Samhain - A Posting on All Souls Night

10/31/07

Samhain - 2007

- Thoughts on the Train -

Though I’m waxing agnostic, I must admit that life is better for me when I sit, when I still, when I pray. Whether anyone is listening or not seems immaterial. Perhaps our evolved, mutated brain and its curious half wakefulness that is consciousness does better when it believes that tribe and clan extend into the clouds – into the mystery. There beyond life we hope are our ancestors sitting with a being more loving, more intelligent than our brightest human aspirations.

I no sooner proclaim agnostic tax exempt status for myself when I notice coincidences in nature. Or at least opportunities for some sort of connection to something deeper, some life force that is perhaps more science and biology than theology. I stop typing agnostic ramblings and go to the bathroom… I look up out the small window precisely as a hawk cuts like a dart through the air above me. But also through the flesh and ribs of my chest. Whether the hawk notices me or not, I notice. I connect with the mystery even if only briefly.

And I guess that’s the crux of being agnostic. Is anyone or anything beyond humanity actually listening, speaking, or in relation with us? I’m betting it is more likely that there is extraterrestrial life than there is a god in the narrowly defined image of the white man we created. I really want to be wrong. I want a relationship with my father. He is biologically alive in my flesh and blood through our shared genetic inheritance. But is there consciousness at the cellular level? He is alive in my memory, but I want more. I want my father to look out for me, I want my father to stop by for a beer, a bowl of ice cream and to see his wonderful grandsons. There is the hole in my heart I want to fill – my own sadness and loss around my father made painfully alive by the thought of how he would have loved them and how their lives would be better for knowing him. An ongoing relationship with my father, prayer and conversation with those who have gone before or some other(s), brings meaning to my life.

But as a newly initiated agnostic (there is no ceremony, no one comes to welcome you into this church) the thought that prayer is a one way conversation leads me away from the practice more often than not. However, and back to the point, my day is better, my temperament better when I pray, when I talk to other whether in my father, nature or some deified conglomerate entity.

I know there have been studies on the brainwaves of both monastics and practitioners of meditation and prayer. Without knowing the details, the short of it is that their brain activity and brain waves change. I would bet those who believe or seek stillness report what I experience when I do the same. More space to accommodate the chaos in life. A greater sense of connectedness to fellow humans. More joy. I’m tempted to read up on these studies, but then I realize what am I trying to prove? What I already know? That I’m happier when I slow down, incorporate ritual, stillness and invoke relationship with something and someone greater than myself.

Conan Malone

Floating Along Lake Michigan

Floating along lake Michigan

Jogging, knees creak a little, back stiff sure,
yet I’ve never floated so purely from step to step
round the corner, Michigan, Indiana, past the aquarium
and big sharks float into consciousness, clumsy, yet steady thoughts
just where the big rocks drop off and the lake starts, thoughts
in and out of the turquoise murk, avoiding the sun clear water
the bright light of day, where they’d be attacked, devoured
and short lived, brilliant, but short lived, they ease and sway
in and out of view, turquoise then black then blue, green
a perch or some fish more sharply finned, blue white and bold
kisses rocks, eats and lingers in the sun clear water, the sun whose soul streaks
through the water in vignettes, but gives up some ten feet down, calls me, but then
goes back to whenst it came, songs come up in ears that increase the bounce and float of my step, I fly as much as run, to see thoughts come and go in the turquoise murk, to see thoughts come and go in my mind and pre-mind, the rush of sensations that are not full thoughts, but chemical surge intuitions, brief ah ha’s not shaped by perch skin
clearly defined in the sun streaked turquoise water of my mind jogging
around the bend of the aquarium, Lake Michigan, July 26, 2007, Chicago.

Sipping Sage Tea in Bridgeview (waiting for Rick)
April 2007

April snow, rain, slush, shicago, I like it.


If I think too long on it or anything, I may change my mind. I will change my mind and not move to Chicago after ten years.

The same ghosts haunt me, no the same ghost haunts me here after all these years, but it has found me in Colorado as well. It is the ghost of no ghosts
that is the ghost of knowing or suspecting there is nothing, no point
no meaning or a meaning mundane, too mundane for a believer, but
I’m not a believer, am I?

I want to be, but I see belief in others and frequently it disgusts me, scares me - intolerance, self-righteousness failing to veil fear and doubt, and I recognize this fear and doubt as I know it myself.

I never did read letters from an existentialist, perhaps I will now… I feel I could descend into anger to mask depression which pushes out from within my skin or is it from outside of me to within? But at the same time I feel closer to an acceptance, not bliss, but acceptance of this. Capital “T” This and at the same time small “t” this, this and that, traffic, bills, Ronan’s dancing, Declan’s laughing, dreams of my father, resumes and cover letters, job search, house for sale in a worsening market, friends in Colorado and Chicago… human connection I think is my true religion, the god I’ve always sought, the Buddha in others. But at the same time I’m hard wired to be semi reclusive or at least to desire hermitage, and ten minutes into retreat I want to be with people again. I want space and then I get away, I dive within, watch my breath and pass out. Brief relief from the pressure of being in this world, but even as I type this I’m bored with myself and this Struggle, I think my struggle is no better than TV, no better than a drug - sugar, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine - to which I turn for a pickup or tone down, a cloudy respite, an altered state, but checking out never feels good afterwards.. From what am I trying to escape?

The problem is dualism I think – if I could finally accept that this life is it, all I got, whether there is a before or after, this is it, capital “IT”, and IT is good even when it is not good, that is IT is IT, this is why we are here whether sent by God or evolved from dinosaur or both, we are here to dive into April snow, melt into sinus pain, sink into sage tea, conversation, kefta kabob, shawarma, etc. … Rick has arrived.

Conan

dusk is a daily reminder of death

dusk is a daily reminder of death

may it be so sweet, death, as this moment, slightly darker, colder than the last,

colder than yesterday, yet golden on its edges, full of the scents of this world,
sounds of birds, rustling leaves and distant machines…

it is reassuring to think the moment comes when you are so tired in body
that death is welcomed, reassuring to a 37 year old newly terrified of his own mortality
and at this very moment, the Naperville Carillon sounds, the steel chimes of my father sounding in, gloriously rising and falling with the whim of the wind, black walnut
leaves merge with that of white oak, drying on the underside silver in the breeze, drying, dying preparing to fall at the season’s end.

may I be so fortunate to live long enough to tire in body to welcome this passing into heaven, rebirth or nothingness…

but at 37 with two beautiful sons, a wife with whom I’m falling back in love,
family close and a newly evolving world view (or at least a possible ease with living), death seems ultimate and profoundly violent, always too soon. too soon for the absolute agnostic who only recently revived his animist spirituality, became Buddhist and scarred his body with Celtic tattoo to forsake the Hebraic taboo of cleanliness, of preparedness for eternal salvation in lieu of truly living here and now, bartered earthly suffering in exchange for later reward there, not here. All this while questioning my manly ability to provide material wealth, forgetting the mundanity is the magic...

whether heaven or simple decomposition and decay, the beauty of this world in nature, in relationships, in occasional solitude, in words, in poetic philosophic interpretation of this accidental display, some solace some ease in embracing joy, finding joy, joy complex in its inclusion of all of life not escapist bliss, engagement of this world and all in it, the shrill flitting blue jay, the skittering chipmunk, my flesh and blood sons, my own elusive self, taxes and tollways, broken eggs, frivilous frustraions always about something else, to make peace with all things, all entities and sentient beings and non-beings through curious engagement, dialogue, dance and loving embrace. To engage the story of my life without becoming lost in it.

May I dance and embrace life fully to one day comfortably and confidently agree to leave it, knowing the whole while, ultimately I have no choice.