U is Boomerang

Nothing is better than those little moments. Those inklings of space and time where the world collides with your absolute consciousness and everything slows down to such a perfect clarity that you know you are living this moment as a breaker from all that has come before it.

I watch life for these moments. I link them together to make stories. I link stories together to make novels. I watch blogs to see when it will happen on other blogs.

If I was a Zen master, this would happen every second.

I am not a Zen master.

It happens when I stop thinking.

It is funny I don't see these moments more often.

Is that the secret to writing? Is that love?

For the past 2 months I have been sitting with the question of love. I made an entire record about it, and then I proceeded to rip apart my mental warehouse for any clues on love. I even explored relationships as an observer and participant.

In fact, I search for this answer everyday.

Is this how to be a good reader? Is this the answer to every question I have ever asked?

Yeah, it is.

So are you going to tell us about it?

This morning I forgot where I parked. I started walking from the apartment.
One of L.A.'s homeless stood in front of the complex.
She was motionless.
I could hear her mumbling.
I looked down at her hands.
They were crossed.
She is praying, I thought.

I had a smoke.
I listened to a crow.
The palm tree moving above me.
Down the trunk to the woman
talking. It dawned on me
God was a tree.
That seems right, I thought.

Suddenly, I remembered where I parked.
I walked past her. I looked at the tags on the tree. CLP. What does CLP mean? And then down to her bag. The Ground is Where You Are, was sewn on its front.

Tonight, I remembered this moment as Jim unbuttoned his top button for a better range of free motion.
That's a poem, I thought.

Is this a poem?

Now there come choices. I can make the poem immediate. I can make it be in the present tense. I can make it more auditory. I can create the sound of the crow. I can paint the palm tree.

I think how poems are like films. I think why don't more filmakers go to poems to make short films? I think how my favorite anything's have a little bit of everything, and that most of all they have love.

Then I realize how many moments in my day today were wasted thinking when I could have noticed love.

I didn't have to worry about work, or the fact that this is now officially my life without Nicole.

These aren't loving thoughts. They aren't because they are thinking. They are the story of how I am experiencing love.

But love isn't a story.

It's much more simple. And writing is about finding a way to tell how you find this moment. For even if the art describes love's loss, if it is told with understanding, it will only be a boomerang.

This is what I notice today.

This is what I write.

Woman prays.
Crow and tree listen.
I am grateful.


The ______ inside us hasn't moved. It is in everything. Even a grain of sand.


The word you choose is the way you live.