The Place Between

Mechanical beast is ahead of me now, eye contact made, commitment in place.

Decisions line up like toy soldiers and are summarily dismissed with orders. It feels like the car is being driven by intuition, but that same intuition tells me that there is more going on than meets the I.

Coordinates are punched, fluids placed, eyes relaxed and ready and

shah!

We're off.

The first 30 seconds - the first of the first - is easy, tinged with a bit of hard. System is acclimatizing here, blood flowing from the torso cavity to the legs, light burn and lungs starting to heat up. The second 30 is a little bit more edge and then

huzzah

Onto the second minute, which is OK. A relief. 10 or 11 seconds to edge o'er the painful spot, then 20 seconds of inner repair work, then the rest to rest. A few seconds before that second minute is up and I'm ready to go again.

Edge that fucker a little higher this time, maybe a lot higher, pulse goes from 129 to 143..44.47.. and hovers in there.

shuka

The first 15 seconds are fine, then it starts to hurt, and when I start to look for toolsets.

Figure eights of breath winding from my navel to my head; rough sheaths going up and down the airway and

tik

I'm back. What did that take care of? Shit. 7 seconds. Close the lids halfway and look through a moonscape; internal / external, field of vision narrowing and expanding at the same time and I've forgotten about the pain for a minute ... a minute?

Shook!

Back and looking at the time. Still have almost 30 seconds left. Pulse is maintaining at a mid-high speed, aches settling in the legs, fear -white energy - coming up from the feet and

tik

I'm back again. 15 seconds left. I can hold this, stare down the numbers and just BE as the clock winds down.

Maybe not.

I close my eyes, hands out to hold onto the rails, open my eyes

close

open

close

and finally it's over. Button down, shitcakes, we're moving into slower gear now, hear?

sir yes sir

and we're 13.5 12 11 10 7 6 5.5

Ahhhh 5.5

Takes a few seconds for it to kick in but I'm not going anywhere. Decision made quickly that the minute of rest doesn't start up until the whole system is back down to a steady 5.5 Probably about

15 seconds

shah!

And we're on.

And the cycle repeats.

A lot like playing Centurion. The initial gap between the first shot of beer and the second seems interminably long, the second the same, the third a little less...and as the alcohol hits the central nervous system, the innerverse becomes an expression of a physicist's wet dream - time expands and contracts like a rubber ban. This, friends, is repeatable, falsifiable experience. Inner proof of the flexibility of time.

But the edge is lost in Centurion quickly. The innerverse on the machine or on the track, on thee other hand, is white fire and electric blues as the system is brought to Tilt then pulled back and caressed into recovery and readiness again.

It's duality merging here, under the auspices of physical exertion and the clock. The merge point starts with white hot suffering, taking me to the end of an inner yuga and presenting me slobbering, hot, hurting but standing to the rest period. But it is not an in door / out door. It is 10 or fifteen seconds where I transition from hurt to not-hurt. Not fully recovered, just not-hurt.

Even the 10 or fifteen seconds can be deconstructed into quantities that themselves can be deconstructed. We get to the 3:30 am point - not quite night, not quite morning, and yet somehow both. It's the place between.

And this is timelessness in a way. Not arrived to as gently as a soft perspective change or shift, not simply getting in the gap or sitting in Big Mind, more like a violent fuck into the space. Which makes it the same but different. Gap with an edge, a white hot blue edge around it that burns itself into memory, so it can be recounted, in places like This.