Observing a spear of summer grass in the winter

I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to embrace all of the Field. In the summer, it's easy. Real easy. I can lie on in the grass and listen. The grass will talk to me. It will warn me against consistency. The grass will teach me the other ways to enjoy the scene before me. The grass says that if I close my eyes and listen I will notice that the Field sounds exactly the same as the beach. The grass invites my touch. I bury my toes amongst the spiders of the deep grass and realize that the grass between my toes is the same as the sand. The sun beams realization directly though my skin. I lie exposed on my back listening easily. Summer makes sense. Questions evaporate.

But now things just freeze and feel cold. A walk to the Field now requires a lack of sensitivity. To feel is to feel cold, in the winter. And I don't want to feel cold anymore. I want days that sound like birds growing out of trees that have forgotten how to be dead and turn green. So I'll leave New England soon and the Field too. I'll go someplace where everything always makes sense and its warm enough to always evaporate questions.

50° is Godliness

Today is a most beautiful day. Emerson said that each word is a fossil of innovation. At some point in time each word was discovery. There was a time when 'sun' was a revelation. A most brilliant realization. Emerson also said it was our job now, to make these fossils seem as fresh as when they were born. That's hard. It's real hard to when the word and the object seem so far, too far away from each other. Today the sun was so much more than the word. Glorious is a stupid word. Donuts are holy. All the good words are taken and inventing new words is just too silly. We were promised that photos would contain so much detail that we wouldn't need to talk anymore, we'd simply walk around with polaroids expressing ourselves with a snapshot of a tree's shadow on pavement. But that didn't work because there's this way the sun feels when it smacks your face after you round past a tree's shadow. There is a warm godly feeling that's to big for pictures, to grand for words.

I don't know how to go about making a photo essay for the Field. The Field is really just a field. Photographs will prove its plainness. Words can barely portray the field as what it is. A scrying glass that's as big as the sky. I should be able to see into pebbles, but they're too small. The field is not that much bigger. But it's big enough that I can imagine it containing the everything. If the Field can compete on a cosmic level for, most glorious spot, than I can compete on a cosmic level for most glorious person.

Today when I rounded UMass' Tower of Babel the sun smacked me the way it does and there as a fine breeze grinding against brick. I felt the breeze and sun flow thru me and thought of the silly Sufi in the desert who once said:
"Glory to Me, how great is My majesty!"
According to Elmer O'Brien, "he thought he had become God, or perhaps, that God had become him." Makes sense.

Yakīn

One of my great fears is of being defined. When you are defined you are understood and predictable. You are full of grownupishness and void of magic. It is a miserable fate, for definition is the antithesis of life. If your fate is petty enough to be extrapolated by a simple human, you are barely alive.

I have a friend who's really great with secrets. He keeps them like nobody's business. I have known him for years and yet, I always feel as though I am learning things about him. He's future seems so wide, like how I used to imagine the globe as a child. I would imagine myself a giant, able to see the curve to the earth. But always having a horizon, a field of vision which held something more amazing beyond it. Today I imagine my world as a globe, I see every corner of it in my mind's eye, and it imprisons me. I see my field of possibilities and it seems tiny. My friend's field is an ocean, it bends at the horizon.

There is a field at UMass. It is holy holy, and full of magic. It is behind woods I call Sylvania. The Field slants down towards the east, making it an amphitheater, perfect for watching the Earth put the sun to sleep. You can see Lederle Tower poking it's concrete skull over the treetops in the corner. Nearly nobody knows about it. It's a secret. Someday, someone at UMass will realize they own it and then it will become a parking lot.

But the Field seems above it's fate. What will happen to it in five years is irrelevant, not only because I won't be here, but because the Field is to dignified, to important, and too much a part of the present to ever mind it's own future. The Field walks backwards from me. It's fate is known, it can not be defined, and it is full of magic. I'm out of magic, I am becoming defined, my fate is unknown. As I get older, the Field gets younger. The Field will not die, simply become unborn. Hopefully, I'll get a job.

I spent last semester in France. I studied French at a school I only visited 12 hours a week. I had Monday's off. I lived with a single French woman and another student, Louis, from Atlanta. The woman's name was Christine. She would define Louis and I constantly. She would frequently say, "I know you, you like wine, while you like chocolate" She would repeat our differences in order to show she knew us. It didn't really bother me. She thought I was an alcoholic but that didn't bother me. Once towards the end of the semester, I was talking to my roommate about this and he said slyly that he felt he understood me. He said it understanding me enough to know I would be bothered by it. He said, "Yeah, I think I get you." He said I was predictable.

While I was in France I dropped out of school temporarily, shaved my head bald, took Savaté, and read the New Testament, all without telling anyone back home. I was so full of secrets that on cold nights, I would take a handful out and hold them tight to keep me warm. My secrets worked wonders, my family found me unpredictable, no one from home could define me when I returned, and I felt like I had power. But Louis saw through me, he thought he understood me and could predict my short term fate and reactions quite easily. It's hard to keep a shaved head from your roommate, and I lacked enough truly personally secrets.

I have walked over nearly every inch of the Field, I have seen it from thousands of angles. I have gotten wet and dry there, I have trudged across it in blizzards, I have spoken to friends about truths so dear to me I cried, I've talked about the meaning of Futurama through many sunsets. I haven't a clue to the Field's true potential or it's real meaning. It keeps so many secrets from me, and stays so powerful. Whenever I show the Field to someone who has never seen it, they are taken aback by it's nearness to the center of campus. How is it possible they have never seen it before? How is it a secret?

I'm going to try and keep this blog secret from my friends and family, but of course, you are reading it, so in way the exercise is not so stark as I would like it. Even a diary would not be a true secret, for I would know of it. I could use my knowledge to know my reactions and my fate. But I want a secret so great that it is greater than my actions, I want a secret that is my fate.

And all I got is this stinkin' blog...

dhikr djalī

dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī dhikr djalī .