Father's Day 2007 (Personal Essay)

(My father's day tribute such as it is)

My ex wife is in Fairfax Hospital ICU and I am staying nearby at an extended stay with our dogs. We had sold our home a few weeks earlier and my wife had had a bad reaction to a surgery requiring her to have a pic-line placed into her to get nutrients since she had not been able to eat for over a month two months by that time. The pic-line had become infected requiring finally first tier antibiotics in an effort to keep this infection from reaching her heart so it had become a true life and death situation. While she was having a lengthy procedure, I had slipped over to the room to let the dogs out and take a shower. I was writing a quick note in my journal in the tiny hotel kitchen just before getting in the shower.

At this time I was still hearing voices after a high dose Psilocybin Mushroom experience back on February 25th. (The “voices” in the form of clearly alien train of thought within my own mind rather than an auditory hallucination, ended a few weeks later on July 12th 2007 at 6:12PM EST and since this has been the most significant event of my life and was a powerfully healing, transformational and positive experience, I do not forget these dates) The voice (or voices was never clear of any sex or whether or not – they – were singular or plural) often responded to some thought of my own and seemed to be training me among other things to love and support myself and knocking out most of my lifelong negative self talk during this four and a half month long period of time. As I finished making a quick note intending to jump in the shower and head back over to the hospital, my thought as usual on Father's Day came to me, “O well I never had a father and don't have any children” just rather a random, stray thought in my head. This voice in my head “responded”, “that is not true, David, you had a daughter named Dakota” in it's typical clipped, neutral “tone” as it were. (I should note here that I was not on these mushrooms at this time and this voice phenomenon was continuing regardless)

At this I felt myself going numb from the feet upwards sitting on a bar stool with this powerful numbness inching up my body, filling my legs and up through my torso and up into my chest and when it hit my chest, I thought that I was dying as it continued upward consuming my entire body finally. I slipped down off the chair as if melting landing on the hard, linoleum floor sobbing long, wracking, heaving sobs feeling it seemed all of the pain of my own failings, selfishness, fear, despair and this felt unbearable to me. I felt like I could not breath and feeling panic rolled onto my side onto the floor when the voice spoke again, calmly, deliberately, “get on your knees” it said. I did so and felt intuitively that I knew where the voice was going and assumed a position kneeling with my hands in front of me in full supplication I began slamming my fists against the floor sobbing still uncontrollably thinking, “please take this from me I can't stand this please” knowing (somehow?) that I was asking the earth itself to absorb this pain and resolve me of it when the voices again spoke saying, “not your fists, David, your open palms against the ground and touch your forehead as well”. I immediately obeyed still feeling as if I were not able to catch a breath my body wracked with this unbearable pain feeling as if I might pass out. When I placed the palms of my hands against the cool floor and touched my forehead to the floor as well, I felt a powerful electric shock where my forehead touched that snapped by head up and back from the floor so that I found myself in a daze a second later leaning back against the kitchen cabinet with the unbearable pain totally gone just feeling empty and spent still sobbing but able to catch my breath again so gulping air.

I sat for five or ten minutes then slowly calming down wondering what in the hell had just happened to me and wondering not for the first time in the last four months if I were going insane. I had forgotten about Dakota because I wanted to put this out of my mind. I had had an affair during our twenty five long very difficult marriage with a woman who I now realize that I did not fall in love with exactly because she was emotionally available to me and a very loving, compassionate and supportive woman. She had become pregnant with my child and I was going to marry her because I had always told myself that I would not allow my child to be fatherless as I had been. But then she had a miscarriage and I dropped her like a hot potato. Probably the worst thing I've ever done all around this whole affair and no wonder I had put it out of my mind. She later told me that she was going to name our baby, a girl, Dakota.

As terrifying and painful as this was, it was profoundly healing of me. It occurred to me only a few years later on another Father's Day, that this voice, the entity, whatever it was cohabitating my mind then, was perhaps in some metaphysical manner the father I never had and like a wise, loving father, it was capable of “tough love” I discovered that Father's Day.

Just Bring It

To what is barren, bring life.
To what is sick, bring healing. 
To what is sad, bring consolation.
To what is unknown, bring awareness.
To what is unforgiving, bring compassion.
To what is inchoate, bring full on manifestation.

Surrender - a poem become an incantation

“I surrender to you, Love” 
I have to say it out loud
It is not easy to do but I do
“I surrender to you, Love”
Over and over and over
“I surrender to you, Love”
I understand this is a mantra

breathing in, breathing out

I feel resistance as I speak it
My skin insisting that I am
A separate, physical thing
“I surrender to you, Love”
And I begin to remember
“I surrender to you, Love”
My skin begins to surrender

breathing in, breathing out

As I speak this out loud now
“I surrender to you, Love”
I see an army assembled
Too many to possibly count
An army all dressed in white
At the head of the assembly
The King all dressed in white
White flags hang from staffs

breathing in, breathing out

“I surrender to you, Love”
Says the King, kneeling down
He offers up the sword to Love
Across the palm of his hands
And as he lays his sword to rest
Upon these fields of battle
Finally down on its quiet side
All the soldiers do so at once
The King, an army head bowed

breathing in, breathing out

An army on their knees now
In full surrender to you , Love
A bright sun glances off the blades
Illumining hard yet reverent faces
The King sheds one single tear
Glistening in the noon day sun
This skin of mine acquiesces
As all resistance comes to ease
Surrendering to you, Love

breathing in, breathing out

To Summer Solstice Moon - prose poem

I want to say something but I don't know what exactly. It's the pain that follows like a shadow. It's that long night of the soul that never seems to end in dawn's relief. It's everywhere and nowhere. It's so close yet so far away. Loneliness. Sadness. Faceless fear. Pointless vigil. Inscrutable yearning. Unrequited love. Worst of all perhaps, a foreboding permeating the air like some doom breathing on the back of my neck sending chills up my spine. If doom itself were to kiss me softly, I would not be startled now.

I have no map of these strange lands. I am a bastard to the past and no pilgrim to the future. I only follow my heart blindly because it is strongest part of me and because it is the only part of me left that seems to have the slightest clue as to what the hell I am doing here.

DNA & The Cosmic Serpent

Why not say it out right sure DNA entwined looks like two snakes fucking
Snakes fucking O wow what the hell kind of building block is that?
DNA read left to right just as you read this left to right whoever you are, you full on goddamn miracle reading a full on goddamn miracle - the sequences being mirror reflections of each other

Over billions of years now base DNA strands span unfathomable strides of time completely unchanged
While mountain ranges come and go and continents walk like gargantuan monsters across the face of the earth

And this is our heritage arising from the dust and returning to the dust these our DNA body Machines
 While our true selves before we were born skip off this world like a flat stone
off of a pond's surface
Is Eternity like some ecstatic fire consumed and consuming at once or more of a snake eating its own tail?

Psychotherapy and Whirlpools

I'm trying to recall his name but can't? But suddenly I thought of when in my thirties I had this Austrian psychoanalyst and he was a trip looked like Freud, I kid you not complete with the accent, the bow tie, a leather couch I would lie on LOL. A wonderful cliche. Was sorry he retired in the middle of my work with him but he was telling me how as a kid swimming in the Adriatic sea there were these strong whirlpools and the older kids would dive down into them kind of a macho thing. It was like a rite of passage, he explained, "and when I was ready to do it, one of the older boys took me under his wing."

The older boy instructed him, "you will get scared right away and try to exit but that is a mistake because the whirlpool is very strong near the surface. If you push through that fear and force yourself deep into the whirlpools vortex against all your instincts, then you will find that deeper down into the whirlpool it looses it's strength and you can then easily swim out and away from it and resurface" - and that was his take on psychotherapy.

"There is no other way," he smiled.

The Universe, Short Story

I cannot account for what others do with their life's energy and I mean this literally because I am more than a little on the Aspergers spectrum. Just a little, mind you. I perceive some people much as I perceive a dog in terms of any true grasp I can manage in understanding of their inner consciousness which is only vaguely, really, having some basic idea what a dog may be interested in, you know? That's not to equate any human with a dog not what I mean. I mean dogs can't be compared to us. They're another level of better than us. But I painfully digress ...

Or, maybe you don't know and you're thinking, “what the hell is this guy talking about?”. Not to cast aspersions but maybe you're a little Aspy, too, man? I suspect it's a lot more common than people think, myself. The vast majority of us are not so far along the scale as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory nor so smart … and I think the two do go hand in hand, Asperger Syndrome and intelligence. Often quirky, savant stuff that weird uncle of whom everyone is always thinking, “why the hell doesn't he go on a game show with his trivia knowledge, he'd make a million!” The Tell is a little nervous tic in lack of social skills or perhaps not even that obvious just random gaps in ability to process certain social interactions properly that to “Normals” are so innate as to lay below the level of conscious thought. You know, when you miss something, you don't know that you miss it? Like being hit by a truck and no one gets the license number?

Anyway, I was always looking for God myself. I mean that is what I was interested in and what I was doing mostly. Well, that and romantic love and sure I mixed the two up no bones about it. Goddess worship could not come more naturally to me. I never was much up for sports. I tried to get it up for politics but damn just can't do it I mean I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than watch another minute of cable TV News. All that to emphasize that I would have never in a million years figured that The Universe was a “male” entity.

But it is what it is.

So here's the deal, I finally found The Universe drinking heavily late one cold winter's afternoon in a dive bar about half way between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico near the Rio Grande River. ( I know, right, who would have thunk it?)
Now of course The Universe is not God but I decided to work my way up the hierarchy, as it were. God in all due time , mind you. It's a process. I see The Universe more like the CEO of the company while God is the owner. 

The sunlight outside is preposterously bright but the air is so cold that a half inch of old snow doesn't melt off the cactus even in the full light of the afternoon sun. Inside the bar is dark heated by a wood stove and the air so bone dry that your nose hairs start to burn after a while and when it's quiet enough – which I it never is! - you can hear your own skin crinkling up. Anyone who lives here for any length of time ends up with skin looking like worn out leather. The Universe is sitting at the small bar alone big German looking guy mid thirties, I'd guess, running big, bony fingers through his thinning, dirty blonde hair when I first set eyes on Him. I can tell he's not a resident because his skin is smooth as a baby's butt.

I sit next to Him and introduce myself and The Universe nods and smiles politely, says hello, but does not identify Himself. I tell the bartender to bring two of what He is having and make it doubles and The Universe smiles and offers me up a toast, “to you, Mate”, he says in an Aussie accent, to my delight.

Good thing for me in this one case that I know my alcoholics. The Universe is a morose alcoholic who passes through a euphoric phase, I determine, and I hoped that he was still in the euphoric phase. I was already thinking that when He hit that morose phase, I want to be miles away from this place.

After our drinks come, a single malt Scotch, I discover, neat, I ask of Him as casually as I can manage, “so why did you take advantage of a Walk-In body, Universe. What was it suicidal guy, guessing?”

His drink stops half way up to His lips. I could see calculation flash across His face for just a beat then He says, non nonchalantly as you may please, “good guess, a suicide case,” downing the rest of His drink then slamming the empty glass down the counter, “load me up,” He tells the barkeep in a cheerful, friendly tone. It makes me think of that guy Steve Erwin. I really liked Steve Irwin.

"You're buying, my new Friend," the universe winks.

"I'd insist on it," I reply. I note that he doesn't go into why he had entered the body of this suicidal fellow but let that go. Not my real concern here.

I saw that I would have to jump in for The Universe was about to cross that threshold from euphoria to morose any time now if indeed He hadn't already - “I want to know about God,” I ask, “anything You can tell me?”.

He starts laughing then coughing so hard that my thought was He might throw up then after this paroxysm settled down said, “don't we all, Mate, don't we all”, in his Steve Erwin voice very much amused.

“Seriously?” I insist.

Without looking at me then, The Universe says matter of fact, “the closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a “God”, is light. so then insofar as I could answer such preposterous question, the answer is light. Everything is light, Mate. Everything is light passing through light, on and on and on – do you see?”

Turning to look at me with those eyes as he asks, “Do you see?”

I suppress a urge to flee asking instead, “to be clear then, you are not actually saying that light IS God or that God IS light?”.

The Universe downs another glass and it hits the thick, wood bar with an empty bang. I see Him cross that threshold and practically run for the door after tossing a couple twenties on the bar. I leave Him there in the growing shadow cast by the steep canyon walls around the little dive bar and I haul ass back up a short cut on a jeep road that climbs two thousand feet in elevation over a relatively few miles quickly to the 8,000 tableland on the western side of the Rio Grande River and climbing steadily up the eastern escarpment, I climb back up into the cold, winter sun now dropping low into the western sky.

“The closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a God, is light” … it made sense in some way to me that is as of yet far beyond articulation?