October 22
Rooster crows into red-blue fiery mountains, touched by kiss of sunrise, air is sweet, melodic and winded cool. Truer tones from the birdsong, i am the bird’s son, no show, all is play in nature’s way; Pinyon Pines CA is where i learn I am; pitches of clouds curl from deep blues to pinks to yellow sulfur whites. Trees, berry bushes, pinyon pines, the bamboo grove get back all their green. Distant plane roars in the blue plain of sky. Dogs bark, wake the nearby farm animals, horses will neigh, donkeys bray, goats chuckle, chickens cluckle, other hounds howl, pigs squeal, people play, gossip, praise, laugh and they cry.
I opened mine eyes this morn in the same window i fell asleep watching orange-white moonset, stars entangled in webs of deeper spaces; i saw the stars as people, their solitary feelings coming to light, i gave them voice, found stars of my own; one held a rose, one a man flicking on and off a lamp nightly, orders he’d say; another star, a kind to count the stars he’s apart of, finding eternally his endeavor; once the inhabitants of stars are true, so they are strange; i most enjoyed laying back in deep space, gazing slow swirls of galaxies.
Pink purple and red white streaked morning light, covering the place of stars to my opening eyes, my dreams shuffled back to the deep, behind the blue of sky. I had to piss, threw open the wood door with window of lotus glass , flicked a blueblack bug from my shoe, walked over cactus and went, made coffee in the keurig in the snack shack, some grounds named paradisio.
Facing southwest, I realized i’d guessed the cardinal direction and may have had my south and north switched, either way the sun rose to my left; i sat outside the art hut, howling steam in my breath from coffee, drinking, holding the coffee hot between my thighs, inking pages, watching morning age.
I saw fingers of God spread colors here and then there with continual change, the movements decisive, orderly, inscrutable and only attentively opened eyes could see what i see, the sun resting in each speckle glimmer of light. I knew and i felt and always i intuit God as grand creator to each instance of life. I less felt the need to say ‘God THAT is you! How wonderful.’ And still i just did THAT!
In the white sand between my toes i had thoughts and theory, in the dim wash of purple contemplating shades of complimentary yellow the art hut; the cool touches of pinyon breezes, the best pine smell; yellower pockets of sunrise opening on the higher peaks of southern mountains, my noticing peaks grounded with green levity while the vales between pointed in with white welds of crag rock.
I saw all is God. God is all life. I felt this truency in all i see, feel, intuit. To it, the sonrise, i felt like opening up my eyes. I left the physical of pen and page, the place of knowledge and memory, adoration, thanks and praise, my stories to make more stories. I sought for a place to feel the light of sunrise all over my face and that i could smile with the love in the face of God.
I smiled. Cheeked up the valleys and called on the way, the day to day peaks of happiness. I reminded the mountains to be fresh. See – my communication with nature is reciprocal, i find nature exhibits mirror to self, when on truency i see God in nature – true self, first bible, paradisio.
Experience. I sipped paradisio, slew my shoes wayside and wandered hopping the same sienna sands of places i’d once only painted. I felt connected to nature as sun shone in mine eyes; thoughts of thousands colored, fractaled, my vision spinning with mandalas, the blind sight.
I stepped from looking into the sonrise back into the blue blueberry bush shade, then into holy adoration in incantations of sonlight again, back and forth, to and fro. Myself akin to a desert baptism, bobbing on sands of illumination; just then doves descended, arose on the image, plucked white feathers, black feathers, pooled the place of my stay with settlings of spiritual significance. Nature has me in a drowse; had i awoken really? Could these be only stories of brighter stars? Am i? I am alive i realize, smiling, fingers in through my hair and feeling up my hands feeling themselves. All experience experiencing itself. Sonlight smooth on my handed skin.
I noticed the word written, Monk on my left hand. I’d written Monk as a reminded last night, i forged in bed my deep peaceful remembrance, i’d said i’ll be a monk. I’m wearing same colors of peach rose robes in my hoodie, the blood red of salvation in each ralph lauren polka dot horse on my pants; the desert mountain my monastery, the situation necessitated ascetic, lesser material living, all life in love of God like i read old Brother Lawrence say, the potato peeling monk for love; as often spiritual as St. Teresa of Avila; as flowery Beloved and joyed at pain as St. John of the Cross; perhaps i am a monk of the new order; as lost as St. Christopher being always found; as pretty as i can be singing truency with birds as St. Francis has; revolutionary as St. Andrew, alone with God in the desert mountains; as in love as Majnun to Layla; as Harmonious to the Heart of God, i’m played as David the psalmist; i am Bjorn. I’m being born again. I’m a devotee to the illuminations in-given; as God flurries in with sunrise, in mine eyes, in hands, a divine manifestation. Divine dream life.
Through the sun’s upgoing and steady fall i’d traced my truth. I’d apply for jobs in the city of Angels, knowing myself to be already doing the playful work of living true; I’d apply for housing in the city of Angels, feeling my body already my home, temple to the Spiritual; I’d even researched monasteries i could join in as intuited guest to, to find dutiful playful-work to accompany the devotion of my breath-praise, the way the days divinely played; I listened to the voice of high winds, sway with the songs of birds, communed with pitch pines, green bamboo, blueberry bushes, soaring swallows, calling crows, brown bunnies, squirrels squirreling, and lizards doing pushups and in all of nature i communicated by breath, with all of life i lived. We breathe the same breath, live out the same capital life, all of us.
This is life; valleys and peaks, mountains teach me this; song and solemn solitude, birdsongs teach me this; growth and decay, the new pines grown tall and old pines dead laid teach me this.
The peaks look higher and valleys deeper, at near sunset, i sat in an old wooden chair nestled into a pinyon pine, i coined the chair a glistening name – sunset chair.
From sunset chair i recovered from an earlier mental break, wrote and viewed my mental process; the crash kept repeating in my head, the dull impact and deafening loudness of silence and eyes of the semi, my immovable body, mind fully empty and spiritually taught. I learned to sit and watch from sunset chair, move as instructed, ever kept to the life both of growth and decay as i lay back in sunset chair, the wood softly creaks, bunnies, two bunnies hop on by and by, a tall thin monolith structured like a vertical cross many miles back into the southwest mountain burns bright in the last cast lights of day, a green illuminated bug crawls on my hand, sienna thistle branches sway, they whistle in the bravado bass blow that is the wind’s breath. The wind is constant wash, through trees like lapping waves on ocean’s shores, not the water i was expecting, not the ocean i’d been running to, nonetheless i drown in serenity.
Splendor of sun’s setting hour is my own style, sunrise and sunset are my happiest betweens. The place in time it seems i belong, i breathe easy, when my song resounds serene, abounds.
Two more nights i booked, making my stay 3 days and 3 nights. I ask whether i abide in a tomb or heaven. The yellow green of south mountain is lustrous as ever, the distant trees looking soft and plush, the parma blues shading deeper into grey and nonexistence, invisible sounds and sights, improbable songs. I light an american spirit, a single emergency cigarette i’ve saved for over months now, smoking, sunset chair softly creaks, the birds sing the song, wind breathes into me, sounds are about the same yet the temple interior provokes silent vigil, i put out the stoge saving some smoke for later, i’m at the ends of new beginnings.
I’m not sure what the ‘ends of new beginnings’ means. Exactly at sunset the monolith of my sightful sees clearest, no matter the meaning. Experience is as God ordains, given we, our breathing-praise – do give to ways of the Spiritual, way of life is earthly heaven indwelling and hell metaphorical phantasms, hallucinations in seeing more than whats clearly revealed; in inner and out outer, for sunrise and sunset, yellow and blue, i find peace coalesced in green, the non-dualistic pure experience as God gives between, i give back with pleasant peasantry, writing an ever poesy in conversational piece.
Try and time again i attempt to close my notebook and unsettle at the bray of a donkey, watch the fuzz of cactus fall into a pointed desert shadow, gods and dogs howl, farm kids yell and play, chickens crackle and cluck eggs. I’m lost and i’m found. I pray. I reach into my right pant pocket, in the red i read that old fortunate fortune sweet cookie, it speaks to me it is most enjoyable to talk with you. I speak in inner happenstance, happen to glance and exchange looks with a soaring swallow, freely flying into the mouth of sunset enhanced. The mountains rim with red-gold, God brims, overflows, enhances a trance at what’s cleary told.