HAPPY TRAILS

Early on I learnt that
The territory does not necessarily
Conform to its representation…
That there’s more going on
Than meets the eye…

As a simulacrum of a complex reality
Maps are easy to manipulate, essaying
An objectivity they can never possess.
Theirs is a gaslit twilight that purports
 A reality they can never match. 

This simple truth has been established
In one declarative sentence:
‘The Map is not the Territory’.
But although pallid and
Untrustworthy, maps are useful.

Maps are subject to propaganda
And deceit yet remain irresistible
In describing an abstract picture
Of a chimerical reality - just
As a star chart maps the heavens.

The first geography I studied
Was Ordnance Survey maps
That rendered the U.K. countryside
At one inch to the mile, a scale
That provided excruciating detail.

They were first produced  as a
Defensive measure during the
Napoleonic Wars, which threatened
To engulf the British Isles in the
Late eighteenth century. 

This documentary response to
Existential danger contrasts with
The concrete solution proposed
By Eisenhower who began building
The Interstates during the Cold War.

In the seventy years since
They have been woven through the
 Patchwork of the forty-nine states
And hold much of my sensory
Understanding of this vast country.

They are wayward expressions
Of Westward expansion, trade routes
Cattle drives, Indian hunting trails
And now international commerce
Between the U.S. and its borderlands.

Initiated at a time of great fear 
Of a Soviet invasion they are 
Mirrored in complex air-traffic routes:
Together they stifle localism, regionalism
High speed rail and common sense.

They have eroded a sense of place
Because diversity has been replaced
By replication according to the mores
Of marketing, fashion and entertainment…
They deny us the sensuality of difference.

Maps, though presented in new media
Present the stolidity of continuity:
The bland conservatism of ‘God’s in his
Heaven, All’s right with the world…’
The whitewashing of a crumbling reality.

MIXTUS ORBIS

WHERE we are living NOW.

Where Grace or Damnation
The esoteric and the ordinary
The beautiful and the ugly
The happy and the sad
The material and the spiritual
The higher and lower planes
All coexist.

And where there is a perennial
QUESTION:
Are we having fun yet? 

All the while, we suffer the condition of
FINITUDE…
The Certainty of our Mortality. 

THE IMAGINAL

Mundus imaginalis
Is a term coined by the
French Islamicist Henry Corbin
For an aspect of Sufi mysticism…

Which he located in the
Mystical Earth of Hurqalya -
A concrete spiritual world at
The edge of the ninth sphere.

Others, more prosaically
Locate it as a heavenly realm
That trades in the symbolic
Archetypal, and synchronous.

It is accessible to those who shed
A past life or two, ready to be reborn…
Open to its subtle suggestions
And alert to its fateful configurations.

A carefully orchestrated relationship
With the Imaginal can then help
To direct a life bearing the
Imprimatur of cosmic consciousness.

JULES

Celebrating the Nation’s birth
Just 250 years old:
Only its incipience
Worthy of passing interest.

Now? We know too much.
There are many wonders 
In this slice of North America -
Our Declaration of Independence…

No longer counts as one. 
The Nation has moldered in its
Long journey into senescence.
Meanwhile - there’s new life.

I could be talking about
Democratic Socialists breathing
A little vigor into the moribund 
Body of our democracy

But I’m not that naive.
Instead, what we have here
Is a new grandchild:
Welcome Jules Rhys. 

Flesh and Blood
Mostly sleeping, but
Somehow ready
For his Future World.

SIZZLE

Ramakrishna suggests that
The world sizzles with
Consciousness. You can hear
That sizzle early grey mornings
In the Chaparral.

At least, that is what happens
At this time of the year
When everything has started
To look fried: blanched, browned
And crisped to a flaky crust.

I always thought that the ground
Crunched under my worn boot
But now I hear that sound
As a sizzle of Consciousness:
It is the voice of the phenomenal.

Orthodox Hindus understand
That the phenomenal
Is all illusion: that reality exists
Only in the formless Absolute.
RK was radically heterodox…

Accommodating the limits
Of my Western and white brain
While expanding them to
Accept that All
Is sizzling Consciousness.

REQUIEM FOR CORONADO

In California 
Zip Codified as
Nine two eleven eight
‘The Crown City’… 

Is an uncomfortable mix
Of a U.S. Naval base
A Disneyfied grand old hotel
And an up-scale Marina

Bordered by palm trees
Crisp white mid-rise condos
And a broad crescent beach
Polluted with Tijuana’s sewage.

At one end of the crescent
In the corner of a Navy
Compound a seaman idly
Fingers his automatic weapon.

At the other, an airfield
Sequesters a Helicopter 
Fleet that surveils
The border marshlands*.

A banner celebrates the 
Marines’ semiquincentennial
And bunting presages July 4
In this still patriotic outpost…

Mexican islands loom just
Beyond the surf-soaked beaches
In a curious affront to their
Sovereignty, more evidence that

In this south west corner
Of the dream that was America
Uneasy lies the town
That wears a crown.

*More about these in ‘Tidings’ 06-23-2025

SUPREME SWAN

As an explorer of
Mystical literature
I am aware of its
Symbolic, allusive
And oblique character.

Which is to say
As Evelyn Underwood notes
No direct description
Of spiritual experience
Can be possible to man.

That experience, however
Is undeniably and uniquely
Evidenced by Ramakrishna
As explicated by his stenographer
Mahendranath Gupta, writing as ‘M’.

Human language is an altogether
Inadequate vehicle to express
Supersensuous perception
But Ramakrishna spoke in a rustic
Patois full of beguiling parables.

Faithfully recorded by M
We have an accurate reflection
Of Ramakrishna entering Samadhi:
Lost to the outer world, tears of joy
Flowing from his large round eyes.

The Paramahamsa* spent
Much of his conscious life
In this God-intoxicated state
Engulfed in an oceanic
Feeling of cosmic connection.

The Development of Spiritual
Consciousness, the expository
Line with which Underwood
Subtitles Mysticism, and which
I am casually exploring…

Is simply answered by the Swami
In his heartfelt contention
That consciousness is manifest in
All of creation and soaked in the
The Bliss of Kali, the Divine Mother.

* Sanskrit, literally ‘Supreme Swan’,
an honorific applied to those who
evidence ultimate enlightenment.

UNLIKELY AGE

My mother…
Had she lived beyond 92
Would have been 113 today
May 25th. 2026
An unlikely age.

Well, you might say
We live in an Unlikely Age:
But she did not
Firmly planted, from the start
In the Twentieth Century.

Born in London on the cusp
Of the First World War
She survived the Second
The rearing of two children
And an unhappy marriage.          

With barely a toe
In the Twenty First Century
She was spared Artificial
Intelligence - which would have
Affronted her own mother wit.

CELEBRATION

Simone Weil is explicit:
The uprooted tend to uproot peoples
Who have remained rooted
And call it progress…

The Hebrews were escaped slaves
Who exterminated or enslaved
The population of Palestine
And called it their homeland.

Romans occupied Ancient settled lands 
Then the Spanish and English massacred
Or enslaved populations of color
The World over and called it Empire.

​The uprooted of Europe massacred
The rooted Populations of North America
And now rampage across the World
Seeking more rooted peoples to destroy.

But those peoples who possess
The benefit of a shared spirit
A common identity
And a sense of rootedness will prevail

For Uprootedness is Toxic:
It leads to a deathlike inertia
Of the soul and ultimately to
The death of its own Civilization.

In 1940, as Weil elaborates, France
Fell under the Nazi onslaught
Just as a tree with damaged roots
Collapses at the first blow.

On the 250th. Anniversary of
Its Declaration of Independence
Who can doubt that the United States
Rotten to the core, is ready to fall?

FIRE CLEARANCE

When the rain falls freely
The grasses grow tall 
Such is the cross that I bear
Following each wet winter.

Light rains fall ‘Pitapat’
Heavy rains fall ‘Topatopa’ 
My world exists between these
Two onomatopoeic words…

In sleep my feet point towards
A range of mountains*
Named for the giant rye that
Grows prolifically on their mesas.

These lithic Topatopas
Reference a plant for which
The Chumash had many uses
Midst the split-splatter of rain. 

And a wet winter we had of it:
Now I endure the burden of
Cutting and raking its bounty
Of beautiful bunch-grasses…

*The people of A’whay slept thus.

TODOS SANTOS

I died a little inside
When I stopped surfing
After three decades
Of an inept practice.

I was always a runner.
And for many years
A bare foot runner
Before I arrived in the U.S.

I died a little inside
When I stopped running
After most of a lifetime spent
 Running, running, running.

Now I sit outside my room
In Baja, overlooking an arroyo
On its rocky path to the Ocean -
A grey-blue strip on the horizon.

I am neither planning my next run
Nor checking the tide or the swell. 
I just gaze at the arroyo, its pitaya
Cactus and its wildlife…

I was last in Baja 40 years ago
Long before these small deaths -
Each a modest sacrifice of self
Uncovering a wider consciousness…

Now, am I awakened or regretful?
This is the measure of my
Preparedness for the big one:
How I die before dying…

PARADISE

Paradise is an unincorporated
Township in Clark County, NV.
It contains the Strip and its airport.
The etymology of this ‘Paradise’…

Originates, not with the word for
A Persian garden, but with the name
Of a 1940’s Casino, A Pair of Dice.
Nothing here is quite what it seems.

Vegas is Israel without the Med:
An exotic, invasive urban weed
That has colonized the Mojave
And its indigenous peoples.

To walk along the Strip is to
Be interrupted by stairways to
Aerial malls, linking hotel to hotel.
Within these vast blocks of schlock…

Crowded gambling halls and bars
Act as the City’s digestive tract
Absorbing the hard-earned cash
Of its unhappily hapless visitors.

But from my hotel window
I can see the distant mountains
Washed by dawn’s rosy glow and
Later, evening’s petrochemical haze.

Paradise is thus forever tempered
By the gravitas of the desert -
An eternally stoic land suffering
An excrescence in its midst.

WOMEN ON THE VERGE

Reading Annie Dillard’s
The Writing Life
I was reminded of the willful
Doctrinaire, prescriptive and 
Didactic Simone Weil.

Dillard is incredibly
Hard on herself, Weil on herself
And others. Both characters are 
Shaped by the Self-Crucifixion
They suffer for their Art. 

They share the soul struggle 
Of putting Words on paper.
But Weil recognized that
The beauty of the world 
Is not an attribute of matter itself. 

It is a relationship between the world
And a sensibility that stems
From our body and soul:
What we experience of its beauty
Is destined for our human sensibility….

She is fed by the foment of the 1930’s 
Dillard by the natural surroundings
Of cabins on the shores of 
Cape Cod, Puget Sound and 
The banks of Tinker’s Creek. 

The imagined kinship between
A Marxist, mystic and soldier
And a literary Romantic is sparked
By the extreme rectitude which they
Impose on themselves…

And the struggle to express
Their profound connection
To a fragile world that for both
Is tantalizingly liminal 
And gloriously present.

A TALE OF MICE

Two plump field mice huddled
Together against a wall.
A probe with my toe
Did not elicit much movement.

Despite their moribund state
I closed the fire door
Limiting any escape 
To the track beneath.

I returned a day later to find
Both dead, but no longer
Entwined. One had moved
Behind the adjacent door.

With a gloved hand I flung
First one, then t’other
Into the deep grasses
Alongside the house…

Bolstering the food chain
By several ounces for
The benefit, I thought
Of those whirling vultures

That paint elaborate scrolls
Of an arcane cursive script
In the skies above…ever
Seeking more dead flesh.

A FOX TALE

We were alerted to a cosmic event
By the wheezy rasp of a Fox.
We had gone to bed in full knowledge
That an eclipse would occur that night.

At 3 a.m. the full moon was overhead.
Moments after earth’s shadow closed
Over the glowing orb it was flattened
And turned the color of brown paper…

In a Cosmos of exploding stars and
Fragments of space time where gravity
 Is so dense even light cannot escape
Our little moon is a pallid protagonist.

But veiled by our planet’s silhouette
It briefly acquired a menacing mien
A Luna transfiguration, stripped of its
Familiar fairytale face - an alien moon.

A lost friend in the vast unknowable
Galactic reaches of the Milky Way. 
Like the fox, we were unmoored:
The tenuousness of our reality revealed…

FREEDOM

Unlimited freedom of expression
For any opinion whatsoever
Without any restriction or reservation
Is an absolute need for the intellect.

The intellect serves the soul
And when the intellect is uneasy
The entire soul sickens
From this lack of freedom.

A healthy society has similar needs
Save for ‘Opinions’ that attempt 
To persuade an abrogation
Of said freedoms…

The distinction between the two
That which is external to action
And that which is part of it
Form an eternal dialectic:

Theory and Practice;
The Woke and the Unwoke;
The public need to fence in
The essential need for freedom.

Thoughts purloined and short-stacked
From Simone Weil, Le Enracinement 
(The Need for Roots), 1949

PITVILLE PUMP ROOM

I would like to reminisce.
Do I hear a collective groan?
About my jolly old College Days…
Or was that a scarce hidden moan?

Ignoring any such disapproval
I will plough ahead: It was the fall of ‘65
Freshly released from Grammar School
Where I emerged but barely alive.

Degree programs in Architecture
Town Planning and Landscape Design
Were on offer at the highly esteemed GCA*
A joint first year - a tasting-menu sans wine.

The Government picked up the tab
And offered a stipend to pay for a dorm
Which was not of the ivy-covered type
Instead, an in-town YMCA was the norm.

I had my fixie for the few mile commute
But first, I watched an episode of ‘Get Smart’
(The Y had a TV room in the basement)
Edifying? No, I was studying at a School of Art!

Classes were held in the upper floor
Of an 1825 neo-classical Greek pile
Set in a park-like setting just out of town
Where I toyed with the menu for a while.

‘Twas a new program with great ambition:
Turns out the courses were undercooked
Which I skated through and left untouched
My talent and intellect totally overlooked!

Push came to shove soon enough
I left the college leaving nary a mark
Now barely remembered and unregretted
For isn’t college meant to be a lark?

*Gloucestershire College of Art

EGREGORE

The idea that a collection of
Shared thoughts
Can have a psychic reality
Poses a challenge
To rational thought.

All psychic phenomena
Share in this difficulty.
How can we believe in ghosts
Or God without having physically
Experienced them?

Some get Lucky.
Simone Weil made contact
With her God at an early age*.
She could then speak authoritatively
About matters of the spirit.

She was emphatic that
We must empty ourselves of
False divinity, give up being
The center of the world and open
Ourselves to God’s presence.

All I saw as a child
Was a ghost at the window
From my upstairs bedroom.
A workman appeared on a ladder
Painting the window frame.

In 1953, our house was new.
I saw the apparition a few
Years later; perhaps the painter
Died a sudden death, falling while
Intoxicated with paint thinner.

The experience led me to an
Early obsession with ghost stories.
Then to a wider consideration
Of the occult, mostly as limned by
Colin Wilson or Dennis Wheatley.

Now, my inner journey
Is marked by a tenuous
Connection to my lineage
The certainty of impermanence
And the fragility of my soul…

While I continue to
Build an Egregore
With fanciful thoughts
Wrested from my attention
To the Urban Wildland.

*Simone Weil, Waiting for God, 1950.

THE CASE FOR ANGELS

In the Wim Wenders’ movie
Wings of Desire
Angels appear as well dressed
Gentlemen of a certain age.

Not young, on the cusp perhaps
Of middle-age, but not yet
Gone to seed
Spry and kind-hearted.

They infuse those they
Invisibly touch with Hope
For the future and a profound
Thankfulness for the moment.

Wings are a signature accessory
But soon cast aside.
Theirs is a lonely but fulfilling job.
One such aspires to become human.

He meets a fallen angel who has
Happily renounced his angelic identity
And is thus reassured
Of his impending conversion.

Trading eternity for the paltry
Human lifespan he falls in love
And lives happily for what remains
Of his three score years and ten.

Set in a still divided Berlin
Still too, recovering from
The ravages of WWII
It is a deeply affecting film.

The premise is fanciful
But angels have a certain
Credibility that spans millennia
Of human existence.

As brokers who negotiate
Between the sacred and profane
They fulfill a vital role.
Who are we to deny their presence?

  Wings of Desire (1987) has been meticulously
restored in 4K and released by the Criterion
Collection in 2023. It was shown
at The Ojai Playhouse on January 29th. 2026.

IN THE DARK

Light is the delineator
Of shape and hue describing
The material realities that
Configure our world.

Seeing in the night
Requires some time
To become accustomed
To an absence of color and form.

To practice meditation
Is to step into the shadows
That gather on the threshold
Of a fathomless dark.

Here, the shimmering ego
Must be diminished to allow
Our spiritual intelligence
To emerge in the stygian gloom.

To enter this profound
Inner world of negation
Is to renounce any awareness
Of materiality and bright presence.

Shadowy figurations slowly reveal
Themselves in this colorless realm
As our spiritual awareness takes shape
Within the clouds of unknowing.