No Way Out

The following was written in a 'timed' exercise - ten minutes to write, the words given as inspiration were “No Way Out.”

Re: No Way Out

Way.

That's my response to your creepy yet inspiring pea story.

Way.

Actually that's a poem by Holly Moyer. My brother-in-law told me a story about a time when he was sitting above treeline in the Rockies, writing a poem while looking out on windswept tundra and huge peaks. He wrote out three pages, then began honing it down, trying to make it more basic, more elemental, more like the awe-inspiring yet all-of-a-piece landscape around him. He honed and honed and cut and cut and by the time he was done the poem consisted of a single word: “Be”.

I loved the idea of a poem with one word. It made me wonder what such a genre would be called…poems of a single, one-syllable word. We called such a poem a hai, since it's like a haiku except shorter. And the accepted format of hais is that you only get to write one of them your whole life. A hai master will spend his entire incarnation living and learning and pondering and questioning his hai, only to utter it on his deathbead, with his dying breath. It is said that those who hear a master's hai instantly reach enlightenment.

After much meditation, thought, and prayerful deliberation, I came upon my own hai:

Squank

Obviously I'm no master of hai, merely a dilettanto, but it does express in an oblique way the core essence of my being.

Thanks for sharing so boldly and fiercely, Sandra. Your pea is scary and gross yet in the end it blossoms. Maybe the things that terrify us most are like your pea. The thing that wakes us gasping in the night is merely a pea under the mattress, waiting to grow. All it needs is ingestion, mastication, digestion, regurgitation, and excretion.

The gastrointestinal school of writing.

Way,

Tom

Re: No Way Out

I loved it! What a fun and yet provocative read!

Re: No Way Out

Thanks Josy! I was a bit unsure about posting it, so it's great to get your feedback.

Re: No Way Out

Tom! You can't leave me hanging.. tell me the poem!

Fabulous story about your brother-in-law.

Way.

Be.

Yes.

Squank.

Gosh, we will have a whole book in NO time at all ;-)

Love.
Sandra.

Re: No Way Out

I already did. Way is the poem, in its entirety.

But it seems you understood, for you created the fourth hai in existence. My brother-in-law wrote the first one:

Be

Holly, to whom I told the story soon after, wrote the second:

Way

I wrote the third:

Squank

And you wrote the fourth:

Yes

Yes yes! It's beautiful, and so inspiring. And very much a part of your essence. My dream teacher had a precept: “Say yes.” And you summed it up in a single poem. Thank you, dear friend and mentor. In times of trouble I'll be able to think back to your poem (one of the very few I'm capable of memorizing) and find again that courage which somehow explodes in art and life itself.

I like yours almost as much as Squank.

In awe and humble appreciation of the one hai you ever get to write,

Tom

Re: No Way Out

Tom!

What a delightful note to go to sleep on ( that's where I'm headed right now ) Thank you, I'm soothed after my busy busy day here at the pod, fine tuning some of its corners with Alex.

Yes!

~ Sandra

Re: No Way Out

Tom. More on “Yes”.

You said My dream teacher had a precept: “Say yes.”

Interestingly, the only teacher (in the larger sense of the word) I ever really spent time with had the same precept. Now, I'm 100% certain that my teacher is not the same as yours.

So I'm pondering this, and then it hits me.

What if.. All spiritual and such teachings are in fact, just meanderings on this core teaching, this 'hai':

“Yes”

I dunno. Feels like a Yes to me ;-)

~ Sandra

Re: No Way Out

Yes, that's for sure. Your poem could spawn a thousand commentaries of many pages long. You may have to come up with a syllabus for it.

Yes is a lot of things, but one thing it definitely is is scary. That's why I spend so much of my life saying no. Yes can burn ya bigtime, yes indeedy. I tried to say yes but got the crap kicked out of my heart. So now I hunker inside no.

Until I came to Zaadz, anyway. I feel a yes burbling up. Yikes!

Maybe I wasn't really saying yes. Maybe I was saying yeah but. Your hai has made me realize that.

My dream teacher Katrina also was very into surrender, which is a big part of the sprirtual pursuit of yes. She thought, as a percentage of the whole being, that our conscious mind, or the part of ourselves we think of as “me”, is about the size of the fingernail on your little finger compared to the rest of the body. So I guess maybe if we can get that fingernail to just say yes to everything, then the rest of the being, which is the part that really knows what it's doing, can get on with things.

Is it a pipe dream?

Yessin' the yesmeister, makin' yessies, oh yeah,

Tom

…come to think about it, as I remember her sitting there, arms wide open, palms up, pixie-like grin on her face, a little shrug, the actual quote is, “Just say yes!”

You did that exactly, since yes is all you said.

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Okay, I am not sure I can eat peas for a while.  This is a great quick paced piece it really pulled me along, where is that darned pea.  Oh, no not the belly button…that made me squirm a little, kind of a sensitive spot.

I love the descriptive text and the way everything flows together and you sneak these interesting characters into the mix like the witch coming out of the whitewash…I would like to read your next horror/thriller story.

~Mike

Re: No Way Out

I would like to read your next horror/thriller story.

Oh very interesting, dear Mike. My latest Musings on my “other” novel, (titled, for now, 'Saving Reiichi') is to develop it into a thriller…. (think Buffalo half Japanese, half-white street kid grown up / love affair with a girl from the other side of the tracks / Yakuza / motorcycle gangs / contracts taken out on the love-couple, street kid trying to do the 'right thing' & the only route there is to do the 'wrong' thing etc… )

so I feel very inspired by this little note of yours! Have no idea how it relates to this No Way Out pea story, but I guess you picked up on something!

Love,
Sandra