Mala beads, poetry and spiritual guides

The sun is finally out, and for about 40 seconds this morning, I felt that cool throbbing pleasure of summer; the bright light of blue sky and green trees reaching right into you and smoothing everything down, the way that first joint used to oh so long ago. Right? I’m lying. Of course, I wouldn’t know. Like the easy enjoyment of summer, that was a long time ago. Or was it? I keep hoping I’ll remember how to have fun, or maybe I will sustain these moments of awareness. Maybe that’s all you get – a few brilliant flashes, like the best view you pass by doing 70 on your road trip. There it is…and it’s in the past.

I’m spending some of my week off trying to recover from a bad cough which seems to cling on, annoyingly. I’d like to blame it on dust, or global warming, or volcanic ash, but I think the truth is that one too many people coughed on me at my work, on the tube, passing by on the street. Probably if I didn’t wake up at 3am, restless and anxious, strange structural dreams forming a barely remembered road map to somewhere I don’t know yet, I’d get better faster. Of course.

So I can’t say I’m enjoying my holiday. Too much is going on, yet not enough.

I should be doing what I am meant to be doing. At the moment I’m working on wresting control of myself back from whatever self-destructive elements seem to be fighting me. I’m mostly winning, I guess. I think I need to put flags on my victories. That might make it better.

So on to doing something more absorbing than idly turning over my neuroses in my hands, while I watch the birds fly past, and listen to the water filling the washing machine. I do wonder what it is that stops me though. Is it fear of not measuring up? Sheer laziness? Exhaustion? Depression? Wishing I knew for sure you were out there? Patti Smith said we choose our spiritual ancestors, and they walk with us. I think I need to make friends with these genius sparks that I’ve turned into shadows. Again.

Ok, Patti, let’s talk. Help me out here. A little Whitman, a little Baudelaire, a little Zola, Camus, de Beauvoir, Aristotle, Annie Proulx, Emily Dickinson, Castenada. Oh a whole list. Oscar Wilde. Radclyffe Hall. Mary Daly. Lorca. The divine Lorca, who kept me company all last August. Hard to write about poets while listening to the grating lyrics of Sting. No offense, Mr. Sting. I like your music. I like The Police. But I think I’m looking for a line that isn’t meaningless and trite, one that I won’t remember over and over in my head like indigestion.

Maybe that’s the problem. Searching for numbness. Dulling the pain, the fear, the needling anxiety that one nice meal with wine would probably dispel. But that’s it, isn’t it? The dissolution of pain spreads it around, like a cloud, like an oil spill, like the bad smell in the train tunnel. The source becomes too hard to identify.

Of course, when you find the source, or you know where it is, there’s not that much you can do with it. Is there? I watched an interview this morning, and when the person being interviewed talked about something they liked, they twisted one of the beads on the mala bracelet they were wearing. I wondered why. Was it to acknowledge and escape attachment? Or to gain energy to admit desire and individuality without fear and pain? Or was it just a nervous tic? No, it didn’t happen again. It seemed a very deliberate action.

Silence and meditation are necessary. I can’t create in a frizzly, electrically static state of mind. Or can I?

I know I have a long string of mala beads. Maybe it’s time to ask for some spiritual help. Lorca, Lama, here I come.

Am I truly this dull?