When You Don’t Do the Do Da (A 30:30 Report)
We say “Just this” early, yes very early, darkness hangs like a silk blouse on the rounded arm of the summer chair. From the cushion, cross-legged, paying silent attention, like a statue in the forested park, perhaps Sacajawea, watching our breath, feeling our thoughts. What we do, cominglers with the climbing sun as yet still somewhere east of Salt Lake City. But that’s cool, I can wait, time here on the flattened cushion on my side, my diaphragm rising, falling, rising again, my stomach filling with air and, hold on just a moment, oh such a slow exhale. It’s all “Just this”, and I feel myself as if of limestone — my torso erect, there’s a string, it’s invisible to the enlightened eye, it pulls my head taut toward the heavens.
Heavens. Is it an accident to make that plural, heavenly body where my Lord Dedith hangs on a corner much of the day, sure she swoops hither and thither when necessary, which with me is not quite so much unless we’re doing coffee, but I said heavens and I’m thinking there are more than the one and more of a shining power like Lord Dedith, perhaps a host more, I consider my author storyteller writer Muses goddesses one and all. And I’ve got plans, what with me making all lady references to magisterial beings, yes I have plans to meet up with Apollo next week too – it’s in my calendar – and there I will act as if on the cushion, head pulled high, body like a bronzed ghostly caste, legs crisscrossing and air in, air out, thoughts just drift like a rowboat slow on a lazy summer river, some hushed meandering.
And I sit on the cushion and no one says this meditate is wrong and this one is better, this one a B plus — nah, this is just today’s. And tomorrow’s will be the one I have tomorrow and last Thursday it was nothing but I am a container and I am large and I hold all this in silence and in attention and in awe and possibly tomorrow, which is a Wednesday, my time on the cushion will thoroughly devote to thinking up plot devices for about seven science fiction stories I’ve got going, which, if the image works, ain’t like that slow drift-able paint-faded boat gliding a mile an hour down, oh, the WeWeantic back in my hometown, no these story’s lines are what you’d sarcastically call dead in the water, which is such a sad and sorry take, what the hell wants to be dead in the water, anyway the point being that Wednesday’s cushioned experience just might be all about taking those tales to the limit, the big bad “The End”, fini Baby, au revoir and arevaderche and possibly even in Latin if I locate greater educational skills, which reminds me that I daydream, oh, do I ever daydream about going back to high school and quitting, the big “I’m outta here” sophomore year, and fuck the draft board Rufus, them cats got not thing one on me, what with all the meditation and quietude I’m a 4 fucking F my man, who wants someone so, um, laid back, no sweetie we be all about the recruitment of Marlboro men, Sugar, which there’s a sidebar to leaving school 10th grade or if’n that’s not the route, changing majors and changing buddies and changing love interests and changing physical exertions and changing tires at the gas station down near Mill Pond for pocket change, and the grace of whatever Gods there are allow these very images – Mill Pond and the Weweantic, my Dad’s column by that very name, a slow boat to Buzzards Bay and walks in wooded meadows I’ve taken wearing eight-inch work boots, those wicked fine Dunham’s from up New Hampshire,
And then again it may be this weekend, pick a day, and I’m on the pillow and the sun ain’t up and I feel warmth leak in through the pre-dawn shower, all moist and heated, and I find myself back in Evanston, Wyoming, right there where The 80 runs through on the way into Utah, and they’ve got a buffalo farm on the border and a motel I’ve known when absenting myself from all the crosstown traffic and I also used to make cassette tapes off LP’s, do the one turntable thing and the other cassette record thing and you can make it if you try and that includes just about anyone you want – of course ya got to lay hands on, Bro, and when we do these things for ourselves they glow, we glow, I believe we shimmer and I already said when I sit and watch the breath and feel the slow thought I am large and when I do worthy chores for myself like making a mix tape – well, talk about letting my little light shine, which I ask whoever’s listening from my knees about every morning – please assist in the shining of my little light, please walk St. Francis back into my afternoon, back where the daily shadows gather and let me run around in crazy circles, big bad crazy motherfucking circles of joy, I giggle, I giggle, and shine them high beams baby – you heard it in the Bible Holmes – where there are shadows let me bring light, which I figure is that same little light of mine and here I go doing something positive for myself – visit a buffalo, record the Thompson Twins for a tape for Dr. Doug out there on Wilshire in West LA, and the glimmer glows and the gold radiates and I become an instrument, and having said that,
I need to clear up what could be a big old misconception and this is good – yeah, this is good so I hear it too – I ain’t dragging my ancient ass out from under the warm covers every morning pre-light and dropping softly and lightly down on the cushion and doing the statue thing – picture the Buddha, that cat ain’t twitching a mini muscle maybe, what, 10,000 years now — no, I am not doing any of that to “get better”. I’m doing that to find out just exactly what today’s meditation looks like. That’s it. No magic involved. What did you do last Friday, Bro? Why, I had last Friday’s meditation, kitty cat, and it sure as shit was different from Thursday’s and Sunday’s, it was the only that-Friday-cushion-moment I will ever get all my days – the ones I’ve been gifted so far, the ones I may be blessed with going forward.
It ain’t me and Julio down by the schoolyard, Brah. Un- huh. It’s me and Lord Dedith hanging on the corner. Shit, we may even be hitting on a jay.