everything
most would consider my street simple, ordinary
— it’s a wonderland
the sun comes, spans the sky, sets in wild color
the moon a shy, unset singer
leaves spurt out of dead branches
grass and bugs zambra with the wind,
allowing themselves -- to allow
dancing out their marriage-songs
and all these creatures swarm sidewalks
squirrels, birds, humans, dogs…
creatures of all ages — each a very different creature, like and unlike the rest
breathless, panting, crying this joy
if i miss it, miss the moment, i miss everything —
Brian Shircliff
what happens when i meditate
i sit down.
rumble round to get comfortable.
and the flow begins —
meditation, so they say —————
and all these little devils arise.
one by one.
a discomfort here, an idea there . . .
each one a distant relative.
what do you want?
as if that’s any way to speak to a child.
5. 12. 17. on and on. last year’s 45. yesterday’s 46.
each one. so scrambling for my attention.
‘shut up and leave me alone’ i could say to each one,
each of these little devils.
i have before. others have too.
but that only makes them louder,
some parabolic payback . . . quiet for a moment and then the loudest shouting —
tornado coming…the stillness and then the unpredictable chaos, destruction,
how poorly i then treat the next person and the next person of my ongoing future
and then i try to sit down and meditate, find the flow again
but then the devils have multiplied as i didn’t find love for myself with that other person
that version of myself a few moments ago
and tangled my webs even more
and i am more miserable, and all those i’ve treated badly — inept me
what to do then?
what to do?
i sit. rumble round. and open my palms, my lap,
for each of these little devils to come for love
to sit in my lap. to be embraced by my simple sleep-breath, my heart, my whole self.
and then magic happens. the little devil is less loud, glows
how?
love of some magical sort embraces us — this now-me and this awhile-back-me
who knows how it arrives? all i can do is allow it, let it well up
from who knows where
and i find myself kinder, more compassionate for the devilish craziness
friends and adversaries put out toward me
even they who live outside me can be held, loved
open palms not necessary, though possible
open heart and lips enlivened with a smile, a receiving, necessary
an option i can give to the next devil and the next devil, all these versions of myself,
my past, that needed just a little more love, at 5, at 12, at 17, at 23, at whatever age arrives
today
in need of love
so that i can receive the person ‘outside’ myself with love, even more love.
so i sit.
rumble round. find comfort until discomfort finds me. within. without.
and stay with it…..be with it….let the magic happen, uncontrolled
uncontrollable by me
and the world spins more rhythmically, harmonically
with the universal spin,
no longer traipsing so wildly on a wobbled axis
when i find my own self — all of me, no matter what bad things that 5 year old did
— and soften with the dance…
Brian Shircliff
DEAR VIRUS
written during the Inner Journey Zoom meeting 4/8/2020, where we always share possible topics and then follow our muse to write or doodle whatever we like -- all are welcome (18+)
Dear Virus,
I’ve seen close-ups of you —
you are quite beautiful
though I’m not sure what
beauty is anymore.
You might be alive within me —
or, if not now, some day.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
I suppose it’s a bit like lions & tigers & bears —
I find them fascinating — though I don’t want
them in my bedroom or neighborhood
or wherever —
I don’t want them near my family, my loved ones.
And that’s pretty well taken care of
around the world — lions & tigers & bears
have their places
and I have mine.
Though I suppose viruses & bacteria
& nematodes & all you so-small things
are a bit different, no?
You live within us all — thrive within us all.
You need us to live, we need you to live.
You have taught me so much already, coronavirus.
My life now is so different —
if what I was doing before was living.
Now, there’s nowhere to go —
my yard, maybe a walk.
My yard alone is a world unto itself —
I remember a guy leading a retreat once said
that there are millions of creatures in a
spade-full of soil.
How much life I’ve missed!
And million upon million of you creatures alive within me.
What is life to one is death to another.
I wonder if the millions of gut flora in me
would sicken someone else, maybe even kill someone
alive today or centuries ago.
I hear friends, leaders, commentators,
maybe my own self saying
there’s a war on against you — to kill you,
obliterate you, destroy you for all time.
Yeah — I don’t know.
I suppose you have just as much right
to live on this planet
as I do.
Even though you are ‘novel’ — at least in our eyes —
maybe you’ve been around the block
a lot longer than I have.
I don’t know.
Instead of warring, maybe we
find ways to harmonize,
to live together. Maybe the error is
on my part.
Humans just aren’t used to you —
and what destruction you are wreaking upon
us.
I hope you stop that —
and yet you are so, so
small —
what fools you make us
to stop entire economies
goodness!
and bring us back to the real economy —
economy means after all ‘taking care of my house, my own’
yes, how I must learn to do
that, you are teaching me
that. I am grateful —
at least now I’m grateful.
May ‘my own’ include all creatures on this planet —
even if I don’t want them in my bedroom.
-- Brian Shircliff
(pictured below, the lilacs in VITALITY's parking lot...something we miss this year together, and yet something we can know...breathe deep, the scent in the air)
love in the time of 'stay-at-home'
did Gautama / Buddha set a timer when he sat for meditation?
did Jesus have an agenda when he went to the desert to pray and feel the breeze? after all, the ancients thought the breeze was the 'holy spirit,' Yahweh!
did Sweet Lady J say, 'tonight we only have a couple minutes to tell stories because there are more important things to do?'
did Samuel and the 'misfits' that became the biblical prophets have a length of time they allowed themselves to feel the ecstatic vibe with their naked bodies on the mountain and the wild wind? after all, the Hebrew word we translate as 'prophet' actually means 'ecstatic' in Hebrew!
did 2nd Isaiah -- likely a woman -- have to stop the poems from coming from her wild ways of experiencing God -- even as Mother! in the Bible! -- because she had more important things to do as she and her fellow citizens were exiled in Babylon?
did Rumi have a schedule for how long he looked in Shams' eyes each day, for how long he would meditate and feel God (Love, as Rumi names God), for how long he would whirl and dance between meditations?
did Muhammed tell God to stop speaking the poems that became the Quran because he had something else more important to do?
did the first people in the Indus River Valley to get blissed out by watching the river -- the people said to have created 'yoga' -- decide to create a life-plan for themselves to achieve all their goals?
. . . perhaps the coronavirus stay-at-home orders are our opportunity to get out of our schedules and time-constraints and five-year plans, our worn-out ways of being, to delight in new ways forward . . . not only for ourselves . . . for the future of humanity on this amazing planet . . . you too?
-- Brian Shircliff
LESSONS LEARNED WHILE WAITING OUT A PANDEMIC (so far)
When I sit more often and do nothing ( = meditation), I have a much better sense of my life, where I am going, what holds me back from my dreams. And those ‘holdings back’ get loosened and melt away the more I sit, even if I uncomfortably squirm. Soon enough, a great peace — an ecstasy — arrives. Often on the next sit after squirming.
All the yeast is gone at grocery stores. Fascinating….and now all these posts of friends baking bread. I guess if we’d always wanted to make bread and break bread within our homes, it took ‘time’ and the fear of death to follow this dream and desire into reality. Fascinating.
‘Of time and the river.’ It was the slow life of staring at the river and getting blissed out that gave birth to yoga, to poetry and song, to the rise of the prophets with Samuel on the mountaintop with the misfits and their wild experiences of the wind — Yahweh. And you too? Does your grass call you to sit and watch it grow? Even if you are still working full-time from home or in a hospital or supermarket or wherever . . . there’s nowhere to go those non-working hours. Watch with me, wherever you are, and you too will know yoga, Yahweh, THE ALL. And a poem might erupt out of you too.
When the shit hit the fan, our first buy was toilet paper. I guess we’re still in the anal stage . . . too rigid, too disordered. Freud might have been right about that.
I guess we’re not exactly the United States of America . . . with governors trying to buy PPE and medical-necessary items at online bidding sites and sometimes getting outbid by federal agencies . . . sigh . . . and that disorder in our planning and preparedness and rigidness about who is to blame might fall on each and every one of us. Sigh.
The love I thought I embraced so much with every person of the past . . . how I fooled myself, thought I soaked it all in and shared all I had, as I now go through old letters and notes and memories come and flood back and I’m awash in that love all over again and discover just how much I’ve missed. Sigh. Tears. I will do better, I will be better, while this pandemic changes life and after the so-called ‘all clear’ is given, even when we won’t be able to hug each other. To learn to love through our eyes, our open hearts . . . our future.
Things change. Quickly. Subtly. The emergent unfurling of Spring is an active reminder. What was not there yesterday is there in full regalia today. What was in bloom yesterday now rots on the sidewalk. True of myself, my body and all that is my body…my emotions, my imagination, my memory. Every breath changes my body/structure/emotions forever. Every thing I daydream does too. Every show I watch or don’t watch. Every song I sing.
I might be wiser to ‘sing myself’ . . .
My beloved and I watch American Idol while staying at home, he’s at his place and I’m at my place. He streams the show and I ‘watch’ and listen as we FaceTime, we chat during the commercials. I’ve always been a fan of Lionel Richie ever since I was in 3rd grade and constantly singing ‘All Night Long’ — yes, 3rd grade! Today, to see Lionel Richie having an inspiring 3rd career — Commodores, solo artist, and now mentoring young artists so tenderly — inspires. The road, the show is never over. As long as we find another breath and another breath, it all begins . . .
may we be so bold . . .
-- Brian Shircliff
a conversation within myself…
how easy
it is
to feel that some myth
was truly the one to follow
some movie, some story, some history/herstory/theirstory, some real happening…
it doesn’t matter how one defines ‘myth’…
in any case,
to think that something must be this way
that I should follow it
that anyone should follow it
everyone
the draw is easy
appetizing
maybe comforting
but it is not life
it is not living
what ‘was’ surely might repeat
whether we like it or not —
but it *is* not now the same as it *was*
the air moves differently than it did
the sun now at a slightly different angle
a different blend of pollen in the air
a sneeze a second later than usual, or earlier
the ground softer, harder — different
and so I try to let all that old stuff be
interesting to contemplate
for sure —
to wonder how it built me for this moment
but to touch this moment — ah
ah
ah
now that’s a different thing entirely
— and where abundant life flows
Brian Shircliff
PILGRIMAGE IN A PANDEMIC
do the neighbors
up the street
think me
strange
for going a few times
a day
to stand under their
tree?
for looking up under it
at the pink and blue
at the birds that swim through
at the psychedelic-surge of colors
and worlds
that emerge from standing there
and smelling it
these flowers
this life
in a tree…the sheer orgasmic
shaking...
ecstasy
of walking to this place
(who decides its sacredness?)
of standing under a neighbor’s tree —
then punctuated, punctured by a sound
i hear the neighbor say ‘Jesus’
as i arrive
and maybe he’s praying
celebrating my arrival
maybe offering his worship too
maybe he too is moved
by the tree
that hovers out
over the sidewalk,
out into the now-quiet street
especially when it blooms
maybe he went to church
to show his trust in Jesus-saves
risked the bugs that he could get, could share
in a pandemic
that too often kills
no matter how faithful, faithless
…
i stand under the tree
wait awhile
dawdle
‘must i really go home
when its splendor only lasts
a few weeks, only hours if there’s
frost or a cold night?’
…
so I stand
I stay
and hear Jesus say,
‘what the hell you doing standing there —
go home
go inside yourself
and find the tree…
the scent is just as lovely’
and profound
-- Brian Shircliff
BOTH / AND
BOTH / AND
at 12:15pm, i sit in my living room (same thing every day)
at 4pm, something different every day (dancing in my living room yesterday, tai chi / qigong in my backyard today...naked feet, naked earth)
feel moved to join the parties?
all from your own place...
grief: because to return to old ways of life only leads to death
i grieve
i grieve the ill
the dead
those who care for them
for those who wish they did
i grieve for ones who have not yet awakened that this is a brand new day
but most of all i grieve my life, for what
i missed
in living
long before the outbreak made us revisit mortality
(how stupid could we be to forget)
i grieve my old life, embarrassed by the clutchingness, the grabbiness, the overindulgyness
…all of it having so little to do with life
something in me knew it was false, though i played right along…
i mean, Gautama gave us the experiment to know it:
sit
watch how each sensation comes, goes
nothing lasts
yet how i ever wanted it to last…
so little to do with life
i grieve
tears do come for it, being lost and apart from what ‘was’
i grieve
which is to say,
i let my sail unfurl and take up a new wind
away from what was known, comfortable, always
i set sail for some place else
inside me
a birth (berth)
to leave behind the old dance forms for awhile — (square, flamenco, ball, etc.)
and free-form it
no-form it
not to any old/recorded music
not to any live music either
but the rhythms in the air, the wind, the murmurs of neighbors, fellow creatures
the oldest music of time
to Joseph Campbell it in the woods (a new verb)
to read three chunks of the day and do whatever i want for the fourth —
allow the old patterns present in everything to announce themselves
(how the hero’s journey made foolish heroes of us all)
so i can choose a fresh, untrod path
a true adventure
a sensation
yes
it’s time to take up my life again
to take up living
even when all around us is death
— the ill, old structures, dependencies —
and be washed in new waters, dreams
where inner sails can finally sleep
— Brian Shircliff