I find it somewhat non-coincidental that in the throes of therapy the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz came bubbling up through my therapist's lips. Granted, this is a famous book from what I understand and it seems to have a lasting effect on the people who read it. I remember my friend Tim was singing its praises one morning as he drank his morning coffee. The good news to me is I think I've begun to ask questions for better understanding. I personally like the question "What do you mean by that?" or "What did you mean by that?" This is not because the other person is being unclear by any stretch of the imagination, but rather that I simply don't always know what other people are trying to relay to me: be it humor, confusion, concern, or just flat information.

At any rate, I googled what I could remember of the doctor's words because it was bothering me... anything I could do to sort of solidfy things in my mind, I was ready to do. You need some codes to live by in order to find a foothold in the greater world of your own reality... I wonder how many people secretively or outwardly have a particular code or philosophy to live by, and then conversely, their personal feelings of success. Just to get that cross-section of people who live by spiritual principles. At any rate, I'm glad I found it because now my interest is piqued for that book which I picked up at Brooke's but never really got far within... I'll put these up as a reminder to myself and rue the fact that I'm such a self-help guru, but some things are necessary , if not would have been wiser to have engaged in all along. But now they're here should I want to return to them.

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you meant. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your work in the direction of truth and love.

DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won;t be the victim of needless suffering.

DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Your best is going to change from moment to moment, it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.

Can I instead say something back to you about the old man
who plays xylophone at the pub at lunch on Wednesdays
How I knew him better when he played downtown
his quiet tones ringing through the joint, and when
he was done, he would quietly pick up the keys and the stand
and the long elegant mallets and place them into his hatchback,
our lives having several resurrections in various contexts,
how he was always a jazz gentleman, a zen kind of the under street,
Can I tell you instead about the time I spent on a summer evening,
sitting on a stool at the old Dazy Maze, lured in by the lights,
and an old bearded bluesman picking away at his electric guitar,
and making the flowers dance in their pots on the sill, and
I couldn't believe but that I had stumbled there, alone,
wanting the night to open up its throat and accept me,
but that some wind some pull yanked me in off the pavement,
and I sunk back away from the fire within me, it became cold, embers.
Can I tell you a story of being in the world, and how my fear
cut me off from so many chance encounters with a small bit of fate,
the kind which so many fail to see or wonder about, but on some
night when the wind fell quiet I could step into my skin,
and come out of the cold, walk up to any musician, and realize
that I just want to know how they do what they do, so I can
return the favor in some way, for the telling of the tale,
for the stretching of the fable, for the clearing of the mystery,
and maybe teach another lost soul how to jump the fence,
and reassume the leap, to quiet the fires, on an otherwise fallen day.

Start with Now.

How many times have you read this in the annals of self-help literature. Frankly, I do get somewhat burned out on recovery/self-help lit sometimes. The David Burnses, the Julia Camerons, the Dalai Lamas. I prefer the harsh, impersonal words of Richard Hugo, Chuck Chamberlain, Paul Auster, the guys who just say this is how it is: It's here if you want it, whatever "it" you happen to be after. But there was a book Poemcrazy that I just got to read a few pages from... start today start with now is what they say. And so you have to go there. Try to write down the way it may be right now. I made a mistake yesterday in that I wrote down some thoughts I had had in my mind, thoughts which disturbed me and which were causing me great pain because I could not account for their origin. I've been known to fabricate a veritiable funk before, so it didn't really surprise but I've known for some time that when you go into the whirlwind, I've just have to ride it out.

Start with Now.

Gratitude, this morning because there is grace. You make mistakes and you know that you are tempting fate, tempting the beast. One thing people may not understand about me is that I believe in going after the disease. Confronting the thing so I know it better, so I know how it works on me. It's like a virus though, changing forms (often) from time to time... Brooke always challenges my ideas about what it is the disease and what is just normal, omnipresent bouts of self-doubt, of insecurity and knowing that being a little off-center is a daily reality for me. Know thyself, the saying goes. Was it Augustine? Or Plato? Aristotle? One of those eastern Europeans. Sometimes I don't think it's worth the time, not when watching Paranormal State or Homicide on A & E offers me a different insight into a reality other my own. I was thinking yesterday that I may have a few more years before it would entirely be true but I have lived close to half my life... I spent a great deal of time getting this far, and a lot of self-examination had to ensue to survive, to not entirely give up & disappear out of the blue and into the black.

Draft of a poem

"he's seen the same things I've seen
and it's certainly made an impression on me."

what edges there are on the human heart,
this victim, this organ, this patriot of human history,
you absorb so many things into a human heart,
your parent's clothing, your friend's sense of style,
your hatred of what money makes you think and say,
you begin to think you are a vessel of divine inspiration
but you simultaneously hate that divine source,
because you just want 1987 back, right before you moved
from that town in Ohio, you had just found out who your friends
were, you learned the art of non-chalance, how to hold on to money,
because you could use it toward a game of miniature golf,
you could save it for an evening having pizza with your friends,
then suddenly, it was up to someone else, something bigger than you,
not you deciding again, time to pick up and go somewhere else,
or maybe you have rediscovered longing for 1991 again,
your grandfather still alive, but slipping away from you.
The human heart staggers in its cage sometimes, but you feel like
you want to get a harness on it, so it doesn't drag you so far
and wide on its wandering, on its sojourn, you want to be able to
squeeze your heart blindly, an drain the blood from it, so you
can fill it when you desire, when you're looking for another chance

She's been land-mined. Down the sinkhole through the airy tunnel.
And punched up with all kinds of demons. She can't speak with the weight
on her chest and who blames her for her quietness. She blinks down at me.
Nothing more needs to be said. Only that she's now a study in humility.
In keeping her mind open and her lips shut. She will have no retainder.
He's asking her not to fight. Not so that she is weak, but that she
can't afford it any longer. She's young, but it doesn't matter, when you've
got to stop fighting those who favor you rather than your opposition.

Recent memories--

Sigler. His house on Izard Street, the creaky floors, the coziness of it, he and I would get comfortable on the leather chairs and watch classic films- Eight Men Out, True Confessions, older & grainy on VHS from having been watched too many times on an aging VCR.

The Incarnation fair. 5th & 6th grade. You looked forward to the fair every year either in July or August, it was always pretty hot outside and dusty, but they had great food, cheeseburgers, fries, sno-cones, ice cream, a childhood dream. And Mahoney would have been there, we would have drank the sno-cones once we squeezed the juice out of them. We would have wandered far & wide in & out of booths which promised prizes, gifts, and fun experiences of games.

Spring in Omaha. 7th -9th grade, the dismal social years. My mother wanting me to get out of the house. My experimenting with basketball games with Doug, Laugh, and Jason from up the street. Those guys just had that air about them like a lot of other guys it seems at that age. Young guys are so awkward, so eager to prove themselves to every one else. They cut each other down, man, it always seemed like every man for themselves at that age. Even so, they probably just wanted to play ball with someone different, see what I was made of.

Brooke walked on the side of the road with me and it reminded me of playing basketball in the spring, the wind would pick up and sometimes it was a hinderance. You'd loft the ball up and the wind would catch it... wasn't it hard enough playing without the elements. But the gravel would collect on the side of the road, and I'd hear the crunch of the ball on the gravel, my tennis shoes crunching over the ground. Sometimes you'd stumble on it and kick the little pebbles all over.

"The idea of faith is a very large chunk to swallow when fear, doubt and anger abound in and around me. Sometimes just the idea of doing something different, something I am not accustomed to doing, can eventually become an act of faith if I do it regularly, and do it without debating whether it’s the right thing to do."

I couldn't help but feel my all-knowing, ever-present ego deflate a little but when I read this. That you have to just give up what you think you know, how you think things will or might end up for whatever will come down the chute. Or gristle and burn into view. I admit I am a person who begins to believe that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It's a cliche to be sure. I've been thinking about how many people I knew who were granted the option of starting their lives over or just trying it again. They make the turnaround and then they have the new subset of events and challenges that are presented to them with that change.

I'm afraid of slipping through the cracks. That panicky feeling you get when you get off the phone with someone who's told you they'll call you back later. But you know how busy things get. How certain items on a daily list get longer and wider, and sometimes things just get bumped to the bottom of the list, reserved for tomorrow. And you want to shake your fist at that. You want to be sent to the front of the line. You want to be given special consideration, and treated like a distinguished guest. You want a special invite tot he party. Think about it: the stars don't need to ask to be in the party, they get so many phone calls, they have to hire publicists. An agent to comb their hair for them, practice their speeches with. Part of you wants that- maybe partly because someone more or less hinted at that possibility- when you finish up with your student teaching, the schools will be calling you, your phone will ring off the hook.

But see all of this is just rabid justification to feel as jaded as you have in the past... it's the white lie that makes you feel comforted on the harder nights when you feel like the fallen athlete with his bum knee or the writer who just froze up one day and never managed to put a sentence together again, the doctor who let someone die on their watch. It's never really your fault, but somehow you can't help but think that there might have been something that you could have done about it. That you didn't play your cards well, and you're fault is that you didn't know you were on the clock. It's forgetting that this isn't a dress rehearsal. Not that you get only one chance at the deal when you're so far up, but no doubt, that is what you're afraid of. And that should you be defeated, you're fear is that your down for the count. JUst think of guys like Gary Hart, Richrd Gephardt, Bob Dole. So close to the dance, always in the mix somewhere but it just really isn't in the cards no matter which way they cut it.

But in perspective. How many teaching jobs are there in the country, in the world. It's a profession. They're a dime a dozen- around every corner, lurking in how many bushes whereas the president is a one time deal, two if you're among an elite bunch. And I understand that it's no easy job. Even so, I'm hungry for some real work, roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty work. There's making money and establishing your ego and some folks are definitely cut out for that type of work. I don't think I ever will be, or so I've often told myself. I've been close enough to see the rat race and find that's there not many people who are truly happy with what they do throughout the day. Never the last man out of Mogadishu because they never leave their desk until the bell rings. Who am I to judge it? Except I don't think it's worth it in the end. And maybe you'd get one or two of them to tell the truth. Truth was always a grand prize when I was growing up. It seemed valiant to go after it. Honorable to move toward a point of entry with that on your tongue.
And it still does, if it's not entirely warped beyond its recognition. I'm hungry for more than just truth, folks. Not just truth but that sad, delapitated mess we like to point toward called the American Dream. Or the Dream of the Red Chamber. As Uncle Tupelo once said, "we're all looking for a life worth living." And that's a day-to-day testimony. I give myself any number of reasons why I think teaching is among the greatest, noble professions in this world, and I can't articulate how it has felt to be close to that dance, ready to engage and attempt to become a shaper, an adviser, an advocate, a marketer of whatever ideas we deem necessary to prepare children for this world. It's not like I'm breaking into heaven, even if I've at times felt like it might be the last door into that particular place... how dramatic. I can hear the squeaky door swinging to and fro...what a ruckus.

We walked out to the middle of the pond
It was 54 degrees, and the mecury rising,
but he had been there like a Christmas ornament
in March, an errant icon, keeping Americana
current. It was the old country left in him,
he said, how his ancestors had done it,
from Quinnipiac, then Stockholm before that.

He had spinners and lures, and the gaping wonder
of a hole, the waters dark as the eye of a fish,
I kept eying the shore, wondering if it would
disappear within minutes, hours, the wind felt
Atlantic on my skin, low eastern seaboard,
except you can't smell brine this far north,
not even in the first week of March.

I told him he had to be losing his mind,
he said years ago, he couldn't pinpoint the date,
and someday, you'll find yourself in the middle
of a lake, running from bears, tracking lightning bolts,
it's in your nature, and knock-kneed though you may be,
you've proven something to the universe, when
you're out hear with me, in March, the temperature
rising, with nothing but variable inches of ice
between you and your perishing. How else do
you expect to teach other men to fish? And
though I swore I heard the ice crack several
times before I reached land, I had to smile
at the old man, crazy and foolish as he was.