It's Nick's birthday all week! Ghost Chapters From The Green Books #6 is a brand new installment.
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Ghost Chapters From The Green Books:
A Long Dream Of Two Hands - 4/27/20:
I cried myself to sleep last night, and woke up laughing this morning. I am lying in bed, biting my nails, plotting how to steal your Trump government stimulus check if it arrives before they figure out that you are dead. And then I remember the leftover taste of what I was reading just before I fell asleep. It has to do with giving you back into the great stream that is rushing on, Nick.
Let’s say I have a fish that learns to love the land. It hops out of the water and becomes accustomed to walking and breathing air. But eventually the river requires its return. I’m never fucking sure why, but it has to do with matter never being created or destroyed, and we are unwittingly caught up in this great recycling experiment, and I’m angry. You know that.
So the river takes back ‘my’ Nick. There is weeping and gnashing of teeth. From my perspective, standing on the bank, I am the one left behind watching you disappear into the shades of the stream, sliding into cool beams of light that flash off your silver back.
Curious time and space coordinates exist here on the bank, so I have only gotten glimpses of what the true situation is; the buoyant emptiness that reality is truly comprised of. The only power I have is in finding a way to give you back willingly into the water as it rushes on, pulling each of us into other narratives. I have to stop resisting.
I have been learning a lot about the river. When I am pulled down to the floor by the force of my grief I ask it to protect you. Fire pours out of me. I ask on my knees: keep him precious. Keep him safe, and buoyant. Take him. Love him. Treasure him. Use him to make a bubbling fountain. Fill him with light so I can find him.
In our last bed at Mount Sinai your head lay on my shoulder for nearly a week. Only a thread of breath kept you in place. I woke at 4:30 AM on your last day to find your tether gone. Untied. A magic trick that left your body exactly in place beside me. I am jealous that I could not witness you slip away from me. But you were so quiet. I hope that I was dreaming with you. Robert Graves says that all poetry is born at the edge of running water. Sluicing through watery gates is a delicious way to imagine your poem, you moving between here and nowhere.
Once it tastes the river again I presume the fish feels like it never left. It is simply reunited with its own slipstream, forgetting there ever was land or air. That was just a long dream of two hands that my fish slipped out of. Is it true that I can never find my fish because it has become the stream? Or will I simply have to change form in order to perceive you? But how do I enter the stream if I can’t breathe there? How will I find one particular Nick-fish in those vast rapids?
Here’s what I’ve learned, Nick: the present moment is the only portal you can slip through. The eternal present is that slice of moving water. The only way to enter eternity without forgetting and being taken downstream, is to jump in and go through. Through. Its always through. Not up or down. Not right or left. Through - like Alice walking into glass.
From the spot on the bank where I stand, if I open my eyes and keep my body and gaze perfectly still, light pierces my retinas. The glimmer is pure emotion. The longer my gaze rests the less I can find a difference between the shimmer and me. If I close my eyes and listen I hear the reverb rushing off the empty walls of eternity. I feel the water lapping against the bank, perfectly still and rushing. The rushing is its stillness. Oh! I have learned a Tibetan word for the marriage of stillness and movement, and the alternating evidence of the wave being the particle being the wave, but I have forgotten it this morning in our bed.
I am still performing foolish rituals to save you from the onward rush of time. Forgetting that it is us who carries it. The river has no such duty. Getting you down on paper is my gift. But I can forgive myself for the impulse to preserve you because you loved me. You loved me. And back here at the fort I will conceive new wickednesses. I will sob, and then wake up laughing, write, and sob again. I’ll go sit beside the river in silence, my mind looping on, and scoop it up in my hands just to taste the sweetness there.
(4/27/20: Total world pandemic cases today: 2,995,209, deaths: 207,009; Total US cases: 987,322; US deaths: 55,415.)
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Because it is a leap of faith to go into our work. There’s an invisible barrier that tells us not to take the plunge, but going in daily hurts less. Ive learned this swimming in the Long Island Sound. The longer you resist plunging in, the colder the water. It is also easier to meet the strange creatures of the deep in the safety of a group, which offers a special kind of charged silence.
Join us for one hour of focus during the chaos of the day. We are practicing serious self-compassion by showing up even on dark days. We meet on Zoom at 1:00 pm, EST. We leave our cameras on so it feels less lonely. We wrap up at 2:00. Those who are onto something just continue writing. Those who want to check in can chat.
Think of Writers Daily Dive as a safe landing place. We keep it a little loose. It doesn’t have to be stressful. You could use it as a silent place to think or meditate. But if you do want to write, you can use these images as prompts. I love writing from images. It gives me a structure. Write only what I can see. It's a great exercise for those of us who get lost in out heady thoughts - to stay in the image at all costs.
Please also read : A Suitable Vessel. This is where you can read installments from Ghost Chapters From The Green Books, about life in the aftermath of my husband’s death in 2020.
Also on offer is a running writers group that has been meeting in East Hampton for 9 years! We now meet on Zoom. It’s called the Writers Collective Out East. We write in-group for 10 minutes, and then give feedback to members on their submitted pieces of writing. We meet every Wednesday at 6:30 PM EST.
Thank you, Domi!
Beautiful Kara, thank you for sharing these gems for Nick’s week. Really felt the power of the river, within and without.