A Drop in the Box, Etc.

This poem dropped in my inbox this mornin' and I loved it - "it is important that awake people be awake" - ya ya ya! It's just amazing how often I deny my own intuition and get in trouble. Of course, figuring out what my intuition is trying to tell me can be a bit of a challenge. I've got a personality that oftens wants to live "Cheap, Fast and Out of Control" to put the Errol Morris spin on it. Hell, I was sitting zazen the other morning and I allowed this little stink bug to distract me/enrage me to such an extent that I thumped that sucker across my living room. It started to crawl up my coffee cup, for God's sake. Sure am glad I'm working on giving up my issues of perfectionism 'cause I was "out of control". I hate to injure bugs. The only ones I will kill without remorse are milli/centipedes. I just cannot abide those f*ckers. They really give me the creeps. I thinks it's all those legs.

Okay, okay - I really have to write at least one the now infamous articles I've been putting off writing for 10 days now. I even went out door-knocking for Kerry yesterday as a means of procrastinating. Now THAT was in hopes of trudging a road to a happier destiny for the entire planet.

Enjoy the poem. It's much more hopeful and positive than it may seem.

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe— should be clear:
the darkness around us is deep.