the second arrow
life rx 22 apr 24
the five of cups, and a whole poem from Michael Earl Craig’s Thin Kimono:
AFTER A TERRIFYING NAP
Gratitude came down
in the form of a golden
grasshopper.
Not golden like a bar of gold
(an ingot)
or golden like honey
or paint on a football helmet.
It was another kind of gold.
This grasshopper
glanced in through the open
window of a southbound car,
hit the fleeced shoulder of
a sleeping infant and bounced
down onto the floor.
It came to rest beside a potato chip.
The grasshopper sent forth a golden light.
The infant awoke in his car seat,
looked at the grasshopper
and wiggled his feet, his white socks.
It is likely we are completely ignorant
of our role in the universe.
the aleatory
There’s a buddhist center in Pittsburgh where I went for meditations week after week for many years. The first 20 minutes of the meditation were seated, and then we walked around in two lines, one circling the mats in the front of the room and the other circling the chairs in the back of the room.
There was one person at the meditation who got really, really into the walk. She would step, placing her foot in a regal arc, pause, and place the other foot in the same way. She held their hands up in a rigid, stylish way that made her look like someone in a tapestry. Her pace was sort of bridal. The whole thing was stiff but also kind of impressive, and I hated it for being phony. Not that I have any idea whether the prancing lady was being phony—she probably felt deeply engrossed with the open field of attention. She is probably a better person than me. But whatever.
It drove me nuts because her meditation walk was so slow that her line would inevitably bunch up behind her, and she never noticed because she had her eyes almost completely closed. So for five minutes we were in a parade led by this incredibly serious, slowly prancing lady with her eyes closed. I hated it. And then I hated myself for hating it. And then I thought, ah, the second arrow of judgment.
The teacher would say: Anything that appears before you is the way.
And then I would go to the diner with my friends, where we laughed about the slow parade and ordered BLTs with extra mayonnaise, and they brought the mayonnaise out in a huge bowl with a spoon in it.
And my friend would say: Anything that appears before you is the way.
the assignment
There is a certain way of talking that sounds honest but it really is just the melody of honesty. Find it and pull it out by the roots.
writing prompt
There is a certain way of talking that sounds like a lie but it really is just the melody of lying. They’re called poems.
a chune
“Me and My Arrow” by Harry Nilsson
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Thin Kimono by Michael Earl Craig
“Me and My Arrow” by Harry Nilsson
Dear diary, if you live in Los Angeles, I’m giving a reading with a bunch of wonderful friends on May 8th, a Wednesday, at Kippered, which is a tinned fish bar. It’s for issue eight of Makeout Creek, and I’m going to read some of my scary perfume commercial poems. All of my poems are basically inside jokes with friends, so when you hear them, you become a friend as well. I hope to see you there!
But it occurs to me that you are a diary, and you probably already knew about this. XS