Kosmos Exhales

Long slow hike through waist high bloodgrass. Weimerammer-grey sheen lighting everything up in the closest you can get to light-shadow; that is, shadow made up of light.

Sun is constantly at 1:00 pm, up and behind my head. Turning up and around to try to trick it into an ocular appearance is fruitless.

Shimmer in the air; clearly summer.

Yet as soon as I make the mental pronouncement, snow falls from the cloudless sky. And as soon as THAT observation is made, the sky is an object without boundaries; solid...but not solid and

shit, too much.

I stop labelling and simply look, and this psychic sudoku stabilizes enough to give me a couple of choices. Three, as it turns out - in the form of handles coming out of the ground - one straight ahead, one to the left, one to the right.

No thought; that's important here; as soon as I gain focus, the world loses its, handles become more of the weimerammer grey and all mists up, ready to collapse into...

First lever down.

Aha, this is interesting.

Scene is there, but the Boundaries are gone. Like a giant canvas, where everything is reachable by the observer, but the observer has somehow been pulled into the canvas itself. Without boundaries, there is no subject and object. Without subject and object, there is no here and there. Without here and there there is no distance, and without distance, there is no time.

Lever up. That was fucked up. Beautiful, but fucked up.

Second lever.

Scene is there, boundaries are gone, but I'm outside the scene. I can see the no-time, no-space, no-boundary paradox splashed oil on cloth, but I'm separate from it. The inhabitants are trying to lookup, but there is no up. They consider reaching out, but there is no out. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. No experience, just Is, and me.

Third lever.

One more mirror in the mirror, there's a transition ~ where the 'space' that contains I watching Is in the canvas shimmers and dissolves

nothing left to say or do. No experience, no I, no Is, no no.

Collapsed into a pointless center that is everywhere; not finite

whisper sigh

throughout the Kosmos.

Inside Outside

It's all paradox.

He got it, _really got it_ , on a Tuesday afternoon walking from the store to his car, which, as grace would have it, was several blocks away.

The last moment he would know zipped up experience, twinkled, and winked out of existence. This was life, of course, not death. Time wasn't there anymore (of course it never had been); judgements ceased to exist (judgement meant difference, difference meant distance, distance meant space and time, and none of that was here). True to Genpo Roshi's analogy, the mind kept on churning out thoughts like the stomach secreted acid. But now, well NOW. He was here. Is here. Presence. Watching the thoughts come and go.

As he made the walk back, everything was at once the same and startling new. He was at the place where enlightenment and non-enlightenment were inseparable, because there was no difference; sensations rained then showered; crimson purples and lilac epiphanies all a glorious dance in now-here (so close to no-here) and tears streamed and arced and exploded in floral brilliance and the sky turned and the ground sang all of the mantras were ever becoming one because they were one and

The door closed behind him and contraction set in, so quickly it made his head spin. Which was confusing, because that presupposed movement, and up until the time he had entered the car, that whole pesky movement - distance thing was a part of the past oh SHIT! Time was clearly back, the language showed it now there was past again and he desperately wanted the experience back.

Time out, chachi.

Yes?

Step out of the prose for a moment.

Ok, what's up?

Well, you've gone seriously south here. And before you start, I'm your creator so I can talk about time and space if I want.

Fine.

So what's with wanting an experience? That's separation AND desire which is more separation and on top of that you are wanting to 'get' a state but you know - or at least you KNEW just a few minutes ago (when there wasn't time) that all of that dissolved in awareness, you simply were, there was nothing to get.

Right, and I get that.

Intellectually, right?

Right.

Almost more than intellectually, I can remember what it felt like, I just don't get why it disappeared when I got back in the car.

I can help with that.

And help I did, easy enough at this layer, simply reach into the monitor, pull the protagonist out via the scruff of his neck ala kitty momma and BANG he's outside the car and back into the backless.

How's it feel?

A kaleidoscope. No need to want wildness or drugs or booze or experience or feeling better or worse or anything. Everything wrapped in time and separation has fused, zipped, and twinkled out. It's all good. How else could it be?

Nice to see you back, but here's the thing - how do you handle getting back on the bus. Or in your case, back in the car?

Well, to start with, in and out are...

Don't worry about Lucknow disease, I'm god here, I get it.

Cool (smile). There's nothing to do when I'm back IN the car. I see how I was contracted, but that's gone, dissolved, i AM what watches that whole game now.

Cool (pluck, into car)

And the whole thing starts over again. A little attenuated this time, but the same presenting symptoms.

(Pluck out of car)

(Pluck into car)

You know, I think that this is basically making him carsick (literally) but it's sure given me a picture of very, very personal Samsara.

You mean the wheel that I need to hop off on?

Why yes, little protagonist, that.

You mean this one? (Pan up, notice many spired wheel over protagonists head, with whole galaxies and ghosts realms and heavens and hells all storming in a funnel cloud over his head and...

now this is strange.

Is it?

I've reached in before, but never had anything come back out of the monitor before

Any last words?

And with that, I see with Meister's eye that is god's eye looking back at me

Protagonist and I touch hands on either side of the monitor and there is silence as we both merge back into that which was there all along.

You mind if I wrap up now?

Don't mind if you / I do.

namaste.

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.

is walking a paradox. Or maybe the paradox is walking him.