found art, jackson park, peterborough, ontario, canada · ben wolfe
do you remember the day i said
i was trying to figure out how to be
a buddhist who is being shot at ¿
i think i’ve found the way
what you do is
you die
if necessary
and as many times as necessary
you do it over and over,
and each time
your face forms
the same compassionate smile
the same sadness
the same forgiveness
over and over
like a character in bill murray’s movie
groundhog day,
doomed and blessed
to live the same
beautiful, endless
lesson
until
one miraculous day
that may never come
(and yet always comes)
it is learned
and this one part of the cycle
no longer needs to return —
and the crazy thing is
that all this time,
through every death-forgiving smile,
each blow and new denial
this is not some sad sacrificing martyrdom,
some hopeless, hopeful
offering of yourself as willing victim
no, you are doing this for you
because you know
that nothing brings more joy, more life, more hope, more peace
when being shot at like this
than finding the alchemy of forgiveness
over and over
until you, too
have finally learned enough
of what this day had to teach you
my anger came back —
the bastard moved into my basement :
he wants to tell me my story again
can i be a patient friend ¿
let him say his peace ¿
open my hands, like a priest
saddled with a self-absorbed parishioner
and say :
“tell me about that” ¿
i need him to stop his complaining
he had me on the run today
i got nothing done today,
i was just jerking around
letting him pull my strings
maybe if i listen
maybe if i can breathe my frustration away
it has to do with calculus,
with breaking free
of the need to see
that one last step, the one that is
infinitely small,
as needing to be measured and divided
in its turn
it is zeno’s paradox,
we have puzzled it
for 2500 years,
circling the point,
at times infinitely close,
reaching for reunion with the whole,
yet always
steps beyond counting away,
kept at bay
by this mind-made trick
that makes us stop to carve
one last small digital divide
between