Tiny Revolutions №128: Certain Shiny Bits

some poetry + come to my next sound bath 🔔

Georgia O’Keefe, Canyon with Crows, 1917

I was sick for most of February. Hormonally sick (😫) for the first half, and then sick sick for the second (an insidious respiratory virus that slowed me down for weeks). Drag! It was slow season for Zen center work and I had high hopes of being a motherfucking creative genius and all of that. You know how it is. But alas, I never really got it going.

And now here we are at the end of March and we’re back in our annual spring ango, a 90 day Zen practice intensive that will keep me running until the end of May. Which is kind of a pain in the ass, and kind of a relief. I love being tested, and that’s what an ango will do. Push you beyond your comfort level and show you what you’re capable of when you’re doing it for the benefit of all living beings, and when rest is not an option. It’s full of joy, too — this year I am an assistant teacher and next year I’ll be a co-teacher — and I love, love, love diving deeply into dharma and practice and sharing it with others. It is such intensely fulfilling work.

And yet we’re only two weeks in and I’m already tired. I’m doing some client work outside of the center, too, and also all the regular life things and dang, it’s a lot. It doesn’t leave much time for my usual existential rambling. Which, again, not a bad thing. It's nice to have some built-in structure to inhabit, to decorate in whatever way I can. So yeah, right now that’s my main creative practice. Doing my best to be expressive within the confines of my day-to-day routine.

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Below I’m sharing some pieces I wrote over the past year in the Zen Writing Workshop, which we do on the third Saturday of the month at Angel City Zen Center. Speaking of being expressive within the confines of your reality, these are pieces born from prompts, constraints, and showing up in a room and writing whatever comes through. Some of the material I generated myself, and some of them are found poems I wrote by assembling little bits of other people’s work. Our next one is Sat, 4/21. Join us! It’s a lot of fun and a pretty unique experience as far as workshops go. Suitable for writers and non-writers alike.

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1
If you listen long enough to the crows, you can’t help but come away with the idea that it’s all just a game that goes on and on forever. Life occurring, obstacles arising, tricks and strategies and alliances to surmount them, a lot of impassioned caws and matter-of-fact clicking. Silence and pondering, maybe a shoulder to perch on or an ill-behaving human to target and brood over. Or not. Who am I to say I know a crow’s business?

What I can tell you is that sometime in the past week or so, a hawk has shown up on our block. Which is not surprising, being the block is chock full of other critters, including skunk, squirrels, possums, coyotes, and this one black cat who wears a gold Cuban link necklace.

The hawk is different, a different kind of imperious than a crow. Its cries are piercing and from a great height. The better from which to see the prey, I suppose. I haven’t seen this new character yet, but I hear it, imagine it surveying the urban landscape so full of discarded whippet canisters and empty cans of Modelo. It’s a place of abundance, Echo Park. Many varieties of experience, including avian. You hear Canadian geese a lot too. Bird giants all around us.

When I lived in Atlanta there was a big red tail living in the oak tree in my dad’s backyard, and there were also barred owls, a.k.a. hoot owls, which make a really crazy noise that sounds more like it comes from a land animal.

I used to listen for overlap. How do all these birds interact with each other? Are the owls and hawks in competition over the tastiest rodents? Or do they each have a lane they kind of stick to? Is there a hierarchy? Do the crows stay clear of their bird of prey brethren? Is their food easier to find and that’s why they’re more trickster-y, because they can be? These are questions I could probably find answers to, but it’s more fun to wonder. Why are some humans more trickster-y than others? Why are some all business, imperious and predatory, and others mostly in it for the LOLs?

Do hawks lol? I read a memoir about a woman who worked with goshawks and I gotta say, there did not seem to be a lot of shenanigans in that world. Wilderness, yes. Violence, yes. But few giggles.

But again, what would I know about a hawk’s business? I am curious though, I can wonder. I also wonder about all the birds I am not noticing here at the house on Kent Street. The ones who also roost right outside our windows, but make less of an impression.

Are their songs softer or am I just attuned to the most distinct and powerful kinds of animals? What is it about me that I’m only picking up on certain shiny bits?

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2
The shadows agreed to build me an office and thank god, I’m tired of this one, I need something more mystical, where I can play with my utopias and hells, and hopefully there will be a balcony where, when I get tired and tip over from childlike to into immature, I can commune with the crows and take a smoke break because after all, one cigarette has never failed to change everything.

It’s the perfect time to move heavy objects here at the end of the industrial age and on the precipice of something different. I don’t know what will happen but I do know that I am ancient and good and that the absurd miracle of the earth has always kept us in a state of wonder, with tropical storms and torrential downpours, yellow cobwebs and cosmic sunsets.

It may be that I am trying to experience life through gritted teeth, which is so emo of me, but what can I say? It all rings true. We’re all just trying to figure things out, even in the presence of stressful and enticing loud bangs that penetrate my bones a little. Maybe it’s the weather!

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3
I want a crisp white button down and the smooth, unblemished limbs of my 20s. I want a home sauna and central air conditioning and eternal life for my dog, or maybe she just dies exactly when I do so we can go together. I want a pedicure and time enough to watch all the British crime dramas in peace. I want cold brew and sparkling conversation. I want multiple international trips per year. I want radiance and vitality and to remember to feed myself before I get hangry. I want to call my mom, who is dead. I want coffee with my grandma, who is also dead, in her breakfast nook every Sunday morning.

I want an armful of gold bangles. I want better teeth. I want to buy all my friends houses. I want to write more. I want to talk about it. I want to never again see footage of someone being killed. I don’t want to have to kill mice or bugs, even roaches. I want everybody to live. I want to be in service of life always.

I want to return to the unvanquished certainty of my youth, where I thought if I just did everything the way you supposed to it would work out the way you wanted.

I want to stop suspecting that for some people, that actually is how it goes.

I want a perfect quesadilla and to speak fluent Spanish. I want to drop out of society and live the salt life. I want to be untroubled by complex moral issues. I want to know if I actually mean this. I want to know why I’m like this, why any of us is like this. I want to know if I can smoke one cigarette per day and not die of cancer. I want to end cancer. I want to be seen. But maybe not really seen, that seems intense. I want to know what the druids knew. I want to know what a fox knows, and a fly, and a rhinoceros.

I want to know what you want. I want to know what I want, and why I think this matters. I want to know if it does matter. I want to stop negging myself. I want to neg other people more. I want to have a raucous fuckin’ party. I want everyone to leave. I want everything to be OK. I want it all to be over. I want to feel like it’s all just beginning though. I want you. You and me and everyone we know, and everyone else besides that. I want it all, just not right now.

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4
This isn’t a masquerade
I’m tapped in like a radio
I’m lounging down the motherfucking wall
Congratulating myself for all these impulses unfollowed,
Inhabiting this liminal fucked up space
It’s amazing that a place like this exists
Where we lust after bloodlust
And fix or not fix all our broken parts
Comprehending things fully is not an option
And I’m scared but I listen
Because the things I hold onto don’t always help
I don’t want to be drowsy or demolished
I just want to hear the bell ring
I’m like a dog off leash, testosteroned up and killing freely
Getting a wild high from transgressive acts
Probably not the best upper, admittedly
But I’ll never wonder if I should have been more rebellious or more forklike
I’ve evolved over many big bangs to glow in the dark
I urge you to look more closely
I’m not powerless as I seem

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🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

A few weeks ago my brilliant friend Robert Holliday and I joined forces to put on our first sound bath, and we’re gonna do it again on April 19th at 3pm at Groundfloor here in Echo Park. We’re billing it as “something that is technically a sound bath, only a little bit weirder, more mysterious, and alive. Think reverb, relational meditation, and ASMR.” Come through and support your girl!

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Oh, and two recent talks of mine on the ACZC Podcast:

Hot Flash! (Energy) — A pep talk of sorts on finding sustainable energy in an exhausting world. What’s the difference between grinding and joyful effort? Can we know a good use of our energy when we find it?

Chad (Zen & Dating) — A candid look at modern dating as an endless opportunity for working with compassion. Should we give people the benefit of the doubt or is that just a recipe for getting let down…again.

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Before I go! I need to plug two very cool projects from friends of Tiny Revolutions.

The multi-talented Matthew Sherling has a new book out, a lovely slim volume called Cultivating the Soulscape, with some wise observations and guidance for tending your headspace more intentionally. In his words:

“If you do resonate with this framework, you can go through it in your own way, and if it helps you like it does me, you can see it as a strange voyage, a poetic, personal transmutation, a creative alchemy, a beautiful art project, a romance with reality, a new type of intimacy with youself, and, yes, a fruitful experiment.”

Get it here.

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Jay Bushman, a stalwart at my Thursday morning Writing Circle who has done a lot of really cool experimental media work, has a new project launching on Kickstarter that I’m super excited about:

Sleepy Hollow, 1998 is “a cozy, nostalgic reimagining of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, delivered to your mailbox as letters, sketches, and artifacts from the era of cassette tapes, flip phones, and zines.”

Get notified when it goes live.

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Thanks for reading, as ever.

😘

Sara

p.s. If this resonated, tap the heart or share it with someone who’d dig it.

p.p.s. Some other shiny bits from my Sublime library. Use the code TINYREVOLUTIONS for 20% off a paid subscription.