I
One continuous mistake: to be the good son, good brother, good friend, good father. To go to work, work hard, eat right, exercise, rake the leaves and fix the leaky pipes. To row the canoe, coach third, give up my seat. To sit zazen agreeably. Not to attempt to be more than a friend to the woman whose smile is heart’s ease itself, not to cross the line but to say “this far and no farther.” To attend to the wise and tend the small. To hold my tongue, hang fire, turn the other cheek. To be prudent, reasonable, patient, forgiving. To be nice, to try.
One continuous mistake made with perfect single-mindedness: but if that woman ever again says she hates dressing up to go alone to the symphony, I will tell her that I will dress up and go with her, gladly. Or, if undressing is required, then there, too, I will say, I am your boy.
One continuous mistake: these hands that have done so many nice, pathetic, futile things; these hands that long to bring their emptiness to her form, to be mistaken there continuously.
II
“There is no other way of life than this way of life.”
I wait for your knock upon my door, concoct reasons to stand before yours.
I hang on your words, in a gush of triteness tell myself stories about us.
What might we do that you have never done before? How long might I hold you before you felt safe, before you never again want to beat on the windows in despair of life’s unbearable sameness?
I listen as you call me your buddy, tell me you cannot make up your mind. Clichés and soap-opera and illicit, unwelcome yearning.
This is my true nature, to be a ghost attempting to unlock delusion with delusion.
I know there is no other life for me.
III
“We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress.”
This morning I awoke to an image of you beneath trees. I was not there. Your lips did not part for me. Your desires did not spell my name.
Thus I come closer to you, little by little.
When I have abandoned all plans, all desire, will I be closer still? Even now I search for you in the heart’s bloody chambers. Thankfully, the blood is only mine. You are safe elsewhere beneath the oaks, the cool sycamores.
I care for you this much.
“Bowing is a very serious practice. You should be prepared to bow, even in your last moment. . . .”
Here in my final moments I find myself still falling. For you. At your feet. For that.
I peeled my heart to lay it at your feet, then slipped upon it, a would-be monk gone Chaplinesque.
Hungry for the space between your lips, for something to light the heart’s dim cell, I offered you a few words, dark beer, jokes and self-deprecation. Desire’s pratfall.
You did not laugh but offered me a story. The story was a cliff. There was a sign at the top. It read: jump.
I watch myself fall from where I lay sprawled foolishly before you, my heart going green, yellow, brown. From very far away I hear my true nature calling.
Quickly, tell me your story again, that I might learn at last to bow.
V
“If it really does not matter, there is no need for you even to say so.”
It doesn’t matter: it is all right. By which I mean it is not all right. By which I mean that it is all right.
Where was I since we became friends? Dismantled in love, away. Thinking you thought me awful. Your cynic. No time even for coffee together. You thinking I thought you bothersome. Sometimes my therapist. Then suddenly this. “You ask me something I can’t answer right now.” It is all right.
I sit here buried in fantasies, daunted, unable to find the off switch. To walk away. Knowing what I ought and mustn’t but writing this, if not to sway you, then why? Bathos, banality: wearing sin like a ring of beauty, dreaming with tears in my eyes. Don’t think twice, it’s alright.
I will draw back into the proprieties of friendship. How are you this morning? How was your trip? Want a Good & Plenty? The right thing to do, but not all right.
Is it cruel for me to write you and want to talk to you? But what hurts more: emptiness or overfullness? Even if dumped and left to rot, aren’t the apples what the trees had to do? But again, to stand at your door every day with more poisoned fruit can’t be right.
So it is all right. Of course it is all right. By which I mean I think maybe nothing is ever all right. By which I mean I can’t imagine it could ever be entirely not right. By which I mean it matters.
VI
“Even though you do not do anything, you are actually doing something. You are expressing your true nature.”
We do nothing. Day after day we realize our true natures. Our nothing covers everything I do. I remain sitting quietly in my room. To leave, to move, to think would be unhappiness. I expect nothing. I am the stone for which the trees are just passing through.
I write you letters, this letter. Schopenhauer wrote, “If you want to know how you really feel about someone take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you first see it on the doormat.” Were I doing anything, I would be wondering what impression the arrival of these words made on you.
I leave work early, leaving you a message that says nothing. Before you go home, you leave one for me. The next day, although Saturday, I come to work, wanting to see if there is a message from you. It says almost nothing, says to call if I like. So I leave a message for you, and later I call but do not reach you. We are doing nothing. We are expressing ourselves.
Last night, I listened to your latest message, over and over. I listened to you tell me nothing in a voice so soft, so gentle, so small that when you spoke my name it was not sound but a blown kiss. Or so I thought, so I wished to believe, but trying to do nothing. To hear you express nothing.
Your eyes, your demeanor, your true nature: I am not able to handle such complicated texts. I am stuck on your voice like a child learning to read. I know only the present tense and have forgotten what the word “friendship” means. No child ever wanted to understand so difficult a text. No child ever had so much trouble expressing himself. No child has ever been capable of doing nothing.
VII
“These difficulties gave me some experience, but it meant nothing compared with the true, calm, serene way of life.”
We have shared private jokes, meals, a relationship rich in innuendo. We glanced away, stepped back. We showed each other what parts of ourselves were just the disguise. Now, on whatever log I squat, you’ll recognize me.
You wrote letters, leaving blanks where the terms of endearment belonged. I praised your indirection, you my indiscretion. You kissed my shameful hand. I kissed your hair. You left me alone with your purse once, and I didn’t take or touch anything.
I am wondering: what the hell’s the deal with serenity anyway?
Tonight only one child is up late, wearing his usual disguise, doing whatever he is doing. He is stacking words like blocks and calling it poetry. He is playing peekaboo with what he pretends doesn’t matter. Now he is recalling how, when he left you alone with his heart once, you touched but didn’t take a thing.
VIII
“By purity we do not mean to polish something, trying to make some impure thing pure. By purity we just mean things as they are.”
Because I do not listen for you, I hear you everywhere. Only if I look for you is this purity broken, only then do you vanish. Because I do not attempt to see you, touch you, I have no fear of losing anything.
True: at night I think of you until I become too excited to sleep. My thoughts many nights are impure. Night after night I polish these thoughts with no desire to purify them.
Desire was here before I felt it. Then I felt it and made its sounds. Now things with me are just as they are.
Perhaps one day I will find you at my door: how can it be otherwise when you are already and always here? You who cast no shadow upon this purity that burns so completely it leaves no trace. You whose absence means you will never leave me.
If you do come, you will not find me anywhere.
“Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment by moment, is the life of ‘form is form, emptiness emptiness.’”
form is form &
life is short &
emptiness surrounds
in the quiet
bar-dark, dark
beer after dark
& you laughing
growing quiet
telling me
about your day
fragments
of your life
shared with plates
of food
another round
when it comes
when you lean
toward me
smile, reach
to touch
my arm
it is almost
enough