The garden at Metta Vihara is a mobius strip
Winding tangent arcs through flower beds
A dynamic regenerative balance
Opposites fold into one another

The eco spaceship is about to take off
It is so real, it is unreal

The retreat centre sits amidst Dutch fields
Windfarms nearby;
megalithic steel giants
gathering renewable energy

Artifice + “nature” = True Nature

Many hands reach into the earth
They turn the compost,
where decay and birth unite

Peaceful, co-operative idealists
work in harmony with the elements

Watering the plants
while practicing the metta bhavana
A torrent of love
streams forth from the heart

Raindrops gathered in the well
hydrate the soil

Cornfields define a natural edge
Porous cell boundary

Letting go of control
enables contact with the source

A butterfly with flourishes of orange and white
flutters among the flowers
Grace defies gravity

I greet a mosquito, which draws blood from my toe
A fellow being needs nourishment
I forgo aversion

Vajrapani and M

Flies, who strap in their doubt:
the motorcyclists in Thom Gunn’s poem “On the Move”
the Boys

I have been such a fly,
buzzing around the globe,
afraid to grow roots,
strapping in fear, angst, and emotional instability

It’s been an effective strategy for coping with distress
the only one available to me at times

But a rolling stone gathers no moss
and doubt is the opposite of faith
and the wheel of samsara keeps turning

How does faith grow?
It’s not something one can will or think oneself into

It whispers in the background
It has stillness and expansiveness

Doing “the work” takes you to a clearing
As does personal responsibility
But then a leap must be taken

I tell myself that I’m brave
yet Lesley says my biggest obstacle is fear

Next week I’ll be on retreat in France with LBC friends,
all seeking faith in their own way

I haven’t severed ties to Triratna yet

My friend from Belgium, Steven,
sent me a picture of his robes recently

I have been moved by his evolution
His robes are for his ordination

“I can’t stand this king treatment! It’s not good enough. [snaps fingers] Evelyn, get the social service involved so that someone can clean this flat. It’s a tip. I haven’t done a day’s work all week, and I’ve only had one massage.  I’ve got my gorgeous girlfriend waiting on me hand and foot, and I’m still miserable. I’ve only had one two-month excursion to Asia all year, so don’t get on my last nerves. My mental health condition is that I’m not handsome: it’s a painful and difficult disease, so give me some credit for my resilience. Get me the ritalin and the ketamine immediately.”

…

This has been a great work  of my imagination. I fell for it, and roped everyone else into believing it too, including two psychiatrists, my family, girlfriend, and friends, the NHS mental health team, the job centre, and a few Triratna Buddhists. The only issue that people have drawn the line on is the nose thing. They’re like,  “cosmetic surgery? No, you can keep that delusion to yourself, thanks.”

Hanging onto the umbilical chord
In utero
Submerged in the amniotic fluid of the womb
Entangled in yin
Paul Celan’s reflections on *negativity*
My father’s repeated statement: “consciousness is divided from being”
The mirror stage compounds the rip
I’m in need of symbolic identity
but I’m lamenting the coldness
An exposed nerve
could do with being earthed
Being alive is the trauma
There’s no way back
Though Being surrounds, always!
Forwards – to where?
To nowhere
The end of the video game is death
So make the game as fantastic as possible
I want the weighted blanket of nature
Without being devoured by the mother
Undifferentiated oneness
becomes differentiated manifold
Torn between ideals
And an impulse returning to an (imagined?) wholeness
Pull yourself out of the fetal position
The man within
must hold woman, child and animal

No need for weed
No need for speed
No need for elvanse!
I just want to breathe
Through the saxophone reed
And listen to Ween
‘Cause I’m a liver
(Not a spleen)

Dogs are good-natured humanists with healthy egos
Cats are unbalanced Buddhists who dissolved their egos into emptiness
Dogs are warm-hearted hippies offering a wholesome meal
Cats are Berlin nihilists on ketamine
Dogs are solar, springtime
Cats are lunar, winter
Dogs are a green park
Cats are a postmodern sprawl
Dogs are honest, redneck farmers in the heartland of America
Cats are the metropolitan urban elite
Dogs go hiking in the lake district
Cats journey to the Himalayas
Dogs are bodhisatvas
Cats are arahants
Dogs are organic, acoustic and embodied
Cats are cerebral, shimmering shadows
Dogs have sincere sympathy
Cats have ruthless compassion
Dogs are Seth Faergolzia
Cats are Josh Gura
Dogs are worldly
Cats are ethereal
Dogs are analogue
Cats are digital
Dogs are prose
Cats are poetry
Dogs are comedy
Cats are tragedy
Dogs have souls
Cats are soulless
Dogs are Aristotelian
Cats are Platonic
If you’re suffering and you want comforting communion wafers, go for a dog
If you’re suffering and you want nirvana, go for a cat
Dogs are Bob Dylan
Cats are techno
Dogs are dwarves
Cats are elves
Dogs are terrestrial
Cats are aliens
Dogs are straight
Cats are gay
Dogs are wounded
Cats are free of suffering
Dogs are naive
Cats are calculated
Chris is a dog
Lesley is a cat

Every cat is a dog

Every dog is a cat

Enveloped in the ring of glowing green squidfisher boats
fluorescent extra terrestrials skim the horizon
wizard oil pastels seep into the ink well sea

Alien robot man and honeysuckle lady
two artists fabricating Maya on a pilgrimage

The crystal mermaid invited us to follow the path to serenity and beyond

Blood red sun sinks beneath wisps of carebear clouds
concentric arcs slice the water in an elongated wifi pyramid

Floating over the globular ocean of Solaris
heading towards heaven on a ship of faith
Ahab’s goin’ fishing

The earth rises to hold us on a platform of hardened lava
a temporal beacon of light

Beneath the gentrification, something of the island’s magic remains

Frankenstein’s monster constructs his DIY rehabilitation clinic,
offering breathwork and abundance seminars

Too much voltage in alien robot man is a symptom of a cancer,
malignant fear that needs to be excised immediately

Honeysuckle lady rolls around in digital ferns,
at peace with the gross, decaying mass of slime and sludge

Together they compose the cyborg songs of interconnectedness,
inspired by Queen Mab’s fiddle at the seed of dreams

John Coltrane kicked the heroin habit to find a love supreme
so do we, through rolling saxophone medleys, free ourselves of fixation
rationalizing about meaning is useless unless you feel it
Saint Jerome’s lion needs to go walksies

When the voice hits
the resonant frequency,
the glass collapses into
harmonious formlessness

Life is irregular and inconstant
friction
Death is regular, constant
and smooth

I am excessively alive
Fear of death is blocking life from flowing
Allow death to happen?

Nirvana is death-in-life
Death is non-duality
Beauty is non-duality

Solidity is the life of the snog
The very constraints give it its shape
Ejaculation is the little death

Life is polarity
Death is singular

Yoga beads and snake charm
Wild and ethical
Polyamorous and true
Zappa and Renay
Rose and Pietro
Work and play
Safety and adventure

Blooming biophilia
Vivid green
Calm reflection of powder blue sky
on the surface of the sea

Sun-drenched rainforest
bursting at the seams with life
Fragrant plumeria
A splattering of honeysuckle

Two golden cane (arepa) palms frame the view
A squirrel hops from branch to branch
Distant drilling hangs in the air
filtered through syrup of humidity

A guard dog barks below
scared and in pain

Graceful dangling tendrils of feathers
waft past on the tail of
an iridescent tropical drongo,
its tail a decoy for chasing birds of prey

Survival adaptations
create accidental beauty,
enhancing the experience of life

Nature is sustainable,
propelling itself effortlessly

The world hangs together, by love
It’s amazing how the forms hang together
even though they are changing/empty.
Love halds it all together,
even when there is hurt
It includes the pain

Cavernous breathing in the beehive
Tiny alien robots performing menial tasks
these bees are onto something,
meditating through the mundane

A shivering dysregulated weasel stands on the beach
facing the discomfort of cowardice
alienated from nature’s flow (also natural)

Crispy clouds of mangosteen

Spinoza… Dispenza

Rapping, tapping, at the chamber door,
the drongo whispers “nevermore”

(written with Lesley Dean)

Soreness, tenderness, tightness
Restricting the expansion of ribcage
Preventing the full, deep inhalation

Feeling neglected without the teacher (Itamar)
The untutored student
Abandoned, alone, on her own
At fault for not being able to breathe properly
Blaming herself
“Flushing money down the drain”
“Breathworks workshop a waste of time”
“I’m too clenched”

In the anguish, she begins pulling herself:
twisting, stretching,
manual manipulation of the mortal coil,
through which breathing begins to expand.
Sea-change

Without conscious thought or volition,
a long, slow, deep exhalation
a deflating balloon
Accordion bellows kick into high gear

A force field of electric, vibrating prana billows outwards
Leonardo De Vinci’s flying machine takes off
Van Gogh’s golden sunflowers
under a haunted blue sky

Blue and gold pulsating orb
transformed by a rolling wave of breath
into a blanket of blue diamonds

Golden sierpinski gasket
with that golden force, power is endless
inverted magical triangle

Wormlike tips of mimoids crawling
at the bottom of Tarkovsky’s gelatinous ocean
Vines, leaves, mud, creepy crawlies,
lizards and gheckos

After her long exhale, she finds it difficult to breathe in again,
but the bellows push through the lung clamp
Sighing and crying through the final half hour

Chris’s clenching is a mirror to her more subtle clenching
she’s climbed a mountain,
reached a high plateau,
but she’s not going to leave others behind
She’s going to throw a rope

Her pinched nerve is a physical manifestation of clinging
Within her ocean of calm, there are still whirlpools of clinging
The rescuer is not a finished piece of work

Wanting to share her release with mother and father
Generational clenching
Fear played out in the 80s too

Bamboo dominoes in the cafe, afterwards,
Reflected in the stainless knife,
warping and bending,
dripping and melting
rolling and tripping

The coffee cup is flowing into every other object
It is flowing into the table
Like trickling oobleck

He asks her to tell her about her breathworks experience.
“We must capture it”, he says
She replies: “so you want to bottle it?”
“We need to pour the experience onto paper.”
“Pour it where? It’s already everywhere.”