The world is made of events, not things.
— Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

If it helps, call yourself

writer
artist
builder
lover
friend
Christian
bodhisattva
atheist

But there is only

writing
playing
building
giving
showing up
listening
standing up
feeding
clothing
healing.

Living.

I could never quite relate
to all of the books, sermons, dharma talks
on anger.

I’ve just never been that angry.
Sure, I got annoyed and frustrated,
sometimes maybe a little 
righteously angry
or just self-righteous.

But anger was never a big problem.

Until I was reciting a Dalai Lama quote
about thinking kind thoughts about
and not getting angry at
others.

And I swapped myself
for others.

Oh.

The bowerbird builds his tower
meticulously.

The piles of flowers, fruits,
and severed butterfly wings
must be just the right colors.

Should wind or other creatures
disturb his art,
he patiently puts everything
back.

He builds, ostensibly,
to court a mate.

He builds for love.

But maybe the enlightened bowerbird
builds to please himself,
simply to create beauty.

Maybe some days
he wakes up
in a state of ennui.

No color pleasing enough.
No structure interesting enough
to get out of the nest.

He’s blocked.

What does he do then?

Does he have tricks
to rekindle
his love for the art?

Or does he think these questions
of inspiration and motivation
are bird-brained.

Just grab another twig.

Some towers are pleasing.
Others just have to do.

As the seconds 
ticked up 
on the clock
on the cold white 
wall

we heard 
the seconds 
tick down
on an unnamed,
unreadable clock.

I wish I’d told you I loved you more often.
I wish I’d told you I believed in you,
given you more confidence in yourself.

You said this often
over the past
two decades.

Since you really saw
my brokenness.

Or, rather, 
how I tried to break myself.

And always, I sat mute.

Wanting to say
something,
afraid to say it all.

I wish I’d said
that I never, ever
doubted your love.

I remember your righteous outrage
when my middle school decided,
without telling anyone, 
one afternoon of daydreaming
during a standardized test
was enough to reclassify me.

I remember how you always
encouraged my dreams,
whether becoming President
or building my own Six Flags
in the backyard.

I remember all the hugs
and “I love you”s 
and how my heart broke
when I heard you never, ever
received those from Grandpa.

I remember you—
my 5-foot-tall, lightweight, white mom,
alone with your 8-year-old son
driving the church van across the tracks
to pick up kids others had given up on,

grandmas and grandpas on their front porches,
shooing away the ne’er-do-wells
(though you’d never call them that).

I remember the hours,
the money we really didn’t have,
poured into
the “behavior-disordered” middle-schoolers
you adored.

And I remember grown men
approaching you decades later
to say that they remember.

The love you showed others never
took away from your love for me.
It completed it.

Nearly.

I also wish I’d said
that boundless love you showed everyone else
was also meant for yourself.

Because I learned
that my body was not my friend.
That aging is bad.
That fitness is a battle.

There were the products
and programs.

Barbells, calorie logs,
videotapes, step counters.

Fonda, Simmons,
Atkins, Ornish.

Kitchen scales + tape measures.

All kinds of ways to measure 
how we do not measure up.

I can’t recall a time when you weren’t on a diet.

I learned that time was an enemy.
Never enough.

To sit still,
unless you’re praying or in a pew,
means falling behind.

And people suffer.

I saw how you
never wanted to be
a burden

while driving others crazy
with your inability to say
what you wanted
to eat.

“Whatever you want”
is not the gift
you thought it was.

I saw a visiting evangelist chastise you
for repeatedly refusing help
when we needed it.

The yoke was supposed to be easy
but it sure looked like
you carried the weight of the world.

I wish I could have told you
that the best in me
comes from that lavish love
you showered on everyone

but yourself.

I wish I could have helped you see
that I learned selflessness
and how to bury the self,

but I also saw you
rewrite Grandpa’s script,
listen to the evangelist,
find a therapist in your 70s
and wrestle with the burdens
of silence.

I inherited it all.

And I know now
Rose is watching
what I do
with it.

Tonight, after giving my talk
“Just This: Two suttas that explain it all,”

I’m not sure if I’m empty or full,
or both empty and full,
or neither empty nor full.

I poured my heart into the talk.
To be thoroughly used up is so fulfilling.

I received “one of the best ever” praise.
To be full of oneself is so dangerous.

But now, there’s just this.

A bed that’s waiting.
A wife that’s done waiting.
A body that’s a little queasy.
A mind that’s mush.

Today lingers.
Tomorrow tempts.

But, as the Dalai Lama reportedly said,
sleep is the best meditation.

Let me put that to the test.

“Please try again.”

I click the squares
a little more carefully.

“Please try again.”

Ugh. I thought this was a CAPTCHA,
not “Where’s Waldo?”

“Please try again.”

I click refresh
to get a new slate.

“Pick all the squares
showing injustice.”

Fail.
Refresh.

“Pick all the squares
showing goodness.”

Fail.
Refresh.

“Pick all the squares
showing people
doing their best
with what they have.”

Fail.
Refresh.

The computer sighs.

“Pick all the households
that have known death.”

I’m through.

I’ve never been much of a dancer.
Even if dancing hadn’t been forbidden growing up,
I don’t think I would have been.

I was too uptight.
I could never cut loose.

Unless, of course, I’m home alone
and the right Michael Jackson
or Janelle Monáe song comes on.

Then I’m shaking and spinning
and singing into whatever’s at hand.

I want to be that way at the club.

Not the guy standing at the edge,
trying to look nonchalant.

Just watching.

I can speak in front of crowds
and bare my soul on the page.

But move my body?

No.
Nope.
No, thank you.

Not in public.

So why can’t I shake off
my self?

Why can’t I cut that loose?

     after Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “The Mindfulness Bell”

The neighbor’s yappy dog yapping.
The unhoused man yelling into the wind.
The motorcyclist revving.

Repeated endlessly
as dusk settles 
into a sweltering summer night.

I just want a little pocket of quiet
and a nice cool breeze.

Now the unhoused man is screaming at the dog.
Now they’re literally barking at each other.

Life is
full of vexations
and mindfulness bells.

I just wish they weren’t attached.

For the 20th time this afternoon,
I scan my inbox.
Where is your reply?
Don’t you know I’m waiting on this?
What exactly does ASAP mean to you?

I do a search in case it got caught in spam
or I missed it among the 3,000 unread emails
accumulated since my last email bankruptcy. 

There’s a word for those who
expect more from others
than they deliver themselves:

(all of) us.

Teenage Tim couldn’t wait to leave home,
to show I’m my own person,
to blaze my own trail.

Then the trip home. 

Tripping over the quirks 
reflected in my dad and my brother. 

Feeling like a teenager again. 

Hearing my dad revisit
his childhood with his parents
as we clear out his house.

Seeing the lingering teenager 
in his 80-year-old frame. 

From Howard Porter Sr.
to Jr. 
to me
to Rose
and back,

indefinitely.

My favorite food growing up:
Pizza.
A personal pan pizza
from Pizza Hut.

I also appreciated the other pieces 
of international flair in rotation:
cheese quesadillas and, sometimes,
hard-shell ground-beef tacos.

Plus:

cheeseburgers,
grilled cheese with watery tomato soup, 
and fried chicken
(KFC Extra Crispy, only).

The only acceptable drink:
Coca-Cola.
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
As a snack and on the bedside table at night.

I don’t know how my body survived childhood.
My taste buds nearly didn’t.

But once I stopped drowning everything
in sugar, salt, and fat,
food came alive.

I could actually taste what I was eating.

Nature’s long cultivation of sweetness
in an heirloom tomato,
so unlike the watery blandness
sold to us as “tomato.”

The subtle delicacy
of a white peach or piece of sashimi.

The deluge of flavors
in a good mole, banh mi, or tom yum.

Even broccoli has a tinge of sweetness.

And when I stop drowning life
in layers of concepts and judgments,
I can taste life.

The bitter is not so bad.
I can appreciate a good sour.

Sometimes,
I even find life
sweet.

Calvinists claim total depravity.
Buddhists, Buddha nature.
Mystics, Christ consciousness. 
Materialists, atoms and randomness. 

To which I say:
Sure. Maybe. Whatever.

I’ve wrestled with these questions
like Jacob wrestling the angel.

When I gave up the battle,
dropped judgment and concepts,
I found such sweetness 
in struggle’s absence.

Not that life lacks the bitter.
But my labeling and resistance
turned it sour.

Anthony de Mello preaches the liberation of
“I’m an ass, you’re an ass.”

Gregory Boyle claims
we’re all unshakably good.

Ginsberg, Emerson and Blake
point to the holiness of all things.

To which I say:
Yes, we’re all holy asses.

The Secretary of State’s office announced its approval
of the Town of Creede’s abandonment application.

A town,
not only abandoned,
not only absorbed into the neighboring City of Creede,

but the recognition that there had ever been
two distinct towns was 
“lost to history.”

Nobody knew.

Not the county clerk, running elections for two decades.
Not the county administrator, living in the area for four.
Not the assessor, who owned land in the old Town.

A former silver boomtown,
abandoned through administrative erosion.
Over 100 years ago.
They think.

No one bothered to close the file.

The closing order declares:
“all books, documents, records, papers, and corporate seals
[…] must be deposited […]
for safekeeping and reference in the future.”

What became of the old Town of Tim?

Leila has known me for over two decades
and doesn’t know the old Town.
Rose has only known the City of me.

Is it time to acknowledge the abandonment?
What needs safekeeping for future reference?
Where do I file the paperwork to make it official?

In reviewing the records,
I discover I still own
the land of the old Town.

I’ve been building on top of it

this whole time.

Walking to the bathroom,
scrolling the phone,
podcast at double-time
in a single earbud.

At the afterparty,
talking to a middle manager,
scanning the room for more VIPs.

Biting into a sumptuous steak,
already cutting the next bite.

Hiking in the foothills,
planning a first fourteener.

Checking everything off.
How can I do more tomorrow?

One more sale.
One more career change.
One more move to something bigger.

One more epiphany.

Then I’ll be free.

     after Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “Love, Like Math”

I’m trying to solve for love.

I forget.
Do I carry the one?

I introduced the negative,
and got booted
from the land of the real
into the imaginary.

I don’t want the i.

I tried some absolute values,
but that was not the symmetry I wanted.

Next,
since we’re all one,
I tried modulo 1.
That left a big old mushy pile of
nothing.

Russell was right.
Self-reference breaks the whole system.

I tried different combinatorial systems.
That spun out of control
in uncountable ways.

The linear algebra transformations
collapsed it all to the zero vector,
no movement.

I persist, even knowing
Gödel and Turing.

I think the Möbius strip
with its one boundary and one surface
in an endless loop
might hold a clue.

The answer must lie somewhere
in non-Euclidean geometry
where parallel lines 
are always
converging and intersecting.

It’s elliptic,
some things better
left unsaid.

The topology of love holds out hope.
It can be stretched, bent and compressed
but never broken.

I know the answer
is asymptotic.

But some infinities are bigger than others.
That’s just a fact.

I’m devout.
I’m spiritual but not religious.
Not me. I don’t buy into all that New Age, woo-woo stuff.
And I don’t buy into the sky bully or your other opiates.

This but not that.

Love, not hate.
Acceptance, not judgment.

Not like you.

I’m proud of my education.
You’re proud of your common sense.
I stand by my principles.
You stand by those close to you.

I look for open doors.
You jam your foot in there.
I weigh decisions carefully.
You just do and see where that gets you.

I’m not like you.

Democrat. Republican. Independent.
Liberal. Conservative. Centrist.
Milquetoast. Extreme.

All the ways you other.

Just like me.

We’re down to threads.

But when Sid Bream slid into home,
we dropped everything to hug and jump.

When the virus hit, there was a brief window
when the dividing walls fell
even as we were trapped inside the literal ones.

When your child was in the hospital,
only offers of help remained.

If we could peer into everyone’s

search histories,
chat prompts,
therapy journals, 
intimate conversations,

we’d see the same questions
in different languages.

Maybe I am

you.

Walking home, Rose decides
to play hide-and-seek.

She hides first,
running toward the brick wall,
turning her back to us.

Shouldn't a three-year-old know better?

Yet here I am.

Looking away

From the spreadsheet I need to prepare for the board.
From the rotting wood on the porch.
From the note to give someone a call.

From the unhoused man’s outstretched hand.
From the stories of innocents rounded up and killed.

From the clock as I binge-watch.

Thinking

If I don’t see it,
it won’t find me.

Fighting so hard to be original.
Avoiding what’s come before.
Line after line,
thought after thought.

Discarded.
Cliché.

Life is cliché,
is nothing new under the sun.

But consider:

The uniqueness of fingerprints.
The infinity of open-ended combinatorics.
How just 26 letters keep forming new words.
How four chemical bases encode all human DNA,

and our genes only vary by one-tenth of one percent.

Yes, we’re 99.9% the same.
And all 8+ billion of us different.

How do I keep missing this?

Life is cento,
is found art.

Always borrowed.
Utterly unique.

A wedding celebration
in the antebellum Hay House
for two friends newly allowed to marry.

Fred Schneider takes to the dance floor.
Mike Mills performs “Nightswimming”
with students from the McDuffie Center for Strings.

I’m standing by the crudités.
Groups drift
back to the dance floor.

I’m left with a colleague
from another department.

“You’re difficult to get to know,”
he says.

“I know.”

“I’d really like to get to know you.”

I’m caught short.

While the dancing continues,
we go sit on the front steps.

I learn others have discussed
this distance.

I thought listening was the gift.

I thought withholding
was generosity.

I’d never considered
letting yourself be known
is also a gift.

Years later,

five strangers gather
under the barn loft stairs
at the songwriting retreat.

Mandolin. Acoustic guitar.
A vocalist.

And two tuneless writers.

I’m sitting at a keyboard
I wish I knew how to use.

We’re all collaborating,
scribbling furiously,
voices overlapping,
pointing at instruments—“yes, that!”—
as disjointed words and melodies
find their match.

The Hay House resurfaces
in the chorus:

“Let your voice be known
The gifts and wounds we share
Let us know we’re not alone”

As the song comes together,
my fellow writer’s lines get dropped.

She quietly suggests
adding a verse.

Her voice isn’t heard.

I stop the room.

Her words become
the bridge
that completes the song:

“The joyous union of unknown friends—
What was broken now can mend”

Maybe
I’m learning.

I felt Zen
as we went around the room.

I felt at home,
trusting whatever came.

Others catalogued insecurities,
described decades of anxiety,
outlined sacrifices to the muse.

“I’ve been practicing
with Just This,”
I told Linford as an aside.
“Just gave a talk on it.
We make ourselves miserable with
all that we add.”

Three hours later —
still waiting
for the muse.