A Soul, A Quarter

Tiny pilgrims wandering,
Blending with sunlight;
The light never pure or blemishless.
The population stirs
Within the attic,
More travelers in the sunbeam,
Reaching for elusive heaven.
Little they know of boxes
Or memories, or that
One contains the other
Here in their musty society.
So I throw wide the gates
To one such city
Of faded memories lying
Categorized in plastic...

The prisoners freed encircle
My head, pleading for
An open window or door.
But I am merciless, and
Wave them off;
Offsetting many from
The Road to Heaven.
I search inside their
Stagnant homes, and
Memories yield to me a
Yellowed Jesus Christ.
I lift him up to me,
Eye to eyes, and
See again the weight of
Sacrifice.

The tears he shed are old
And rusty, the plumbing
Left untouched too long.
The blood has dried on
Head and hands,
A pile of scabs replacing
The Cup of Life.

Next I find a broken Buddha,
A tired old man, still
Sitting in supplication.
His face still holds the
Smile of serenity, but
Its lines are tight and
Simply tired.
The Eye has dimmed,
And the Light has faded.
He says, "Form is..."
But his Lotus falters.

The dusty pilgrims settle on
Each their brows, claiming my
Jesus Christ and broken Buddha
As memory's possession.
But my sweaty hands clung tightly
To each, washing them of
Each inhabitant of
The Road to Heaven.
I abandoned that world of age
And memories long gone,
Leaving the gates to the city
Still open.
The prisoners freed began to
Settle there, repopulating the
Memories I stirred.

Back among the changing present,
I gently cleansed my
Broken Buddha.
I washed the tears from
Jesus' face, and removed the scabs
Hindering his flowing blood.
The two I set upon my shelf,
Hand in hand and
Mingling there.
Sacrifice and Serenity pooled
And blended, blood and
Smile fading together.

A man came by and
Said to me, "I'll buy them from you
For a half a dollar."
I asked the man, "Is that all they're worth,
My Jesus and Buddha?
What is the market today?"
He grinned and replied,
"A half a dollar is quite the steal.
A soul today is worth a quarter.
If I were you, I'd skip the haggling.
No man will give you more than this.
A Jesus Christ and broken Buddha
Are all too common to be worth too much.
Take it from me."

Turning away, he shrugged and left.
I watched him go, then shut the door.
Then I traveled back up the stairs,
And entered again the Musty Past.
There I deposited once again,
My Jesus Christ and broken Buddha.
Tiny pilgrims protested again above my head,
Then attacked me, and so I sneezed.
The gates to the city were open still,
And I made to leave when
I heard again:
"Form is no form, and
No form is only dreams.
Do it, maybe, in rememberance of me."
I said, "I'm sorry, but I have things to do.
I'll take you out someday,
When you're both worth more."

Zen quote of the day:
"To know what you know and to know what you don't know, that is real wisdom."
~ Confucius

Fall's Beginning

It is about 12:30 PM on a chilly Friday morning. The sky overhead is weighed down with Michigan-reminiscent clouds; grey, dimensionless, and empty. The temperature is around 60 F, but feels cooler with the environment's overwhelming influence. Haven is asleep in her swing, rocking gently to the sounds of a summer ocean (a pretty passable imitation for a Fisher-Price product), and I'm sitting in the quiet living room, creating my own percussion line to the sounds of my favorite classical guitar piece via the keyboard. Hard to keep in rhythm, though.

I have about 15 minutes before I should hop in the shower and begin getting ready for work, but the view outside my heavily stained windows made me pause. Autumn for me has frequently been filled with melancholy, the weather along with other things commonly making it difficult for me to keep that bounce in my step that keeps the time passing at an acceptable rate. I try my hardest to remember the things that have made Autumn into this SAD nightmare, but I come up empty. I have often found that my emotional memory is much more keen than my cognitive memory; places, scents and sounds invoking more of a feeling than a thought or memory. It's usually very frustrating to me, since I end up feeling sad, or feeling angry, or feeling soft joy while having no idea what originally made me feel that way.

My other problem is that the stimulus is never obvious. I only catch it sometimes, and only subtley. The scent of apples stirs a feeling, the sound of the breeze weaving through fallen and drifting leaves, the sight of tiny droplets of rain splattering downward on my window. I end up confused, since they only stir an emotion, and no movietime memory to accompany it.

In the present, I am in a completely new and different situation in life. I have a beautiful wife/fiancee/girlfriend (she doesn't want to be called 'wife' until we're married or 'fiancee' until I get the ring onto her finger, even though we have a common-law marriage and a ring is already picked out), a wonderful daughter, our own home, a job, insurance, and numerous financial burdens that help keep me cognitively in the present and on my toes. I thought that this new situation might dispel the evasive memories from my past, but I find they haven't. I wonder if Autumn will always be ruined for me, even though, in the end, I know it doesn't truly matter.

It's odd, though. Amy really enjoys Autumn, and she gets excited when it begins to get cold, when the days shorten and the wind stiffens. On Sunday, Amy would like us to take Haven apple-picking at an orchard near us. We did something like that last year, and it sounds like fun. I find, however, it takes some effort for me to get enthusiastic about anything during the fall. If I was an animal, I'm certain I would be among the hibernating species. Sounds rather nice, really. Hibernation. Mmmmmmm.

I find I'm struggling to find equilibrium with each day, with each hour of each day as I wade through the never-ending though ever-changing present. I work for nine hours a day, five days a week, forced to manuever through the heightening workplace politics that add a draining emotional factor to the already exhausting physical factor of my job. Then I go home, enjoy fleeting but precious time with Haven and Amy, and then leave to go back to work. The weekends are too short, and do little to counteract the five days on the other side of the scales.

But of course, through all of this, as with all of life, I have little choice. I am forced to push through the present, fighting for an ideal future that is less in my control than out of my control. My body and mind are constantly at low ebb, yet I feel guilty since there are so many in the world that are much worse off. I feel weak since I know that my threshold should be much higher, and so I tell myself to quit whining and just do it. Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?

Zen quote of the day:
"Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places? Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own heart."
~ Ryokan