On the backs of seahorses' eyes

by Cauble, Don

  the beginning—time to get ready

  to go home, to the one you love,

  to the lights that never go dark,

  to arrive at last to who you are,

  with no strings attached.

  Outside my thoughts,

  a whole universe goes on.

  Endless

  Endless comes life

  in the Spring, in every Spring.

  "Away with lullabies,

  sad songs, your eyes that close in tears!"

  we cry to the flowers;

  we beckon the sunbursts

  between the quickening showers.

  Show me your secrets

  and I'll show you mine;

  and I'll show you every doubt

  the budding rose, the dandelion,

  the bumblebee,

  will joyfully put out.

  Endless goes the cycle,

  endless my heart, loving you.

  Endless all that I am,

  and endless this journey to you.

  Looking out my kitchen window at the cemetery

  2006-2010

  §

  Whatever Unknown and Unknowable Spirit there is in the universe, this Spirit has brought forth untold billions of individuals with unique fingerprints and auto-biographies that seem to last no longer than dreams. This unutterably beautiful but often terrifying world we live in is a fact that never ceases to evoke wonder in me, and I must confess I cannot understand it. To me, the agony and the beauty of the human condition is to be eternally and inevitably ignorant of our ultimate origin and destiny.

  —Larry Setnosky, in a letter

  §

  Into this Universe, and Why not knowing

  Nor Whence, like water willy-nilly flowing;

  And out of it, as wind along the Waste,

  I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

  —Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

  In praise of Basho, W. C. Williams,

  & Charles Bukowski

  This morning,

  looking

  out

  through the kitchen

  window,

  a cold

  January morning,

  I saw a deer,

  nimbly

  walking through

  the gravestones

  near

  the crematorium

  in

  the cemetery

  across

  the street

  from our house.

  How delightful!

  I thought.

  So much depends upon

  this cemetery!

  Knowledge on the line

  A few questions

  With your life on the line,

  with a loved one dying,

  what book,

  what piece of knowledge,

  will your draw upon?

  What truth

  doesn't come from who you are?

  Who do you think God

  is made of?

  "Bless all you see,"

  Ramas once said to me,

  "and let the world

  fall apart,

  as you bless it.

  Just let go, and love.

  Open your heart and love."

  Even if I can't carry a tune

  An e-mail dialogue with John Bennett

  in response to his shard:

  THE ROSEY CRUCIFIXION

  who the fuck is Cornel West?

  and why should I know him?

  if you don't know who levy is,

  you're cornel west...

  if you don't know who cornel west is,

  you have transcended

  everything

  and are god almighty himself...

  congratulations, Don!

  well, I know levy...

  since the 60s.

  so I ain't cornel west.

  and Jane

  (my partner)

  will tell you that I'm not god

  almighty himself...

  close...

  but not quite.

  then you're the mystery man...

  just about everything's a damn mystery to me.

  then it's time to take the magical mystery tour...

  you got a ticket to ride?

  ah, yes, but it's scalped and will cost you...

  last seat on the bus

  (which you are either on or off...)...

  who's driving this bucket of bolts, anyway?

  levy's dead. Kesey's dead. Lennon's dead.

  even Bukowski, who never liked buses,

  he's dead.

  what the hell's going on?

  who's driving this damn bus?

  neal cassady...it was difficult to arrange...

  a long pause.

  I see.

  this is no ordinary bus.. .is it?

  destination: unknown.

  oh, look, there's Tom Kryss with his rabbits!

  sweet Jesus, who's that beautiful woman?

  (I'm sure I've seen her somewhere before.)

  what a lovely voice she has!

  damn, it's 4:28 in the morning.

  when do we leave?

  shortly.

  that's it?

  no good-byes from the depths of the soul?

  no words of wisdom?

  no memories to relive?

  no tears of remorse?

  no wiseass advice?

  no broken hearts?

  no reciting of scriptures?

  no mumbo jumbo?

  no books to carry?

  no secrets untold?

  no regrets?

  no.

  we just disappear?

  vanish? without a trace?

  no collection boxes?

  no tombstones?

  no ashes?

  no shrines along the road?

  poof.

  you mean, the party's over?

  it's closing time?

  as in that great Leonard Cohen song?

  but, hey, it's a new day, right?

  who knows what's around the next bend,

  right? or just over the hill?

  wait…

  I see a glimmer of light.

  it must be time.

  any last thoughts?

  -30-

  I see.

  I'm on my own…

  ok,

  a last farewell,

  (without being sentimental

  or tough; is that not

  the hard part?)

  to friends… family…

  Jane…

  ("Gone to New Seasons"

  she once joked

  would be my epitaph)

  in this life I have

  acted the coward, a thief, a liar,

  a poet, a lover, full of pride,

  a king (a make believe king,

  wearing not a crown of stars

  but of cinders),

  an outlaw, a prisoner in a foreign land.

  a traveler, a mystic, a beginner,

  a working stiff, a sanctimonious ass, a fool,

  a nice guy,

  a family man

  (a role, I'll admit,

  that didn't suit me well

  and that didn't last long).

  I have wrestled with angels,

  thinking they were demons;

  and I have entertained demons,

  thinking they were gods.

  I've been a seeker after Truth,

  only—I'm a slow learner—to discover

  I carried this truth within me—

  and this is my truth: LOVE—

  even as I carry you within me,

  and the memory of home

  deep within all that I am and am not

  like an acorn within a giant oak tree.

  simply put,

  I am who I am becoming…

  a man…

  a man who loves.

  a jewel of a man.

  I leave you

  now

  with this single thought.<
br />
  remember this.

  this is important.

  all those who crave knowledge,

  all those who pray and beseech the gods;

  all those who stumble and fall along the way,

  all those who think there is only one way

  to heaven

  and those who laugh

  at this one true god-forsaken way;

  all those who live in fear and those who love

  without the help of anything on Earth;

  all those who hide their thoughts in the shadows

  of tall buildings

  and those who look inward for all to see;

  all those who would rather be right than real,

  and all those who think they are lost

  and those who think they have been found;

  all those who wish--

  oh, damn, the bus...!

  I gotta go,

  gotta get on this conceit of a bus,

  like some Book of the Dead tug boat

  crossing the great waters,

  or that mythological chariot

  with the crazy Greek at the reigns,

  charioting me off to the underworld.

  there's no bus.

  (John made that up.)

  no band of angels.

  there's only Light...light

  everywhere...

  and in every cell of my body,

  a great singing.

  …

  with your life on the line,

  or a loved one dying,

  what book,

  what piece of knowledge

  will you draw upon?

  Don Cauble/ John Bennett

  They could not remember a time

  for Jane, partner in time

  No matter how long I sit and stare

  at these freshly painted walls,

  or the living plants so rich and green,

  or the stars I see through our windows

  with their grand view of Mt. St. Helens,

  snow-capped in the distance,

  or how long I gaze into the light around you,

  as you read your book of mysteries,

  both of us knowing, in our understanding,

  that this too shall pass,

  when I think of you,

  and wait for my heart to speak,

  I am filled, almost overflowing,

  with this deep, unfathomable silence.

  Words—like these—

  seem trivial, almost obscene,

  and yet, and yet…

  I must give words to this that is:

  my heart feels at peace with you in this room

  and this deep, unfathomable silence.

  An essay in which I attempt to explain to a friend how I see the world

  (Author's Note: Feel free to skip this part of Book Four

  since explanations can not only be boring

  but are often deceptive and misleading.)

  §

  I confess I have trouble reconciling that very spiritual,

  very mystical, very Zen, radical nondual teaching

  with my experience of time right here and now.

  If my watch tells me it's now 3:30 p.m.,

  how can I at the same time be living in eternity?

  —Larry Setnosky, in a letter, June 2008

  To begin, I'll skip your adjectives like "spiritual, mystical, Zen," and just go with the nondual term. I have no problem with the thought of living at 3:30 p.m. and living in eternity "at the same time." However, I do not define eternity in terms of physical immortality or physical existence or continuation. That would be silly. At least, to my experience. Not that I have some mystical experience or perception of eternity. Or 3:30 p.m. for that matter. They are both thoughts to me. One is a thought-measuring stick—the clock. Plus an awareness of night and day, the earth in relation to the sun, my body rhythms, that sort of thing. The other is more or less a sense of being outside of time…or the limitations of time. I can go with your thought that "I am time," but that doesn't exclude the thought "I am forever." Again, I'm not defining myself here as simply a physical existence or even a mental existence or even a soul existence… but existence itself.

  (Actually, I don't much think in terms of "eternity." I much prefer the word "forever.")

  Eternal Present. An interesting thought. But basically meaningless. Nor do I think that, in a true sense, we live in the present and, as you say, "Most of us run away from the present because it is too uncomfortable." Let me back up. You write about the Buddhist philosophy of relative truth and ultimate truth. I have no idea what ultimate truth is and neither do I think a Buddhist knows what ultimate truth is. Unless, perhaps, they mean by Ultimate Truth: I AM. An example for me is Newton's view of the universe. (An example I've probably used before in our exchanges.) This is a great truth. What goes up comes down, and the earth revolves around the sun, and all those laws we see in action in our physical universe. However, I believe the quantum view of the universe is a greater truth. It does not nullify the Newtonian view of the world but includes and goes deep into the world "where nothing appears to be." To call this the ultimate truth would be way presumptuous on our part. How can we call anything that we think or perceive or experience as the ultimate truth?

  A conceptual sleight of hand: to call relative truth the same as absolute truth.

  Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

  Our experiences can hardly tell us what's real and what's not real, much less what is absolute truth. To experience anything involves duality, as you well recognize. There's the state of meditation and the "I" who experiences the state of meditation. If the two become one, how are we to know? (Perhaps you suddenly emerge from the state and realize that "you" were not there?) I have no problem with "I" or with the "self" or with "desire" and with a lot of things that the Ancients wanted to dismiss as not being "real." How could they even say the "I" is temporary? By seeing that we die and that we have a temporary presence in this physical world? How does that prove anything other than what it is: we die and have a temporary presence in this world?

  As Walt Whitman crows: "I am large. I contain multitudes." He contains the whole of his world. Of his truth. And that world merges with mine even as I write this. Not just in some metaphorical sense but in the sense that we are here, now, forever. This is an inner thought, Larry; or whatever you want to call it. Sure, many would call it "denial." But they have no more proof of their "reality" than I have proof of this feeling, this knowingness, within. Relative truth—absolute truth—lower self—higher self—we can say yes, they are one and the same; they just wear different masks. I like the term "altered self"—this is the self of social consciousness, the self that leaves us feeling empty because, basically, it's a bubble on the ocean (to use a Buddhist metaphor). It's the self we create and forge and put together to live in this world and the self that so many of us come to accept as our true, authentic self. The true, authentic self is the "I" in touch with that-which-can-not-be-named and that-which-eludes-our-thoughts-and-our-philosophies. As in quantum physics, we can only deduce or conclude that this "I" must be there. We cannot experience this "I" because we are this "I" and to experience something, we need a split. We can only be this "I." Still, we go in search of this "I" in the name of enlightenment and all those other grand names we've inherited from the Ancients.

  Eternal Present.

  I don't experience the "I" that I AM. Neither do I experience the Now. I don't even experience the Present in our normal sense of the word, Larry. I experience, in our normal sense of the word, the immediate past. Perhaps I'm slow, but by the time I perceive something, that event has already come and gone. Yes, this happens so quickly that we think—we assume for all practical purposes—that it's the present. So we're running from the past. Perhaps many would think this is too subtle a distinction of past-present-future. In my ordinary day-to-day life, I certainly distinguish between past and present in the normal sense. But we can certainly fine-t
une our perceptions and emotional awareness so that we know when we're dealing with issues from the "past" and when we're dealing with an event in the "here and now." For instance, I know when it's Jane speaking—or maybe Jane's mother or her father—and not my mother or my father from way back in my memory banks. "It's not the past if you keep dragging it around with you." That's a quote from Polinski, years ago when we were married; a quote that I still treasure.

  The more we live in the "here and now," the closer we approach that feeling of authentic self and to the truth I AM. Trying to catch this self is, to use an ancient metaphor, like trying to grab the tiger by its tail. You can't think fast enough. In other words, you're chasing your own tail.

  The sense of lack… the sense of loss…

  We could ask: Where is this lack? Where is this loss?

  Certainly, in performance, I lack the ideal of how I want to be and act in this world. The other evening, after I placed Rosie's food tray in the utility room—Rosie, our border collie, is moving really slow these days and she hasn't yet got to the utility room—Milo makes a beeline for Rosie's food—and Milo knows this is not where she gets fed—and I stick out my foot to prevent Milo from going into the utility room. I forgot that I had on flip-flops. Milo chomps down on my foot with her teeth. In an instant, I grab Milo by the throat and throw her halfway across the kitchen floor. This is not the first time Milo has bitten me—her bite didn't draw blood, but I was so mad, so quickly, that my thoughts were filled with rage and the thought of killing that dog. Yep, in the moment Milo's teeth came down on my foot, I experienced the whole world of separation between myself and this other creature. If I did not have such self-control—if I wasn't so rational—my quick trigger reaction might have meant a bad end for Milo. (Something that I would have regretted for sure.) And this "spiritual consciousness" of mine… damn near gone in a flash… so how can I judge another or ride a high horse? Or even consider that I've mastered my emotions or left behind my reptilian brain?