Searching for truth, she found a banana peel.

Right or Left, the other is wrong.

Carpe diem.

We are truth seeking itself and discovering their are unreachable voids.

So why me? In my life, I’ve tried to embody a commitment to personal growth. The success and failures on that road are the perspective I bring. Some things I’m proud of, first-generation American (my father is from the DR) – the first person in my family with a college degree; key leadership roles in several start-ups; over 25 years as a software contractor; over 30 years of men’s work and personal therapy; a certified co-active coach since 2010; volunteer with Veterans-Healing-Veterans since 2013 – helped steer it in its early days, responsible for facilitator training, started up a program in a second prison; over 50 nights on a Suicide and Crisis Line; on my third marriage – which is both failure and success; successes and failures as a parent; left several companies early because I was too impatient, insubordinate, or careless; profited from several IPOs and buyouts but never enough to get rich; ten-time Burner as Playa Coach; – and sadly, I can’t speak Spanish. I’ve left out a lot but not bad for someone from a broken alcoholic family with a learning disability who barely passed high school.

This morning
Taking a few moments in the hot tub
To check into silence
I notice the mind is like
Empty space.

Empty space we are told roils in disquiet;
Creating in each moment an

Endless sea of virtual particles.
Almost, existing – popping in and out –
Even colliding.

Sitting there, unattached to
Popping,
Colliding,
Persistent and effervescent
Thoughts coming and going.
There is a place that feels unmoved.

Like empty space, something sits unmoved.

I sometimes imagine this is the real me,
It is not.

It is the timeless anchor,

The same everywhere
In everything

in nothing,

Nothingness that roils unmoved.

I am not it.
It manifests me.

I was let go from my job last week.

Compatibility issues.

And it is true.
I was not compatible with them.
I wasn’t going to change so I tried to change them

They were not interested.

I did my work, great things for them,

But I also hid over in my corner and played only when I had to.

I never felt appreciated,
The dominant energy was Hack.
I resisted it.  

I didn’t know how to bend it. 

Sometimes I joined the hack.
We all paid the price.
By the time I accepted this I was in two deep to let go.

Nonetheless, it was a blow.
I am applying for new jobs.

I’m sad but hanging in.
I feel a bit desperate,
I can’t afford to go without income.

In the ideal world, I could answer truthfully,
Why did you leave?
Incompatibility, they with me — and me with them.

We danced for a time,

But bad choices were made.
I felt it from the beginning,
I felt obliged to try and make it work.

I told myself, recoup the investment,

Stay for a year, fall over the cliff.

And I did — fell right over that cliff.
Each day after got harder and the mood

Unhappy.  I must have shown even

If I hid when I thought it mattered.

But, now I’ve let go of all that.

Skin Graft

I once witnessed a skin graft.
It was for my job.  In the
O.R. is not like on TV.
The smell of cauterized flesh and
Sight of blood and guts are very real.
It changed how I see the world.

Three surgeons wielding their instruments.
Nurses, anesthesiologist, technicians.
All comporting themselves professionally.
No Grey’s Anatomy T.V. serial this exercise.
Intensity, intention, focus.
No room for error.

She lay on her left side,  
Bare from the waist up on the O.R. table.
A beauty with red hair, and
Left arm crushed in some
Unfortunate accident.

From her back
The junior M.D. prepares
A six-inch piece of
Her skin behind shoulder.

At her arm two practitioners
Each ready at the
Four-eyed microscope prepare the
Ground where they will plant.

I admire her red hair and
Milk-white skin and
Perfect breasts and
Wonder if her arm can be whole.
The two on each side of her arm are
Hard at work moving this and that
Invisible under the microscope.

Meanwhile, the jr. surgeon having
Delicately freed a steak
Now removes this pound of flesh
Revealing as the elastic skin pulls back
Muscles and tendons like a
Grey’s Anatomy drawing.

The steak delivered begins
Its long process of reconnecting.
They work together one blood
vessel at a time.
There is no relaxed banter,
It is place/stitch,
Place/stitch, place/stitch,
Tick tock, tick tock, for hours.

Her back quickly sown and bandaged
While the two labor on, earning
My respect and any dollars that
Might also come.

Merry Christmas!  

Sitting alone waiting for my love to return.  
I feel sadness.
And I think of infinity
...
The heart can expand to love the entire world.  
Maybe that is why the story of Jesus' love is so compelling to folks.   

Do you remember when LJ was the hot place to be?
...
Long since ...

The Western/Judaic God is acyclic and unnatural — which it must be to be ultimate.

Did the early Jews feel alone and singular such that they sought an unnatural god, a god not embedded or connected to the natural world?  A god unlike the other gods, an uber god.  An uncountable god rather than the countable of a cyclic god embedded in nature.

The null-god is both a/cyclic.