Wind Storm

 Today we had a big wind storm on the high desert.  Looking down into the valley from DMU, everything was obscured by white dust.  Columns of wild swirling whiteness moved slowly across the landscape.  Whatever top soil we have out here went air-born today.  It is touching down in Mexico as we speak.  The gate at Jamyang house was blown off it's hinges.  A large patch of shingles was blown off my roof.  A big metal dumpster was toppled.  As I drove home to Bowie, the orchard Ravens were clinging to the tops of the still nude pecan trees.  Some would let go and be swept up and over the road, beating their wings furiously then gliding fast with the wind.  There must be over three hundred Ravens in the orchard at any given moment.  I imagine they grow fat eating nuts but it is probably the things that live in the moisture around the trees that attracts them, or the moisture itself.  I slowed the car to look down the rows of trees.  The trees stretch in perfect lines for what looks like twenty acres or more.  A hallway of skeleton tress covered in Ravens.  The herald of the end of days. Edgar Allen Poe's retirement dream. Another normal day in Bowie.  I jest.  It's not that dark here.  Very dramatic but not that dark.  

    It's me who gets gloomy.  The dis-satisfaction that I lived with for most of my adult life that led me to the Dharma and my teachers lives with me still.  I thought I had buried it under the floorboards but I can still hear it's tell tale heart beating.  I'm lonely, yes, but it's not just that.  I don't know what it is.  I never have.  I can point to what it hardens into on the surface; a bad relationship, a bad job, poor finances, but that's not really it.  But I cannot yet touch it's face because I haven't really seen it.  And that pisses me off.  After a year and a half of the hardest labor of my life, dedicating daily, I want the results. Why hasn't it ripened?   I know we cannot choose the "when" of a karmic ripening.  And then I admit I do not at all pretend to understand karma or mental seeds or whatever you want to call it.   I do not understand and that pisses me off as well.  I am clearly full of piss.  I feel like I could tear down the house with my bear hands.  I do not want to bring this attitude into my care taking duties and muck up the joyful effort.  I want to burn through this ridiculous ignorance.  Not just ignorance of how things work but ignorance of self.  If I have to sit in this poverty ridden no-where land, by myself in the prime of my life, banging my head against the wall around my heart, in order to get some self knowledge, By God I'll DO IT!  And I'll serve the frak out of the retreat while I do it.  And I don't care what anyone says, I'll do it my way and come out shining like a fraking super nova eyes of Kali fire at the end of days!  FRAK!  You hear me!? You nameless faceless thing.  I'm coming for you.