Tag Archives: love

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Thinking And Therefore Becoming

It is all very well for Mr. DesCartes
DeCation
to think with his mind
and therefore be with his body,
yet this fails to explain
why when I think happy and healthy
I feel like I am more,
and when I think sad and depressed
I feel like so much less.

Somewhere back in the sleepy land
of Cartesian dualism,
we can still recover the WinWin contrast of Eastern philosophy’s
co-arising nondualism
of mind and body,
what is spiritual is what is also natural,
what nurtures sacred wisdom
with what nurtures secular rationality,
but also other dualisms
not merely appositional contrasts between inside-Right
and outside-Left
evolutions
and revolutions,
but oppositional tensions between ecopolitical health and pathology.

Evangelical and Supremacist Trees Knowing Good Or Evil
growing in Earth’s original Eden forest,
may feel more Eastern,
and RightBrain seen and heard and smelled and felt,
as WinWin KnowledgeTrees of NonDual CoArising Good AND Evil,
ecological virtues with some egocentric sins,
healthy climate governing decisions
and those more deadly,
and cognitively dissonant,
and depressing
and chronically stressing
and decompositional,
devolutionary,
rather than Tipping Point nondual co-arising balancers
of positive evolution,
regeneration
aptic contentment-happiness,
Left and RightBrain collateral dominance
within Positive Psychology and EcoPolitical Earth Sciences
throughout parenting
and educational systems
and faith and trust building systems, communities
of nondual co-arising (0)Sum WinWin nonduality
as contrasted to Cartesian dualistic assumptions
which are more (0)Sum WinLose,
Either-Or deductive-reductive fundamentalism,
rather than BothLeft AndRight co-inductive cooperative rationalism
of SecularLeft Yang with SacredElderRight Yin ethological discernment
re-combining both revolutionary regenerative health
as cooperatively grateful life trends
and evolutionary decomposing bilateral pathologies
through competing to subdue maladroit LoseLose death-trends.

Our Western difference between sacred health of mind
and reductive-secular pathologies of merely natural wishful-thinking therefore aming bodies
together provide a co-arising nondual bilateral view
of what we nutritionally/toxically are each day,
each year,
each life,
Yang cooperative and ecologically proudest for having achieved
as part of EarthTribe’s national Treasure,
but also as Yin grateful for co-arising decompositions,
recompositions,
reweaving reunions
through (0)Soul YangSpace-YinTime
4D Real SpecialCase HealthWealth Time
WinWin self-governance
polypathically and polynomially and polyphonically and polyculturally applied,
noticed and appreciated,
non-violently listened to and with,
planted,
fed nutritionally and watered through thermodynamic balanced root systems,
harvested,
decomposed,
regenerated toward and re-invested through
Seven ReGenerations of Trees
knowing both good ecological nature
and bad egocentric spirits
paranoid about Earth’s LoseLose
Left v Right Cartesian dominant Western dualism.

We are fortunate,
but too seldom grateful,
to learn at least as much from our fears and fear-mongerers,
(not to mention any RightWing dominating elitist names)
as we have from our great sacred and academic loves
and fellow lovers of healthy wealth
for more humane acclimating climates
within as without
EarthTribe’s natural-spiritual landscapes.

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Dorm Love

Ours was daily mysterious,
sometimes near mystical,
rapture;
a sensual yet platonic
dorm-mate love affair,
within the only male grad student corridor
at SFSU.

He was the presumably straight Vietnam veteran
southern white good ol’ boy,
athletically studying Japanese,
with a gentle passion for young Japanese women.

Did his all things Japanese culture love
precede his Vietnam War experience,
or was this a response to West-East violence,
inviting vulnerability and compassion?
Embracing romantic remorse
and male responsibility for technology’s aggressive habits,
but,
regardless,
knowing constant passion for peace.
I don’t recall ever asking which came first.

I do recall his first words.

“Hi. Delighted to meet you,”
in a Louisiana-slash-MilitaryOfficerSchool
creolic mashed-up engaging smile
up across and through his raised blond eyebrows,
guileless,
or ruthlessly contrived,
“Ensign Jake Ruford,
Eastern Language student.”

Hi.
just Jerry,
gay epistemology student,
wondering why we are roommates
when I specifically said
“Anyone not homophobic.”
You would think Student Residential Services
at San Francisco State
would know what the word means.
Including probably not a straight Louisiana
military officer
even if he is Navy.

As he turned back toward his desk,
where he had been reading something that looked like a textbook
in an encyclopedic hard-bound scale
of inscrutability,
“Do you agree human nature
must have evolved from a bottom moral line
of eat or become stew?”

It seems we have this old reptilian thing
about eating our young and vulnerable under duress,
overpopulation or starvation
of a struggling to hunt and gather species,
especially before we figured out the matriarchal gathering part.

“I want to come back to those matriarchal parts later.
But why, do you think,
do we continue to see Golden Rule cooperativity,
WinWin strategies,
as contrasted favorably to WinLose
sacred MightMakesRight Traditions
of
Always eat others before they eat you?”

I don’t think WinLose,
much less LoseLose,
Eat first and fast,
because we all fall prey to death
in our not quite foreseeable future,
is authoritatively sacred,
or exegetically scriptural,
or fundamentalistically spiritual,
nor even evangelically Christian,
which was supposed to be about Good News
of a God defined most ecologically,
and satisfyingly,
as love and beauty
and polycultural Eden’s Original Creator.

“So you would give divine grace credit
for why we beg for multicultural Golden Rule self-governance
through WinWin inter-relationships,
rather than continue eating our young?”

No,
I think premeditated organized violence
through conscripting young adults
is how we continue eating our young.
I give God credit for non-patriarchal Golden Rules,
which do not include mutual assured violence,
nor Better Ballistics Bureaus.

But, I give the Sacred Gaia Hypothesis
and matriarchal creation stories and parables and paradigms
credit for existing
and any future
and most, if not all, past WinWin abundant inter-relationships,
rather than Mother Earth
eating Her DNA regenerative
Left and Right BiLaterally Balanced CoIntelligence,
synonymous with EcoLogical,
and oxymoronic as Military WinWin Intelligence.

“Left and Right,
like Yang and Yin.
Which is kind of the opposite
of LeftBrain dominant ideas like
Maybe it’s OK for hungry single Moms
to sell their children into slavery
to invest in better dying
through chemistry.”

Yes, and other xenophobic behaviors,
paranoias like homophobia
and patriarchal “just war” theories.

“How do you feel about Japanese ladies?”

Hopefully about the same way you feel about radically dipolar gay gentlemen
at the beginning of an AIDS epidemic.

“That’s an interesting, but dark, analogy.
Are you coffee or tea?”

I don’t think I intended an analogy.
Perhaps more of a eulogy
for continuing relationship
with much of anyone ever in risky futures.

Coffee.
If I have any idea where this inquisition came from
or might be heading.

“Oh, that’s good.
See, we already have something in common.”

Something.
Yes.

And so we went on from that first moment,
as if resuming where we had just left off,
or last eaten,
with an Ensign I had never hoped to meet,
much less eat,
and would never wish to know a last farewell.

Two travelers
along love’s mysterious,
sometimes mystically ambiguous
journey,
soldiering on.

Better thriving together,
than surviving inscrutable textbooks
apart.

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All Dancers Matter

Those who pray by marching
can pray alone
in endless competitions.

Those who pray while dancing
can only pray together
for timeless cooperations.

Hate and fear can only angry march
side by competing side
in uniformity of lock-step supremacy.

But love and compassion
can also truth and beauty dance
and sing
in full hope octaves
of multicolored harmony.

Resonant solidarity of ballrooms
and street performers
singing and chanting and drumming
good news gospel resonance
rather than bad news mono-marching hate.

We can sing and dance cooperatively
to angry patriarchal elitist marchers
more effectively than merely speak in not-kind shout,
and across,
and back and forth,
flow anthems up and out of all inclusive love songs.

This singing dance can,
with enough harmonic polycultured voices,
become sustained ego-happy filibusters
through marching hate,
marathons of love
proactively singing and dancing
alongside those marching through dualdark fear and anger,
inviting them to rejoin
our dancing gospel choir.

For every hate-mongering military march,
we have thousands of love-mentoring lyrics,
and,
therefore,
potential dancing lyricists.

Anger and marching paranoia are mutually competitive
double-binding allies,
as are love song and grace of dance mutually harmonic.

We can choose to march and shout ourselves apart,
but we would more democratically,
and gracefully,
prefer to dance and sing our cooperative ways together.

Those who pray while dancing
can only pray together
for timeless cooperations.

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The Rival Sisters

They were loyal sisters.
The older
was also more fair,
prettier in an Original Barbie kind of way.

She had been sick
when her younger,
darker,
more tomboy sister
met and first desired
my tall, dark, and handsome Uncle.

When older and fairest of all Sisters
returned home,
after a long healthcare absence,
she too desired Uncle Handsome,
as did we all,
in our time and ways,
but Handsome’s eyes never wavered again
once reset on older and fairest Sister.

Young darker Sister, left behind,
began to heal
when tall, dark, and handsome #2
showed up
and spoke smokey truths
of happiness,
kindness,
quiet gentleness.
But not too gentle.
Slow and steady; confident
integrity could heal all guilt
and angers
and prior disappointments.

These two Sisters
and their TD and H husbands
lived near each other
and grew old together
with unspoken neighborly mistrusts,
unresolved struggles with and about envy,
jealousies and jilts,
but also laughter and deep mutual regard.

Who can control chemistry,
or timing?
Who can forgive,
and how long could this revolution take?

Yet even restrained love
can grow abundantly rich
with both age and generosity.

Younger and darker Sister
lost her husband to cancer
and then her memory,
while older fairest Sister and husband
moved into assisted housing
after reaching golden fifty years
together.

Then good-natured patient waiting
to embrace final retirement,
a journey we each take alone,
as when we entered
except without Mom nearby,
or maybe this too remains the same, somehow.

Older ancient Barbie Sister
did not let go
until younger jilted Sister
quietly stopped breathing in her deep night sleep,
lost in memories not accessible by day.

Ten nights later
Barbie Sister passed out of embodied memories
in this same way.
Safe at last,
knowing it was then too late
for TD and H Uncle
to go back before that place
where they had started.

They say death comes in threes.
I wonder why.

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Healthy Love

Do you think love is healthy?

I suppose more therapeutic than its opposites,
whether hate,
or fear
or anger
or greed,
for is not love the formed functions of gratitude?
positive attitude,
that I am loved by Earth’s diverse health in return
nutrition
conservation
cooperative economies
positive psychologies?

You would agree, then, that not love
could also mean not healthy,
pathology?

Yes.
Yet I wonder
about two types of not,
forming a double-binding ecological
dialectical knot.

You would distinguish between disease,
unease,
and active pathology?
Between decomposition
and anti-composition?
Between economies of depression
and oppression politics?
Evil unhealthy forces,
more than mere absence of good health,
with rabidly LoseLose nihilistic intentions
to empower monoculturing supremacy
and, thereby,
sociopathically attenuate Earth’s healthy polyculturing diversity.

You read me like a post-liberal clock.
The opposite of positive health as love psychology
is active hate of love psychology ourselves,
human developers of humane natural-spiritual maturation,
while negative psychology
lies notnot appositionally in-between.
So mistrusting ambivalence
informs both positive trust and active distrust,
anti-trust,

Intentionally evil fear-mongering
and terrorism
and fascism
and prophets of nihilism
and preachers of divine plutocratic supremacy
because EcoPolitical Elites
have won
in a WinLose tepid world
rather than retaining trusting sight
of our WinWin healthiest love.

Do you think love is healthier than not?

I know Earth’s regenerative development,
negentropic and active positive ionic and ergodic
and thermodynamic balance,
never could have become
if this harmony were not
integrative animism
of our multicultural
polyculturing
Creation Love Story.

Is that your sacred psychological faith
or your secular ecopolitical trust?

Yes.

Sounds like dipolar co-arising nutritional advocacy.

Feels like a chronic orgasm.

Don’t you mean synchronic?

I don’t know.
Are we?

I am
if you are.

I am
and you are
so we are becoming synchronic orgasms
more than all that infertile evil monoculturing
hateful climates of pathology
competitive Lose short-term to Lose long-term self-oppressive business.

Stay focused, dear.
Don’t get distracted from our question.

Do you think and feel love is healthy?

Absolutely.
But it would be a lot more fun
if it were also just a little bit dirty.

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When Pigs Can’t Fly

If love is healthy
and health is love,
whether a screaming rabid eagle
or a peaceful mother dove,
then it matters,
whether you are a pitbull
or a kinda bitchy beagle,

When someone nominates for CEO
a person who flat out tells you
I am a pig,
and not only that,
I could fly like an eagle
if not for all you lumpen doves,

Run,
don’t walk,
fly, if you can,
in most any other direction.

To do otherwise
is like saying healthy Earth
could be more lovely
if flying pigs
were plutocratic CEOs.

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Songs of Resistance

Songs of resistance
are love songs.

Anthems sung together from churches
and temples
to town squares
and capital sold-out markets.

Sounds of acquiescence
are cowering silence
suffered alone
through long and lonely nights
of fear and anger.

Great lovers
prefer to sing
in full harmonies
and resonant octaves
of sound
and loving light,
whether resisting
persisting
or assisting
escorting
affirming love’s compassioned notes.

We sing
when climbing up jacob’s ladder
together.
When climbing down
we feel alone,
are silent
and live in sorrow
for love life’s absence.

Silent majorities and minorities
reassure bullies
and defenders of plutocracy.
Resistance songs
are love medicine
fear-mongerers fear,
yet need the most.

 

 

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Governing Climates of Change

“Laying open the soil is like a careful dissection and there is the same astonishment among the students at the orderly beauty of the organs, the harmony of how they rest against one another,
form to function.
These are the viscera of the forest.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Braiding Sweetgrass” p. 233

Climate change environments
with government authorities living inside central-air denial
are like a bullfrog
enjoying a nice warm healthy pond life
and stubbornly doing his best
to continue acclimating
as his pond turns into
a simmering pan of water
developing a fatal case
of climate pathology.

Communication
between organic evolving and devolving systems
is often recognized,
even frog to atmosphere deductively analyzed,
as formal verbal-rational logic choice.
Too often slighted
are aesthetic-harmonic forms
of co-arising dipolar functions
within co-passioning messages,
statements,
appositional architectures
assuming desire for continuing organic-systemic interconnection,
convex-form/concave-functional inter-relationship
between YangForms of effective verbal communication
and double-binding yin nonverbal enthymematic
co-passioning
Function.

Hopefully,
we learn this sacred ecology
as we mature in self-governing
with both deductively acquired knowledge
and inductively felt dipolar wisdom,
discerning appositional differences
between regenerate climates communicating healthy WinWin cooperativity,
and degenerate climates
denying self-perpetuating WinLose competitions.

Wise governing choices
are less likely
when YangLeft merely formally correct communication
of facts
overpowers rather than co-empowers
YinRight co-empowering functions,
harmonies,
balance,
both ego- and eco-systemic,
co-arising,
dipolar creative tensions
healthier than bipolar dissonant noise
of patriarchal capital-hoarding pedagogical dominance,
monocuturing merely formal ascent to short-term Wins
masking descent loss
of anthro-inhabitable Earth.

Unlike reptiles,
how might warm-blooded acclimators
define declining climates of competitive pathology?

I don’t know.
Yet I see decline
when I feel it as patriarchal violence
of form
over against
matriarchal function
of co-passioning wisdom.

How do you learn the difference
between revolutionary regenerative wisdom
and normal devolutionary dominance
of further articulating details
for merely deductive reason
within side-by-side silos of discovery?

By also learning their cause-effect
co-functional
correlational dipolar co-arising similarities,
replacing WinLose Either/Or deductive monocultures
with WinWin Both/And reverse-hierarchical
matriarchal polyculturing outcomes,
sometimes revolutionary Yang,
and normally evolutionary double-binding
self-with-other golden ruling notnot Yintegrity.

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Summer of ’67

My canopy of early summer sounds
in 1967
was as intimate as adolescent knowledge
might ever become.

My sixteenth summer
sweetly smiled with driver’s permit,
my first job,
economic promise while the Beach Boys
and the Beatles sang a rainbow
of boy band diversity,
sang stories of straight white male revolutions,
evolutions of June firefly evenings
resounding bullfrog and cricket background vocals
on our family farm,
where good Christian Republicans
longed for good old Eisenhower years
when Father was wise
and always knew best,
and Vietnam was no more than an acrid draft
of wasted social
financial
political
environmental
nutritional capital,
not yet fully present.

This summer of 1967
was when I knew both anguish of embodied defeat,
hopelessly homosexual,
an yet poignancy of emerging mystical wonder
about what this could mean
fifty years from now.

I could not help fantasizing
how Paul and Art
might not only sing,
but dance, in poignant harmonies.

And,
as much as I laughed and loved and longed
to hear Stevie Wonder wondering
and Otis Redding wanting,
Marvin Gaye worshiping,
I so wished they could sound even better
with me.

Joni Mitchell
and Joan Baez
and Judy Collins,
like John Lennon,
were compelled to write and speak and sing
songs of love as freedom
growing transcendent
yet deeply fertile
Aquarian promise.

A promise bombed out
by uncivil wars
bound by fear of egocentered failure.
Fear our parents,
and half of my junior year classmates,
found compelling enough to throw away dollars
to build and buy
and transport
and explode bombs and bullets and boys,
nearly oblivious to hundreds of thousands of innocent men
and mothers
and children wiped out
by a mere strategic choice
to cover partisan ass
as the biggest baddest bully
on Earth’s shrinking block.

I didn’t blame him,
but when I called James Taylor
to rescue the Johnson and Nixon White Houses,
he did not come,
as promised,
to rescue me,
to remind us about our friend and family connections
across cosmic time
and Earth’s regenerate space.
A great ballad was just not enough.

In June of ’67
I was singing both “I Believe”
and “Love is Blue”
with equally honest passion
and thriving off a translucent vulnerable cover song
between these two impossibly incommensurable positions,
surrounded by straight evangelical predators,
sniffing for pinko faggot weakness.

I was so guilty
yet so in love with rightness
and ripeness
of my generation’s possibilities
for revolutionary integrity,
drawing together economic health
with political wealth
in some new golden ruling age
of relentlessly cooperative incorporation
and association
and ownership
and self-governance.

In this early summer of 1967
Martin and Bobby still walked with us
and one still dreamed he might see
someone who looked and thought and felt like him
as President one day
and the other I dreamed would become President
while I was still a high school junior.

So much devastation and disappointment followed.
It took at least a decade
and hundreds of thousands of human lives
treated like conscripted fodder
for nationalistic hubris of false pride
to arrive at the very treaty
our Vietnamese opponents had originally demanded.
And long before anyone from the U.S.
had been drafted and killed
for this offensive cause
of nationalistic non-defense.

Other health care and defense abuses
and losses
followed.
Neglect of women’s health.
Pedagogical loss of children’s deep ecological listening opportunities
to nondually co-arise with Earth’s polyphonic voices,
resources of multiculturing nutrition.

Yet I have these summer of ’67 memories
when,
for one diastatic season,
my revolutionary age on planet Earth
stood between despair of guilt
for what and whom I could never become
and celebrating hope for joy
of what we might yet reweave
timelessly singing and dancing
chanting and drumming
revolutioning and evolutioning together.

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