swollensun

Sorry for those of you who have been waiting anxiously for over a year for me to post!
Last summer I moved my blog to here
Thanks and stay in touch!
dc

it seems there is ever
a battle of good
& evil being
waged inside my heart;

the desire for good,
to be creative,
to feel God,
to be close to nature & breathing
things, living things,

is ever assaulted by dark
fiery dreams of destruction,
of enslavement of the soul;

this part of us:
this devil-soul,
would delight in seeing the rest
of what makes us us,
the beauty,
the freedom,
the unchained moan of expression,

caged, hungry,
devoid of God,
alone.

With what wielded words do we beat this back?




*thx to daeng for the typo spot!

As some of you may know, I was offered a job a month or two ago as a private English teacher for a Spanish family in Delhi.  Lured by the (now that I think about it) outrageous salary, I went for it, only to find quite at the last minute that the whole thing was a scam, the Spaniards didn't actually exist, and my $650 "visa processing fee" that I was literally walking out the door to go get a money order for was in fact for the scam-artists.  And I use the term artist because it was cleverly executed, up until the very last step.  So that sucked, bummed me out for about a day, but I was in a sense relieved, because I could go back to Thailand, pick up where I left off, return to the creative path I was working toward in an environment of incredible love and support.

During the period we thought I was going to Delhi, my dad emailed a few of his friends and acquaintances.  One of those people is a writer in Delhi named William Dalrymple.  When the scam was uncovered, he expressed his condolences and offered to keep his ears open for anything else that may come along.  A few weeks later, I got an email directly from him, telling me that Jatin Das, the famous contemporary Indian artist (pictured right), is looking for an assistant/archivist, and was wondering if that would be something I'd be interested in.  So I thought about it, having flashes of what my life could be like with a very successful artist, who has his own Jatin Das Centre of Art in his home state of Orissa, as well as many projects in Delhi, including a recent show called Earth Bodies in Delhi. 

I emailed him, expressing interest.  He wrote back asking for a resume, which I sent to him, with a cover letter.  A few days later, I was asked to come work with him in Delhi.  He said I was just the type of person he was looking for.

So today, with a 10-year multiple-entry visa for India in my passport, we bought a ticket to Delhi.  I leave June 17th.
And I know what you're probably thinking (holy shit!) and I am too in a way.  I know little about what I'll be doing, what my accomodations will be like, though if I'm staying near where he lives, Dad says it's a pretty nice part of town.  The high for tomorrow in Delhi is 111° F.  Dear Jesus let there be air conditioning.  But right when I got that email, my heart told me to follow it, and my heart was right last time.  I jumped into the unknown going to Thailand and came out more fully myself than I ever have been, more confidant in my skills as an artist, and most importantly, not so cripplingly judgemental of the creative work I do.  I only hope India will be the same sort of environment for me.  I just figured if I want to be an artist, (writer, singer, whatever) surrounding myself with art, both literally (I'll be archiving paintings from his 51-year career) and figuratively (entering a community revolving around art), some insight must be there waiting for me (grist for the mill I've heard more times than I can count).  To be part of something interesting and creative just really appealed to me more than teaching kids English who may or may not want to learn it.

I am saddened to be not returning directly to Thailand, but there's a trip in the works for July or August, to see the ones I love and clear some of my shit out of Rose's house (sorry Rosie!).  I see this as an important step for me.  And if it sucks, Thailand is just two countries away.

So that's where I am today.  I've spent the past months enjoying the southern spring, spent some time writing up at my parents place on the river in Ellijay, in northern Georgia.  I've been playing music with an old friend of mine.  We're talking about doing a show together before I head off in a few weeks.

And next week i'll be 24.  I'm going to see Al Green and Etta James on my birthday.  Then, the weekend following, on the 13th, I'm going to see my new favorite band, Grizzly Bear, who I very highly recommend you check out.  Also saw PJ Harvey two nights ago, which blew me away, to put it modestly. 

So thanks for reading; sorry for the lag, but life doesn't seem blog-worthy when you're just hanging out with your parents and your dogs.  Look for a new website soon, and some more poems.  Thanks for reading!

d

I watched from far
above as the o/
cean uncur~
led its fingers
out across the s
                          an
                            d;
it pur- (secretly sandily)
red
the
red
mor-
ning
in

while your feral eyes
yelp & sing f
/or me to stay,
my limbs cry for home;

the sun in your mouth (fullbrightroundwhole)
my fingers pierce the ground,
quickly spread roots\\
to tear th\rough civilizations

my sour veins a ten\drilled vine
tinged pink with  flow ers
& the smell of old wine

my hands f/old\ed in like rusted
iron gates
crumpling into fists
decaying into snowwhite
bones(fingersfalling
like fairy  wings )

until you reach through
the dusk,
             the dust
of the city,
             the bones
in my chest,
             the folds of my
flesh,
             (the flesh
of my beating,;. . . )
to
       the center, the ever-
bloodied rose,

to pluck my
bitter seeds
for planting.

I remember us --
how we would sway
   side by side
hands on hips
the night dizzy with stars &
the sea far below ---

how you whispered
printemps
as bougainvillea bloomed
in the darkness
& jasmine floated
across the sand up
the hillside
with its aching smell
of a life without longing

Your eyes held
the sparklers'
scattering
flashbulbs of
light
like an acolyte(in
the quiet hours be
fore dawn Easter
m  o  r  n  i  n  g)

When I return to this space, especially after weeks (or almost a month) of absence, I feel strange pangs of guilt.  Why haven't you written in so long Dave?  Some of your most insightful stuff has happened right here, without plan or preconception, published immediately to all three of you who read this (you know who you are).  But I usually brush it off, bargaining that I've been keeping up on my journal, or have written a poem or a song in the past few days.  But now, more than ever, frequency is less important, and the simple act of writing, of taking the pen to the page, fingers to the keys, has become a quiet joy, not a chore, not a requirement, not something I should feel guilty for neglecting.  It is play, as it should be.

Part of this comes from a program my dear friend Ali, who, in concert with various other forces of the universe, drew my attention to a piece of work called The Artist's Way.  It is a book, and I hate to call it a self-help book because that connotes to me the most awful loads of garbage and quick-fix bullshit ever conceived, not to mention gaudy neon-colored covers and Richard Simmon's afro (for some reason).  So let's call it something else.  Her term for what her book assists the artist with is "creative recovery."  There are exercises in the book geared to remove the blocks we all put on our own creativity.  We are all artists; simply being a creation of [insert diety of choice here], we are expressing creativity, and thereby doing [insert divine pronoun]'s will.  You sitting at your [insert sitting apparatus] reading with your beautiful eyes these words I wrote on a Wednesday night, sitting out on my balcony in the Thailand night, listening to cars amble and groan and sigh as they pass below me, dogs yipping, exhaust in the air, the coolness of early evening wrapping around my shoulders, you are expressing [insert deity]'s will.  Your every breath, word you utter, glance you offer to another, these are all your sole expressions.  The book gives you exercises to work through the blocks you have placed for yourself, barriers built to protect yourself from the scrutiny of others, built as barricades for childhood or adolescent (or often adult) pain, attacks on your creative self, attacks on any part of your self.  You learn to identify these negative aspects of your imagination, all the voices that have you so convinced the creativity you think you have is far from spectacular, those haunting voices that persuade you of your utter normalcy, your petty ordinariness.  These acts of self-sabotage, betrayal of what [deity of choice] gave you and continues to give you every day, these are all mechanisms to limit your exposure to the real creative essence that permeates the entire universe.  Some of the exercises bring up very painful things.  I found myself ferociously writing about events I had buried so deeply, never daring to tell a soul.  My candor and honesty frightened me.  I was no longer afraid someone would find it.  These things were blocks, they were barriers, inhibitions to the creative energy I possess and deserve to share, the energy that deserves to be shared.

But let's not get carried away.  I'm only on week two, and I only started week two yesterday.  It's a twelve week program.  The essentials of the program are few, but are important:
1) Write three pages every morning.  No way around it.  It can be three pages of "I hate you pen. I hate you morning. This isn't working. I am a shit writer. My breath smells like the fish market. and so on...
These morning pages skim off all that bullshit that sits on your creativity. They appease your critic, your censor, so your creative outlets can put stuff out.
2) Take yourself out on an Artist's Date once a week.  By yourself. Do whatever you want. Treat yourself as you would a potential lover. Buy yourself anything/everything you want. Think. Breathe. Take in what you see.

You also do tasks she gives to you, some creative writing exercises, some digging up people or events in your past that scarred or encouraged you.  It has been very beneficial to me, has organized some of my mind-chaos.  And more than anything, it has given me an intention.  Each day is a new way to fill the creative well, to notice things again, just when the monotony of work and settling in to a place has drained the novelty from this wild and vibrant country.  And I have identified people in my life, some whom I love quite dearly, who have been or are creative blocks, stealers of creative energy, enablers of self-sabotage, critics, demons, theives.  I can see their schemes; more importantly, I can love them more because I can see that they are just blocked creatives themselves, and expressions of creativity by those they are close to threaten them; their jealousy consumes them, when all they need to do is follow their hearts.


Perhaps the greatest gift I can see so far, even this early in the journey, is that I am learning to love more the time I have with myself.  I used to regard solitude with fear.  The silence was too great, the loneliness too suffocating.  I would place myself apart from others, but feel only that I was throwing myself into dark, bottomless water.  Now I find solace in solitude.  Comfort.  I take walks and sit alone in coffee shops to feel that unseen air, to watch the leaves flicker in the wind and the sun dig its fiery fingers into the afternoon.  I watch the moon climb the night sky like a flower crooking its slender neck over a vase that stands alone on a table.  I feel my breath fill my mouth.  I extend my cheek to the kiss of the night.  Songs fill my head.  Songs I've yet to write.  Songs unborn but longing to be sung.  Words unwritten but swarming, loitering, waiting in line, growing, seething, paying their fare, tipping their hats, catching my eye.

So my humble advice to you, dear reader:  Abandon your silly mantra of waiting till you aren't so busy with work to do what you've always wanted.  One part of the book that has really struck me thus far was a short little conversation between a blocked artist and the author:

"But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play/story/book/poem?"
"Yes....the same age you will be if you don't."

thanks for reading.
d

second of january


when lips & love & beauty run
like watercolor seas into the sun
will vulgar tears send quiet ruin
down the slopes of suffering?

will tightlipped stares
bleed through the night
to drain the seas of sorrow --

or will love's blue eyes
send down the rain
to wash the scars
(a sweet refrain)
to bring new light
to ask the day
                  what it was
                                  it always wanted

if I held the keys to doors
that kept sweet secrets
                   (such as these)
I wouldn't have this awful heart
that seethes for love
                         but never believes

crawling into Christmas afternoon
presents all opened,
all the eggs eaten
littleboy sleeps with his new
trains lined up around the bed --

I knead my contentment
like a thick dough;
babies sleep and dream of animals

and the cold curls
around my toes
I reach for socks
and smile quietly,

for family is near and all rings true --
a bell in the cold clear air

This past weekend, I visited the Pucheefa Forest Park with some friends of mine.  I wanted to briefly note the experience, trying to remember the details before they're lost in the wash of time and forgotten like so many wild thoughts and secret moments crowded out of the memory by the dull hammering drone of the everyday and the ordinary.

My friend Ali, a friend from yoga, part of my Monday night yoga sangha (of which I will surely write more on), who works at Chiang Mai University, invited me to accompany some students of hers to camp on the top of a mountain near the border of Thailand and Laos.  I agreed, after being assured that we would not be riding in a songthaew but in a lush air-conditioned private bus.

I awoke before dawn on Saturday morning, gathered all the warm clothes (it's really cold up here now!) that I had brought to this "tropical" country, and set out against the pale darkness that still ruled the earth at that hour.  I picked up my friend April, a yoga teacher at Wild Rose at the Three Kings Monument, in the center of the old city.  In front of the monument, scores of Thai people were doing morning aerobics.  I commented to April about the sweet secrecy of the time just before dawn, how an anxious kind of hush descends upon the world about to wake up.  As if you accidentally stumbled upon the day as she was getting dressed, and divined some secret of her anatomy that would have otherwise been forever locked away in the realm of the secretive.   We drove up Huay Gaew Road, toward the mountain, feeling the chill that clings to the skirts of the mountain pierce our thin jackets.  Turning into the university around half-past six, we met Ali and her friend Jordan in the parking lot of the humanities building.

We waited, as is the fashion in this country, about twenty minutes past the arranged meeting time for the driver to arrive.  He did arrive.  In a dingy light-brown sonthaew, which would comfortably fit about ten people.  We were sixteen. 
One of the students, whose friend he had counted on to drive another songthaew, reluctantly relayed to the group that he was unreachable.  We discussed our options, deciding that if we rented a car and followed them, all would be comfortable.

A Thai liaison relayed this to the driver, who was also a professor at the university, whose incredibly Thai response I will try and recreate verbatim:
"Oh, do not worry, everything is fine and relaxed.  There is no need to rent a car, it will be expensive and since we are all each other's older and younger brothers and sisters, we will go together in a relaxed way and have good fortune.  Never mind do not worry."
So that was our answer.

We resigned to clamber into the back of the truck, thinking foolishly that the closer we sat to the cab of the truck, the lesser the amount of wind that would be able to whip in and chill our already cold bones.  April had the foresight to cite her residual trouble with motion-sickness, and was granted a coveted seat in the front.  Ali, Jordan, and I, along with eleven other Thai students, who clearly had never experienced cold before, crammed ourselves into the truck, sitting opposite each other on the eponymous songthaew's two rows.  Two students were given pre-school sized plastic chairs, which later caused a Thai girl to comment that it in fact was a "song thaew krung," and two-and-a-half row, which I realize as I type it lacks the certain punch it did then, but it was damn funny crammed in there like sardines.  I asked this same girl about now how many hours it would take.  Her response (deadpan): "long time." 

We rode for an hour, my foolish lack of knowledge of the aerodynamics of songthaews put on full display as the 50 degree wind whipped in around the cab, funneled in through the curved roof  through small gaps in the welding that held the covered portion of the songthaew to the truck it once was.  This created a forceful and concentrated sustained blast of cold air that my body was fortunate enough to block from the rest of the passengers.  Nothing could assuage this barrage of frigid air.  If I shoved my pillow into the gap between the carriage and the truck, the wind redirected upon my legs or face.  If I simply thrust my back against the corner of the cabin, the wind found ways to draw all warmth out of my face and nose.  I was inconsolable.  But like a good Thai, I bore my pain in a contemptuous silence, until I saw my chance for escape.

We stopped at mid-morning for breakfast, hot noodles and pork.  April and I conspired to oust her Thai partner in the front, claiming that I was her boyfriend and was also prone to carsickness, a malady that affects many, if not all farang.  I was granted the honor.  The rest of the ride up the dizzy hills of the northland was undertaken in the cramped warmth of the shared front seat, April in the middle dodging the gearshift with her knees, me pressed up against the window as the clear winter sun flooded in over the hills into the cab of the truck.  My water bottle sweated in the sun, the thick beads of perspiration catching the light and refracting with a golden hue the radiance the sun layed out across the land.  The fields had been cut, and stood solitary, mute, chopped haphazardly but with an innate sense of order.  The long stalks of wheat or corn were cropped to only a foot in length, and with a resigned but bold rusty color, bore the days of winter in the mountain sun.  Beyond the fields stretched the green mountains up into the clear azure sky.  The mountains straddled that fine line between jagged and rolling, as if unsure of their identity as mountains, or perhaps too new to have acquired the thick flesh required to be called rolling.  In the indecision lay a certain beauty, a tense kind of sparkling radiance, at once calm, at once fierce, but at all times more than pleasant to look at.  The day warmed as we moved north toward Laos and the mighty Mekong.

We stopped to admire a lakeside village called Phayao, taking in the pink water-lilies resting on the surface of the water, our Thai friends posing in all necessary poses (peace-sign fingers, hand to chin splaying thumb and index finger like a check mark, sundry poses of infinite creativity and utter cheesiness, the ubiquitous hear no evil...)

We stopped for lunch in a nondescript town whose name demands to be forgotten.  We were advised to buy food for dinner (despite the existence of food stalls where ever there are people). 

We climbed back into the truck, our legs stretched to endure a few more hours of cramped jostling driving.

The songthaew winded up and around mountain roads, climbing slowly and steadily a valley of rolling hills, patchworked by agriculture and glinting in the early afternoon sun.  The higher we climbed, the more spectacular and sweeping the vistas became, the thinner and clearer the air.  As the road became less civilized, marked with potholes and patches of sandy dirt, April and I talked at length about India and the nature of being out on one's own.  She is twenty-two, fresh out of college, pursuing, as I am, a clearer picture of herself and the world around her.  Talented at many forms of expression, not the least being song and dance, she told me her story of growing up in Colorado, of visiting Israel, and her tangible and intangible goals for coming to Asia.  The time passed beautifully as we climbed the hills, the sun softly falling in the sky.

After eight grueling hours in a rusty songthaew, whose windows were old and warped and would not shut, we arrived at our campsite, a mantel in a steep hillside that overlooked a valley sprawling with green and rolling into the foggy distance.  We quickly set up our tent and set off to hike up the knobby hillock, scarred by a single trail, that sat atop top of the ridge above us.

Climbing past a gold meditating buddha, and two children with weather-beaten faces selling incense and candles, we reached the summit and beheld the other side.  Over a large pile of pockmarked boulders stretched a valley cut horizontally by a straight and coursing river.  The Mekong, which flows from the hidden hills of the eastern Himalayas down through Cambodia and Vietnam to empty in the South China Sea.  Beyond the physical line cut by the river was Laos.  The cold mountain wind swept up the mountainside and blew straight into us.  It was achingly beautiful.  There was a strange fog on the horizon that visually divided the earth from the sky.  Above the foggy earth flew the clear and pure sky, blue as my mother's eyes, crisp as a glacier melt.  My eyes watered from the wind and enormity of it all. 

We climbed down and watched the sun sink behind the murky haze floating on the horizon line.  Two lights shone bright and metallic in the early night sky, one bigger and brighter than the other.  We wondered what stars would have the audacity to shine through the twilight.  I later found out they were Venus and Jupiter, out for a short time to align beneath the waxing moon to create a smiley face in the early night sky.

That night the temperature dropped below six degrees Celsuis.  The wind ravaged the feeble ledge as my tent clung to its stakes in the cold earth.  We attempted a fire of bamboo wood, but the wind, changing directions and force every few seconds, drove us into our tents and sleeping bags.  The Thai children that built our fire for us were long gone, off in the cold empty night to shriek their waning adolescence into the wind.

  The next morning, we awoke at around seven, collectively but without speaking deciding not to go to the top of the wind-swept hill to watch the sun rise over the Mekong.  Though the promise of beauty called strongly (almost as strongly as my bladder called me out of my warm cocoon to walk the five minutes to the bathroom), I could not muster the courage to leave my refuge of warmth.

We finally did awake, eating a quick hot noodle and hot chocolate breakfast, before disassembling the tent, bounding across the campsite to rescue a tent tumbling towards a precarious ledge followed by three screaming Thai girls, and packing everything back on to the roof of the songthaew, our noble chariot.

We lumbered back down the mountain, straddling potholes, crossing wooden bridges rusted with age spanning rocky streams, down through the saddle between the mountain we camped on, Doi Ba-dtang, and Pucheefa, which in Thai literally translates to, "point at sky."  We wound around turns up into the Pucheefa forest park, past some beautiful gardens and landscaping that looked cold and huddled.

Climbing the steep hill from the parking lot, past children peddling fat infant buddhas, "authentic" hill-tribe wares, smiling beneath cheeks ruddy and worn from the mountain wind, we reached the top of Pucheefa, and beheld the great stretching mountain ranges, jagged and torn, sitting like open jaws waiting for the sun.

The sight filled me.  With what, I think I have not the capacity to say.  Or perhaps (shifting the blame here) that words have not the capacity to express.  Rilke says it better:

          "Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life."

This landscape was a work of staggering art.  By whose hand, no man could say.  I will say that it filled me with a sense that life is designed for these moments.  Designed to put you in a muddled place, to make you forget the real and clear things by weighing you down with the everyday.  Then, if you're lucky, and you have the sense to pursue it, you get moments where the world lays itself out before you, where the expansiveness of beauty and the fortuitousness we possess to be able to behold it, weave and fly together in a single silent song. 






I sat long and drank from the well of life.

















That of course made me have to pee.











The drive down was a prolonged, rocky exercise in quiet contemplation.  A bemused sort of quietude.  A gracious quiescence. 
We arrived home at the faded edges of twilight, tired, full, alive.  I returned home to read and go to sleep.

******************


I would love to offer a word on the current political situation in Thailand.  I imagine you have been following it.  The truth is, it has no real effect on me.  I am in no way invested in it.  Neither side is acting for the good of the nation.  Neither side has a solution to what ails the country.  I fear for the economy, for the tourist industry, and for the future of the monarchy.  Now it seems, the PAD will leave the airport.  This is not the end.  The solution reached is a disguised apparition of the same thing.  Know that I am safe and will not be affected by the turmoil that plagues this country.  Do tell your friends to come here, not to deter any plans should they have them.  I think once the economic effects of this disaster are fully felt, a lot more people will be a lot more indignant.

But for now, as the late afternoon coolness creeps in from the windows behind me, I must depart.  Thank you so much for reading.
d.