A.M. Inquestionary

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends, this is not a poem although it tried to make itself into one in the beginning...

No comprende mucho nada.

“Don’t confront the opposed.”

Sun-Sue Q, “sidestep the sideswipe.”

Sideswipes, the sweated brow yowl,

The crinkled brows,

In study after yike. Yike®Rreeerr.

Who cares?

Now’s where some cool, Rumi rules kinda poem would be inserted.

Not today. Not now today, anyway.

What I want to say has to be said as the straight-man, in straight

talk without metaphor or rhyme or all the bs I can boggle on about.

The poet takes the back seat, and listens…

Like this, I don’t know what to say, how to begin. I want to stop

right here and shut up. Signs from the head sprout up, like “Fool! No

one gives a flying fig about your ramble-babble.” “You’re an idiot, a

whiner, a weakling, an embarrassment to your kind! (my ‘kind’ being

nondualers)”

But I’m not going to listen to that voice. Choiceless choosing.

This is about pain. This is about pain and how it can affect a body

and a mind and a me, Mazie. Strange things come up when one is in

bitter, relentless pain. Finding myself unable to break any cyclic

thinking that was grounding out through this body, grinding me to

distraction, a sense of that same old exhaustion came over me. Not

just the physical exhaustion, and it is exhausting to endure pain

without let-up, but the emotional exhaustion, the mental tiredness of

all of it, all the pain, this wasting disease, this need to write

about it and find some light and truth in it, to find meaning in the

meaningless.

There is weariness. I asked myself, “Ah, what point? What use and why

do you remain here in this body, Mazie? Why can you not somehow find

that something that would end all this body-insanity, this brutality

hoisted upon this body and this mind?” Then I answered back about the

many times I could have just stayed home and died of from one of the

many infections. Why did I not do that? The death does not bring

fear. Why stay then? There seems to be a part of me that wants to

hang in there, to remain, but I think that part also holds out some

crazy hope that this disease will depart, this pain will end before I

do leave this mortal coil.

Part of this early A.M. inquiry was spent in trying to figure out a

way to ask a friend how or what, or something, something asked that

might be a key, a flash that would give me something I lacked, a

seeing I cannot see in, something, anything that would help, that

would help me help myself. This preference that I so long have been

denying, a preference for a pain-free body, a life without doctors

and drugs and horror-experiences wild with freakshow attitude, it

wanted to find a way to ask my friend for the out, the in, the

whatever that would allow me to let go, to hang on, to do something

or stop doing something…something!

I put together a dozen pieces in my head of ways to say and ask this

thing. But now, none of them are what I want to say or ask. How can

ask what I know they cannot answer. With no answer that can ever be

forthcoming to help, to relieve, would it then, I ask myself, be the

final moment when you actually let out the safety scream that has

always been the ace in the hole, the last hold-out, the last place of

safety of being able to take it? This safety-scream is something that

came to me when my father was dying and I was with him 24-7, nearly

entirely for the two weeks he was dying and comatose. I was also very

ill and in great pain physically at this time. I thought if I could

just always have that last frontier of a scream that I held in, then

I would always be able to take it, to take anything that life could

give me, even death, the deaths of those whom I loved.

I have no idea what it is I want to say now. I’ve been thinking of Bob

and Vicki W and Dan B as I write this. I sit here with them sitting

between me, and between the four of us, there is a bond that has no

name. The pain becomes bearable again. I don’t know why. I don’t know

why it is that the Woodyards and Dan are the focus of my four-squared

thinking.

I’ve made no point. I’ve understood nothing more nor have I ended the

conflict. But there is a peace and a calm, abiding happiness that has

no reason nor unreason. Having heard and understood much of advaita,

having the chance to share with wonderful friends and acquaintances

in the thing we call advaita, when these times do become nearly

intolerable, nearly beyond my ability or inability to endure, the

exchanges I have with Vicki, with Dan, with all the friends mentioned

and not mentioned who help me along each day, it sustains somehow and

the row with myself about the pain, diminishes. This is where I end

this complaint and praise. Somehow, in some way, this talking and

writing about this has been a help. I don’t know why, but it is so. I

don’t know why this arthritis, don’t know why these other new diseases

wanting to cash-in…

I just know that I’m grateful for friends.

Vicki: Today I sat down and cried because Bob is so sick and I am so

tired. The words from my daily shipment from the Funny Farm are:

exasperation, transcontinental and institutional. Putting my words in

a straight jacket will make them soundlike everyone else's--proper,

suffocating and pimple-squeezing.Some of you who know me from my

writing know that there is always a grain of salt in my writing and

sometimes too much heat. That is how I am in real life, too. I am a

hologram of insanity and nerve, like most of us. I do not like to be

watered down but swallowed neat, even if my words make you

cough.Lately, my life sucks. Bob has the gout today and I am having

an emotional breakdown caused by too much cancer and not enough of

everything else. I plead burnout, fatigue and frustration. In the

name of everything good, nds, don't make me conform. I get enough of

that in the chemo room. The very air Ibreathe seems to be suffering

in there. At nds, I let my hair down and let `er rip.Jerry, I know

you have told me that I am welcome to post here without restraint. I

thank you for that; the men in the white coats and the butterfly net

may be out to get me, but you are not.Tired but never

listless,Vickihttp://www.bobwoodyard.com

dan: it's not a crucial cleaning. So, maybe you're wrong.it's a

dissolution of what never actually took place,but in which investment

is being made as if it couldbe continued. The attempt to maintain what

has nosubstance in the first place -- the me, the group ofme's, the

nationality of me under the supreme me-leader,the killings,

manipulations, deceits that evolve.all of that isn't cleaned. it is

seen through.and how will one see through, when one is busy buying

into it,investing in it? one loses one's investment, or one triesto

continue. that may sound dualistic to you -- butthen again, it's the

height of dualism to suggest thatthings that are dualistic are

problematic, and things thatare not dualistic are beneficial."

 

LoveAlways,

Mazie Learn how to choose, serve, and enjoy wine at Wine @ MSN.