Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.
___
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao Te Ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
_
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

_
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Dear Mr......  I live in Melbourne.  Read your book--honest, bold, revelatory, trail-blazing.  I read much of Tolle and some of Chopra.  I like the way you have described your observations--they are sharp and insightful.  I am a Zen person and must have read Lao Tze's Tao -te-Ching 50? times ( my forthcoming book is on Tao leadership).   Every person finds their own way in their journey towards self-discovery and self-awareness. The path is a very hard one--it calls for so much patience, humility and determination. You mention happiness as a skill--so true.  What is so fascinating about Zen and Taoism is that it's an achievable art.  Happiness-gurus overstate their case,  they exaggerate,  they prescribe what they regard as THE ANSWER--- that's not true...and you have rightly written about their loss of cool, that they also exhibit impatience and dislike in stressful situations, that they self-aggrandise.  There is no perfect person on earth--even saints have their faults. Teachers must have humility, compassion, selflessness,  tolerance and goodwill----self-effacement I regard as the highest virtue being immensely affected by Taoism and Confucianism.  Yes, I live in the moment but my focus and attentiveness could never be the same or unencumbered.  But I do succeed in some measure.  He who wishes to meditate must come in purity of heart---he can't meditate if his heart and feelings are not right.  He needs to self-abandon, lose himself, feel as a child in the vast expanse of possible 'being', to be one with a Higher Reality or Consciousness....the letting-go is the route...My small book  IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN--THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE released in Melb in 2018 has sold quite well.  For an unknown hobby-writer, I am more than gratified and have thanked my publisher for their faith in me.  It has accepted my Tao leadership book for release later this year---many lessons are in the same vein as found in Zen--after all, Taoism is the mother of Zen.  Someone wrote that Zen is the greatest discovery since the Enlightenment.  It has permeated every sphere of thinking and living.  I read Thomas Merton's SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION some 50 years ago and continue to read him though I am not a Catholic (I don't have a religion being a humanist--agnostic?).  Merton was so enamoured of Zen that he edited a work of Zhuangzi, the most eloquent follower of Lao-tze.  The Vatican was very concerned as it was afraid he might abandon his original faith. But he didn't---his love of his faith even grew!  Now we have Zen-Christians, a phenomenon that testifies to the universality of faiths and beliefs.  I am sorry to have written so much.  Once again, thank you for your wonderful book.  Please drop me a line--I can learn from you.  Being a composer, musician and singer,  I find it easier to find my 'peak moments' when I am into it.   With my deep esteem and sincerest wishes.

precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a ***,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

__

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

_

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao Te Ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.
__

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.

__

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao Te Ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Dear friends , this is an old poem of mine which was composed after I learnt that one of my favourite Hollywood actor Richard Gere had become a Buddhist and believed in Zen Philosophy. So having read about Zen, I composed in a simple format about the same. Hope you like it. Thanks, - Raj.


                    ZEN PHILOSOPHY
With roots buried deep in soils of Ancient India,
And watered by the exotic blend of three different
cultures;
Reflecting the mysticism of India, the pragmatism
of the Confucian mind, and the Taoist’s love of
naturalness and spontaneity,
Buddhism bloomed and blossomed into an exotic
flower called 'Zen Philosophy'!

In 475 AD a pupil of Buddha called Bodhidharma
went to China.
There the Mahayana School of Buddhism mingled
with Chinese Taoism, which evolved into Chan
Philosophy!
'Chan ' derived from the Sanskrit  word 'dhyana',
which meant 'silent meditation',  -
Through which the Buddha attained enlightenment
and salvation!
Later, in 1200 AD this Chan philosophy travelled to
the shores of Japan,
Where 'Chan' got translated to 'Zen' by its many
followers and fans!
ZEN is the art of meditation to achieve inner awakening,
To gain intuitive knowledge, highlighting the inadequacy
of logical reasoning!
It therefore advocates the practice of 'zazen' or 'sitting
meditation',
For acquiring inner awakening through silent
contemplation!

ZEN could be practised in our daily life,
Without entering a hermitage, leaving behind your
family or wife!
'Gain the naturalness of your original true nature',
-  preaches the Zen Teacher through meditation,
'Rather than through mere faith and devotion,
which is contrary to Zen notion.'
'One must awaken to this present moment to feel
this life,
And not waste time in speculations of an Elusive
After-Life’!
The 'Enso' or the ‘circle’, is the Zen symbol which is
often deployed,
Symbolising Enlightenment, Strength, the Universe,
and the Void!
With this 'expression of the moment ' the Zen Philosophy
starts,
And today the ‘Enso’ is also the symbol of Expressionist
Art!
Never ask the Zen Master 'What is Zen, when, or how? ',
For he will always tell you, - 'Zen Is The Instant Now'!
                                                      - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.

It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.
__

"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

_____
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-tao-2-when-people-see-some-things-as-beautiful/r/#ixzz11xNle0lV

Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-tao-4-the-tao-is-like-a-well/#ixzz128aUI49p

The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.
_
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Dear Friends , this is an old poem of mine which was composed after I learnt that Richard Gere, one of my favourite Hollywood actors had become a Buddhist and believed in Zen Philosophy. So having read about Zen I composed this simple verse. Hope you like it. If you like it kindly re-post this poem. Thanks, - Raj.

                      ZEN PHILOSOPHY
With roots buried deep in soils of Ancient India,
And watered by the exotic blend of three different
cultures;
Reflecting the mysticism of India, the pragmatism
of the Confucian mind, and the Taoist’s love of
naturalness and spontaneity,
Buddhism bloomed and blossomed into an exotic
flower called 'Zen Philosophy'!

In 475 AD a pupil of Buddha called Bodhidharma
went to China.
There the Mahayana School of Buddhism mingled
with Chinese Taoism, which evolved into Chan
Philosophy!
'Chan ' derived from the Sanskrit  word 'dhyana',
which meant 'silent meditation',  -
Through which the Buddha attained enlightenment
and salvation!
Later, in 1200 AD this Chan philosophy travelled to
the shores of Japan,
Where 'Chan' got translated to 'Zen' by its many
followers and fans!
ZEN is the art of meditation to achieve inner awakening,
To gain intuitive knowledge, highlighting the inadequacy
of logical reasoning!
It therefore advocates the practice of 'Zazen' or 'sitting
meditation',
For acquiring inner awakening through silent
contemplation!

ZEN could be practiced in our daily life,
Without entering a hermitage, leaving behind your
family or wife!
'Gain the naturalness of your original true nature',
-  preaches the Zen Teacher through meditation,
'Rather than through mere faith and devotion,
which is contrary to Zen notion.'
'One must awaken to this present moment to feel
this life,
And not waste time in speculations of an ‘elusive
After-Life’.
The 'Enso' or the ‘circle’, is the Zen symbol which is
often deployed,
Symbolizing Enlightenment, Strength, the Universe,
and the Void!
With this 'expression of the moment ' the Zen Philosophy
starts,
And today the ‘Enso’ is also the symbol of Expressionist
Art!
Never ask the Zen Master 'What is Zen, When, or How? ' ,
For he will always tell you, - 'Zen Is The Instant Now'!
                                                      - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.

Mahayana in Sanskrit means 'Great Vehicle', and is the largest major tradition of Buddhism existing today. The other branch is called Hinayana, meaning the ‘Lesser Vehicle’.

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

Read more: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-tao-2-when-people-see-some-things-as-beautiful/r/#ixzz11xNle0lV

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

____
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

From a young age I was claiming to see angels, aliens, elementals, sometimes god himself walking in the sun. I remember surprising my teacher at age four by explaining infinity and drawing a figure eight for her.
I'm telling you these things, and other parts of my background because it all just feels necessary, if I'm to have any credibility for rational thought when I somehow find a way to explain what happened in there. It's been almost a week, I'm still jacked in the head. One thought, one memory, one feeling and all I can do is sob.
I digress. My point is that I've always been a highly spiritual person. What started as a Catholic would travel through taoism, Buddhism, the Cherokee and Hopi, the Hindu.. I've learned their Kung Fu, their Asana yoga, their healing through chi. I can say with no ego or shame, I am a shaman.
Christ, coming full circle, now amazes me the most. From that short line, "for through me all things are possible."
It's funny, but it took all that eastern mystic learning for me to come to understand the truly timeless nature of the cross, of God, and of ourselves.
I also, from age fifteen, was frequently hypnotized, and used an array of other advanced tequnique therapies meant to increase sub concsious brain hemisphere communication speeds. Remarkable stuff. From there I taught myself how to meditate and heal, and my colleague and I continued our experiments on into my early thirties.

I'm writing all of this because I want you all to know what I mean when I say "I am extremely in tune with my body and often sense things intuitively."

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the  Tao te ching,  the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).

Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html

i wish i could just forget it,
but christ-
there's a hook somewhere inside of me
and it's wedged in real deep.
the only way out is through
and the only way through is you
but there's only one you
and the last time we included you
was the time you got out of my car
and left me with a mouthful of
buddha says this and taoism says that
and blah blah blah i know what i'm talking about
but i don't know what i'm talking about
and you know just as well as i do
that i don't know what i'm talking about;
oneness and demons, we're all god and ego and prayer, just stop it!

you could have sat there and listened, though.

but you still got out of the car
in that construction zone with your friend
and did you look back? i don't know
you never said before you left for italy and left me
antique shopping at just the gosh-****-cutest shop
this side of the PA/DE border
don-cha-know.
i wanted to buy everything there and say
"let's have this one. let's have that one."
let's register for this one.

its just you always have a script in your head,
but i always fumble my words when they mean something,
and i can never talk about what i feel-
never say what i really believe.
maybe there's just no words for it,
definitely there's just no melody for it.

but if there was, it'd be all like...
capo on 1: amin, g, f, c.

say the word and we'll start heading home.

I don't know
No one knows

RELIGION

A greatly diverse word
The complexity from each Gods can't be explained

Christianity or Islamic?
Hinduism or Buddhism?
Confucianism or Taoism?

I don't know
No one knows
Which of these is the one?
Which God is the Man?

Each have their own beliefs
Each came from different myths
How the hell would humanity know?
How would a religion shatter every other's ego?

Just what if?
What if Christianity tells the truth?
Would it mean that homosexuality is just a bluff?
Is it just a wrong "choice" and can be cured by having faith in God is enough?

BUT what if?
What if Atheism tells the truth?
What if atheists just have so much strength?
Strength in facing the truth that after we die it will all end?

Until now, evidences are still vague
Even the most religious one had thought this inside their head
What if the world we have now is just an illusion?
No one knows for sure how to cure this confusion

RELIGION

I don't know
No one knows

I. from living under a rock to exploring the internet

well... isn't it nice...
me? i've greatly benefited from the existence
of the internet...
how else would i have found out about the origins
of Taoism if not thanks for the internet...

i just kept one maxim in my head from
a book i picked up in some bookshop near
Russell Sq., it was a book on Taoism...
but it was sort of like the Best of
   of a band...
                not good enough... but my modus operandi
became the Kantian categorical imperative:
in order to help the world -
forget the world and let the world forget you:
the crux of "not-doing": i.e. purely being...
hell not- is not the antonym of pure...
                 not could be coupled with just... simply...
pro?
                   one of those...

me? i greatly benefited from the internet...
as most "bears" / "loners" / solitary creatures have
found out to be true...
i have an entire world history and a body
of knowledge at my fingertips:
it's only a question of what you're wanting to find...

without the internet i would have never
bothered to spend £20 on a physical copy of a book...
the complete writings of the primo Taoist: Zhuangzi...
nor would i have spent £30 x 2 on Heidegger's
black notebooks...

but i understand that the people who make videos
and do not write are all "savvy" when it comes
to view-counts... they ignore them...
they are more into "interaction": the comment sections...
i don't remember the last time i commented
on something:
i mean, ****'s sake... it's not like you buy
a book and expect to leave a comment... where?
on the sleeve? who's going to read that?
the author? hardly...

                             i like my view counts...
obviously the comments come minimally...
why? i believe in the anonymity of the readership...
the anonymity of the reader...
i like the fact that ideas are equivalent
to gold-mining and lightning strikes...
and that thinking itself is subject to shadows acting...
that it can be the best: most worthwhile "thing"
that implores of a being: hide me! hide me!

but i'm never going to make a video...
videos attract all the wrong viral attention...
i like the filter process involved in writing:
people have to make an effort and?
therefore? i'm left to my devices and whims
and sarcasms...
i can entertain Ovid and Marquis de Sade...

tu mihi, tu certe, memini, Graecine, negabas
    uno posse aliquem tempore amare duas.
per te ego decipior, per te deprensus inermis -
    ecce, duas uno tempore turpis amo!

i remember that it was you, certainly you Graecinus,
who told me to deny the idea
that one could love two girls at once!
through you i'm deceived - unarmed -
reason (this be the reason): i'm in love with two
girls at the same time!

i did one over old Ovid... loved two girls when both
of them were loving me...
which is so much better that loving one when loving
one and loving another when loving
another...
might as well:

                ledo duas aves uno lapide

two birds one stone... hardly serving two masters:
being served up twice...
and we're not talking about masters and servants
either...

me? i greatly gained from the internet...
                 am i the only person to agree to the fact that
it's just a jolly decent tool to use...
in and out... in and out... the internet to me
is like a brothel... i'm there / "here" for an hour...
then i disappear... leave footprints in the sand
on the beach... the tide of humanity washes in...
i'm left diluted: but i don't mind...
i too wouldn't want to have written the Harry Potter
books and then be mistreated for some
trans-****** phobic insinuations...
but i give her the grammar...
and how about the grammar on
the lyrics from WHAT IS SOUL... the B-sides
of By The Way...
                                 Big-Pie (Bag-Pie from Trainspotting:
freaking about... did i just touch
a magic nugget... a leprechaun's nose?!
is there! is there! a rainbow on this "other" side?!
pretty please... hey! if i go to Thailand
i'm sort of expecting to get confused...
it's a Thai thing... it was originally a Thai thing...
those Thai ******* are crazy)...

'it's roaming the streets at 4 in the morning
finding your best friend making out with a trans-******
in an all-night diner in Cleveland in 1986!'

plenty of women... ingenious boys
will be outright butch or add some extra BLUSH...
i can't say that i never kissed a man
sensually like i might kiss a woman sensually...
to later brush up on my Mr. Slurp'y skills
in the garden of fleshy flowers...
located where i entered the world: hopefully head-first:
oh sure... plenty of dolphins too...
how's it hanging? how's it hanging in Dubai?
plenty of hanging in Dubai...

freakishly lean: a plentiful decent diet of literature...
me? i benefited from the internet...
hey presto! i can bypass the gatekeepers of literature!
i can forget about publishing houses...
sure... i don't earn any money from it...
but that also increases me drive to pursue
the spiral out of control...
for me the advent of the internet is akin to:
the invention of the Gutenberg Press...
                                                  
yes, i was a fan of buying cans of Pepsi
instead of those 2litre bottles...
hmm... how to keep the gas once opened!
aha! shake the bottle after having a refill!
shake shake!
keeps the pressure tight-knit... beautifully
bountiful!

- two songs get me these days....
ALLAROUND THE WORLD
and GO ROBOT...
i trun to the canvas with regret: great! more typing!
i just want to keep keeping the rhyhtm:
perched on the windowsill
tapping my leg and grooving with my neck
like an imitation-party-pooper-pigeon
who invented head-banging
as the Hebrews imitate before the Wailing Wall...
i should have never picked up the guitar...
what a lonely enterprise:
it's already haunting me...
i was born as a natural drummer...

huh?!
of course i gained all the things there
are gained from the internet...
minus the light-bulb...
i managed to bypass all the gatekeepers
of literature: the editors...
hello! you forgot the paper! there's no paper!
there's no spoon either!
forgot the pills! just focus on the spoon
that isn't there!
and it's the perfect filter...
no one is going to bother me when i'm writig
and slacking on making video confession...

videos can be ingested passively:
reading? oh wow! who would have thought
that it might take some effort!
mix into the whole affair some Katakana...
hell... mix in some Mandarin hieroglyphs...
perfect defences against "simpletons"...
who? you have rotten cabbage
agreed with to throw with your comrade
against against being disgruntled about some
poor acting actor? what?!
stealing shadows became mundane?!

i also managed to breed a higher purpose
while everyone else was slumping
in the "pandemic"... i couldn't tell the difference...
what a funny: he-he-ha-ha tickling breeze!
ooh... let's have another go!
come on! let's go, let's go!
           he-he-ha-ha!
or rather: hí-hí-h'ah-ah-haha!

                             the internet wa been great for me...
but recently i came across this trend...
hmm (emoji of the biggest SMILE)...
VABBING...
                     dabbing... people dab perfumes on themselves...
what's VABBING... ah... ah... ha ha...
this is the point where i feel like putting
on my clown make-up and going out to
party come Halloween...

i'm pretty sure i'lll grow old and irrelevant
at some point... pop culture will no longer
interest me...
             but until that time comes...
piglets! teases!
                   it's like that one time where
i thought it was a good idea to date a single mom....
brought her homemade wine...
brought her homemade banana loaf cake...
NO GOOD...
i'm good-crazy as one prostitutes remarked...
still NO GOOD...
                                   goo.. plenty of goo...
oh man... the arsenal of music i have to sieve through:
it makes sense to not have children...
sure.... i'd love a little kritter "here and there"...
but? come on... with so much music
made available: would you?

and how did that parody of my grandfather
and grandmother play out?
she kept his death a secret....
to the point where he was in AGONIA:
out of reach... **** that then!

****'s sake VABBING... i.e. inserting your fingers
into your genital regions...
and then... Orestes! save me!
pretending that these juices are sort of:
akin to: perfumes!

o.k.: i'll level with these women...
here goes:
i like... ******* on my leg...
when i'm having a shower?
i like the idea of being a child again:
unable: UNONSCIOUSLY to control his bladder...
once in a while: i like ******* on my leg...
but that's only when i'm having a shower...
i like the idea of being without control...
i wish i could **** my pants ever so often...
alas... i can't!
but then i relieve my tamed unconscious
inhibitions... i tend to **** on my leg...
while taking a shower....
          
what is left for man beside finding new avenues
to compete: for the crown and the jewel in
in it of losing reason?
hell... let's all become **** AUTOMATON!
i can wait...
i'm orientating myself around the internet
like i might orientate myself around
a phonebook, an encyclopoedia...
and the... sacred loss of the music store on
the high streets...

there's me imitating drummers on a windowsill...
robot-esque...
*****! i'm keeping rhythm...
with a squint of my eye watching NORMIES
sitting static with their static televisions...
entertained?!
i like brick walls: i think of chess...
i like the sea bashing the land come high night...
i think of playing cards with the boys...
and backgammon...
i also like the idea of interpreting the flute
by splitting a reed of grass and blowing through it...
i like the childhood memory
of catching cockchafers and throwing them
down girls' t-shirts...
         hmm! i liked a lot of things...
whiskey won... i like swimming in it: thoughtless...
it's like like: give me a drink of whiskey =
Cleopatra having a ******* bath of milk!

i love the minutes "concerning" an unlit cigarette
dangling in my mouth...
before the opening crescendo
of Led Zeppelin's IN THE EVENING...
kicks in... only because: SHARP OBJECTS
waas such a captivating t.v. show...

hate t.v. love t.v. most certainly loved the movies...
i hate the movies these days...
i sometimes think: i could replace
the t.v. with three "things":
the sky... a fireplace... or a... ooh!
a ******* aquarium!
                     yeah... that could  work!
then again.... candles or the sky...
either wait.... play shadow charades...
                  
             there are actually two ways to give stress
to a F-U... using the hand...
there's:
A. the clenched fist with the etended middle
finger... poison...
but there's also
B. ******* extended....
thumb also extended: NO FIST...
all the other fingers are "bowing":
but they're not clenched... there's no imitation
of a fist...

seriously, though? no wonder i ventured into the realm
of prostitution, no wonder so many people thought this
"pandemic" was a "fake"...
sure sure... let me just apply my *****
Jean-Paul Gautier sniff-sniffs
while you, girl, test out, your next best
found ******.... what the ****?!

how about we start off with... oiling ourselves
with molten pig fat and then, then asking:
kosher enough for you?
oh... but this craziness is not supposed to stop!
it's supposed to escalate!
didn't you know?!
                           no no!
                                 there are either the crazies
or the uber-crazies!
      there's no in-between!
                 as much as Ovid prescribes ****** love...
i find the most erotica in prescriving myself
a decent amount of sleep...
               perhaps in his days...
but... he wasn't a solider...
so he wouldn't have known about being stationed in
Britannia,., jumping ****-naked into
the feral bushes of... no! not mint!
              you ******* Forrest Gimp or something?
blushes of *******... ****'s sake... FENNELS!
POKRZYWY! FENNELS! not ******* BASIL...
not ROSEMARY... not TYHME
*******: Hamza: brain-drain-lord
of an otherwise working Latin BREEN!
call your ******* cousin Hah-med and Muha!
the lord of the flies! Muhammad!
Muha! FLY! Jesus is the lord of mosquitos...
Muhammad is the lord of the flies...

please tell me someone tried to tell them
that they were
the auxillaries of Hell?
the past 2000 years has been an advent
of Hell...
Hell... even more: the Hellenic original
thought project...
comme ci, comme ça... c'est la vie!
i.e. it's good when it's good...
and bad when it's bad...

the tired mountain: the eagerly waiting stone...
the tired sea... the ambitious droplet of water...
that eternal flame... but all the more eager
sparkle of an ignite!

time flies when you're not having any fun...
pretending to not having a stab at...
those Kenyan ivory slush-puppies
come the crocodiles and Muhammad types
moon-served plump almost juiced up...
hey ** hey... you're just my Macaque sort
of type...

II. a schematic of rugby

H15()15H
\ (pass back)
/ (kick forward)
and...
just run around
shuffling your
magic feet:
toying with the octopus
dance of
a dislocated shoulder.


III. leftovers from an afternoon

give me until tomorrow, i'm still figuring "things" out...
video: oh video V video... Deo. and Doo and Deus...
mighty Churchill's index and middle...
of the fork in the road...
          or akin to the crossroads of
Robert Johnson...
            i picked up playing the guitar but i'm
a natural drummer...
easily soothed but also easily irritated by a rhythm
and beat...
for all the protest of (search engine, hello...
back of the bus protest, i just need a name)
sitting at the back of the bus:
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus protest...
i just remember mornings on the no. 86
bus... reading Stendhal while all the black
boys "unconsciously" stashed themselves
to the back of the double-decker...
white-flight in reverse, i.e. all the white girls
could join them:
thank god for my Turkish and Japanese fetish...
a fact not frequently recited:
i don't own any woman under the sun,
it's just my turn, turn after turn...
perhaps happily a *****-donor...
what's ******* and what's surrogate
motherhood for a homosexual couple,
like for like: i can't tell the difference...
besides... i earn about £10 an hour...
she earns £120 an hour and all for what?
being given an ******
and soothing my ego...
amazing though... it's crystal clear...
i never liked the back of the bus...
double-deckers have their engines in their ***...
very much like VW beetles...
the black boys naturally migrated to
the back of the bus every trip to school i took...
loud, vociferous: like most post-African people...
still strapped to the gridlock of
VICTIM... but sure: thanks for the jazz...
thanks for the blues...
if certain Africans were not exposed
to the English tongue...
i fear we'd still be stuck in a Mozart epoch...

In response to a Post by someone:

'Eckhart Tolle, after 27 years of acute depression, overcame this, in a state of bliss in ONE DAY. Is that possible?'

We are unhappy as we hold ourselves too seriously, too tightly, too selfishly, too judgementally.

In Zen and Taoism, we get rid of our ego, we don’t have fixated thinking, we accept life in all its facets—joy and sorrow, the pleasant and unpleasant—-we follow the flow of life and don’t fight against it. In our centred-ness, we hold our equilibrium in equanimity.

Ingredients making for happiness and sane living, in any culture, are fundamentally the same:

acceptance, kindness and compassion, love, generosity, simplicity, humility, patience, insight, forbearance, magnanimity, forgiveness, humour and in adoration of the transcendental, the divine and all that which is beautiful and life-enhancing.

This is a lifelong journey—we don’t need to lean on any person or their thinking.

ET has many critics, but also a huge following-
it shows the extent of existential angst of so many people in our anxious, restless and confused world.

I've spent the last 8 weeks studying Taoism, trying to find the art in letting go. But I can't and the pains pant, inside. Because at the end of the day, you're just black lines, carried across a blank page.

A little bit of Confucianism and Buddhism
The worthwhile life of Taoism .

Go with the flow maker Lao,
Communism and Chairman Mao
Stood no chance against the holy prism,
Opened up a deep wide chasm

The way, The path
Just do the math.
All day and all day
Just look at nature and it'll be okay.

Reason and knowledge,
Take the pledge,
Just look at nature and stay away college.

Things you can't comprehend,
Sins to amend and commend,
Just look at nature and you'll find a friend.

Master Lao, the maker of Tao
Finding ones place within this town,
Be one with nature and forget the crown.

Remember the magic of this mystical place,
Right in your head and right in your face.
Yin and Yang,
Walking with a cane.

The End is near,
We got all but haste.
Receive with open arms and a fragrant taste,
A little bit of aloe that's nature's paste.,

All will heal and All will feel
Beneath the tree,
We will see
Beneath the tree,
Just you and me.

hubris

cypher: d'
    'e
         -           antithesis
of non-negation: Tt...

i.e. to decipher: lost a
snake's tongue
and a tree's branching out
i.e. Y. (502 bad gateway bypass)

i'm coming up to doing this job for a year, come December,
late December i will have done this for a year,
time's up... time to rewrite my curriculum vitae
point to people who will give me references and apply
for a teaching job...
                                   if i can manage drunken football
spectators and people with mental health issues
freaking out on me and me calming them down...
if i can supervise a team of at most 15 people...
    i think i can tackle a bunch of rowdy teenagers:
even though i have this motto in my head...
sure, i could teach high school chemistry...
   i have the background for that, but...

sometimes it's not what you teach:
but who you teach it to...

same ****, different cover borrowed from that old chestnut
of: it doesn't matter what you know
but rather who you know...

if i could land a job as a primary school teacher i think
i would never again regret not having children
of my own...
i rarely do.... sometimes... there's this "evolutionary psychology"
element to my thinking but it rarely conforms to
what most people speak about...
notably about women...

women? how can i not love women...
i couldn't live with women,
i couldn't do what most men get up to with women
i see them with an invisible leash on their necks...
in the supermarket like down-trodden
beasts pushing the trolley while a woman
is throwing in, not necessarily good food...
certainly not vegetables, not fruits,
ready-*******-meals...
me?! i had a fancy for pizza today...
obviously i'm going to make it from scratch!
obviously i'm going to first make the rising
mixture of a little flower, dried yeast,
sugar and some water... wait for it to rise
and then make the pizza dough... d'uh...
but i see these guys with women who throw ready-made
meals into the trolley... seriously?!
one hour less watching pointless television
and enough time to make a PROPER MEAL...

i sometimes wish the television could be replaced
with a fireplace or... at worst an aquarium
with pretty fish in it... in between? *******...
esp. during the winter months...
i'm not even buying into the whole stereotypical
"oh honey, i'm tired, i have a headache"...
maybe i'm just a freak like that:
lethargy makes me *****, it's an aphrodisiac for me...

the best year of my life... state funding for
the drinking and the writing and earned money
for... prostitutes...
i don't believe in the concept of a worth of virginity...
women are like leather...
the best leather is worn leather...
over the past year having regular ***
(i try at least once a week, the rest of the time
i fill with epic cycling routes, reading, writing,
thinking, not thinking, drinking)
has taught me that there's this great veil
of ******* hanging over society...
clearly i'm a tame **** / a gentlemen or i'm sometimes
peeping into the extremities of ****** lives of...
not actual people: actors...
once more, to reiterate... we are living
under a Thespian Tyranny...

i once mentioned that we live under a Silicon Curtain...
if there was once an Iron Curtain coming from
the Soviet Union... now there's the Silicon Curtain
coming from stateless entities, companies...
who the **** knows or even bothers to care...
the media conglomerate coupled with internet social
media companies... oh... and let's not forget
the dating apps...

a rekindled fascination with Taoism from my teenage
years having found a pinpoint to a person
whom to associate Taoism with, i.e. Zhuangzi
have paid off... the best way you can help the world
is to forget the world and let the world forget you...
but with the current state of the world...
i'm growing "paranoid" / suspicious...
i'm on my own path, i'm living a life of a freedom
some kings would weep over to have...
i don't want to engage with the world...
i've forgotten the world, but it seems the world
wants to remember a little bit of me...

ooh yeah... that little mix of brandy and whiskey...
let's call her, i.e. the spirit: bra-     +   -ndy
                                                vs. bran-  +   - d(y)
          whis-  +         -key...

a quadratic... brankey... ****...
     brakey... sounds better...

                                   whisdy... whisp?! whisdy...
whiskey can be too smoky sometimes...
then again it can turn into bourbon and become too sweet...
there's a whiskey in between these two extremes...
but brandy, i.e. cognac?
the last one had an aftertaste of chocolate and charcoal...
charcoal is not smoky, it's bitter... so we're basically
talking bitter dark chocolate... which is ******* great...

but i'm bemoaning the fact that i won't be making
my own wine this year... i'll try to make a bottle or two...
but landscaping the garden left me with very little yield...
well... at least i made my favourite flavour ice-cream
this year... no ice-cream like it:
mint and chocolate-chip...
and never! ever! follow the recipes on the internet!
people have become either **** junkies,
or caffeine junkies or... SUGAR junkies...
sure... the Arabs are such greater men because
they have all these NIQAB hidden ****** fetishes
and they don't drink...
but aren't they BACLAVA MAD DIABETICS
on the verge of either amputated limbs or going blind...
but sure... sure... decent human folk because
drinking alcohol is b'ah b'ah bad... *******...

i hate sugar, i hate caffeine... water and nicotine
and vomiting like an Ancient Roman
in the morning... taking a ****... nice... esp. a well rounded
****... although a diarrhoea is just as pleasurable...
*******... hmm... that's a sea-saw debate...
one time true, another time not so...
kissing... or rather stealing kisses from prostitutes...
my grandfather collected stamps...
i steal kisses from prostitutes...

clearly we're living under a Silicon Curtain
and a Thespian Veil of Tyranny...
however we interact or however we love...
******* is not how *** looks like...
like i said before: maybe i'm a tame lover...
the most extreme i ever "accomplished"
was slapping the *** of the ******* top of me
or i either bit her lip, chin or nose...
not hard... i try to be tender...

it's so strange sitting across from 5 women...
and you ****** all 5 of them...
4 are smiling at you, enticing you,
but there's this one grumpy one growing a massive
frown on her face...
as if she's putting on make-up...
you have to go with her because she decided
to go on the pill just for you and for all
the heavens of unprotected ***...
you already bought her lingerie and now she's asking
for more gifts, i.e. jewelry... oh **** me...

i stopped listening to these promises of prostitutes...
this was the last time i listened to her,
we were supposed to spend an entire night in
a hotel room together... she failed...
fair enough... once i'm done ******* these five
i'll look for another brothel, simple!

the steady influx of money has released me
into unexpected territory...
i can finally scrutinise *******:
it's ******* unappealing... it's horrid...
it's acting with the gravest of consequences...
i want a tender ****...
i don't need this western bedroom barbarism!

and i haven't smoked marijuana in well over a decade...
chances being: the chance that was
Elizabeth II dying i met with this Afghan
"Jamie" and he gave me a pinch of the ****...
even i was surprised... i used to sit up and smoke
and listen to music and vaguely remember time:
because time extended into eternity when i did...
this time round?
first i had to take my first aphrodisiac:
lethargy from a shift...
my second aphrodisiac: a bottle of 8.2% dry cider...
basically half a bottle of wine...
aphrodisiac three: i had to walk alone
in the night... hmm... that "star" so close to the moon,
esp. when detailed on all those Muslim flags...
that's not a star... that's the planet Venus...
seems like Islam is a cult of the marriage of the Moon
with the planet Venus...
fourth aphrodisiac: a sip a two a three of
either whiskey or cognac...
fifth aphrodisiac: three cigarettes...

who the hell said you need chemistry to invoke
a hard-on?! well... if you're ******* a beached-whale
i wouldn't be surprised... if you have something
against a woman that's like a leather: of anything...
chair, sofa or jacket...
i found out that women "taste" better if
they have been with a man beside yourself...
they're... more keen... they actually have some:
"ambition"... no no... it's not arrogance...
they have... confidence....

and come to them akin to a ZZ-Top song:
sharp dressed men... they ******* lose it before finding it
very quickly...
the last one i had i first had a forced *******
with... luckily the ******* did the trick the first
time round: otherwise i would have left
frustrated... and howled into the night...

second time i don't remember...

third time? a talkative... スカ... SÜKA
   Ü = UU / Sue SOON... in the ****** zunge that's...
it's not *****, *****... it's a female dog that
readily gives *** to males...
not so talkative when the ******* began...
she contorted her face as if she was in pain..

it's a more endearing word than, say, KURVA...
i.e. *******, it's more a case of:
i'm *****, she's *****, i want to ****, she wants to
****... we ****...
but none of this pornographic extremes
of Thespian nymphomaniacs,
as a "poet" i feel i have a duty to obligate
people to turn away from these faceless
shadow-stealing phantoms...

this one writer in particular, a Joseph Roth from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire noted the rise
of the Thespians back in the earliest dictates
of the 20th century...
  
oh it was funny... i only paid for half an hour...
at least not half a steak and a ticket to the movies...
but as i was about to leave: ****'s sake...
another hard-on... but the ******* was pulled back...
dried up... i laughed, she laughed when i asked her for
some oil to lubricate and pull the ******* back...
well i can't be walking about
with an "unsheathed sword"... can i?

i like writing about women in a way that Marquis de Sade
never wrote about them, like i might have some
revenge strategy in place...
as long as i'm not lied to... i'm fine...
the moment people start spinning me fictions they
speak: but never write...
i start thinking about grating cheese...
or feeding my cats turkey steaks...
i take great precision cutting the steaks
delicately as if i'm preparing sushi...

i like the texture of raw, dead, meat under my fingers
in a way that compensates itself with the
touch of living meat under my fingers
after i scrubbed my fingers against a brick or
two... when touching a *******'s body
i need rough finger-tips...

but i won't be buying into this western libido "insomnia"
any time soon...
*** in real life is or never will be what the pornographic
industry prescribes or... well... back in the 1970s...
the Italian movies had tender loving care...
these days... it's ******* sadistic... all that ****
and all that one woman "vs." five men power action
*******...

if i am healthy *** with prostitutes...
that tells you a lot about the supposed "healthy"
people having "healthy" *** with other "healthy" people...
clearly unhealthy...
sure, i too have my kinks... but i don't enact
them... that's why they're kinks...
they're part of the cognitive circus that will never be seen!

well... apart from the one renegade clown...
you'll always see a clown from that circus...
i don't know why i decided to write about ***...
over-saturation is my best guess...
talk of *** in the most wrong sort of way...
that must have been the clue...
annexed ******* of disused men's capacity
coupled with a woman's over-stipend over
excusing herself in "too much action"...
whichever the case is...

the world has passed me by,
or rather: i passed the world by...
and turned around and said:
clearly no, i don't feel like it...
even for all the riches you have on offer...
i don't, feel like, it!
the richer a man becomes
the more obligation he has to his status
and the woman he, most assuredly has
to take for company!
me? i have zero to no obligations / dedications
for status and a woman of status...
i like women like i old leather:
they always tastes better if they have been
with plenty of men and i know that to be true...
****, lips, arm-pints and all that's thighs!
**** too...

             i'm not a jealous man...
i wish i could be a jealous god... but i'm not jealous
at all... that's my weakness...
i believe in love: universal...
hell... if women think it's worth sharing their beauty
and majesty.. why refrain from the argument
they're making... after all...
whether pretty or ugly: all can admire the sun
come either sunrise or sunset...

if that's how it's supposed to be...
   so it is to be...
she tells me my name is not Matteo: you can't be
a Matteo... i tell her in a groveling voice:
CON-RAD...
finally she understands me.

Dear Tom


Western existentialism is generally gloomy unlike Chinese philosophy ---both Taoism and Confucianism never speak of despair, angst or the predicament of living----such philosophy is immensely practical and can be followed by anyone--both sages speak of the Tao (The Way/the Path)---walk in the Tao and you will live in righteousness, beneficence and compassion.

  The difference between  the Tao of Taoism and that of Confucianism lies in this:  the Tao of the former relates to the spiritual and metaphysical while that of the latter relates to the human being in society and benevolent governing.  

A meeting of Nobel Prize winners in Paris in 1988 made this observation:

If mankind is to survive, it must go back 25 centuries ago to tap the wisdom of Confucius.

I am not a student of philosophy and this is all I can say

humbly

Peter

Sometimes I stay up all night cleaning
And when it come 3 and 4 AM I think more clearly
Cause collective consciousness shuts way up
When everyone around me's sleeping

It's called the witching hour
When I finally get the ground below my feet to stop moving
And I can see that I've just been busy proving
I'm enough!
Or maybe not...

And my broomstick tries sweeps my past away
Till I'm remembering that its no tangible thing
Yet I live like back then they cursed me

Like every moment I don't have the ruby slippers
To click my heels right back

To now

This moment
It's all we really have
Yet inside our heads we live in future and past
Like this idea of me that was there
Will undoubtedly be there tomorrow

But a meteor could be only seconds away
To wipe us clear off of this planets face

And how the hell do I win this race
With all these definitions they gave me to carry
And this closet of clothes they think define me
I keep purging and redesigning

Imagine if we saw souls not bodies
Our definition of beauty would be
What?
Not something just comprised by constructs built by society
In which we buy into

Seriously…what the **** is beauty?
Everywhere we go it shifts shape completely
Morphing with each place and time
Just look at fashion over centuries

So what makes all our ideals seem so true?
How bout we stop with the seeing
and start hearing what the skin bags are saying
What are they committed to?

**** then maybe it's the words I said that comprise me
That I didn't even mean when they came out of me

And look at that!
I just brought myself back there to then
In the time machine inside me head

And so I keep staying up through the night
To wash the crap that builds up on my mirrors away
Calling up the past to finish the mending that I gave up on
And magically the spell is being broken

The wicked witch is under the house it's true
But instead of making an excuse and stealing her shoes
I call her sister to say I'm sorry

All my reasons are what I'm clearing
Justifications and excuses
That keep me smaller than my circumstances

Me-
The call and response stimuli machine
Calculating how best to survive

Is this threat I perceive
One where I run
Or one where I bare my teeth

Yet we don't see that today and tomorrow are still living out yesterday
But in 100 years will ANYONE remember what happened to you on that day?

Seriously, it's time to hose down the pigsty in your mind
Get down on your knees and scrub that **** clean
Cause your reasons for being the way that you are
Get old
They start to mold and stink the room up for the rest of us

Taoism speaks of constantly letting go
Lau Tzu wasn't talking about a garage sale
What's bogging us down
Is the **** we make up and let run our lives
But to us it's the truth and its real

But we don't live like that

To live right now
Like there's no someday to go to
Like this is the practice round and I'm just warming up
For my real life
The one where I'm gorgeous, and rich, and everyone loves me.
The one where I have a perfect childhood!
Oh wait… that's completely absurd

But it certainly doesn't feel like we're living like that
When the dramas of our lives seem so significant
And we give them permission to keep our dreams from coming alive
Aborting what's possible the second it sparks into being

Reasonable living is suffocating your happiness
And that's not just going to change

You little dust speck
You minuscule blob of atoms that will soon evaporate
In an infinitely expanding universe

Now
What are you creating?
  
E. Poe
February 2016

Goodbye never felt so sweet
like yellow suns morphing into pink
Man, life is like a beautiful sunset
Or kissing someone you love
During the soft magical creamy light of the dawn

But I know, boy do I know
That sometimes life has those days
Where it seems like all the colors have been drained
From the flowers, from the birds, the grass, the sun
On days when you feel like the blistery night is
Most relatable
When the moon barely shines
When you feel like you tread this world alone
With tears streaming down from your eyes

But those days,
As deep down as they reach
Don't have a long trajectory
It's just, well,
I know that you are really strong
I mean, I know I don't know you
So you're shaking your head right now
And you're like,
"******* ******,
With your inspirational ****"
I mean, I know
Sometimes I overdo the sentimental

But I've been down in the pit too, okay
And some days I am just literally amazed
That I'm still living, breathing, existing
In this flesh body
I just didn't give up
Well, sometimes I didn't give up simply
Because I was too scared to hurt myself
But
I've learned so much,
I've grown so much
I'm different now
And I'm not sure if I'm happy about that or not
Or just, well, indifferent
But I am happy to be alive

I guess I'm just more spiritual now
I really liked Taoism when I learned about it
In summer school for ninth grade history
You just go with the flow
And see where life takes you
No journeys,
No destinations
You just lay back
And enjoy
Disconnect from the ratrace
Living from a place of infinite grace.

You know they have these,
           those groups for
people who are,
          were,
        are going through addictions.

Well I was going to one such place...
I'm not addicted not like these people.
My failings are
              light compared to those others.

I was hooked on the deity addiction,
              I was raised to believe in certain
                          noncorporal
unsubstantiated constructed fear factors.

I was for many a immature years fearful of
           what I was doing till I was 7 years old.

Questions were my maturity, I'd read that
            these man made constructs, well the
top of today were all
                      with an area of minimal distance..

                                               It was like,
the central point for god creationism,
                   who had the most followers,

who had the snakes tongue, the intellect
              to make other listen to there lies..

But so it happened, there were the old gods
   fading into obscurity..
they were real for a time,
           but the thing about time, everything dies.

But the words huddled the masses,
      you see there was a religion,
religions already around that stood the
   testament of time.

These new ones approaching gaining ground,
they were either an off shoot of
                      there disagreements,
of the word of there god not others
                                                   as they weren't real...


No there's was real, but the gods before were wrong??
                                            ok...…..

But moving on and we have the oldest religions still
around. Some have the masses where some have but a
only a few followers not as many as way back when.
Here's a quick lesson in gods and spirituality,
counting down we have:

1. Hinduism (Circa 7,000 BCE)
2. Judaism (Circa 2,000 BCE)
3.Zoroastrianism (Circa 1,500 BCE)
4. Shinto (Circa 700 BCE)
5.Buddhism (Circa 600 BCE)
Jainism (Circa 600 BCE)
Confucianism (Circa 600 BCE)
Taoism (Circa 500 BCE)

So you see that there are some old that still remain..


But the thing that people forget is that in the old times
wars were fought on the premise of there gods words
were the truth and the others were distortions not the
right word of god, gods.. look down, I know...

1.Second War of Kappel
2. Lebanese Civil War
3.The Crusades
4. Second Sudanese Civil war
5. First Sudanese Civil War
6. German Peasants’ War
7. Nigerian Civil War
8. French Wars Of Religion
9. Thirty Years’ War
10. Eighty Years’ War

I know what your thinking what the fudge has this
got to do with now, quite a lot it would seem.
We have new religions popping up, some are just
plain ***... and people follow these.

But the good thing is time is awaking the masses to
the ridicule of what these old books stood for.

Hate, Love ******, ****, intimidation to believe or
                                 pay a levy or pay with your life.

But the world is awake, more than ever.
         So I sit here in this room, listening to the
stories of what made them rescind the notion
of belief in a deity, that controlled them now
                                          they have cut the strings.  

I just hope one day that we all can look behind us
and wonder why we were so immature to think
that  these things helped us find our keys,
                         but let a child die of starvation..

if you don't see the contradiction your still blind I see...

Dear ...


Yours is a post PhD thesis and sets us thinking about what life is but definitions are relative and subjective as philosophy and morality is not science--more by way of speculation and hypothesising.  Truth is sui generis--we de-sanctify it by claiming we know it but it stands askance.

I would look at life in awe and in recognition of the limits of my own understanding, also in acknowledgement of my lack of maturity and perspicacity ---I shall not pre-empt bur rather live a day at a time-if lucky enough, I might learn to know a bit, just a tiny bit more ,of myself and my relation to life.


I do not need to have an answer to life's mysteries, complexities, nuances or its contradictions as my happiness and wellbeing does not rest on knowledge--I would deem myself lucky to have some oblique insight--to be able to see a moment in its intrinsic state  is quite enough--though it is not enlightenment, a new consciousness would have dawned upon me as what was reflected by Blake in his AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE.  

Whether life has meaning or not is definable only by personal experience, stripped of external influences or the ranting of writers and philosophers---it is the perennial 'I' and 'Life' that is the crux.

Existentialism is but a lonely and isolated way of looking at life and might be better suited for Western thinking in its vague and dubious search for answers to living unlike the Eastern which seeks to live in harmony with the self and the universe. As such, the West is Yang and the Eastern, Yin--the former involves struggle of the self, the latter is strife-free in its benign acceptance, acquiesce, humility, compassion and subjugation of the ego and not over-doing or over-achieving. That the West is bending more and more towards Zen, Taoism and Buddhism clearly shows a sharp shifting of thinking in espousal of Eastern wisdom.

Love is more real than life as it impinges upon me in my relation to those whom I love and also in my knowing I am loved in return.
It is not an abstraction like life or truth.  

What shall save me at the end is not understanding nor knowledge
but rather in recognising I am but a ripple in the limitless vastness of the sea of life and my acceptance of such.

Do I make sense, dear Master?

My IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN--THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE (published by Brolga Publishing, Melbourne) is on sale in 14 countries under Lim--  for rating vide Lim Sing AbeBooks, et al.
It mentions, inter alia,  existentialism, Camus and Sartre

with my deep esteem.

Now, the dau,
that idea, first bubble we be in,
and the final thought
we pay attention to,

a-priori, is a popular phrase on the pundit trail,
first any ever once,
enfolding now, augmented mortal
appropriation of the spirit
dau, the truth in life,
being.

Thinking is reading my mind.
You have the knack, read,
wiser minds have left letters locked in glyphs
of tradition,
-flash k;ab;alla; wink blink image of the map

this not terrain mortals trod, this is where
Shakespeare and Browning smoke ****
with me and Lady Wei, as seen
from a smoky hut
leaning on granite decomposing as I write,

this came to the surface, as a we, reader/writer
we may think in one
mind, while doing in another, and becoming
something else, in a third,

but it does not stop there, I hear in my realm,
Everest Pax, a child named
in a happy state of mind,
by my daughter,
at whose marriage, I broke the rule,
I made a pact,
with my son-in-law
using my own scruples,
stretched to threads of finest wire,
through holes but one photon wide,
one bit serial thought, off set by a function
forming
matter in states where nothing has mattered,
for a long, long time,
then today
- dao, kapow
the link to how often I proclaimed, I,
have always, and do now
take the easy way,
and that, they say,
is cheating. Wu wu boo who wu wei is
as water in our once crossed rivers, in the median,

between the freeways…

As I remarked early on this trek to find your name
in the book of my life, knowing
readers of this line, even, perhaps,
hearers, some day,
knowing tasted good, not knowing tastes evil as hell.
You exist in the book of my life as a reoccuring
character, who may be formed from early
childhood scruple implants,
Ossie Davis, look you in the eye, say
Do the right thing.

… which brings us, flop, stop, 2021 - three brothers
jonesing screens- Evvy screaming, he is five,
on no screen Sunday, a family tradition
in its first iteration, set by the mother
reinforced by the father, ignored
by Grandpa who is doing a show with Lady Wei,
on the experience
of Yang His, who received a vision from Lady Wei,
while Pine Valley high above the maddened crowd,

I hear it said, His had that Habakkuk habit, wu wei,
lady, did you lead me, write the vision, make it plain,
or is this all just
pretend, knowing is a given, one taste, concentrate

okeh, we on wu wei now, read and watch,
think and see,
what if this was happening to me, and I have
hyper-text such as no manuscript
on earth ever had,
no ink needed,
no ashes of prayers in the tea,
I used Pine Valley honey and flowers from a herm-kush
take a l'taste,
hear this, I think, I say

say, have you ever used Dragon Naturally Speaking?

On mute. If we think in Wade-Giles, and write in Pinyin,
- we can pass any shibbolethic judges of twang
and we got this Tuvan singer,
from New York City, a place he never saw

the glass harmonica can hold the high notes,
and we can channel the blind throat singer to hold down
the baser notes of life in soil creation,
till the hard rows, right,
sow the finest seed,
available, by chance, legally blind, where I went into total
last days, wait and see, here is here I presupposed
wu wei, no intervention
you came, now see,
this is where I live when in my right mind.
Now, I can make up my mind on matters of the wish,
last wish
from the magic golden carp in the castle mote,
I caught a thought in Ape and Essence,
and may have wished a bogus wish to live,
among the words that I redeem worth my use
-to form a more perfect union
-with my own heart's desire to be the best I may imagine,
given the tools fit for the perfectly happy, lazy old man,

who giggles at the idea of pulling down imaginations
that exalt themselves as institutes of authorized knowns.
Scratch my ear.
rethink, how Swedenbord did not doubt,
that old dude, just kept dippin' n' scribblin angels
who love to wrestle with scriptures gone pointy crown
shape burr, itches, crave, yes, the wish of which, witches mix
doubt is the art of balance between lines of several minds,
redo, redone, redo, redone, soon, we laugh
and walk away,
lady Wei, and I
leave His, making all this plain to the degree,
of telling history, I thought this, so real, it seems still
as real as any angel duty ever…
Yang His says:
Lady Wei, looks to me and said to me unspeakable things.
This is confusion, she let me know with
a single drop of black,

ashes of talismans burned in vain, never, to my knowledge
written in vain,
think once a godly thought, as used to say, just now,
think that as a practice,
this is that exercise
unto godliness.

First, gnoshit, attain the Yang His state of cannabis-bliss.

Or go on lying about what I think we know
already, this is
that earth,

where happy people think happy thoughts and others
find that maddening,

and Lady Wei laughs with me, we know the traits we give
to those who chose on any given day

to put on a mind made from words alone,
and listen.


----------------- author's note:
Taoism: An Essential Guide by Eva Wong, these lines occur
while listening to Chapter Four
The Shang-ch’ing texts tell us that Yang Hsi received a vision
from Lady Wei (who had become an immortal)
and then “wrote” the scriptures
under the influence of a cannabis-induced trance.

Wu-wei (non-action) in Taoism
to him  nothing at all I did
he destroyed himself verily
by his own thought and deed

Nothingness means return.
Nothingness is the body of the Tao.
Not only man, but plants and animals
and all living things are part of this body,
this body of nothingness.
Everything is one with nothingness.
There aren't two things in this universe.
To realize this is the goal not only of Taoism
But also of Buddhism.
Everything in this world changes.
Taoists and Buddhists seek
That which doesn't change.
That is why they don't seek fame or fortune.
They only seek the Tao,
Which is the nothingness
Of which we are all created
And to which we all return.

- Jen Fa-jung, abbot of Loukuantai

I've written love letters, suicide notes, inspirational essays, stories,
and most of all I've written poems.

Even so the feelings come and go.
and that's what I do,
I just go.
You see Taoism has taught me some things.
Go with the flow.
I am most useful when my mind is clear.
The things I hope to keep become my fear.
so I let it go.

I let it go,
Not like rocks in a river only to be dredged up by passing currents
But like the words I've committed to parchment
that happiness and sadness are life's concurrence

Dear ...

Letting go is the main theme of Taoism.  
We take our self* too seriously,
we hold things too tightly (our job, our belongings, our love and desires, other people's opinion of us, values...)
but everything in life is fragile, ephemeral and transient.  

The more we cling to things, the more vulnerable we become and lose our equilibrium too easily.

Let go, hold everything lightly, the good and the bad for life is always in a flux.

The Tao way is acceptance of the process of natural laws, being in harmony with The Way which leads to self-understanding and insight, humility, compassion as the more we move away from our fixated  and deluded self, the freer and happier we become as we would have removed the self-imposed and false shackles that have impeded our growth for so long.

Unhappiness, according to the Tao, is caused by our ceaseless strife and restlessness; we don't own our self anymore and are thrown into the maelstrom of perpetual wanting and acquiring--
we never seem to have enough and the more we have, the more we want; we die a little everyday as we have forgotten the most essential things of life--
love, compassion, simplicity,  contentment, family life, friendship, the beauty and wonders of nature and all that which lifts us to a higher consciousness and a state of grace.

Let us learn to slow down, let go, listen, learn to be still and quiet and for those who take time off to meditate, all will be peace and self-fulfilment.

Be one with the Tao!

Dear Rosie,

many thanks for your views---they are profound.

May I add?

Human nature is prone to self-deception---death is a taboo.  
Ernest Becker , the renowned Canadian cultural anthropologist, has had a profound influence on me----
his THE DENIAL OF DEATH is a classic. His earlier book was
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF MEANING.

He died of cancer before 50 but calmly gave an interview a few days before his demise.  Taoism's ideas on death are most profound and such are also echoed in the writings of the Stoic masters.

My 5th book IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ZEN--THE PATH TO A CALMER AND HAPPIER LIFE, Oct 2018, has a chapter captioned COPING WITH DEATH, SUFFERING, GRIEF AND EMOTIONAL PAIN-- a small book of only 83 pages, on sale in 14 countries and rated 5 star by 8 book-dealers (visit Lim Sing AbeBooks, et al).  Published by Brolga Publishing, Melbourne.

I am a humanist.

I admire your wisdom and insight.

Please stay in touch

humbly

Peter

The Tao Te Ching advises quiescence, and wu wei, taking no action that is contrary to nature.  It also exalts the humble and lowly with the compelling image of water that always moves to the lowest place, and yet can wear away stone.

                      - Understanding Taoism
                     Jennifer Oldstone-Moore