narcissist

there’s no closet mystic here

a friend who knew me as a child
tells me I was  – in spite of a tendency for promiscuity
and contrariness – always a closet mystic

he’s wrong, you know

I’ve never shared the mystic’s striving for union
with the One

I simply wanted to know whether the notion of One
was true, and if so, to prove it to myself
for myself by myself

I walked the neti-neti highway from horizon to horizon
until I fell off the edge of the world
and into the heart of here, where
‘I’ was the only eye and ear and all the senses shouted:
t h u s!

there’s no mystic here striving for union
with the One

this is what’s here, my old friend:
an unknowable, yet inescapable
cosmic narcissist, naked and guileless
playing with itself
– its One and only self –
in every conceivable form and fashion

(did I mention a tendency
towards promiscuity?)

~

never will you meet such an unapologetic narcissist

343

I settle on my zafu
poised as the Presence
of a world displayed –
a world whose appearance
is wholly dependent upon
the sensory capacity
here, yet without location
anywhere

I marvel that after turning up
for more than 300 mornings,
pen-in-hand and heart-at-the-ready,
words still spill themselves
out of the silent emptiness
on the other side of thought
as fresh and fecund as on day
one

There is no author here –
my authorship could never sustain such
freshness for even a fortnight.
I’d bore myself to tears and quickly move on.

Wild wideawakeness is simply singing
soulfully
to itself in the mirror.

A small hand
holding an old-fashioned Waterman fountain pen
scribbles the opening libretto:

Everywhere I look
I see
laid out in luscious
lu-mi-no-si-ty
the miracle
of unknowable
Me!

I’m cracking up at the audacity when out of nowhere a gleeful chorus pipes up:

It’s a new dawn
it’s a new day
it’s a new life for Me
and I’m feelin’ good!*

[Never will you meet such an unapologetic narcissist!]

~

*from Feeling Good, by Peter Schick