I am thinking about the movement of the mind.
When I am alone and without distraction, my mind produces an object for its own attention. My first impulse is to call this object a thought, but that is too singular, too steady-state. Better would be to call it a thought-complex.
I am alone, the room is quiet, and some thought-complex fills my mind. Here it is. Now, what do I do with it? It is dynamic. It contains tensions within itself. It wants to change, so it does. I now see a new face of the object--this is how it happens.
I am interested in something that happens often enough, at least to me, that I'm a bit surprised that I've never read about it. I should think this is a common experience, and yet it is strange--if you think about it.
I am often amused by what my mind does. My mind entertains me ...
(There seem to be two basic ways this can happen--either the thought-complex moves in a surprisingly bizarre/humorous manner, or it transforms, in a seemingly prosaic fashion, into some ridiculous new result.)
... the mind surprises itself: the thief uses his left hand to pick his right pocket.
[this is why I love writing fiction]
And to actually make it exciting, the thief had to pretend that he didn't know if there was anything in the pocket in the first place.
I am obsessive also, for better and for worse, and maybe not everyone is like that. I can run a phrase or a thought or a melody through my mind over and over, for hours or even days--I'll keep working at it until I get it right, which means I'll keep working at it until I discover what right is. But this condition of self-ignorance, which is required if the mind is to surprise itself--the unexpected irruption of an old memory: a smile long forgotten. If I did not expect it, then how, or why, did I retrieve it?
The mind contains many voices: I am only one of us.
I am playing with this idea, and I have no idea what shape it will be in when I finally put it down. And yet, there is nothing else at work here besides my own mind. My mind cannot predict what my mind will do.
---
Of course it's impossible to actually talk about this. Or I could say that I will only ever be able to talk about this, but I will never be able to say it.
---
Could I force it--just to prove myself wrong, for the hell of it--and compel my mind to move along a preconceived track? I really don't think so. Maybe.
---
After hours of solitude, some ridiculous thought made me laugh, and the sound of my laugh made me think. I hadn't spoken all day. The sound came out of nowhere, somewhere around dinnertime.
It broke the spell, and cast another. This.
So, if the mind is simultaneously both the comedian and the audience, then what is the joke? . . . this is the way to the construction of a Holy Trinity.
I read something like that somewhere.
So went Saturday afternoon. It was bright and cold outside.
1.29.2012
1.28.2012
Transported, Rapt
When the divine light shines, the human light sets . . . and this is what happens to the race of prophets. For our reason leaves home at the arrival of the divine Spirit, and at its departure the former returns. For it is not lawful for the mortal and immortal to dwell together. Hence the setting of reason and the darkness around it beget ecstacy and god-given madness.
--Philo of Alexandria
--Philo of Alexandria
10.23.2011
Dream Another Dream
I'm transitioning out of the imaginary world I've been living in, and this post will be a sort of real world confirmation of that shift for me.
I've completed a readable draft of Yesterday's Sirens, which is the long chapter in Pilgrims Dream concerned with Orestes Herpetulian and his misadventures with the Herd (giant, mutant rats with weird psychic abilities) in the Fresh Kills Landfill, aka the Dump. I still have a few notes for revision, so there are still a few drafts to go, but I'm pulling my imagination out of that world. There is no more imaginative work to be done there. From now on, my only thoughts on Yesterday's Sirens will be issues of craft.
I feel a sense of relief and freedom, even as I'm a bit saddened to think I'll no longer be running with Orestes & K and the rest of the Dump crew as they deal with the Herd. I went deep into their world, and I've lived with them for a long time. (Orestes will continue in the rest of Pilgrims Dream, but he will be transformed and in another context. K is done for now, but he's been running in my imagination for about 15 years already, and I'm sure he'll be back around somehow.) I can't really explain what it's like, if you haven't experienced it yourself. There's an entire world in my imagination, the world of the Dump and the people who work and even live there. I've been building that world for a long time. I've dreamt in that world. I've watched it change gradually. So now it's time for goodbye, and probably not a moment too soon.
The chapter is basically about how Orestes' life falls apart. He goes all the way down to nothing, and doesn't even have his own sanity by the end. It's a strange thing to keep in your head for an extended period. In the context of the novel, Yesterdays Sirens is a chapter, but in itself it is the length of a novella (20,000 words) and could stand on its own. Now, my imagination is hugely important to me, and for that reason I respect it, which means I respect the dangerous power it can have if not handled carefully. The truth is I put myself out on a ledge with this chapter, and Yesterdays Sirens isn't a story I'd tell if I didn't know what comes after, about the reintegration and uplift to come.
An experience this weekend confirmed for me that it's the right time to leave. I went to see a performance of The Caretaker by Harold Pinter--I didn't know too much about the play and went based on my admiration for the theater company putting it on. It turned out to be about a drifter getting on in years, moving from place to place, and he's taken in by a couple of crazy brothers who have a sort of derelict building. They give him a bed, and that's all: it's not like they're trying to reestablish or reform him. You get the feeling it's the guy's last chance--he won't be able to hustle his way on the street much longer, and he's already far gone enough that he's not going to get help from anyone else. But the brothers turn on him and kick him out. The play ends. I thought, Jesus Christ. Watch a man lose it until there's nothing left to lose. It'll stop your heart. The play has the same basic arc as Yesterdays Sirens, and the correspondence was difficult for me to confront.
Then, later in the night, in a bar at a birthday party, there was a man with a guitar. He didn't seem to have a friend, and he approached every group in the bar strangely. He came uncomfortably close. It was like he forgot how to talk to people. At one point, he was playing a song at me, sort of forcing it on me, and then he broke off and went to the other side of the bar. I thought, Thank God, maybe something else will distract him. But he returned to me with his guitar case in hand, and out of it he pulled a decent sized piece of tupperware, which he opened to reveal the marijuana inside. He then asked if I wanted to smoke a joint. This sounds perfectly normal, like the sort of thing that might happen in any bar in Prague. What I can't quite explain is that he did these things without competence--when he showed me his stash, my only thought was, Someone's gonna rip you off soon. It's one thing to pass a joint to someone you've just met, and it's another to flash a substantial amount of drugs in front of the eyes of strangers in a public place. It was like he thought we were friends because I let him play a song at me for a few seconds. I wondered how long he would manage to keep his guitar. When I told a friend about the play I'd seen earlier that night, how the coincidence disturbed me, she said people don't become homeless (meaning the crazy sort of homeless) overnight, that it's a gradual process. The guy with the guitar was no longer able to communicate with other human beings. He was just enough in our world to talk at people. It was obvious that he wanted to connect, but he just didn't know how to do it. He's in an intermediary stage, so he can still manage, though just barely, to be in a bar and not get kicked out.
After spending so much time with a character who's losing it, then to see a play that powerfully echoes that, and then to meet such a character in the flesh, yes, I'm ready to move on. I've started to feel like I'm the one who's losing it, and that's what I mean about the dangerous power of the imagination.
So now it's on to Aleister Von Dirk, the unknown writer in exile, and his search for the angelic language, which he looks for on long walks through the empty streets of Mala Strana after midnight, where he meets Sophia Aurora, that strange, beautiful woman--then the powerful shock of his meeting with Agents Grossberger and Troutslop, who open up a larger world to him--and this is perfect timing, because winter in Prague is the season of such magic.
I've completed a readable draft of Yesterday's Sirens, which is the long chapter in Pilgrims Dream concerned with Orestes Herpetulian and his misadventures with the Herd (giant, mutant rats with weird psychic abilities) in the Fresh Kills Landfill, aka the Dump. I still have a few notes for revision, so there are still a few drafts to go, but I'm pulling my imagination out of that world. There is no more imaginative work to be done there. From now on, my only thoughts on Yesterday's Sirens will be issues of craft.
I feel a sense of relief and freedom, even as I'm a bit saddened to think I'll no longer be running with Orestes & K and the rest of the Dump crew as they deal with the Herd. I went deep into their world, and I've lived with them for a long time. (Orestes will continue in the rest of Pilgrims Dream, but he will be transformed and in another context. K is done for now, but he's been running in my imagination for about 15 years already, and I'm sure he'll be back around somehow.) I can't really explain what it's like, if you haven't experienced it yourself. There's an entire world in my imagination, the world of the Dump and the people who work and even live there. I've been building that world for a long time. I've dreamt in that world. I've watched it change gradually. So now it's time for goodbye, and probably not a moment too soon.
The chapter is basically about how Orestes' life falls apart. He goes all the way down to nothing, and doesn't even have his own sanity by the end. It's a strange thing to keep in your head for an extended period. In the context of the novel, Yesterdays Sirens is a chapter, but in itself it is the length of a novella (20,000 words) and could stand on its own. Now, my imagination is hugely important to me, and for that reason I respect it, which means I respect the dangerous power it can have if not handled carefully. The truth is I put myself out on a ledge with this chapter, and Yesterdays Sirens isn't a story I'd tell if I didn't know what comes after, about the reintegration and uplift to come.
An experience this weekend confirmed for me that it's the right time to leave. I went to see a performance of The Caretaker by Harold Pinter--I didn't know too much about the play and went based on my admiration for the theater company putting it on. It turned out to be about a drifter getting on in years, moving from place to place, and he's taken in by a couple of crazy brothers who have a sort of derelict building. They give him a bed, and that's all: it's not like they're trying to reestablish or reform him. You get the feeling it's the guy's last chance--he won't be able to hustle his way on the street much longer, and he's already far gone enough that he's not going to get help from anyone else. But the brothers turn on him and kick him out. The play ends. I thought, Jesus Christ. Watch a man lose it until there's nothing left to lose. It'll stop your heart. The play has the same basic arc as Yesterdays Sirens, and the correspondence was difficult for me to confront.
Then, later in the night, in a bar at a birthday party, there was a man with a guitar. He didn't seem to have a friend, and he approached every group in the bar strangely. He came uncomfortably close. It was like he forgot how to talk to people. At one point, he was playing a song at me, sort of forcing it on me, and then he broke off and went to the other side of the bar. I thought, Thank God, maybe something else will distract him. But he returned to me with his guitar case in hand, and out of it he pulled a decent sized piece of tupperware, which he opened to reveal the marijuana inside. He then asked if I wanted to smoke a joint. This sounds perfectly normal, like the sort of thing that might happen in any bar in Prague. What I can't quite explain is that he did these things without competence--when he showed me his stash, my only thought was, Someone's gonna rip you off soon. It's one thing to pass a joint to someone you've just met, and it's another to flash a substantial amount of drugs in front of the eyes of strangers in a public place. It was like he thought we were friends because I let him play a song at me for a few seconds. I wondered how long he would manage to keep his guitar. When I told a friend about the play I'd seen earlier that night, how the coincidence disturbed me, she said people don't become homeless (meaning the crazy sort of homeless) overnight, that it's a gradual process. The guy with the guitar was no longer able to communicate with other human beings. He was just enough in our world to talk at people. It was obvious that he wanted to connect, but he just didn't know how to do it. He's in an intermediary stage, so he can still manage, though just barely, to be in a bar and not get kicked out.
After spending so much time with a character who's losing it, then to see a play that powerfully echoes that, and then to meet such a character in the flesh, yes, I'm ready to move on. I've started to feel like I'm the one who's losing it, and that's what I mean about the dangerous power of the imagination.
So now it's on to Aleister Von Dirk, the unknown writer in exile, and his search for the angelic language, which he looks for on long walks through the empty streets of Mala Strana after midnight, where he meets Sophia Aurora, that strange, beautiful woman--then the powerful shock of his meeting with Agents Grossberger and Troutslop, who open up a larger world to him--and this is perfect timing, because winter in Prague is the season of such magic.
9.18.2011
Taking Note
Hang with me until I get to the part about coincidences. First I have to work backwards.
--
I keep all sorts of notebooks. Some might say I keep too many notebooks, that if I'd focused exclusively on my novel, I might've completed Pilgrims Dream years ago. Maybe so. I don't care: my notebooks make me happy.
Obviously I have a notebook expressly for the novel. I also have a small notebook I take with me everywhere in order to catch the occasional inspired thought, to remember the name of a recommended pub, whatever; quotes go in there too. I keep a journal, and in addition to that I keep a dream journal. (Writing your dreams immediately upon waking helps you to remember them, and analyzing those entries in a particular way helps you to have lucid dreams.) I have a notebook that I use with my students, which I also use in the Czech lessons I'm taking. I have a small notebook into which I copy my Czech notes so I can carry it always in my bag and review while I'm riding the tram or sitting in some reception area. I have a notebook for hand-copying what I consider to be great works of literature so that even the smallest amount of that brilliance might rub off on me through some process of sympathetic magic. There are other notebooks I neglect, and unfortunately you could probably throw Lightning, Mirror into that category, if there can be such a thing as a digital notebook, which I'm not really sure about.
Not too long ago I came up with an idea for another notebook. I didn't have any extras handy, so I decided to start it at the back of the small black everywhere notebook and work my way toward the middle. The idea for this fledgling notebook is to record coincidences.
Keep it simple. The date, and the details of the coincidence. It doesn't have to be life-altering. I'm not trying to figure out what anything means, so it doesn't have to be meaningful, whatever that means. All it requires is a moment of, Huh, that's weird, and it goes onto the list. For example, I was walking to a lesson, and during the whole walk I had Satisfaction by the Stones in my head. Round and round. When I got to the pub where I meet my student, I sat down and realized Satisfaction was coming through the speakers. Nothing big. But it caught my attention, and that's enough. Write it down.
Basically I thought it'd be a fun list to keep. It'll be the sort of thing I'll enjoy looking back on after awhile. I don't expect to find scientific proof for Jung's theory of synchronicity or anything. Some people collect stamps, and I've decided to collect coincidences.
But today I noticed a strange development.
As I wrote a new entry, I got the idea to go back and underline in red the specific object of the coincidence. In the above example, I underlined Satisfaction. Then I thought to underline the names of the people involved. That went in green. Another idea: underline the places where they happened. Do that in blue.
(This is why I had to work backwards at the start.)
A larger perspective came over me, and I realized I was beginning to analyze these coincidences in the same way that I used to analyze my dreams, back when I was more diligent about it.
This creeped me out.
It would seem that I've transmuted the dream journal into a waking-life journal. O, how do I express this?! A journal is a journal: what happened, what am I thinking about, etc. It's a way to unload and maybe untangle some knots. But to keep a dream journal about real life is something else.
This technique of analysis, when used upon dreams, alerts you to the patterns of impossibility within your dreams so that in some future dream, you will consciously recognize the old, familiar impossibility as a consistent component of your dreams, your dreams, so suddenly you realize, Hey! I'm dreaming!
Now I'm doing that with real life. Will there come a moment when a similar recognition flashes upon me, and I shout, Hey! I'm living!
I don't know. I'll see where paying attention takes me.
--
I keep all sorts of notebooks. Some might say I keep too many notebooks, that if I'd focused exclusively on my novel, I might've completed Pilgrims Dream years ago. Maybe so. I don't care: my notebooks make me happy.
Obviously I have a notebook expressly for the novel. I also have a small notebook I take with me everywhere in order to catch the occasional inspired thought, to remember the name of a recommended pub, whatever; quotes go in there too. I keep a journal, and in addition to that I keep a dream journal. (Writing your dreams immediately upon waking helps you to remember them, and analyzing those entries in a particular way helps you to have lucid dreams.) I have a notebook that I use with my students, which I also use in the Czech lessons I'm taking. I have a small notebook into which I copy my Czech notes so I can carry it always in my bag and review while I'm riding the tram or sitting in some reception area. I have a notebook for hand-copying what I consider to be great works of literature so that even the smallest amount of that brilliance might rub off on me through some process of sympathetic magic. There are other notebooks I neglect, and unfortunately you could probably throw Lightning, Mirror into that category, if there can be such a thing as a digital notebook, which I'm not really sure about.
Not too long ago I came up with an idea for another notebook. I didn't have any extras handy, so I decided to start it at the back of the small black everywhere notebook and work my way toward the middle. The idea for this fledgling notebook is to record coincidences.
Keep it simple. The date, and the details of the coincidence. It doesn't have to be life-altering. I'm not trying to figure out what anything means, so it doesn't have to be meaningful, whatever that means. All it requires is a moment of, Huh, that's weird, and it goes onto the list. For example, I was walking to a lesson, and during the whole walk I had Satisfaction by the Stones in my head. Round and round. When I got to the pub where I meet my student, I sat down and realized Satisfaction was coming through the speakers. Nothing big. But it caught my attention, and that's enough. Write it down.
Basically I thought it'd be a fun list to keep. It'll be the sort of thing I'll enjoy looking back on after awhile. I don't expect to find scientific proof for Jung's theory of synchronicity or anything. Some people collect stamps, and I've decided to collect coincidences.
But today I noticed a strange development.
As I wrote a new entry, I got the idea to go back and underline in red the specific object of the coincidence. In the above example, I underlined Satisfaction. Then I thought to underline the names of the people involved. That went in green. Another idea: underline the places where they happened. Do that in blue.
(This is why I had to work backwards at the start.)
A larger perspective came over me, and I realized I was beginning to analyze these coincidences in the same way that I used to analyze my dreams, back when I was more diligent about it.
This creeped me out.
It would seem that I've transmuted the dream journal into a waking-life journal. O, how do I express this?! A journal is a journal: what happened, what am I thinking about, etc. It's a way to unload and maybe untangle some knots. But to keep a dream journal about real life is something else.
This technique of analysis, when used upon dreams, alerts you to the patterns of impossibility within your dreams so that in some future dream, you will consciously recognize the old, familiar impossibility as a consistent component of your dreams, your dreams, so suddenly you realize, Hey! I'm dreaming!
Now I'm doing that with real life. Will there come a moment when a similar recognition flashes upon me, and I shout, Hey! I'm living!
I don't know. I'll see where paying attention takes me.
8.13.2011
Fear
About writing: two months ago I decided to stop all work on Pilgrims Dream, and I'm nervous about jumping back in. It feels like the right time, various cycles have come together in this moment, and after about nine months I finally have my lucky fountain pen back in working order.
So what is it that lurks in this hesitation?
I have a lot of fears tied up in writing. Fear of failure. I'm not sure, but maybe fear of success also. Fear that my talent and ability don't match my ambition. Fear that I don't have the skill to communicate what I believe is worth expressing. Fear that I am not who I hope to be.
My laziness terrifies me. I fit the slacker role well enough, and I even embrace it, but for this desire. I want to be admired and respected for my writing, and yet it's been almost a decade since I completed anything for serious publication. I want to be admired for something I've yet to achieve. I want to be someone who I am not.
Since I am not yet the person I hope to be, I fear that I don't allow myself, in the present, to connect to the people around me. Maybe I want everyone to connect to the person who I am not, and I think of myself as a temporary mistake, so I keep everyone at a distance, for now at least, waiting for the day when they can connect to the person who I want to be. And maybe that day will never come, and maybe I will never have a true human relationship.
I'm terrified that my life is drifting wreckage and without purpose. Last night in conversation I said, "I have no long term plans." And then I added, "I used to." I think of Prospero, who recognized the moment of his fate, who saw the star his destiny hung upon, and I wonder if I've already missed my star. Who knows what might've distracted me.
I fear that I'm petty and misguided for all of this, that I'm terribly flawed, that this need for my work to be admired--work I sometimes think I might never complete anyway--that my entire personality is founded on a mistake, a wrong intention. I should want to be happy, I should want to love, I should want to create, and none of those right intentions would give rise to all these fears. I must be doing something wrong.
In the last two weeks, two people have told me, in unrelated contexts, that it's crucial to confront your fears. I hope that's what I'm doing now. I'm not done yet.
My ambition terrifies me. I want to create something great, brilliant and true, with a strong heart and a clear mind, something rare and therefore maybe impossible, or at least beyond my reach. I fear that my ambition far outstrips my potential, and that I in turn use this as an excuse. If I've inflated my ambition to the impossible, then I will always count myself as a failure. If I will always be a failure in my own eyes, I have the perfect justification for laziness. But it's one thing to never feel success and another to never give it a shot.
What is failure? What is success? Why do I care about these words?
What will I be when I am old? I see a man alone who once dreamed of writing something great but never accomplished it, even as he let that dream justify a life half-lived. Shouldn't I have a long term plan? Shouldn't I be making moves today to secure a better future? I tell myself I only need fiction to be happy, and that anyway I've found myself in a fantastic situation, a place maybe others would dream about--I love this here and now, living in Prague--and thus I let my life, my future, go down the drain.
I don't know if I'm deluding myself further with this entry, if what I'd like to think of as courageously hunting down my personal demons is in fact only a pose--that it's only something I believe a writer should do. Maybe I am imitating the person I would like to be instead of being myself. Maybe everything I am is a farce. Maybe I don't even know myself, and if that's true, how could I ever find anything worthy of communication?
I've been here before, so I've seen what doubt can do to me. But how can I know when it is too much, and when it isn't enough?
I have felt destiny and magic in my life. I watch for signs and allow myself to be led by them. I seek them. I wrote earlier about the two people who spoke to me about facing fears--I attribute a mystical force and purpose to such coincidences. Life feels empty and dead to me when I don't see these signs. But maybe a coincidence is nothing more than a coincidence. Maybe I've turned my attention and intelligence to this charmed, spooky fantasy world because I don't have the necessary rigor of focus to discern reality. Or maybe these signs are real but not sympathetic to my purposes. Maybe these signs are meant to misdirect me. I used to do the rational thing, and since then I've been doing the intuitive, imaginative thing--it seems I'm capable of getting lost no matter which compass I hold.
A thought just came to me.
(The fly from the fly-bottle.)
I specifically remembered the story of the Egyptian goddess Isis: her husband had been murdered, and she didn't have the power to restore him. So Isis tricked Ra, the more powerful god, into revealing his secret name to her. By possessing that secret name, that word, Isis gained control over Ra's power, and she then used it to resurrect her husband.
It is the word that holds the power. It is the word that brings life from death. It is the word that conquers.
I have named my fear.
So what is it that lurks in this hesitation?
I have a lot of fears tied up in writing. Fear of failure. I'm not sure, but maybe fear of success also. Fear that my talent and ability don't match my ambition. Fear that I don't have the skill to communicate what I believe is worth expressing. Fear that I am not who I hope to be.
My laziness terrifies me. I fit the slacker role well enough, and I even embrace it, but for this desire. I want to be admired and respected for my writing, and yet it's been almost a decade since I completed anything for serious publication. I want to be admired for something I've yet to achieve. I want to be someone who I am not.
Since I am not yet the person I hope to be, I fear that I don't allow myself, in the present, to connect to the people around me. Maybe I want everyone to connect to the person who I am not, and I think of myself as a temporary mistake, so I keep everyone at a distance, for now at least, waiting for the day when they can connect to the person who I want to be. And maybe that day will never come, and maybe I will never have a true human relationship.
I'm terrified that my life is drifting wreckage and without purpose. Last night in conversation I said, "I have no long term plans." And then I added, "I used to." I think of Prospero, who recognized the moment of his fate, who saw the star his destiny hung upon, and I wonder if I've already missed my star. Who knows what might've distracted me.
I fear that I'm petty and misguided for all of this, that I'm terribly flawed, that this need for my work to be admired--work I sometimes think I might never complete anyway--that my entire personality is founded on a mistake, a wrong intention. I should want to be happy, I should want to love, I should want to create, and none of those right intentions would give rise to all these fears. I must be doing something wrong.
In the last two weeks, two people have told me, in unrelated contexts, that it's crucial to confront your fears. I hope that's what I'm doing now. I'm not done yet.
My ambition terrifies me. I want to create something great, brilliant and true, with a strong heart and a clear mind, something rare and therefore maybe impossible, or at least beyond my reach. I fear that my ambition far outstrips my potential, and that I in turn use this as an excuse. If I've inflated my ambition to the impossible, then I will always count myself as a failure. If I will always be a failure in my own eyes, I have the perfect justification for laziness. But it's one thing to never feel success and another to never give it a shot.
What is failure? What is success? Why do I care about these words?
What will I be when I am old? I see a man alone who once dreamed of writing something great but never accomplished it, even as he let that dream justify a life half-lived. Shouldn't I have a long term plan? Shouldn't I be making moves today to secure a better future? I tell myself I only need fiction to be happy, and that anyway I've found myself in a fantastic situation, a place maybe others would dream about--I love this here and now, living in Prague--and thus I let my life, my future, go down the drain.
I don't know if I'm deluding myself further with this entry, if what I'd like to think of as courageously hunting down my personal demons is in fact only a pose--that it's only something I believe a writer should do. Maybe I am imitating the person I would like to be instead of being myself. Maybe everything I am is a farce. Maybe I don't even know myself, and if that's true, how could I ever find anything worthy of communication?
I've been here before, so I've seen what doubt can do to me. But how can I know when it is too much, and when it isn't enough?
I have felt destiny and magic in my life. I watch for signs and allow myself to be led by them. I seek them. I wrote earlier about the two people who spoke to me about facing fears--I attribute a mystical force and purpose to such coincidences. Life feels empty and dead to me when I don't see these signs. But maybe a coincidence is nothing more than a coincidence. Maybe I've turned my attention and intelligence to this charmed, spooky fantasy world because I don't have the necessary rigor of focus to discern reality. Or maybe these signs are real but not sympathetic to my purposes. Maybe these signs are meant to misdirect me. I used to do the rational thing, and since then I've been doing the intuitive, imaginative thing--it seems I'm capable of getting lost no matter which compass I hold.
A thought just came to me.
(The fly from the fly-bottle.)
I specifically remembered the story of the Egyptian goddess Isis: her husband had been murdered, and she didn't have the power to restore him. So Isis tricked Ra, the more powerful god, into revealing his secret name to her. By possessing that secret name, that word, Isis gained control over Ra's power, and she then used it to resurrect her husband.
It is the word that holds the power. It is the word that brings life from death. It is the word that conquers.
I have named my fear.
8.02.2011
Secret Passages
It's when reality goes berserk that I confront my all-too-human prejudice for a rational order. This, here, now: liminality. Into the secrets of the unexpected.
7.25.2011
Yet There Is A Method
It crept in gradually, over months, maybe seasons--it's unnoticeable, that shift, and I'm talking about from high to low. And really I don't want to talk about that part of this so much: just what's necessary. At my best, the world lights up. Inspiration in every moment. Often it comes as synchronicity. It makes me want to jump up and run off into some excitement: it lurks behind any and every corner. And everything comes so easy. Brilliance just happens and I'm astounded by the words and the relationships of ideas that somehow appear in my mind, as if I'm a spectator to it all. It's wonderful.
Then it calms down. It takes a long time. Synchronicity turns into coincidence. Maybe I feel a bit more "balanced". Because maybe another way to describe that high part I was talking about is to call it mania, and after awhile, I think, Jesus Christ, I need to freaking relax for a little while. So I do. Life starts to feel normal, and I'm glad for the break.
But the slope doesn't stop. It takes a very long time. Normal becomes dead so slowly that I don't notice it. It gets hard to imagine a world of synchronicity--coincidences themselves disappear. It's not a question of a subjective assignation of meaning, because when I get low, there's nothing for me to project anything onto. The world, myself included, is a set of facts. Useless, boring. What you see is what you get, and that's all that you'll get, and that's all that it is: worthless. Relationships are facts. Personalities are facts. Works of art are facts. Governments are facts. Wars are facts. Jobs are facts. Facts are facts, and no point to any of it.
So a few months back I bottomed out. I was desperate. I tried, but it wasn't the kind of boredom I could shock myself out of. That's how I knew I was in trouble. But it was also exhilarating--I'd been there before, I'd learned how to conquer it, and it had led to one of the greatest seasons of my life. I knew I could do it again.
I knew I had to.
This is my method.
First, strip to the core.
For me, this means go to work during the day. Otherwise, drop all habits. It means stop writing, stop reading, stop wondering about whatever obsession has gripped me. The trick here is to stop following my mind. I meditate every night for at least an hour. In my meditations, I don't try to visualize a better life or white light coursing through me or anything like that. I actively try not to think about anything. At this point, I know my mind is too far gone to be trusted. What might appear to me as inspiration is in fact distraction. It's difficult to train the mind to emptiness. At first, maybe I catch it for a moment. With time and practice, I get better. I can go deeper into it, for longer stretches.
I meditated for a month before I visited Ireland with my mother. I already felt better by then. I knew I wasn't done with the process, but I felt good enough to enjoy myself. It was ok to put things on hold and take a break. But I will get back into it, training myself to nothingness. The best adjectives to describe the mind I'll have when this is done are strong and clear. Figure another month or two of heavy meditation and avoidance of distraction, and then I'll be ready for the next step.
That's where things get interesting.
It's crucial to remember that the process is slow. For this, I admire the alchemists. An instantaneous transformation doesn't stick around for long. If you want to change lead into gold, it'll take time. They timed the phases of their work by the stars, which mark the seasons.
After the mind is cleared, it is powerful. I can't predict exactly what I'll do then, because right now my mind is still swimming in distractions. But, it'll have something to do with filling my imagination. A clear mind is good for a saint or a philosopher, but I'm more of an artist, so after I get clear, I need to get some raw material so I can exercise my imagination.
There are all sorts of ancient exercises for the imagination. While I was in Dublin, I visited the W.B. Yeats exhibition at The National Library, and I was very impressed by its presentation of his mystical life. Yeats worked with Tattva cards, and I'd like to try that.
Symbols work very well at this stage since they are both simple and gripping. In a sense, they mean nothing in themselves, yet they activate the imagination. I can't describe what happens. Perhaps they provoke the imagination to create relationships. A circle, a triangle, and a square can do very interesting things in a focused imagination. Squaring the circle, and that sort of thing.
I've also been working with dreams for years. But dreams can get a bit more complex and unwieldy, and it's best to keep things simple at first.
When I'm ready for it, fiction is both practice and purpose.
Eventually, if you come from the right beginning, and if you do the right work, and if you do it slowly, slowly, then, eventually, with a little luck and a little grace, you can talk with the angels.
At that point, the trick is to write it all down.
Then it calms down. It takes a long time. Synchronicity turns into coincidence. Maybe I feel a bit more "balanced". Because maybe another way to describe that high part I was talking about is to call it mania, and after awhile, I think, Jesus Christ, I need to freaking relax for a little while. So I do. Life starts to feel normal, and I'm glad for the break.
But the slope doesn't stop. It takes a very long time. Normal becomes dead so slowly that I don't notice it. It gets hard to imagine a world of synchronicity--coincidences themselves disappear. It's not a question of a subjective assignation of meaning, because when I get low, there's nothing for me to project anything onto. The world, myself included, is a set of facts. Useless, boring. What you see is what you get, and that's all that you'll get, and that's all that it is: worthless. Relationships are facts. Personalities are facts. Works of art are facts. Governments are facts. Wars are facts. Jobs are facts. Facts are facts, and no point to any of it.
So a few months back I bottomed out. I was desperate. I tried, but it wasn't the kind of boredom I could shock myself out of. That's how I knew I was in trouble. But it was also exhilarating--I'd been there before, I'd learned how to conquer it, and it had led to one of the greatest seasons of my life. I knew I could do it again.
I knew I had to.
This is my method.
First, strip to the core.
For me, this means go to work during the day. Otherwise, drop all habits. It means stop writing, stop reading, stop wondering about whatever obsession has gripped me. The trick here is to stop following my mind. I meditate every night for at least an hour. In my meditations, I don't try to visualize a better life or white light coursing through me or anything like that. I actively try not to think about anything. At this point, I know my mind is too far gone to be trusted. What might appear to me as inspiration is in fact distraction. It's difficult to train the mind to emptiness. At first, maybe I catch it for a moment. With time and practice, I get better. I can go deeper into it, for longer stretches.
I meditated for a month before I visited Ireland with my mother. I already felt better by then. I knew I wasn't done with the process, but I felt good enough to enjoy myself. It was ok to put things on hold and take a break. But I will get back into it, training myself to nothingness. The best adjectives to describe the mind I'll have when this is done are strong and clear. Figure another month or two of heavy meditation and avoidance of distraction, and then I'll be ready for the next step.
That's where things get interesting.
It's crucial to remember that the process is slow. For this, I admire the alchemists. An instantaneous transformation doesn't stick around for long. If you want to change lead into gold, it'll take time. They timed the phases of their work by the stars, which mark the seasons.
After the mind is cleared, it is powerful. I can't predict exactly what I'll do then, because right now my mind is still swimming in distractions. But, it'll have something to do with filling my imagination. A clear mind is good for a saint or a philosopher, but I'm more of an artist, so after I get clear, I need to get some raw material so I can exercise my imagination.
There are all sorts of ancient exercises for the imagination. While I was in Dublin, I visited the W.B. Yeats exhibition at The National Library, and I was very impressed by its presentation of his mystical life. Yeats worked with Tattva cards, and I'd like to try that.
Symbols work very well at this stage since they are both simple and gripping. In a sense, they mean nothing in themselves, yet they activate the imagination. I can't describe what happens. Perhaps they provoke the imagination to create relationships. A circle, a triangle, and a square can do very interesting things in a focused imagination. Squaring the circle, and that sort of thing.
I've also been working with dreams for years. But dreams can get a bit more complex and unwieldy, and it's best to keep things simple at first.
When I'm ready for it, fiction is both practice and purpose.
Eventually, if you come from the right beginning, and if you do the right work, and if you do it slowly, slowly, then, eventually, with a little luck and a little grace, you can talk with the angels.
At that point, the trick is to write it all down.
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