Lilac Cathedral

So hot here, wet heat.

Part's internal - the controlled yo-yo of interval training, part of it is external - steam enveloping, relaxing, bringing up the core temp up bit by bit.

Close the eyes and mantra-up; thought recognition that established yogis are beyond hot and cold, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering. By that definition I am nowhere near established, but the mantra brings some fleeting relief.

Relief from what? I am the one who brought the exercise to the pulse; pulse in the body; body to the room where I now sit. I am the one who feels the desire of heated, steamed relief and relaxation even in the midst of a workout; I am the one who is sitting here, of my own volition. I WANT to be here. Human beings move towards pleasure and away from pain. There's a still-borne syllogism there. Even if fully articulated, it would fail the experience somehow because I am sitting in discomfort (pain and heat) for pleasure. Apparently, I want both.

Mantra is not strong enough here to take me to the place of no-pain; there are some rat-bastard demonoids that had happy-fun-time ravaging different levels of the gross-body the last two weeks, and they are having their last kick at the can before they can be expelled for good out of the system. They've fucked the equilibrium up, as has sleep and psychotropics and emotion and energy and the whole web, shimmering and sliding me in an only partly controlled free fall (more a free tumble) down the web to the end where I held on in rock climber's finger gripping grace and just managed to pull myself up and over.

So eyes are closed now, legs are dangling over the edge of silver web, and the mind's eye is open and I'm surrounded by a distanced white black screen

and now

floating down, tiny lilacs; one, two, then ...

walls of lilacs, and pillars in front of and holding up the walls. And great gothic arches sprouting windows and turrets and crosses and all of it Lilac.

i'm at the center now, standing and surrounded, the sitting me on the web in the steam room is somewhere connected but distant, it's just me and this Lilac cathedral

And the flowers extend and hold me now, and I am part of the castle, breathing in centuries and out eons, eyes exploding inward and outward; refuting physics in this tiny complete point that is everything because it is nothing

and that thought is whisked away because this is not a place for thought, just experience, or better yet just awareness playing.

A step up from awareness.

Manifestation between the causal and the subtle and the gross.

And it's flight that is delivered now, just above the walls and floors and spires and basements of the cathedral; everything Lilac, I am lilac, and I am being delivered it seems to the spire of spires where on toes and arms extended backwards I sing in ecstasy as

the steam rolls in

and I'm bounced to the web, off the web to the benched room where causal, subtle and gross gel into Me again.

puka.

Are you us?

I'm happy just to sit here, wait for the bite of the fog outside to be excised as the door closes and the people mover whisks us on its way.

Happy to scan a few pages before el soporifico hits like a pacific front. Warm, unrelenting; washes over me and blankets me in a soft sheath of stupor, taking me to

..eh

what's that?

Odd conversation happening next to me.

I drift nonetheless

To the sweet spot, glassed between two layers of consciousness, almost dreaming but with the slightest of grips on the top pane of glass and then

plunk

there.

Plates above and below have fogged in, but there's light coming through, suggests not a very long trip down here and I must be hungry because it's all about ribs.

This is isn't id here, this is the little brain talking. GI juices must be rumbling back on the other side of the glass because all I can think about is

..how long to boil these puppies. And the juxtapositions begin. Geometry of dreams; shapes and shadows overlapping and contraindicating and challenging and diffusing together. And there, being pushed out of the wall in a perfect wife-size profile she comes and now we're

talking

How long again? Wouldn't it be easier to braise these in the oven or even barbecue them...boiling seems so Dahmner like and the smell. I love meat dear, you know that, but sometimes the smell can

But dreams have geometry, they also have their own linguistics so it comes out something like

thought word thought thought word

and ultimately comes out as something like "purple", which somehow captures the meaning, intent, undercurrents and fluorescence of the whole dialogue

Which now segues without a pause to the new family member. How long should we keep her separate in her room ("red"); is she eating enough "yokel" wonder if she has had her shots (thought).

Dreams are at once unilateral and non-hierarchical, another paradox for another day. But it comes to bear in THIS dream as it our relationship transferred to the subtle realm, so there's collaboration and back and forth but utlimately I pull the shots here - nobody else can except maybe for that lady looking down from the glass plate she has a cord she's somehow dangled through, odd, solid through solid, but this is sopor land and the next things blur into continuity, the subtle realm and the gross realm destroying opposites as they couple and twist as I pull the chord and

eyes are opening. Nice train. Warm train. fog gone. But she is still talking to her other half, who sounds a lot like mine, given the context of the conversation. She's finishing up with their new pet now, about to say cloistered goodbye without a lot of vociferous love-yous, a lot like me, pointing me again the to ultimate impersonal nature of most of our very human transactions.

Cohen, for all the edges I can't seem to get over, does have that one NAILED. Fear, anger, depression, love, they're the same between all of us - just different degrees of intensity.

And with that thought threading and wrapping around the mists her conversation wound around me, I'm off to nappy land again

shuka.