Meeting a Baby Alligator, Walking on a dirt-road, Animals inhabiting the scattered forest floor

My body moves,

then says something about not moving anymore

The baby alligator came up to us. I thought maybe she was saying hello. Her floating eyes above the water, in a circular-doting way, with half a foot of her head cool to the air. She stayed, stopped near us, only a few feet away and for more than an hour lingering in the sun-setting dusk.

I tried, and felt, I did what that girl once taught me, near a body of water. She told me the heron wanted to tell us something. So, I squinted, gently, into the baby alligator's eyes and smiled with my mind.

It felt like we were meeting in the same moment; bouncing cranial magnetic waves--our eyes held in singularity.

//,

Mom...can't you tell me about your childhood?

Or the nights you slunk into bed

with your youthful limbs?

restless

//,

Where's the youth that dad erased from your memory?

//,

Once, Popo said you were so soft when you were a girl,

in a moment of disagreement,

she scoured,

"How hard you are now"

//,

Around the lake I saw a sweet baby alligator sort of like a cat, a cicada on its back who immediately started screaming when I gave it a saw palmetto leaf to grasp onto, a brown-red-tan small speckled frog making itself known hopping as I stepped out of the spot I found to pee in, fast fluttering small bats unfettered from the dusk sky, an orange-red billed white bird who was attracted by the parings of my moms green apple who frightened the baby alligator momentarily.

At some point, I walked oppositely from her figure mostly surveying layers of well-formed rock lain on the floor, recognizing the rocky-texture beneath my feet, quickly replaced by yellow sand after seconds, as I shifted my legs one after the other increasing momentum in my bones. 

Notes for today:

I found a lot of writer's workshops online. I don't really know how to write creatively--"formally". I'd like to take a workshop to be introduced to all of it more adequately. I have taken a Intro to Creative Writing in one of my final, if not final, semester of college...but I can't remember much I can translate as advice for oneself linguistically, with instructions...So! SO! so! So! so!

I know people say there's no such thing as synchronicity. But it felt like...me stumbling on an entire page of writer's workshops made available this month-next month-month after-month-month. It seems like a call from _________________.

To be continued.

8/2 12:24 AM

Mom asked me when her next chemo session is. I regretfully but try to optimistically give her options and solutions.

July 26, 2020: Zen, Medicine, Depression

Today is like a blur. Many days are this way...especially in this small trailer home and only me and mom butting/puttering around in this 560 square feet home.

It is a home.

Our days melt away. I wake up late often, although I frequently attempt to sleep earlier the night before in order to prepare for a fuller day, the day to come. Still, despite my mental assertion that I should change so-and-so for the next day to spend more fruitfully, densely, and appreciatively with my mom in her coming days...I am in bed usually until 9:30 or 10:20 AM.

Many days are exhausting. We are in one brain--me and mom. Our depressions, when they are bad, rub together and cause inflammation.

I sleep on a queen size inflatable mattress in the screened area, which we both delightfully recall she adeptly picked up with foresight, by paying 5 dollars in the neighborhood. I have slept on this inflatable mattress probably since April (it has not deflated since the first inflating, (I re-inflate daily/nightly). I wonder how much I will remember of them a few months from now, or a year from now, if or when she passes--how much the grief of one night might shatter the long unified memory of seamless months which weaved the earlier half of 2020.

There is always the if.  Paul Statmets saved his mother; the mushrooms did.

Some notable things to mention which were of some significance for me on this day:

• From 6:30-8:30 PM, I attended Orlando Zen Center's Closing Ceremony of it's physical space on Zoom. Claudia, the Abbot, led the closing ceremony. I felt much gratitude and appreciation and joy during this time. I listened to Dharma talks. Something in particular I liked, which Carlos mentioned was, The Closing of a Flower, is the Beginning of a Flower. Something of this nature--I will revisit the recorded Zoom session.
• I revisited Tao Lin's blog and Twitter numerous times, over the period of the entire day, but also over the period of many or all months this year.
• I revisited Facebook's "Cholangiocarcinoma Group" numerous times throughout the day. I learned about how some people pay 400 dollars a MONTH for Medicare within the group. A wife responded about her husband's care. 400 dollars.
• Early, way earlier in the day, I listened to a doctor of ecological medicine (I believe it was termed this), on the Bioneers podcast about Integrative Medicine. He began to discuss the divide between Western Medicine and its downfalls. He spoke about how our understanding of medicine in Western society and how targeted medicines can kill as much as they are purported to heal, due to the high level of toxicity found in concentrated forms, which is typically the kind of medicine we legitimize due to its strength and target. Said medicines carry high levels of toxicity from extracted substances from plants existing and thereby augmented in the lab.
• I listened to Joan Halifax in the day-time for approximately 20 minutes, though I cannot say I remember much of what she said her biography was impressionable and affecting, on the Irresistible Movements Podcast. I had already knew she was involved with pioneers of the psychedelic movement in the 60's and found her intriguing because of this after Claudia had mentioned Upaya as a place to study, stay, and further my practice of Zen approximately 2 years ago. The podcast led me to a quick Wikipedia search, where I learned she was originally studying under the Kwan Um School of Zen, under Master Seung Sam. I did not know this at all beforehand. A few hours later, I received suggested online events from Orlando's Zen Center on Facebook, and promptly attended tonight's Closing Ceremony after being reminded of its timing 30 minutes prior to its start.
• I left the house about 9:40 PM to buy Pepcid (Fantomidide). Drove onto the HIGHWAY, for said Pepcid, priced at approximately 3.67 per box, to the nearest Winn Dixie Google maps brought me. I drove about 15 minutes to get to Winn-Dixie. On my way there, I had realized slightly after I left the neighborhood, but too far from being able to return without consequence, there was a weighted cardboard box full of garbage sitting on top of my car. I hadn't visited the garbage compactor in the neighborhood, like I had wanted to. I drove to Mc Donald's somewhat carefully, and deposited the trash into their Dumpster before continuing onto the highway to Winn-Dixie.
• Lastly, when I arrived home, I put on a breathing video for both me and mom to watch and replicate. Breathing is important to me. The video was simple. Mom was experiencing bloating when I had come back home. I read on the Cholangiocarcinoma group that this bloating may be Ascites--sometimes, patients get the fluid drained from their stomachs, and can look pregnant due to the bloating. I mentioned this to her, though it is always a bit painful to be the conveyor of the message to the frail and unpleasent things... Anyway, we also relaxed very deeply and skillfully with the goodnight yoga facillitated by Yoga with Adrienne. I was so appreciative and full of gratitude by the end, by the end I had encountered feelings of deep truths rise, some of which are:
• "There is an expansive space within me, which heeds everything the Universe is, before thought, as Seung Sam, and practitioners in this tradition of Zen say."
• Before thought, is that space where we reside together in oneness, in that deep expansive space of thoughtlessness, of seamlessness, of togetherness, of infinitude.
• These final truths were influenced by the Dharma Talk and Closing thoughts shared at the Closing Ceremony. At the ceremony, there were also closing thoughts on how the physical space was never what the sangha was, it was always the people, and the space of the mind. It was said that we are always connected, that much is evident, even if we did not return to the four walls of the Zen center--this acknowledgement, I took it as such for my self-pitying-conscious heart, was an acknowledgement that although I had not been faithful to the physical community, a string of connectedness existed within those in the circle but also all of humanity. I left the evening feeling called to Buddhism devotedly, to practice, and to desire to heal the disdain of long-term belonging within me.

At the closing ceremony, I recognized deep feelings of un-belonging residing in me. Feelings which were strong in childhood at my own Orlando Chinese Church. I was so uncomfortable and self-conscious of not greeting anyone verbally, and also, having left the organization rather abruptly and without notice 2 years prior, that I felt ashamed of my silent presence. I didn't feel I had the capacity to speak cheerfully either though, so said nothing at all, probably seeming rude. The others were regulars and spoke cheerfully and with warmth and belonging the 30 minutes before the Closing Ceremony began. I also unskillfully exited the session without saying anything.

I thought it was extremely interesting and telling how misplaced I felt, to the point, where I had wanted to exit the Zoom video call and re-enter at 7 PM, when I knew, it was scheduled Zen practice would begin, and I would not need to consider speaking.

I have to continue investigating my disdain and restraint of community, belonging, and love to such a degree. Also, I will investigate my callousness when I feel weakness in others, and my carelessness or abrupt renunciation of care of others I was once in love with, or have had deep emotional experiences with.

Darlene: 1:39 AM, 7/27/20

Goodnight. Going to snuggle in my wonderful inflatable bed now:)

who is this "you" that i miss? this you who is ever-shifting, ever-evaporating, ever-lifting? from sight...from space...from time? oh, grab the tape. we've been down this road before.

but this "you" takes on a ghostly, undefinable form

this "you" i can trace in an abstractly oblong shape air, cookie-cutted against fir-tree and dusk-sky

this "you"

...

who are you?

a "you" expired, out of existence

a you, transpired as time dredges on








who are you?