There is no greater danger for the outsider than seeking acceptance. Yet this is the natural makeup for the human as we are social creatures. The mimetic impulse though, for one whose trajectory is so different than that of mass culture, is like an illness as it drains the vital energies needed to weather the solitary journey. Energy is required to hone one’s powers of concentration, the necessary work of inner alchemy.

To see this world — the world of phenomena, materiality, trees, people on the street — as shadows of a bigger, more expansive and timeless underbelly, this seems to me the most genuine relationship with life. We do this on occasion, such as how, by eating, we expect some invisible process to nourish and sustain us. So too do we see through the materiality when nature’s beauty strikes a strong impression — a multicolored sunset at dusk. We accept and then take for granted that we are existing in two worlds at once. To be obsessed with the world of materiality, work, building things, other people, is to divorce our attention from the parts of reality which are timeless . But to remain conscious of both worlds is by no means to lose interest or to decry the world. On the contrary, such balanced vision — seeing phenomena as shadows, reflections, of a bigger, more timeless domain — is a way of switching on a perspective that the world — instead of problematic or threatening —- is a magnificent play of magic.

The priest holds community and its collective identity. The prophet holds the prophetic vision — not because he is an ideologue (like the philosopher or academic) but because his life and inquiry has stripped him and led him to an experience of longing which pulls him unavoidably from the shores of belonging out into the harbour of his own loneliness. On the other hand, the priest is deconstructing the prophetic heartbeat of his tradition, working to pull back the mystic from the harbour, to clothe him, to hide his wounds, to cover his nudity in marble and gilt, and to assuage the congregation’s fears of aloneness and pain. He discourages the flowering of new prophetic vision as he discourages his members from taking their own solitary journeys out into the sea. Within this environment, fear and spiritual deflation are the norms; and to follow in the footsteps of the tradition’s own mystic roots is considered dissidence and grounds for exile.

Perhaps the depths of loneliness are the closest we ever get to that light they call “God”.

I wait in a small room, a decaying shack, for any momentary sliver of light, to fill me, to move me to some sort of action. And I wait for touch, for something real — anything carrying shards of divinity. Does love exist? I sit thirsty and dry upon the banks of a giant river, a flood of unbridled love, I sit empty, waiting.

While my peers were in college, preparing careers, starting careers, solidifying careers, making babies — so many years! — I was a devotee of the magic of purging. I built many edifices of sadness and of beauty; I built them from those ashes of emotive fumes. And now? — I am a tightrope walker, parading the razor’s edge between remembering and forgetting, between the madness of boredom and the wide eyes of wakefulness.

Yes, I have many little speeches now. Like any good philosopher (but not the mystic) I am a raging ideologue, drunken on the past, spilling these little speeches on the shoes of everyone. Where is my diatribe of silence?

But alas, these thoughts — however putrid or recycled — are the only mirrors I have. This neurotic running is my birthright and to hold the whole of me would surely be enough. Enough.

Sometimes it is necessary to sink to the bottom so as to be able to transmute the whole matter in entirety. To taste salt on the bottom of the sea floor; to know that the whole ocean is a salty madness and to then seek sweetness in some sort of eternal knowing.

This process — this call — of letting go brings me closer to the heart of things, and to death. Everything falls apart. Life is messy. Yet the foundation seems to be beauty. We often see life as fundamentally devoid of love so we try to create it from the ashes of hope and fear, passion, and lust. Whether we manage to squeeze some sustenance out of such desperate means or are showered through more serendipitous encounters, love comes in all the same — as grace, as a wind from some domain beyond the mirror we carry as self. We are fools to think it’s conditional. Not love. Not the sun. We need only to care for the empty container. A window should be kept clean enough for transparency to occur. The light will come.

Insomnia. My head feels like a midnight bulb, shining into the darkness. This room is bright, as white as day, and blinds me from seeing that little door beyond which a dusty slide would certainly carry me, finally, into a dream world. Any dream world, so long as this body can practice stillness and this mind can stop churning out images upon images of a man building in the night.

I believe many poems visit in the night, as my body — a stiff board, a shaft in the gear of society — hovers uselessly along the razor’s edge between flesh and corpse. My heart beats unknown rhythms while those poems fly in on the wings of Spring.

To be stroked in the night by a poem and then, like every poet fallen from up high, to remember nothing come morning — in spite of two chisels, a crown, and a parachute found strewn amongst splinters over the floorboards next to where I sleep.

Soon dawn will crack its purple whip, sending me at last through that sandy door, down into the depths. Surrounded by three million hive-dwellers dressing their minds and feeding their ponies, at last I am gone, practicing nothingness, writing sleep poems.

How many minutes, months, or years must we go before succumbing to silence? Is silence really a bear lurking in the shrub? Is it an arrow pointing to the oceanic silence to come? As I step into my own revisitation of silence, I anticipate not a void but the great inner cataclysms that I otherwise wash over with noise and constant stimulation. Will I once again feel like my life has been gliding along a dreamscape, an exile since my last experiment in solitude? Will I recognize myself within the exposure of mind, of fear? How will that pervasive quality of aloneness feel, now that I am more at home in my body than before and also more open to the emotional spectrum?

I remember remembering. Once upon a time, I discovered a great fire within, a temple illumined by stars, filled with great dancing and song.

Perhaps what makes life such a journey are all the goodbyes. The turn of each new chapter points out the magic of life, and the unceasing letting go. I leave Portland in the morning and I leave many beautiful friendships behind. Yes, this is the digital age; I will have access to all the facts, all the sound bites, even the softness of voices, yet it’s the absence of eyes that will create this vast gulf.

I feel as though I am moving closer to understanding my home. We all have a home within ourselves, one that is painted particular hues and bears many marks of what we are capable of growing in the time we have. My curiosity now is for how this discovery will affect living out of my car, immersed in the vast stretches of trees, concrete islands, and endless stores we call America.

What is culture? This question has been a provocative one for me as the answer informs my sense of place and relationship with the world. Currently I would define culture as being those shared aspects of human expression which, at their very essences, cannot be bought or sold. You may purchase the container or medium but what brought you there is not a commodity but rather a transmission. In this sense, culture carries the legacy of the soul down through the ages so that human beings can continue to have an abundance of love, beauty, new ideas, and spiritual sustenance. At times, life can be a desert of the heart; especially in this dark age. This is where a healthy culture of art and ideas must thrive and balance the darkness.

For me, nothing awakens my vital energies more than certain books, films, and high-art in general. This was the idea behind the Sparks pages on this site. In this section I offer you a list of some of my favorite arrowheads of the heart. May they inspire you to stop, listen, think, cry your eyes out, sustain your dreams, create beautiful objects, and feel more deeply routed in your original, wakeful self. Feel free to drop me a line about anything in Sparks, including your experience of the works mentioned, as well as any additions you would recommend.