“we’ve reached an endpoint in human history. That the modernist tradition of progress and ceaseless extension of the frontiers of innovation are now dead. Originality is dead. The avant-garde artistic tradition is dead. All religions and utopian visions are dead and resistance to the status quo is impossible because revolution too is now dead.”*
-Kalle Lasn
Observations in the early morning:
1. Everything can take on meaning, or have no meaning at all. It just depends on perspective, and how badly you want an answer.
2. Breathing. Just sitting and breathing, in the early morning, before it’s light, before the neighbours are awake, before you’ve had caffeine (which is also before your brain starts running at 100 mph… no correlation, of course) when its just you and the cat sitting and filling your lungs with cool dark air, is one of the most pleasurable experiences ever.
3. Everything in the present moment is intent. Everything in all of the universe is intent. Your (all of our) personal intents have made you (and all of us) arrive at this very moment. Where you are and how you arrive there is up to you.
4. Facing backwards is pointless– everybody knows that history is determined by the eye of the person reading it (much like dots and waves).
5. Rationality is reaching the end of its tenure. Good riddance, I say.
6. Perspective is everything, but also nothing at all.
The postmodern condition, in my opinion, is much like the story of Narcissus. We (as a society) started out in awe of the world around us. Exploring everything, touching everything, trying to figure out why it is the way it is. Gradually (as a society this could be seen as teenage years) everything started to become more boring. Except the inner landscape– the inner landscape could still be explored. Through the tunnel of the inner landscape and out the other end we came upon a still pool of water.
Holy crap, we (as a society) exclaimed! We’re CUTE.
And there we have sat, ever since, masturbating all over ourselves and gazing into our own eyes.
Life is going on out there, people.
Plunge into the water.
Wake up from the spell.
Please.
*Although I am not a fan of Osho (flawed logic in every chapter), I highly recommend reading his essay titled: “Rebellion is the biggest YES yet.”
“Dwell in the cave of the sacrum.”
This is what Eileen keeps telling me when I’m panicking in Baddha Konasana (and when I’m not panicking in Baddha Konasana too), which is not as scary as being dropped back on to your head for the first time, but more scary than walking in to a place that you’ve never been to before when the door is closed and you can’t see what’s behind it.
Out in nature, I don’t really need to think about this too much. My brain switches off, my energy expands and I just kinda, well, move with everything. My energy automatically sinks to my root because that’s where I feel earth energy interact with my body the most. The second civilisation enters the picture, however, I need to consciously ground myself. Consciously and constantly.
One of my teachers was talking the other day about breathing IN the earth energy, but I disagree with her entirely. I don’t think we have to consciously pull any of the energies into our bodies, I think we just have to allow them to flow in, as they’re meant to. Inhale and yang flows in through your head. Exhale and yin flows in through your root.
Something to think about when bored in class.
I’m sorry, I miss you too…
Been around my family for a week.
I think I’m going grey.
Most definitely not feeling any words coming
(except ones that would make you blush).
In the meantime, here’s some pictures to prettify your day and to remind you that there is always a remedy for hectic frazzled family time…
usually in the form of mountains, canyons, streams, trees and sunrises (though there’s one pretty sunset in here too).
Happy new year, o six readers.
May it be filled with words and colours and magic.
Just like the one before;
just like the one after.
In my dream this morning, I was chatting with a wee baby, and started talking in poem.
I swear, I said the lovliest poem I’ve ever heard,
and woke up, and sat straight up in bed and thought
“REMEMBER IT”
except
the dream was already fading back into sleep
and my mind was already grasping at straws and lines
and frantically trying to remember
but pretty much failing.
After a couple of minutes the only straw I had left in my hand
was a short one
the first line
“To M_”.
find a small room that somebody doesn’t mind getting covered in paint, and then roll canvas out all over the floor (and maybe even on the walls too), and put flowers in my hair and pour paint on the ground like a twister board (and put some on my hands and feet too) and play my favourite songs and then dance and dance like a spinning sufi woman who spits out flowers and colours and emotions like an unstoppable tornado until it’s all out there instead of stuck in here.
completely unrelated, mind you.
I know that you say we must release all definitions
but, if you don’t mind, it just doesnt work like that now.
Not yet*.
And I know that I promised that I would be listening with my heart
And that a promise that you make when you’re awake
isn’t a promise at all but an oath (and if you noticed, I do listen sometimes).
But then sometimes, things deserve a really good think-over.
Movement is born from
the silence of listening
and action arises from the deep rest.
When I feel what you label love (even though you’re dead set against labeling), then
my body starts moving of its own accord.
Dancing yesterday,
there were angels singing in the corner
and a little old man at the opposite side of the room playing the fiddle and moving his sinewy old limbs as best as he could and
a man with his drum
in a trance
with his back against the wall
and his deep voice creating a humm for the rest of the music to rest on as it came tumbling out of the speakers
(all of this next to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness– the irony of which did not go unnoticed as I walked past the white robes and piety and greedy stares which you wouldn’t necessarily think were there but they were)
and over the top of it all somebody
started talking about love.
The group of separate people started moving together
in unison. And each time I started moving of my own accord
I went quiet again until the movement
that wasn’t mine returned into my limbs
Until a thought popped in:
What if all of this ‘love’ that people talk about
Isn’t really love at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I know that’s
what I keep telling you already, but, I just hadn’t thought about it in this context before.
That it’s not love–
that it’s the force behind the love
that pushes through us
and it just happens to feel so good that
we label it with a name
that feels good
(one that we are sure should feel good, anyway, but let’s not get into that right now).
And a big problem here is that when
mincing words, the signifier stops
taking on any meaning of its own;
love starts hanging in the air like
a fantastical garland that people throw out
and throw around each other and
that the nuevo hippies of Los Angeles
take as their mantra and bless each other with (wide-eyed and very spiritual looking too)
while Love is actually in the closet quivering
with kinetic tension about to burst out of itself but not knowing quite how to do so…
Is the allowing of intent to flow through your body
freely
not just love (or any impersonal force)
in its freest form?
Press deeper:
Is the love that flows through us all not
just the white letter that the word is written on?
And when we love ourselves are we not just allowing ourselves to be
both the canvas and the thread that weaves it
and even the paintbrush that paints on it
and if you expand yourself enough
maybe even the hand that moves it
but not separate like
before.
When you dance and let it come up
through your spine and
out of your limbs and into the world it
explodes in an ethereal cacophony
building and destroying
without resistance
(and happening so fast that any resistance whatsoever is sure to create some kind of tension somewhere).
Unison.
The label is the resistance.
The word is the vessel.
The heart is the motion.
Love yourself,
he says.
But don’t think that this is the answer.
Do it, and then turn out to face the world.
*(One day it will, mind you, but by then we will be sitting in our left-sided oneness wishing for some kind of excitement. And then after a while one of us will say, “I know– let’s start labelling things” which will of course cause a rift in our friendship because that’s why we ended up here and bored in the first place.)
I went back to the beach yesterday… it’s getting sufficiently cold and wintery here that it’s become attractive to me again (not that it’s not attractive in the summer, but the mobs of people and smell of Hawaiian Tropic make me kinda nauseous).
And it was COLD. Not as cold as it is in England right now (I’m getting that out there, Louise, so that you don’t make fun of me), but cold. So cold that when it rained two days ago it wanted to turn into snow but didn’t. (I asked it why and it pointed out that all those LA drivers would start driving into each other with shock and the roads which already aren’t built to withstand any kinds of weather patterns might buckle and crumble or at least turn slippery and it just wasn’t worth it. I pointed out (I really wanted it to snow) that if it felt like it needed to express itself in frozen form right now then it should, and it said “That’s what Alaska’s for, silly”. I then pointed out that it’s much more important to let its energy flow in the direction that it wants to go than to restrain itself for the sake of some silly Angelinos and, well it laughed, and dried up, and as the clouds scattered and drifted away it whispered that it has transcended that kind of bullshit, and maybe one day I will too.)
There were three girls huddled together under a blanket up the beach watching the sunset, and then me.
That’s the way I like the sea– quiet, desolate, and raw. The waves were huge, left over from the storm that came and dried up and didn’t snow, moving the air around them, sucking the air back out of my lungs as they thundered on the shore. Wind, streaming eyes. That’s the way I like nature– a reminder that I’m very much alive.
I stayed out for as long as I could stand. That’s the thing about the cold in Southern California– in cold weather places it’s totally normal to venture out with fuzzy boots and a hat and scarf and gloves and a warm warm jacket but here, you forget. You look outside and it’s sunny and bright and the sun warms you when you’re sitting in it and so you go out with just a sweater (because it’s still less than 60 degrees which is the sweater point) and then the sun starts to set and the warmth is sucked out of the dry air and your body goes “Oh. Shit.” but by then you’re an hour away from home and enjoying yourself on the beach so you just take it for as long as you can (and pray that there’s hot water for a bath when you get home.).
It’s strange, after months of being away. Months of wishing I was here and thinking about the people and the noise and getting repulsed and going up into the mountains and picking a bush to sit under instead (just like Jonah, except I wasn’t feeling guilt for running away or anything, and I definitely didn’t get swallowed by a whale, which would probably be kinda cool). But those months create a distance, especially when I’ve been connecting to the earth so much. I used to stand with my feet in the ocean and feel like I could feel all the fish inside my own body. Now I stand with my feet on the shore and feel birds running around on the backs of my arms and the seaweed in my hair. I wanted to jump in, to say hello again. To pray that she hadn’t forgotten me and to apologise for being away for so long. To promise that I’ll learn how to surf so that we can play cat and mouse (see, I can give up control sometimes) like I keep promising every year. None of this can be done from the shore.
Standing at distance I remind her that I was actually sailing a lot this summer, so I WAS there, even if I wasn’t THERE. But she sniffs at me and crashes on the shore again.
I look at the cold water.
I look at my red feet.
And as I’m looking down I hear a tremendous crash and just like that I’m soaked.
And frozen.
And smiling.
And shivering. Uncontrollably.
And just like that, it all rushes in, the sensation, the lack of emotion, the clarity of thought and the connectedness. Just like that I’m both here and there, on the shore and lapping the sand on the shores of Japan and wriggling and moving around plankton and giant squid and whales and seaweed and it’s all there. There’s no room for anything else when it all comes rushing in like that. No room for thoughts, and no room for emotions, only sensation and perception. Only now.
Giggling, the waves rush away and chase a bird up the shore a little further up.
Shivering, I return to my car and put the heat on full.
I love winter more than I love any other season. Kidney season. Water season. Time to return to the sea again.
squigglies
When I don’t get outside enough, my heart starts to shrivel and I feel like I’m in a cage.
I forget about it though, and then wonder why I feel funny.
I’ve been so busy studying (yes, me!), and haven’t been going out to the desert since I got back from the east coast (oh yeah, I went to the east coast. That was fun.), so until yesterday I hadn’t actually been outside in…. over a week. And if you count the type of outside I like (dry expanses of Mediterranean landscape with tons of wild and not very much grooming and diversity of wildlife and sky that goes forever) then it had been almost a month.
When I stepped out of the car into the woods yesterday my soul took a big big drink of air and quiet and I promised not to forget again.
air
Letting go is something I have a really hard time with. From arguments to people to the past to my expectations to the present and everything else, I hold on. For dear life.
About six months ago I was lying in savasana feeling around inside my liver (as one does) and noticed that it was kinda petrified. I thought about what would happen if I got it to let go, and for a brief second it lessened its hold on time. Everything came flying in all at once– the past, present and future all collided in a cacophony of information and underneath it all was this huge feeling of grief. Grief for the past and grief for the future. Grief because things have to and will change. Grief because things die, and people die, and people move, and things move, and happiness becomes sadness, and love becomes pain. Life is movement, and that movement hurts my heart. My liver holds on to the moment (whatever moment it can grab) while time passes by, to protect me. Isn’t that sweet?
I think that a part of being alive– really truly excruciatingly alive– is to be able to feel things as they are. Joy, fear, sadness, anger– to be able to handle the burden that FEELING puts on you. Or, I guess that’s one of the side effects I notice from the different things that I do: that yoga not only makes me bendy (somewhat) and gives me great back muscles, but it makes my body a stronger vessel. To hold all of the energy that it’s been building, but also to be able to stand in the influx of information and observe and be, without having mind (and liver) freak the fuck out. Not that I’m there yet… liver is still hanging on for dear life. So are my traps, come to think of it.
*sigh*
All is coming, right?
Some of the wilderness in LA doesn’t really feel like wilderness to me at all.
Too many people, too much crap lying around, too much smog in the air, the paths too well maintained. I’ll take what I can get out here, but there’s something very bittersweet about getting out for a nature fix to find that it’s being groomed.
Almost as bad as finding that it’s not wild at all– like at that stupid something shrine place in the Palisades– it’s like a spiritual disneyland with a meditation room by the fake lake with fountains and turtles in it. It made me want to vomit (mainly because people treat it like God has descended from the heavens to meet that one specific little point on earth, and so if you’re going to be ’spiritual’, it’s the perfect place to do it). Not holy. Not holy at all.
In meridians class a couple of weeks ago, the wind was blowing fog in off the ocean; it was coming in really fast. One of the girls in my class mentioned that this weather made her uncomfortable. Another chimed in, and pretty soon the class is briefly discussing how they like it when the sun is shining and the air is bright and there’s no fog and no change and, well, I, too, love it when the sun is shining, but transitional weather, I love it even more.
In the desert when the clouds roll in fast and the air takes on this density (and the creosote bush starts to release a tiny bit of its fragrance), and the light changes to this deep grey-yellow, and you have to REALLY stay awake to keep up with it and feel comfortable, or the landscape shifts on you and the colours shift on you. It’s easy to fall into a dream-like state when the weather is like this. Things bubble up from the unconscious. Shadows flicker in movement. Its disorienting in a deeply visceral way.
It’s not just about weather, you know. People don’t just dislike weather patterns that aren’t sunny and bright. It’s everything yin. We’re afraid of everything yin. Like sex (unless it’s done by people who look like ugly plasticoid cartoon characters and who remove the idea of connection of any kind from the act entirely), and of death*, and the unconscious, and of the wild**.
In certain new-age circles and now non-new-age circles alike people spread ‘love and light’ like they are the only things that exist, or like that is the direction we should be moving in. And I hate to break it to these people, but we live in a dichotomous world– think back to Mysticism 101: “From the one came the TWO”. One might try to argue that love and light is the source of everything, but that’s impossible because this ‘love and light’ that the new-agers refer to is the light and movement of the masculine side of the dichotomy. So the one gave birth to light AND dark. The presence of love and light implies that there is a state in which they are absent, and there is. Right over there on the other side of the spectrum that is being ignored. Not only is love and light ignoring one side of the spectrum, but it’s perpetuating this societal myth that we have had for centuries that the masculine is more important (I’m not talking feminism here, I’m talking yin-ism. There’s a difference. I don’t know many feminists who are yin-ists). I’m referring to the basic archetypal principles of the world that we live in: male and female. Yang, male, light, expansion, life, growth, work, spring, cultivation; Yin, female, dark, contraction, death, rotting, autumn, wildness. The feminine is our unconscious, it’s the place below our belly button that guides us if we listen. It’s sex and death and war and all of the things that we choose to ignore. Our meat comes prettily packaged so that we can ignore the pain, death and violence that went into creating it. Love and light. Our psyches come perfectly presented so that nobody can see the pain that goes into maintaining the pretense of happiness and perfection. Love and light. Our relationships are superficial so that we never have to see the shadows in our significant others. So in love, so perfect, so meant to be together until the final blow comes and “we never saw it coming– they just looked so happy”. Love and light.
This ignorance of the dark side has many other implications in our society. The dominance of over refined foods in our markets and pantries reflects the “refined spirit” that we hold in such high esteem. Our lack of respect for the wilderness has caused us to rape and pillage the earth we live on, all in the name of “taming the wild”, or making it “pretty”. Our fear of looking deep within ourselves has left us without an internal compass, so we look to anybody who appears to have authority for the answers. We squish our “gut instincts” in the name of rationality and science where, in reality, we need a combination of both. Sex and death are taboo subjects for children even though they are most curious to know about them– we have a society of people who are terrified of death (and will do anything to maintain the illusion of youth) and who view sex and our bodies as dirty shameful things, creating an entire industry that feeds on sex being ‘taboo and dirty’, and generations of people who lack respect for themselves and their bodies and treat sex like it’s something you do when wasted or bored or when you want somebody to like you, or when somebody wants to do it to you, and then they spend a few minutes mimicking porn stars and the rest of the night lying awake wondering what is missing from life. All the while we ignore that other side– the foods in their natural states; the wilderness without taming; the archetypal stories; the sex as an act of creation and of love and of pleasure; the dancing without choreography; the ideas without academic language to shroud them in importance. The basics. We are starting to miss out on the basic things that created societies in the first place. To perpetuate this idea that ‘love and light’ is the ideal is, in my opinion, reaching a point of being dangeous. There is always a backlash.
These things cannot be repressed for too long.
*Yep, death. I brought up the big D word and now I’m quaking in my boots that you’re going to click the window closed before you get to the point where I say that we’re all going to die one day. Yep, I said it. I’m going to die and you’re going to die (and I hope it isn’t today or tomorrow), and now I can be labeled as morbid, or even crazy and people will paint an invisible boundary around me that they dare not cross lest I remind them of the inevitable. Ok I doubt it actually, and give my five readers (notice how it went up?) more credit than that. But have you TRIED to talk about this stuff in public? How about menstrual blood. That’s a good one. Oooh, or oozing pus (I may be getting off topic…).
**Disclaimer: I KNOW that there’s a balance. Really, I do. I just don’t feel this balance in society at all. I feel like we’re running the wild over, suppressing it, controlling it, and squishing it away. And until that balance has been achieved I fear that I will always be angry when I think about these things, and always feel compelled to fight for them. I don’t want to get rid of the balance, I understand its necessity. Blah blah blah. There.
