New Moon

poem 9 from The Ancient Elm

Past midnight,
crownless and craftless,
away from the Court of the Sun,
I stare into
the black sky…

I can’t sleep,
for the secrets I seek
only speak
in the silence
of aloneness…

It is my voice:
“Return, invincible Wizard-Knight,
you who know power
is like the father moon,
potent even in moonless skies.”

So I create…Nothing
and go outside
to find it is inside:
that ancient power
understood
before language named its secrets,
before cuneiform,
before music,
before cave painting,
before the dawn of ritual,
before any way
to experience it
but to run outside,
bellow in the wilds
flooding sky and canyon
with echoes
until
gasping
dizzy
spent
I am
once again
shining
myself.

The speaker found himself in a position that was similar (obviously dramatized) to where I found myself before going on the Pete Retreat and getting into Zen. Now I wanted to show how I feel I broke out of it. It was really the same solution as to how the speaker broke out of illusion, because regardless of whether you are powerful or powerless, striving to achieve something or having achieved things, illusion is what ends up pulling you away from truth. It takes different forms, but it's the same thing no matter what form it takes. You have to throw it all away and get out of it ('crownless, craftless, away from the Court of the Sun') in order to think and reflect. I often wonder how many relationships end because people are unable to do this, and they have to throw it out EVERYTHING in their life in order to think. Of course, I guess getting two people lost in illusion to 'get outside' and then come back together would take massive coordination!

The speaker finds that when he allows himself the silence necessary to hear himself think in honest terms that his voice is still there. He knows what he has to do; he just has to listen to himself and let himself know it. This is kind of what I meant in my rant about cell phones in another post. I feel people often use such devices to fill time and that keeps them from 'creating nothing'. Instead of being silent and thinking and listening to themselves, they anesthetize themselves with a lot of meaningless 'input'. I think it's extremely unhealthy, and that people who are confused or not happy stay that way because they keep themselves from thinking abut it. They start thinking: "It's just the way it is. I have to work 50 hour weeks every week and never talk to my family/friends and not be happy most of the time."

Then again, maybe they don't think that. They're probably not thinking at all, which is the problem! I would imagine they are totally on auto-pilot. But reality has a way of bringing even the most comprehensive auto-pilot system to a crashing halt. I was never as bad as what I've depicted above, but I was (and still am - though to a lesser degree) influenced by illusion. Once I realized it, I had to face where I was and decide if I had the balls to make things different. It took a lot of effort from me. Finding a new job, changing how I dealt with people, changing my goals, making myself get off my ass and DO things I've wanted to do but 'didn't have time for', etc. It's not easy to take back control of your life, but I did and Zen was a huge part of how I made it happen.