Validation

Validation

My cat, Mau Mau, sits at the open door of my home

Thinking cat thoughts, wondering cat sorts of things

As he watches the evening sky

Turn from blue to gray to black

He breathes cat breaths and his heart

Beats with a cat heartbeat

The rhythms his cat thoughts,

Cat breaths and cat heartbeat make

Are their own reason for existing,

And he is comfortable with no more validation for living

Than the life spark coursing through his veins

It is good, I think, every so often,

To strip away from ourselves

All the heavy trappings of our culture,

All the striving, and talking about

What's gonna be on the TV next week,

And worrying about paying the bills,

Down to the sorts of rhythms our human

Heartbeats and breaths make,

And feel once again for ourselves

That same sort of validation for being alive

That needs no more reason

Than the simple fact that we exist

Dewey Dirks

Views

Views

This morning I sat for a long time

looking at the scenery outside my home

There were tall green trees and leafy bushes,

tan rooftops, red ochre walls,

and a playground with blue and yellow slides.

As I looked out my open sliding-glass door,

I noticed that the shades of colors were different

depending on whether I was looking through

the glass window, or through the wire screen

that covered the other half of the door.

Through the glass, colors were of a deeper shade

while the colors through the screen

were a little more pastel as the wire mesh

diffused the morning sunlight shining bright outside.

Same scene, different views,

through different perspectives and I knew that

if I opened the door, and stepped outside,

I would see all the morning colors from

yet a third perspective as well.

Everything you ever look at in life is just like that---

You'll get different views of the very same things

depending upon the filter of expectations,

assumptions, preconceptions and ideas

you happen to be looking through.

It is good to learn to stand back

from one singular perspective and view

whatever you're looking at through

several different filters in order

to get a more well rounded view

of what your looking at.

Become a collector of ever more points of view.

You'll find soon enough that no single point of view

has a corner on the market of truth

and you'll discover in yourself

greater empathy for ever more people.

Dewey Dirks

Pictures

Pictures

I have a number of friends whom

Have reached deeply enough into themselves

To have touched something of the great starfield

That lives deep in our souls

Although I'm sure that some of them

Have not yet realized that is what they've done

Many of them have good amounts of insight

Into Nature and Human nature

And it is always a pleasure to talk with them

About the paths we all wander in life

Two of my friends who see with much clarity

Have a couple of traits in common

Although I don't believe they've ever met one another

Both are American, born and raised in the American ways

Of the seventies and eighties

One of them has studied the martial arts for many years

While the other has studied yoga for a very long time

Their minds are both lithe with the thoughts of two cultures,

Their ideas swim in the oceans of two societies traditions

And this trait, I think, allows them

To both see from better vistas of view

Although it is possible to see with good clarity while depending

On the ideas of just a single culture

And knowing the thoughts of more than one society

Does not guarantee clarity of view,

As a general rule, it is easier to see life more clearly

When you can draw upon the great variety

Of human thought rather than depending solely upon

The notions of just one society

The more you teach yourself of the grand palette of colors

Humans have created for themselves

To depict the paths we each wander in life,

The more it tends to allow you to paint

A clearer picture of the world for yourself

Dewey Dirks