writings and connections

i was never a great student.

i wasn’t honor roll, or recognized, or even a nerd. i was just there. usually b’s and c’s with an occasional ‘a’ thrown in for good measure. it was never about me not being able to grasp or do the material; it was more so that i just didn’t care. there was nothing that they could put in a book and make me read that i couldn’t learn quicker than the rate at which they were teaching it.
i just wasn’t a school person. period.

so i joined groups; lots of them. anything and everything, as long as it was creative and didn’t involve any kind of homogenized, regurgitated, force-fed verbal diarrhea, slapdash cookery coming from the spout of a teacher who didn’t want to be there any more than i did. band, orchestra, prose, writing, poetry - anything that i could be creative in and express myself; i was there. anything to get away from the daily round up and slaughter.

i loved english. HATED reading, unless it was of complete interest to me. i could care less for anything british, i'll say that. all crap. once you've read the language and know it, it all becomes pretentious.

what did catch my interest?

lois duncan. she had a series of books. all dealing in the paranormal. not ghosts and goblins, but of people gifted with abilities. people with prescient and telekinetic abilities- all kinds, and always centered around a female character as the lead, who was either a strong dynamic individual or became one. i remember in the 7th grade i finished two dozen or so of them in a month; the teachers were amazed, the parents thought i was on drugs, and i, i sat in my room devouring them and just idling at the thought of being special.

more so, i was surprised, i could sit still for more than 30 minutes. another one i read repeatedly was a book of tales, lore, and legends in and around mexico and the area where i grew up in south texas. like "la llorona," the woman in white who walked along cliffs crying out for the baby she gave up thinking her husband was cheating on her. of the dark man who prayed on innocent women, coaxing them to dance on the dirt floors of the old haciendas and ballrooms of south texas, and how they would spin and spin even when the music stopped, till in all the dust, they disappeared and the woman was never seen again.

over and over and over...

and i was good at writing. i loved it. i soaked up words everywhere. i remember the thrill of learning modicum, phoneme and sesquipedalian. and when the spelling list would come out every week, i'd always go to the last in the list, just so i was the first to learn the long complicated words. i loved it.

i read books i didn't understand at all. just to come across words to learn. i was never a dictionary guy, but i understood just by reading it what the words meant and my vocabulary grew fast.
i fell madly in love with words and language. the more lyrical, the more poignant, the more driven in character and stamina the words were, the more i loved them.

i won contests for my writing. i remember winning my mom a gift pack from dillards when i was in 3rd grade for mother's day from a letter we wrote in school. she still has and wears the "love" earrings she won, and i'm pretty sure she has the letter that won along with everything in that gift pack, wrapping, boxes and all.

i won poetry contests in middle school, and free form writing uil events, the prose and improv events as well.

and even with all the accolades i was a very quiet, keep to myself, not a lot of friends loner guy who just never got the people around him. how they could live with being "just adequate," but to fit in, and how desperate i was to just not be looked at, i did anything i could to be what they would consider normal. i didn't answer every question the teacher asked. i slacked off on purpose to not be a nerd. i never looked at boys and did everything i could to not pay them more attention than the girls.

and of course, i only had girlfriends.

i was painfully aware of what i wanted to be and act like, but i did just the opposite. where i grew up, it was latino guys, the kind that work the fields and were either a cholo or gangster. all of em where of some derivative, and in a place like the valley, where it's 99% mexican and a 10 minute walk to mexico, the air of heightened machismo and the energy of do proper and act proper or else stifled; i just didn't want to endure more than i put myself through. hypercritical and creative, i tore myself knew ones all the time. i could not help but live by how others perceived me. i couldn't. not when walking down the hallways someone ALWAYS got shoved for being different, or picked on for some reason or another.

so i kept quite.

but not when it came to writing. that was my pride and joy, no one could take it away from me. i didn't care what they thought about that.

when put to writing for a school assignment, i looked up everything i could, learned whatever words i had to to make it sound how i knew in my head i would sound if i were the person i wanted to be.

how sad is that? but i was 12, what did i know?

i knew that it was mine. no matter what. but when it came to doing it on my own, to be creative in my own right, with no reason other than to create, nothing ever came.

i could sit and try to create something, but the harder i tried the more infelicitous and stifled it came out. everything awkward and gawky as i must of looked to others. and no matter how hard i tried, it just wouldn't come out ...right.

i graduated 127 out of 644. i would of been 56 if i hadn't failed a class (pre-calculus, the teacher and i hated each other). but i always got A's in english. and with all the activities and achievements i got into UT.

when i moved to austin was the first time i ever wrote something. something that was of me, but not from me.

one night, about a year of living on my own here in austin, having come out a bit more than my stilted coming out in the Valley (back home). i was being at least a considerable bit more myself.

fuck that, i later became the head of the oldest gay organization at UT. AND lectured at sex ed classes at different colleges, a panel member at various events, and even on the front page of the Daily Texan, the nations largest and highest circulated college daily newspaper, which i still have copies of. and i was proud of it too.

but back to being 19. i had just found out this puerto rican guy i'd been dating was actually involved with someone else. he was 25 at the time. and i was crushed (they broke up last year).

i sat outside one night, around 1 am. i just sat there. i had an empty spiral notebook and was on a bench on this elevated porch on the top of a hill. moon was full, the pool was below me and i just sat there and stared. i just sat there for about 2 hours. just sat there staring off and thinking. it was quiet, so unusually quiet. the normally busy streets across the complex were still, all you could hear was the bowing of the land to the wind that filled the night; light as it was, everything kept still; so very still. and i sat there being still with it.

i would quiet my mind for a bit, but then little spurts of thoughts and absolving of what was. really looking at it and examining it and letting it all go, and when i was done i would just sit, till something else came up in my mind that i felt i needed to do "something" with.

till i was finally done. how did i know? do you ever have that really deep nap where after you wake up, it seems like you’ve just had a weeks worth of sleep, your mind is completely clear, your vision feels sharper, your ears perk up just a bit more than usual; that feeling?

i opened up my notebook and started writing. about 14 pieces in all. the early works i’ve come to call them. and as i sat there, done writing, and strangely refreshed. i went inside and fell quick to sleep.

i had never slept better.

and that morning, drinking my coffee i reread what i wrote. and didn't recognize a word. i read them thinking "i wrote this? really?" and i read them and thought, "is that me?" i didn't remember a single word of what had been put down on that page.

i knew i wrote them, but i didn't really "think" them. it was my notebook, in the ink of that one pen that took me an hour to pick out (i'm incredibly picky when it comes to pens), my cursive, my odd e, and my odd melded shorthand. i sat there looking at them, and knew they had sort of just "come out." and all these distinct Beings, conjured of something i was feeling at the time, manifested on the page, and instinctively, i knew they were of me.

and that's how it goes for me. i can't really sit down and task myself to write something. it kinda just happens on its own.

i'll put my hands down into an old pair of jeans, or open up a book bag i haven't used in a while, or find a pocket on something long dumped in a silent corner, and often times i'll pull out random pieces of paper. each time a thought or a line. something that in my head had manifested in a quiet monologue watching cars pass as i sit idly in traffic.

sometimes trite little things, something that at the time surmounted enough interest in my mind that i thought it befitted a permanent life.

i still do in fact. pen. paper. pencil. sometimes none of the above. i have done more with the outside of styrofoam cups than most.

not so much for a period of time, and these days, it happens infrequently.

as of late though, i've had a lot more to think about. there have been slivers of substantial observations, but the need to write them down, is less.

perhaps something is brewing.

on a visit to atlanta, a friend and mentor tasked me to reading "the art of the sword." i'd spent a great deal of time talking to him about what i had come to understand about the world; my truths. what i believed in spiritually, and what that meant for my life. how i had come to understand what had happened, in order to be who i was, and the trouble of that path.

there was a passage that talked about dis-ease. i found it interesting that this translation from a japanese text, centuries old, took to the distinction in writing the term as, dis-ease. i'd learned that when there is something not said or felt or owned or understood in ones psyche, chi, aural, or emotional plains, it manifests itself in the body as dis-ease. it is the state of the body not being at ease with itself; a blockage that allows for the manifestation of dis-ease.

as i read, it took time to understand the book's thought on dis-ease. i knew it resonated, that there was something there in the text that i understood to be true. but i had a difficult time ascertaining from the translation the observations about Art and Life the Sword Masters were trying to ensure got passed down to the artisans of the sword to come.

the difficulty of the passage is to blame for my inability to conjure it at the moment for a true explanation. but in it, the Master talked about being humble in the awareness of the gifts one possesses.

the Master, mindful of his skill, never fought for the sake of the fight; a resolution was not at the tip of the sword. he spoke that in the mind is a space, where one can come to understand themselves, in allowing the quiet to manifest. the Master was not a man of violence, most were Zen in their approach of the sword. they would requite stories of monks and Buddhist teachers.
a story tells of a master alone in a apple orchard, blossoms around, and him at the ground in quite repose, atop his bent legs, a lone apprentice standing behind him, attending his Master.

there in the hush, they had come to reflect. the Masters talked of dis-ease being the forcing of the sword; to be clumsy and unaware of the sword as a being, an extension of oneself, as if to treat it simply as an instrument, of final means, to final ends. the Masters believed, one was to be humble at the presence of the sword, to allow it to guide and pull and teach what it intends upon the student. in those teachings come balance, and awareness. and in the end, humility and peace. to completely be at peace, to "Seek the released mind [mencius]," was to achieve Greatness.

in achieving Greatness, Masters could end armies, and were given treasures and accolades by kings and governments; more often, they would seek recluse, done with the dirtiness of politics.
and it was said they could sense the enemy; sense the energy of the world around them, and from that pick up the enemy, before the enemy could strike. this was to be at One with the Spirit.

and in their walk back to the grounds of the master, the Master spoke to his student; asked if there was any sight of foe as he stood guard in the orchard. the student responded that he did not, but hesitated. the Master continued, and hoped that the student had devised a decisive, one strike blow capable of taking his Master. the student stood silent and stunned; a fleeting thought, he had wondered if he could engage his master there in the orchard, and his Master, picked up on the energy of a passing thought.

i understood the idea. i knew what they were talking about, i'd watched enough television and bared witness to enough pop culture to understand the peacefulness of the "masters" of film and screen. but this was a deeper understanding of it.

then, an awareness; i equated the art of the sword, to the art of writing, and i understood. reading the passage, the further i got into it, the more examples it began to give; last of which was writing.

my writing is far and few between. i am not someone who can sit down and write, that is not a particular talent. i was not blessed with that ability. i know many who are and i often sit in awe and admiration at what they are able to create. these testimonials of their own lives, their journey and experience. mine is a personal art that i use to mediate the needs and thoughts in this particular manifestation of Spirit.

i cannot will something into creation. it must be of its own nature; serving as an open channel, that i am to work and make ready. learning about myself, being in therapy, being aware of who i am and the Spirit inside of me and the purposes we are meant to complete here on this trip.

the more effort i exert in it's creation, the more harsh and stilted. but when i feel the mood, a good week and a good alignment of the stars, it will come out naturally, coinciding with how ever i feel at the moment, but without thinking of it or how it makes me feel, but just letting it "Be," and for lack of a better word, letting it "exist." in it's own space and it's own time, in the infinite loop of time.

it is, and will always be, what it is.

my influence? accept and embrace, and put onto it what i can, positive energy in the form of visualization, prayer; be in a state of benevolence and gratitude. be aware of the fact, that i am creating my own reality in the space of what i know to be my own personal truths. i am who i am, a being that is to be free of self-woven trappings, false egos and expectations of who i think i need to be, and just exist as who i am with no judgments of myself or others. to let go of any residual anger and jealousy that i unknowingly hold on to, and grow aware in the issues in my Spirit i continue to work on and resolve.

in forcing creation, it cannot manifest itself in it's entirety. thought prevents the channel of the Universe in the Spirit.

kai - jo - e // the three basic stages a Buddhist monk studies and works through on their path to enlightenment.

kai, is the observance of precepts set up for discipline.

jo, is the mental concentration for achieving a Zen state.

e, is the awakening to the wisdom of the lord Buddha.

"Rectifying oneself by being sincere inside- this is jo. Jo is evidenced by quietness. when there is quietness there is truthfulness. without truthfulness, there cannot possibly be jo.

when it manifests itself outwardly as action, it is called kai. Kai is not doing forbidden things. when something is forbidden, respect comes into being. without respect, there cannot possibly be any rule of conduct.

if you teach others, with an awareness of this, they will obey and follow you.

that is called, e. E is born of Brightness. Brightness is born of Wisdom. without Wisdom, there cannot possibly be E." - Chugan Engetsu