When the Tongva lived
‘Neath bent willow and tule
Their wood fires smudging
The wide Blue Skies.
Where Coastal sage scrub
Edged Marshy wetlands
Springs flushed
And creeks meandered.
When Oaks stood
For food and shade
And on-shore winds
Whipped across the Dunes.
Where the Ocean
Was Raddled with schools
Of fish and mollusks
Crowded on the beach…
This is the swell of an Ancient
Yet Abiding Consciousness that
Still stirs within the deep pools
Of our Pride and Pretension.
Hollywood screen writers
Won a skirmish
Against A.I.
In the spirit of Ned Ludd.
The young lad
From Nottingham
Who smashed the
Stocking Frame.
The Impulsive Destruction
Of machines
Employed
To Marginalize our Skills.
Laying waste
To dubious Devices
That Diminish
Our Humanity.
JUST LIKE: The Urge
To Deconstruct the Persona
We Erect
To Smother Our True Selves.
In 1846, Genocidal Pale-Faces
Founded
The Republic of California -
A Rebel State within
The Spanish Empire.
Their Sanguinary Lust
Was eagerly co-opted
By America
And Safely Harbored
Within its Rapacious Union.
Then all Races Heard
The cry of ‘Gold!’
Resound from Sutter’s Creek
A call to Populate and Predate
The Foothills of the Sierras.
In Rough Camps
Soon was Established
A Hierarchy that privileged
The White American
As God’s own Plunderers.
Their Souls Eviscerated
As Killers of the Red-man
Enslavers of the Chinese
Destroyers of the Land:
These Men made California Modern.
It was 1944
In the White Mountains
Of New Hampshire.
The U.S. Dollar
Was Confirmed as the Planet’s
Reserve Currency.
WWII was Ending
Empires were in disarray
While their Colonies
Demanded Independence -
America’s domination ever assured
By the World Bank and the IMF.
Much of the World was indebted
To the USA; Japan and Germany
Were soon Occupied
Little England Emasculated
And only Russia Remained
To Threaten U.S. hegemony.
Oil
The World’s Essential commodity
Denominated
In the Almighty Dollar
Ensured that Nations invested
In the U.S. Piggy Bank.
750 Global Military Bases
Funded by Foreign purchase
Of U.S. Treasuries
Maintains Our Dominion still
While Globalization Impresses
The Market’s Logic on alien Lands.
But The End of History
Is not the Triumph of the West.
Instead, the World will soon be
Purged of the Yankee Dollar
And the U.S. Impaled
On the Central Asian Axis.
China and the Russian Bear
Have arisen
To rival the Hegemon
And the Global South is
At last Restored
As the World-Soul.
Chuang Tzu
Wandered dusty
Roads in Ancient
China.
Debating his fellow
Poets
In alfresco meetings
Of Pugnacious Dialogue.
He lived
During the Classical era
Of One Hundred Schools
Of Thought.
In a Society Where
Philosophy was Revered
He introduced a form
Of Buddhism we call Zen.
Along those dusty Roads
Chuang Tzu Wrestled
With the Tao, others, and himself
In the Shadow of Confucius.
Now, we read Chuang Tzu
Seeking Lucidity
Under the Ominous Pall
Of 21st Century Western Culture.
Trusting in the Guttering
Light of an Ancient Spiritual
Mystical, and Aesthetic Tradition
To Show the Way.
Kenosis
Is the act
Of Self Emptying -
The Purpose
Of Meditation.
What is
Atrophied
Is one’s overblown ego
Encrusted
With hubris and aggrandizement.
A self, inflated by Puffery
Tended and cared for
Over the years
Like an exotic
Hot-house Flower.
Kenosis is a necessary step
Towards Individuation -
That Jungian notion
Which provides the text
For the second half of Life.
The deflation of the ego
The abandonment of
That Carefully cultivated Persona
And its substitution with Heart.
The cutting of the Flower.
The opening to Spirit
And the Reconnecting
To the Great Rhythm
Of the Universe.
Once Rulers
Ruled from
Citadels deep within
The Countryside.
Their Seats of Power
Secure amongst
The people of the
Land.
Beyond, Towns grew
Rich by trading
Harvests Unearthed
By sweat of Peasant’s brow.
Princely Nodes of Capital
Then became Established
Linked in Traceries
Of Global Connectivity
Whilst Peoples of the Earth
And of its seasons, vainly orbited
Sequestered Courts
That Rotted from within.
Abundant in Information
And Worldly Wealth
Great Cities then arose
In Concrete, Steel and Glass.
Inviolable to
The Vagaries of the Weather
And Disdainful of
The Natural World
These Hives of Virtuality
Thrived until
Destroyed by storms born
Of Earth’s Malignant Shroud.
Yet out of the Dross
New societies Grew
Informed by the simple
Lessons of Agronomics.
The Treasures of the Land
And of its People
Regnant again, amidst
Battered Fields of Wheat.
In Europe’s New World
Its Indigenous Peoples
Were Decimated
By Disease and War.
They Raged, raged Against
The dying of their World
And Mourned
Their broken Lives.
In acts of Restitution
They Fought
So called
Mourning Wars.
Against Neighbors
And long time enemies
Alike, they made War
To restore a Balance.
They Fought
To capture slaves
Hostages and the Young
To Replace their Dead.
The worst of Societal Decay
Was thus brutally Staunched
And Bereft Nations gathered
Strength to Live another Day.
* * *
Now, after the Collapse
Of its Hegemony, America
Fights its Mourning Wars:
Wars to Kill and Torture.
Wars that feed
The Corruption of the State
And Exacerbate
Its Impotence and Decay.
Hollow Military Rituals
Or Shock and Awe
That Fail, and fail again
To Restore our broken Nation.
We Rage, rage Against
The dying of our World
And gather round us
The Ghosts of Olden Days.
When Science
Was Invented
Early in the 17th Century
And the West
Became Enlightened
Life’s Mystery dimmed.
In the Long Before
There were arguments
Over the precise Liturgy
With which to pierce
The Transcendent Realm
But none to its Existence.
This Great schism
Between Science and the Soul
Developed over five Centuries
And formed an Abyssal Rift
Into which, we are told
A.I. is now to be implanted…
One hope remains
Now all but forgot
Not demigods
But minions are we
Our Special Power:
Humility.
I grow nothing but
These piles of Words
Only weeding weeds
And trimming thoughts.
Which, in this moment
Sounds Thoreauvian.
But I do not Aspire to
Profundity.
I simply let grow what grows
In the Native plant community
And write home-grown thoughts
In these short stacks.
Content to be, like Thoreau
A Collaborator
In the Devolution
Of Modernity.
It is very Simple:
We are Conscious Beings
Embedded in a World
Of Consciousness.
Humankind
Has understood its
Elemental condition
Since Time began.
We call it Animism.
The Primitive belief
That all the World
Is Alive.
It does not necessarily
Comport with our Present
Scientific Knowledge, but Still
We understand its Truth.
The Idea
That Sentience
Exists
In Everything.
Philosophers call it
Panpsychism.
It is not Religion
It is for now, Conjecture.
An old idea
Rooted in Philosophy
Not Physics.
Not Yet.
Some things endure
Despite the Circumstance
Of a Civilization
That promotes their Destruction.
Common Verbain
Turkey Mullein
And Vinegar Weed remain.
Resolute, in the pasture.
Revived by August rain
They grow surrounded
By the sun-killed
Grasses of Summer.
These Plants amidst
The dead bric-a-brac
Of Europe: Secure
In their Indigeneity.
Grounded in their place.
Indigestible
To the four Reticulations
Of a Cow’s stomach.
Surviving
In a fissured Landscape
Where their meadow
Borders a Ravine
On a mesa
Amidst rocks
Brush and barbed wire.
Their Redoubt.
Men die
In Far-off Lands
To Defend the West’s
Imperium.
Mid-century
The Atom split
The world too - Between
Revolution and Stasis.
Decades
When Nothing changed
Except the growth of Militarism
Capitalism and Technology.
A Sundered World
Then put back together
By the Superglue of Globalism
The Neoliberal West Triumphant.
Now, Against the Inevitability
Of its Decay, this dying Empire
Sacrifices the Human Flesh
Of its European Borderlands.
Was Ever Thus:
Steel and Fire
Blood and Guts
For Empire.
When I was nine
I thought we all
Possessed an equal share
Of Happiness.
How else to justify
The great disparities
Between myself and
The afflicted?
Afflicted
By Poverty
Crippled by Polio
Or, suffering other impediments.
This youthful dictum
I now articulate
As a world where Yin and Yang
May find a balance.
The Yang of Pleasure
And the Yin of Suffering.
Each enfolding the other
In an amoebic whole.
How do we Proceed
Except by this Faith?
Embracing the Equilibrium
Of all things.
In every life
We have some trouble
But when you worry,
You make it double.
For Buddhists:
‘The Floating World’
Is our prosaic world
Transformed by the Awareness
Of Being.
They Imagine:
Our divine selves
Emerging from its murky depths
Like Lotus blossoms
From a Lake.
Such Imagery recalls
The Mystics notion of Reality
In which the prayerful
Are Pierced
By an Elucidating Light.
It is not Necessary
To believe in either notion
But both are useful prompts:
All power lies within us
As we open our Hearts to Grace.
It is then that
The Lotus Flower
Engulfs us
In the Divine Luminosity
Of its Unfolding.
L O T U S L A N D I I
A Void
Exists
Somewhere
Within the Abdomen.
It is the
Phantasmagorical
Location
Of Our Being.
Of Our Presence
And of Our Attention.
Nested within
The Lotus Blossom.
Our Consciousness
Rooted
In the effulgent bowl
Of a Flower.
From this shallow declivity
Arise Mystical filaments
That Fly to
Worlds beyond Worlds.
To a Universe
Of All Things
Held In a web
Of their Consciousness.
The Green Revolution
Thrives in the Shadow
Of the Industrial:
Its righteous glow
Fueled by the Burning of Oil.
The mining and manufacture
Necessary, for the Creation
Of Solar Energy Infrastructure
Requires Burning Fossil biomass.
It Is not Self-Replicating.
This then
Is no Revolution at all.
Just another way
To continue on the way
To our Demise.
Progress is
Maintained, Growth
Assured, while the Future
Fades into the
Approaching Storm.
Momentum Ever
Privileged over the Stilling
Of Our Rapacious Appetites,
We Race Toward
The Darkening Of the Sky.
Big Ideas
Were conjured
In the caves
Of the Neolithic.
Male egos were imposed
On the bodies
Of Woman, Beasts
And on the Land.
The Wisdom of the Natural World
Was Forsaken
While Ideas were wrought
In Stone, Copper and Iron.
The Familiar rise of Civilization
Followed
Until Science became
The God of Man.
Colonialism then Marked
The Triumph of the Male Ego
Celebrated in violent predation
Upon Foreign Lands.
Enlightenment Thinkers
Counted
This desecration
As Progress.
Now, after Long centuries
Suffered under this Brutal scourge
We come at last to its Collapse
The Blessed End of Progress.
Eucken once asked, Will it be Existence
Or Substance?
The Sense-World or the Transcendent?
In 1908, the Nobel Prize for Literature
Was His.
A little more than Fifty years Later
Dylan replied
The answer my friend, is blowing’ in the wind
In 2021, the Nobel Prize for Literature
Was His.
Evelyn Underhill introduced me to
Rudolf Eucken
In the prodigious
Footnotes that underpin
Her magisterial work, Mysticism.
In this, my short-stack exercise
In Compare and Contrast
Eucken does not represent only Substance
Nor Dylan only Existence.
As E.U. might put it, each sought Reality.
Philosophers and Mystics both,
One wrote in academic High German,
The other in demotic American.
Both express a commitment
To the experience of Transcendence.
Each flourished in the sense-world,
But, as artists
They wrote their higher calling:
The exposition of Substance
Within the evanescence of Existence.
Turning Things Into Numbers
Was a Very
Bad idea.
Too late to Banish
The Binary Code
We submit to its full consequence.
Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
For 165,000,000 years.
Forever and always forestalling
Change.
Until a Cosmic Collision
Covered their Verdant World with Dust.
The Sumerians first converted things
Into numbers
To tax the poor.
The Egyptians to measure out
Monuments to Dead Kings
And to count their slaves.
No great harm perhaps
Until, in the Land of Kali
The Zero was conceived.
Then Leibniz
Made the Modern possible
By counting in Ones and Naughts.
Now, Our Verdant World
Is shadowed by its digital simulacrum.
And within the Binary Haze
We can see
That Our Days
Too, are numbered.
Buddhists advise
To Invest our Lives
In the Buzz
Of Being.
The Body
A mere fleshy Carapace
We carry around
For the duration.
At the End, they say
The Truth is Revealed:
There is no center
Only the Vastness of Presence.
Our Solitary
Lives spent suspended
In a Reality
We barely knew.
Too late, we confront
An awkward truth
That all earthly effort
Was in Vain.
Still, a life lived
Has Value.
It is the grain of sand
Around which sentience gathers.
And in its multitudes
Is Formed
The Essence
Of our Abounding Universe.