Category: poetry

Infinity and ChatGPT

December 26th, 2022

I set out to play with ChatGPT this week, to see what its potentials are, especially for those with cognitive disabilities. So far what I’ve learned is that it is extremely limited when it comes to being witty or clever in the magical ways people are, where you feel winked at, or know that something means more than someone seems to say.

However, for those who share information, and who are so full of personality that they can present easily known things in ways others find captivating, this may be their ticket to becoming amazingly prolific. It may be a small window within which it will work that way, because what people seek out in the first place will change too, but for an early-adopter with momentum, wow.

And for those with disabilities? This could be like having a personal assistant who clearly frames anything one wishes to present. I have struggled with an unreasonable amount of fatigue at times, which usually sets in while I’m going over and over texts, so know what I’m saying here. Non-creative tasks can absorb so much energy, limiting creative output in dramatic ways, even when inside a flood of ideas is ready to flow into the world.

Then again, it can work the opposite way. People who organize and edit for more creatively-inclined people, may find they need to tweak their branding, focus their talents in different ways, perhaps on deep detail work or polishing. There will be a market for polishers, for sure.

Here is one of about ten poems/songs I asked ChatGPT to write today. You can easily see what its limitations are, as well as its strengths.

The stars, a burning host Infinite, unknowable, A reflection of the endlessness That lies within the soul

In their light, we see A glimpse of something more, Something beyond the limits Of our mortal selves

They remind us of the vastness Of the universe, The boundless expanse of space That stretches out before us

And as we gaze upon their fiery beauty We are filled with a sense of wonder, A sense of the infinite That lies within our consciousness

The stars, a constant presence Guiding us through the night, A beacon of hope and possibility In an endless, unknowable sky

ChatGPT, when asked to write a non-rhyming poem at graduate reading level, about stars, infinity, and consciousness

And here is a dialog I asked ChatGPT to write, between a campfire and the sun. I began something like this when in college, but my then partner ridiculed the idea, so I never finished it. I’ve often thought about picking it up again, but know the moment is gone. P.S. I like that when I asked ChatGPT I used Please, and when it replied, the response was “Sure!”

Campfire: Oh, sun, how I long for your warmth and light. Every day, I try my best to mimic your glowing radiance, but I know that I can never truly compare to your brilliance.

Sun: Ah, campfire, my dear friend. Do not sell yourself short. Your flickering flames bring joy and comfort to all who gather around you. And although I may be far away, I am always with you in spirit, shining down upon you from above.

Campfire: Oh, sun, you are too kind. But I cannot help but feel a sense of longing when you set each evening. It is then that I truly miss your presence.

Sun: Do not worry, my dear campfire. I will always return to you, bringing with me a new day filled with endless possibilities. And until then, remember that you are never alone. The stars above twinkle down upon you, and the moon casts a gentle glow upon the earth.

Campfire: Thank you, sun. You always know just the right words to lift my spirits. I am grateful to have you in my life.

Sun: And I am grateful to have you, campfire. Together, we bring light and warmth to all those around us. Let us continue to shine bright, always.

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sticking the landing

December 16th, 2022

15 days until the end of the year. The usual momentum has taken hold of me to wrap things up, or play as wrapping things up, so I’ve washed the car, sorted through things and gathered donations, and begun the list of 100 accomplishments a friend first sparked me to begin quite a few years ago now. ♥︎

What’s interesting about the list is that what ends up on it are not often the things I strongly set out to accomplish or plan with timelines and detail. It’s more accurate to call my list 100 Appreciations.

There are a few notable patterns this year, ways in which I’ve stepped out of my usual groove, going to more events for instance. I was at the Lady Gaga show that a massive lightning storm disrupted, ending it early and sending a stadium full of people into common wings to sing and pray for the show to go on–to which the universe responded a resounding NO.

I was with one of my grown kids that night, who kept remarking that even with the shortening of the show everything was wonderful–our first grown-up concert together! After years of contraction and concern how could we feel anything but happy and grateful? We were good about masks and thankfully stayed healthy.

And I attended a poetry/comedy show with friends that was in itself an answer to prayer, as ALOK would list their upcoming shows on social media and I would wish “Miami, Miami…”, until one day the date appeared. I invited friends, and for the first time in I-can’t-remember-how-long, we lingered and laughed and overshared like crazy until forced to call it a night.

If you have never listened to nor encountered Alok Vaid-Menon, it is well worth your energy to do so. Although I fall into the ally category when it comes to transgender rights and activism, and believe myself rather educated on the topic when comparing myself to peers, I’ve learned that my knowledge base is actually quite shallow, and not to give myself too much credit for minimal apprehension.

While it has intellectually seemed a no-brainer to me that if even the heavenly ideal is “no male nor female no bound nor free”, getting stuck in gender binary thinking is an error, my notions can still be unnecessarily limited. Much like praising a melting pot rather than honoring unique individuals by allowing them to tell their own stories, and listening, my ideas have often reflected my own conditioned and consciously chosen preferences.

This year Rubin Museum also focused on an exhibit on site and via SMS which highlighted Buddhist figures that are understood as being ‘beyond’ yet appear as myriad forms. The same quality and name can be represented by a so-called female or male form. Then of course there are the unions of deities who exude qualities as one/both/neither.

What I’m saying is that there’s plenty of room for further understanding.

And last weekend during a holiday visit with my oldest we went to see the musical Hadestown! The show was full of powerful performances and had the intimate feeling of being in a hidden improvisational Jazz bar. Here’s a little animation someone made, highlighting one of the songs:

As for the rest of my list, and patterns I noticed, there were smaller trips too/getting out more, although no real travel in 2022… a famous local farmers’ market I’d never visited before, new vegan restaurants, knitting groups, scattered between lots of work and recovery from work, lots of plugging away at building my repertoire of healthy meals, lots of reading, therapy, and importantly, real attention to the Vajrayana practices I began this year. I’m probably most pleased with that renewal and deepening those commitments,.

Goodness, it seems like a lot when I type it all out (especially since this is surface scratching!), and I guess that’s part of the point of making time to list those 100 things.

It’s so easy for time to go by in a blur and for the aspirations one nurtured carefully to nonetheless fade into background. Some years, that blur is okay, quite natural. Then there are years like this one, where acknowledging the *so much happening* in my little ecosystem encourages hopefulness–energy to wake and be at ‘it all’ again for as long as I’m given to do so.

♥︎

P.S. Why is WordPress giving me a prompt when I hit the WRITE button? I generally come here when my own thoughts move me, so that was a little strange.
appreciation practice

February 13th, 2020
Warm sunlight streams

through soft applause ~

Leaves and branches.

An unidentifiable fragrance

Sallies forth ~

On cool January winds.

Inside,

Sheer white curtains

flutter ~

My thoughts too.

Figs, pears, blueberries

Fresh cream and ginger ~

Brightly green, popping peas.

Alertly sitting on cushions

of glistening rice ~

Evoking fields of water,

and occasional Drops,

of wine.

In this jeweled world

Beauty and sustenance

{like heaven and earth}

Present one feast

Moments
suspending

hands with
moments

Like a grand procession

Sheltered by space,

Known by attention, and

Arising in perfect time.
```
SBC
March 1, 2015

[A poem I found and enjoyed, even though I wrote it] 😉
```
The Blank Slate

January 25th, 2020

As you see, bolder formatting is temporarily gone from this site. I’ve stripped it down while making changes, but also to symbolize my current state.

In meditation this morning, the theme of faith arose. Unkind thoughts were present – an argument I’ve been having with someone for as long as I can remember… feelings of injustice, betrayal, silencing. But, rather than get deeper into the argument, I could see how it had affected my trust levels in relationships, and how much of ‘me’ it had defined.

I would say, “I’d let it define”, but that wouldn’t be accurate. It is more like, my quest to resolve or escape it has, both knowingly and unknowingly, defined key interpretations.

As can happen in meditation, I could experience the argument as an object of attention, one of various, a wheel spinning off in the corner somewhere, bigger or smaller, taking up more or less space. And I could ask, “Help me let this go.”

Who was I asking? Who was the I, asking? Worthwhile questions, but distractions in this context, because more important is the asking itself and the imagining… the feeling of the possibility of that wheel no longer spinning so fast, defining so much.

I think this imagining, at the point at which ‘I’ runs out, or intersects, is faith, and where across religious/spiritual disciplines and schools of thought, there may mustard seed sized agreement. It is a bit like a blank slate itself.
Bubbles & Wings

May 18th, 2019

Today, after a full night of tossing and turning, I felt it… a spark of innocence floating in the air. It seemed very real, yet somehow not of the same universe or substance as the rest. I watched, my inner vision locked in on the hint of the glimmer, as just like the Good Witch’s bubble in The Wizard of Oz, it grew bigger and bigger; there, yet also not touching anything else.

I asked myself, which is the dream? It didn’t feel like an angel I was wrestling with last night, more like the baggage of a thousand lifetimes, but surely I awoke to some kind of gift.. a new opening of mind or sense of liveliness and freedom through which the wonders of life may flow more freely. Or at least, my awareness of them…

Soap Bubbles
downloops.com

When I first began meditating. I met a monk (who was or wasn’t – it doesn’t matter) in a virtual world who, listening to me talk about my spiritual experiences and visions, cautioned me not to become too enamored, a la Narcissus with his reflection. He suggested I instead consider the taste underlying the experiences, and let that taste spread out, permeating into the rest of life.

While I don’t think I missed the point entirely, it would be a long time before I could see that not owning personal experiences, not holding them too tightly would enable growing wings.

However, something else clicked when that feeling of claiming ownership of experiences fell mostly away. Even to tell a simple personal story began to feel pointless or indulgent. I often felt guilty, or like I was lying. My context was way too wide.

Yet, that’s how people converse. It is normal to ask about someone’s past or hopes for the future. Locating one another in time and space seems necessary to further connection.

So it felt for a while as though I’d undergone surgery, but the wrong part had been removed, leaving me unsure how to interact with the world. Thankfully along the way I found other ‘spiritual types’ who felt this way, and more patience to wait for that phase to pass too.

It was then that the insecurities of childhood and fears of adulthood reappeared with brand new ferocity, and wow, such deep feelings of regret. I suppose now that what happened is that I hadn’t had to deal with those fears and inadequacies for a for a while amidst my blissful romance with meditation and spirituality, and was caught off guard to find the wounds still there, still un-healed.

Doesn’t that sound similar to what people describe in romantic relationships? So much can be covered initially, by awe and newness.

I think that’s what the spark of innocence that greeted me this morning means to remind me. That although my field of perception may feel full of the beasts of doubt and fear at times, I can recognize that they aren’t ‘me’ or ‘mine’. That there are muses of clarity, too. Now I want to see and converse with them all, hear the strange and wonderful things they have to say.

Sometimes when I write a post here, something comes up on twitter that speaks so closely to it that I find it hard to leave out. Today it was,

“…to arrive at that beautiful ancient innocence which consists of the ability to plunge into dream…”

-Albert Camus, Youthful Writings; “Essay on Music,” , 1932 – quoted by Rubynola82

What comes to mind too:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi
Force and Movement

March 17th, 2019

I watched the documentary Mr. Gaga today. At first, I watched with the sound off and subtitles on, while listening to a podcast. This is an objectively terrible habit I’ve gotten into, of taking multitasking to absurd and undermining ends, but I thought the film might be atmospheric and give an experimental air to the room.

Wonderfully, however, it was the sort of documentary which won’t stand for that treatment, which makes one want to engage with what is happening on screen, inside of the other lives, as though one’s own. And I did!

Eventually I stood up and shook my body convulsively, turned my limbs in odd directions this way and that. It felt great, though I stopped short of practicing the fascinating falls (you’ll have to see the documentary)!

Image from Stanford University promo

I didn’t know much about Gaga as a dance style, or as a language, as the film suggests. Until taken by friends to see the last Pina Bausch choreographed show Vollmond, I’m embarrassed to say that I knew little of the modern dance world beyond outside of parodies, which always gave the impression of a frivolous world of privilege far far away from my own.

Like many little girls, I had desperately wanted to be a ballerina when young, but it was because I was drawn to the beauty of the sets and movements, the hypnotizing and grand lyricism of it all. In fact, when I was about 13, I followed behind a girl at my church, learning to walk and hold my posture just like hers, pretending that I was also a dancer… a form which stuck and I still haven’t quite broken. I even learned to swing my ponytail like hers, while appearing to hold my head perfectly still.

So I remember feeling confused and overwhelmed after the Pina show, as though my mind had been curled and pushed backwards and all my linear lines of thought thwarted so much that they just wouldn’t work anymore.

Walking out, my sophisticated friends long immersed in the Art World asked what I thought, and I remember trying to compose a sentence or two that might give the impression I understood “the story” at all. I couldn’t. Looking for the story was the story, which was a koan to me.

And because it was a koan to me, for months afterward I felt and dreamed the splashing waters and the whooshing in everything, feeling the force Pina was trying to show, of destruction and resilience, embodying rather than ‘thinking’ about it directly.

Image from dansedanse.ca

This is my sense of things right now… an urgency that has me trying everything under the sun to get out of my head and onto the page, the stage, the whatever-it-takes. I feel like I’m trying to break into my own life, defying convention and my own accepted wisdom to do so.
One Last Time

January 20th, 2019

We were fortunate to see Hamilton! a few weeks ago, which was everything it was cracked up to be. I’ve been obsessed with the music for a year or so, but was still surprised by just how timely the whole thing is when you see it come together, how complex even though popular, and how deep some lyrics run.

Like other great works, although the play is named for one central character, other characters come forth more strongly – as more raw, or their stories more heartbreaking – than does Hamilton himself. Sometimes we’re not sure we like Hamilton at all, and we think we dislike Burr, but his arc is not so simple. Lin Manuel Miranda is very generous with the music, giving others the best melodies.

One of the most poignant of the songs, One Last Time, is a conversation wherein Washington announces to a protesting Hamilton, that he is stepping down rather than running for another term of office. This seems an absurd move when there is much good to do, and such good opportunity right where he is. He’s probably even happy there! Yet the stately Washington makes the case for teaching the country how to say goodbye, for going on in a different way.

I’m terrible at goodbyes. Perhaps I’ve never seen one modeled well. I’ve always found it hard to be clear and just let go, inevitably leaving things half undone for a while, hoping they will make sense of themselves. It is ‘nicer’ in the moment, but not the most mature approach!

These days, people are more likely to ghost, letting others fill in their own narratives, but that doesn’t sit right with me either.

It can be especially hard when there’s no good enough reason, when it really is just a call, which is why I’ve been writing (then editing way down) a letter for the last few days. The meditation (and lots of other things) group I’ve been part of for ten years is full of people I still care for, and I still love the vision.

So it feels more like moving to another town than a break up.

This song *really* helped. Listening a dozen or so times, I heard Washington’s layers of reasons, and accepted that there may never be a good time to go, and I will never feel good about doing so. And that it is the right decision, for now. Of course, the scenario of the song is about the transfer of powers, which my situation is decidedly not, but the emotion he expresses is close. Once I’ve accomplished some things, too, I would like to return. Also unlike Washington, I’m not ready for retirement. 🙂

Much of the song is taken directly from Washington’s final address, and uses a variation of a line from the Bible I always thought was beautiful: “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.“… (adding to it, not from the Bible:) “They’ll be safe in this nation we’ve made.”

There lingers love in him and a great vision he remains invested in.
“If We Started at the End” – a poem

April 22nd, 2018

Poem written with the Play-as-Being group in mind, for our 10th Anniversary.

If We Started at the End

If we started at the end

perhaps this is a beginning

Perhaps this very celebration

Is an Original Prayer

playing as culmination

Our shared ritual of

Avatarness

Flashing in, flashing out

Of existence

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Could you see,

the ‘true person of no rank’

always coming in and going out?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What about now?

.

His suitcase is full

of elaborate costumes

Sad mask, happy mask

Dragon tails

Sunshine and storm clouds

play across his face

.

Offering magic

to our time

Amazed am I

Am I?

.

The scene keeps changing

alterations happen,

Appreciation overwhelms

Wild open hearts suddenly

leap out

Let the stories lag

behind the Knowing.

(end)

**With thanks & apologies to Shodo Harada, Rinzai
Reflection

February 25th, 2018

I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being.”

– Hafiz