Zenny

The Buddhists say you can't step into the same river twice. Some of them, those Zenny ones who think they're really clever, say you can't even step into the same river once, since by the time you get the other foot in, it's already a different river. Zen Buddhists? They're mostly mean. They get off on fucking with peoples' heads. You wanna meet a nice Buddhist, you gotta go to the Mahayanas.

In any case, the Zennies are confusing the water in the river with the river bed.

Metaphysically speaking, I only know what it is like to be a rock in the river. Water rushing by, changing and re-shaping me and everything around me without giving two shits as to whether we want to be rearranged or not.

Last night, a friend in LA sent me to his website, asked me to listen to a tune. It took me awhile. He's got a MAC, I've got a PC and everyone knows what kind of trouble that causes. But finally I found a format that would work and listened to the tune. I recognized it; it made me cry. But I had no idea what it was.

He said it was a melody I'd written 25 years ago. Man, I hate time. It is the most goddamn powerful force every spawned by physics. The egghead crowd-- you know the ones- they get their pithy articles published in the New Yorker, are forever saying droll shit like, "time is what keeps everything from happening at once." Oh, how clever. Ooooh, let me wrap my mind around that one.

Later last night, I woke up and remembered the first verse to that 25 year old song. "Winds that say your name. Colors that don't ever change. I stare at the night. Wishing you could somehow make it right. But Venus it don't rise any more. And I sit back and wonder what I ever came here for. To the Milky Way."

Kind of cute. Kind of sweet, right?

And it reminds me of that old joke. Guy number one says to guy number 2, "Where'd you go to school at?" Guy number 2 says, "Wherever I went, they taught me never to end a sentence with a preposition." Guy number one says, "Okay, where'd you go to school at, asshole?"

I think about love sometimes. About youth and the things that go with it. I think about laying on a diving board at 2 AM, looking at the stars not wondering so much, why is there something rather than nothing, but, "why isn't there more?" Why was it, I wondered, that there had to be millions of light years between stars, blinding me with deep purples and blacks, when they could all be closer together, illuminating the night sky like a never ending fireworks show?"

The answer of course is, they can't. Not and keep the rest of the shit from flying off into nowhere or imploding like a suicidal poet.