Life According to Homeless Nathania

Fascinating rantings of a homeless friend of mine I often talk to on my runs around the park... as verbatim as I can get.....:

"Look, I'm not interested in the 'life of...' Know what I mean? I don't wanna know about the 'life of an artist,' the 'life of a investment banker' or the 'life of a homeless person.' I'm interested in life. And don't tell me life is this or that or isn't this or that and don't tell me it could be worse or better. There are people I will compare myself to and if I go competin' over who's got it worse, I'll go jump in front of a bus on THEIR behalf just to let them win. The question isn't who's got it worse or better or what does it all mean? It's deeper than that. The question isn't, is life worth living? Like, Life with a capital L. I mean, the question? I don't even know if any of us even know what the question is? And THAT ALONE makes me question the point of all this, I mean, if the point is, is MY life worth living or not living, that's a moment by moment thing. I mean the answer might be love or it might be procreation or it might be sex or it might be survival. How will any of us know if we can't even get the damn question right?"

A Love Supreme...

Oh, man. We go to movies and we read novels (and these days, US Weekly and People and Reality TV) to show us love, love lost, love regained, pathos, ethics, passion, amor.

But if you open your eyes, it's all around, no different from you, for better, for worse.

I will tell a story not of REAL love but of two people who are struggling to define real love for themselves, and of a scene in which REAL love was NOT present... but the desire for love, for romantic love, is really a step toward that longing which creates the opening to life itself. What you seek is INSIDE THE LONGING ITSELF...

So, my upstairs neighbor, Zack, is an AMAZING songwriter. I actually had no idea how talented I was when he first moved in- two years ago- just that he was a cool guy and we got along and he was cool about giving me space unlike a lot of people I meet and how open he was to talk to. There was something about him that made me know he would make a good friend, and we became friends, of a sort... I knew he produced music and he asked me to sing on a project he was doing and etc.

So one day, we were talking, and we started speaking in such poetic terms that we realized we were speaking a song. (That was my experience of it, but I didn't know until Zack said, "now THAT'S a line in a song.") And we stared writing this - in my opinion- really honest, heartbreaking, sexy song about love that just didn't work out... each of us going through our own recent versions of that....

We started out with
"That night we went down in the pouring rain, soaking wet, to the skin... kissed me so hard I forgot my name, yeah, you were letting me in."

So, we had that much, and we had the chord structure and the melody for a bridge too, which we just couldn't quite figure out... when suddenly we realized we needed more verse....

so we talked about songs that were sexy.... and I remembered this one hot summer in Minneapolis

and everyone was singing Lucinda Williams... righteously.... which led right back to John Coltrane. So we added to the verses, and here they are:

"That night we went down in the pourin' rain, soakin' wet, to the skin... kissed me so hard I forgot my name, yeah, you were lettin' me in:
I thought I heard Lucinda playin'.... Look in your eyes like a hunger sayin....


V2
I was lookin' for a little calamity
to break up the monotony
I found you looking into the future like you were lookin' at me
Yeah, righteously and you had me burning... had no idea there was no returning....

Do you want, wanna be my religion?
Things that are gone, jamais encore. Makin me late for tomorrow
Lost in the day, wearin' them chains, and I'm trying to say
it's
really
okay
okay
really."




So, there's more to the song but here comes this amazing part where


seriously



Saturday night was one hot night. I mean, literally. Summer fever. Know what I mean? And hearts were afoul all over the place. I was out and about observing the people and by the end of the night I was in my own little passion flower dance myself. (another story for another time.) And i had a feeling about the next morning....

So Sunday morning.

Let's switch tenses, because it hit me so
IMMEDIATELY
I gotta write it this way

I am having breakfast with Nicole (who dates Zack's roommate Derek) up on the balcony when suddenly this little black sedan ZOOMS around the corner

and this man, maybe 30, comes running- RUNNING FAST! after it-

he's yelling,

"Come here, Cxxx (insert C word here)! Come on back here you Fxxxing Cxxx!"

And at first I thought, uh oh, someone's BMW got nicked.

Because it's Hollywood, you know, people get angry about everything all the time but especially their cars....

And then suddenly this man hops into a robin's eggshell BLUE old school Ford Truck, like OLD, and he drives FAST to follow the little black and Nicole and I are looking at each other like what the hell and he THROWS A CD OUT HIS WINDOW...

We turn to watch him drive on down the road, off to-

Nothing joyful, anyway-

And I say,

"what was that!?"

And Nicole says,

"I don't know!"

We ask Derek if he knows who the people were, but none of us knew.

So...

A few hours later...

I got the fever in my blood, you know? And I just have to get out of the damn apartment for a bit, so I go for a little walk around the block,
and

I spy the CD

that angry Ford man had tossed out his window

and I walk up to it

and I turn it over

and it's
John Coltrane, A Love Supreme






and it all comes so clear
and I weep

for who knows what loves was thrown away that day
if there was love in the first place
and I think of passion and romance and flings and sex and long terms relationships and friendships and songs and roses and bourbon and

sometimes

Life just Takes Over





Calamity. Breaks up the monotony, that's for sure.





Here's the funny thing.

I finally just got over being broken hearted. I mean, I have a lifetime believing in being broken hearted and.... I finally truly got over it (as far as I know) just like I finally ended the pneumonia that plagued me for MONTHS. And... now, who am I if I am not this literary damsel always with the sad look in her eyes? And do I even get to choose? But

the funny thing is

as much as I am looking I am not looking

and beyond that,

I'm open to CALAMITY
if it comes from LOVE of the deepest sort

NOT DRAMA

not the man in the Blue Ford who got so angry he had to throw out A LOVE SUPREME

but the potency of

I give up
and there is something better

and that longing for LOVE and whatever other passions come from that
life begetting life begetting life
love begetting love begetting love begetting love
and

CALAMITY
if it brings me to that point of yearning
in which all secrets unfold but no language, no intellectual understanding, no words could ever express
only
light
breath
breath
and the light from your eyes



THAT

LOVE SUPREME

THAT

RIGHTEOUSLY

THAT

that

that.







LIKE THIS,
said Rumi.




HERE,
say I.

love in the time of national anxiety

there is a difference between an anxiety that sits in your chest like a walnut, waiting for the crows to swoop on in-

and-

feeling the fire burn in your heart as if you were the almighty phoenix alight in self-destruction not of a false pseudo psycho intellectual manner but in the way that clears the path for regeneration

i wonder if the difference between those two is

your opinion of where you are

because from moment to moment i am in the deep, fast moving current of a river carrying me to territory i have never even heard of, let alone have any kind of map for,

and

every time i find that walnut and see crows circling overhead

i just repeat to myself

the lines

this is how i am getting to be

the me i always held a secret dream for,

through the heart
of a phoenix on fire

and i am that phoenix

and i will always be that phoenix

as long as there is burning

and

as long as there is breath.

Second thing in the morning

Hello, love, my shining one, my wandering one...

veiled and veiled and veiled again.

And we have the gall to ask ourselves, "What is truth?"

star-made...

High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole.
.
A deep yearning. A constant remembrance.

Late year lies down the north, just you and me and a bottle of wine, or without the wine, and without the north, all is healed, all is... just with you and with me, it is we, it is you, it is me, it is we, it is you, it is me, it is.... until we melt into a space where there is no you and me and

only the non passage of non time and the non circle of all non eternities because all is (0) is all is (0) is 8 = 0 = 8 = 0 =


shadows, because...

where I stand, in this, deep, love and sex and emotional interest and intellectual intrigue and connection that is beyond any of that, and then when you are near, this wretched fear stops me from reaching out to touch you

veiled and veiled and veiled again.

how dare I ask?

first thing in the morning

funny what love does,
when you're torn up, inside or out, by history or culture
proposed truths
funny what it means
to listen deeper
know more
by which i mean
KNOW more
in the core of knowing
funny what it
looks like
what you thought it should look like
what you wished it would
look like and
what it actually is

but - oh -
dreams are not meant
for selling

love is not meant for Restricting
freedom exists only
in freedom
and in all words
and
all logos and all
{______________}
and all
is all
there IS freedom
I seek
that
love, and freedom, and
the place where the two
(words, not words)
become one

All things become the same thing
All words become one word
All isms, people, thought that
could be thought to
be thought
existence that could
exist to be in
existence
all of it
becomes one
and these details
of specificity
as the diamond glint
of individuality
Reveals the diamond
beyond all that it is the diamond
it is in the shine

melt into me

how joyous
how frightening
to my
singular
petrified
glint

I choose to remember
the
REST OF ME BEYOND ME
BEYOND ME BEYOND (who? What?
of what did we speak?)

which becomes
always was

Diamond.

SHINE ON.
SHINE ON.

It is the only thing there
is and

the only thing we're doing
.

Shine.

symphony

sometimes in every breath
there is a symphony

one of my friends gave me a pear from her orchard
smell: sweet floral,
color: light green specked with yellow
feel: cool in my hand, and heavy

I ate it on a break from a job
all around me every one was really stressed out
about what, I couldn't really tell, because I was doing a job in a corporate office and I have never had that kind of job and when people want me to get stressed out about stuff I become more like a duck and it rolls off my back and if they continue to want me to get stressed out I get angry and just say, forget about it, and hence have never been able to keep a normal job, because it always seemed to me (i'm not saying I'm right or wrong here, I'm super stubborn and all that) like it was a bunch of rules that made no sense and a lot of extra explaining to do when we could just get to work but. Hey. I've never had a "normal" job longer than a week so what would I really know about it? Not much

what I do know is about that pear

dive in,
remember the experience of a pear

I mean, I'm no Hemingway, I'm no Rumi, I'm not even Nin, but
just

remember the experience of a pear

teeth slicing skin
teeth compressing grainy flesh
sweet juice eking out
inhale
the faintest mist of wildflowers
mixed upon a round buttery sugar
but light still light
oh god, that divine smell
and oh god, that drop upon the tongue that mash up against the teeth delicate and animal all at once
so am I

as I turn away from the computers, the glitches, the beepings, the monitors, the phones, the innuendo, the anger, the unspoken he said she said where's mine why didn't I get, the shoes too tight, the belly overlapping, the hope for tomorrow, the preoccupation of sex or the children or the laundry list of things to do,

and I look out the window past the supermarkets and the office buildings and the mountains rising in the distance

and into the elegy of the sky and the wind

and I say once again

sometimes in every breath

wait I change that

in every breath
there is
a symphony