January - February 2018

　

I wonder if I am real.

I stand in the room of mirrors and I ask the monk in grey.


Am I real?
He says yes, but I wonder about him sometimes. He lives in my imagination after all, so perhaps his opinion is not to be credited with truth, but the Buddha once told me not to downplay the importance of the imagination. It is after all the origin of all real things.

I am a creature of my own imagination. I imagine myself to be a musician, a father, a husband, a friend, a gardener, a writer....all these seem real enough, but I have fooled myself in the past, so I am uneasy with assigning reality to any of my own ideas about who, or what I am.

The way people look at me often makes me very uncomfortable. They are looking at something that is real, but I can never tell exactly what they are seeing. I wonder, what am I to them? If I can convince myself of things untrue, then can I also convince other of these same fantasies? If so, then do my friends see anything real when they look at me, or have they the power to pierce the veil of my illusions and see something of me that even I am unaware of?

My secrets have secrets, as they say.

I wonder, does the monk in grey also have a room of mirrors, and does he go there to see a monk in white ? What do my dreams dream of ? Or am I simply mad, imagining agency and intelligence to etheric phantoms of my mind?

Just how powerful is the imagination? It seems a matter of life and death sometimes. Other times I dig my shovel into the warm soil of the garden, planting bulbs for the coming spring and the imagination seems as powerless as a gentle breeze. It seems irrelevant to a reality that does not care for monks in grey or needle toothed demons. The dirt beneath my fingernails and the rough texture of my labourer's hands might be the only thing in all the world I can truly believe is real.

A performer's life weaves fantasy into reality, but the blurred lines between the two are porous, and flexible. Perhaps, the barrier separating fantasy from reality is in itself, unreal. Maybe my hands, dirty from the day, are the gate through which my imagination enters reality, and their quiet dance upon the keyboard grants me this power to share my wonder, and my wanderings, with you.

　

***

The dancer is more real than the room she dances in
the colours of her spinning skirt bleed ink-like across the air
painting the room

her movements become the conversation of our silence
as we who watch, see the reflections of our own thoughts and feelings
mirrored in her expressions,

in the twisting and turning of her hips and hands and
the skin of her tattooed belly
and the fully clothed nakedness of her uninhibited movement
embarassing us in our own inhibited stillness

we cannot look away, we cannot help but look away

her beauty is too real to admit
more real than the room she dances in
the colours of her spinning skirt splash ink-like across the air
the dancer shames us with her shamelessness.

Like a child whose laughter is too bright
our old hearts break at the sound of such liberty
and we remeber a time when we,
maybe,
were that free.

***

I saw a Raven on the side of the road, down near the old stone bridge on the edge of town. I saw a Raven with a Rat in it's beak.

I saw Three White Herons overhead.

The lake at sunset.

At home I saw sunlight gleaming off a knife edge, painting white the wooden chopping board, and right beside it, the shadow painting black the same.

I heard the story of creation, as told to me by my eight year old son. Spirits who made the sky, the crust of the earth and the core. Spirits who made life, and another who made death, so that everyone would get a chance to rest.

My wineglass, filled and filled again, I overflow.

What is the difference between magic and reality?

Is that even the right question?

I saw the soldier with his head hung low, and the lady with her heart hid behind keys. I saw the Raven with a Rat in its beak. I saw Three White Herons, the lake at sunset. I heard the story of creation, and I tell myself, All these things are connected.

　

*

In the faces of children I see the story of the future. Their ideas, attitudes and experiences will inform their actions, which will echo through time as they too become history, and the future can be divined in the eyes of their next generation.

I saw one of my drum students today, a boy one third my age. He looked up at me and every white whisker in my beard, every sunwarmed line upon my face suddenly became visible to me through his eyes.

Yesterday I was not old, but today I am, and it is new and exciting to discover this. The problems of my youth are no longer my problems, the goals, desires and methods of my youth are passed, and today, in a renaissance of self, I laughed. How wonderful it is to be something new!

At last! At last I am not young. Marvelous! I can let go those troubles of my past that troubled me still, and look forward to new troubles, new challenges. Hell, a new way to sing the blues. Every door seems open again, as if somehow I am no longer the product of my past, but of my future. My future decisions will make me. My past decisions have done everything they can to make me what I am, but now it is my future that I will rely upon to inform me. I can already feel it pulling me, my future decisions being made, and their consequences rippling back.

I am typing in the kitchen, golden sunset light stencilling fern shadows on the walls, and all around me the sound of a breathing world, ready to be received.

***

　

In the late evening I sit down to play Setar and immediately a melody comes out, unheard of, played by someone with hands far more confident than mine. I am startled but I do not scare them away, I sit and let them guide my hands. There is someone inside me that doesn't share my insecurites, doubts, or fears. He plays so beautifully, so instinctively that I find myself listening to his song, but it is I who am being played.

Later, I look around in the room of mirrors, but I cannot find him there.

　

***

　

A sunset lake reflection,
a Sacred Ibis, a Black Winged Ibis, a Grey Heron, and an Egret upon the shore
A flock of Wood Ducks upon the water

The ache begins in the afternoon, an arthritic swelling of the senses,
a feeling of tension, inflexible
and by the morning
heartbreak has covered me.

A dead fox on the roadside
stretched out in the summer heat
its carnivorous beauty broken against the steel of human genius

Two Fairy Wrens playing in the shade as I sit beneath a tree
my stomach a sailors knot
the unruffled skies an affront to the storm in my tea cup

Oh how I want to feel good,
to be unburdened by the barbed wire and electric tape of the past
but it seems that growing up, and growing old and
growing out of these old clothes
takes more than good will
more than poetry
more than intentions and inventions and the genius of steel

For the carnivorous hunger of the the past does not lay broken by the roadside
does not fall discarded by the wayside
does not let go when we let go
but returns to us everyday
in every thought, borrowed or bought
commanding us to stay the same
to stay the course
to see it through
to hold on to fear though afloat with love we soar through an unruffled sky that seems an affront to the fireworks of our passion
　
A Plum Tree grown curled and cuddling against the monolith of a Red Gum

A conversation with an old friend, and cups of coffee between us mend
the swelling of the senses
the inflexible morning
and the heartbreak covering me

I pick my son up from school
with a harmonica in my pocket
and a book in my hand.

　

***

The floorboards greak and squin,
barefoot chilldrins dance and sing upon the
soarboards of the stage,
and even in the even light of a rehearsal,
the ordinary world is

lost

on

us

as a butterfly enters downstage right,
emerging irridescent from behind black curtains,
and floating upon an invisible breath so delicate
it feels like being underwater

so I hold my breath and watch.

I see it bubble hopping above the children
I see them, see the butterfly
and then, as if sunshine could be poured from a cup,
the room thus emblazoned
joy and wonder
　

the butterfly

flew over me

　

***

　

The boy drummer,
momentarilly distracted by the cricket crawling across the floor towards him
slips with sudden ease into the rhythm
which has
up until now been inconsistent
and
sometimes

fal

ter

ing

but which for a distracted moment
becomes itself completely
and forms a bond so utterly
to the harmonium song beside it
that the two are one and the song uplifted
and the father glances to his right
at the hands of his boy drummer
and the father smiles and plays and sings a little stronger
and when he stops and asks if they may play a little longer
we sigh, we swoon though seated
and then we cry out
for more.

***

Thank you
for considering my skill
a resource
of value
even if
it is only of value
to you.

***