Wednesday, May 28, 2008

yes

yes to the afternoon
sun

and a meeting
i
"don't want"
to go to

loving
what
"it"
doesn't like

la
la

it's a beautiful
afternoon
to ride
a bicycle
to a meeting about bicycles
and maybe some people will
come on bicycles
and maybe some
won't

good chance
i'll have
a
chance
to do the
Work of Byron Katie

and that will be
good

and breathing in
is
good
and knowing
we are breathing
in
is even better
maybe

feels better
to me

you decide
for you

which
you will
anyway

another beautiful
thing
about now

it's always
a complete
moment
unto
into
onto
itself

loving what
"it" doesn't
like

and "it"
only complains
when "it"
isn't now

what's now:

breathing in
fingers
sky
blue sky

sounds
birds outside
and
,,,,,,


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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

you're fucked

one of life's
core
realities:


if you "need" to
"get what you want"
to be
happy

then
you're
fucked


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Monday, May 26, 2008

the sun before the fog

this poem rests
stomach bully
belly
fully
on a warm lazy
chair

outdoor the chair,
this is a fresh air poem,
it is, it is

the breeze is soft
fog wants to come
waiting
massing
curling up in the hills
or are the mountains
to the west

sun still
plenty
bright shimmer off
leaves
oak
willow,
redwood even

birds call

yeah, yeah, and cars, too
swoosh by
no heaven
here

but close enough
or maybe it is heaven
isn't that in
what we are loving
and allowing

the breeze
the sun
the fog
waiting

later
the gray will come

now:
bright
free
easy
clear


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Saturday, May 24, 2008

what good is a day?

what to learn
today

who
to love

what to
love

what to learn
about
more
and
easier
and
funner
ways
to love
this amazing
ongoing
now

we'll see
won't we???


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Thursday, May 22, 2008

i'm an idiot

marlie informs me
i'm not supporting her
in her spiritual practice
of admiring
and following
gurumayi

this means,
simply,
that
i'm being
an
idiot

oh
well

not
the first
time


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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Superb Movie: The Visitor

Marlie and I just
rode our bikes on down to the Sebastiani Theater
to see the
Visitor
(Click here for a nice review)

a wonderful movie

great acting

fun and then gripping
and heartwarming
and jarring

a movie
of real humanity
depth
wisdom
compassion

Marlie had already seen it once
and was excited for me
to see
it and to
see it again

she loved it a second time

i plan to go again

well worth seeing

please support Roger at the local theater
if you live in
Sonoma

and no matter where you live
see it and support
independent film making

in case you
missed my pitch:

treat yourself to a
visit
to
the visitor

ciao
chris


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Friday, May 16, 2008

the sweetness of life

i keep working
away
on this book

it's back
to the title
of

UP

i like the idea:
Up
and awake
and aware
in the field
of gravity

into the world of light
and sound

what's all around

feet on the ground

what'll the book be about?

how to improve backs and necks and sex

and improve

moods, thinking and posture


and improve

relationships

and

being present
to the joy
of life


and if that'
s
not enough

it'll be
about:

"saving the EArth"

so far,


so good.


and why is life sweet?

sense
yourself
right
now:

isn't that
aliveness
at the middle of
you

sweet?


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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Losing Bets, hot day, ha ha

one of the great losing
bets is this:

that the past
"should have"
been different

maybe "should have"
can be clung to
as a concept with which
to torture ourselves

but what's the reality
of the past??


the past is stuck
finished
and complete

we can change its effects
we can imagine a different way
of reacting than we did
but
undoing
the past:

huge losing bet


and another
huge
losing bet:

that the weather
"should" be different

if
"it's"
hot,
as it appear to be
now
hot wind
hot night
hot day
la
la

wanting it different
complaining that it should be different
demanding to God
or each other that it "should" be different....

another grand
losing
bet

la
la


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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

slow down, farmer's market

for the last two weeks
i've sat down
with people I don't usually sit with

last week:
Nicole, and Lynn
and Jamil
and Ginger


this week
with Alex and Lillian
and Jay and Heather

and various kids

just listening
hanging out in the present

watching
and
enjoying people
be who they are

lots live up around
where we live
Carriger
and Solano

what a kick

some interested in co-housing idea

all interested in
quality of life


nice


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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

what is the meaning of life?

I just "lost" another tooth
today

but a big deal
look stupid
right down in the
lower middle
tooth

no dentist
willing
as yet
to learn my offerings
in exchange for her or his
work

so
i'm in that fat
and wonderful
space:

what am i
going to do?

i don't know....


i wish you could
know
how
sweet
and clear
and free
that

i don't know
space is

maybe you
do


i don't know


love,
chris


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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Lose Weight, Get Smarter, Be Happier



Lose Weight:

eat mainly stuff with lots of
water in it:
veggies and fruits
uncooked

eat high quality meat
that has been range feed
or is wild
and is organic

maybe cook
it
maybe not


don't eat after six
in the evening

better
don't eat after five
in the evening

no fat after five

no flour
no sugar
no junk


okay:
how to get smarter:
learn five new ways
to do everything
you do:

come from sitting to standing
roll over
walk
talk
listen
write
worry
smile
eat
brush your teeth
and
so
on





okay
how to be happy:

breathe
learn to be present
spend time outdoors
slow down
love more
love bothersome people
love the ungood side of yourself
love the ungood side of others
laugh at yourself

meditate
meditate
all the time

don't do a "serious"
and/or "try hard" meditation

do something like
yoga
or
dance
or
wiggle fun moving

don't do "do it right"
yoga, dance, wiggle fun moving

learn to wake
up
to the habits in your moving
and
do
something
anything
else

learn to forgive
(the Work of Byron Katie
will take care of that.
i'll hire out to do that,
or you can do on your own)


basically:
if we are awake to now
we are real

if we aren't
la
la
either
high functioning robot
or not so high functioning robot

oh
well





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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

maybe intro to "Up," the book, I'm writing

UP:
BACKS, NECKS AND SEX
AND
MOOD, POSTURE AND AWARENESS
WHILE
(MAYBE)
SAVING THE WORLD
IN THE BEGINNING
In the beginning, supposedly, there was a Big Bang. We don’t know. Somehow things started off. At least it seems like that.
And our lives had a beginning, that we can know (about) with more certainty. Once we were in our mother’s womb. Then we came out. Then we learned a bunch of stuff and here we are, reading or listening to a book, in your case, or writing a book in my case.
We learned words along the way.
We leaned to negotiate gravity. In the womb, life was pretty cushy, or at least cushioned. We were in no danger of falling. We may have felt the pull of gravity, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it, all rolled up in a nice warm ocean sack.
Dark sack. Not silent. Apparently we heard voices, music, sounds, though they must have been muffled, and maybe that muffling mingled with the thump-thump of Mom’s heart, to give us a sort of pre-natal symphony. Who knows.
Dark. No gravity. No light.
No breathing. I mean we had lungs, and water could go in and out, the ocean we breathed, in a sort of way, but air, no.
Gravity, light and air: these are what we were born into that began our life as creatures of the Earth. Well, we were creatures of the Womb and Earth, at first, and then, creatures of the Earth.
We could be happy on this Earth. We could be unhappy. We could move easily. We could move with difficulty. As we grew older, huge numbers of us had some sort of issue with our back and neck. Even larger numbers of us decided that sex was something of interest to our lives.
Well, maybe decided isn’t the right word. Were drawn to. Were compelled by. Fascinated. Hooked. Intrigued. Obsessed. Excited.
You pick the word or words, but sex is a big part of life on Earth, and yes, yes, just for symmetry’s sake, it did start off that journey in the warm dark gravity-less and breathing-less Womb.
And even those of us who have never had an “issue” with our backs, must daily, use this collection of 24 vertebrae to hold our head upright. In sitting. In walking. The spine is long, and our arms hang off it, and we can rotate and bend to the side and fold forward and arch backwards. We can curl up in a ball. We can look up into the sky. We can look around behind us. The spine is long and clever, and as children we have a lot of fun naturally doing all sorts of things with our bodies and our spines.
And then we get old, most of us, and sit around too much and stop having fun in certain ways. Maybe our back or neck hurts. Maybe we just don’t feel like walking or running or skipping or dancing or playing basketball or swimming any more.
That’s a shame, don’t you think?

Sometimes we have a sore neck. A pain in the neck. Sometimes the pain in the neck is another person. Even if we don’t have a pain in the neck, we often have a person or a group of people who are, for us, a pain in the neck. They bother us. Our neck, the connecting of head and the rest of us, sometimes signals the head and the heart not communicating. Or the head and the heart/body. Sometimes the neck is in pain because we came to an accident, or are straining too hard, or just plain don’t use ourselves right.
Sometimes the pain in the neck that other people can be creates stress and unhappiness in our lives. This book is not just about moving better, more fluidly, as we did when we were younger. This book is also about finding ways to be flexible and free in our emotions, so other people, who are always go to be annoying. (At least a certain percent of them are bound to be jerks, and how can we live so that their jerkiness doesn’t bother us. Indeed, how can we live so that we can take their jerky behavior and get up in our mood from this, rather than down).
Back, sex, necks, mood.
Mood is a big thing.
What if we were cheerful and in a good mood all the time? Or most of the time?
Would that be okay, if we could pull that off without going blind to what is going on around us? How to be of good cheer, whether the people around us and of the sort to bring us cheer or not.
That’s another part of what this book is about.
Or how about this: even when we are sad and down (i.e. not “up”), there is an underlying joy, and sort of carrier wave that is more important than the sadness and gunky stuff?

And what might that carrier wave be?
Well, if it could be described it would be the most important word in the world.
And it can’t.
Nevertheless, the route to this underlying state of quiet happiness, contentedness, in-love-with-life-ness, is this: to be in the present. This has been known, and forgotten, for a long, long time. Buddhism to The Power of Now. Fritz Perls to Oprah. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to Adhyashanti. Gurdjieff to Ram Dass to me, many have said this: be here, now.

And some of us have been present while we said, “Be here now.” And some haven’t.
La, la.

One woman’s work, her gift to humanity, her re-discovery of Enlightenment in small, thought size does, is the Work of Byron Katie. She doesn’t talk about “Enlightenment,” except to say things along the lines of: Don’t sweat the enlightenment as a full time gig; how about just this thought, can we wake up from that?
Or she might say: if I fight reality, I lose, but only one hundred percent of the time.
Or she might say: I am a Lover of What Is.
Or she might say: if you want to know the truth, if you want to do The Work, fine, welcome.
If you don’t want to do the Work, fine, welcome.

Are we suffering?
Then, physical suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering, even Earth suffering, let’s say: This is a wake up call.

The Earth is spirally toward destruction.
Not really. We humans are fouling our nest to such a degree, that we might extinct ourselves, and assist Mother Earth is some sort of readjusting cleanse.
“Saving the Earth” is code for not going that way.
The statistics look bad. We may, as a species, be screwed, and not in the pleasurable, and life making sense about which we spoke when earlier we were discussing sex.
Sex is nice: it brings us to the present.
It gives us a glimpse of a wordless state and a possibility of connection with another.
It also allows us one of many, many meaningless escapes from the dilemmas of lives lived without awareness and love and consciousness.
So: what are we to do. How are we to save the Earth, quote unquote. How can we improve backs, necks, and sex, and moods and posture and awareness and what would all that have to do with “Saving the Earth?”
If you can gently take a walk or go dancing or work in your garden, with simple ease and pleasure, growing food and beauty, or taking in the simple joys of a stroll, of time away from schedules and demands and cars and consumption: this will be a sweet peace of the simple life that will begin to “save the Earth.”
If we can improve our moods around those “pains in the neck” who live next door, and live under our same roof, and are related to us and live across the town, or across the country, then we will be able to have the kind of simple peace that will allow us to live lives of conversation and pleasure in our neighbors and family and friends and even strangers.
Life will be sweet when our moods of anger and resentment, our grudges, our fear of approval and disapproval are undone. And in this sweetness, we can begin to live simply, and in harmony and in love.
Love with now.
Love with What is.
Love with those around us.
Love with our-“Selves,” whatever that is.

So welcome to the adventure. What ways can we discover to ease and undo the suffering in our bodies and emotions and spirit.
And even if no overt, big-deal suffering, how can we improve inner connection and outer love to live lives of ongoing peace and happiness and learning?
This is what this book is about. Maybe.

Friday, May 02, 2008

the things we are afraid of...

being quiet

not being liked

not knowing what to do....next

not knowing what other people..
think
are up to
are

not knowing what we
are

knowing
that it is okay
to not be okay

knowing that
in certain terms
there
is no
"okay"

being stuck
in the same old
same old
over
and
over
and over
again

living a life in
sleep

living a life
in bondage
to our fears about
what other people think
and expect of us

living a life
in bondage
to our reactions
to what other people
think
feel
and
do


and
so
on

some of these fears
make sense

some
are a good sign
but not that commanding:
the fear
of becoming the nothing/ God
that we really
are

like the fear
of being totally
present

something like the fear
of our robot
to give up
and just not
be so sure
any more that life
is meant to
revolve around
"it"


from Gurdjieff:
"Like what 'it' doesn't like."

from
now until tomorrow
what delightful
unknowns will wash up on
our shores
that we will miss,
too busy,
too afraid,
too distracted,
too much in a rush.


we'll see

or
not


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Thursday, May 01, 2008

bipolar, at the same time

sometimes now
i'm achieving this nice
new state:

instead of mood
SWINGS

i'm having the "bad" feelings
and underneath them,
making them as if carried
by something more
"real"

i'm having the ongoing feelings
of the thrill
of being alive

the joy
of the moment

the delight
in what is now

and curiosity
about
what is
going to happen
next

all the while
the "crappy" stuff's
in there too

just like
some kind of log
floating up
and down
in an
ocean

oh,
well


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