Meditation 106

 

21 December 2020

To be afraid of air. To air it out. To take the old words with the new, to voice them where voice stands in for self, not identity which comes from the outside, burrows into skin, lays eggs, and leaves again. The kids evicted a mud wasp from outside their rooms. Hadn’t paid their rent in months, and the feds will only give them $600 to tide them over in their tent cities. Behind the chain link fence beside the Pali off-ramp, tents lean against the steep hill down to the freeway. At least the way is free, because nothing else is. You find those two paths in the woods and they're blocked by toll booths with mechanical arms that block you from entering the wood. When Yogi Berra gave directions to his house, he said you’d get to a fork in a road and you’d take it. Wisdom so often divorced from sense it should be a warning that thought ends at the atmosphere’s limit. You go up in a small tub attached to a rocket and become a Guardian of the universe, while still packaging your voice for public consumption. Capitalism’s strange bedfellows lie on fancy mattresses; if you like an angle, you get one. If you sleep on your side, the mattress form-fits to your folds. Invent another need; work in needability studies. I read Marcus Aurelius at night, watch Marcus Rashford in the morning. The wisdom that feeds is sometimes food. Her students objected to the sex in ancient Greek plays. Our students are counseled not to do the reading if it gets in way of purity. It’s a kind of stripping away that doesn't reduce us to spirit, but takes away the flesh. Acceptance is a mode of reduction; the "to be" verb is all we need, even if it sounds weak. To love what one must leave ‘ere long. Leave the longing to others, accept weather patterns as they line up like planes coming into LaGuardia. There’s a train into the city; I paid a profligate amount for my ticket to enter its nest. The broken-hearted man went to a mattress store each day and lay down, over and over again, seeking comfort on flat surfaces.