A Handful Of Salt

Dear K,

I read this wonderful little koan the other day. Do you know what a koan is? It's a zen tradition. Where you tell a story, usually about some old bhuddist master explaining something to one of his students. The story is short. The story is true, and like all things that are really true it is true from multiple angles. This is why it is so hard to write a koan. It is hard enough to get something to be true one way, most people never manage it. We find the truth like people find furniture in a dark room. We stub our toes on it, bruise our shins on it, and curse it, when really it is a lovely seat made for us, if only we had the courage to sit in it, but you cannot sit in something that you do not know is there can you?

This is the koan I read: There was an old bhuddist master and his disciple. The disciple had led a life full of worldly suffering, and he complained about this to his master to the point where his master knew he needed to teach his student a lesson. So the master placed a glass of water in front of his student and bade him to pick up a handful of salt, and pour it into the glass, and then drink. The student did so. The master asked how the student liked the drink, and the student said it tasted bitter and salty. The master then asked the student to walk with him. They lived high up in the mountains so that they could be closer to God. The student followed his master to a mountain lake. The master again asked the student to pick up a handful of salt and pour it into the lake and drink. The student did so. The master asked him how he liked the drink. The student said it tasted fresh and sweet and cold and clear. The master then said that the pain we gather in life is the handful of salt, can you gather more than your hands can carry? No you cannot for you have nothing but your hands to carry things with, and the vessel we drink from is our sense of scale. Are you contained in a glass? Are you small like that? Or are you a part of something larger? Are you a glass or are you a lake. It is good to be a lake.


It would be much better if I could say that story in fewer sentences, but I am not very practiced at writing koans. I would like to say though, thank you for being my friend, thank you for being my confidant, thank you for helping me keep upright in the storms of life.

I hope we keep writing to each other for ever.

Kindest of regards,

K

A Fool For God A Fool For Love

Dear K,

I want to wake up next to somebody for the rest of my life. I want to look in their eyes and never ever want to close mine for fear of missing one single moment of theirs. I want to breathe their breath. I want to grow old with somebody. I want to watch each liver spot and each wrinkle and each crow's foot come in and I want to kiss them and bless them and revel in them because they are trophies of years spent with me. I want to raise children with somebody and watch them play in a yard. I want to watch grandchildren play in a yard. I want to lift somebody up. I want to make soup for them when their sick, and when we're both old and dying I want to say that I couldn't have done it better.

I want to reach my hand out for theirs and find it waiting for me already. I want to be so in love with somebody that the sun exploding could not tear us apart. I want somebody to love me this much I want to love somebody this much. I want to love everything about a person. I want to love their friends and family and their hometown and the bed they slept in as a child and I want to love each hurt and scar and each twist and turn of their life, for all of these things created the one I love and how could I love them without loving every part of them, being grateful and thankful to everyone on this whole damn planet for making the one I love. I want to die inside of a love like this.

I want to be buried in it. I want to spread a love like this. I want to dance slowly in an empty room with the woman I love and him softly a song that we used to dance to when we were younger. I want to do this until one of us is in a wheelchair. I want love and I ambitiously want love.

The Fool,

K

The Itch of Bloody Antlers, Bone Rubbed Raw Against A Tree

Dear K,

Did you know that I can be very good at talking to women? In the last few weeks I've had phone numbers thrust on me. I've had women approach me. It's strange. This is new for me. I feel no different. I don't feel as if I've changed one bit in my whole life. I'm just hopeless. I think that might be the cause. I don't care about what happens with any of these women. I'm not ready to fall in love again. I don't want them to fall in love with me, and still I write pretty things and do pretty things and wear pretty clothes.

Without meaning to I've built a career out of being a heartbreaker. Once at a party, before we were dating, my most recent ex heard me say "I'm just a lone wolf looking for my next prey." She thought I was being serious. I've never felt like a wolf. My last name means Fawn in German. I'm the thing that wolves eat. I'm supposed to be easy prey. I've always thrown myself at the best wolves. I guess somewhere along the way I grew antlers.

Nothing I can do about the past though. Nothing anyone can do about it. It's there, it happened, it's gone, we move on and on. Endlessly forward down the stream, and we can't ever see what's around the next bend. So I'm going to charge, and use all my strengths, and be myself and be fully myself and I won't worry about who I've hurt or how much I've hurt them anymore. They're all grown and gone from me anyway, and if they can't get over a little fawn like me then, what's the point in being a wolf?

Antlers down,

K

mirrors are so last season

Dear K-

I think there is something healthy in eventually letting go. After an appropriate period of mourning, we bury our dead. We can't keep those things around, because they just rot and decay and turn into something so distorted and far from what we remember them as, what they truly were, that it only sullies what once was, what we loved. The same applies to memories and past lovers. We can't keep such things hanging around for too long. Maybe, a few years later, once the grass and weeds have grown over the grave soil that formed a scar on the earth, we can dig up the bones and examine them like a scientist. Cold, distant, like an archeologist pondering over the history of an unearthed relic. But for now, you need to bury the dead. You've been holding onto that corpse for a bit too long and the air was starting to smell foul and sour.

If only life were as neat and beautiful as you write it. I am going to keep hoping for that remarkable character you describe, but who deep down I know can't exist. But maybe that's what holds me back. My cynicism is my downfall. But fuck it, I'm tired of putting so much value in the result of a wild goose chase.

I dropped everything and went north to the nation's border. I had to get out of the city. I've spent the last few days doing little except for sitting outside, drinking black coffee, and reading. This is what I am, more than anything. My bones feel so at ease here, with no expectation and no demands. But a voice deep down in the well of my heart whispers that it is only temporary. Even if I were to cut all ties and stay up here to live this lifestyle, it would lose its allure and grow dull. I would become restless, just as I always do. But for now it is beautiful. It is beautiful. You are beautiful. I am beautiful. And we don't need any fucking mirrors to know that. Mirrors are so cliche these days. I don't know about you, but I've broken all mine. I spun them like plates on my finger tips and then I shattered them on the rocks of the river bed.

Some days it might be better to be the third horse. Just enough resistance to keep the rider alert that at any moment I might change my mind, that I am only now giving in because perhaps it just so happens to suit my whims. But I know for now I am the fourth horse, bruised and bloody but still refusing the path presented. Stubborn until the end, blind to whether it may be advantageous to obey this time. True to myself, but also perhaps selfish beyond forgiveness.

If you have the gift of prophesy, I must be blessed with the gift of introspection. I can dissect myself apart better than the most gifted surgeon. It's the only time my hands can stop from shaking. I leave a little tally mark on one of my ribs every time I perform the procedure. It is so covered in the little grooves that I might need to start in the next rib soon. I should really never been worried about what other people might say or do to me, because I know it will never do as much damage or cause as much hurt as what I myself am capable of.

And as for your tattoo...pics or it didn't happen.

Off for more coffee,
-k

Le Fou et l'Ocean de doulear

Dear K,

I have a new resolve.

I'm going to do this. I'm going to move on. I'm steeling myself now. I'm going to make the choice to neither speak nor write of her. I've indulged too much in the bitter drink of sorrow. In my life I have come to enjoy the taste. It is odd how one can acquire a taste for heartache, like black bitter coffee. I drink in heartache like wine. I drink it in a garden staring up at the moon thinking of what was and what may be.

Did you know that it does not matter either way? That what was will happen again, and that what will be has already happened, and will happen again and all of it is all true. Everything is in the cycle. Everything is bound to the wheel. Even our universe will die, and then live and then die and then live, and we within it will live and die an unknowable number of times, and all of this does not matter because the only truth is the present. Did you know this? I'm sure you did. You're very clever.

I've decided on my first tattoo. I'm going to get a tarot card tattooed on me. The Fool. Because I am a fool, more than anything else. I am a fool, and there is a kind of wisdom in being a fool. It is a good thing to be a fool, it is fertile soil to grow in. I believe that I am on a journey. I am in progress, and that I will trip and stumble and make God laugh until the very end, when I'll probably go out with a big fart. I'll wear ashes in my hair and rags to the brightest dinners and a tuxedo to sleep in the alley. I'll throw away gems for apple cores and hold them up to the sun saying look how they shine and shine as they rot in my hands. I am a fool.

Bhudda says there are four types of horses. There is the horse that as soon as you jump in the saddle begins galloping off to where you want to go. The second horse needs only for you to grasp the reins lightly and gently. The third horse needs a gentle kick and a tug of the reins and will obey your commands. The fourth horse will struggle and kick and will need to be beaten with a lash until it's flanks are bloody and bone is showing in the wounds before it will move. I am like the fourth horse. We are all like the fourth horse. It is good to be the fourth horse. There is purpose in it.

Meher Baba was a Persian-Indian mystic popular in Hollywood in the 1930's. He took a vow of silence and spoke with an alphabet board and hand signs. He invited High Society women to come to his ashram and they did by the bus load, to scandal and scorn back home. Later in the 50's and 60's he demanded that twenty of his followers join him on a never ending pilgrimage. They must fill their hearts with hopeless helplessness, and be cheerful about it. No matter what difficulty they encountered they were to be cheerful in resolving it. They were to overcome sickness and death and hunger and thirst and pain and fever and flies and rainstorms and sharp rocks and broken bones with song and laughter.

I am convinced this is the way of things.

For now.

That is the advantage of being a fool, you can always realize that you are being fooled. It is much better than being wise or smart.

Le Fou,

K

A Lantern Must Be Alternatively Covered and Unvovered In Order To Say Anything Across Time And Space

Dear K,

I don't think you need to change anything about yourself except how much you like yourself. I've been telling you for years that you're too harsh on yourself by not just half but whole. You say you're a monster, you berate yourself for the things you've done that anybody would do. Dear K, if you are a monster then we are all Draculas and Wolfmen and Frankensteins. You're one of the good ones, one of the dear hearts, one of the true believers. You hold a lantern in the darkness. You hold love in your heart and water it secretly and outside of this you've built a shell of pessimism, but I am not so blind as that. I can see right through this flimsy little shell that you've built. I see through to your heart I see the love that you are so desperate to give away. I see the fires you keep banked. I see their warmth. I know that you are just waiting for the signal, waiting for the horn to sound, and that secret fire of yours will rage through your whole body. You'll burn in it. I know this, because I can see my own kind, the kind that loves love. The kind that throws themselves on the train tracks of fate. The kind that will say they love somebody two months in, and mean it, or if they don't say it they will think it and mean it. We are the dear hearts. We are the lighters of lamps. We are the audience and the author. We are the ones who spin this world of broken dreams around our impossible schemes to scale the heights of loves lofty cliffs and so often fall to the rocks below and then we see a distant glimmer of hope and start the climb over and over again. Oh dear heart I have faith in you. I have placed all my worldly faith in you. I believe you will be happier than you ever thought possible and still happier than I could ever dream for you. I believe that you will meet someone who likes coffee just as black as you. Someone who pushes puzzles pieces together just the way you do. But this tall and dark and handsome man, with a chin to write home about and coal black eyes that make you think of railroad tunnels and Raven black hair, this man will make you think of chess in the night and love in the morning and he will come to you and how to you and make you his and he yours and love will rain down upon you like an August thunderstorm. There will be a trumpet sounding in the hills, and dogs barking in the street and the clock towers will sing out your new love. I know this to be true, for one of the gifts that God gives the dear hearted is prophecy. Our prophecies come truer than most and hardly ever at all but, it's a lot like tilting your head and squinting an eye or better still one of those pictures where you have to let your eyes unfocus and then you see the sailboat, it is how you look at it. I believe in you and your future, and there is sunshine ahead for you, but first storm clouds and strong winds, because your boat needs to be blown in the right direction, because God and Nature abhor straight lines.

As for me. I will love again. I know I will. I still dream about her though. This week I've been out in the wilderness that she fled to. I've been with my family, and I've thought about her. I have my regrets and my bitterness, but now I am more me than I was then. I have regained myself. I don't think she had taken my sense of self, or if I threw it away, but I had lost it and now I've got myself back and that I think is a choice I would make a thousand times and one. But still, the barbs are there and they are deep.

Oh well. We must all cry and suffer and scream and then we will be washed in the light of love and made clean, in this life or the next or the one after and if we're lucky we can catch glimpses of how big the world is and how small we are and that makes our pain less.

I love you, I bless you, I hope all things for you,

Dear heart,

K

a nice heart and a white suit

Dear k-

I am tired. I am restless. I have decided I need to make changes in my life. Things have become too stagnant. The person I currently am could be consciously improved. I drink too much. My workouts have become too routine and have lost their edge. My social life consists of the same four friends doing the same things every week without much variation. I am floundering hopelessly when it comes to dating. It’s time to decide to fish or cut bait, and I am cutting bait and swimming for shore.

It’s time I take control and make myself the person I want to be, rather than relying so consistently on the approval and acceptance of others in order to dictate my happiness. I went on three really good dates with a guy and now it’s like pulling teeth trying to set up a fourth date with him. He dodges and weaves through my suggested meet-ups like a prize boxer avoiding punches. I’ve spent a few days feeling low, but now I think that he’s the fool. If he’s trying to strategize to play hard to get, it’s backfiring. Why waste my time pursuing someone who is not so infatuated with me after three dates that he’s not willing to make time for me? I want someone who looks at me from across the room and thinks “that’s a woman who deserves a man who is willing to fight for her” and he is apt for the task. I want a man who actively looks forward to spending time with me. I don’t like feeling like something that needs to be penciled in a schedule, squished between other commitments and made to feel like I should be the one thankful he’s even giving me a few hours of his busy time.

Of course, I suppose I have possibly treated suitors in similar fashions at times. So maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised when the tables are turned on me. But then again, that’s another thing I need to improve. Another thing to add to the list of changes to enact.

Drink at least 8 glasses of water each day.
Start the day with hot lemon water. Optional: add mint.
Eat better. At least a salad a day. Be conscious of portions and late night snacking.
Sign up for a new workout class; try something outside my comfort zone.
Do something creative at least twice a week.
Limit alcoholic beverages to less than 10 per week. Preferably less than 5, so as to fit with most advice given by medical practitioners of the day.
Stop calculating self-worth based on the love of others.
Make attempts to elicit what truly makes me happy.
ADDITION: Be attentive to how you impact the feelings of potential suitors, both those you are interested in and those you don’t intend to pursue.

Here’s to hoping for something better to come.

Swimming,
-k