Some semblance of a wave

Some semblance of a wave, some remembrance of sensibilities, torched by the sea when the wave starts receding. At each deliberate turn the murmur of the word is guided by the swoosh of the underlying sea.

(Habarana to Nilaveli, Sri Lanka; Aug 6, 2013)

There is only a gnawing roar that separates the film from the gash.

(Nilaveli, Sri Lanka; Aug 6, 2013)

– Depth is two parts subtlety, one part deception.
– Poverty is two parts humanity, one part misery.
– Play upon the these words as they mean less the more they start meaning more.

(Nilaveli, Sri Lanka; Aug 8, 2013)

Where do the compromised poor stand?

They stand less proud than their children, less sure than the path that will one day be surer than theirs. But their path (let alone the path of their children) is not your path which is more treacherous and less in tune with the forest when it chimes with the wind.

How is the song of the unsung heard? By dreading them. How is the the gulf breached? By submission to the dread. There is semblance of choice when it is time to choose. Choose the apparition of choice, and choose well.

(Habarana to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka; Aug 6, 2013)

Disentanglement

– The structure is daunting, towering, compelling. Not death — yet. It does not seem to seek life yet speaks of it. Compel the structure itself to yield to softer things.

– The body is not the wound; the discourse is not the whole; the rot is not the core — yet. Find another apple, look for another tree, seek another orchard.

– Seize this moment of separation amid lush trees, quiet road and cloudy skies, where the contemplative dog watches cars and bikes and trucks pass by; where wayside coconuts are getting bored waiting to be sold; seize these tangents to triangulate your course and look the odd passer-by in the eye.

– Touch the coursing error in your veins while immersing yourself in the sea of faces glimpsing joy in snatches.

– To rather be a little lost than a little sure, altering the rules of engagement.

(Nilaveli to Colombo, Sri Lanka; Aug 8, 3013)

Rinklety Dink Rinklety Dink

Rinklety Dink Rinklety Dink
The camel is laden with bags stuffed with gold
The burden is heavy and the diction is old
Thoroughly worn and unsuitably told

Creature of habit and burden it is
Burdened with fable and verse
Dinklety Rink Dinklety Rink
Burdened with fable and verse

Dare to speak camel and grunt as you like
No one save you will mis-understand
Perhaps that consoles, perhaps not
Tinkledy Link Tinkledy Rink

Shave off your wisdom, delight in the day
Minkledy Sink Minkledy Sink
The burden is heavy and the diction is old
Thoroughly worn and unsuitably told

Ask of the camel if he has any wool
He will stare back at you as if you were a fool
Wrong fable, dear seeker, now off with your head
Rinklety is gone and Tinkledy dead.

Water scribbles

– Ground of being: word immersed in the search for joy.
– We owe ourselves more disbelief and disarray if anything is to be substantiated at all.
– Creature comforts and gourmet literature: connecting the oppressor to the oppressed in aesthetic sympathy.
– Plunging into the uncharted depth of words that leads to the abyss that soothes.
– Words can be shaken off their colonial bearings if you will it often enough; plus there is little choice.
– Gravitas to be sought in peals of unexpressed laughter in bonds of a tyrannical softness that yearns to be broken.
– Preach the preachiness of the soft vowel that glows in the dust of unforgiving middlemen that see only the passage of a tiresome journey nervously surmounting this ambitious precipice ahead, missing the inevitable fall.

(Habarana to Trincomalee, Sri Lanka; Aug 6, 2013)

How can truth not capture the insecure

There is only the non-question that begets the non-answer when madness sits down with you for a cup of tea.

There is only non-sense that begets the nonsense when the veil is veiled which is veiled.

—

Engagement is error; but error is real in the sense of being human.

The real in the sense of being human will engage as the child reaches out and gushes magic awkwardly spilling secrets when the sun can do no harm and night can no longer veil.

—

How can truth not capture the insecure, beauty not show the incoherent if they are one?

In this place where the norms are a little bit out of whack, where the real is beckoned by silences and where each word is immersed in dark matter nuances occasionally swimming out and whispering the naughts underlying the rock solid figments of our other than day thoughts.

Where the leaf is Buddha, the stem logic, the flower is the overflowing stream, and you catch it all on paper measuring it all in a glass of wine.

Where the crow beckons but only succeeds in making noise.

Where the waves are careful not to wake up the gods who are not listening not in the forest that holds the tree that shows the path to the forest.

Where mothers and sons and daughters and fathers sit around the fire and worship the sun.

Where rightness-es are engendered as consequences of silences which follow words which follow silences.

In the beginning was the silent word.

(Nilaveli, Day 2 by the pool, Sri Lanka; Aug 7, 2013)

All this confused fire and fury

– All this confused fire and fury busy laminating the luxurious sheen on things-as-they-are
letting the festering sore impale its gory fingerprints on the shed that overlooks the lantern that lights up the corner in the the nook of that little place you would like to call home.

– The fairy tales have now begun to sprout and deliver their payload. Which monsters would you care to feel breathing down your back? Which nightlamp would you hold to fend off the aura of creepiness that you must slay must slay?

– Clever little footnoes that remind us that this day is but only past another tender one in the making, forged in the fury of iron factoids that provide the glue to nebulous flights of fancy which otherwise you would hold on to as if there were nothing truer.

– So you seek to stir the unshaken or slightly shaken? So you seek to make the blue palatable to the unseen red? Or vice versa? Little does it matter which, for the red will undo the wine that is extracted, and the blue will transcend the sky in that tiny moment where you stand corrected, asserted, expressed.

– How much more maya will the mystic bring as baggage today? The whirling spoof is now a gel that lays on thick on your eyes comforting for a while keeping the light away from the innards of your tentacles that yearn to reach out.

(Havelock bungalow, Colombo, Sri Lanka; August 9, 2013)