27Oct 2015 by aryask@gmail.com

octo-vision: a parable

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Inside the bone of your right shin there is a circular crevis, and there lays a ship wreck where in the captains cabin I found a sowing needle and made a moon sweater for lady octopus. She liked it, it was red. She wore it for a week straight, even when she went to bed.
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20Oct 2015 by aryask@gmail.com

Trust the process: a bike ride to Tao mountain

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                            On our way back from a 40 mile bike ride to a nearby mountain. Shoes and clothes drenched, relieved to have made it this far. The steady rumbling of the engine and intermittent squeaking of the windshield wipers. The side windows foggy, swarmed with rain matter. Occasionally, a droplet would streak diagonally across the window in dismay of the other particles. Seated comfortably, reflecting on my field of fortunes. I had never been on a long distance bike ride before and seeing that Andy was an experienced rider and a cool cat to journey with, I began to amuse the prospect of a cycling trip. Unfortunately, our weekends were always different. Mine are Monday Tuesday and…
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21Sep 2015 by aryask@gmail.com

Memory is magic

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I lost all the data on my ipad, my main productivity tool. One day at work I pulled it out of my backpack and somehow the system had reset to original settings and had wiped everything clean with nothing stored on iCloud. All the stories I had written and the time I had spent on them. Vanished. Luckily, I have things written on my work computer and in various notebooks. And the source of my memory remains intact, my mind. More specifically, the heart of my mind. But at the time, my thought was "this sucks balls." Later that day, I held a poetry workshop and a lesson that arose from one of the students' stories was: somethings we cannot control, just be happy. I'm trying something new this week:…
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15Aug 2015 by aryask@gmail.com

The bus driver belongs

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I'm sitting at the front of the bus, eating an apple on my way to work. I begin to notice the driver is honking his horn for no reason. We are in slow moving traffic and he’s honking his horn. We are at the stop light, the light turns green and the cars begin to move. He mumbles something at the other drivers and honks the horn. There is no logic to the constant noise. It’s irrational and irritating. "It’s something he does everyday and has become an unconscious behavior," I thought. "And continuous honking is part of the driving experience in China, similar to Iran’s roads. It’s just a senseless habit.” I concluded. I look around the moving traffic, the trees, the clouds, and the blue sky that is rare to see…
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21Jun 2015 by aryask@gmail.com

Why I don’t bother with humility

gratitude, happiness, play, spirituality, storytelling
What if each waking breath you had a whole new brain, a new perspective, and all that remained was a wonder, “Here I am.” What if we dropped our personhood, no matter clever or simple, humble or self-absorbed, into the thick fragrance of now. Those ribbons of analysis wrapped around the mind, how we decorate our walls with untold stories. If we remove the outside world from the equation of "me," what are we left with? The self-image is hallow. there is no person behind the mask. There is nothing to chase or avoid, you are the light soaking on your forehead. How light wrinkles and shifts in her eyes, starring at the world behind the world with the spear of destiny in hand. Easy under the skin, liquify your spine, melt like gravity washing over the…
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