Sharings by Daniel

What happens when something goes right in life?  If it’s something big, the custom appears to be to have a celebration, a moment to stop and be happy and thank those who made it possible.  But what about personal victories?  I find I too often write them off and move on to the next challenge, in an endless drive forward towards no particular ultimate goal.  Certainly at work, frustration comes from not being recognized for my contribution while watching my coworkers spend their days trumpeting their efforts rather than get any real work done.

Maybe that’s the oxymoron: personal…victory.  If it’s so personal, then unless it becomes a public victory, who would know?  So I ask myself, when is the last time you stopped to smile on your accomplishments?  And why is it so difficult to share them with my partner, or friends, or coworkers, or the local paper?  The mere thought of being recognized makes me cringe - ahh the truth!  And yet, I expend so much energy to accomplish things for others, hoping for some scrap of “thank-you” which rarely comes.  I guess when you blog-jectify it, I’m your typical low self-esteem case; or some such psychoterm.  But believe it or not, I didn’t fire up the browser for a therapy session.

Perhaps, the key to New Years resolutions is not only setting attainable goals but stopping to celebrate successes.  And maybe my coworkers could join in my victories, if I took time myself to enjoy them and not look at any mention of a person’s accomplishments as arrogant.  The key is me.  Lazy bones that I am, I see stopping and celebrating as just another job to do, and one that can be skipped to move on to the next goal.  But there’s a reason every human culture has holidays and celebrations; its human and healthy to stop and appreciate where we’ve been, even if it requires a little work to prepare the victory “feast.”

So, here’s my New Years resolution addendum:
No more silent victories!  Even if just a word to a friend, I resolve to take the time to share my accomplishments with others; and to keep an open ear when they share their victories with me.

Photo by Daniel Milbo

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander on January 20 as provided by CQ transcriptions.

—
Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

This election was no different… standing at the poll with two imperfect (to put it politely) choices.  Sad to say, it was Palin vs. Biden that was more on my mind; but after having weighed the issues, and having read an unprecedented amount of available “facts” and views online, I made my choice and voted.  I was a waverer - there was a night, after hearing Obama speak, when I thought the decision was made; and then as rhetoric faded, I weighed the issues again.  Somehow the three or four issues I recall voting on last election were now a dozen.  How can you drop environment issues from the list just because of the current domestic issues?  No, all these choices pulled my vote back and forth like some 70’s red and blue mood ring.

And then it happened - the election was over - my precinct’s results weren’t even official before CNN’s 3D hallucinations crowned the winner with their calculators on their jumbo-tron as they finger-painted the states blue and red like the country was some crayola plaything.  And the elation began.  A new hope seemed to be born - and people were coming together - at least from the perspective of my small blog-encrusted world.  And then I went to work, and found angry whispers around the coffee pot venting secret bigotry and smallness of mind.  My hope that somehow the country would rally was short lived.

But despite my own personal new-year’s prediction that the initial excitement of a regime change would fade faster than the cynacism left from the political weapons of mass destruction that were eventually found in the White House over the last 8 years and unleashed on the populace, there is no denying the turn-out for the inauguration spells a flare up of that hopeful ember.  And, although more with sighs than hopeful breaths, I too am fanning that flame we will all need to survive the next 4 years.

It is refreshing that Obama is an intelligent and well-spoken man.  It is endearing to hear respect for history and follow his emulation of Lincoln’s best qualities.  And it is amazing to see that he is not afraid to “cross the aisle” and engage viewpoints beyond his own.  And we love him for it.  I know that 53% of us risk making Obama into something he is not, but in our enthusiasm, we need to realize that its our job to empower him to carry us forward.  We have a lot of work ahead of us.  We have to rebuild our sense of community and help each other and make sacrifices to give the President’s policies a chance.  The more we reach out in ways that are unlegislated, the less work he will have to do.  We need to take the initiative; and indulge a little less in griping when his dream is not our own.

In the end, we the people elected him, whether I or you voted for him or not.  He is our President today.  He’s a brave man for stepping up, and I believe, he is sincere in his desire to be a public servant.  Like the new opportunities that open with each New Year, Obama gives us another chance to make more of our time together during our brief lives.  He is our Obama, but let us not mean by “our” that we will, like a million Lilliputians, tie him down with our personal agendas, but rather step up to help our neighbors and take action when there is need, defer the cynical instinct to enjoy his failures, and begin, like him, to consider what work we have ahead of us in the next 4 years.

Well, I’m no cook to be speaking about what it takes to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner; but I do fancy myself (don’t we all) as knowing when a meal has been prepared properly.  If everyone raises a glass to toast…if the flavors are admired and then fade into the backdrop of conversation…and if afterwards, there’s no room for more…well that’s a well-prepared feast!

What then would I lay on my plate so that I may savor a moment to myself?

How much toil and toast-burning must there be, before I feel I deserve to sit back and be?

What must I do to be?  Silly question I suppose, we all know “blogito ergo sum” (I blog therefore I am).  There is nothing that can be done without being.  So I suppose what I meant was…what must I do to be…free? aware? fulfilled?  I must practice it.  I must gain that piano-playing-freedom that comes from habits where the music is created without commanding the fingers to touch the keys.  If I were a monk, perhaps I’d pray the rosary.  But as a writer, what habit shall I form that is customary to my craft?

Need I read the classics or tread the online forums; is it in the writing, editing, or critiquing of others’ works?   Perhaps I should journal daily like exercising the soul.  Or practice the existential art of standing open in moments of lucidity?  I could call beyond myself in contemplation; or find peace in the embrace of the man I love (I confess that I am a bit of the romantic, feeling the best place to write love poetry would be on the rear of his resting nude body).  But in order to be in that amorous mood of teasing out the words onto paper, I must find that state of mind where I lay open as well.

I guess any answers would be unique to the individual…  But I do admire that glint in the eye of the accomplished poet that reveals the joy they found along the way.

What happens when I find what it is I am looking for?  Is it found when I name it?  Or understand it?  Or is it in the touching - holding - grasping of it?  Is it only truly revealed in the grieving of its loss?  And how dare I say ‘it,’ offering no respect for what I am given in the finding.  Am I not found by it?  We find each other.  And in the finding, does the moment tic by from ‘find’ to ‘found’ as if spent without notice?  The verb tarnishes the meaning conveyed.  We are together found.  We are we.   We found we.

Silly abstractions?  No, a test of the boundaries of words.

Finding is both a meeting and a realization of personal fulfillment.  I am free to decide what I want, what I will seek, and I create the moment of awe in encountering what I sought.  There is a kind of love in seeking.  One might call it passion-driven, when the seeking is wholehearted.  But let me sober from feeling myself as master of the world, for I am reminded that whom and what I love most deeply found me when I didn’t know what I was looking for.  I recognized it in that precious moment; I said ‘yes;’ and I have been working ever since to nurture that love and honor its worth.  Moments are not unlike holidays that require preparation and stress and work to build a little window of time in which to smile and sit back sated - they are part of the human ritual, which mimics the seasons and nature’s tectonic events that erupt to transform the earth.  The immovable obligations of the season present an opportunity to acquiescence, to cooperate, to embrace and allow ourselves to be found.

Shall we revive this thread of reflections?  Yes!  It is a new year with endless possibility.

I find myself, at my core, simply thankful for my life and love.  It is my peace to love a wonderful man who is my light.  …to have good friends and a wise mentor whose path I hope will cross again with mine.  …and a home that is secure.  So much can change in a moment…suddenly one can find oneself gifted or find oneself grieving loss, but fear only tarnishes the joy.

I watched The Last Brickmaker last night, a charming movie, and in the midst of family drama, the father asked his wife: we all make sacrifices but what do I get (a seemingly selfish, yet honest question), and the wife responds, You get nothing until you decide what it is you want.  He comes to realize his family is more important than his job, and suddenly he has what he truly wants.  What is it I want?  I didn’t ask for this life, its pains or pleasures, but finding myself somehow alive, let nothing distract from the miracle.

And I owe this spark of wondering to my dear friend Jenny, who put it this way:  “I have seen people running after so many different things they hope would give them some identity they could grasp and keep and name “this is mine” They didn’t know that they have already owned the Universe within.”

This weekend, a moment I very much desired passed me by.  It did not bypass me - I failed to reach out to grasp it.  They say we make our lives, so I am left asking myself, “what have I done?”

Life is such a mix of needs and emotions, and I just froze - shut down.  But I’ll not dwell on the loss, it is a new week and new hope is ripe for the picking.  What wonders are waiting, that just require a little movement to stand in their paths, as they come?  Though life strikes at my heart, I close my eyes in forgiveness and open my arms to today.  What a tragedy was the missing of my heart’s desire; but what a miracle will be this week’s new life.

It is all nice and good to ponder life, to write about it, and to seek for what’s deeper; but such thoughts seem like luxuries when faced with suffering.  I speak not of my own pain, for that merely requires coping - I speak of the pain of someone close.  What peace we may garner in our private moments, and in the intimate support of love, is not something we can just give to another as comfort.  And despite all the rationalizations that I might say to myself to protect me from the pain of empathy, the fact is we are bound to those we love, in pleasure and in pain.

Aging is not an easy process.  For some it is worse than dying, for it requires adapting once again after so many years of life.  Health wavers, mind falters, and moments become more precious.  Memories comfort and haunt, and friends who provided such valued support pass away one by one as the barrier of life expectancy is reached and crossed.  For the elderly, isolation can be the greatest pain.  We spend much of our life investing in deeper values that are supposed to endure, to give peace in the last years; but the nag of an aged body dims the joy that many well-lived years should have given.

I am feeling quite helpless in this moment, to share what spark of life I have to offer with my dear friend.  What words can I say when several hours distance separate us?   Plans have been set for a visit, and now I too must wait.  But even when I visit and take time to listen and to share cheer; even if the conversation should wax to deeper things, I’ll only have a few hours to share.  These days I am not much of a praying man, though I live open to a loving Creator; but my prayer will be…that some spark of hope will be shared, and some relief will be felt - body and soul.

I have been pondering the fact that the theme of my last poem seems to have, perhaps subconsciously, crept up repeatedly in my latest writings.  Exstasis - the standing outside normal perception of reality - is on some level my goal in writing.  I use poetry as a portal to an existential state of mind - to see the bigger picture.  My hope is that it would be an opportunity for any reader to move beyond.

But is it an escape from reality?  Am I dissatisfied with normal perception?

My conscious intent was to develop the theme of ‘moment’ as a slice of time in one’s life that is significant.  But cannot the most ordinary of moments be significant?

I suppose the planets eventually will align, but this morning all the traffic lights were green on my way to work.  There wasn’t the usual traffic, and it seemed like people were clearing the streets so I could get through.  Obviously, they were paying no mind to me, but it’s curious what an impression such a coincidence of events can make.  May your day be filled with green!

Ardent blades burn in sun’s passion.
Fired scarlet, succulent leaves
gather to bear the bloom.

Fervent petals waft in sultry air
like excited flames, goaded
by a mesmerized smithy.

Enraptured I stare in stillness.

In a sky of virescence, I float
looking down in my mind to
that crimson eye-flood.

Stoke the heart-head inferno,
Loosed in a bang of distractions consumed,
and
rest in the ever ember-ashes of now.

A measurement of time we call a “second?”  A heart beat?  A blink of the eyelid?

If it’s just a time slice, how is it that one moment is more important than the next?
Moments are phenomena of our perception.  It holds “import” to us and therefore stands out.  Imagine a field of lush, verdant grass…why would one solitary bloom of scarlet catch our eye?  Our mind packages together the million blades into a “field” with seemingly comparable weight as the one bloom - both components of the landscape.  What piques the interest of the mind to prioritize Color as enough reason to glorify the solitary flower?
Sunday, two blooms stood in the field together; how ironic that there should be any fear in our minds that, in our diversity, we would stand out.

In all my years of employment, I never came out to the whole office or volunteered my being a gay man.  Today, I proudly took my partner and love to the company picnic.  He is a wonderful man, and the time was right to share him with my co-workers.  I have been two years at my present job, but this is the first event held by the company where family was invited.  He was well received.

I have always taken a don’t ask, don’t tell approach, based on my assumption that if someone wanted to know about my personal life, they would ask.  I have no difficulty sharing openly about most aspects of my life, given the opportunity.  If someone asked me if I were gay, I’d say yes.  But I have been reluctant to give out the information to those who may not want to know.  After two years of waiting for a chance to say more about myself, I felt it was time, and my dear companion was up to the challenge.  You never know how people may react, but as my boss said, “I think it’s great you feel comfortable enough to bring your partner.”

I mention this small step in my life, as I ponder why I started this blog: an experiment in honesty and transparency.  What does it mean to be honest?  Does it mean answering “yes” when asked?  Or saying “I am gay” when others go on and on about their wife and kids?  Ultimately life is a series of moments we sift through, learning from each how better to respond to the next, and growing in the wisdom of knowing when.  Today, the time was right, and I’m glad I did not let the moment go by.

There is a shore by the ocean bright
where the sand lies softly warm
waiting for your hard and weary feet.

On that shore, lap crystal clear waves,
that play and leap and laugh in the sun,
waiting for your worn and heavy hands.

In those waves, move currents deep,
that can carry away the body’s weight,
waiting for your dusty and parched soul
to awaken…

Deep calls to deep.

As your feet stand buried in a trillion
diamond grains, wealth beyond imagination,
your hands dancing on the wavetops, sending
rhythms of joy through your bones,
Lie back on the waters that give life,
Let creation carry you back to the Creator.

You could never leave Her arms,
and all our cares were His first, so
we only seek now to serve, to
smile when we see a face, to
sing when we hear a melody, to
dance when our souls are lifted
by a breath.

It was made all for you,
to share and enjoy,
for our glory and pleasure
is in our delighting.

Resplendent
Yet veiled in the plainness of my finitude
Glorious
A web of more echoing wavelets than I can attend to
Beauty
You are both the song and each note inside each note
One
What is, simply is, in all its complexities

Oh, Reality, you simple are before me
I speak to you?  Because you speak to me.
Though you have no voice, no limbs,
no complicity in my humanity.
I speak in thoughts, in actions
like a fish drowning in the wide ocean,
thrashing about, forgetting simply to breathe.
My thoughts give no testimony that I see you
But only ramble babbling forth from my restlessness.

I thought I heard something…

I hear but do not comprehend, I see but no image enters me
I feel and shudder as a shiver races down my spine.

Who are you?
Your symmetric order betrays the fact of your intelligence
What is your name?
Though I have never met you, I’ve known you my whole life.
The others speak of you in legends,
in words that bear your life.

The thing about legends and language and stories
from long ago is they have always fallen short.
Who do I say that you are?
How shall I say?  when my answer is a thousand memories bubbling up
from within me, face after face echoing emotions, joys and pains, lies
and revelations of truth.
Even if I could enunciate the sum of my experience,
synthesizing so many disparate echoings into a simple matrix, even if
my mind could hold such a perfect ordering (which would surely be
beyond my mental ability), I would be speechless.

Such a conception would be like a ship built within a glass bottle
whose neck allows but a penny through.

But there is a way to get the ship out…if not by language, then by a
projection of its image, carefully focused by our will into action.
Thus all the experiences that crafted that fragile matrix need not
speak, but rather lend the sparkle to one’s eye that tells another you
understand and it is good.  When the river of one’s actions runs pure,
it paints a more colorful image of what’s in one’s heart than any words
or canvas can convey.

When one finds…

More words from Jenny:
From where I am, what makes me happy is a flowing feeling of love and beauty, so I am attracted to pleasures and dread pains like all of us. Nothing can change that.
…
My question is: Is there beauty and love in pain as well as in pleasures? I think it is up to each of us to find it out till the inner self inside of us smiles and says: “Aha”!   Certain things in life surely give me lots of pleasures and… pains. My work is to see where the beauty and love lie in them. Especially to see that I am capable of love and beauty myself, not just appreciating it but giving it and inspiring it.
…
Then there is a painful part of it. Does that prove pleasures and pains can not be separated? If they are not separate, why separate them? Maybe from the pains, I can learn to handle the pleasures associated with them? Again the question comes back: “Is True Nature separate from Human Conditions?  Do they separate from pleasures and pains? I don’t know the answer. I only hope I ask the right question.
…
Let the pain sharpen my awareness and hold the torch high on the path, the path to self liberation. Pleasures certainly come mellow, sweet and absolutely enjoyable. I welcome them, thank them and let them go when they go. On the other hand, I should remember that pains can come from…loving, and compassion …from pains.
link

After reflecting on her words, I came away with this sentiment:
Have faith in yourself that, given time apart from the daily stress,
your thoughts and feelings will flourish if allowed to be yourself.
Let go of the fear and anxiety and be that radiant person who is cherished.

One of the most significant people in my life is my dear friend, Jenny Hoang.  Although our paths have parted over time, I remain deeply enriched by her friendship.  I took the time to read some of her blog stories (under Jenny’s Writings in English), and would like to share some of her wise words:

One day it just dawned on me that what really matters was the intensity and truthfulness of the experiences at the moment. Time has nothing to say about it.
link

The quote pales when taken out of the context of the wonderful story, so please read of her remarkable life, but how powerful is that momentary dawning when we realize the fetters of what we perceive as time and aging and distance, are revealed to be ephemeral.  That voice of “I” that speaks of time only clouds what little we know of the depth of our individual timelessness.

-
One thing I know for sure at this very moment is that I have plenty of love and sympathy for everyone on this earth. The seed of this wonderful feeling has been with me all the time but I, being overwhelmed by the ups and downs of survival, did not pay attention to it, let alone nurturing it. Hardships of different kinds inside and outside have taken turn to conceal it and have tried to damage it. Half a century has passed by, now that I look back, the love has never been concealed or damaged. On the contrary, it fed on itself and grew and grew and waited and waited…for me to be ready.
…
Ready to have both feet on the ground and smile and be proud. Be proud of what I am and of what I am not.
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Jenny’s words affirm how life can be a struggle, and I find such hope in that faith and insight into self that is able to look deeper.

-
She was very sad and had no hope in a turning around from…wars. I myself maintained that Humanity never dies, and nobody has ever to die because of it. For Humanity is the expression of the Universal Truth, like the Sun or the water at the bottom of the sea. The clouds may seem to chase the sun away sometimes, but *it* is always there. The hurricane may cause the waves to ravage the sea at times but hurricanes and winds are part of ephemeral happenings; When they leave, the ocean will be calm again. That is water in its natural and genuine state.
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I love this imagery - it brings it down to earth, so I can understand it.  True genius isn’t the ability to conceive of higher truth, but rather the ability to explain it to children.  I am reading How to See Yourself As You Really Are by the Dalai Lama, and he explains this teaching as well, that all that changes in the world is ephemeral, and to free oneself from pleasure and pain is to see things as “dependent arisings,” in the context of all other changing, and not to mistake it for real existence.

Here begins the adventure.  I’ve been a blogger through various stages of my life.  Here begins a new attempt at transparency - to share with anyone curious or interested in my thoughts and writings.  I hope to pique your sense of awe at the universe in all its dimensions, both external and internal.  And invite your participation with comments, critiques, and sharing your personal discoveries and musings.