Catharsis I

Catharsis is an asymmetrical existential balancing act. It appears to be intimately linked with the act of art. Are catharsis and art inseparable?

“Catharsis” is an ancient Greek word. Like “parthenogenesis” *, which means virgin creation (parthenos = virgin, genesis = creation), a form of asexual reproduction, a lone birth. Catharsis means “purification” or “cleansing”. I’ve always associated the word with the act of emotional release in art. An artist’s emotional experience finding expression in a performance, for example, or the emotional release of an audience moved to laughter, anger, or tears. I wonder, is to practice (any) art, to swim in the unpredictable ocean of emotions? Or is art a way to tame feelings altogether? But can an ocean really be tamed?

Evolutionary art in the human body.

Can muscles move however they want, in theory? Or are they inherently encompassed by the shape they take? Can they conceptually move anyhow, or are they constricted by form? What has lead to specific anatomical formations to begin with? And where can they go from here? 

Asymmetrical Balancing Act
Malabarismo Asimétrico
Asymmetrischer Balanceakt

How many human and other organic experiences are embedded within an individual body? How many lives lived by countless ancestors? How many countless experiences lived by an individual body alive today? We carry the lessons of our forebears in our bodies. Of course, we also carry our own.  We are already all fathers, mothers and kin, gods and goddesses who exist in solidarity with the divine (a perpetually present beyond). Who exist within the limitations and possibilities given to a terrestrial species enwombed in a planet whose condition is a delicate cosmic balancing act of light, movement, darkness, and matter.

Countless? Not necessarily, according to ancestral mathematics. Have you seen the meme that reads as follows?

"Ancestral Mathematics

2 parents

4 grandparents

8 great-grandparents

16 second great-grandparents

32 third great-grandparents

64 fourth great-grandparents

128 fifth great-grandparents

256 sixth great-grandparents

512 seventh great-grandparents

1,024 eigth great-grandparents

2,048 ninth great-grandparents

For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4, 094 ancestors over the last 400 years.

Think for a moment - How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? - did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment..."

Misses and Mister Goenka meditating.

The calculation is only for 400 years. Imagine millions of years and more! Vipassana Meditation Master S.N. Goenka said, as did Gautama Buddha, that the likelihood of being reborn as a human is like popping out of a ring in the middle of the ocean. It is rare to become human. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to use the present life to seek enlightenment and achieve liberation through rigorous meditation. 

Techniques abound. Vipassana meditation, as the Gautama Buddha himself is said to have practiced it, is only one technique, albeit a very effective one. 

Master Thich Nhat Hanh revealed that meditation is possible in every moment, no matter how fleeting and benign. Because mediation is merely the ability to be consciously and completely present in the moment. In a world full of distractions (within and without), being completely present in a given moment is easier said than done. Being present involves the practice of becoming an ever more detached observer of life's flow without losing touch with it.

Besides life, we all share the phenomenon of death, which precedes and follows us as well. How many ancestors have died? All that lived. And they were released (temporarily) from the bonds of becoming (organic), except for the ties left in the progeny of the species, or variations thereof. Individual, idiosyncratic will does affect the collective. But to what extent can it be transformative of an entire species? What constitutes the will of a species? In the vast existential ocean of inter-being, who moves the tides of becoming?

Alone or not alone? To bear or not to bear? Who knows? Do you?

*Parthenogenesis

Human creature,
Give birth to yourself!
And breastfeed yourself!

Whose arms will catch you,
when you fall into the world,
who knows?

Whose hands will touch you,
when you slither onto X scene,
who knows?

Half Moon (in Capricorn)

Am recognizing past misconceptions about the spine, amongst other things. Samskaras? Habit patterns? Am attempting to rearrange, ever so subtly, lumbar* and thoracic** relations. It’s taken over two years of conscious study, practical effort, and countless lessons with great masters to arrive at this juncture. And this only after having crossed many more minor and major physiophilosophical junctures. These experiences are often nameless, the are only felt (in body, mind and spirit). Nameless because I feel a concept without form. Forms being words, symbols, language, structures etc.(in terms of anatomy (body maps) and beyond). Nameless because I feel what is formed without conscious conceptio. Body sensations manifesting in the flesh I never conceived to my knowledge. The question is, how to perceive one's own existential form? How to perceive what lies beyond (either way outwardly or inwardly)? A conceptual relationship of the self with an extensive manifest reality (nature) exists. And a formal relationship with "reality" exists also. Bound by biology, physics and ecosystems, forms inter-are. ____________________________________________

*lumbar axis exhale breath pattern (half-cow); pelvic floor, lower torso musculature "awakening"; hold inhale form (**) during cow bottom consciousness

**thoracic axis inhale breath pattern (half-cat) (inflated rib cage, expansion towards the back, upper torso musculature "awakening"); hold exhale form (*) during cat top consciousness _____________________________________________

Take a teacher’s lesson and find a way to study it - through questioning, contemplation, practice etc.

Dancers are philosophers. 


 Anyone who moves is, Anyone who makes of movement art.

The biological vessel has peculiar responses to the experiences it is subjected to, as well as phenomena surrounding it. This dynamic merits more examination. But there is so mucho going on all the time, that is is difficult to keep track of it all.

Every time he steps into the room I seem to lose my balance. How do I stay balanced even in his nerve racking presence? How do I not get turned on and distracted from the spiritual quest of liberation? Is existence indeed only composed of nature (i.e. hormones, biological structures, the manifest universe (formed conceptializations?))? Or does something lie beyond? And what is that like? Must conceptualize, must give form. Why? To live, to survive? What if what lies beyond is formless and deceptualized? How can it be understood from a place of form (beig alive, in a body, on a planet, a part of the physical universe etc.)? All that is not known remains a mystery. No mystery can be eternal, can it? Form conceptualized... formless concepts ... unconpetualized formlessness ... mysteries that can be solved?

Sometimes a teacher’s brilliance is realized in the repercussions of the lessons given, the effects these have over time, not necessarily in the moment of instruction. What carries over to the context outside of the classroom? What remains in consciousness, what travels through the unconscious? All input requires digestion. All effort (spirit) demands rest (organic limitations).

Are other spirtiaul scriptures around the world, in structure similar to the Bible in terms of being a collection of writings realized over time by countless authors and even more countless storytellers? Or do traditions with an unfiltered core exist, that have been carried over faithfully, consistently, obstinately from generation to generation?

Grauzahn Wilderbart (Märchenfigur) Greytooth Wilderbeard (Fairy-tale figure)

Prämens / premenstrual: cramps, heightened sensitivity, grumpiness, sore breasts, bloating, less energy, biological low (biolow/Biotief)

red, white and blue

Calor. Heat. Hitze. Just passed the Cancer New Moon at the height of summer. Went to a midsummer nightdream party over the weekend. Wore a fabulous short red velvet spaghetti strap dress. Braless. And tolerable black high heeled sandals. Even though they made my feet feel like blocks of stone on the dancefloor. But the breasts hung around freely. It felt good. A salute to Twentieth Century Feminism! And a nod of honor to Ancient Mothers and Grandmothers. "Always wear a bra! Even to sleep!" Warned my Mexican grandma, who had gorgeous breasts in her seventies. I totally undersand why female humans invented braziers. And I'm grateful every day. But oh does it feel liberating to let it all hang free sometimes.

Was in the mood for cold white wine. Had my gentle companion put in ice towards the end. According to my dad, white wine doesn't make you smell of alcohol. And if there's something he knows well, it's all matters "booze". Wine, liquor, beer and all things spiritus and demons. Father and I. We are a reflection to each other. One that is different though it appears to be the same. I had some sips of chilled white wine to cool the spirits. To lighten the mood. Or make it more grave. Take your pick! I know stuff because of all the stuff my dad knows. What I know is that the father line goes as far back as the mother line. 

Astrologer José Millán talked about Cancer in an interesting way in the context of all the transpersonal transformational energies facing the world, not least because of Pluto's final return to Capricorn before moving into Aquarius. Capricorn: father, social structures, institutions, working in the world, career, presenting outwardly etc. Cancer: mother, home, heritage, family, going within and being from within. He suggests to look at the inevitable changes (upheavals, revolutions, wars and the crumbling of sinstitutional society) not with fear. Cancerian energy invites to understand the family (in all its varied constellations) as a cell of society with timeless information. Eons of evolutionary intelligence with the ability to act as a force of renewal ever reinvigorating, reinventing and restructuring organisms from deep within. An inspirational driving force born out of individual collective intelligence. I do believe that this kind of timeless intelligence has enabled us strange human creatures to come thus far to begin with. I have faith that our cellular collective intelligence will renew the human organism to show up in the world not as fucking assholes but the loving beings that we were always meant to be. Why did we fuck up so bad all over time and space? God knows. This is a question for another time. For now, I am happy to revel in the holy inheritance of cellular intelligence that drives my organism with hope, dedication and courage into the ever changing transpersonal ocean of terrestrial destiny, as Cancer season closes out.

I have discovered assymetries and irregularities in my body that speak of weird old habits, afflictions and other things. Creating new customs through physical and spiritual retraining and refraiming is taking interesting turns. In a fascinating cylical fashion old patterns demand revisiting. Depression and foolishness rear their clownish faces. I laugh and cry. I despair and rejoice. Again and again. Yes, Buddha, rolling in pleasure and pain.

I lost a tampon that night. Let's face it, women have been putting "things" in their vaginas for eons. The physician mentioned that a patient once had lost a tampon while twerking pantylessly wearing a skirt. I had worn an undergament beaneath the red velvet dress.  And I hadn't twerked. Must have taken it out automatically when I went to pee, forgot about it and freaked out. My mother had Alzheimer's, I lamented to doctor and nurse. Ouch. Watch out for the symptoms, he advised. Yeah, like forgetting?! :@ 

Husband assured me that it was not Alzheimer's but wineheimer's. Remeber how you almost threw up in the front yard? No. Remember how you struggled getting up the stairs? No. Damnit. Sounds like Alzheimer's to me.

Years ago, after having birthed my second child, I was traumatized by a lost tampon. Suddenly a strong, awful smell. Gyno didn't take a look. Prescribed strong medicine, pills and a lotion, instead. Husband giving me eyes like "You bringin' home an STD (sexually transmitted disease)?" Dude, f*ck you. I wish I'd been... damnit. At least then all this theater would have been worth it. Eventually discovered the lost tampon myself while applying the salve three times daily. Had accidently pushed it in with another tampon. Forgotten about it. Doctor and nurse said it can happen sometimes. Glad I'm not the only woman out here with these problems.

Well, that I made it up the stairs almost alone is a good thing. The gentle man used to have to carry me all the way from the train station to the old Berliner apartment up three old flights of stairs. 

Another thing that coincided with the New Moon is the movement of the lunar nodes into the Aries (North) and Libra (South) Axis, where they will stay until January 2025. The last time the nodes were on this axis was from December 2004 to June 2006. 

"Welcome to the Carnival"
begun 2005, abandoned 2006

2005: Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Parents. Diplomacy. Internship. Choice for love. Seattle, US. Study of Fine Arts (Painting, Drawing, Dance). First home together. First yoga class.
Nexistentialism is born. First Nexistential Carnival publication @ Seattle Central Community College (SCCC) Women's Forum. Visits to Bruce Lee's grave, who I perceived as an inspirational thinker and artist. 

2006: Broken back (L5) from club dancing in red high heels on my 25th birthday. Goodbye Seattle. Hello Germany. Frankfurt am Main. Parents. Frankfurt an der Oder on the border with Poland. Europa Universität Viadrina to study Cultural Science (Master of Arts). Wohngemeinschaft (shared student living). Second and third home together. Hot, dry summer. German back surgery with flirty flower power surgeon ("If you sleep with the same woman twice, you're from the establishment.")

Checkpoint Now: Marriage (Libra), xy home together; pursruit of personal path (Aries), studying to teach yoga, training ballet (dance) and kung fu (martial arts) as well. Triverses. Maturing Nexistentialist. Still not sure what philosophy is. Wondering about the Gadfly of Athens (stirring up the town with philosophy) and the meanings of (eu)daemonia. Every once in a while there seems to be a teacher that passes knowledge directly to students, as opposed to, say, writing it down. But it gets written and interpreted anyway (i.e. the Bible and countless other arts). Just gotta be able to follow back the line to a moment of truth, regardless of where or how it occured. After all, the line is ongoing thus far. Except, it is not one line. It is the entretejido (interwoveness) of countless lines of interpretations. I made peace with Christianity and continue to study (South) Eastern Philosophy and Spirituality. In fact, I love the whole world of human perspectives, which despite their differences share so much. Anywhere on the globe. I love Jesus, and Buddha, too.

Triple Training Tuesday

Cancer season. High summer (Hochsommer). Long days. Moody moon mother. Approaching New Moon. Moody Monday. Monthly female biology taking place. First day of bleeding crying liters of tears. Yearning for dead mother. Searching for memories. Remembering Alzheimer's as a slow losing, detaching, letting go. This feels spiritual somehow. Makes me think of Buddhism, Yoga, Vipassana and Zen. Mother was a philosopher, a mystic, a spiritual creature. Why remember? To cry in the present and laugh at the past? If memory serves. Why not serve the present moment instead? Anatomical onslaught massaging the entire flesh with yoga and study and dance and more yoga. And a lot of activity at home. Duties of the house like cooking, washing, rearing children, and tending to marriage/partnership demand attention. Forgetting all the bawling from the day before. Thankful for the passing of another wave. The worst is over -- when the eye-sockets make waterfalls. The bleeding will naturally follow its course. The breasts feel less heavy thanks to training and brasiers. I did feel odd with them at ballet today. Then I try not to pay attention. But the body never stops paying attention. Now I know this. So I cannot help but look again and again. Look at the breath. Feel the sensations. Becoming aware of the inner strings that hold it all together. Oh, and there are countless strings! And we (humans) try again and again to paint a picture of this magnificent, mysterious and transparent body - individually, collectively and universally. Mapping the famously little known human body that is actually well known by all. Only if you look. But don't you get caught up with it! Except when you are training for the moment. For that moment, that one instant, no matter how fleeting, that flash of all-knowing. Complete awareness of the body interwoven with the threads of time and space, of fractals and movement and stillness threading through emptiness. Complete absorption. 

Iyengar says: "Repeated effort made with a thorough understanding of the art and philosophy of yoga and with perfect communion of body, mind and soul is not a mechanical practice but a religious and spiritual one."* What does it take to understand the art and philosophy of yoga - or anything for that mattter? It takes study. To look repeatedly, to search, to practice, to remember with religious fervor. 

And it also demands detachment. Iyengar goes on to explain, that Hatha Yoga blends the forces of practice (remembering) and renunciation (forgetting). Ha, the sun, is the "life-force, the seer, the very being". Purusha? Tha, the moon, is "consciousness, the reflected light of the seer, citta" (consciousness = mind + intelligence + ego). Prakriti and the three gunas? The three fates (Greek mythology) threading the destiny of human kind? Yes, like a moody moon. Sometimes visible, sometimes gone. Hatha yoga blends these forces, which are merged in the seer (Iyengar, 2002). In order to see, one must look. And on the night of the New Moon neither moon nor sun will be seen despite their presence. Purusha, why look at all?

Because if you're not observing, you don't exist. Since you have to see to be, then might as well study yourself until you realize yourself as you really are.

Llorando a solas en compañpía, asi te veía.

In company crying alone I saw you.

In Begleitung alleine am weinen sah ich dich.

Martes de Multiples Musas

Es la temporada de cáncer. Alto verano, Hochsommer en alemán. Los días son largos y cálidos. Launische** Luna Madre. Se avecina la Luna Nueva. Cambiando de humor el lunes. Sucede la biología femenina mensual. El primer día del sangrado derramando litros de lágrimas. Añorándo a mi madre muerta. Busco memorias. Recuerdo al Alzheimer como una perdida lenta, como un proceso de soltar y dejar ir. Lo que me parece algo espiritual. Me hace pensar en el budismo, el yoga, el vipassana y el zen. Mamá fue filósofa, mística y una criatura espiritual. ¿Pa ra qué recordar? ¿Para llorar en el presente y reirse del pasado? Si te sirve la memoria. ¿Porqué no mejor servirle al momento presente? Una avalancha anatómica masajea la carne entera con el yoga, estudios, baile y más yoga. Y con muchas actividades caseras. Los deberes del hogar como cocinar, lavar, criar y cuidar del matrimonio, de la pareja demandan mucha atención. Trantando de olvidar todo el llanto del día anterior. Me siento agradecida que otra ola ha pasado. ...

*Iyengar (2002). Light on the Yoga Sutras. p.62

** launisch - alemán, que con frecuencia cambia de humor 

Full Moon in Sagittarius

On a holistic awakening of the body.

You (mind, consciousness) are the body. The body is you. If you are spirit divine, then so is your biological body.

I've picked up on a perceptive phenomenon towards my body in terms of separateness, which appears to be calcified into its very tissue. The fascial net (connective tissue) is definitely affected, also muscles (dormant, hyperactive) and joints. Perhaps even the bones. Certainly the cellular map will be affected. Not sure how this affects the functioning of the nervous system. Is it actually the fascia that dictates movement, not muscle mass? Given its alleged superior number of neurons? It makes sense that the net moveth the mass, not vice versa. Too much mass force could rip the net connective force, couldn't it?

How can yoga help, say which asanas (poses), to integrate the wholeness of the human body and awaken atrophied parts to their existence as an integral element of a whole? What kind of practice can accomplish a holistic awakening of conscious proprioception? Only seated meditation? Cannot the principles of observation, awereness and mindfulness (i.e. body scanning, samadhi, complete absorption) be applied in any position?

The weight of my breasts feels like a proprioceptive distraction. Must get conscious in order to integrate their sensation, position and weight into my movements to avoid "misalignments." Must find an intentional way, and train into habit conscious breast bearing. Particularly the (upper) thoracic spine appears to be affected to the bone. I suspect that the inherent anatomical structure is prepared to accomodate the additional "dead" (muscleless) weight. I do remember what it was like to feel free in my body. What it was like not to bleed. As I once was a girl without the burden of tits, these baby-feeding extensions. But do I also remember what it was like to feel trapped? Like in an egg of some sort. (Is there confinement or freedom in a sphere?) Do I remember the organic separation from the motherwomb? What did that feel like? What sensations did spirit store and why? Maybe it doesn't matter because there is always freedom within?

After "losing" my body to trauma and transformation; to high heels, tights and corsets; to pregnancy, birthing and motherhood. Yoga has helped me come into contact with my child self and my love for moving creatively. Yoga has awakened my child consciousness and triggered healing from the wounds of womanhood.

What’s up with this notion in ("Western") anatomy to separate between body parts? For the sake of specificity? Specificity in what direction? One of separating or one of integrating? How does this affect human perception of the self? And how can a holistic view be created or restored? Yes, one whole made of parts, but which side of the scale do you swing towards?

I'm currently exploring the notion of a pendulum between whole and partial perception, in terms of human anatomy, of anatomical systems of perception. What effects on proprioception has the study of the body mapped out as specific parts? As opposed to the study of the human body mapped out as a holistic flow of energy, for instance? How do different schools of body perception, i.e. Western vis a vis Eastern anatomical conceptions (organic structure mapping) affect the way a human body is perceived?

Which asanas accentuate a holistic biological proprioception as opposed to being focused on more specific aspects of structure and mobility?

It seems to be a natural consequence to do backbends given the structure of the human spine. It's why they're possible to begin with. It's clearly been done before. Thus resulting in such an organism as the limbed spiral axial creature that is the human being, who bends back and forth and side to side. Ancient humans appear to have had a remarkable understanding of human anatomy. The body scriptum alone is a testament to that. Not to mention schools of movement wisdom. Thus, study of the organic body is essential to understanding humankind. Thus, creating mind. Beyond individual musings lies the power of Evolution, ceaselessly whispering words of wisdom past and carefully listenting to the beats of contemporary creativity.

The human creature is essentially intelligent. Then why does it behave with such ignorance? Because samsara (the world) is but a narcissistic creator fascination with the terrestrial human experience? A show for some abstract observer to watch but not get distracted by? An existential carnival. And it doesn't matter which carousel or roller-coaster you choose, you're still part of the carnival. Even as a mere spectator you still are!

Is a perceiver's essential nature individual or universal?

Phenomenon 1

Ruphus: You are very high maintenance.
Apheida: Is your undivided attention too much to ask for?

Fenómeno 1

Rufo: Eres bien demandante.
Afeida: ¿Es demasiado pedir tu plena atención?

Phänomen 1

Ruphus: Du bist sehr anspruchsvoll.

Apheida: Ist deine volle Aufmerksamkeit zuviel verlangt?

Cansancio de amar / Love tired / Liebesmüde

 Entonces ¿qué es amar?
¡Buddha, Jesús, Alguién! 
¿Existe alternativa al amor
cual tenga su dulzura
Pero no su dolor?

So what is loving?
Buddha, Jesus, Somebody!
Is an alternative to love in vain
that has its sweetness
But not its pain?

Was ist denn Lieben?
Buddha, Jesus, Jemand!
Ist eine Alternative zur Liebe
mit Anmut aber ohne Schmerz
bloss ein Scherz?
________________

Love, but a silly affliction? I'd rather be afflicted with depression than other human ills. But to be afflicted with love? Show me a sage that has the courage to eat out of the spoon of love and spit in its face. I'll tell you who. All of you! All baby humans do. And it doesn't matter. Because it, too, simply is not where everything isn't. No, in love everything is! So is desire, yearning, longing, clinging, dreaming. Can love be enlightenend? Do humans grow tired of loving because of its link to suffering? You want to blame the self for suffering? Blame love! Ambiguous notion wreaking havoc in the mind. Love is death. None who love remain untouched by transformation, immune to loss of self. Love launches the self into perdition in the most irresistible and inescapable of ways. Existential loops of loving reaping countless bodies millenium after millenium. Evolution being the greatest lover of all. Love is exactly that which we will all experience. All that we fools have incaranted to experience. God help us all! God save us from love with an even greater love, the greatest love ever experienced! Be born and find yourself clinging to love. Wrapped in its arms. Find yourself in its unavoidable grip. And suffer with it. Welcome to the greatest show on Earth! Welcome to the existential carnival of love!
"Fuckin' and fightin' it's all the same. Living with Louie Dog's the only way to stay sane." (What I Got -Sublime)

Chiron

While being immortal Chiron suffered a painful, incurable wound. When he sacrificed his immortality he was delivered from his torment.
I think of the immortal soul sacrificing (temporarily) its immortality to incarnate (a body capable of experiencing pain and suffering), and wonder: Is the answer to suffering in the suffering itself? But how?
Could Chiron represent the journey of the incarnating soul who suffers in the body it inhabits while also still being an immortal soul? Does the sacrifice of its immortality represent the experience of death as deliverance from a life-specific wound? And to what extent does the soul carry a wound from experience to experience, thus making its suffering apparently eternal?
Does Chiron teach that suffering can be relieved through sacrifice? What does this sacrifice represent? In the story he sacrifices his immortality. Does this represent the sacrifice of the soul itself? Is this a zen-like reference to living in the moment? Before enlightenment fetch water, chop wood, after enlightenment fetch water, chop wood. Is the same true for suffering? So the sacrifice of immortality as in death, as in perpetual transformation, as in constant change from moment to moment, as in the law of impermanence. The sacifice of immortality in the recognition of the law of impermanence. That suffering, too, is a changing phenomenon, subject to the law of impermanence.
I believe that the apparently eternal wound can be healed.
Chiron teaches me that healing personal wounds does not occur by healing others.
My wounds are a great challenge in creativity. Also a lesson in patience with and love towards my own vulnerability.

Erudite?

The best thoughts seem to occur in the out and about. What accounts for mental blockades? What is so intimidating about the written word? Is it a lack of practice, of habit? A shere lack of skill? How many hundreds of pages don't flow out of countless human souls!

The written word is material mind, tangible thought, exact expression. The written word is a menacing promise of transcendence. It is the vanity mirror of the narcissistic psyche. It captures the abstract in a few visual lines. The untouchable comes within reach of the eye, which pretends to penetrate a learned mind. I seek solace in artifice, I pursue comfort in the tedious...just to entertain a notion of freedom. What I find is nothing in this search for clarity.

The written word alarms me. I depend on it as much as I discard it. I desire it as much as it escapes me. And as it pierces through my restless soul it fulfills me and brings me joy. Phrases that love me and hate me, that consciously infiltrate me. They are a reflection of my conditioned existance, the echo of my solitary cry. They remind me of the human plight for independence and communion all at once. Before the word, what likeness had the human notion?

Beyond the Carnival

I think about so many things everyday. Doesn't everybody? Some things are like a carrousel: cyclical, silly and intranscendent. Even if I sit on the majestic white unicorn, it'll never get me anywhere. Other thoughts feel profound to me and I think "I need to write this down, make it stick." I rarely do. When I finally meet with the written word, past contemplations seem to have evaporated away. Memory is a feebleminded fellow in my vessel.

Is the thought that sticks to art the one that bears transcendence? Maybe "I" don't want to be transcendent. Maybe only humanity is capable thereof. What's in a name anyway, right!? *laugh* And yet, in my daily carnival of notions, I find myself at the center of a mad universe in chaotic convulsions within an apparently never ending stream of being. You see, the world looks different from the deserts outside the carny walls. The sky seems suddenly still while the revolutions beneath my feet remain undeniable.

Full moon

Is life easier through the veil of idealism, the filter of ignorance? Some truths about the human condition are heavy to bear. Is enlightenment but in the dark shadows of existance? I no longer wish to search everywhere and anywhere. Shall the questions begin from within? She called it conflicts of the psyche that need to be dealt with, the ancient woman with knowing eyes. The soulful physician explained that everything occured in the brain. The conflicts allow for both the experience of joy and the experience of pain. The brain steers both tears of happiness and tears of sorrow, smiles of kindness and smiles of deceit. What a conflict of the psyche, indeed! Such contradictions under the same roof. What to do?

Guiding light
in the darkness of night,
remind me to shine,
not too bright,
just enough
to sit tight
and ne'r lose sight.

Turn of affairs

Civilization breeds desperation. Why? Since the industrial revolution: carbon dioxide. Physicality can measure it. Climate has changed. Frightening things are happening. Can technology save us now? The stony knife that fed has evolved into the rifle that exterminates entire species. Can the snow machine make ice for the Antarctic? We're scared. 'Cause we got reason to be. But this ain't the first time we' scared. Remember back in the Dark Ages? There was this terrible plague that menaced to exterminate us. We were civilized then. Out of fear we turned to religion and to fanaticism and to cruelty. And not for the first time did we succumb to vehemence. Great civilizations like those of the Aztecs and the Incas...why the sanguine sacrifice? And the Romans? Why those games of death? And then, the dreadful downfalls.

Mother Earth is fuming. Mother Nature is sick and tired. Mother Love is aggrieved. Father Sun intervenes intensely. We're like a dysfunctional family as Humankind enters puberty. Capitalism is superfice. Globalization is hybridity. Indifference is sloth and comfort temptation. We seek the easy way out as we race 200 miles per hour straight towards a wall. We are so caught up in our little affairs, that the wisdom of Father and Mother won't reach us.

I still agree with Jane Goodall: there is reason for hope. We are of loving, generous origins, in spite of our carnivorous nature. We are of the river's soft rhythm that finds a path over time. We are of the lucid daylight that sheds clarity on our ills. We are of the herbs that cure ancient ails. And we are of the wind that carves beauty into stone. We are of the breath that kissed us into existence. We are of the union that through love created life. We are of the heart that makes music and of the womb that bears energy. We are of the hand that conceives, and of the eye that sees beyond physicality. We feel. We know. We just need to remember.

Realidream

Somehow the brain makes no distinction between dreamt and lived experience. I can say that my own memory frequently can't tell apart dream from so called "reality". It's like I exist on two existential plains, at least. I recall a physicist very well who explained to me on a parking lot once, how there are various dimensions, that I found myself between two right then. I was dreaming. Yet there was something so real about him, especially about the insight he shared.

Some psychoanalysts may attribute the various characters and places to protagonize a dream to the self. Quite simply, they may claim that fears, insecurities, complexes, desires and the like manifest themselves in the symbolic intricacies of reveries. As of late, I find the egocentrism of such notions quite tiresome. As if extra self phenomena could have no place within. As if the self was a place of isolation, exclusion and estrangement towards the world that surrounds it, the universe upon which it truly depends, the cosmos that nurtures it, that gives it life.

On another occasion an ayurvedic physician stressed for me to remember that "everything is an illusion." I was awake, though I recall as if it were a dream. In memory there isn't a difference between him as he sat in his office across the desk from me and the physicist who spake to me between a parked car and the hole in the ground we'd just come out of. Never got around to ask the physician: if everything is an illusion, then what is real?

Origin

Isn't it strange to be from a place but you're not. To feel like you grew up there but you didn't. To know it so well and yet have no facts to tell, Only a personal story.

to reside in abstraction

Like flies finding onto the wooden stump in the sun and resting upon it...
To get startled by insects is to be reminded of my civilized nature...
learned concepts of beauty and peace reveal to me
the monsters of burried memory and tainted knowledge.
The call for comfort confronts me with simple nuissance.
Yet, the senses know what's artificial...but they, too, join in the dreaming.

I discover that I have sought comfort in abstraction;
now I seek peace and distraction.
I become afraid to turn sachlich,
to hold on to the matter I know has a fin.
In spite of it all, let me tell you a story!
Words without wisdom, impressions of glory.
There is lethargy in abstraction.
I dare not put in words my suspicion.
Learned to find Halt in what's hard to define.
I am going through some sort of transformation,
never ceasing to give up the mine.
It is in this abstraction that I find solace and peace of mind
with myself as conscious creature.

Do I need to learn another language?
To learn a new languague has been to
transform...to metamorphose.
Maybe I have an identity
that has four strong identities
and then some more subtle ones.
Yet, independently of linguistic manifestations
and cultural aspirations,
my identity is one.
This one exists in abstraction.
There, the moon melts into the sun,
and the spirits become one.
It is there that the mind is set free,
when life is no different than that of a tree...
or a bug, or a river, or dirt.

So many details escape me when I reside in abstraction.
I seek with reluctance to scripture.
Not sure how to deal with the trains from without.