“When focusing only on one’s credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.”
― Criss Jami
I met this old professor.
He wore his degrees like medals.
He would talk for hours of
all that he had learned thirty years ago
yet when I asked
what he had learned since
or what made his heart sing
he gave me a blank stare
“Hearts do not sing”, he scoffed
“I have learned all I need to know long ago.”
He walked away as there was nothing he could teach me.
He was right.
I met an old street woman.
She was a Princess in the land
she was from
or so she said.
She had only three tobacco stained teeth in her mouth
and her eyes shone.
She had dreams dancing there
and each one brought her from day to day.
She said for five dollars
she would tell me a secret
I handed her the money and she said.
“Love, Dream, Learn, Share”
I longed to forever here her teachings
I saw a child playing
He ran up to me and said “Play”
He did a little dance
I said “I must complete this project”
and then perhaps I will.
He looked at me and did a little dance.
He hugged me and then skipped and said “Play”
Totally in the moment
One day he would grow
and worry about yesterday and tomorrow
but today he was present.
I joined the Teacher in the moment
and danced in the now.
— G A Rosenberg
“It’s not at all hard to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias.”
― Criss Jami
How do I shut myself off enough to hear you? How do I stop pushing to be near you? I am me so loudly at times, how do I tune it down so I can amplify your voice in my ears? How can I dry not judge your tears? How can I sit with you in pain without feeling the cause? or the because…when the only way i can hear the because is to listen not with my ears but with my heart, to feel your energy, as it is presented not as how I would have it be… I cannot use your pain to make my rhyme or waste my time I need to sit with you as I need to sit with myself. Perhaps something I need to learn how to do better as well.
Blessings, G
“I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.”
― Criss Jami
Long ago I learned that the more rules there are in a system, the more loopholes there are around them. But then I’ve always had a love hate relationship with rules and structure. I tend to like to bend them into new lines and shapes and see what they can become. Can I now claim that’s due to artistic license. Hmm that could be even better than poetic license which just gives you the freedom to play around with language. Now that’s a turn of phrase gives us freedom. How can something give us that which is inherently ours?
This little mini-essay may be a bit more dis-jointed as usual as I have a bit of a cold so feeling oddly stuffed up in here. Hmmm, if a priest is defrocked and a lawyer is disbarred is a former pothead dis-jointed? I’ve been told that when a foreign embassy is torn down it becomes disconsolate.
Tricked into learning
We start chasing our true tales
revealing ourselves
Ganesh, the deity shown in one of my pictures tonight is the remover of obstacles. Sometimes of course the easiest way of removing an obstacle resembles Alexander the Great’s solution to the Gordian knot…… (cutting the string).
Intersecting Realities by G A Rosenberg 
