:: ArthurPoet ::  (journey)

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“For a samurai, a single word is important no matter where he may be. By just one single word martial valor can be made apparent. In peaceful times, too, one knows that by a single word his strength or cowardice can be seen. This single word is the flower of one's heart. It is not something said simply with one's mouth.” — from the Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, — by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Japan, 1716

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one year ago it was fall, a year and a half ago, a love i longed for was beyond my reach, and a love i had discovered, was lost, and i was alone again, work was becoming increasingly pointless and without hope for change, there seemed to be no respite from the darkness which filled my days, and the nights, were far worse, the endless pain became unbearable and it just kept on coming, my home was a shambles, countless boxes filled with a painful past and garbage mixed with items of varying degrees of value, words and photos that were sacred to me, and ten years of bills and statements and junk mail from long since abandoned places of residence, unopened, and letters and memories all fraught with a world of pain unbearable to even hold in my hand for the briefest of moments, i am a strange creature to begin with, i have an uncanny sense of things and a sensitivity that racks my inner world, to touch or hold a thing brings back the entirety of that experience behind it, and my recall is perfect and whole, fortunately or unfortunately, whose to say, and here i was in the most immense and overwhelmingly painful time of my life with no light at the end of any known tunnel and there was no longer any place to hide the past that i had kept filing away afraid to confront and reclaim, it was overtaking me and my home was no longer livable save for my bed and the meager path leading to a bathroom and the outside door, an embarrassment, down into a hole of despair and unbelievable hurting, i cried every night and every day, sobs of uncontrollable tears racking my body, my daily work brought me within feet of her, untouchable, and yet not even there, i prayed for the moment when i would make it home to my bed so i could crawl into a fetal infant and let the sobbing come again, washing through me till the waves of pain diminished in intensity, speaking or conversing seemed empty, nothing seemed to matter, yet at home at least i could relish in the freedom to express the pain and not hide my true state of being, crippled, my hands would shake from so much pain and tears, i hoped no one would notice how bad it was, a girl i met did notice my shaking fingers over lunch one day, she asked me if i was a drug addict, i wish it were something that simple, my eyes would burn constantly, on the verge of tears, dark circles, worse than usual, i had this large empty dirty fish tank and rocks and shells dust covered and filthy, all collected over a lifetime of travels and miscellaneous adventures, each holding a distinct memory of some distant place or time of beauty and joy scattered amongst the ruins of my home and a collection of a stored past, amidst a world of pain, i did what i had always wanted to do, i created something that i had dreamed of, something that i had long envisioned within the fleeting moments of my solitary times, from within the darkness, a light, something born of love and care, a work of delicate patience and sensitive beauty, a thing of order to fight the chaos, something to express the peace and serenity that lived in my heart and soul, something that would show what my words could not, something that would show who i am, for it seemed that nothing else had worked, i pushed away boxes and stuff from in front of my fireplace, i emptied the fish tank of garbage, i washed it, i cleaned the glass, and i placed it empty in the center of my living room, on the hearth of my fireplace, everything else was a mess but this one thing was clean and a mark of an order and a center, i placed it as the beginning of an altar of love and beauty and care, to remember, to reclaim, i collected and soaked all of the rocks i could find, i rinsed and washed them so that their color and life shined through, they were pleasant to the touch and eye, i gathered them together with me as i sat on that small space of the cleared away hard wood floor, shoving everything else aside, this would be my talisman, this would be my weapon, my center, this would be my one place of beauty and magic and power, this would be my act of power to change what seemed to be unchangeable, something to rage against a sea of tears, something that would tell my tale in the simplest of terms for those who had eyes to see, let them see, i organized the stones in colors from dark to light, small to large, i began with the whitest of hues, i had two thick worn twigs of wood attached to bases of slate from when the tank contained water and fish-life, one i placed in the center and it jutted off to left, the other i placed against the far right side to the back, like two old and decaying trees amidst a barren landscape, the two sort of created a balance and equilibrium, the rocks i spread like a wave of color across the spectrum, placing them one at time, slowly testing the fit and look and feel, pale desert white stones with faint hints of long faded patterns, light tans blending into dark browns and deep reds, strong greens and solid blacks, it was a story without words or pages or history, yet it was all history and it told my story, it was my beginning, that night, and every night thereafter for eight ten weeks without respite, every day and every night, sleepless nights i worked till dawn, showered and went to work, returned home as quickly and directly as possible, no social gathering, no nothing, just home to build and create, i slept less than ten hours a week, barely one or two hours a night, and every third or forth night, i slept not at all, this went on for over two and a half months, the human body can call upon hidden reserves when put to a task that is of sufficient weight and importance, when the need is great, people have no idea of what all we are capable of, i went through each and every box, every file-folder, every envelop, every single thing i reviewed and organized, twenty-five boxes and brief cases and drawers, in all, twenty-eight garbage bags full of papers were tossed, i salvaged all of my writing and old letters and personal items and filed them and read them, i reclaimed a distant past and began to forge a long envisioned future, i worked outward from the small garden of color and rock, my altar, when the pain from memories became too great i would just sit in front of the altar and light candles in the dark and feed off the simple pleasure of its beauty, as if nothing else mattered, yet everything mattered, everything held memories and life and joy and pain, the pain came from caring, the pain came from feeling, the pain came from loving, the choice was mine to remember or to forget, most people choose to forget, to avoid pain, yet i had observed in life that trying to forget did not serve to create a healthy mind body and spirit, for the truth of what lives within always seems to resurface unwanted and when we least expect it, forcing itself to be heard and felt and remembered, better to live the pain in the immediate than to let it rule a subconscious psyche save for the benefit of years of a therapy that might hit upon the spark of a lost and injured spirit never given time to heal the wounded heart, to become whole again, i would embrace this darkness as maybe no one had ever before if that was what it would take to change the course of a history that seemed desolate and filled with lost dreams, filled with pain, from the pain i create beauty, a beauty that would speak the beauty of a love that was from within a heart of quiet stillness, in the end, my entire home became liken to the garden of rock, a homage to the Japanese organic order and life of old yet filled with my own artistic life and words and pictures, to some it was busy, they wanted empty walls and a forgotten past, mine was full yet all within certain lines, to those who could see as i would see, it was calm and peaceful, the lines were all that i cared about, i would adjust and neverendingly clean and arrange and re-arrange, from day to night it changed with the shadows flickering ever changing patterns emerged, a living art of hidden meaning and hidden messages for only those who understood and knew, always adding to it, my entire home became like an altar, a prayer, and it was the only place in the world where i was at peace from the pain of loss and love, that she might one day come and see, all that i wanted was for her to one day see it, once, so that she would at least know of what really did live within the apparent chaos of what she had seen of me and my world when we were together, i imagined that her rejection of me was because of what appeared to be my true nature, something of ugliness and dirt and dust and a failing spirit, something not worth her love or time and care, not worth the time of day, i wanted her to one day know of the true essence of what lived within my inner world, i wanted her to know who i truly was and that all that she had seen was simply a man struggling an ancient struggle to become who he always knew himself to be amidst a world that denied and forgot and sought to destroy all that was sacred and dear, a world full of fear and jealousy and anger and spite and the denials of truth and beauty and love, each day, even today, long after i had finished that seemingly insurmountable task of transforming my home, i do some something, some thing, here or there, no one notices and it means nothing to any but a bare few who know me deeply, i arrange something in an order, something, several pens, a book and some papers, something, here and there, to create an order from the chaos, something of beauty and life, something, something akin to what my home had become, she never saw what i had done, i closed up that home months ago, she never came to see it, she never saw my humble garden of rocks, my altar of color and life, to remember, to reclaim, to care, all that i had done, for the simple expression that she might know what was beneath the surface and what all my words and actions could not reveal, she never saw what i had placed at the very center of it all, the ancient Tibetan talisman that marked the completion of it, a gift that i had given her amidst the wall of silence and the empty cold spirit that she placed between us, upon completing the transformation of my home, the very next night, i sat and began to write her a long long letter, it took several days to complete, i rolled it up like a scroll with the talisman within the center, like a weapon of power and weight, it was heavy to hold, i bound it with black string and cord, it was a beautiful work of art and it embodied the rock garden and my home and all that i had done those past months, i placed it within a soft burgundy cotton pouch and sealed it, and then i waited, i waited for the right moment, for the right feeling, for the right time, it took two days, one morning i noticed her door ajar, almost an invitation, but i did not want to impose, several hours later amidst an involved conversation with someone i was overcome with a feeling that it could wait no longer, i excused myself and went and walked into her office, she greeted me as if i was a nonchalant minor acquaintance, i placed it upon her desk, and left, i believe it took several months before she opened and read it, i suspect she simply placed it in some drawer and chose to forget about it, as she had tried to forget about me, she never really responded, but at least i had completed my own gesture of honoring the love i had felt between us, my own act of power, of healing, an act of magic, an incantation of awakening, of remembering, of remembering who i was, who i am, where i come from, and where i am going, that night, upon returning home, a wave of pure energy opened within me, flowed through me, i seemed to have tapped into something immense, indescribable, intense beyond compare, something truly rare was happening, some part of me had been altered by the gesture, a door had been opened, a gate, something very real and very very powerful, from within the pain, something else lived, a part of me dormant and waiting to be born, it was just before six in the evening that i began to train, i had been training hard and long throughout these many months, pushing myself each time, two or three hours non-stop, hard and rigorous, another thing to help alleviate the pain, another outlet, another way to express the inexpressible, but this was to be something far far more, i knew of stories from my Shao-Lin teachers and studies over the years of a certain time in one's training when one goes far beyond one's known limits and taps into unlimited power, i knew that this was just what was upon me, the awakening of the Tatsu-Jin, the Shao-Lin Sun Lung, the Sleeping Dragon, the right time and place and sequence of events and it all seemed to have a meaning and purpose, it all seemed to make sense and it was all simple and obvious, i trained alone that night non-stop for over eight hours, a hard and rigorous intense training, i probably ran over fifty miles that night with several pounds of weights in each of my hands doing martial forms of Tiger and Dragon and Phoenix, really intense and vigorous, this would be no light workout, and it would be long, so long that it would be unmistakable what i had done, but i would do it alone, i knew after the first two hours that i would go for the full eight, i knew that i could do it and i knew that if i chose to i could continue for ten or twelve even, but eight seemed to be the right length of time, it would be my crucible and rite of passage, it was a little after two in the morning when i finally slowed my pace to a walk and let my body begin to return to a normal state, i cannot even begin to describe the world of pure energy that flowed through me that night and it is here with me still today, it was almost as if i was drawing forth energy from my rock garden, from the earth itself, from the universe around me, an unlimited source of energy that could be tapped into if and when i might ever need it, i must be careful with the exercising of it though for i can drain and over tax my bones and muscles without the proper balance of rest and replenishing, balance in all things, that is the ancient teaching, i bore no bitterness for her when i dismantled the garden and altar of my home without her ever having viewed what was meant for her eyes alone, it seemed fitting, to live and breathe and embrace the greatest of pains and then to let it all go, just as the Tibetan monks would spend so much effort and time in the painstakingly elaborate yet fleeting sand Mandala's of such care and artistry, only to be wiped away by the wind and the brush of casual feet, only to live for the briefest of time, let the world speak what cannot be heard, for those who have ears to hear, let them hear, to love is to worship another, to give unconditionally, with no strings or expectations, nothing save for the joy of giving, as i sat alone in a distant land and wrote to life the story of a movie of a man and of a woman and what it might take for one soul to meet and truly recognize and trust another as his mate, as her mate, amidst a world of injured and crippled spirits, betrayals and lies and fears, forgiveness, i had finally found the mood and setting that would define my story and reveal the hidden world of my passion and love and peace, to reclaim my self, Arthur, january 2001,

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