Your Third Eye is Showing

It is mid-evening when we finally leave the meditation hall. The half moon is already high in the Melbourne sky. The July air is crisp and damp. I keep thinking how much it feels like winter in Seattle here. My throat is a little raw from all the chanting and a mild cold. As we walk back to the house we are staying in I ask you how your meditation went. "It went," you say smiling. I remind myself that this is old hat for you. In 1977 you went to India and spent three years in an ashram.

novice questions the

obvious and hidden

after the meditation

There's a short muddy path lined with tall eucalyptus trees that leads to the house. When we reach the street you say, "Hungry? You wanna go to the store and get something to eat?" I don't really want to go. I want to go back to the house and talk about the meditation. I saw things, felt things, energy moved. What did the Guru mean when he talked about stillness? But you brought me all the way to Australia for this meditation retreat, so I follow your lead and walk with you up the hill to the convenience store.

higher planes call

want to stay in

the clouds

At the top of the hill we go into the parking lot of the convenience store. There is a small row of gas pumps. A red UTE idles in front of the store. The driver, long-haired and bearded, gives me a strange look as I enter the store. Inside, the layout is the same as any other convenience store I've ever been in, though I don't recognize some of the brands. I find some cough drops and go to the counter to pay. The woman behind the counter gives me the same strange look as the guy in the car. "Been at the ashram have ya?" she asks. "Yeah, how did you know that?" I ask. She taps the spot between her eyes and says, "The red spot on your forehead." In the back of the store I hear my friend laughing.

Buddha's belly laugh

can wake you up in

the strangest places

Democracy Dies While Capitalism Thrives

Democracy dies Capitalism thrives

Bling bling don’t mean a  

thing when all you  

want is the needle’s sting.

World economy based on

suffering with no buffering.

Corruptible souls

all about taking,  

politics and humanitarian faking.

Narcotics come in on  

the A train, laundered

money leaves to the

off-shore through the  

Main-Frame.  

Politician  

points to the ghetto and

yells deranged.  

Poor habitual gets the third

strike. White collar

criminal don’t serve a  

day of his life.  

One holds up

a liquor store for twenty dollars

and a pack of Lucky Strikes,

the other rips apart the Third

World and gets nominated for the

Nobel Prize.

Anorexic social services surviving

on governmental hand me downs.

Twisted ideologies based on building

more prison grounds.  

Little children’s

brains and stomachs remain empty.

Money for education diverted for war  

masquerading as justifiable remedies.  

Big dollar five percenters

stake in the heart of low income renters.

Just watch what you need.

The television feeds that unnatural

greed. Let advertisers plant the seeds.

The Beginning: Breath of War

I recently did a beta-read exchange with Rashed. He was very helpful and even wrote a review for the novel I'm currently work on. Check out the preview to his dystopian fantasy novel here.


https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Breath-War-R-Malak-ebook/dp/B072WHTXCH/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499093985&sr=8-1&keywords=the%20beginning%20r%20malak

The Divine Director

He looked again at the text message glaring across the screen and he felt the rage and wrath rising in him. “Yahweh!” the text message screamed. “ I give you a singularity with enough power to create an immense amount of time and space and a 13.5 billion year deadline and this is all you got? Call me back pronto. The producers are screaming for a meeting.”

When he got to the office they were already waiting for him in the conference room: Maggie the assistant director, immortal name Athena, Anderson the producer, immortal name Odin, and Larry, his agent, immortal name Mephistopheles (they had all adopted human names after Yaweh had first pitched the idea to them for some reason) all had worried looks on their faces. Shaking his heavy mange of hair and beard twice he gave each one a cold stare before sitting down.

“I think it needs more yellow. Don’t you think it needs more yellow?” Maggie the assistant producer piped up as soon as he was in his chair.

“And Yaw, baby, what’s with all the time spent on that little blue rock in some galactic backwater shit hole? And then it turns out that a bunch of the hairless super monkeys all worship you? I mean, directors are naturally a bit narcissistic, but I think you went a bit overboard here. Am I right?” Anderson, the producer asked.

“Loved the opening explosion though. But I don’t know, several billion years of hazy opaque energetic clouds before we even get to the first nebula? It just doesn’t grab me. Does it grab any of you? And where’s the dialog? We gotta wait how many billions of years was it again before we even get a grunt? Come on Yaw. This isn’t like you. You’re the king of holographic universe shows, no one is questioning that, but we can’t ride out another bomb again,” his agent Larry said.

He left the studio in a ferocious mood. A few lighting bolts had escaped from his fingertips and scarred the table top before he had stormed out of the conference room. As he walked towards the parking lot he pulled up the entire database on his phone, the script, shots filmed, budget info, the entire quantum conversion matrix, everything and viciously stabbed the delete tab with his right index finger.

Mt. Horaiji Hike

You explained during our hike that Ieyasu Tokugawa’s
mother had prayed for a boy here. I was still breathless
from the climbing and stinging from the old Shinto priest’s
glare. Black and green moss followed a tiny creek down a jagged ravine. At the bottom of the ancient wooden stairs a stone basin awaited our hand washing.

Purified, we climb the steps to the cedar building that
holds the shrine’s altar. Beside the altar a frayed hemp rope
a foot thick encircles a massive Japanese oak. Kami, or
spirits, are said to reside here. It is peaceful despite the
bitterness in my mouth.

cold mountain temple
pine trees grow precariously
snow on iced winter peaks

The Destruction of an Old House in Japan (Haibun)

The white sheet metal siding is streaked brown from too many years of exposure to wet and cold winters. The once solid square frame and high sweeping roof is now sagging. What did this old building contain, a family, treasures, simple junk? It is in a sad state, but sadder still is the indifferent wrecking machine that sits patiently in the front yard.

-leaves so large I thought they were roof tiles smashed on the ground in the rain

Trout Streams, Motion, and Memory

Trout Streams, Motion, and Memory

The desert of Eastern Washington is a place of dryness and death. Without water nothing can live here. The thin little stream that cuts through the harsh rock and sand provides nourishment for the willow trees and the grassy meadow. It is the single life-giving artery in this arid place.

I walk along the west bank of the stream just as the sun rises in the east casting off reds and violets across the black, sharp stone ridges. A small white tail deer stands atop a crumbling ridge staring down curiously, afraid of the upright predator parting the thick weeds by the stream.

I have to be careful that my shadow falls behind me and not across the stream. The trout here are wild. Everything in their world is either a threat or a meal. Unnatural movement  or reflections on the water scatters them. They are selective in their eating habits. Even my steps along the bank are measured. It’s a trade off; the rule is walk heavy for the snakes and softly for the trout. Rattlers, like trout don’t have ears, but are very sensitive to vibrations, striking suddenly when surprised.

I’m looking for dimples or swirls in the stream’s current, any sign that gives away the trout’s position. They always face upstream in feeding lanes where the current drifts insects down to them. Caloric energy is a premium in their world, and they never waste it lightly.

And then I see it, a break in the gentle flow of the current, the sloppy splash from a big tail, slashing back and forth in the trout’s enthusiasm for its breakfast.

I pull a few feet of slick fly-line off the titanium reel, making sure there are no kinks or tangles. I hear the methodic click of the metal drag deep within the reel as the fly-line peels smoothly off the arbor. I hold the tiny fly between my thumb and index finger, blowing on the delicate spun deer hair, and dark brown turkey feathers, fluffing them up, so they will be more buoyant. Then I gently press the point of the steel hook into the tip of my thumbnail to test its sharpness. Looking over my right shoulder, I check to make sure no hanging branches from the willow tree behind me will obstruct the path of the nine and a half foot graphite fly rod, as it is pulled vertical on the back cast, in a steady sharp snap of my arm.

But it’s not about the technical aspects of fly-fishing; the stalking, casting, and landing of the fish are unimportant. When the moment is upon me all these things drop away. There’s this feeling of clear intuition guiding me. Time is a tentative force in the background, and the stream and surrounding desert disappear. Only perfect momentum remains. I feel nothing but the flowing motion. It is the purity of form obtained in the action of doing. The motion of my body, the flow of the stream, cause and effect suspended in the structure of synchronized rhythm.

With the soft landing of the tiny fly on the gentle water, and moments later a large silver trout cruising from the depths, breaking the barrier between air and water to take it, shaking the energy of its life into my rod and through my arm.

It is always fleeting though, never captured, never grasped, or described. I have the moments spent stalking the trout, the long sweeping cast, and the trout’s short fierce battle for freedom. Then the brief period after, gently holding the slippery trout for a quick picture and then releasing it back into its cold home, but this is all. Only a shadow of the grace may be reflected in the depths of my eyes, or a faded copy of excitement imprinted slightly in the tone of my voice. Maybe the memory of wanting to be an angler, and learning to fish, and later in life, wanting to be an artist and learning to fly-fish. These thoughts and memories remain, the rest drift down stream.