Zero Point Susan Lynch Sometimes it all seems pointless, then science proves we’re marvelous beyond our ken, miraculous as planets, badass as day-flying dragonfly eyes and as I watch them rove, I let their om- matidia lull me into reveries I know but can’t describe. Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope and dragonfly eyes at once— you see they see in ten dimensions turning like a ballet dancer’s grand brisé volé. So how can we be tethered to this plane when we form amazing structures in our brains? In where it’s warm we soar in tesseracts and more precisely, objects we invent are just as natural as breathing in and out, sensational and glorious, uncontained and yet they say that we create specific shapes like sandcastles appearing in our heads that fluidly disintegrate as if they are alive and then they’re dead as if imagination helps us ask about our complicated tasks. The neurons form in cliques, you know, the more the more dimensions we explore—oh wait— that’s no way to think of how we do these things. Elaborate designs beyond this place springing from some center of our Id, our ça, or soul, homing with the zero point in some field of elation; meanwhile the quantum ballerina tangos down the marble stairs modeling the gyration of internal events in her Oxford dissertation. See how they go together : all this goes together as umami is both essence and a taste I think therefore I am proving my life is not a waste, more a tract beyond where it instantiates. Buddha gave it all up but if it helps, you could use art —I try to think with my heart— each jeté flying over the water to a little shore arriving altogether now awake! but how long, how long will it take to make this bland infraction vanish? It’s time to think of time a different way: more like a ten dimensional plié the golden cut, an eyeful of opsins a moon snail, a time lapse of a peony opening, a flash of ultra violet, the song you know comes after this song can somehow help explain precisely why the harmony’s so tricky to attain. If it’s in us, if the brain’s creating brilliant domes alive with shining zing connecting us to everything, then why’s the waking up so long does anybody know? For now I guess I’ll take a walk and stop the world then let my feet lift off and float. I think the whys will have to go. The rising indicates a parallax for this is zero point. The lowest of the low. From this point on’s the only way to go.
How to Be Nothing Susan Lynch Now from here, e x p a n d into all there is —seen or not— as you are not all you appear and recognize yourself as nothing doing nothing you know the way they say god is in you as you but that can feel like something unreal what I mean is more like letting your belt loose after a good meal letting down your hair from a tight bun removing corsets of whale bones, yes that’s it, just unzip your body and step out as you let it drop to the floor become a quivering line like the taut gut of a bow strung new. A l i g n so you fly true, close your eyes or not, and let yourself out. Like a fig bleeding milk you’re not ready for this new you knew. You may feel a tug, react to the pull, but know that’s why you learn to merge first, so when it all goes you know you are the milk the tug the seed the tree the bow the skin the bag of bones the fig and the shooting stars lining the night knowing there is no boundary between anything, there is no any no thing.
Nothing Doing Susan Lynch These days it’s all nothing doing, gone immune to pleas that prod and speed the plow and all the reckless hooey of pursuing. Nothing new in consciousness but now we have conscience, and that makes all the difference, as holy men are so hard to understand. No face no eyes no nose no whatever comes next in the Heart Sutra— no attainment, no lack of attainment— those buddhas really had the knack. In fact, when it came time to pack it in, some sat sipping resin though a straw, in deep zazen, morphing into dharmakaya— the all empty body—they were left alone for three days. The three day thing is nothing new: three bodies, three days arranging assets for a clean getaway. With me it’s more the dearth of wow, impassive demographics, mellowing ambition, each old age check rendering my options down to zilch. You know what I’m talking about. Meanwhile, in the meditation room, our monk has died, embalmed himself alive, from the inside with that pine resin trick to save the stickiness of flesh for easy clean up and get out of Dodge up up and away leaving nothing but an upright husk a quiet heist of spirit flight gone beyond beyond parasamgaté. Now that’s what I call nothing doing! No attainment, no lack of same. I call that winning at the game. Alchemy and graceful realization that this is just a space between the places that we roam on our way home to knowing there’s nothing but.
Susan Lynch went to college—after a peripatetic pathway including commune founder, recording artist rock singer-songwriter, computer consultant, and shamanic practitioner—in her 50s, studying at Reed College, Wadham College Oxford University, and Goddard College, for the MFA. She has just completed a two-year tenure as Vashon Poet Laureate. Her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, and elsewhere. She is a shaman-poet on Vashon Island, and has been called a serious word freak.