Midnight in the Eternal Soul Garden

Knowing the Tao,

The being and the non-being,

The water and wind,

The yin, the yong;

This is everything and

Nothing at all.

When I close my eyes to meditate I can go to my calm place,

Only that is being…

Once I am there, I easily slip into non-being

Where I cease to be,

Where time does not pass

And interruption is only the next moment

When I am being again…

Like a bit of bark on the surface of a vast pond

I bob and dip between

Being and non-being,

Spanning consciousness and sub-consciousness

Experiencing each in a similar way

I dip and bob through successively

Higher and lower levels of consciousness.

As I rise, I meet the ego

On the threshold of self;

As I submerge, I seek antithesis

Encountering my deepest attachments…

Too often getting tangled in the strings.

Fourteen degrees Taurus—an old lady selling bunches of violets on a street corner

I've felt old most of my life,
The time spent figuring out
What I've always known:
That the older I get the less I know;
That the more I become comfortable in my own skin,
The stranger and more grotesque the World appears.

How strange to find myself at a crossroads
And barely able to satisfy
To always be comfortable is a skill,
A blessing…

But then who wants to be comfortable in a storm
or a swirling vortex?

Title quoted from "Degree Analyses Part II: Chandra Symbols In the Horoscope" by John Sandbach