Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Day Tripper

Beautiful, cool, puffy cloud day...
why not? Why wait for a better time?
Now is the only time to do anything,
and since this is a good now, why wait 
for another now, the perfect now? No
such thing. Having an addictive person-
ality doesn't hurt in the decision making
process, If I indulge now, early afternoon,
I'll be down in time for evening thunder
storms and clean sheets. It's too good not
to be true.

Thinking of my old new friend, K.D., plying
the path of dharma somewhere else in the
world. Wish I could be with you this time,
buddy...might not feel this good again. So
fortunate in my life, (I wouldn't call it luck),
this old, all that hard work and drinking under
my belt...I'm over the rainbow...don't need 
glittering excelsior future. The aches and 
pains that come with this old body are as
welcome as the clouds in the sky, or, my 
amigo chicken eating doggy that likes to 
hang with me in the mornings, or the people
with faces I sometimes meet.

Might be fun to goof on some straight people,
all tied up in their business suits, uniforms. You
don't see many of them here in Tepoztlan. I see
a couple of army jeeps full of soldiers. Each 
jeep has several gleaming brass trumpets on 
the benches...soldiers with automatic weapons.
What's the juxtaposition there? Waiting for war 
or fiesta? Keeping options open? There must 
be a good reason. I prefer to wonder.

Beatles good background music...waiting to get
on the bus. Ringo was a good choice....so was
Allen Iverson...don't even bother to try....it's koans,
all the way down.

Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett by the swimming
pool while "Hello Goodbye" by the Beatles was
playing. It just made sense somehow. I did a double 
take, turned and waved...they smiled and waved 
back. I wonder if they remembered that moment
as clearly as I do.

Thirty one flavors. I wonder if they got them all. 
I mean, all the good ones. I've had things in my 
mouth that would make you puke just to hear
about them. Let's not talk about that now. "Please
Please Me", that would be nice and was. One only
regrets missed opportunities...I didn't miss many.
The bus is late, but somehow, it always arrives. 
And there's always another one...endless buses
to keep the whole thing moving.....not that it needs
much help.

B., turquoise shirt wearing on the Zocalo this 
morning...good man...gave me the present I'm
in the process of opening. "We never close, but
sometimes we have a hard time opening." Gave
me a novel to read about a poet...a novel idea.
I wonder if I'll recognize myself in it's pages. I
imagine stammering in response: "Yeah, well...
well...so's your old lady!" Then, the novelist writes
a few more dozen pages with a smile...I slink away,
my trope between my legs.

I'm looking through you. It's easy after looking 
through myself all these years. The Gods must be
lazy to have created all this and then let it go to hell.
What did He say to Adam? "OK, I did my bit, now 
it's up to you!"  Adam: "Whaaaa! What the heck is
all this anyway!? What am I? You want to give me
a clue?"  G.: "Just  don't eat from that tree over 
there."  "A.:  "Oh, great...I just started to think, and 
now all I can think about is that tree over there!
You're a big help!" G.: "Here, here's someone to 
talk to." A.: "Hmmmm....not bad. What does it do?"
G.: "It's not an it...it's a she." A.: "OK, so, it's a she...
what does she do?" G.: "You'll be surprised."
Eve: "Well, hello sailor!" A.: "Uh, hi."  E.: "Say, do
you mind if we go shopping? I think some of those
leaves over there will look good on my body."
The rest is called history.

There is no plot to all this. Plot is an invention of
novelists and screen writers to give the illusion 
that events have continuity. The Greeks had it right
with "in media res", in the middle of the tamasha; 
we hit the ground pooping and you can follow the trail.
But, like a Pynchon novel, you never quite know why
things are exactly happening.  You're in the middle
of writing your novel, and someone's at the door. 
It's an insurance salesman with a rope around his 
neck. Your girlfriend falls in love with a doctor in the
middle of the supermarket and you watch it  as its
happening. After her marriage turns out to be a 
disaster, you see her, and she tells you. "I should 
have stayed with you." Thanks for telling me.

The last time I took E., I made the mistake of
calling my brother. I found out, beneath his
schizophrenia, he was a real asshole. I always
knew there was  something wrong with him. It
put a brief kibosh on the bliss, but I climbed back
up the ladder. I won't do that again. I'll go to my
grocers in a few and get  something. I always like
to tell him I'm on drugs. I'm  never sure he
understands, but he's always friendly.
He's a good man...kind of the headman of the 
neighborhood. My landlord took me to meet him
so he could check me out before I got the place
I'm in. It only took him a couple of minutes to say
I was OK. I've been in this place over five years,
Seems like five minutes. What's that thing about
time? Oh yeah, 
which one.

My costume, my kundzop, is shorts, a loose
tie, and discordant shirt. sitting outside the coffee
house, coffee and cigarette, looking like that.
One guy got it, a young man in colorful clothes.
He saw me and grinned  broadly, almost laughed.
He got it. Like level four of Shambhala Training
when the meditation instructors were told not to
say anything in the interviews and see what 
happened. One guy I had walked in smiling, sat
down  and looked at me in anticipation. I looked
at him and  didn't say anything. After a minute or
two, his smile  evaporated and he looked down,
confused. I said  nothing. After a couple of minutes,
he seemed to have a sort of revelation, looked
up and smiled wider than  before. That was it.
It's amazing how much you can do
with nothing. All the way down.

I used to dance to Leo Kottke when I was
young, by myself, for hours. Hyperthyroid too
much energy. Glands....who knew? The body
produces some  amazing stuff...like DMT. Lucky
they discovered that one. Now we can have some
fun. Machine elves... why not? Everything you
can imagine exists somewhere in the universe,
one Rinpoche noted. Most of us can't handle the
truth. Imagine what it was like  being around 
an enlightened dude, my teacher. He didn't have
to do anything, say anything, and everything just
fell apart. I asked him why and he said it seemed
to be necessary.

Truman Capote said no one could write when
they were drunk. That guy was limited for sure.
I thought I couldn't write when I wasn't drunk,
although I knew  I was kidding myself. He self
destructed. Fame, the mind killer. I've held it off
so far...in spite of prophesies. I could handle it
now...what could it do to me now? I'm not tooting
my horn here, and I don't think I'm
that great at anything. I might look good as our 
species disintegrates around me while we watch. 
Not much  chance for fame if your a prophet who 
only gets  "Look out!" out just before it hits. That's 
one thing  all the religions got right millennia ago. 
Lots of  dead seers saying "I told you so!"












































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