stream before bedtime

ah and the sitting here in the silence of the spacious room that is my mind and i sit and listen to my heart beat in silence silence silence and in the background there is a leonard cohen song playing on my sound system lulling me ever deeper into the stillpoint the stillpoint where i long to be this night as the tears trickle from my eyelids as life ticks away away as memories of ann whom once i loved is now just a fading memory and it was a love that was meant to die die die as we all are dying and yet i am not too sad because there is a peace of acceptance beginning to drop like the dew on the grass in the cold of the early morning and i type these words and wonder at their healing power and i will never dwell in the valley of self-pity never never never because it is a selfish waste of precious time no no no i will climb to the mountain from which i can get a viewing point where i shall rest a while and look back at my climb at my slow and winding climb ever upwards ever upwards towards the acceptance of self the only truth the very centre of self the very centre of gravity of all life and this is all we have that journey to the centre or core of self that centre which alone will hold in this mystifying universe this universe ever expanding expanding expanding and i type and listen to the healing words of the lyrics of a song and these words are healing me as they pour like a balm over my soul ah these words are the sweet waters that heal heal and heal ever more deeply and cohen sings on dancing me ever deeper into my soul ever ever deeper like a caver of the cavernous labyrinthine soul and these words are lighting the way down down down and dance me deeper deeper to the end of love and in that end i will surely find a beginning and these are the words that sound out my heart and then the music ah yes the music that enchants my soul that brings a tear with every stroke and caress of string for i need this music to play on and on for i need more healing that once i thought i never needed i need to be cherished and cuddled and comforted in the arms of mother earth in the arms of mother earth in the peace of mother earth in the peace in the peace of mother earth at her bosom at her bosom and i need more more more than a thousand kisses to heal my wounded heart and yet my soul is light for it courts the beauty of the imagination the imagination oh yes the beauty of the wondrous imagination that can enchant the soul to sing its song oh so strong oh so strong and i listen on not alone to cohen and his songs but to my own soul song that sings as these words will out as the truth of self will out as congruence and authenticity play the strings of my heart and they play them sound they play them sound they play them sweet and what a music those strings make what a music what a beautiful music and the truth it lies in the spacious room that is my mind and it is a room that has some seats and chairs and loads of lovely bookcases with those sacred books of knowledge that once my mother bought in the poverty of my youth in the poverty of my youth in those far away times those days almost forgotten when little or so little was such a lot and sometimes when the night is slow i sit and listen to cohen singing a thousand kisses deep and let those words lull me to sleep to sleep perchance to dream and in that dream of death what sleep may come and thus ends this and thus ends this and the rest as they say is silence... and the fading words... a thousand kisses deep...

Undone, Undone and yet again Undone

A Picture of my 94 year old demented mother

...and it's difficult to understand always difficult how those random juxtapositions happen from this death to that and to the other and thoughts and dreams and images always fleeting of faces long since departed come to this mind unbidden and still the world goes on from losing this bank card to the other to losing one's way in a new city or in some other strange place to breaking a rib being mugged failing or passing or honouring an exam and all this juxtaposed randomly always randomly always randomly and then the passion of the little man who will be president that little man with the big voice and the bigger vision that big vision of what we can be as a nation of what we can be as a people if only we have the courage of our convictions the congruence to be true to self like old Polonius recommended to his dear departing son: yea yea yea and this above all to thine own self be true and all that follows yea yea yea all that follows that one in that case can never be false to another to another to any other human being or even any being as i remember my childhood dog my childhood dog still licking my wounded or cut knees ah yes and the randomness of it all and now there are keys on our calculators to generate numbers at random and all and still as a thinking mind and as a hurting soul i long for an order to the chaos of these thoughts and yet in the seeming chaos of this uncensored stream of consciousness i write on and on and on in order to plumb the depths of my being in order to be true to my self whatever or whoever that may be and i am aware so well aware that even in the randomness of these words there is a thrust to order there is a thrust to meaning there is a thrust to authenticity and to the truth that lies buried like gold in the caverns and caves and passage ways of my being and so that little man our new president with his big voice and greater dream and greater vision is leading me leading this little thinking being this little insignificant mind typing these little random words always random but always in a randomness seeking order ever seeking order and meaning and i think and and i meditate now on the slow death of the wife of a work colleague random death for me but a bitter painful soul-searing one for the poor colleague and his two soon-to-be-orphaned children and this randomness and the suddenness of it all like a shower unexpected pelting down seemingly out of nowhere on a fine day such a fine day and yet little lives are ending ending ending in big and greater pain and it is not you or i at least not yet and as i type i meditate like Sogyal Rinpoche on the Tibetan book of the Living and the Dead on this coming death which is a little death for me and on the coming death of another colleague trying valiantly to struggle on and not to give in i praise his courage and yet i cannot let go some of the injuries he has inflicted on me and on other friends of mine but i know that as i go on and on and on those injuries are getting less and less as they are all about ego all about ego-ego-ego-ego which goes on and on unless vanquished and so these words are stuttering and halting and random and seeking order and meaning and they are not behaving as well as i should wish and yet the little unseasonal daisy in my lawn half-way through an unusually warn November is too random too unusual and yet that is life so random and that is what the great professor Stephen Hawking says that all is random that living and dying is all a matter of luck all a game of chance which we are invited to play and yes that is where some personal philosophy or wisdom comes into play we must learn to play as creatively as possible whatever random hand of cards we get in life and press on and on and dress ourselves appropriately or as appropriately as possible for whatever weather we encounter for whatever winds lash against the canvas of our earthly tent we call our body-soul or soul-body or whatever or whoever we as named are in all our humanity and animal-ness in all our weaknesses and strengths in all our littlenesses and greatnesses in all our brittleness or leochaileacht as a Gaelic poet put it and so and so the sheer randomness and juxtaposition of a drunken man slobbering over a half-eaten dinner and the silliness of two dogs copulating or two teenagers screwing on a settee or or or and these words fade into nothing and trail away away away into nothing nothing nothing...