WE HAVE TENTACLES
we have tentacles
extending into the immediate
not only the capsule of skin
tentacles that mix
and throb and meander with
the immediate
innumerable tentacles
innummerable tentacles
permeate into our skins,
our cells
ultimately and immediately
every tentacle
is connected
to every other
tentacle
the thickness of it
is that it is clustered
skin is abstraction
for a bundle of will
a bundle that seems to bump
itself around
eyes, legs, hands, mouth
allow the bundle to move
through the greater mass
it is sticky, the bundle,
pulling itself through this
mother mass
this is what we perceive of
as separation
separation
clumped together again
with gravity…
I pray
and it casts a net of will
tentacles
into this greater mass
of information
I pray
for immediate perception of
connectedness
everything is so simultaneously logical
and illogical, simultaneously banal
and miraculous
the banal part
is mostly the grind of ambition
of getting through the day well
and the miraculous
is the empirical stuff
that I observe “around” me
signs and sounds
it would seem
it should be the opposite
that the mind inside this shell
should be where novelty resides
and everyday sights and sounds
should be not so novel
but I look at our breathing
tail-swagging cat, and hear
the river of traffic outside,
and I know it is an orchestra
and a ballet
and the permeating song
of crickets outside
the lush August sonic carpet
it is thick, This
the carpet of sound
is thick and humid
it is fabric cumming
into my perception
that by handling with mindfulness
I either tune in to
or it tunes in to me…
I focus my ears, my eyes,
my attention and it is a machine
that becomes keener
the volume and quality
pulls itself together
by my tightening attention
Lady
Interesting.. I resonated with this write from the title on …
so interesting that I’ve read in several things over time.. not sure where now.. but that psychically/ metally/ emotionally we put out threads… tendrils.. tentacles… out to thing we want.. love .. touch… both in good and bad ways.. it is a form of attachment… it can be healthy or hurtful. The healthy ones can connect us to others in wonderful and meaningful ways.. the unhealthy ones can be painful.. and hard to remove. Discernment and consciousness of putting them out is key I think.. Sometimes we put them out unconsciously.. and get caught by them… by hopes and wants… but awareness can bring deliverance from the attachment.
In the I-ching… one of the hexagrams I’ve been studying and found hard to understand finally became somewhat clear to me in one of the commentaries I recently read… and it talked about “loosening of the thumbs” which I thought a strange expression… in some translations from the Chinese it is referred to as a cutting off of the toes. But what it refers to is “letting go”… to let go means to loosen your grip on something… and thus releasing the thumb… visually/symbolically I find that much like the idea of tentacles… The concept I think is that it is not just we who hold .. but the object also holds us… and when we let go… it also loosens it’s grip on us.
It is a very simple but profound idea I think… it makes the environment responsive.. there is give and take… especially when it comes to understanding attachments of the mind and the heart… obsessions and addictions to things and ideas.. people…. Anyway.. you ideas and poems always give me more to think about… I sometimes wonder how it would work to collaborate on a series of poems and how that would work… we often see different facets of the same thought.
I am always intrigues when I find how things are interestingly related.
…. and I think the challenge is to learn to hold things and people and ideas… without grasping them… I think that takes time to learn.It is the same concept in buddhism no different really. It is a form of reverence towards ourselves and the world we live in… to learn to not hold things too tightly… so tightly that we are afraid to let them go.. it allows us I think to more easily move thru this world… not hanging on and grasping everything along the way… it allows us to flow when we must flow.