Thanks Always Returns

By Thanks Always Returns

Shalom is a creative intellectual who becomes world-weary and cynical from an early age. Sick of observing his family and those around him expecting Jesus to arrange easy atonement for coldness and cruelty, he seeks true redemption by agreeing to go to hell himself. The hell he experiences is revealed through life stories of his failure to bond with others, to enter the passionate romance he craves, and to bring peace to those he loves. Instead he brings them, and the reader, a unique perspective as he explores the rarely questioned cultural assumptions he finds at the root of his ongoing cynicism.

Among the many topics explored are the hidden costs of gender-role reversal, the superficial sanctimony rampant in both new age spirituality and organized religion, the futility of one-size-fits-all solutions, the worship of established authority in medicine, law, and other professions, and the deprecation and strictly-for-profit treatment of both the creative and the intellectual in modern society. Other thoughts thrown in, along the way, involve the courts, folk remedies, meditation tools, addictions, a unique grand unified theory, the relationship between software and life, the nature of faith, and more.

Can Shalom find the path to redemption that he has hoped would coincide with his life path? Insights come through a marriage that reinvents what two adults can mean to one another, through recognition of his place in a cycle of abuse that has haunted his family for generations, and through the pending arrival of a first child. As the verses draw to a close, he is left to contemplate how a shift in perspective -- from that of everyone's undesirable misfit to that of their patient and loving parent -- can change the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thanks Always Returns
• Release date: Sep 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301696888

Thanks Always Returns

The book titled Thanks Always Returns, available here and at http://www.thanksalwaysreturns.net, contains lots of these details. Out of its content, "Faggot" and the "Experiment" and "Laughter" series use some of the broadest brushes, and http://thanksalwaysreturns.net/ThemesOfThanks.html provides a biographical synopsis.

Book preview

I. Fall

Jesus

"Thomas said to him, ‘Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you’re like.’

Jesus replied, ‘I’m not your teacher. Because you’ve drunk, you’ve become intoxicated from the bubbling spring I’ve tended.’"

~ Gospel of Thomas, verse 13

As a child

I knew a way into meditation

I never forgot

He came into my visions sometimes

Gently

Over the years

And one day asked:

Who do you love?

There are no limits

at least not while I’m in this state where you’ve caught me

though sometimes

like with demanding people

poison ivy

faceless corporations striving to influence me

it can be a boundless stretch

Would you go to hell for the sake of one you love?

Yes, since there are no limits –

is there a reason I’d need to go?

Would you go to hell for me?

Well I can see you must be tired of being nailed to that tree

imagine what may happen if through giving myself I could pull you off

I know the place well

I’ve been there

of course

I love you, man

and I’ll do whatever you need

relationship is a two-way street after all

He handed me the contract

I signed it in my blood

He might as well have partaken of my body too

For I descended straight to hell

and knew again what it was to be consumed

from then on

I’d welcome knowing

The hell of reliving leaving everything behind

keeping close the memory of the rich dark soil of the place I was born

the memory of nurture

held distant

from the time I was a child

The hell of being an outcast

stranded in somebody else’s town

resenting those who’d dragged me

till they and all around resented back

holding myself away from everyone who might’ve cared

to prevent their being hit by more spitballs rocks or insults

getting their physical bones broken or displaced

like mine were

as I learned to know and appreciate the aspects of me

that can never be broken

to see with broadened vision

what can’t be injured

The hell of observing my habit of holding myself away

for their protection

and for mine

outlive its usefulness by a boundless stretch

with me

holding onto it

alone

The hell of experiencing all the suffering I ever caused

unable even to say I’m sorry

because the time to do that came and went

without me

The hell of recognizing every confusion of others

agonizingly slowly

while I’m a bit too late too unusual too far out

of the picture

to make a difference

and there are many confusions

The hell of watching the incompetent doctors make her dwindle

to eighty pounds

half what she’d weighed a few months earlier

having to steal her from them

from her mother

from that death grip

while she couldn’t eat

forced to learn more subtle healing arts myself

for lack of any sensible alternative

buying an extra fridge to hold enough vegetables to keep

giving her juice

the only nutrition she could stomach

convincing her to hold my vision

gained from my long experience in this hell or that

of the part of her that can’t waste away

a tenuous vision of her recovery

body and soul

a vision of her subcutaneous fat regrowing

cell by cell

only over years

of precarious mindfulness

that never quite finds its end

The hell of raising our awareness together

rather than all the children she wanted

maybe it was all that juice

only to reach the revelation

that we faced the devils of her family and mine

steel-clawed rodents and classic red dudes with pointed tails from my side

whirling crones and depressed loafing cadavers from her side

as I drag them out of our home one by one

and surround it with ash

the last devil’s face must of course

remain stuck inside the front door

irrevocably cast into it whether we smash plead or bless

his bulging eyes glancing back and forth over his wicked grin

I show him to friends who don’t even meditate yet

see him plainly with awe

formed in fine detail from the very grain of the wood

watching everything we do as the months go by

until I walk into the room one morning and he’s gone

even though it’s the same door

he’s not to be seen anymore

still when we sold that home the buyers’ first act

having never been told about our devils

was front door replacement

Doesn’t hell take many forms

Can’t the many hells cold or hot

All have fires

Our fires

Burning away dross

Bestowing subtle gifts

Clear soul vision

Things laid bare that would be hidden

So they can be experienced fully

From here I see things differently

Things that boundlessly stretch

A crazed imagination

Made real

At some level

What’s altogether serious?

Will those of sufficient imagination experience hell

When their consciousness always can be somewhere else

Clinging

Remaining stuck in a place and time

Unchanging

Growing neither older nor wiser

Until imagination itself is captivated

But how

Maybe a moment of introspection doubt shame realization grace

Maybe someone abandoned

Maybe a missed opportunity

Maybe a blind chance now

Maybe the world

Maybe a friend

Or maybe just maybe

Other unknown powers that meddle with our fate

Beginning last night in my meditation

A devil entering the vision

Barging right in with the wind

that comes blasting across Monterey Bay and up this hill

His enormous profile towering dark red above me

Blanketing me in the pitch blackness of immense shadow

laid all over and around me

The sense that I’m a tiny powerless nothing

impinging upon me

The definite feeling of being touched by bitter cold

That feeling of doom

Annihilation

Goads my laughter

As I say

just look at you

you try to make this big impression on me because you’re weak

As I bring warm healing energy into myself

Filling me

Overflowing

Until it spills from the palms of my hands

see how with a boundless stretch I reach one hand beneath you

to support your warty feet

and another

over your shiny horned head

lightly press you like an accordion down to my size

you’re almost playable

like a fine instrument

a beautiful solo

or is it a duet

surely not a trio a grand trine a trinity

right?

now why not have a seat in that chair

come on

you’re resisting

what a piece of work you are

or pieces

here’s the core of you relaxed in the chair

or at least a lot of you

but there’s the big dark red towering husk you left standing over me

the piece you wouldn’t let me play

maybe your problem is that your pieces are all scattered

you’re like Jesus

who has so many people calling his name with no reason

who wouldn’t tire

of being asked to show up in traffic and at every football game

he never had to explain why he doesn’t like his name

called in vain

the answer’s plain

others may be rewarded for their worship

you my fork-tongued friend are rewarded for my gift of myself

of my love and total respect for you, man

that’s how you came to spend this quality time with me

and isn’t it nice to have someone talking sense with you for once?

He looks at me with big round eyes

In silence

Probably wants to lower those horns charge gore me in the gut

it’s useless big guy who are we kidding

you’re pure spirit

I’m embodied

think I don’t know the difference between the realms?

do a real convincing job and I might get a tummyache

just for you

curable with a stirred sip of slippery elm powder

or perhaps a few drops of warmed pau d’arco tincture in my teacup

but more likely you’d only get hung up in my shirt

I’d have to pull it off and shake you out of it

right there over your chair

and if you fell out upside down I could always leave you

humiliated that way

with your shiny dark red head pinned by your horns into the seat

and your scaly stick legs hooked over the back

watching me like you used to from the door

you might stay that way as long as you like

why should I mind

I’d sit there and mingle with you now and then

because like I said I love you, man

why intimidate or manipulate anyone

why bother

why not just collect yourself

maybe hang out in a jazz club

or dance to the Pacific Avenue didgeridoo players

you’d be too cool

what, have you got nothing to say?

Yeah I got something:

did Jesus ever thank you for cuttin’ that backroom deal with him

the deal with the blood and all?

Thank me?

you’ve got it all wrong

I thanked him for the opportunity to have conversations like this

with the likes of you

You’re pullin’ my leg

I really did thank him

with all my heart

for he’d given me a true gift

and then he told me

thanks always returns

Distance

"No one can please everyone.

Your mental peace is more important."

~ Baba Hari Dass

Awareness

is all that is

to the one who has broken free

of illusions

of prejudices

of regrets concerns conceits

of identifications

of jealousy

of femaleness or maleness

though since this is about human awareness

the reader may rather identify the protagonist as she or he

at least not it so what’ll it be

might as well be she

which is fun and

besides after spending enough time alone

she’s learned to play any and every role

learned to respect the body for its role

learned to recognize awareness as the whole point

learned to sense the mind’s limits

learned to bend or break a few of them with who knows what results

learned to marvel at incomprehension

learned to accept imperfection

learned to acknowledge the lessons

learned from those who step by step brought her to

where she was going all along to

awareness

through which she unlearned everything

leaving behind these insufficient verses

To the one who reached down from the rooftop

like a vampire

to pound her third-story window

waking her in the wee hours

leading her to wonder

whether you saw in her

if only after so many years

what she perhaps had failed to see before to

what you expected her to awaken,

To the one who knocked on her front door

at seven in the morning

having lost the key to the next door apartment

after yet another night of abandon

leading her to wonder

whether you refused

the breakfast she set before you because of

what you saw in her too to

what you expected her to become,

To the one who left vitriol to arrive years later

in permanent ink

in the disposable mail

the one who tripped her from behind

as she ran

the one who shoved her from behind

down the stairs

the one who kicked her

when she reached the bottom

the one who pretended

as she thought you were her friend

leading her to wonder

whether you understood the ripple effect of causes,

To the one who gobbled all the food in her fridge

as soon as it might have been shared

leading her to wonder

if her little date with your virtually-ex-spouse

made her have to ask

before you took her on another date

of your own

for more groceries,

To the one who picked up the phone for her

that one last time

leading her to wonder

just what anticipated pressure was

too much had time continued,

To the one who philosophized at her

as she lay through most of the night

and became upset when she refused to abide

by your direction

leading her to wonder

how carefully you’d considered

who could be taught

what could be taught

and why it need be taught,

To the one who cleaned her rented oven

with at least an hour’s elbow grease

leading her to wonder

what you anticipated in return

since you refused both money and favors,

To the one who suggested she reach beyond limits

for awareness’ sake

leading her to wonder

why no one had suggested that before,

And to the one who drove a lot of miles

expressly to curse those to hell

whose special occasion was being celebrated

leading her to wonder

how anyone could be guaranteed

to either go there or stay there,

She asks of your true essence

can anyone

suck your blood

shut you out

shove you

trip you

confuse you

starve you

compress you

correct you

release you

bind you

consign you,

even the source

of your free will,

even a brilliant blazing heaven

that some say

almost without your knowing

attracts you

like a moth spiraling four-dimensionally,

even your

karma,

even your

mother,

even your

self?

Yet unaffected by the fire

is what already burns

as the healer and the healing

become conscious all at once

comes understanding

and the chance

to at last be each

and every

one.

Encounter

"And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that,

behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire...

And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven."

~ 2 Kings 2:11 (NIV)

In my earliest memory

Four of us traveling a backroad

Came to a stop

From the reflective seat I saw

The stunning glow of the round object

Bigger than the car

Nearly blocking the way

For a few moments until it lifted

Itself overhead and was gone

Into the night sky

And of us four

None spoke of it

Until I asked many years later

One thought it was aliens

One thought it was lightning

One hasn’t shared an opinion

As for myself

I turned odd

Very different from everyone else

As have the few others I’ve met

Who admit to similar encounters

At similar age

So you’d understand why

I also haven’t spoken of it

Since one of several events I’ve attended

For the gentle effects on my mind

And the visions established

By crystal singing bowls

That left me singing inwardly

Until someone asked

If anyone had seen a UFO

Of all that crowd

Only I raised a tentative hand

Became the center of attention

Asked what I saw

What could I say

Well it was just a round glowing object

And I was just a little kid

I remember it vaguely

I guess that was a disappointment

Not very interesting

How could what I saw be interesting

In any way that offers much meaning

To someone who wasn’t there

Maybe the others

Were right to not speak of it

But my life sure isn’t boring

Could be

That’s the interesting thing

About having encountered that bright round vehicle

In which case I wonder

Why I was singled out so

That should all else be equal

I’d wish its occupants would bring it on back

Down and take me with them

Experiment, part one

Не спрашивай старого, спрашивай бывалого.

Don’t ask the old, ask the experienced.

~ Russian proverb

Here at the Autumn Leaf Festival

Folks from places far away

Cook’s Forest in its nitid colors

Or Cherry Run’s quaint cottages

Far afield as Story Book Forest

From whose portentous leaves they might’ve stepped

Or clear to Cedar Point

The westward lake where their stones might’ve skipped

Had none traveled here

To walk past in their own autumn colors

Sometimes colorful clothes

Sometimes colorful characters

Their lives could be experiments

Trial and error outcomes

I could learn

From a fellow with beads

Like these

I run

To catch him up as he saunters along

Begin to wave a greeting

Only to be halted by a hissed rebuke from behind

Don’t talk to that hippy!

I turn back

Not comprehending

Why my path need be predetermined

Discipline

"Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand."

~ Chinese proverb

She takes pride

In that now I’m five

And trying to help out

Spilling chalky water all over the garage’s cold concrete floor

In the act of cleaning the blackboard where I create

Realizing my intentions aren’t those

That necessitate discipline

She knows better than to punish me

Why think of punishment at all?

Next lifetime dear

May your mother hand you a mop

And kindly say

Let’s finish the job together

Barn

"Deje el mundo cambiarle

Y usted puede cambiar el mundo."

Let the world change you

And you can change the world.

~ Attributed to Che Guevara

We run and play together

Born a week apart

Next-door neighbors

Those doors a quarter-mile distant

Running out the wide barn door

Leaving behind the hay’s aroma

I step too near the ramp’s stony edge

Slip on moving rock

Fall crashing into the pile of boards strewn

Alongside the short wall’s bottom

Raise a painful hand

To find a coarse splinter piercing it half through

Crying out

I reach my other hand for his help as I clamber

But he’s run from the sight of blood

Related as it is to his own

I cease my efforts

Lying there amazed

At how close we are

Yet so far

That but one of us can be human

But which?

Eggs

Better a neighbor nearby than a relative far away.

~ Proverbs 27:10 (NIV)

It’s a weekly ritual

The stop at the farmhouse

On the way home

Grandpa’s there

With Grandma

And my closest cousin

And her mom too

Three generations of ladies

Who mustn’t want to see me

Since I’m such a rambunctious blundering boy

Since she thinks I’m tiresomely messy

And since he leaves the car without a word

Leaves the engine running

Leaves me fidgeting in back

Waiting

As she monitors the situation from up front

Watching

So I’m always afraid to ask

Waiting

The point of sitting so long wasting gas

Watching

Whether I’ll soon need that likkin’

Waiting

To add the foreseen wails to the engine’s annoying drone

Watching

In the dark

Waiting

For the next round with the paddle will come soon regardless

Watching

I must show no emotion

Waiting

Or I’ll provoke her usual refrain

Watching

Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about

Waiting

Endlessly until his return

Wordless

With the box of eggs fresh from the coop out back

What a relief

The car’s finally moving again

Backing in the dark from gravel to unmarked pavement

Turning at last toward the next home down the road

My only home

For three more endlessly envisioned decades

Leaving

"I open my eyes

And look at the floor

And now I don’t see you

Anymore."

~ Bauhaus, Burning from the Inside from the album Burning from the Inside (1983)

There’s no choice

But getting in

Sitting the stuffy hours

Rifle pointed skyward

Through the roof

Plastic stock firm on my leg

So when I’m at last told to get back out

It leaves a red welt

That’ll last for days

In this strange sweaty environment

Now that they think they’ve dragged me

To this convoluted place

I know no one

Should they fit in

By being square

I’ll do the same

Sure I’ll be conformist too

As best I can

But only on the outside

I’m my own community

Youth and kids and old folks

Males and females

But not on the outside

I see what others don’t

Spirit real or imagined

But not on the outside

I’m a northerner

I don’t live in the place I see

With eyes open

I haven’t gone anywhere

I’m still right here on the farm

Anticipating the next Autumn Leaf Festival

But not on the outside

This will never be home

Home will always be

Not far away

Not distant in space

But right here where I really am

Stranded in time

I’ve never left it

I’ll never accept it as gone

It’s right here

In my soul

That’s all that matters

In my heart

That doesn’t fit in

That’ll always be home

That’ll never be home

That’ll always be home

That’ll never be home

That’ll always

Drift

"Work is done

Then forgotten

So it lasts forever"

~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 2

Love’s easy to demonstrate

The little things make you aware

Just a cute statement like Grandma has to go to the bathroom

Clear enough that even a toddler playing with his trucks on the rug knows

Why no one’s present for awhile

That he’s not really alone

Some said an old lady shouldn’t have to care for a kid

Anymore she’s had so many

In truth I was looking after her

For those few years

Her funeral came way too late for me

What’s the difference between

Hundreds of miles

And death

After they thought they’d dragged me

To the big town

I had just the two of them to learn from

Everyone else so foreign with their accents

Some fashionably cliquish

Some over-spittoon-ready and twangy

Some coolly flavored by the still ghetto

I hardly understood

What I heard and drifted

Regardless of my rootedness to that old patch

Of Allegheny land

Those hundreds of miles

Back to them

From her I learned detachment in faith

Decisiveness intent self-reliance

Make a choice and stick

Spirit over body

Faith over works

Who cares what the world may think

Or whether there might’ve been better options

Whatever concern may arise

Just barrel through

There may as well be no one else

In any scenario

From him I learned detachment in acts

Performed in quiet

Body over spirit

Works over faith

Who cares what the outcome may be

In the best or worst case

He’s just another one of the rabbits

That he keeps out back in the raised hutch

Whether the day brings sunset or butchering

Why be concerned joyous anxious moody bitter vain

Things just happen

Rabbits never complain

Because they thought they’d dragged me

To church Sundays they must’ve had the notion

They were raising an old-fashioned follower

Of empty words

Of half-hearted preachers

Of Jesus

How could they

In the midst of transferring those moribund values

Not realize they effectively raised an older-fashioned non-follower

Or maybe a follower of nothing

Of raw emptiness

Of Tao

Of drift

Clothes

"Whatsoever you have will be taken away.

Before it is taken away, why not share it?

That is the only way of possessing it."

~ Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, My Way, the Way of the White Clouds, p. 239, first Evergreen ed. 1979

Somebody stole my underwear is what I once exclaimed

Because I couldn’t find my clothes and at that point I blamed

The other children at the pool where many went to play

That afternoon, there at the town’s run-down YMCA.

Kabir has said most people are insane: afraid to lose

Their clothes, although they’re naked as it is, they yet would choose

To stay upon the bank instead of jumping in the stream.

So much they worry over clothes while owning not a seam.

Nobody paid attention to my little quandary.

I stood by the compartment that I’d found to be empty,

And realized that it was the one I’d used the day before

Then, thinking, found the right one and put on my clothes once more.

Monkey bars

"She’s everything you dream about

But don’t fall in love

If you do you’ll find out she don’t love you"

~ The Tubes, She’s a Beauty from the album Outside Inside (1983)

She’s at the top

Overseeing the playground

A vision

From the stuck up environ

Plenty of room up there

Not for me

If she didn’t throw me off right away

Through touch of sun-roughed skin and tousled hair

So delightful

How could I not fall

The vision oversees me

Longing makes me look

Look away

When she looks back

It’s too hard

At the bottom

I already know

Only too well

No one’s at the top

While the playground otherwise remains

As it was since she fell

Fracturing a kneecap

Here they stand

Empty

No overseeing vision

Of rough and tumble fun we could’ve had

Brings on a fall

Faggot

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I lost my sensate home just before I turned six.

I came to live in town from way out in the sticks.

They spoke in their accents striking me as contrary.

The friends I had, in those years, were imaginary

Or rather, real to me but perhaps not to you,

Though what these friends told me was entirely true:

"If you would live in balance what you may well run

(Though that male form you have may suggest it’s no fun)

Is energy that’s mixed: both the female and male

Complete your human life. Choose the blend as the need

Presents itself to you with each moment. Don’t heed

The boys who tell you chatting with girls is no good,

For knowing girls will be of help on down the road.

You’ll understand girls best if you sense how they feel.

To do that, know your feminine aspects are real,

So live a life that draws from all sides of the cup."

This balance I retained all the while I grew up

I gained an understanding of male and female

Much earlier than others. Though none knew me well,

They could yet see this difference between me and them

And thought I was unsure whether I was a him

Or her. So they decided all this on their own

And called me faggot, pussy, all which I’d disown

Since I had not become more attracted to males

Than females, none harked what I said to them then:

My attitude toward girls must have been quite enough

To prove my manhood lacking in all the right stuff;

The music I composed was yet more proof that I

Was absolutely gay, clearly not even bi.

I played the bells at church; that was the final test:

Whoever saw me do that must have told the rest.

The more I tried to let them know I wasn’t gay

The more they ridiculed me each in their own way.

The physical abuse I got left me with small

Reminders of that past, like when I took a fall

Because the guy behind me saw that he could trip

Me so I’d hit a riser; it made his sides rip

To see me back at school with my arm in a cast.

My jaw still clicks, because someone had a real blast

When he used it to practice his roundhouse punch one

Afternoon. His brother the bus driver, son

Of wealthy parents, figured he’d let us both off

And stopped for just the purpose I’m here writing of.

I wear a night guard since one calm day at the gym

When a big black guy next to me, just on a whim,

Reached out and felt me up. In return for such charm

I dealt him a sharp blow gauged to do little harm.

He turned and slammed a fist right into my gumline

And knocked some teeth loose. I nearly retched from the fine

Taste of blood in my mouth as I held my teeth clenched

To keep them in. Things might’ve got worse but he flinched

As he was grabbed at once by another black guy

Whose name was Perranoski; I didn’t dare try

To speak a word of thanks with my mouth in that shape.

Though if it weren’t for Noski, I could describe rape

These days perhaps from a first-hand perspective.

My soul may not have suffered too much from invective,

But on the other hand, for my ribs I do stretches,

And you might do them too if your rib ever fetches

A kick from some girl’s shoe on which you have just landed

With thanks, because the stairs atop which you just standed,

(Before some kid behind you gave you a hard shove)

Descend until they meet the chill sidewalk. Such love

I felt for all my classmates back in those fun times,

Let’s hope they’ll get a kick out of reading my rhymes.

Their favorite things were their psychological games,

For instance at the library, where some sweet dames

Who’d just sat by that guy who’d made me break my arm

Came grinding up against me with all of the charm

That girls can muster back in the darkened book stacks

Where I had gone naïvely to ward off attacks.

Though I can see few differences in types of flesh

That’s not an invitation for men to get fresh,

Or women, either, certainly not if