Fire and Ashes

I have been postponing making another blog entry because I have had really large entry to make on the poetry gathering at Serenity Coffee, but as time passes I feel more and more disconnected from the feelings I experienced while I was there.  I better make it soon, first I need to contact a particular poet.  For now I feel moved to speak, particularly by some music Tereza gave me that puts me in an emotional mood.

Birth and Death and Rebirth.  I feel like I die multiple times a week, but burnt out, there is always some spark in the ashes that lights me back up.  In one hour I can be on fire with vision and thought, the next I am a pile of ashes.  I am not a science guy (Although relative to my ancestors I am) but I tend to see things as though they were symbolic paintings.  I feel like the suburbs is a society of ashes.  Burnt out people with burnt out lives.  I know many people who seek to move somewhere that is alive, flames well kept, spirits looking forward, but I am not concerned with these people.  I look at the ashes around me and ponder how can life be breathed into the dead.  What spark is the right spark, how can I light a people who sleep and do not know?  Hidden among the ashes there are allies, but while they themselves are very much alive, they are clueless as to what to do about a stale culture.  And while one of my favorite fires leaves town for Canada, to experience a region that still has spirit, vision, vibrant culture, and a forward looking attitude, I regret abandoning this mountain of ashes for a city bound to a rigorous intellectual outlook which, while passionate for knowledge, lacks spiritual direction.  

When I think about Glenside, I feel the need to become a monk immediately and begin wondering around talking to people on the streets, ignoring education or my economic visions.  When I think about Boston, well, let's just say this:  In Glenside when I say I am Buddhist, I am occasionally greeted with interest, but most often with an apathetic, "Oh, thats interesting" from an agnostic.  In Boston, when I say I am Buddhist, I find a general intellectual backlash.  "Oh, I've read what you people believe, and I think you people just waste your lives," sir, how little you understand of our teaching.  In Glenside, I feel like people go to work, eat, watch TV, and depending on the person, have sex.  In Boston, I feel people are too busy following the neo-school of transcendental libertarian-anarcho capitalocommunism of social-populist bent with emphasis of (Insert Western Philosophical Windbag here).

We are remembering to bring our textbook to class, but not our soul.  "What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind." - Einstein

May the soul of this community and this city, a city founded with a philosophy in mind, rise up again like a Phoenix.