Author: davestankowicz

Dave Stankowicz is a retired educator who lives on an island off the coast of Portland, Maine with his wife Debbie Jordan and their dog Cody. Liberated from the responsibilities of teaching he has found the space and time to pursue so much that interests him. Dave is the former host of the WMPG radio show Palm Wine Radio, and currently hosts Next To Silence - an hour long show that explores different themes, genres, artists and record labels. Next to Silence can be streamed live on Peaks Island Radio at https://peaksislandradio.com on Mondays and Fridays @ 7:00 PM EDT, and Tuesdays @noon. You can also stream archived shows at his site (category: next to silence) He continues his lifelong efforts to master space and time.

In This Age

In this age of refracted reality
the magic pull of certain vagaries of truthiness
ensnarl, swirling flames and celestial gloom,
the state of permanent sleeplessness
hypnotized into confusion and wonder.

Not too scared, never outside your comfort zone,
a life of nothing more than sensation,
the bewitching bond of desire,
and a terrifying romantic nightmare,
conjure up worlds, present and beyond,
arresting speculations of unmitigated folly.

Lethargy and decisiveness of every single attenuated moment –
metal, bone, blood, ash,
fragments that  lack context,
relentlessly empty and ugly,
long centuries of ghosts woken from their sleep.

All that you have done compressed in the ocean
of sympathetic imagination.

It’s All in Her Eyes

It’s all in her eyes;

those blazing, wild eyes,
unbridled, impulsive,
seeing ten steps ahead
of her actions,
perpetual zap
through an endless
tunnel of thrill;

shearing through days,
no looking back,
unstoppable as a
rampaging herd;

with the charismatic force
of unimagined ecstasy,
that blurs
better judgement,

as she careens
in all directions
towards  the consequences
of the damned.

I Get Paid in Hugs

“I get paid in hugs.”

A tidbit I caught from the radio
before taking out the garbage.

It lingered, like an unwanted smell,
while I schlepped the trash barrel, recycling
bin and bundled newspapers to the curb.

Not the same way as
“Does a dog have the Buddha nature?

or
“The world is all that is the case.”

or
“Ineluctable modality of the visible:
at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.”

The hug payment afterimage remained
like a pebble in my shoe;
an irritant without apparent purpose.

The phone rang inside,
the dogs barked,
Bernie delivered the newspaper, and
my wife stuck her head out the window
reminding me to empty  the ashcan,

and I lost whatever was there a moment ago.

Perception and The Magician

Perception is Creation.
                     -Andrew Holecek

The magician, he sparkles in satin and velvet
You gaze at his splendor with eyes you’ve not used yet
I tell you his name is love, love, love
“My, my, ” they sigh
“My, my, ” they sigh
                -Donovan Leitch
“Sunny Goodge Street”

Perception is Creation.
Through our six senses, driven by our genetics, ancestral legacy, culture, experience, and memory our mind assembles and creates a world –
a vision of reality.
Our brain and mind look for order, pattern and explanation,
and our ego – this sense of a solid self –
shapes and sets that world into a reified image,
in the service of  our need to construct a sense of security.

The mind is averse to chaos, the patternless, to discontinuity.
It is resistant to the dreamlike nature of things,
and cannot abide by
impermanence, randomness, and interdependence.
So we become stuck in believing who
we think we are in the narrow, rigid, fearful world
that we have created in our mind.

At times I will draw a Tarot card that may shed light on a line of thinking that lost its way
or a project that has hit a dead end.
This happened with the above strand of thought, and I drew The Magician,
and immediately thought of the Donovan stanza above
which has always held a haunting fascination for me.

The Magician:
represents the ability to manifest an idea or vision;
makes the invisible visible;
brings consciousness and illumination,
acting like a bridge between the sea of the unconscious and material reality;
serves as a reminder of how skilled we are and also how powerful the universe is.
The Magician has confidence in himself, his talents, capabilities and resources –
and knows the potential that is just waiting to be realized.

Who is the Magician Donovan sings about?
The Magician is an archetype, and is each and every one of us
when we become the spectator of our actions,
and bring  insight and wisdom into our minds.

This gazing at the splendor of eyes we’ve not used yet
is the knowledge that we create our world,
and recognize the difference between pattern recognition – which often leads to insight and creativity –
and pattern imposition – where we force our bias and predetermined opinions on a situation and convince ourselves of it’s truth.

As Magicians we are able to penetrate the chaos, the patternless incomprehensibility, the sadness and cruelty, the threats to our sense of security, the painful changes to the world that we were so accustomed to, and a future that is unsettling.

As Magicians we are able to direct our energies into creating an antidote to the darkness,
and in doing so we transcend the reified sense of self
and enter an open, boundless world of possibilities,
and relax into a timeless and limitless space of awareness.

Nubian Maiden

Nubian maiden
barefoot bashful,
angel of her father’s eye,
glides with the grace
of her innocence –

her hands soft,
not knowing the scrape
and rough assaults
of manual labor.

Her oh-so-proper transport
of frangipani that sings
her untouched girlhood.

This world bursts
honey hazed,
and exhales
without guile,

in once there was
a time.

Not For Sure…

Not for sure I’m quite here yet,
spending time,
wasting time,
time seduced
by fireworks and frills,
lost,
nowhere;
distraction not being a place,
a detour, yes,
a movement smooth and effortless,
away from place and a time notched in meaning.

Too bad,
oh too bad this gong of presence is muffled
in imagined past, and future projection,
fueled by unctuous schemes and urgencies’ insistent barbs;
unanchored and drifting,
in the current of lost,
the waves of losing:
celebrations,
illuminations,
tactile evidence grounding presence in the world.

Waving the tattered flag of surrender,
a half-hearted life of neglect,
of discernment of porous beliefs,
of connections barren and uncultivated,
sometimes careless, often clueless
to the ever-changing interdependence,
registering spikes of false confidence,
convinced that
when things go south
it isn’t necessarily you.