tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63839993723473501452024-03-06T19:36:37.850-08:00 70,000 FathomsWer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich aus der Engel Ordnungen?Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-8868145156470632542023-12-18T13:56:00.000-08:002023-12-20T21:10:26.447-08:00Mindsongs<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>i. </i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div><br /></div><div>as a child I invented a mind within </div><div>my mind</div><div><br /></div><div>for years it clenched shut</div><div>the hole at the bottom </div><div>of my heart</div><div>not knowing what it was</div><div><br /></div><div>it cut paths through the Spirit </div><div>built forts</div><div>threw balls of anger at my parents’ faces</div><div>so hard they wept</div><div>figuring out how to win</div><div><br /></div><div>and it searched</div><div><br /></div><div>it wanted to kiss</div><div>the mother of meaning</div><div>to feel </div><div>the feeling</div><div>stronger than all the other feelings</div><div><br /></div><div>and sometimes it halted</div><div>bored</div><div>halfway up the slopes of Awe </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>ii.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>time passed </div><div>like a lung inhaling without exhale</div><div>a fire always heating up</div><div><br /></div><div>today</div><div>my family’s on the West Coast</div><div>but I live in New York</div><div>and when my brother calls</div><div>we whisper as we talk:</div><div><br /></div><div>“are your thoughts, too, </div><div>attempting something stranger </div><div>than thought?”</div><div><br /></div><div>I read a novel </div><div>steam broccoli </div><div>and take my daily walk</div><div>feeling the mind within my mind</div><div>probe</div><div>and grasp </div><div>and push</div><div><br /></div><div>alone in my room</div><div>I stare at the wall</div><div>…it tries to get away</div><div><br /></div><div>it caresses memories like rosary beads</div><div>each weighing exactly the same </div><div><br /></div><div>the frogs I caught</div><div>those days in spring</div><div>just wanting to meet them </div><div><br /></div><div>the songs I sang</div><div>the poems I wrote,</div><div>wrote just to read them</div><div><br /></div><div>it must do such odd things </div><div>in private</div><div>just to make sure it’s real</div><div>must search old yearbooks for answers</div><div>and feel and feel </div><div><br /></div><div>and feel</div><div><br /></div><div>sense was never enough for it</div><div>sense was never enough</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>iii.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>then one night </div><div>tired of yearning</div><div>it drops the chains of effort</div><div><br /></div><div>the hole opens—</div><div>and the universe</div><div>not wasting a second </div><div>squeezes through </div><div><br /></div><div>galaxies hiss against the dark</div><div>the circle widens</div><div>waters laugh into oceans</div><div>wind and stone</div><div>spring, winter, wrinkled skin </div><div>angels and angels </div><div>a howl gets in</div><div>and—</div><div>I gasp</div><div><br /></div><div>compassion</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>iv.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>but still it goes on</div><div>tugging </div><div>at its leash</div><div><br /></div><div>one by one it cracks the shells</div><div>of meaning and meaning-</div><div>lessness</div><div>and slurps the pap in each</div><div><br /></div><div>what do I eat?</div><div>it wants to know</div><div><br /></div><div>why am I alone?</div><div>it wants to know</div><div><br /></div><div>this hole I grip</div><div>why can’t I pass through</div><div>and what comes after?</div><div><br /></div><div>the mind asks the question</div><div>screams the question</div><div>now <i>something else</i></div><div><br /></div><div>answer</div><div><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-40793226353706230732023-04-10T19:44:00.010-07:002023-11-02T11:26:52.609-07:00Vale of Cashmere, April 10th, 2023<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">time </span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">just passes </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">and I can’t do anything about it</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I look up and it is </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">five forty-five pm</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">soon I won’t have light to read by</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">soon I won’t have thumbs</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I have this feeling I’m </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">emptying out</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">as though a leech outside dimensions</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">sucks stealthily at what is </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">most mine</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">maybe a thousand things more will happen to me</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">maybe I’ll love again</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">maybe I’ll become a hero or just</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">get another chance to talk</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">to all my old friends</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">but all this will end </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">inside a moment like this </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">like this one now</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I know it with a </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">pure knowing</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">that needs no concept</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I understand it again and again</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">and yet I go on </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">believing that this life</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">this life! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">will have made a difference to me</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">by the end</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">(look, now it’s five fifty pm)</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></span></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-85723722515959913292022-06-21T09:57:00.005-07:002023-04-10T19:42:11.031-07:008pm, Couch Thoughts<div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">clarity of day's end</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">clarity of all tasks done<div>clarity of no more asking, what next?</div><div><br /></div><div><div>clarity </div><div>of not needing </div><div>to write a poem</div><div><br /></div><div>clarity of just sitting against this window</div><div>not counting the passing cars</div><div>the blue-grey light </div><div>almost gone</div><div><br /></div><div>ah clarity</div><div><br /></div><div>I can see it so perfectly now</div><div>a dark spot</div><div>hovering at the center of my vision</div><div>the size of a pea</div><div><br /></div><div>it pours nourishment, infinite nourishment</div><div>outward</div><div>into my mind</div><div>into this universe</div><div>feeding the whole thing</div><div><br /></div><div>this small node</div><div>where clarity </div><div>ends</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /></span></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-63537008089316495422022-06-04T12:33:00.011-07:002022-10-17T17:21:29.608-07:00Dream Journal as Literary Project <div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Recently,
I was wandering the wastes of Internetland, peeking here and there into reddit
forums, stopping by old bookmarked blogs—when I happened on a post at the
Teeming Brain titled, <i>A nightmare that
was better than the story I made from it</i>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The post
absolutely chilled me. In it, Matt Cardin returns to a dream that gave birth to
a short story, and finds, as the title suggests, that despite having the
advantage of length and literary technique, the short story did not reach the
same uncanny depths as the dream itself, which is related <a href="https://www.teemingbrain.com/2022/04/01/a-nightmare-that-was-better-than-the-story-i-made-from-it/">here
in just 742 words</a>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">And this
makes sense. As someone who has long been fascinated by dreams as <i>aesthetic objects</i>, it’s clear to me that
something irreducible is going on, and that any translation of a dream into another
medium, any attempt to make use of its parts outside the medium of the dream
itself, must suffer loss. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">As James
Hillman puts it in his unsurpassed classic, <i>The
Dream and the Underworld</i>, what matters “is not what is said about the dream after the
dream, but the experience of the dream after the dream… For a dream image to
work in life it must, like a mystery, be experienced as fully real.
Interpretation arises when we have lost touch with the images, when their
reality is derivative, so that this reality must be recovered through
conceptual translation. Then we try to replace its intelligence with ours
instead of speaking to its intelligence with ours.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In other
words, the most fruitful way to engage with dreams is not to regard them as
messages from the subconscious, not as noise generated by our
nocturnally-recalibrating neurochemistry whose signal can be utilized by a
therapist… but as experiences with their own experiential merit.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe I
am among the few, but I don’t flinch away when someone says to me, “So last
night I had this weird dream.” I seek it out, in fact—bringing up dreams in
conversations, following Jennifer Dumpert’s daily dream posts on Twitter (@OneiroFer), and every so often checking <a href="https://worlddreamatlas.tumblr.com/">the World Dream Atlas</a>. I also love encountering
dreams a work of fiction or a movie. That unpopular Sopranos episode devoted to
Tony’s coma-dreams? One of my favorites. That chilling dream-like sequence at
the diner in David Lynch’s <i>Mullholland
Drive</i>? A masterpiece. And Rodney Asher’s documentary about sleep paralysis
and its related nocturnal phenomena, <i>The
Nightmare</i>? If you know me, I’ve probably already recommended it to you.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But more
than this, of course, I have recorded my own dreams.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This
project, which I started as a teenager, has evolved over the years as my own
writing and my own understanding of dreams has evolved. Once, I had it in mind
to make use of some of this content, free gifts from my subconscious, in my
fiction; no more. As Cardin discovered, that just goes wrong. In fact, I’ve
come to believe that, when it comes to capturing the aesthetic power of dreams,
there is simply no more effective medium than <i>the dream journal itself</i>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Let's try a thought-experiment. Let's think of
dreams as a literary genre, the way, for example, the American
kitchen-sink-realism short story is a genre, or the Eastern European tradition
of microfictions is a genre (a la Robert Walser, and Kafka’s parables), or more
recently, the autobiographical blog post, or even the Facebook status update
(of which people have made stitched-up novels, like David Sauvage). The
particular aesthetic advantage of this genre is that it does not need to create
a scaffolding, or “frame”, to excuse or explain the content. That is, it
doesn’t need to set up the dream via plot mechanisms or even establishing a POV
character. It just treats the dream as its own inherently meaningful object. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In other words,
in this “genre,” the container of the dream itself is vital to the particular
aesthetic effect. Knowing it is dream, the reader can then willingly enter the
particular mode of participation that dreams offer, which <i>is</i> their magic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“In
sleep, I am thoroughly immersed in the dream,” writes James Hillman. “Only</span><span style="font-size: large;"> on waking do I reverse this
fact and believe the dream is in me. At night the dream has me, but in the
morning I say, I had a dream. A true subjective level of interpretation would
have to keep me subjected to the dream.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Of
course, there’s one small hitch here. A dream journal entry isn’t the dream. It
is words on a page. What makes dreams <i>sui
generis</i> is that they are <i>dreams.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Acknowledging
this, the goal of the dream journal <i>as a
literary project</i> must be, then, to stay as close as possible to the
phenomenon. Dreams, after all, bind together multiple dimensions of
experience—past, present and future, the known and the unknown, the self and
the not-self—into a compact hyper-object which, upon waking, provides a
potential for reflection and interpretation vastly asymmetrical to the actually
very simple and image-based content of the dream. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">But the point of the dream
journal isn’t to spin out into this surrounding hermeneutical territory. It’s to stay with the source. To record what was seen,
felt, and understood in the dream in the way it happened, in the sequence in
which it happened, without deviating, without interpretation. Without mixing
day consciousness into the night.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The
following dreams are my attempt to do just this. Please read them the way
you might read a small collection of micro-fictions; but read them <i>as</i> dreams. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Sept 27<sup>th</sup>,
2014</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(I want to start this series with
a dream I had when I was my early twenties. At the time, I was beginning to
navigate what would become a lifelong—at least so far</span></i><span style="font-size: large;"><i>—</i></span><i><span style="font-size: large;">chronic bowel illness.
Symptoms included unpredictable flares of inflammation. I nearly had to drop
out of university. Dread, frustration, and loneliness characterized my days.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">Deep
space. We travel with the last remnant of humanity in a vast interstellar
cruiser. The situation is similar to <i>Battlestar
Galactica</i>: in the wake of some nameless disaster, a universal apocalypse, we
search for a home. We have gone everywhere, traversed the whole cosmos, and now
we are launching into the great Boundless of deepest space, beyond the last
stars. Where there is… nothing.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">But
there <i>is</i> something. Far below our
ship, out here in the void, we notice a vast blue wolf’s head. Its presence is
immense, the size of a nebula.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">What
is it doing here? What <i>is</i> it?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">I have a horrible feeling. A shift seems to occur; this thing, we realize, is not friendly. Already it may be too late. The thing turns, raising its snout at our ship.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">Before it can make a move, we drop a bomb. It is a powerful nuclear missile, released like a depth charge into the wolf’s face. It explodes, and in its wake there is a window of chance. We can, if we’re fast enough, slip away…</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">Taxed to its utmost, full speed ahead, the ship gets free. </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">We carry on our journey.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">Now the dream, or my memory of the dream, slows. We are on an alien word, with vast fields and blue skies. We have found the paradise we’ve been seeking. </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">It is truly glorious. I’m standing by a river, just feeling the most profound gratitude. But it’s not a new gratitude; I seem to have been there a while, many years have passed since our long dark voyage through the black void. There’s this sense of beauty and infinite potential. All around me I see deep red fruit, endless varieties of novel plants, and these strange airborne jellyfish whose transparent bodies everywhere reflect the clear dusk light. How is it possible we succeeded, and so richly? So luckily? Ah! </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">As
I stand there, feeling this joy, a figure emerges on the horizon and begins to
hobble toward me. It comes slowly at first, then swiftly, and in a moment it
stands before me, hunched and intent. There’s a mysterious power in this
not-quite-human person that makes me uneasy. It points a finger at me and stares.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">And
suddenly we are back. Our interstellar ship is hovering over the blue wolf’s
head, like a worm on a hook.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">For a moment, I think: so our paradise hadn’t been real. The wolf had only generated a beautiful illusion to mock us. But it’s worse. The paradise <i>had </i>been real, but the wolf has reeled us back through time, ripping us from what was our very real home, one we had really found, to once again dangle us over its vast maw.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s
horrible. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">It can do this. It can actually do this.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-size: large;">The fruits of our long-suffering, the striving, the quest, and all love, all joy, all progress along the way, yes, even after reaching heaven itself—it can just be undone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span lang="EN-CA"><span style="font-size: large;">What
the hell is this thing? What is it doing, just brooding here, outside
the universe?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">August 29<sup>th</sup>,
2018</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(Sometimes I remember only an
image. But that image seems to contain the story itself.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A woman
is holding a sphere, cupping it with both hands. It is about the size of a
child’s head, white-grey, made of a soft, light-giving, permeable substance. I
know this sphere is the universe.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Slowly,
she begins to peel it apart with her fingers, unfolding it outward.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">At its
center, when the work is done, there is a key. No, a set of keys; but it’s the
one key I notice, because it is the key to the universe, won by this work of
careful exposure.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The
other keys, I don’t know what they are for. There must be other things which I
hadn’t thought to try to unlock. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">January 27<sup>th</sup>,
2020</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(Sometimes I take extra melatonin
before falling asleep, in order to increase the likelihood of strange dreams. This,
it turned out, might not have been the best thing after a day of reading Thomas
Ligotti’s horror fiction...)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I am
with my family in a kind of Airbnb on the coast. My friend Kaden is here too.
They want to watch a movie but I say I won’t join them. In fact, I’m very lonely
and hoping to be contradicted. They don’t; they go off to watch the movie
without me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">After a
time, they come back outside. I am leaning on a railing, weeping. I shout, very
earnestly, believing it myself, “I want to die!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">They
surround me, and right away it’s clear they do not take me seriously. What
happens next is strange. We begin to rough-house, joke around, but slowly it
becomes clear that this rough-housing is demented, their laughter is heedless.
There are moments in which I seem to suddenly comprehend that I am losing
control of something important, that I am desperately alone and in pain, and
that I am progressively forgetting this truth in the course of their game.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now they
have pinned me down. Mom, my dear mother, has an axe and she is swinging it
here and there, <i>ha ha ha</i>, and the
swings are coming ever nearer my face.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">“You
have to listen to me!” I yell, urgent. I know I could be hit any moment. “You
have to listen to me!” But my yell, and within it my desperation, is simply
understood according to the rules of the game, i.e. as just more rough-housing
and not in earnest.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">No
matter what I say or do, it’s taken up into the demented game. Cries for
help are subverted into play. I make an even greater effort to yell then, the
kind of effort one makes in a state of dream paralysis when the terrible
silhouette looms over you, an enormous push—and it wakes me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In bed,
I hear the sound of my own strained voice, a weak croak, <i>Aaah,</i> before this is punctuated by the awareness of being awake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, this isn’t a false waking. But something hasn’t ended. I
remain perfectly still for a long time before thinking I ought to try to move.
I find I’m able to. But there is a heaviness in my body. I go over the dream to
figure out how it led me down those strange loops of disintegrating free will.
Then I close my eyes again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Before
me, perfectly formed, is an image of an entity. It’s blue, complex face is in
profile, looking away. I have the impression of extreme intelligence and utter
malice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Before
it can notice me, I opened my eyes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I am in
my bedroom, in Brooklyn, awake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Okay.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Cautiously,
I close my eyes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now the
entity has turned to face me directly. It takes me a moment to understand what
I am seeing; it is so strange and near, closer now than before, and the power
of its mind is intense.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">This is
the dark intelligence, very real, which has orchestrated my demented dream. I’m
not yet in its power, I sense, but at the same time I am at risk of this, and
therefore must not indulge the vision. I open my eyes at once.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I stand
and turn on the light in the room, to reset things. Then I get back into bed
and focus on something else, and eventually fall back asleep.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">July 26<sup>th</sup>,
2020</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(At the time of this dream, I was
reading Carl Jung’s memoirs, and I was deeply impressed by his memory of a
dream he had when he was three or four: “In the dream I was in this meadow.
Suddenly I discovered a dark, rectangular, stone-lined hole in the ground. I
had never seen it before. I ran forward curiously and peered down into it. Then
I saw a stone stairway leading down....”)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m in a
suburb with many old houses. It’s an old wealthy neighborhood, and a crepuscular
evening light is falling over the houses.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Someone
is guiding me, I don’t remember who, and I’m not even sure there was someone
else. Perhaps I am guiding myself.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I hear,
or rather I have the impression of hearing, the phrase, “I will show you a
secret.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">We go
down a street and at certain a point, no more special than any other point, we
stop. There’s something that looks like a drainage grate or a manhole but isn’t
quite either of these things. It’s by the sidewalk in front of an old house. I
am shown how if you put a finger in a small hole and lift with all your might,
you will pull out a metal rod, and when that metal rod is released you will be
able to lift open a disc. When that disc is open, you can pull aside the grate
itself and expose a small cavern or alcove.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">We go
down. It is very shallow and dirty and I can see the bottom easily. But now I
am told to step back and look lower.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In the
side of the alcove is a long thin concrete culvert—a tunnel. The more I lower
my head, the further I can see down this tunnel. It’s maybe 20 or 30 ft and extends
at an angle that doesn’t make sense; it is parallel to the street, but jutting
across multiple property lines. The width is just slightly too small to be able
to crawl through.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">There is
a light coming from the other end. It’s a kind of meadow, and in that meadow it
seems to be mid-day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I
freeze.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">A face is
looking at me from the other end. This person is pressing right up to the
opening, so that I can see only from the eyebrows to just below the lower lip.
For a moment I think it is myself. But something is different. It is a woman.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">It was
only when I woke that I realized this was <i>me,
but as a woman</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">October 5<sup>th</sup>,
2020</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(What follows is one of the most
powerful dreams I’ve ever had. It left me glowing for days. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">The dream takes place at my
university campus, which was on the outskirts of Edmonton, Canada. It was not a
nice campus, and was surrounded by industry and a train yard. All the same, it
being my university, the campus has a magical aura for me. The friend in the
dream is an old acquaintance who I will call Colin, who wasn’t even a close
friend at the time.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I was
walking along a train yard a few friends from university when I encountered
another old friend, Colin, who I hadn’t seen in years. He’s married now in real
life, with kids. In the dream, he seemed to be living atop an industrial
building just off the train yard. He would scale up to the roof by gripping
only the ends of the screws which studded the metal siding. Witnessing this, my
friends couldn’t believe it was possible. But I wanted to do it myself, so I
followed Colin up to the rooftop. I found that the screw heads were indeed
sufficient hand grips.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The
rooftop was bare save for skylights and industrial vents. Here, Colin lived a
magical existence. He was utterly content. Whatever he wished for would
manifest, but he did not wish for much, he simply existed in an eternal glowing
ecstatic mood. He had discovered a new way of being, and he undertook the task of
showing me what it was like.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The
first thing he did was conjure an illuminated blue marble. My friends were
roaming around on below us, hopping over railway ties and calling out; they
seemed to be looking for me. Colin tossed them this marble. He did so, however,
in a strange way: he seemed to extend a hand all the way down to the train
tracks while at the same time remaining on the rooftop, so that when my friends
caught the marble and tossed it back to us, it was, bizarrely, his own hand
that performed this toss. That is to say, my friends didn’t seem to be aware of
Colin’s hand; they thought they were tossing the marble back themselves. They
weren’t even aware that the marble was glowing. We played a kind of game with
my friends, tossing the marble back and forth, which was really a game between
Colin and I. Then Colin said, “Why don’t we hide it in the world so that
someone can find it.” And he threw the marble so far away it disappeared over
the horizon.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I felt
ecstatic. We were sharing something intimate and magical that no one else in
the world knew about.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Next, we
began to make out. I’ve never kissed a guy before, in a dream or otherwise,
and I felt neutral about it, or just above neutral; it was kind of nice. We
snuggled and kissed. I remember his tongue circling the inside of my lips. This
is new, I thought. It was all part of this magical existence: anything could
happen, I could even be bisexual.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">At last
I noticed it was getting late and the night was dark. I asked Colin what we
would do about sleep. He seemed surprised. He never slept, he told me, and I
didn’t have to either. As he said this I realized I did not feel tired at all.
I didn’t need to sleep if I didn’t want to; in fact, I didn’t need to sleep
ever again. Realizing this, only then did it occur to me to wonder how all this
was possible, this magical existence. I felt incredible awe for what Colin had
discovered. But this awe alienated me slightly from the magic and introduced a
kind of doubt. Sure, this was all possible. But was it possible for <i>me</i>?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I asked
about food. Colin said we could go down to the street. I had very little money
on me, and I wanted to see how Colin survived, since he didn’t seem to have any
money himself, so I agreed. We found ourselves in a late-night deli picking out
a wheel of goat cheese. At the counter, the cashier—a tall man with a huge
mustache—looked at us skeptically and said this was very expensive cheese. I
told the man to slice it into a fraction of what we’d given him. The cheese,
now just a small wedge, was still over twenty dollars. “Well?” he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Up to
this point, the mood had been playful and light, since I was waiting for
something magical to happen, something that would take care of us the way
everything had been taken care of before. Now, with the cashier waiting on my
decision—would I buy the cheese or not?—I felt a sudden pressure. Something was
up to me now. I was being asked for an act of faith. I felt the way Peter must
have felt when, walking on the water towards Jesus, the moment of fear came and
his feet grew wet for the first time. I could not sustain this, I realized. I
was sinking. What had gone wrong? By my side, Colin wasn’t explaining anything.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I turned
away without buying the cheese. Leaving the deli and walking out into the
night, I knew that I’d broken it. If only I had agreed to buy the cheese
despite the expense, something would have happened. That had been the moment.
And now it was too late. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I’d lost it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">April 20<sup>th</sup>,
2021</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(At the time of this dream, I was
attending an MFA program at NYU, in creative writing. All my classes were moved
online, and Zoom was the tyrant of my days. David Lipsky, who appears in this
dream, was one of my professors.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I am
sitting in a windowless classroom. The chairs are arranged in a circle, and
some friends from home in British Columbia are there, along with maybe half a
dozen NYU students. David Lispky is present on a large screen that leers down
from a ceiling corner at the front of the room. I don’t know if we are all just
chatting or if we are going through some specific curriculum. It feels like we
are all sort of just waiting.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Some
shadowy people enter the room now. They chose me and take me away. I don’t
remember what they do to me, but I know it is very, very bad. I feel raped.
Utterly violated. They take me into a side room I hadn’t known about in order
to do it. The side room is huge; it’s a dark, swampy, cellar-like world. I’m
not sure if my inability to remember is part of the dream itself, and a
reflection on how deep the violation went, or if I just can’t remember. When
the bad thing is over, they sort of toss me aside, and I’m able to escape back
to the classroom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Here, I
see something so much worse than I could have expected. Everyone already knows
what has happened to me. In fact they knew while it was happening, but no one
tried to stop it. They’d just gone on with the class.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now that
I have returned, however, they realize what they’ve done. They have all done
something very wrong.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">I go
around the circle, punching everyone in the face. I am so mad. Some accept it
meekly, as their due. Others fight back. It doesn’t matter, I know I am in the
right, nothing could be clearer. I make sure that everyone gets punched, hard,
in the face. The only person I spare is David Lipsky, since he is on the
television screen, and I have the sense that he maybe tried to stop it, maybe
tried to raise the class’s attention at some point.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">In the
end, after I’ve punched everyone, I still want more. It burns, a bottomless
rage. I realize that I have to cut them all out of my life. How could I
continue to be friends with any of them after they have knowingly let those
dark things rape me? My friends understand this then, too, and they are very
sorry, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t really have a choice. Something has been
ruined, and we are all, all of us, horribly sad about it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">April 22<sup>nd</sup>,
2022</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(As context for this dream, it’s
important to know that over the last year, I’ve been exploring various
psychedelic substances, mostly ceremonial or highly intentional contexts,
including 5-MeO-DMT, N,N-DMT, psilocybin mushrooms, and Ayahuasca. These
substances can induce radical shifts in subjectivity and, outwardly, one’s
personality.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">At a cabin in the
woods with the family. It’s night. I stand looking out the window at the dark
forest, where a massive tree grows at the edge, five times as thick as the
others but only just as tall. A Baobob-Pine: that’s what I call it, and that’s
what it is. “Hey Dad, do you see the Baobob-Pine?” A large, curly-haired dog is
out there, watching the trees attentively. After a time we end up just watching
the dog. Its behaviour is ever-so-slightly strange, since there is no one
around and even trained guard dogs know they can relax in these conditions. We
wonder at this. What is it like to be the dog, what does it think is happening?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
Suddenly there erupts a loud wail. From deep in the woods a fire truck comes
hurtling down the road just beyond the trees. Its entire right side is engulfed
in flames. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
The fire truck is on fire!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
This seems very serious. Whether out of curiosity, or a need to help, or simply
to track a disaster that could very well become our own (we are, after all, in
the middle of the woods, a tinderbox), I hop in the car with Dad and follow it
to the ocean, where we understand it is headed. (Will it plunge in directly, I
wonder?) We don’t get very far. The fire truck is stuck in traffic. We pull up
behind it, realizing we are now part of the problem: here we are clogging up
the road with everyone else. We pull away further, off the curb, and park in a
field to wait things out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Outside the car, I
make a discovery. We have parked right next to the gravesite of someone
significant. In fact—I know this intuitively—this someone is my grandma. But
not Grandma Readel, not Grandma Doerksen, a third grandma. This woman seems to
be somehow related to Katrina’s family, though she isn’t Katrina’s grandma,
more a kind of grandma generated by the mingling of families. I feel a profound
connection to her. I understand that she represents a lineage from deep in the
past that used visionary drugs. This woman had deeply explored her own
consciousness.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
Oh, the incredible solace I feel at this discovery! This is part of my
heritage! </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
Dad is elsewhere, checking on the fire truck. I get him and explain what I’ve
found. We stand by the car, in a nondescript field. There is no indication of a
grave, and Dad doesn’t know what I’m talking about.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
“Watch,” I say.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
I step onto the site of the grave and immediately become someone else. This new
person is filled with a kind of unhinged, demonic energy. This seems to be
proof: it is nothing serious, nothing scary, this is just what happens when you
get very near a special grave. I linger in it for a moment, then step back
again. I can do so because this “new entity” seems to be a kind of controlled
persona: I am both wholly this new thing and also myself watching from the
outside, able to intervene when needed.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: x-large;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">May 15<sup>th</sup>,
2022</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>(No context required. Except for that this dream occurred the same week I watched Rodney Asher’s documentary on
simulation theory,</i>
A Glitch in the Matrix.<i>)</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was living in a
world which seemed to be on a lower level, ontologically-speaking, the way a
virtual reality is on a lower level, or a video game, though it
presented as real. I was there voluntarily, and I think I could have even
withdrawn from it, though the process must not have been easy because I never
once thought of doing so when things got dangerous.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Which
they did.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
It happened in a field.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
I had been making myself some food—a cod fillet and a few carrots fried in
butter on a skillet—when I realized I was missing a key ingredient. I went out,
leaving the food on a low temperature. I had to extract myself from the
compound in which I was cooking, and cross a grassy plain. There were people
all around. The sky above me was dark, though I could see just fine. Much
more came before all this, but this is what I remember, because this is the
important part.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
Some distance away, to the side, a man stood very still, looking at me. There
was a power about him, an unnerving intensity. I met his gaze, and in an
instant I realized that, like me, he was not from this world. He was in some
sense “really elsewhere.” And, realizing this, I realized that he had just
seen the same about me—and he wasn’t pleased. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">This was his turf. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Imagine
you’re wandering around an MMORPG, slaying monsters, undertaking quests, and
suddenly in the middle of nowhere</span><span style="color: #222222;"> <span style="background: white;">you run into a player whose levels are so, so much
higher than yours, and who, out of meanness, out of that blind alpha-male need
to dominate, decides to go after you.</span><br /></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was like that.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I ran. I can’t
remember all the zigs and zags I took, just that I ended up clambering
along a rickety log path which was suspended between a massive and heavily
trafficked highway far below, and the ridiculously high chain link fence that
circumscribed the compound I had originally come from, where my cod fillet was
cooking. It was a peculiar “in-between” place: the log path was concealed in a
long strip of evergreen trees on the slope, and it had about it that very
particular “public-but-secret” feel you get when you’re concealed on the side
of a very busy road.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">
With this man behind me, I climbed as fast as I could over logs and rope
ladders. I was carrying a bunch of random things, like an extra set of clothes,
and a bag, and at some point I realized I could solve the problem of having to
climb and balance with only one arm if I consolidated all the stuff in the bag,
then slung that bag around my neck.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Soon after, just as I
began to climb the chain link fence, I woke.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">May 24<sup>th</sup>,
2022</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size: large;">(What can I say about this to
prepare a reader? Perhaps only that I am a male who has been single for over
three years.)</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was in a high school
building somewhere in Portland, Oregon, though I’ve never been. I was there as
my adult self; I felt old and out of place, but I was careful not to let that
awkwardness come through. If I had, I was sure the teenagers would sniff it out
like wolves. The architecture was full of inefficiencies, which I thought
fascinating and romantic and which caused me to explore the building. There
were staircases that ended in long passages that opened out into rooms, and a
general vibe of “old manor home.”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I ended up in an
indoor auditorium. There seemed to be some kind of knick-knack store on the
auditorium room floor, which I perused, but everywhere I went this pair of
teenage girls went also, and fearing that they would accuse me of stalking
them, I ended my search. It seemed we were both hoping to come across a magical
object.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I went to a
bleacher stand, where students had gathered. I made friends with a few kids who
seemed amused by me and indulged my questions. Then a large man came into the
room, a kind of Hagrid-like half-giant.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">The auditorium went
hush. He came around the room and let the students smell his hand. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why are you doing
that? I asked my friends in the bleachers, who had leaned in eagerly to take a
whiff. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Because, they said,
he’s with her.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Into the room walked a
tall, long haired woman in white. She was beautiful. Not supernaturally
beautiful, just a beautiful woman; but at the same time there was something
about her that was just too much, too elevated above everyone else. Then the
whole situation became clear in this one image, the way it does in dreams.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was in a world in
which women were almost all “de-sexed.” Looking around the room, the girls
barely registered as girls: they were plain, square shouldered, round faced,
not ugly but not <i>feminine</i> either, just dwarf-like. The whole
mass of humanity had lost that feminine presence, that spark.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">Except just a very,
very few.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-size: large;">And how these few
stood out. They appeared, like this woman who had now entered the room, almost
god-like. All the charms and attractions of that sex were theirs alone. Between
the homely and square-bodied masses and these rare birds there was no one; they
were so different from the common female, in fact, that it felt like a
three-species situation. People worshipped them. They ruled the world. And
this Hagrid-like man was one of the lucky ones, he’d been paired with one of
these few women and was sharing his good fortune by allowing people to smell
the hand which had held hers.</span></span></p></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-62254184021363036162022-02-24T06:16:00.006-08:002023-04-13T09:35:38.885-07:00It Wants to Happen<div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I wrote up my experience smoking the 5-MeO-DMT-containing Bufo alvarius venom for an anthology: </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Toad in Me: Psychedelic Experiences with Bufo.</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> It will be published October 1, 2022.</span></span></div><div><i style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: arial;">Special Note: due to ongoing conservation issues, it is now recommended that those seeking to sit with Bufo (an experience that itself is certainly not recommended for everyone) find a practitioner who uses synthetic 5-MeO-DMT.</i><i style="font-family: arial;"> </i></span></div><div><i style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"> </i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUJ0qgyk4zw5Mp89CKDrtJZOCGpRdJ8qNoySegPDF3loHNOL1ggB9bcOYup0WZXQchYIwDs8ZZorYLTNoAlIH4QoO3Jl7W8Q8N5WnhexmqbDiMt-hHxfXfzUkTj4cgXbAsrCn9DeJ7OaMthmqadh3MuoiM40eOArdAjrh8mQ-KQsmKmFO6_KNtu8A1sw=s201" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="201" data-original-width="175" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUJ0qgyk4zw5Mp89CKDrtJZOCGpRdJ8qNoySegPDF3loHNOL1ggB9bcOYup0WZXQchYIwDs8ZZorYLTNoAlIH4QoO3Jl7W8Q8N5WnhexmqbDiMt-hHxfXfzUkTj4cgXbAsrCn9DeJ7OaMthmqadh3MuoiM40eOArdAjrh8mQ-KQsmKmFO6_KNtu8A1sw" width="175" /></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">To some degree, I sought out Bufo from sheer philosophical interest. I was looking to experience what, all my life, I had reasoned and intuited my way towards—namely, the <i>knowing</i> that exists above the mind’s knowing. The only knowing adequate to the infinite source of Being. I’d read Plotinus, Ibn Arabi, and other mystical texts. Now I wanted to see for myself. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But there was another way of putting this. Some weeks before I sat in ceremony, a friend asked me why I wanted to do it. Not knowing at the time George Mallory’s quip about why he’d climbed Mount Everest, I replied seriously: “Because it’s there.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">That was all. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If there was a limit, I had to touch it. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I wanted to put my hand on the ceiling of the universe.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">*</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I can’t recall precisely when I first heard of Bufo. I’d been using mushrooms for years and was curious about other psychedelics, and at some point it must have come onto my radar. Despite my best efforts, however, I was unable to find a connection. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Then, at twenty-nine years old, I moved to New York.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I came to attend grad school, which was an adventure in its own right. I mean, I was writing fiction and reading books all day, the two activities I loved most—and getting paid for it. My life was lonely, but stable and relatively fulfilling. In short, I didn’t need this. This was entirely extra.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But I was in New York! You could find anything in this city!</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I went looking. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This part wasn’t exactly easy, but I’ll skip the details. It involved a lot of hanging out at meet-up groups and a kind of pre-ceremony initiation: before agreeing to connect me with a Bufo practitioner, my contact asked that I first undergo a “heart-opening” ceremony with him, using psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA. We did this at night in a hotel room on Long Island. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It was fantastic. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">About a week before the ceremony, I found myself trying to explain to someone else, my roommate this time—a nurse practitioner with no psychedelic experience—what I was about to do. She was alarmed. I wanted to smoke <i>toad venom</i>? Because I was <i>curious</i>? She couldn’t understand it. “Your motives seem too pure,” she actually said to me. “I’m skeptical that there’s nothing else behind it.” I fudged some other reasons, including the intention to seek “healing,” and at this she was satisfied.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Only, now I wasn’t. The conversation had left me uneasy, and I went for a walk to be alone with my thoughts. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What <i>were</i> my intentions, really? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Was it really as simple as curiosity? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But why was I so curious? Why did I want to <i>know</i> so badly, and where did that <i>come </i>from?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I found an oak tree to lean against and looked out at all the people on Prospect Park’s north meadow enjoying the October warmth. The sun was perched just over the treetops. Close by, a young man was talking on his phone, but the wind was so strong that I couldn’t hear a word he said. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Then a strange thing happened. A moment later the wind died, and I heard him say loud and clear: “So my intention...” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Immediately the wind returned.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I stared at him. Leaning closer, I tried to pick up more of his words, but his voice was completely muffled. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Okay, I thought. So I’d gone to the park to think about my intention, and I’d heard this. Of course, the coincidence was rather low-level. But it stirred something in me. Suppose a genuine, full-fledged synchronicity was possible? At the time, I was working on a novel for my MFA thesis, and the plot turned on such an event: one of the characters comes across the phrase, <i>It wants to happen</i>, which he later learns several other characters had also independently come across, leading them into the deeps of a metaphysical mystery beneath the surface of New York City. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In short, synchronicities were on my mind.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I’d never really wanted to experience a synchronicity before; I didn’t need to feel that I was at the center of a cosmic attention. In fact, cultivating this desire seemed vaguely problematic, as though it was wanting too much, somehow egotistical, even straying into the territory of madness and schizophrenia—or worse, stupidity.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But why not? I said to myself. Why not set that intention? </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So I did.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Let me, I said to myself, receive a communication from something Other. Something that’s not me.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">*</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The ceremony was held in a little apartment in Chelsea. It was full urban fantasy: on my way to the secret sanctuary, I walked past outdoor patios where restaurant-goers finished their lunch, entirely unsuspecting that just above them existed a portal where twenty-first century shamans regularly sent journeyers off into the boundless deeps of cosmic consciousness. Was I really doing this?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Inside, the practitioner (who I’ll call Eva) greeted me with a warmth that put me at ease. The apartment had simple furniture and white curtains and varnished softwood flooring. She took me up one floor to the ceremonial space, which was surrounded by more white curtains, and talked me through how it would go. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I was nervous, of course. But it was more than the natural anxiety that precedes any psychedelic experience. The night before, a friend—the man who’d vetted me with a heart-opening ceremony—had called. In describing what I ought to prepare myself for, he’d said, “This is a very powerful medicine. Your ego may snap.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">That word had unnerved me.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Snap?</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Yeats has a story called “The Sorcerers” which always sends chills down my spine. In it, a group of underground sorcerers invite the author to observe the invocation of a spirit. During the ceremony, Yeats senses waves of darkness covering him. It’s all he can do to resist. At last, when the ordeal is over, he asks: “What would have happened if your spirit had overpowered me?” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">“You would go out of this room,” the sorcerer replies, “with his character added to your own.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I was afraid. Not of dying—I’d done my research, I knew this was physiologically safe—but of something scarier. I was afraid my personality, “who I was,” would be irrevocably damaged. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Curiously, I didn’t truly understand the nature of this fear until Eva gave me the introductory dose. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">She called it the “kiss.” She offered it to all first-timers before the full dose, and I accepted gratefully. I watched her hold a light to the glass bowl, invoking those mysterious white vapors. Then, as she had instructed, I forced out all the air in my lungs.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And inhaled. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the last several weeks, I had done all I could to be ready for this moment. I had read Rick Strassman’s DMT research, I had browed online forums, I had met people who’d sat with Bufo and had heard their stories. But all that was a joke. The effect of this first hit was so unexpected that it was impossible to prepare for. Time just stopped, and there was this feeling of: “Oh.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>Oh. That’s what this is.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I was in a space infinitely removed from all that I had known—and it was trying to pull me deeper. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I fought back. I had, it was true, wanted a no-going-back moment, but not like this. I didn’t want to <i>snap</i>! I could feel it as a possibility, and I sensed it would break my ties to everyone I loved. My family, my friends, we’d no longer be on the same wavelength, I’d permanently lose whatever true and living connection I had with them. This feeling was concentrated especially on my father. For his sake alone it felt crucial not to go further lest I end up in an alien realm he couldn’t fathom.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And this was only a “kiss?” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When I came down, I was not at all sure that I wanted the full dose, and I asked for five minutes to decide. I couldn’t believe it. Had I really come here only to stop short of the real deal?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">After a moment, I realized I needed to tell Eva what was going on. I was holding way too much in my head and the fear just keep churning around with nowhere to go. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">After I explained, she smiled warmly.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">“Snap? I don’t know why your friend told you that.” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Encouraged, I asked Eva for a different image, one less violent. She didn’t need to think. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">“You’ll be embraced.”</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This was what I needed. Holding that image, I agreed to the full dose. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As she prepared the pipe, I wrote a word on a piece of paper: <i>Connection</i>. I put it in my pocket. This word felt like an anchor: it would be there when I returned, reminding me of what I cared about most. Meanwhile, I could let go and just experience whatever it was I needed to experience. </span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When I took up the pipe again, Eva told me to hold the vapour longer this time. “Your body will take care of breathing when it needs to.” Easier said than done: as the effect intensified, time and matter became like a tide receding out from me in all directions. Still, I remained intellectually aware of a responsibility to make sure my body got oxygen, and that worry preoccupied me until I simply <i>had</i> to breath. I did.</span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There was a stutter, a moment of exhilarating terror—and then I was outside the fear. I was outside my mind, my body, my history. There was nothing I could hold on to. Nothing. Who was I? I genuinely didn’t know. At the same time, I did. I was this. An immense power had reached in, pulled me outside of the universe and shown me, plain as day: <i>I was this</i>. All along, I’d been this. Not Patrick, not really, not in the way I’d thought. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>This.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I felt eternal. But what do I mean by that? When I think back to the moment it happened, it wasn’t that I felt I’d “always existed;” rather, I was shown what it was like to exist in <i>a dimension without change</i>, a peculiarity quality of which is that even outside this dimension, while I lived my life, I existed here. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Time didn’t stir. There was an intense pressure all around me, and yet I felt intensely and perfectly open. I felt utterly decontextualized. </span></div><div><span style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What <i>was</i> this?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I can give it many names now, but while I was in it, neck-deep, it was simply Openness.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This Openeness was the ground of Being capable of holding anything. It astonished me utterly, and yet it made perfect sense: <i>of course</i> there had to be a place like this. <i>Of course</i>. Otherwise, how could anything else be? How could there be matter or mind or time or selves? All the different religious ends, Hindu <i>bhakti</i>, Buddhist <i>parinirvana</i>, the Christian beatific vision, Taoist nonduality—they were all possible because of this place. I thought of my father’s idea of spirituality, which he calls the search for coherence—surely it ended here, surely this place was the answer. In the world of form there are such a vast multitude of compelling perspectives. But this was <i>how</i> it could all cohere. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">An intense energy was coursing through me. The experience was so deeply strange that my body, which generally knows how to behave in any given context or state, simply didn’t know what to do. It was impossible to just sit there: I breathed heavily and swayed around and felt my hair and face. At times I laughed and grinned. Other times I moaned and cried. But these were merely bodily postures. I didn’t feel humor, I didn’t feel sorrow. I felt something far beyond these narrow emotions, something that was all these things, but in its raw, undifferentiated form. It was like I sat at the center of the power we experience only once it has been translated into feelings. In fact, this was what emotions<i> were</i>: they were a <i>choice</i> this power had made to become this or that. I could laugh or weep or snort or groan or just sway around and breath heavily, and all these things were merely specific incarnations of a greater, irreducible source. And all were <i>good</i>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the end, I came down laughing. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">“I didn’t snap!” </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">*</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Eva offered me the Bufo twice more, at slightly smaller doses. I just couldn’t get enough. It was incredible. Three and half hours later, having smoked it four times, we ended the ceremony. Eva had me read aloud a closing blessing. It concluded:</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>I will look inside and welcome what I see,</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>Opening ever deeper day after day,</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>With gentle effort,</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>With sweet effort,</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>Allowing the spiritual unfolding that wants to happen and is ready to occur.</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And here was the last extraordinary event. As I came to this final line, I paused. Those words, “<i>that wants to happen</i>”—they were like the synchronicity I’d written about in my novel.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>It wants to happen</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Was I really seeing this? Yes. The words were right there. The universe was speaking to me. Oh! Oh! </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This was my synchronicity. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I can’t describe the emotion I felt at this moment. I know that were I to rate this coincidence on an objective scale of likelihood, it wouldn’t rank that high. And yet there I was, coming down from the most extraordinary and sacred experience of my life, and here, as though I hadn’t already been given everything that anyone could want, was another gift. This little phrase. The communication I had asked for. It was too much.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I wept.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">*</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It has now been a year and half since I was, you could say, baptized in Source. In the weeks following, I found myself pondering what had happened almost constantly. I even experienced that Source in my dreams. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Then one day, while sitting on the toilet and reading a post on Reddit about someone’s experience with Bufo (as one does), I had a spontaneous flashback. The words in the post triggered me, I closed my eyes—and I was back.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I was <i>there</i>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Gooseflesh rose up and down my arms, but I barely felt it. There was only awe. I stayed in this state, nearly disembodied, for more than a minute. Then my roommate tested the bathroom door and I opened my eyes.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But here’s the thing. This occurred over a year since my Bufo ceremony, too distant to be considered a reactivation.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So what am I to think?</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I’m left in wonder. How near to us is the Mystery. There is nowhere it can’t meet you. It’s here even now.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-87942551897973484292021-12-20T11:49:00.012-08:002023-12-18T14:13:49.156-08:00Thinking of My Teenage Years<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">I have let some force over the course of years tame my confused longings.</span></span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><div>I am being brought to the form of myself most dear.</div><div>When I go walking, I still don’t know where I’m going,</div><div>but I no longer roam, and the noise of the street is only noise.</div><div>There are days when I act like a student, and days I am the teacher.</div><div>I’m finding out for myself. I’m touching the roots and the high branches.</div><div>Something grows as I grow that is not my growth and not not my growth.</div><div>When it’s ready, I’ll take it. When it’s not, I’ll know that it isn’t done.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-58001499358036548522021-09-19T16:38:00.005-07:002022-03-02T18:58:01.775-08:00Sometimes I Would Sit<p></p><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">sometimes I would sit </span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;"><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">out in the field</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in early autumn</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and for a long while</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">not do anything</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">except imagine her walking </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">towards me </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tall and sure and gentle</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">my eye’s closed</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I’d see her at the field’s edge </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">drawing near, intent</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">crossing the tall grass without a sound</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">approaching</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">standing over me</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">her presence</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">just two, three feet away</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">her shadow on my cheek</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">her eyes on my eyelids</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">she’s found me</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">she’s brought nothing but herself</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and we are silent together</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">really here</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">until even opening my eyes</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">would not send her away</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></div></div></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-799945070717389622021-09-06T19:03:00.012-07:002021-12-20T11:54:46.444-08:00Hurricane Ida, 2021<div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Autumn. The waterfall</span></div><div><span><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in Prospect Park I sometimes</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">can’t find. The pond</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">like a drain stopped </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with leaves and branches.</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Tu Fu’s poems open</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">on my lap, but I read only</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">three or four at a time.</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Why do I ration?</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">There is infinite hope</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and infinite despair.</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Last week a hurricane</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tore through here,</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">drowning dozens in</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">basements and cars.</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">The waters have receded,</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but they will come again</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">worse. I sit for a long </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">while on this stone.</div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I’m already tired, and things </div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;">have just begun.</div><div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Below me, a turtle </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">sends up bubbles. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Sunlight strikes the water. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Shadows deepen, and </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that glow lifts </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that makes me </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">yearn </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">for the kingdom of heaven.</span></div></div><div style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0Queens, NY, USA40.7282239 -73.794851637.263614582681029 -78.18938285 44.192833217318977 -69.40032035tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-57155455611538140532021-08-26T08:39:00.003-07:002021-08-26T10:37:32.599-07:00I Snuck Into the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">snuck into the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">again</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I hope I’ll be forgiven </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I did not ask to be poor</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">or to want so badly to gaze </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">on the wet galaxy of spiderwebs </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">atop the Heart-leaved Groundsel</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">by the brook</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">there’s a mystery here</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I’m not even trying to solve</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the Shining Sumac</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the Gray Goldenrod</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the Toadshade</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and the Pawpaw tree’s stiff fruit</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">nothing here has eyes</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">no face to turn toward me</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and no face to turn away </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the Great Blue Lobelia</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tall as a woman giving orders</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">is perfectly silent</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a mouth closed tight on the key</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">hard to believe </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but the Long-stalked Astor</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">really wants nothing </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I could empty my bank account </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and still </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it wouldn’t be </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">any more or less my friend </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">we’re just here </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">unable to fuck it up</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and ah this Scarlet Oak</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with its kingdom </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of Virginia ryegrass</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tell me the truth now </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the summer is hot</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the city is loud</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and I know you can’t free me from pain</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but tell me, Scarlet Oak</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I can take it</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tell me the reason</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I do not shine with a love </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">so unconditional </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it draws hordes into my orbit</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to bask</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-84056277397812691462021-08-26T08:34:00.008-07:002021-12-10T08:07:45.986-08:00Pact<p><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">How about this. </span><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">How about you live, and I live, and you let me get obsessed with God and I let you get obsessed with this universe and the extraordinary god-sized explanation you’re always on about. And how about you never mock me for my obsession, and I never pooh-pooh yours. How about we just see what happens. Just live and see. Even double-down on it, like some sort of crazy experiment. And, years from now, when we’ve both really entered our lives, let’s not just forget each other. Let’s keep an eye out. Who knows, maybe we’ll catch a tantalizing glimpse from afar. I’m serious. If you see me doing something that makes you stop and go, What now?, in a way that makes you just a little more awake, I want to know. Ask me about it! Promise you’ll ask and not just shrug and make something up in your head. And I promise the same thing: if you do something that stirs my depths, something that makes me go, <i>Ah! Ah!</i>, then—I swear it—I’ll get up from wherever I am, go over to you and say, Tell me. Agreed? This may never happen of course. It’s just as possible the two of us never again enter the slim bright circle of each others’ attention, and we have to account for that. Maybe, even, we end up longing for each other, looking high and low, only to find that our paths have brought us so far apart we are practically at separate ends of the universe and there’s no hope of contact. Wouldn’t that be just too terribly sad? They say all seekers are climbing different sides of the same mountain, but we just don’t know. Well. If one moonless night you or I look up from a hungering solitude and begin to bleat like lost sheep for a way out, a way to undo the whole huge implacable work of time, remember: we wanted to give each other something. A gift of morning hope. We wanted to share honey of the spirit, we wanted to lead to each others’ doorsteps whole cavalcades of beautiful monsters praising the midnight sun. That’s right. We wanted to show everyone how in the heart lives a gratitude the exact shape of the shapeless world, and so we made a pact. A pact that would run deeper than all loneliness, a pact that would bring us back from even the farthest reaches of the fifth dimension, this pact, this one awesome ongoing madness that we share.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-55714911395602672402020-09-07T06:50:00.026-07:002023-04-13T14:59:38.970-07:00Everything Kills Them<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i>An absurdist dialogue.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">*</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">They are very fragile. Everything kills them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Can you give an example?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> No need for examples. Everything kills them, everything.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />So, pesticides, of course.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> Of course.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />What about temperature? At thirty two degrees, will they…?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> Yup.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> What about dust? Soil that’s a bit dry?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Let me save you some time. <i>Dirt </i>kills them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Ah—</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />I’m not done. Sunlight kills them. Air kills them. <i>Space itself</i> kills them. Time! Living!
Everything kills them!</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />I don’t understand. If that’s true, how are they <i>around?</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i>Well. There <i>is</i> one
thing that doesn’t kill them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />There we are, then. And?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />What doesn’t kill them is… talking about them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Talking about them.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />That’s right. It’s the only thing that encourages their
growth.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />So, right now, you mean…?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> Yes.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> That’s absurd.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> It does seem that way. And yet, they thrive on it. They grow
and grow. And grow.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> I’m sorry, but you’ve really lost me now.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />They can get quite beautiful when they mature enough. Strange,
but beautiful. And also…</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Dare I ask?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Dangerous. Also dangerous.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> Uh-huh. When do they reach that stage?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Soon.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> As in, if we keep talking about them…</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />We put ourselves at risk. Yes.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> And what makes them dangerous, exactly?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Well, when they mature they suddenly start <i>wanting</i>. Only, what they want is…</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /> Yes?</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Let’s just say, it’s not something they can have. So.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Don’t tell me you’re going to leave it there.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />I’m afraid I must. If I said more, who knows what would happen
to us.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Now you’re just being—</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br />Shh! Are you completely mad? We must stop talking about them
now.</span></div>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-81876806728986608082020-07-30T14:31:00.009-07:002023-12-18T14:02:15.000-08:00Climbing the Holy Mountains<span face="" style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>i.</i></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">these are the mountains </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">so holy</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">their slopes are felt</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">as the difficulty of our days</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>ii.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">near base camp</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">never straying far </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Wang Wei enjoys the sun’s color</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">cooling </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">on the larches</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it is peaceful</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">from far off you can hear</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Rilke</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">restling his great lifelong angel</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but I am looking for Traherne</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Traherne?</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">likely off in some meadow</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">rolling around</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I climb</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>iii.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">what strange hills </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">you can watch Tranströmer</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">despite everyone telling him not to</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">trade everything </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">for a stone</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and who is this anonymous</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">female poet</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">keeping a bird</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in her pocket</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">made of ruby</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">o my god</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I’m not sure how far it’s safe to go</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>iv.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">half-way up</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Bukowski’s eating roses</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Hölderlin is piss-drunk</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and Keats and Shelley are whistling</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">over top each other </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">while Bashō</span></span><br /><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">calmly watches from his hut,</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">playing his game of don’t-blink-first</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with the world</span></span><div><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">o Traherne! I think</span></span></div><div><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">where are you?</span></span></div><div><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">suddenly Jack Gilbert </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">steps out of the shadows </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">challenges Bashō to a fight and</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">immediately begins</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to weep</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>v.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">turns out</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it was Rumi </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">hiding as a bird in her pocket </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">whispering</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>ah!</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>don’t you know?</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>don’t you know it yet?</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>vi.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">higher </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Emily Dickinson,</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">muttering secrets into the ears</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of tulips</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">higher </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Ammons, struggling to make himself</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a colon</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">higher still</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a shriek—Sappho</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">have you climbed up and thrown yourself </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">off a cliff</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">just to punctuate </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a sentence?</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>vii.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">this is no joke</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">something is happening</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and everyone who even begins</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to think </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">is already onto it</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span><div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Li Po dreams of it but he’s soon </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">chased away</span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">by the same Blasting Rod </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that drove Adam and Eve </span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">from the garden</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Anne Carson </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tries to touch it</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">by punching a hole in space-time</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and reaching an arm through</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but accidentally</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">hits the switch and—</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">darkness</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>viii.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">uh-oh</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">now the only sound is George Herbert’s</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">nostrily </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">breathing</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">someone elbows me</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Blake? Yeats? Hopkins?</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">no</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Traherne!</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><div>there you are </div><div>you don’t know me but </div><div>I know </div><div>your deepest secret</div><div><br /></div><div>looks like </div><div>it may be our only food for the night</div>if anyone knows how to cook?</span></span></div><div><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">for a moment I think it’s a monster</span></div><div>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but it’s Hafiz!</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Hafiz is not afraid!</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Hafiz holds a match and</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">sets </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">him</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">self </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">on </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">fire</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>ix.</i></span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">now all the poets are gathered round </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">stomachs sated in the dark</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and in that lull that could fit any story</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and in that group that could ponder any question</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I ask</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">so</span></span><div><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">has anyone ever got to the top?</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a silence </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">so profound</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">you could hear a petal </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">falling</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">all the way </span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to the basement of your soul</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><i>x.</i></span></span><br /><span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">then laughter</span></span><br />
<span face=""><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<br /></div></div></div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-18989554472634351312020-07-29T15:17:00.003-07:002020-09-21T10:10:32.231-07:00Trying Again<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 18.6667px;">yes there is </span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a solid core of unthink-</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">ability at the heart of existence</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> I like to place my hand on it</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> like a sleeping dog</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> and call it</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> matter</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">since that one day I noticed the quickened light </span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">on the back of the dragonfly</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and, after trying to put my whole being </span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">upon it like some magic carpet,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">slipped off</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> o mind </span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it takes us so far away</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">from body</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I can almost feel it again,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">almost hear all Heaven </span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">screaming from her eyes,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">almost answer, even,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the perennial question</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> does the flavor</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> of the taco</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> improve,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> exposed to rays of thought?</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I beamed Wittgenstein back upon the sunset</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and the sunset won</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">took my soul</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with long fingers,</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"> squeezed </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-7018219475050331262020-05-11T11:10:00.002-07:002020-05-11T19:05:15.448-07:00The Stroll<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">It was pleasant at first. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">The new leaves</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">were the size of eyelids</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and there was sun.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Then, all of a sudden, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">he felt so utterly alone.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-47726070840011007542020-04-30T14:35:00.006-07:002021-07-02T10:11:40.321-07:00Gnosis<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Out of time you called me into these days of sitting on desk chairs in poorly lit rooms, rubbing my thumb on hot tea mugs to self-soothe. You sung me up from dust and I snack on late night oatmeal. Why am I anxious? Have mercy, I am trying to understand how it happened. Take me back, before the moment my memory begins, to that holy city in which we all first played. There you reared my desires like lion cubs in your Inner Chambers, you taught the wild blood its route in the maze of my veins, but something always goes awry, doesn’t it? As you raised the walls around my mind, a shadow slipped in with me. Surely it did. Ah, then you sent me forth, and now I am a student, twenty nine years old, living in Brooklyn, New York. How can it be? I feel ashamed. I gaze at bodegas on street corners, bikes chained to black iron fences, with eyes that really look out from the Absolute. Is it true that the hand that once held Saturn long ago caressed my face? Of course I know that love is the only way to apprehend love; I know that nothing exists but ecstasy and delight. But it makes no difference. I eat steamed broccoli and keep my whole family listed neatly in the contacts on my phone. Is this how you meant it? You must give me more than I have so that I can have what I have. You must point your long gentle finger through these darkening evenings. A Manhattan skyline seen from a rooftop, a worthless novel found on a bench: I want to wake, but I want to wake exactly into this. Maybe it will take years. Maybe even beyond the span of my life. But surely it is impossible to come too late to the ultimate moment. Surely that moment is even now pressing towards me through this tunnel of thought I’ve set like a drill into the stony heart of the everyday. Am I already feeling it? It prickles, like in the old days when you would feather my nose with angel wings to make me sneeze into life. As I walk through the park, as I nestle into the bole of an oak, it prickles. But not ever quite enough.</span></span><div><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
</div>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-83463934615859891612020-03-29T13:13:00.003-07:002021-12-10T08:17:05.210-08:00Puddle<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">It’s spring, and there may not be much time left. What matters? Let’s begin the process of elimination, and let’s begin at the top. Am I interested in what happens to me? No. Things have happened to me before, I know what happening is. The velocity of this rain is a fraction more or less than any I’ve previously experienced, so what. Am I interested, then, in what happens to others? There is a mantis I can’t see, beneath layers of decayed leaves. Set aside questions of what the mantis wants, how it wants, or whether its wanting runs along the same gutters we know, and just go for the mantis itself. Is that enough? Ha! Now set this aside, too; who cares what’s been asked of this or that. We know what asking is, we know what it leads to and what it’s all about. Give me a puddle. Maybe it’s February, maybe it’s May, whatever, I’m not interested. The puddle’s got an edge: at some point a puddle must end and the world must begin. Now we’re getting closer to the important shit. Look to the left. There’ll be some sort of conifer, water-laden, or a single duck. In any case, don’t worry, there is enough of whatever you see for everyone, images are infinite that way. I’m not interested in your proofs against this, didn’t I basically just say I’m not even interested in what I’m saying? Step in the puddle. There is no other means of doing what we’re doing now. Cup the cool water in your palm. It’s not matter that makes matter matter, and it’s not the sign of the cross. So what is it? We’re finally coming to it now. The duck quacks, and then again, maybe it doesn’t. Go deeper. If you can, fit your whole body in the puddle. If you can’t, all is lost. At its very center is the thing that will make the puddle, and everything, new. That’s it. I’m interested in that. Is it baptism? Stop, please, your attempts at understanding are getting in the way. It’s this. Pay attention! This. Go all the way in the puddle now.</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-18877524881126226832020-03-28T10:13:00.000-07:002020-03-28T10:23:25.346-07:00Early Spring in Montreal as the Snow Melts in Dusty Clumps<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I only wanted to give it to you</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the way the world</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">gave it </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">to me</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">wanted to tell you what I saw</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with the words </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">my eyes used</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">not these</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I wanted a person I could</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">get near without </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">hurting</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the nearer I got</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">wanted everyone to know it</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and for it to still be </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">my </span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">secret thought</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I only wanted nothing </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to be less than </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">what it was!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and for this to be </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">—why couldn’t it be?—</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">not wanting too much</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-87772109184152187782020-03-19T07:28:00.003-07:002020-03-19T07:28:26.740-07:00This Long Tunnel<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">I am looking down a tunnel</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">infinitely long</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">my vision </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">is infinitely clear</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I see movement</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">is that you</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">dear one?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">is that you</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">waving </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">at </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">me?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-71540286872001201782020-03-13T07:06:00.000-07:002020-03-13T18:04:59.439-07:00My Wretched Hunger to be Known<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the child outside the game</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">enters</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">by only one means</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">pretends she is something,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">crosses over</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">at cost to her being</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and—this is no metaphor—</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">chooses</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">one of seven billion teams</span></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-51163878864645840522020-03-06T10:17:00.002-08:002020-03-17T08:01:33.004-07:00the heart is the eye<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the heart is the only eye</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that can see this </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">thousand eon</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">bonfire</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">whose sparks are our galaxies</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">once, long ago, I saw its light </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in a tea lamp </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">there was no one in the church</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">its small flame made a long hall of the darkness</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">guiding no one</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it searched</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">became </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">a tongue </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that licked</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">the</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">tinder</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-19511582124140874102020-02-29T19:52:00.002-08:002020-02-29T19:52:40.085-08:00Mind<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">This is the zone in which </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">understanding happens.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Outside in the other zone,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">which has been called</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">many names, another thing </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">happens, just as important,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that is not understanding.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-65944635223421209022020-01-02T10:27:00.000-08:002020-03-19T07:10:21.350-07:00Groaning<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I am the dread enemy </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of easy consolation</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I groan the word beyond </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I hear the unsure vows </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">whispered </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">against the cliffs of sheer concern</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">some would sell their hearts </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to meet the world</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">like a hug </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to live as though the everyday</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">were not really just </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">danger </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">but without the terror</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I am telling you</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I disintegrate</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">day by day there is less</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and before my body drops its last finger</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I shall not have half</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of what I crave</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">how can I live anymore</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">hoping that out there some Power </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">has my all dreams in a bag</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">my medicine also</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and could give it all to me if he only </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">wanted to?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">this is no time </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to yell at the evil crowd</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to sit hours at the frosted window in distress</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it is happening </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with or without consent</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I’ve touched the loose doorknob</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and sipped the tepid coffee</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">it is all so real</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">because it is never exactly </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">how I want</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">come with me</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">someone come with me</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">into the wild sure premise of night</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-76138189309511382102019-12-30T12:10:00.000-08:002023-12-18T18:01:14.933-08:00The Difference<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">It was not a dream like any of the others. We talked long, the woman and I, walking through a dark endless alley. She said that there is no meaning outside this place, there is only void and chaos. This is where the meaning is. And she said that we must all find a door which does not open at some point in our lives. We must forgive the limits of thought, yet never cease to hate them. She said many things, and after she had said these things I remembered, finally, to ask her who she was. </span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">“I am the sun.”</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">“The sun in the sky?” I said.</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">“The sun in the sky, but I am walking with you now.”</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I saw how she shone then, but differently than light. I said, “Will you tell me something? I think I have been afraid for a long time. How do we know that everything is not just an appearance, an illusion? A dream? How do I know I am really talking to you?”</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">She was quiet for a long while.</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">“Tell me,” she said at last, “if the world were an illusion, how would it look? If it were real, how would it look? Where is the difference? There is no other way things could be.”</span></span><br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">But just as I began to understand this, I woke.</span></span><br />
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span></div>
Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-56806366220218392732019-12-20T13:03:00.001-08:002021-04-12T06:57:30.645-07:00Confession to the Tormentor<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">T</span></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">he tips of my thumbs turn cold <div>outside the glove</div><div>these truncated days of December.</div><div>I look around and can’t tell </div><div>what matters, or what </div><div>in one year I’ll remember.</div><div>In the park, people</div><div>drag shadows like a history,</div><div>and feed on things </div><div>grown a hundred miles from center.</div><div>New York’s full of them, like</div><div>arms stretching out </div><div>from a splendor </div><div>but not ending anywhere.</div><div>Just stretching and stretching, </div><div>a vast loneliness monster.</div><div>Torture me for the meaning </div><div>of my life, tormentor,</div><div>even for twenty-nine years;</div><div>I can still give no answer.</div><div>Maybe there’s never been.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then last night, my brother said </div><div>something I once believed, </div>and now I believe again.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6383999372347350145.post-58234247627601216272019-12-01T07:17:00.000-08:002020-03-19T07:10:56.314-07:00Running with the Demon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYadpNF_3zyo_yWF8XET_TnwRgZ1626eILyVw5KZI_PZ7lUsj6hUAFyCQzod85yY2YJaYRlpC9DxzDlEU3maVEsL1K_eec_4xTcvIpMOZIQVRqc3DtOtcbgC0t2wT8a_i0Eq-XnpnLF8V/s1600/e2c470067f5414d379bc0776960f8e38.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYadpNF_3zyo_yWF8XET_TnwRgZ1626eILyVw5KZI_PZ7lUsj6hUAFyCQzod85yY2YJaYRlpC9DxzDlEU3maVEsL1K_eec_4xTcvIpMOZIQVRqc3DtOtcbgC0t2wT8a_i0Eq-XnpnLF8V/s640/e2c470067f5414d379bc0776960f8e38.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">i.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">At Prospect Park in mid-November, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">five Gold Rush apples in my bag,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I remember a summer years ago </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in the Trossachs, where I sat on a bank</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">with bluebells in the clear light, remembering </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">another summer yet, in Saskatchewan, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and a book called <i>Running with the Demon</i>, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">about a girl who sees what no one else sees </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and evil on the increase, and how </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">to read it as a boy was so like the ache </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of recalling it now, with the bluebells all around, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">that it seems all feeling must be nourished </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">by the sense of once being more purely felt,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">the past shining with pasts deeper in,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">for what thing ever ended in itself?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">And then I look up and it is Brooklyn. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">ii.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Longing is our desire to posses </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">not just what we had but the circumstance</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">in which we had it, Spinoza writes,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and might have added—as if we ever </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">had it. New York’s sun is Scotland’s, and in </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">Scotland a prairie sun burns through, </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and all my melancholy is only </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">futile wanting’s bruise. Give me back</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">my own sadness, the demon at the edge </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">of town, and let me keep everything that is</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">happening now. Let me bring these apples </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">into old age, carry them past death</span></span><span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18.6667px;">—</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">I'll eat them in heaven. Let me pull </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">from my bag this being here, feeling</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">what’s been felt for a thousand years </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;">and never gotten to the bottom of.</span></span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><br /></span></span>Patrick Doerksenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06377480824188284920noreply@blogger.com0