Norman Allan : the story for Ezra
book two: secrets
chapter eleven: from spiralling ecstatically this...
a Snit with Ezra

e.e.cummings:

from spiraling ecstatically this

proud nowhere of earth's most prodigious night
blossoms a newborn babe:around him,eyes
-gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease-
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole

perhapsless mystery of paradise)

mind without soul may blast some universe
to might have been,and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child; nor shall
even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother's smile

- whose only secret all creation sings.

This poem, by e.e.cummings, I love it! We'll come back to it... I love it love it love it     
but first
let me speak of Ezra...
  
If you've read this memoir from its start (which is not necessarily what I would recommend). you will know that Ezra has an important place in my story, life, heart.


Ezra busks, playing Bach on the streets, dancing some, barefoot, all over the world, but particularly in Toronto, and he earns handsomely, a whiteman's wages. He has paid off his house.
    Have I sent you yet to meet Ezra, on-line, in Val Peter's video, "The Happening"? 20 minutes of Bach in Kensington market. And Mark, the illustrator, non-illustrator of TAiS, painting the pavement round him.
    

my friend Miguel's favorite poem of mine is
Ezra speaks of suffering : oh do go read it
and come back!

Ezra also speaks of his immediate connection with the divine. (That's where we started this story.)
Ez speaks with God, everyday. "Everyday I say,
'Thank you God', and God answers, 'Thank you Ezra'. " 

Sometimes Ezra speaks of himself as a prophet...

Last summer (2015) Ezra sent me into the city streets to become "a painter of the city, a painter of the people." It was a wonderful experience. I was going to start the final volume of Norman Allan: the story for Ezra, book three: towards joy with a chapter on God in the Tree, and indeed  we will go there in a moment. But first a vignette... Last summer Ez and I sitting on the porch... discussing God, and it turning into a bit of an argument as Ez asks me to, "Define God," and then as I make a start, immediately interrupted."God is..." (Ezra, and any of us, can, at times, be overbearing)
    God, for Ezra is personal (as mentioned - they chat). And God is inspirational, and all good. And I realise that I use the term(s), the concept of the divine, in at least two major, different, ways. When speaking in a Native American manner of/to the creator, I am using that inspirational reference. But just as often my concept of the divine is of the all and everything - alpha and omega. So, now, then, Ezra and I are sort of arguing, and Ezra says, "Things go better when you agree!"     Absolutely! I realise immediately. Things seem, feel, smoother when I just listen to Ee - so I tried that that last week, and yes...

and I went into the city to paint.

Go thou to the city. Be an artist of the streets, of the people. "Show your work and let people see it. Put out a hat." And in Book Two:Chapter 6: the substance of Life, and Painting the City I've documented the first few outings, including this below...

Ezra and I at the corner of Augusta and Oxford....

Ez says, "Painting me a tree. I see God in the trees."
     Across the road from where we sat by Wanda's Pie...
is a tree. Ee smoked his cigarette... and I drew
the tree across over on the west side of Augusta.

"That's beautiful," said Ezra, "but I don't see God. Don't see the light."
      I crossed the street and sat beneath the tree.

"Beautiful. But where is God?" asked Ezra.
"I, I see God in the tree, in the bark,
when I look. In the light,
when I look in the shade."

                                   so

"Ah. There is God in the tree," said Ezra.

    In the Waite tarot pack,
    I have read of the Tower...
    a description that spoke
    of the flecks
    of fire, light,
    round the lightening struck tower
    as being the Hebrew letter "Yod",
    
    for Jah,
    flecks of God light

God in a tree
in the city

a movement towards joy

                   around him,eyes
-gifted with every keener appetite
than mere unmiracle can quite appease-
humbly in their imagined bodies kneel
(over time space doom dream while floats the whole

perhapsless mystery of paradise)

isn't that, aren't these words of e.e. cummings... isn't that the cat's whiskers ?   Sue Reynolds brought cummings back to me a few years gone. She gave us a cumming's piece as a prompt to one of her Inkslinger workshops... [was it "Buffalo Bill"?]

well, I got into comparing myself... the selected anthology I read, out of 150 or so poems that I read, I noted (on the back inside cover) thirteen to revisit... and thought, I have as many fine poems. It's just that he is innovative... he helped create the milieux in which we now live, think, write... and then I read "from spiralling ecstatically this..."

it awed me... and that's a context for or a segue into another story, and another snit... that being that... Sue's sweetheart, J. Doer, dissed me! dissed me like I have never been dissed...   blew me away (like a piece of shit)... see footnote (Doer).

so at a tangent, again ("segue" they say) ... in the metta practice that Mel gave me... Metta is the Buddhist "loving kindness practic." in which you recite a ritual invocation of well being, first for yourself:      then for a loved and esteemed person, who you envisage sitting to your left:      then for an anybody, someone you feel neutral towards, across from you:       finally for an "enemy" or a "difficult person", envisaged to your right hand side. The object is to feel equal good will for each category, and you will know when you have succeeded: when your heart opens you will feel a deep ache, says Mel. (I've written of this in chapter three, "Dr. Allan's Medicine Show", in a page on healing rituals.)

"may Doer be filled with happiness and well being
 may Doer be free from malice envy disdain, anxiety worry
            and all affections of the heart and mind
 may Doer rejoice in the happiness and well being of all sentient beings
 may Doer be at peace, at ease"

I asked Sue of something she said her teacher said... and her email reply...

"I think what I quoted," she said, "was: 'Our work is to learn to hold ourselves in warm regard, in spite of our very human failings.'

Cheers!"

Sue again

from spiralling ecstatically this ...

It is now the summer of 2016, and Ezra back in Toronto for a couple of months.

We were sitting on the "deck" in back, night time, a few weeks back, early June, for the lilac was in bloom. "Paint me this," said Ezra.
     "Ah, the night time lilac." . Yes, I could see how to do that.

I have been reading "from spiralling ecstatically..." reading it to every one, anyone. It is as beautiful as any words I know, so sometimes I'll read it two, three times.: i'd like to set it to music .. Oh, so it would be another afternoon, on the deck, with Ez, I read the cummings "spiraling" to Ezra, two, perhaps starting a third time.. . Ezra said, "While you were reading these someone's words, I was here, here listening to a bird chirp, to a mosquito's hum. These things are beautiful, Krishnamurti says..."     I felt dissed. I felt pissed! Then there was another put down, yes, and what was that?
      in the cafe, we were sitting, with Jan (a new friend. Jan loves my poetry, esteems my painting as much as I, and now it seems we've mended her chronic neck and her low back pain) and Ezra says, "And you talk about yourself as a scientist. I don't think you are anything special as a scientist."
      Hmm.. It felt like a stream of put downs that week. And it got me thinking, not happily: more obsessively, ranking myself again, again... back to the "genius" conundrum. Am I special, and so what. And the obsessing ran thus, this time... (Sorry to bore. I'll try to be brief.)

Oh, and my friend Nick, who was as bright as I at school, ended up on the roadside... Brightness, cleverness, brains don't necessarily bring happiness at all. Ranking yourself won't help neither!

~ I think my body of work as a painter as as beautiful, as fine as any Canadian: as wonderful as Tom Thompson or Arthur Shilling oeuvre, i do. However, It is not innovative like Norval Morrisseau (our one Canadian world class painter, because of that creation of a genre).
~ And I think my poetry as fine as any Canadian's I know (and here none of us are particularly innovative, like ee cummings who with his peers created the field of poetry in to which we speak.. oh, i've just realised recntly that Leonard Cohen's lyrics (not his poetry) is stunning... is Elliot and everything what Leonard has done for song.
~ And now a days, since writing TAiS, I think my prose important (in a Canadian context: and though it is a small body of work, (three of the short stories and some of the sketches are special), and it's a little more innovative then many of us up here in Canada.)
~ And, if I think of clearly, while my healing practice is not "innovative", I may be as fine a doctor as any on the planet, maybe. (And given my association with Pomeranz and all, I probably know as much about the science underlying acupuncture as anyone. And as much about the science underlying homeopathy. Possibly as much about chiropractic as anyone? and so what so what so what!)
~ however, as a scientist, as a thinker, i am innovative! though, again, it's unknown work... all my work is virtually unknown...

I recall Richard Hemming back in the early nineteen ninties 1990s saying how it is the unknown poet, Baudelaire undiscovered, that is the most romantic of figures...
      Enough with the romantic, Lord. Let me be of service,' cause....

enough already. Ah! that's (shouting enough already at God) what Ezra said Isreal meant: Jacob wrestled with the angel, demanding a boon of God, and was given the name Israel, "fights/wrestles/contends with God"

So, the (unknow) science (work) your Baudelaire is enormous. (You read of that in book one and two.) A biggish bit whole new science : 21st century bioquantum. And Mendel's sweatpeas were lost for 35 years. Eweida's dot blots have only been buried in obscurity for 25ish years so far. gnhi it's five years on.
     It is as a scientist that my work is innovative. So in the context of my snit with Ee, I was reckoning that as a scientist I am (though unknown) somewhere between Mendel and Darwin.
     And then the megalomania went: who are the greatest geniuses (of the post classical world). They are Bach, Shakespeare, Einstein.
     And who is greatest genius at more than one thing, at two things? Probably Shakespeare (as a playwright and a poet).
     And who is the greatest genius at three things? Surely Michaelangelo, the painting, sculpture, and the architecture. (His dome for St. Peter's was the largest ever built.)
     And who is the greatest genius at more than three things? My God, it could be me.

So in my snit I was reckoning that my genius might place me somewhere between Darwin and Michaelangelo. (God forgive me: and bring me audiences.) And yes, I am ashamed of my conceit..

But speaking of this to Ezra earned me no rewards. Several times this boast and swagger have been turned back at me as unattractive... as un everything. Oh no no no: there was a great reward! "I know a scientist," said Ezra. "I will introduce to you, Michael." Yes ad Ezra found me a wonderful friend ....

a few days later I found Ezra in the annex

oh these drawing are from last year in the annex - when I briefly painting in the city...

Trinity St. Paul's: is this Bloor and Major?

a bench by the curb

stumbled in, Ian,four sheets to the wind...
but I've lost where i wrote this once, already, repeat it I hate it repeatingt what what t
"Ian" a drunk mid thirties? lean lurch hunched (somewhat) shambles drunk s in
archidrunk    two beers in his rear pockets   though he's barely standing
Ez recognize, addresses, "Ian," kindly...
"Ez," slur-say Ian. Ian the pianist, isolated,
he had, he had perfected Beethoven's piano concerto's (check that, there... the fifth is the Emppeer's
drunk drunk

"Ez you've got to help me..."
"Of course: you get sober enough, and later this week we'll busk together..".

oh it was sad Ian      may Ian be blessed
and I saw myself there
in the helpless heaving seas
floundering,
"Norman , are you floundering..."

oh, and while we are praising Ezra, let's give him the last word: I paraphrased, Ez says, "Finally this is the great divide: whether you are here, here present, interacting with those around you, or off in other spaces chasing agendas... in books, cell phone, Facebooks, ...       that's the two worlds, two cultures: those who are here, and those who are elsewhere, inside... away...       (and it's easier for them to rationalise lying?)

This last summer 2016 Ezra and Mark, the illustrator, became very close, to each other. (Was it Mike in the cafe who heard Ezra speak of it being like having two wives. Mark and Norman?) And Ezra thought he had found a way to clear the ground so Mark could finish illustrating Ted Allan in Spain: the movie. Recall, February 2015: Mark says yes, he is ready to send a presentation out to publishers, literary agents, others: he has a list of over a hundred names. But first I must clarify and secure ownership of the project, oh and now he tells me that he's told he should have film rights. So I (self) publish, and, and things get estranged.
     18 months on, this summer, I asked Mark if i could "borrow" his wonderful "rough" of a cover for TAiS... "Yes," he says: then a few days later (was it the day he called Jan a "terrorist") Mark says to me, "You expect to much of me." (And I tried to be snide retorting: "I've expected nothing of you.") So Mark says, "Let's cut the strings.") (Was he ever near to having the "presentation package" for TAiS that he said was ready way back then?)

Talking with Ez, Ee says Mark is successful and busy, but that he loves TAiS, and does see it as a possible significant work that could crown his career. And, and Ee came up with a brilliant scheme...
     Ezra's plan: that we form a company: Ted Allan in Spain: the company, TAIS:co. and we separate remuneration from control. The text is half the project and Ted's estate gets half of that and I get half (I get 37.5% in all): Ezra gets 12.5 % (for devising the company, and so that I can get as much as Mark), and Julie gets 12.5% and gets to be president! and that's the brilliant bit of the scheme: though I later realised that Julie just needs to control the film rights. Mark get to control the graphics, and I get to control the text. It's brill!
      According to Ezra, who is going back and forth between us, this scheme works for Mark. Brilliant!

I had the realisation while I was "ranking" my work between Darwin and Michelangelo and brought that back to Ezra... that there are other ways of ranking people: if you are into ranking. No, Ez says: everyone is their own genius.
     I used to think, when Mordecea Richler said that Ted's genius wasn't in his work, but was in the way he had lived his life, I used to thin that that was a put down, and perhaps it was. But it is also true. Bear's genius (see  Spoons: Bear in the 70s, a decade of personal growth) was who he was, how he related, how he lives. As was Ted's. As was Bethune's! As is Ezra's. They are huge, wonderful people. (Larger than life, we say.)

Ah, but the snits. Last year's and this year's: Last years Mark didn't turn up for an assignation with Ezra - artist's license? Mark might say he had not made a commitment, just a maybe go to see a movie together: but Ezra was offended outraged for weeks? - then resolved.

And after Ezra went home      he Facebooked how downsized he felt being home, being husband father familiar rather than artist and prophet. And I commiserated how yes, it is hard not getting that article in the New Yorker and where is my show at the Tate. Ezra thought it a castigating, criticizing him; he felt dissed, felt I had broken the friendship, he might even never come back to Toronto
     "What message?" Facebook. "That!" I explained how totally mine those reference were. (An article on the Southern blot ultradilution anomaly in the New Yorker would shake the intellectual world, and change the world! And where indeed is my show at the Tate?)

Back, between snits, this summer: between disdain for my enthusiasm for "spiraling ecstaticaly" and not being much of a scientist (does that mean I had I been humble?) - I was correcting Ezra when he spoke of my painting as my vision .... the painting is not a "vision": it is a game I play with media, a process of techniques, algorithms - it's relatively concrete that that emerges from interplay with media: My vision is what I "see" and what "I see" is sort of what I "understand", wordily (in the truthiness of it). "Vision", the vision is in my words, my poetry and writing.

But what of the snits all around me? Two years ago Ez commissioned my story, and this last season, my story's, in part, but no small part, is a snit with Ezra : (and how private is that? ...

enough beating about the bush : the pheasants have broken cover. Shoot!

the snit, in fits and starts: first E and M's snit: so...
    
      Ezra has another falling out with Mark. TAiS out the window - but I don't think Mark was ever really truly serious about collaborating. We'll skip the details. Ezra felt thrice let down; felt that was irredeemable. They started avoiding each other. "Next year," said Ezra, "I may find a room nearer the market. I don't feel that you appreciate me enough. And, and I don't want to run into Mark." Then later we reconcile. But TAiS: the company is presumably out the window. Indeed, Ez says Mark never looked at my rough contract, agreement...            

July wound down. Ezra's departure approached. The weather was very hot in July. I'd come home in the evening to the front door open, to cool, Ezra lying on the living room floor (rather than asleep in his room, waiting for it to cool, somewhat. Ezra in the dark living room. In the kitchen I find an open jar of peanut butter and of jam, dirty knife and counter. He often leaves small messes, but speaks of seeing everything, of being impeccable as a yogi. I'll leave the mess. See if he'll clean it latter. He does take a second snack, but then later, when I go up to bed, through the kitchen, I find the mess, still there for me to clear. I clean like Mr. Natural, another job well done, but slam a cupboard door. Phmm.
     In the morning I softly speak of having to clear up after him. Ezra rationalises. "You left the mess" : I just used it, and no, it was there both times I entered the kitchen. I left it untounched.
       "I'm tired after ten hours work." And then he adds, "When I arrived in May there was filth, fluff, under my bed." (Was there? Really? Was my thorough clean up the year before?) Wow.
     That evening Ezra asks if I would smoke with him. An invitation to conversation, and interaction often. And so we are stoned out on the deck again.

How much can I remember of the diatribe? I wrote down some quotes to try to keep some of the dialogue : it was rich! but we are weeks on, and much is gone. The gist... paraphrase!   "I will not be staying here again" says Ez. "We can still be friends, but I do not feel you love me. You do not light up because your friend is home. You moan. You boast." My empty boasting peeves Ee. And he is tired from trying to fix me, heal me, solve my predicament... And why hadn't I followed up, followed through on of his suggestions. And there were some strange pieces of rant: "If Bach is a greater composer then you, play Bach. If Einstein is a greater scientist than you, stop! If you are not as great as Einstein or Bach, get off the stage!"
      Ezra speaks of a friend in Jerusalem, an old lady, in her nineties, a holocaust survivor: and when Ezra stays with her she treats him like a prince. A description followed and I think, I too would love such a friend.

The dialogue in high-snit: "You don't act like you love me. You don't light up: to be happy I have a friend in the house." and then, "You called me not a nice person, not a good man."
    "When?"
    " You said you wouldn't want to have been one of my sons."

Ezra can browbeat, well me at least he can. (Soon after this snit, as we conflicted (happily?) over something, and as he escalates intensity and volume, he snuck in a, "You must let me win, I must prevail." Glintn in the eye. "I am Israeli.") And, yes, apropos of how it felt to clash wills with him, I had said that I would have hated to be his son. Two years back, this recollection was: another time, fresh fueling the snit.
     But it's all all right. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Bless him.

We settle, some, and sit, on the summer evening deck: post snit. A bridge crossed, a bridge burning? smoldering? The flowers on the lilac long gone, the lilac leaves florishing. I'm calm. (I do welcome the rent Ee pays, but I won't have to sleep on the street tonight, surely.) Calm. Minutes pass.
     And Ezra says, "You should paint me a picture; make me such a gift. The house," he points to it behind him. "Or my portrait."
       So there's a fetching of materials. is it holding up the story to say i referenced/thought that i have no conscious control of how a picture will turn out... they can turn out crazy but i trust in the Lord and draw in my sketch book, is that ten, fifteen minutes? this...

"Yes. This is a man I could like," says Ezra. And, I think, it so delights Ezra that here, post snit, I would paint him sympatheitically    as    someone we could love

"Tomorrow we will take this to the cafe and see if they will hang it."
       I say fine, and add that Leacko, who owns the cafe, is an artist, and he uses the cafe to express his sense of interior design, hanging his own work. (As I would.)
     "We will ask. You must ask when you wish. I will show you how to promote yourself. ." and an ah ha, "Well then Starbucks," says Ez. (But it been weeks, now a month, in the negotiation of a maybe at Starbucks. So it devolves to maybe the Ethopian cafe round the corner, across from the subway.
     And Ezra is planning an event for me (to plan), a little over a year from now, well find a gallery and do a joint performance art and Ez.
    All this was when?   The snit and it's resolution.  The last week of July.   Perhaps the Monday.
Ezra was leaving on the Friday.

Friday morning, early, we are on our way to the cafe where we will spend some time; where we meet Mandy - Mandy is a classical pianist Ezra often works with/plays with. She arrives soon after us, meets us outside the cafe. Yes early, hours before Ezra will take the subway to the airport and Medicine Hat for a month, then Montreal. So we have a little time for this cap to this stay, this story.
      Ez asks Mandy, "Do you have anything to smoke? any 'medicine'? Ee sends Mandy home, on her bike, for the medicine. (Catherine, Aziza used to called it "music fuel").
     Ez and I wait on the sidewalk bench by the cafe.     
     Ee speaks against books. There are those who are attending to here, now, and those chasing agendas, plugged into plans (like Chaplin in Modern Times?) no eye contact on the whole, eye contact is tricky, a watch/be watched dance, to engage/not engage those who are here. "Engage!" says Ez. So books are another way of being out of contact, or lost in far away news.   I paraphrase.
     "I speak against books, the book culture separates people (as for me, the first intimacy, no, you know what I mean, was with a cat, and with a person, maybe it was D.H. Lawrence, his great novels) but now Ez rages against any thing that takes us out of immediate, real, connection. Let me repeat this, like Lawrence might: Ezra perceives a fundamental divide in culture and cultural experience ~ fundamentally there are two ways of being: being present (with corollaries like caring, interacting, connectivity) or being otherwise engaged ~ lost in a book or newspaper, or agenda ~ not responsive or caring about the immediate, the present, those present. For Ee, most people in the 3rd world societies are present. Most in 1st world societies are alienated.       Fundamental for Ez is 2 cultures: one alive and one lost
      "Once he woke up, the Buddha did not read books !"

Ezra says something we all may have heard and should know, and it's quite neat.  "My swami, yoga teacher taught me that the greatest wish, the greatest wish is to disappear. Then everything speaks for me, to me. I am the wind. I am the stone. Disappear." and yes, Ezra can disappear into the music, into the spiraling ecstasy of Bach..

I wrote a neat poen about that



Music as Buddhogen


Ee's as complex as any of us
but he spends his days
his life playing music
which lends him some bliss
cause it spills him into wordlessness
highlights flux (the mirror of impermanence)
and makes emptiness easy
music: the void that dances
selflessly

Outside the Red Rocket the Friday of July, Ezra noticed that he had got some mango on the sweater he was travelling with, now tied round his waist, but with a soiled arm. I looked. "I think I can fix that." I take it to the wash room: run a little water, brush and then wring the small damp part.
     "There. That's mostly clean, and barely wet."

Mandy retrurns. We smoke. Then go into the cafe for coffee. Ezra has Mandy play for me, for us, on her smartphone, a recording of she and Ezra last night playing a piece by Beethoven. And an improvised piece, ad lib, new: very interesting, very accomplished. Fifteen, twenty mintes, the two?. Then Mandy has to leave.

.

We, Ezra and I, move to the two couches at the front of the cafe. Ee would have me be present, in the cafe, with my nose up, not in a book, watching, listening, to what is around me. (Meditate, I think: but do I follow through.) And Ezra's showing me how to hustle... to busk... "Draw this gentleman," he says...  and then, "Show hiim what you've drawn." Then to the gentleman (with his earphones), "You appreciate art. That's worth some money, yes, twenty dollars, fifty dollars, don't you think/ ..."     I should of told him that I take credit... naugh

The sitter, he felt quite awkward. We made no sale.  LOL

Where do we go from here towards joy?
snits snits all round me snits
with this John and that Jane      that Mark and Mandy      a Tara snit? she smiles at me today. It's a lovely smile. The Bren snits? Oi!
And what's sacred, confidential, we are not supposed to talk about what, how we live? sh hush

The painting of Ezra is now on top of a box, on top of a cupboard, at the rear corner of the little cafe by the station. I must go and visit it, and report.back.

Towards joy? My love of my crazy friend Ezra.

Toward joy? And Ezra's commisions:  these paintings

portrait of Ezra in the Maple cafe!

there is more....

chapter two (of book three) of the story for Ezra is my current work. link post

CODA: A week after Ezra left to return to Medicine Hat was the festival on the Danforth, and at the Inner Arts Collective I spent some time offering (relatively short) demonstrations of CranioSacral Therapy. One recipient was a young lady of East Indian descent, Radha, who came with her mother and sister. (Her mother watched. Her sister went off to receive a reiki treatment with a colleague.)
     I explained that CranioSacral work could be done without any particular issue: one would simply follow ones intuition, and it would be deeply relaxing. Or it can address issues, and they could be physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual. Were there any issues?
     Radha, who was in her late teens, early twenties, told me she had had a miscarriage the week before! There were many things that might be appropriate in such a situation, and addressed, worked on, several. Of note, perhaps, is an observation I often offer those who came to me to work with issues arising from abortion... I may voice my belief that when a "soul" incarnates to live a long and fruitful life, it lives a long and fruitful life. When a "soul" aborts, or miscarries, it has chosen to incarnate briefly to do some simpler processing. That's my belief: and I think it may be comforting.
     Now, you may know (if you've read this story (NAtsfE) from the beginning) that while on rare occasions, when the spirit (and/or higher self, whomever that might be) have found it appropriate, I've been involved with the miraculous. However, for the most part I don;t read minds, see the future, see auras: though I sometimes sense energies. Towards the end of my short session with Radha, sitting beside her with a hand under her back and on her abdomen (a standard Cranio procedure), I had an acute awareness of the size, the hugeness of this energy what? energy field (golden? yellow? nurturing!) and I commented on this immense maternal fullness. How I felt that in no way had Radha failed" as a mother. She was rich and large and nurturing as the glow of the sun. (I hope that, too, was some comfort.)
     After the session, Radha's mother, Kala, asked if she might confide what she has witnessed. She said she say me standing, my arms crossed, quietly, standing amid turmoil and something, not sure of that word, and added, war; standing calmly, an island of peace with turmoil and warfare around me.
     I found Kala's vision very disturbing. Oh my God. War and strife! Oh my poor children. And then, several hours later, I thought, "Oh! She's seeing what is around me now! (Much like Hamach had.) Oh She's just seeing Ezra and Mark's feud. Phew!

As summer ended (2015, a year ago) and we sat on the porch an evening hour, I bitched about Tee's guru. "Don't complain," said Ezra.
     "Don't slag the guru?" I asked.
     "Don't slag the guru!"

      "Book Three," said Ezra, "should be the good things. Towards joy. I'll commission that!" Did we set a fee? Ah, but as Ezra explained, this year, "There is that artist (and friend) who needs supporting, and that artist,"... said Ezra, as we walked towards the cafe and summer's end...

Further: I realized, dah, just the other day, that as a stoner i'm probably numero uno genius of all time ; maybe the first ever floating here between Darwin and Michelangenius. Number one!

so...

towards joy...

I am the greatest, I am the number one, numero uno, stoner genius, out there, up here (unkown but) somewhere between Darwin and Michelangelo, and, yes, Coleridge is a genius wordsmith, and, and there is Conan Doyle and ... um? ... but I am the stoner genius of the ages... out here, unknown, somewhere twixt Darwin and Michelangelo ... um... er.. yeah. (Teresa says, "All stoners think that.")

CODA two years on    2018: context: earlier bumped into Ezra who tried to recruit me to his save the children crusade, and I had not followed up... oh, I thought next day, that's the context of this

epitaph

Ezra sneered me out of his life
said I had refused God's challenge
wasn't rescuing his children
was a whining approval sucking/snivelling poseur
a nothing
bade me adieu

on the way home I stopped to share thought arising from our last conversation with ...
Luq who had posited love as absence of anger
I brought Luq our question for Linda of anger
and my hearing the inner voice say
arm it with love

Luq asks if we didn't
have insecurity and anger and fear
would we need love
well I said well it feels nice

so I stand on the night time street
seeking closure
fora running sores

yes it seems like the end of days are ramping and rehearsing
and there are super good bits in this most dire of times
and I'm still looking for the fulcrum
trying to hone a lever
I hope
suffer the children
God bloody willing