Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Strange Vaudeville
Strange vaudeville, this.
I walk through the market, wearing my hypocrisy like a warm vest, leering at the all the fodder that will end up in the suburbs tonite in the closets of Those That Cannot See, while secretly coveting bauble that *clearly* should be coming home with me.
I'm different of course. I see through the materialism, know the sharp teeth of desire will only be sated temporarily by a purchase. And because I know this I am immune to Samskara's wheel in a way that Those That Cannot See couldn't possibly understand.
Until grace hops out from a merchant's stall and breaks me open like an egg.
Fluid and purposeless, I am looked. And walked. Things are purchased for a loved one's birthday, but the gift I am given is far more sublime:
The realization that there is no difference between whatever is living me and Those That Cannot See. Understanding that the act of identifying a 'me' and a 'them' is about as meaningful as trying to paint the ocean: going out with a five gallon bucket, dipping my roller and painting wave after wave after wave.
And with that quickening of grace, incandescence grows around me - Brand Name Stores, Bathroom Signs, even my own banality shine like a thousand suns trying to outdo each other.
Arms akimbo, I stop and survey creation, breathe deep, and ride a sparkling crescent of light back to the office, remembering just enough to know that this will shine through again and again; the peaks will get closer and closer together until finally there is continuity in what has been here all along:
Just
This.
Eternity.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Always Clean up After your Epiphany
Be fair now.
I caught you today.
Way down at the end of the platform, bathed in golds and bordered by artificial greys, I saw you, snapped you, kept you for reflection.
25 minutes on the soporific express into town gave me ample time to mull you over.
No question - I saw you! A perfect articulated 1, carefully wrapped in human form, right at the convergence of all the lines.
A slight contraction, then complete resolution as I caught my mistake.
The lines and shadows and light and attention and 9,996 other things weren't converging on you, they were coming from you.
The gold - your only begotten sun. The shadows - refractions of the sun, intimating existence of your thousand limbed body through negative space.
A beautiful, gossamer thread left the picture, wrapped itself around my clumsy chrysalis of abstractions, and pierced me right here - between the eyes.
Epiphany! You're not a 1, you're I in drag. And for several delicious moments, the hem of your garment connected us: I to eye.
The thread pulled tighter and tighter as I tried to reel you in; the chrysalis exploded in terrible beauty until there was only This left:
No words, no abstractions, no perceptions:
Just
This.
It had no chance, this epiphany; it was feted and fated for dissolution before it was even realized.
Still, I wished I had done a bit of gatekeeping before I got off the train; some words on the photo as a reminder; pointers to pointee, a little sweeping up of the experience for the future.
Nonsense, of course.
Besides, we both know I caught you today. And each time I catch you the bell curve towards eternity slopes inexorably closer to This lover's embrace.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Buildings have feelings too (Bad metaphysics, opus 17b)
I was dispatched with unusual haste to the 31st floor, to investigate what, exactly, was going on.
Reports had been coming in all morning - the usual deluge of emails, but an unusual volume of phone calls as well, which was the first thing that got my eyebrow twitching.
Emails were easy enough to spit out for any variety of corporate complaint - toilets backed up, new eco-friendly light-bulbs not pulling their wait - xeroxers running low on paper - but picking up the phone was more personal. Voice calls were intimate; there was an investment strung between your vocal chords and the listener's ear: *this issue* needed to be looked at post haste.
Otis propelled me with his usual passion-less efficiency from the lobby to the 31st floor, and when the doors opened:
Nothing.
At both ends of the hall, glassed front doors leading to the belly of the bureaucratic beasts; and pushed against the glass, very, *very* unhappy faces. Scared, unhappy faces. They looked through me, though it was not clear whether this was intentional or just an aftereffect of whatever they had been through.
Time for some forensic work. I crossed off the obvious first. Ventilation systems, water, electricity - all good.
What then, of all the complaints? The feelings of dread being reported? The terror? The anxiety? Clearly, nervous systems were running amok, and it was my job to figure out why.
Crude mechanics ruled out, it was time to become quieter, and ask the space what was going on.
Several deep breaths, a walk from east to west - and there, like a neon sign, was the answer.
The string of this floor's lights leading to the water closets were clearly out of synch. Specifically, the third light, running dark.
In my mind, boundarilessness presupposed that buildings could have feelings too. And was it a was not a stretch to suggest that chakras could be lounging around the hallways too, spinning and swirling their own cosmic tidal pools across their own ecosystems.
Clearly, someone in one of the offices had been graced with the recognition of no-self. There wasn't a question of whether their third chakra - home of self esteem - existed or didn't exist. There was simply no self to be impacted by the third chakra.
For however long this person's light was on (and their chakra, at best, flickering) any person they came in contact would be similarly affected. And they would touch two people, and they would touch two people....
And the metaphysical walls would come tumbling down. No self, no separation. The building was as affected as the people, and clearly manifested it in the third light - that hall's third chakra - flickering.
And that, kids, is where the trouble set in.
Realizing something internally is one thing, but when the world is recognized as ephemeral as the internal world, it can be terrifying.
This explained the faces, the fear, and the solution.
Enter me - Self - paged from their collective need.
I carefully aligned the buildings chakra, and jumped like a thousand fingered flame into the temporarily enlightened workers on 31.
Self back, chakras lit back on, personalities in tact, another job well done.
Word is that Ego is going to be distributing bonus cheques as a thank you for the course correction.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
xray I's
It was a beeline to the Tibetan specialty store when I hit the air conditioned leviathan.
Swallowed whole, I looked for any sort of wayfinding post that would help me navigate the belly of the beast. Without it, surely, I would be lost.
There was a bookstore within reach - but this place was beyond book knowledge. A surf of humanity cresting into fashion stores I didn't understand; plastic and paper traded for a surfeit of goods that I intuited would be cupboarded, unopened on arrival home.
An image - all the masses in the mall gelling into one body; all the chattel in one gelatinous bag umbilical-ed to them and dragged around store to store, looking for That which would make them happy. For a time.
Fade right, and there, bless the gods, a directory listing, and reaching out in an almost sensual oracular embrace, the Tibetan Specialty store.
Quick bee-line there - not without a triple americano, even mystic-wannabees have their needs - and an exhale as I entered.
The place reeked of home, maybe not my root-home, but spiritual foliage I was somehow familiar with.
At the counter, paying for an Aum Mani Padme Hum bracelet, I inquire about what appears to be an electronic prayer wheel beside a picture of the Dalai Llama. Turns out it was an electronic prayer wheel beside a picture off the Dalai Llama, threading the syllables from the source to the market back to the source over and over and over again, as long as the leds and lithium ion innards held out.
Senses overwhelmed, I didn't notice the seed that had been dropped in my heart before I left the store. Now, several days later, I notice it regularly: a prayer wheel turning continuously in that space. Where there was contraction with others, now, there is a quite pull back to the turning in the heart and the mantra. Where there was discomfort, boredom, or quite simply too much thinking, the heart-wheel-mantra.
And now, when I look at you, and you, and you, and my own thoughts, the wheel picks up and the exteriors vanish.
On deeper examination, it's not the exteriors that have vanished, but the realization that there are no such things as interiors and exteriors, just This.
And This is forerver churned and imossibly moved from Source to Source by the prayer wheel and mantra; an initiation from the most unlikely of places.
Swallowed whole, I looked for any sort of wayfinding post that would help me navigate the belly of the beast. Without it, surely, I would be lost.
There was a bookstore within reach - but this place was beyond book knowledge. A surf of humanity cresting into fashion stores I didn't understand; plastic and paper traded for a surfeit of goods that I intuited would be cupboarded, unopened on arrival home.
An image - all the masses in the mall gelling into one body; all the chattel in one gelatinous bag umbilical-ed to them and dragged around store to store, looking for That which would make them happy. For a time.
Fade right, and there, bless the gods, a directory listing, and reaching out in an almost sensual oracular embrace, the Tibetan Specialty store.
Quick bee-line there - not without a triple americano, even mystic-wannabees have their needs - and an exhale as I entered.
The place reeked of home, maybe not my root-home, but spiritual foliage I was somehow familiar with.
At the counter, paying for an Aum Mani Padme Hum bracelet, I inquire about what appears to be an electronic prayer wheel beside a picture of the Dalai Llama. Turns out it was an electronic prayer wheel beside a picture off the Dalai Llama, threading the syllables from the source to the market back to the source over and over and over again, as long as the leds and lithium ion innards held out.
Senses overwhelmed, I didn't notice the seed that had been dropped in my heart before I left the store. Now, several days later, I notice it regularly: a prayer wheel turning continuously in that space. Where there was contraction with others, now, there is a quite pull back to the turning in the heart and the mantra. Where there was discomfort, boredom, or quite simply too much thinking, the heart-wheel-mantra.
And now, when I look at you, and you, and you, and my own thoughts, the wheel picks up and the exteriors vanish.
On deeper examination, it's not the exteriors that have vanished, but the realization that there are no such things as interiors and exteriors, just This.
And This is forerver churned and imossibly moved from Source to Source by the prayer wheel and mantra; an initiation from the most unlikely of places.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Area Dog’s Rock Bottom Same As His Peak | The Onion - America's Finest News Source http://ping.fm/ey28V
Friday, August 12, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
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