ALERT STILLNESS

[Continuing] 

The present one

Fear of the unknown, does it not at times stir us to deny the unknown…? Plato said, avoid the pretense of wisdom [of knowing.]

A God we already know much about, is a God we do not necessarily need to have with us. The present one is unnecessary, unwelcomed by the wise.

[Note from The Spiral-Bound notebook]

Whatever he thought, it was. Out on the quiet waters, surrounded by morning mist, he entered it as prayer.

Being was effortless, no news to anyone. In through the nose it comes with life, and if not – no life, no thought or anything thinkable. Even unthinkable.

Anyone present, maybe watching from the shoreline or flying overhead, would see him at intervals paddling the kayak, then letting it glide for long stretches at a time while he sat perfectly still, hands on his lap, his eyes closed.

Clouds of thoughts and thoughts of clouds stir through the air. They are strewn, they are swollen and gray at times, they cry their tears for only a moment making their spring drip drop first on the dock, then upon all the surface of the waters.

You might extend yourself and reach to enter and know the sense of its reality from within your own blood and bones and hands and feet.

So you would wait and breathe more allowing the current to take the craft with you inside it right along on the breezes, counting ripples on the water, readjusting your Cabelas fishing cap.

There in your place you first dreamt of only now you rest.

You give yourself completely to the presence of the Cardinals chasing one another through the treetops. You gaze and breathe, your heart lying open to the source, Love Alive, the fountain of life and you only know this through your senses in glimpses; a glimmering patchwork of light through the trees at the surface here or their, the hawk spun sunward through the dune grass, and yes, the lawnmower, the faintest trace of a semi hollering down the interstate a good 20 miles away.

You give yourself to the knowing of the present one; gazing, breathing, as would a lover between kisses.

You practice alert stillness. Presence to presence. The world is alive. You are alive within it.

You see yourself already speaking to a group about communion… Not thinking about it…

Experiencing it as fully as you are able as an embodied creature.

The animal breathes beneath their naval… utterly without thought… and stays and stays… and who is the most brilliant? The one who creates the sensual doorways into the ineffable reverberations of creaturely ecstasy or the one who provides so abundantly that which craves and is inherently so needful of being known, seen, smelled, touched and tasted?

A scattering of sparrows giggle from brush to brush at the waters edge.

Let there be a garden.

Looking deeply into every aspect of life, the world around us becomes an apparent Eden.

You touch the water and bring it to your lips.

A bright glare of Golden feather shoots out from a stand of dead red pine across the lake.

You search with your binoculars the far shoreline and set a goal for yourself and get paddling toward it. The cold air surges through your lungs and as your heart rate thumps harder you can feel the surge of power promised by the purveyors of prednisone and your old friend Anthony. You press yourself forward to paddle even a little faster and the energy is feeling fantastic. You feel an occasional splash on your forearms and face.

Maybe an Eagles nest, let’s find out.

As you reach the midway point of this fairly large lake there is a sense of smallness to your being that suddenly grips your abdominals with an uncomfortable twist of fear. The waters beneath you must be so deep and so cold.

The wind blows and the chop is becoming noticeably higher. And there are things you know and remember very suddenly.

I still have to get all the way back. Am I shifting to the left from all of this paddling with gusto? I think I'm shifting.

This is not the place to tip over.

LOST MATERIAL

(Continued)

It killed him. It just absolutely killed him. He couldn't even sleep he was so angry.

The discovery happened after he returned from his time away for those few days. It's what unfolded and how things went throughout the weekend that held the key, he now believed, for solving the great mystery.

Upon arriving home he opened the apartment door, put some bags down on the floor and through his keys down onto the end table.

Zoe was already disappearing into the far reaches and becoming reoriented to the home space. From Jerry's all the way home she had much to say about what it's like to try to have a retreat in close proximity to an uncivilized potbellied pig.

Yes Zoe, I hear you but please…

What on earth had happened to those pages!? It was absolutely ridiculous.

The pages were gone. Completely missing. Not a shred or trailing chad or crinkled tear in evidence after they had clearly been torn directly and completely free from the steel spiral binding. But by who? And when?

Shortly after settling in to the apartment that night, simply at random, flipping back in the spiral notebook had revealed the clear and present absence of a handful of pages precisely where he knew he had written at length of a specific experience, a story that had come to life in the midst of his epiphanal adventure that night upon first unveiling the Poppy. The visions, the dreams in red unfurling ornately all around him, how they felt so revelatory, these spiritual encounters that had poured forth such an ineffable loving lifeblood, filling him with such profound divine turbulence and passion and beauty.  

Somehow it had come out of him, yet he did not know how.

Right now, however, it was a certainty.

One of them. One very specific and dear to his heart was gone.

Locating the missing piece could only happen by reassembling the events of the few previous days. They had been good ones, indeed.

As he had planned, he would spend the first night out on his own. He needed the solitude and would look forward to recharging before having to "show up" as fully as he could for his old friend, the artist who had given him the photograph of the Poppy.

Her invitation, though it still seemed out of the blue and perhaps mildly fraught with possible tensions, was something he had accepted. So after a day to himself he would make his way over and spend time catching up with her and hiking the deep wilds of the pristine forests shouldering the western slopes of the Kitaroo range, an edenic environment she was lucky enough to call home.

But for the first night out he had booked a room at Shender 's fishing lodge just outside of Beaumont and pulled the Subaru Forrester into the gravel parking lot there just after midnight.

As Martha, the camp host, had mentioned on the phone, his key could be found in a small box just outside the door and he could feel free to let himself in at any time as the front desk and restaurant closed at 10. Breakfast was served from 6 to 9 and included a full buffet and an unending stack of hotcakes no matter what else you liked best.

At the cashiers register they sold Shender's T-shirts and blueberry syrup and hats, some limited fishing tackle, night crawlers, bug spray and essential canned goods and milk by the court from the dairy down the street.

He didn't want to leave the breakfast table as he sat there for a long while simply enjoying his coffee, watching some of the other folks walk through the entryway to discover the stuffed bear above the broad fireplace where hickory smoke lingered blithely into the room giving the whole sun shone space a spirit of welcome. The image he sketched into his notebook was entitled MORNING BLESSING.  As he finished the quick sketch, he smiled and craved an outside cigarette to complete the worship.

The air was crisp on the water.

It took only a few moments to breathe deeply and find his center and fall softly into conscious embodiment, an indwelling right there in his own warm skin and bones, inside one of the finest kayaks he'd ever rented in his life.

The ducks were flying free above him. He thought for sure they knew it as he pushed away with a crisp clatter of his paddle. A bright yellow fin of light sharply prattling at the edges of the cold and burbling waters of Fall Lake.

And then, amidst late morning fog… the loons.

The silence.

Kayak

 (Continuing)

Right here and now. Your life lovingly gazes back at you in circumstances here in the present.

Do You breathe? I love you for that. I am present as you read this, writing the words, loving you.

[These from the Spiral Notebook, poppy notes]

He needed to pick up his prescription of a low dose of prednisone his doctor had prescribed to knock out a sinus infection that had been pestering him for months now. It was the first time ever he would use any steroids and Anthony had warned him already with a smile. Get ready to feel – animal, my friend – pure primitive human, ready for survivor in the forest, your gonna feel like a wild chimpanzee, you wait and see.

He stopped at the bank, got gas and then grabbed a double bacon cheeseburger at Wendy's feeling strange about the girl working there, handing him his change. She had curly red hair and she also had a red bulbous nose that she kept scratching with her bare hands and then she turned around and reached out to give him the sack of cheeseburger, french fries and large root beer. 

No mask. Wet nose. What the, what?

Just on the highway and down the road 20 or so miles it was nothing but unending meows and whimpering and moody questions from Zoe about when we were going to return and it all accumulated there in the Subaru Forrester.

The sleek maroon vehicle had a sunroof, tinted windows and four-wheel-drive, luggage rack and all weather ready tires. It had suede seats and leather throughout the entire of its interior. This rental special included the highest quality sound system on the market, the Kenwood DMX 99 fully loaded with a JL audio C2-650 X evolution series sound system that thumped your belly and rattled the seats. Every day while walking or biking his paper route he would look in the windows of this one in particular. Now he was driving it, smelling it, tasting its leather, loving its gusto straight out of town and on the tail of liberty's angel.

He sang as he drove, From the Land of Sky-Blue Waters….

So with so much to enjoy, he certainly wasn't going to waste his energy trying to counsel Zoe into a better space, no instead he would go to his friend Jerry's and drop Zoe off for the extended trip and she would be fine when he got back. What's more, Jerry already had a Newfoundland, a golden retriever, two cats and a potbellied pig so it was already quite a cozy place for furbearing folks. Zoe also packed appropriately, so she brought some of her favorite books with her and some familiar snacks so he wasn't concerned in the slightest. It will be a retreat.

He allowed himself a fresh pack of Marlboro lights for the first time in a long while, tested out the muscles on the evolution sound system and got a feel for the skin of the asphalt surface of Highway 402. Out on the open roadway as dusk gave way to starlight alone he tested the engine between 90 and 100 and enjoyed the weightless flight over the undulating hills and due north through the farmlands of Soderbergh County Ohio. His first leg of the journey would bring him to Beaumont in about two and half hours.

Bob Seeger played on the Kenwood as he snacked on vanilla Coke and mustard pretzel knots. He sucked the salty mustard dust off his fingers.

Soon he would sit with loons. Soon he would be kayaking upon a glassy lake.

AIN'T IT FUNNY HOW THE NIGHT MOVES?

Why not stay here?

(Continuing)

The day was drawn forward by gusty breezes heaving from the south, warm and dusty at the graveled edges of roads that lead straight out of town with three or four days off, depending on how serious he wanted to be about the road trip.

In the mind that he was given he drove a Jeep, he saddled a horse and rode out with his cat securely fastened and sedated for the journey. Zoe had asked for some kind of compensatory meal or at least some added comforts for the journey and he was more than willing to agree.

More truly he drove, now, a Subaru Forrester that he had rented from the parking lot three doors down the street from his building. He'd seen the rental advertisements so frequently and knew at some point he was going to have to get the work done on the Honda. This was the time to do it, so off they went with Zoe in her little car carrier after much squealing and significant threats. Actually, he left the carrier open the entire time and after some initial freak out sessions, she took comfort by nestling into a corner of the carrier and falling asleep to the vibrations of the engine as they radiated through the floor.

Of course his last full work day with both jobs was a bear.

Pauline O'Sullivan wanted to know where the hell her damn newspaper was – I ask you! Do you see it? I don't see it…?

Am I seeing something under your garbage can? Yep, right there… Sure enough, you have a good one, now.

Alan was back with a joke he completely blew after five minutes of the poor drivers life he would never get back with the lengthy introduction and eighteen parts of a four sectioned sequel of who the hell knows what – but when Alan finally said goodbye the man was reminded he'd definitely forgotten his antacid.

I had, he thought, a cup and half extra of coffee after trying to wave off Anthony who was walking around with a fresh brewed pot of French roast. Why do I do it to myself?

The night of the arrival of the Poppy to his apartment, the gift from an old art friend he didn't quite get to see in person, now seemed like ages ago. It was strange then to receive a text from that very person, a message which, in essence, was sent to thank him for the thank you.

How long is this going to go on, he wondered.

In fact, as he threw his last bag into the Subaru and turned the key he was almost in disbelief that he would be at her cabin the day after next. Why on earth would I ever agree to that?

BLUEBIRD SKY

 (Continuing – from February 19 posting – EXERCISE: START HERE)

Places without people are good for the mind. ~Anonymous

He had read this quote while clicking around online among various artists blogs while listening to Steely Dan. He had never heard people put cords together like they did. The song PEG was in his head all day long.

The sun came out and the weather was okay so he sat outside to receive the fresh air and to admire the birds. Bluebirds were arriving, bright blue flashes straight across the park where he sat in his jean jacket and aviators. He wore his hair straight back.

They shot like angels out from among the shadows of shrubs near the front of the building where the brick cooked warm in the afternoon sun. The shade of blue was so like the sky all around them, it gave the appearance they were being sewn in and out of the sky, puncturing it in waves and deep swoons only to be plucked out into disappearance, into sheer azure oneness with all of the surrounding pages of sky.

Anthony Reginald Silvestori grew up in his mother's Italian kitchen, he knew early mornings and hard work and lots of cleaning around the kitchen. He also knew how to make pizza crust and tiramisu and some of the finest calzone you could find in the US. And he would finish that with a few taps of cinnamon on a cappuccino you would come back from Cuba for.

These days he was trying to contour a more open, more socially aware, globally minded Italian bakery with not a hint of machismo, tough guy criminality, whether organized or no. That would be nowhere near the sauce, the rolls, the meatballs, cheese or with the wine!

Most of all Anthony Silvestori was an incredible host and so he certainly started to recognize the presence of our agent in place at his station, sketching away again today almost as a way to take his vacation without taking any vacation.

As long he was sketching the boat where the man was fishing, testing out different kinds of lures, drinking a beer and listening to the ballgame; as often as he was setting up a tent or building a camp fire or gathering wood from the forest or climbing a wall of rocks with a friend or Hammocking with Charlotte Hathaway from middle school at age 12 or scuba diving to put together an underwater photo shoot for National Geographic… Well, you see what I mean…

When the Journal rejected his essay what he heard them hollering back to him deep down was this:

You had your run at defining THE REAL TRUTH. We just simply find it way too far to go for the church… We invite for you, with love in our hearts, a return to the basics. Yes, the doctrine of sin is exactly where you need to be for a while, a little while longer it seems to us. Again, we say this with love in our hearts.

We encourage you to continue discerning God's best for your ministries. It is so important to understand GRACE, as you know the church remains committed to the sovereignty of God, the sexuality of Adam and Eve, the authority of Scripture,… Yada yada, and we would ask for your trust and humble recommitment.

A good part of this was of course much removed from their true position. He had not read the letter carefully. It was mostly about the poor timing of course. But also, some of this was true… Everybody knew that. It's just that nobody ever really came out and said so. He would continue to think about writing back or positing a better time or restructuring for the essay. But for now he would let it go.

It was a lucrative day with Uber but he was feeling tired and happy to be home to unwind.

Goodness, how could a whole week have gone by already?

Listen to this one Zoe, Can magic mushrooms Heal Us? And how do you pronounce: Psilocycbin.

He looked over an editorial in the times. His head rested on one arm of the leather chair and his legs over the other.

After trying mushrooms the author of the article says, I became more legible to myself. What do you imagine that means, Zoe?

Did I tell you Anthony gave me a free cup of coffee today?

He's pretty nice. He went on and on:

One of our faithful, right here – ladies and gentlemen! Let's give it up, for the writer man!

When I was a kid I always wished I had more Italian friends.

Green

 [Continued from February 19 post, EXERCISE: START HERE]

Hey were you at the Third Avenue Art Supply yesterday by any chance?

Alan had hardly shut the door of the Honda and sat down with his Hazelnut coffee, as usual on the brink of spilling all over the beige leather seats that the man was quite proud of having, finally.

Who me?

Yeah, I had this weird thing where I thought I saw you but it was after we bumped into each other. I tried to track you down but somehow you seemed to have disappeared.

Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned –

Sacrifice, surrender… The words he was trying to memorize were getting all mixed up and what it amounted to was a full on collision between the loving person he desired to be and Alan Nicklebine, an individual who contained multitudes [thank you Walt Whitman… But]… of inane observations, lengthy circuitous stories and an average of 15 to 20 questions per mile in the car. Each ride it came time to drop him off usually ended with –

Well, I guess I have to finish that one later… Peace out and see you next time?

Okay sounds good, thanks Alan.

Early on the man seemed nice enough. It's just that there was no end to anything he ever said. Everything he mentioned made him think of something else, and "come to think of it" reminded him of something that he wanted to make sure and tell his favorite Uber driver about before he forgot. But he was a good tipper and life was short and who knows, even an irritating Sox fan might still have something good to offer from time to time.

The clouds drew themselves over the city for several days and throughout the monotony of gray one could almost sense a weariness accumulating on everyone toward midweek.

At his station near the window he sat sketching in a new pad he purchased at the Third Avenue. He was dying for a cigarette but refused to ask the man a few chairs down for a light. Technically the restaurant was supposed to be no smoking, but so many still enjoyed it that it became sort of an understood thing in town that if you wanted to smoke and drink coffee all day, eat astonishing bakery and people watch, you were at the right place. ANTHONY'S had become an extension of his living space. Seated there by the window was the grand parade that would never disappoint.

Today was no different. His favorite, a marching band from the Catholic High School waving their flags for Ireland. Today was their day: St. Patrick's! Another group from the art school were dancers all body painted green, slender and tall and small and in constant fluid motion, with music bouncing off the coffee shop windows back onto them, tossing them about in a syncopated dance… It reminded him of HAIR from back in the 70s.

He sketched out feet and legs, put a sofa underneath and around the subject, added a lamp… A Burmese cat.

The cool jazz that was playing behind him, turning the air around the swirls of cigarette smoke led him into the sketch even more deeply. He lost a good two and half hours right there and then.

Supply

 (Continuing – from February 19 posting – EXERCISE: START HERE)

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. ~Dorothea Lange

The Poppy photograph, so well framed and square and hung plum as God's own first horizon, rested silently on the wall beyond its veil.

The night was an amalgam of dreams about horses and bonfires and not being able to find a raincoat and he suffered a fitful stirring and not too few wretched trips to the toilet and Zoe complaining about the bathroom light at 4 AM.

Down to the nub of a pencil, he wrote in the spiral notebook and he did remember scratching down this quote just before falling off for a few decent and restorative hours of sleep.

If we've never experienced human love to the point of

sacrifice, surrender, forgiveness, generosity… it will be

very hard for us to access, imagine or even experience

God's kind of love. Conversely, if we have never let God

love us in the deep and subtle ways that God does,

we will not know how to love another human in the deepest

ways of which we are capable. ~Father Richard Rohr

In the morning he took himself to an art supply store with no plan and nothing to think about creating or constructing, just the hunger he woke with to have a free day and go get some stuff to play with. He walked like a prayer up and down the halls of Third Avenue Art Supply whistling Last Dance with Mary Jane wishing he would have had a chance to see Tom Petty before he croaked. It would've been an amazing concert.

He and Perkins should've gone and sat five or six rows back like they did for The Stones at Alpine Valley.

The apartment was a two bedroom and so one room was just for his artwork and to do yoga or take a nap and center down in a different space to keep from feeling cooped up, especially during the winter months. It was real simple, Fenshwe. He had an easel and a worktable for assembling sculpture or clay models, doing mixed media with found objects anywhere from driftwood to candy wrappers.

Sleeping in and making an omelette and strolling the aisles of the Third Avenue Art Supply took absolutely no energy or stress. He played with word puzzles, memorizing lines from the morning's meditations… Letting everything flow as integrated… Taking that sacred stroll, skating along on all four wheels of his cart.

Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned –

Sidewalk chalk half off for a huge bucket, yes please. Thank you, yes.

even, and especially, when things go wrong.

Love allows and accommodates everything in

Pastels, pastels… Charcoal, pencils… The last sketch in his spiral-bound notebook was of the teepee and he was remembering now his desire to do some more sketching and then work from there toward characterization in the pros. Along with music he was a refiner of many and various casseroles and orchestral perfections as one would add wine to a sturdy bohemian meal.

human experience, both the good and the bad, and

nothing else can really do this. Nothing. ~Father Richard Rohr

Just then he saw it. Yep, no question about it, Alan, one of his most popular Uber riders, the one who would talk your ear straight off for half an hour before taking a breath, wore a large Sox hat, one of the throwback kind from the 70s and he saw it flashed before his eyes before he could stop and turn the other way.

Still, by some small miracle Alan had not connected and did not recognize who he was as yet, so he quickly turned around and poked his nose into a magazine and slowly walked away.

By some small grace the magazine he chose was filled with the photography of Dorothea Lange. All the shades of gray and sorrow and solidarity she captured… She was working with charcoal and doing sketching in a very different way… The camera, she said, is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

The air in town had snapped back nearly to frozen after the rains came, there were flurries in the air.

Later in the day, in the leather chair with Zoe, he thought about writing a letter to the editorial staff of the Journal.

Having slept in so late he was up again until nearly midnight even though the early route was looming. Oh well, Sundays are sweet and too soon passing.