannot see. Did it mean the world had disappeared? A child would say Yes and shake in fear. A teen wouldn't consider, being in the throes of creation. An adult at the middle of his road would say I Believe and the blank canvas, instead of being Void, would be pregnant with the imagined All and therefore, strangely, comforted.

Less | More

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 00:38:43 -0400

In many conversations over the years I have found myself planted on one side of a fence, leaning in, looking over. And according to my companion's words -- through words thoughts, in thoughts timber, trimmed timber rails, rails become fences, fences framed vision, in pictures a mirror of one's Self -- there was a way of being that was correct, a way of being that was incorrect.

Live, and Learn

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Better to travel with someone who is looking for God
than with someone who has found him.

Thanks

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 23:06:55 -0400

Today unlike other Thanksgiving holidays I find myself alone. The day began in silence, shrouded in fog from the eastern seaboard; it passed quietly in a town whose shopdoors shut tightly against profit and house doors opened wide in favor of family; and ended in fog from the eastern seaboard, backlit in a dusty red, dusky purple, then dark.

The Edges of Reason

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

My younger brother is a musician and mathematician, an adventurer whose inquiries lead him to landscapes most people would never dream existed, much less find themselves exploring them. It isn't enough to walk along planar geometries and simple proofs -- that would be to walk in the Garden without admiring the flowers. The walk is well-trodden, and the flowers are the Mystery. So these flowers attract his attention, and once in a while we share some of their colors.

I dare say you would not be interested in the topics of our dialog; but then again, you might find some of the thoughts similar to considering the space between stars, or the far end of the Universe, should there be one, or its conception, if it had one. Ah, ha! You see, these days existentialism doesn't score as well on the Nielsen Ratings as it used to.

Once you get a whiff of the Mystery, though, you begin to get this strangely comforting feeling that things are, after all, much larger than you projected them to be, and you (by comparison) are much smaller, a little bit less in control of your destiny than you imagined. It is a sweet gift; when your muscles aren't bound up in such great effort to prove your permanence or grandeur, your relationships with people invariably improve. Not convinced? Then don't read on, I'm not trying to convince you.

Things of Value

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

In 1985, I spent several months living on the island of Java, in Yogyakarta, having traveled there with a partner in the evening of our intimacy. I sat out nights with our mutual friend Muller, a Sumatran who was studying at the University, on the grass mats of Jalan Malioboro, smoking Kretek cigarettes and drinking sugary tea, and spooning up repeat servings of gudeg, a simple local dish perhaps, but with friendship and smoke and inconsequential conversations -- I can't recall even how much was spoken in Indonesian, or English, or not spoken at all -- the long evenings were excellent.

You may know something of the region in which I stayed: famed cultural hub in the center of the island, the most densely populated place on the planet, presenting fine silverwork and woodcarvings, musical instruments and high-art batik to the world. The best of the jet set would return from such a trip laden with cheap goods for friends or for sale.

Somehow objects bought cheaply can never quite escape the stamp of "commodity", however. I returned with very little. I returned without my partner, without silver or carvings or wall-hangings. With almost no photos, since I told myself my eyes would be my camera. I suppose they were, and the film has faded somewhat with time.

But beyond the stuff of the senses which, while possibly faded, is still so intense and precise: the smell of melati trees lining the road; the deafening chorus od frogs in the rice padis outside my window; the charcoal braziers puffing out small clouds and delicate road-side dishes; faces of friends... beyond all that there are these things of value. I still possess one; I find it amazing it is still intact.

Innocence

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

My daughter Isabela -- more naturally Bela, though capable of carrying her more regal name when called upon by the drama of the moment to do so -- has traveled to Florida with her mother and brother, to be with their Brazilian grandparents and uncle and aunt for a few days. Ah, yes, and to visit with the newest cousin, little Lucas, Lucinho perhaps, born a year ago in a country far from the familial home.

Bela has been challenged by change lately: there is plenty of it to go around, while constancy is constantly in short supply, and her body is changing as well, so while the rug may not have been pulled out from under her feet, the floor has been pulled out from beneath the rug; a more confusing situation, since the appearance of ground is mocked by the spongy and intangible feeling of the flying carpet weave, high above... nothing, it would seem.

Before she left, I reminded her that we have two hands, that we have one hand for giving and another for receiving -- one hand which holds the past and which makes us feel secure, while the other opens up for whatever the day or the week or the year will bring us. You may wish to close one or the other because what they carry or what they call is uncomfortable to hold; still the past is there like a jewel or a stone, and the future is there for anyone who cares to unclench their fingers.

Procession

Mark T Schultz — Wed, 4 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A certain slant of light or the softness of the breeze tells you; the brightness of the birdsong tells you it is morning. Most of the world is waking now, refreshed, while the night shift yawns and paws its way to bed. The light turns green. The light turns red. The morning traffic pauses.

As though drawn by an invisible mote of gravity, or pulled by a magnetic line of force that points south toward Boston, from seven directions a procession of coffee cups floats four-and-one-half feet above the sidewalk, looks both ways at the crosswalk, steps up 6 inches above the curb, stops at a bench, settles or hovers, waiting.

And attached to each coffee cup, a hand, and to the hand and arm and a torso; it is a procession of coffee cups pulling behind them a variety of men and women, younger, older, tied to the cup as it makes its way together onto a bus or a train, then spreads again to find a desk here, a chair there, a booth, a bar, a counter, a meeting-room table.

As though in the morning pots, lit as they are by the slant of light or touched as they are by the softest of breezes, brewed cups or pints destined for one place or for another, and the human who was chosen by this cup or that would follow along, preordained to settle where the cup would rest.

At some moment in the morning, the contents of the cups would be drained, and the procession comes to a sudden, vibrating halt.

Amen.

Speak, Memory

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 1 May 2007 00:00:00 -0400

There is nothing in midnight but a fleck of ink on the otherwise empty face of the clock, or an electrical pulse which dis-integrates into a soft dash of light in an otherwise seamless river of life. We make the marks against which we measure our lives and call them time: they do not exist without our pen striking the hours and the days and the years.

Gravity explains the sands of our lives by dividing moments into falling grains of silica, whose gently wrinkled whorl descends a crystal flue, gravity which draws it through in only one direction, toward the center and to rest, toward the sea. As smooth as grains can be, still they click in quantum resonance like a smaller tick of the clock, a smaller and less useful error of the time we make, one which can never be pointed out, so never be discussed.

The clock I want extends a digital display. I want to see the passage of every instant, not grasp at seconds as though life were not a wheel but merely the spokes. See the red numbers at your bedside: eleven fifty-seven... eleven fifty-eight... fifty-nine... one second, two, three...

Dust

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I looked into the mirror and found that the dust of time has softened the edges of old pains and blended the colors of old joys; as though every footstep were muffled somehow, walking through snow toward night, walking in the dust of an extinct volcano toward a summit. Everything had become quieter, from the head to the body to the heart; love had grown quieter, insisting less, and accepting less insistence. What once felt like threat now felt like old thunder, a storm that had swept the plains clean and rolled itself, complaint and all, toward the east. Where once there was the need for a father's blessing, remained the embrace of a father's presence.

The dust had settled in the eyes; I wiped them with my hands to clear them.

Will you marry, Charlotte?

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

A moment arrives and a moment passes, like water through your fingers. Beautiful water, touch a drop to your lips and your thirst is lessened, touch a drop to your eyes and they are cleared, touch a drop to your forehead and you are baptized, touch a drop to the soil and the root is nourished.

And from the electric arc of that instant, a trail of past streams out. Like the smoke from a sparkler spun through the air, or the heat from a flame that burns and consumes itself as it gives light... and words on a page, a trail of markings that leave the hand like a trail of history, every story, every written word a nod to a story that began and continues to be written with each passing moment...

A vida � uma dan�a

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0400

...atrás dos corpos e as mentes que nós vestimos, para ter algo tangível que podemos tocar...

We spend so much time tied up within our thoughts and our bodies, we think This is It, I am here to avoid as much discomfort as I can, here to do what this skin tells me to do, now eat, now copulate, now sleep, something unsatisfying here, got to uncover it, got to feed it, to fuck it, to put it to bed.

Ah.

The richness of a rainforest

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The beauty of other languages is that you can see... beyond the walls your own grammar has constructed. The mind finds easy passage in some avenues, where in English, say, or German or some other tongue, it had been constricted. Why consider the Earth an anarchy, a Babel? Were it not for the incomprehensible complexity of our language, we would reduce the richness of a rainforest to the flatness of the desert. The mind is master and the mind is also the creation, and our thoughts draft pathways that our spirit can walk, from early lessons to later experience.

What is it that he meant? What can she be saying, her sounds and her gestures, her body's movement, her silences?

Consuming Anger

Mark T Schultz — Fri, 9 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0400

We tell ourselves that what we experience in a moment's time, also passes in a moment's time. We step out into the street, for example, and while crossing a car ignores the red light, and you are nearly hit: whew! That was close. And now it is history.

That is a mistaken impression, however. We have trained our eyes on our next paces, or we laughingly pick up the thread of conversation from before our scare, and move on as though nothing had happened; but something has happened, and we engrave the events of our physical lives in the same way a tree writes rings into its body for every hard winter, or an animal writes scars into its flesh and into its spirit for the threats it has narrowly avoided.

Everything is consumed, the flavor sampled... and the essence of the food spreads throughout our bodies to the furthest cells. If we are not conscious of the memory, yet we remember.

This Life's Riches

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 6 Feb 2007 20:01:39 -0400

When the eyes are open, all of Creation is reduced to surfaces... imagine the poverty in a world of surfaces. As though all that an ocean offered us was its waves! As soon as the eyes open, the interiors begin to close, the interiors of everything that sight obscures from us, the interior of our selves as well.

What sustains

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 6 Jan 2007 15:37:56 -0400

Work is what sustains us -- work that we have chosen -- sustains us by bringing bread for the service we have provided, gives us purpose and, hopefully, a sense of satisfaction as the world turns on its axis, and whirls us into shadow of the Earth once again.

Todo amor � sagrado
e o fruto do trabalho
tamb�m � sagrado, meu amor

every love is sacred
and the fruit of your labor
is sacred as well, my friend

The fruit of your work you bring into your home, you offer to your partner and your children, to your friends. So choose well, that the fruit and its offering be sweet.

A flower the color of history

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 16:43:45 -0400

Every day should surrender a small jewel, something new and intriguing for the body or the mind. Every day does, unless you have been sleeping. I woke today to page 122 of the hardcover edition of Silk Road Cooking, by Najmieh Batmanglij:

Saffron
Long treasured as a medicine, perfume, dye, and seasoning, saffron consists of the golden stigmas of the autumn-flowering purple crocus, Crocus Sativus. It takes the stigmas of 75,000 blossoms -- an acre of flowers -- to produce one pound of the spice. These must be picked from the crocus by hand, making saffron, currently selling for about $55 an ounce, the most expensive spice in the world...

Did you know it was a crocus? I didn't....

Cultivation

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:03:21 -0400

You walk through your day dissatisfied; there is something missing, or something amiss. In the evening you are tired, but it is weariness of spirit, not a physical depletion. Your body has not been a channel for a day well lived, life flowing into and through you, now ready to be replenished; instead, your energy is bound within you, collected and unreleased. To a full vessel nothing may be added, so everything the world had to offer went untasted. Something is missing, or something amiss.

To allow the water to move, though: this is a skill that can be learned. You can cultivate this ability: you are a garden, and you are the gardener. A moment is a seed. Stop whatever it is you are doing -- it only takes a moment -- and plant the idea of plenty. Make a small hole in your earth, take a breath, and plant the seed, plant gratitude.

Sunset

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0400

You have to acknowledge the beauty of loss: it makes your smile more natural, your glance deeper, and your touch more compassionate. How many adults have been toughened to rigidity by the demands of a life, only to be snapped -- like that -- by some event that should have been expected.

It's too bad if you try, try, try to get ahead, try so hard that your body becomes stiff as a board, your kisses dry up, your lovemaking becomes the memory of a memory... Too bad, but no fear, the world won't forget about you: tomorrow or the next day it will give you a gentle nudge... then one that is slightly less gentle... then a real firm shove... and finally stick it's foot out and drop you in the middle of a step, what nerve!

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

I feel fortunate to be visited by deaths which are not quite Deaths; what great fortune, to be brought back to one's mortality -- the amazing strength and potential and ephemeral beauty of it -- before being asked to relinquish it. You meet a small death, and every color and sound and face and touch is so intensely alive then, for a while, as alive as it seemed to be dead the moment before.

Death is maligned because one doesn't visit nearly enough, we deck it out as a thief but it steals nothing, as the face of evil when it wears the same face as a birth... In fact it is our greatest teacher, it is your closest friend. Guará agradecido, na sua frente vou me dobrar. The friend who would tell you anything, would whisper secrets about your Self when you didn't want to hear them, and who had no personal stake in being greater or lesser than you, no stake at all... the friend who is at your side from the moment your first cell split into two. Your body is a graceful arc, an arrows flight into the sky then, aided by gravity, back to Earth.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

I didn't realize, when I titled this entry, that Emily Dickinson would be visiting; but I am grateful. How many people are willing to speak about loss? If you are afraid of loss, then you haven't lost enough. You need to lose until all that's left is you, whatever is left of you. You need to let go until you hold nothing, and then... gently as you can... take hold.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

Such small things can remind us. A friend feels fear, or pain, is angry with us, and the soft touch is lost, the innocence is lost. The hope that the touch remains forever, just as it is... lost. A fruit grows ripe and rots before you can eat it. A glance becomes a love becomes a glance becomes a dull ache. A toy breaks. A new generation creates a wave that drowns you. Your children grow old.

The earth turns away, and the day ends. And that day has ended, in a beautiful ocean of red, never to come again! Did you give it attention? Did you find your moment to taste it, sweet and ripening as it was? Red is the color of slowing, the waves of light are longer and quieter. Every living thing becomes silent, as though bowing their voices in prayer, with the passing of a single day. They could stop for Death, sweet Emily.

And so could you.

One Thing Sacred

Mark T Schultz — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 23:07:49 -0400

If you do not meet the sacred in yourself, you will not meet the sacred in anything; if you meet the sacred anywhere, even in the smallest thing, you will have found the sacred within yourself.

That is the first lesson, before all others. If you have not learned this lesson, reaching for another will reveal nothing of permanence, will move you further from the truth, and questions will be answered with questions.

Yet it is the simplest lesson to learn: Let go! Open your eyes! Open your arms! To feel pain doesn't mean that someone has harmed you; to feel joy doesn't mean that someone has caused you to dance.

Disorganized Sports

Mark T Schultz — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:23:25 -0400

As a driver, you choose where you are going (usually within the confines of paved roadways), when to get there (depending on traffic), and how stressed you wish to be over the process (all options available). But as a driver, your field of vision is drawn in: to a narrow strip of pavement ahead, to one or more sets of tail-lights, and to a small mirrored square of your traveled past.

As a passenger, you have the chance to give the world around you more attention. You get older, it is easy to become the driver, to get stuck doing the driving. It's good to be a passenger sometimes, prying your fingers from the wheel, to relax for a time, and to open your eyes.

This morning's bus ride from the North Shore to Boston gave me a whole hour to sit in half-lotus -- an opening and grounding posture I don't generally enjoy behind the wheel -- and time to watch and think. Traffic is quiet this morning: have people left for the weekend already? Has the drizzly weather and yesterday's horrific commute convinced them to take mass transit? Has the recent jump in fuel prices taught them a lesson in global commerce and middle-man profit margins?

Everything is part of everything else, so if you seed your mind with current affairs, and water the plant with some personal or planetary history, the smallest glance can lead you to a bigger picture.

Heliocentric

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0400

It is not the Sun that turns around us: the Sun doesn't come to shine down upon us. In fact, it is we who turn our faces toward the Sun.

An important distinction. The sun was not made for us. We were made, and the Sun exists.

From a birthright to a gift. From a spoiled child expecting plenty, to a child grateful for what is received, acknowledging that we are part of something Greater, we are not here to be served, but to participate.

Tomorrow when the sun rises, turn your face toward it, and remember that it is you who has awakened.

Technical Difficulties

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 -0400

It is interesting that, in a country whose infrastructure is far less consistently developed than that of our own digital nation, I had far greater success in posting thoughts and impressions to this journal than I do now that I am home.

Part of it is, of course, that the sheer volume of experiences, their water filling me to overflowing, demanded that some channeling be done and some sense be made of them; and I prefer to make sense in words. The ability to catch hold of a virtual mooring, whose anchor was just inland of the Plum Island Sound, also supported daily journaling.

But the greater reason is that I have simply encountered greater barriers to writing here than I encountered there. Submerged in the new, we seek to find solidity and something mundane; returned to the mundane, open time is shouldered aside by the currents and eddies of one's work and one's responsibilities, and the new and relevant seems to be an act of seeking a drop of water in that flow, looking for an individual drop in a full glass of water.

Not that the perfect angle of this morning light is not reflecting that drop; or the voice of my daughter insecure even in her insecurities "Sorry if my worrying kept you awake", a nuance of being to be seen and understood. A bird moving through the trees and his or her imagined song, the sweet tang of fresh squeezed orange juice, the memory of musician's songs filling the body -- those bits of magic all open the door of the unique and make each moment new again.

If you can remember they exist.

Other technical difficulties include the electronic form with which I write these entries. If I post a journal over the web and use a Mac -- which is generally a much better platform than PC Windows (a work of art, as Mac says: "The bottom of our computer looks better than the top of theirs...) -- there is a slight possibility that I will accidentally hit this key in conjunction with that key, which combined serve as to send me back one page, losing the entirety of my edits. My composure at having been slurped into an Indian bus heading the wrong direction was much better than my composure the moment I realized 30 minutes of creative writing had been erased. Twice in a row. That's something akin to the delightful work of trying to get pregnant... and having the test results come back empty.

Then there was the failure of my broadband link, which is akin to not having anyone to try and get pregnant with. What I desired was not available, and neither was time to find a functioning alternative -- yes, I am talking about internet cafes now -- in this little networked community of Newburyport. So I twiddled by mental thumbs, champed at a mental bit, and watched the inner workings, as that is all I could do.

My wires seem to be all hooked up again. The electric curves of raspberry canes are visible in the brush. A brisk breeze from the ocean has made every grass and leaf into a flag, waving the moment. The body of the Earth turns over in its sleep and opens one eye toward the sun. And in that blazing moment, a new day, with infinite possibility, begins.

Time to feed the rabbit.

Look, this beautiful dream.

Mark T Schultz — Sun, 3 Dec 2006 22:05:58 -0400

A counselor was speaking to a small gathering of people, those who had just recently been informed of a diagnosis of cancer. It was a mixed group, some were patients with treatable forms, others were less certain of the outcome, and a few were quite certain that the time left to them in this life was short -- the time to see the colors and feel the textures that the body had allowed, to taste the richness of foods or the salt of a lover's lips, the song of a flock of migrating birds who had perched in the trees outside the house, or the song of a soprano who had spent years perfecting her angels' art. That the morning's printed news, both good and bad, would be an echo far away, like voices in another tongue and another land, like voices whispering into the wind, and would no longer apply. That the endless daily striving after the endless daily goals was vanity, and that there was little time left to take part in that dance.

For a few, the chill that enters the air and removes the leaves and the flowers was in the heart, and in the bones; and the warmth that is in the fireplace and in the arms of a companion -- always fleeting -- was suddenly fleet, was running away as a red coal of sun runs before evening. The words left to be said would be left unsaid.

That something greater exists

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0400

I find in my readings that many of the experiences I have had, many of the thoughts to which I have been exposed -- to which I have exposed myself -- along my seeking path, have been spoken before. Some of them in ancient texts, whose context and imagery demand a certain patience and quiet of mind to embrace; others whose proponents are recent, almost contemporaries. These voices have of course fed many seekers and writers, and the most current theories and practices usually owe a great debt to a long lineage of similar travelers, each one standing on the well-lit path of someone who had spoken before.

If something sounds great, keep the speaker humble by reminding him (non-cited references usually from a him) or her that they are just the instrument, while the musician... the musician is the music itself.

Sri Aurobindo sought deeply and long, moved from political activism to an existential inquiry -- one which never divorced itself from the world in which we live and breath. His thoughts followed direct experience, an experience which inherently inhabits this body and this mind, and found that there was something beyond both. The idea that there is a greater life available, here for us now... the fact that someone has said: "You know, there is something more..." That can be your freedom. You can question yourself. You may let go of certainties that confine you to smaller ideals, and to shallower connections to others than what is truly possible. Here and now.

"It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind, and that consciousness is accessible to us, that we can know and enter into the ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live it.If we can get that, intellectual speculation and reasoning must fall necessarily into a very secondary place and even lose their reason for existence. Philosophy -- intellectual expression of the Truth may remain, but mainly as a means of expressing this greater discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mental terms to those who still live within the mental intelligence...

"... To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body .... this is the integral way to the Truth. It is this ... that we aim at in our yoga."

- Sri Aurobindo, The Integral Yoga: Letters

Undercurrent

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The external beauties and (as often as not) challenges are easy to write about, but the inner work is not. Still, I am rising at 5:30 for yoga, each day feeling stronger, more limber, and somehow "cleaner"; I am sitting when I can in meditation -- really delighting in being close to the ground, and considering removing some upright furniture from a couple of my rooms; and I am reading and writing along this well-lit path we have taken.

It is truly well-lit, with friendships made (some to continue I am sure) and acquaintance with a few spiritual guiding lights which are grander or broader than those I have been able to see from my cramped life in the States. An open window offers a breeze; an open door offers road to something new; an open sky, access to something far greater than anything we have done or will ever do.

Good to be away, for awhile. And soon, it will be good to be heading home, to incorpoate (most literally: "bring into the body") those gifts we have received in this remarkable, exasperating, dusty, elegant nation.

Fauna

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:46:47 +0500

This is the first time we have really been out of an urban area. With the exception of fields and trees and open skies seen through the window of a bus, our lodging has been in town, our destinations in towns or cities... all human, all urbane, and polished to the degree which things in India (or in tropical climates, I should say) are polished. So the falling water and the green of trees and movement of animals (!) has come as a pleasant and restorative change to our trajectory.

That not to say that nature is particularly peaceful. We have lowland and water outside of our room, apparently the breeding ground of the native Bleater Frog. This is not akin to the peepers we have in New England, or the peepers I recall from Indonesia, or the peepers of Brazil. No, the voice is somewhat rougher, more like an open-mouthed AH! AH! AH! An incessant AH! and no, there was not just one Shouter singing -- if it can be called singing -- last night, there were one-point-two million, all joining their delighted voices in a cacaphonic AH chorus, calling to prospective mates. Manny and I literally could not hear ourselves in conversation, finally giving up and putting ourselves to bed.

Not to say that we slept. AH! AH! AH!!!

Another favorite is the Insistent Bird. Nice tone to the call, it begins with a suggestion that it would like your attention - hoo-wit! ho-wit! with the pitch rising on the second syllable. But it doesn't appear content with your lack of reply, so it picks up the volume on the next call, and louder and louder until it is nearly shrieking at you. I can well imagine its eyes bugging out and little cheeks getting red and it leeeaning out on its perch shaking a furious foot at me.

Acquisition

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:27:56 +0500

Manny asked: "What do you wish to gain from this travel?"

I struggled for a moment to find an answer -- everywhere I looked inside of my heart I could find nothing that I wished to add to my life. How often do we fall into an old habit: the search for what is missing? When in fact, it is not something we hope to gain, but rather all that we hope to lose. All of the automatic and assumed attitudes, all of the activity, the movement without pause...

In my city we live with a fear of death. This fear is so great we stand with our backs to it, as though it did not exist, and cross our arms, and make ourselves so busy. Maybe if I am busy, Death will look at its watch and think, oh, I really couldn't bother him. Look how much he has to do.

This month I wish to live in the place between resting and sleep. Have you ever been there? You will know it when you have, it is like the park on Sunday morning, just when the sun is rising, and nothing before you except that sunrise. It is that place where you have fallen into your bed, yet your awareness hasn't yet been taken to the other side of sleep. All of the spinning thought slows down and down, the mind has surrendered its great efforts but not disappeared: a perfectly quiet emptiness into which anything could speak, or everything.

In stillness you discard the posing and the masks which, inadvertently, you had taken on.

Well. We have found ourselves on the doorstep of a master, and while the master is no longer among us, the wave that his life on earth created still washes the feet of the mountain he called his home. Amazing to sit in a hall of meditation where so many have come, from around the world, in pilgrimage. I am not a pilgrim, but a fortunate traveller. Tomorrow we climb the mountain, to the caves where Ramana Maharshi retreated in his inspection of the self.

Perhaps there is a grand view from the top...

Of Dollars and Drugs

Mark T Schultz — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 14:44:28 -0400

Typhoid 0.5cc IM. Tetanus 0.5cc IM. Hepatitis A 1cc IM. Polio 0.5cc IM. Mefloquine Hydrochloride 1/1 week.

When you travel from the United States to other areas of the world, you are strongly advised to renew your boosters: a couple of days of discomfort to stave off life-threatening or life-shorting diseases endemic to your destination. Mefloquine HCl is the latest in a long series of anti-malarial drugs, the evolution of which has closely followed evolution of the parasite itself, as it builds resistance to current treatments, rendering them useless. It has a number of potential side-effects, some of them rather nasty and potentially permanent, if you have a tendency toward the depressive or have struggled with psychological problems.

"Efforts to eradicate malaria by eliminating mosquitoes have been successful in some areas. Malaria was once common in the United States and southern Europe, but the draining of wetland breeding grounds and better sanitation, in conjunction with the monitoring and treatment of infected humans, eliminated it from affluent regions. In 2002, there were 1,059 cases of malaria reported in the US, including eight deaths. In five of those cases, the disease was contracted in the United States. Malaria was eliminated from the northern parts of the USA in the early twentieth century, and the use of the pesticide DDT eliminated it from the South by 1951. In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a major public health effort to eradicate malaria worldwide by selectively targeting mosquitoes in areas where malaria was rampant. However, these efforts have so far failed to eradicate malaria in many parts of the developing world - the problem is most prevalent in Africa." from Wikipedia: Malaria

An effective drug plus infrastructure plus education plus sanitation equates to a level of physical security most of us can't help but take for granted. That is a security which can, to some extent, be shared.

Is today Ecoday?

Mark T Schultz — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:49:06 -0400

If you haven't been amazed at least once today, you haven't been paying attention.

Meaning, there are so many mundane tasks begging this moment of your life, and the next and the next, that quite easily -- predictably, I would say -- an entire day slips along on that bubbling and familiar current, sunrise to its setting, and nothing remarkable seems to have come of it. Yes: the employee or employer or colleague at work who never fails to get under your skin. Or: the story about someone that someone you know knows, who won some money, lost some money, recovered or lost health. All of it swirls along the surface, most comfortably, as one day becomes the next, the wheel of a month becomes the wheel of a year...

But you really should have stopped to look at that flower -- no, not the flower itself: you should have stopped to look at one petal of the flower. No, still not amazing enough. Look at the veins in the petal of the flower, how they somehow, incredibly, draw water up from the soil, and open their palms to the light of the sun, and become a fragrance. There's no need for there to be a fragrance; there's no need for us to find pleasure when we smell it. Yet there it is, and there you are. Did you notice a flower today? Did someone give you one?

Thought not.

Here's how to make the world stop spinning, and to start noticing things again. Sounds challenging, and more than a little fun, if you get into the sport of it, if you let yourself become a child again, where everything is possible, and every moment is learning. The intentional community we have been creating on the north shore of Massachusetts, Odonata, has education as one of its reasons for being. Education for ourselves and, in the process, the education of anyone else who wishes to drop in on one of our events, where we invite area experts to broaden our knowledge of the world. Last Sunday we heard from Tullio Inglese, a green architect from the Amherst area, who has spent a good part of his professional career building houses that get much of their heat and cooling from the earth itself, much of their electricity from the sun, much of their insulation from natural fibers or products... in short, using the smallest amount of energy possible, given the strength of current technologies and the wisdom of ancient ones.

Tullio, you see, was raised in a small farming community in Italy -- he is not a product of the industrial fever which has taken our country, but one where people lived with a very clear knowledge of the value of energy. The communities were small, easy to heat, simple to share, and surrounded by arable land. Tullio said: "Houses should never be built on land which could be used to produce food!" When you think about it, at all... of course they shouldn't.

Home in the body

Mark T Schultz — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:36:37 -0400

One aspect of travel I greatly enjoy is the rush of colors and smells and sounds, the intense (and sometimes forced) awakening of what may have become complacent senses. The teaching of Buddhist tantra is a realization that you are not an isolated chuck of matter, not part of a duality (you vs everything else), but in fact an integral part of the world around you, both seen and unseen.

Ornately-painted box

Mark T Schultz — Thu, 5 Oct 2006 23:06:54 -0400

Early yogic and other Asian traditions gave great attention to inner space. It was the science of that day, and like the science of any other day, it was a human attempt to understand the nature of existence, employing the clearest and most powerful tools available.