Separation Papers

My concept of death has passed through many topical gates of inquiry; past the millstone of "why"; passed the emotional moors of nihilism, travelled to and from (or through) the barren yet exhausting existentialist wastelands. Got snowblind in those, almost lost my way, on the way to finding it.

So I've matured in my concept of death somewhat.

Now, when I look at it, and this is in the light of several deaths in my life - grandparents, friends, friends of friends - natural, premature, or otherwise - now when I look at it the closest feeling I can associate it with is a separation profound and unbreakable.

My sense is that those who have passed enter into an impersonal state, where they can 'see' or 'be' with family, friends, their past - but are not attached the way to it the way they were prior to death. That, plus an absolute barrier where communication - at least in the way we think of it - cannot take place. I believe that almost all rules in life can be broken, often need to be broken, but this one - here's a way to think of it - it does not seem relative. It seems absolute. The ultimate separation papers, from who you were to what you now are.

And the sense that it is not nearly as hard for those who have passed as it is for those who are left behind.

And that is the koan that I'm wrestling with right now on some level. As well as what happens in deep sleep, and the answer there that confirms awareness as non-corporeal.

I've seen through my spiritual travels and travails that happiness is wed to sadness; anger to joy; suffering to pleasure; in the world of not-two, they are two sides of the same coin.

What then, with this feeling, this vague abstract that paints death as profoundly one-sided?

GrIndia

That would be a lexicographical representation of my journey from there to here. Greece to India. Or I guess more accurately from Here to seemingly there to Here.

My memory is shite compared to most people I know - long term memory anyway - short term I can zone in and make it happen. Still I do remember the first book of philosophy I picked up - don't remember the title exactly, maybe it's around here somewhere.

Tish.

Anyways, the large image I have of it - still rings in my head to this day, is the discussion of nothingness and somethingness. Outside inside. All and Not All.

And here, at 42, I'm waking up (it's so hard with language to describe waking up. All descriptions seem to involve division. Waking up - means FROM sleep - that's distance baby, separation, and what we're talking about here is undivided being) and it's tying the knot in a significant way from then to now. Thing is now, there's more of a sparkle to it; a clarity; a coming home; a truth.

There's different ways I can look at it, but it seems to cut through a lot of the chuff. I can still muse about life's purpose, the right meditation technique, the right life I should be living, the right things I should be doing. But, using the razor sword of inquiry, I can slice through all questions and representational musings and look for that which is. And by recognizing that Is-ness, realize that even my pre-awake stage was part of the Is-ness.

I stand before me today, arms raised in sacrifice, to the group in front of me. Many voiced choir - different timbres, postures, abilities; different approaches, beliefs, and attitudes. Many different personalities, awaiting the aha-up-motion of my baton to inhale and ...

start

Hi falsetto from the back left, purity so disengaged from the blemished; so focused and pure; silver needle piercing me front to back, lifting me in a mother's swoon then soaring off into the background. Basso profundo rumbling from the front; a wall of vibration that catches me in the abdomen and heart; dissolving waste and distance; branding Eros then rolling away in salted thunder. Middle voice, but from both sides trying to find center. Straining journey, finding moments of solace and ringing behind the eyes.

And then

The fugue begins. Chords spinning Celtic wonder; flirting with infinity; tightening and expanding; creating and dissolving tension; creating and dissolving distance; sine waves like lovers spooning in closer and releasing into each other; one voice now, one stream of terrible beauty; coring me through center; lifted backward spread eagle; agonizing beauty and tension , then utter release; beyond mind; sex; judgement and distance.

Is

experiencing the

conductor

and the choir

the many

and

the

1

GrIndia

I stand before me today, arms raised in sacrifice, to the group in front of me. Many voiced choir - different timbres, postures, abilities; different approaches, beliefs, and attitudes. Many different personalities, awaiting the aha-up-motion of my baton to inhale and ...

start

Hi falsetto from the back left, purity so disengaged from the blemished; so focused and pure; silver needle piercing me front to back, lifting me in a mother's swoon then soaring off into the background. Basso profundo rumbling from the front; a wall of vibration that catches me in the abdomen and heart; dissolving waste and distance; branding Eros then rolling away in salted thunder. Middle voice, but from both sides trying to find center. Straining journey, finding moments of solace and ringing behind the eyes.

And then

The fugue begins. Chords spinning Celtic wonder; flirting with infinity; tightening and expanding; creating and dissolving tension; creating and dissolving distance; sine waves like lovers spooning in closer and releasing into each other; one voice now, one stream of terrible beauty; coring me through center; lifted backward spread eagle; agonizing beauty and tension , then utter release; beyond mind; sex; judgement and distance.

Is

experiencing the

conductor

and the choir

the many

and

the

1

Breath Me, Break Me (Chuck, Dave, Colin)

Breathe Me, Break Me
(:...Chuck, Dave, Colin)

Your face is bruised with charcoal
And the nite a tear of red
Absent from the emptiness
Hold on

Too soon for the mourning (morning)
Too late for the dawn
Do I celebrate your passions
Or break now that you're gone

(Chorus)
Thread time's ribbon gently even if it fails again
Through the tears of lovers
And the anguishes of friends
Fragile we may be but when we circle touching now
Breathe me break me breathe me break me whole

This goodbye will always be half away from done
Falling from the thunderheads
Into a midnight sun

I'll thread time's ribbon gently
Even if it fails again
Through the tears of lovers
And the anguishes of friends
Fragile we may be but when we circle touching now
Breathe me break me breathe me, make me whole

Virtual Cybernetic Extension Succesfully Implemented

Let me explain.

If you know me, or several member of my family, you know the horror of navigating from point a to point b unless there is a very clear, unambiguous and preferably graphically laid out route to follow. History has shown even that is not enough some times.

I have lost my way walking, driving, biking, busing. Never running, go figure. And in the woods I seem to be fine, again, antithetical to the problem statement but there you have it.

So, getting lost.

In a car is worst. Given my station in life, there is usually added pressure when I don't know where the HELL I'm going, given that somebody is depending on me to get them somewhere. Drop off. Pickup. Both. Add to that the fact that I am conspicuously and consistently late for most things, and you have the perfect storm.

Want to be self confident - not in a typical fucked-up man can't-ask-for-directions way, but in a lack-general-self confidence- most- of- the -time, behind- the -wheel -would -be -nice -so -I don't- look -like -a -complete -asshole way.

Now, along comes Google. And my new Samsung Jack. Google maps + GPS in the Jack = a fully functioning GPS.

Using this literally, literally changes my personality. I can drive stress free and confidently, and one of many neuroses is put to bed.

If I use it, however, and lose it - out in the boondocks, lose a signal whatever, the neuroses, anxiety and frustration jump back in the party lane with a vengeance.

So I am considering this a virtual neural implant into my behavioural and cognitive systems. Sound like an overstatement?

Try driving with me with and without my crutch.

Cal and I were talking about the visceral collective energy that crackles through a funeral gathering. Hoto referenced it too; holding somebody whose heart is so utterly broken that they are literally suffering from every pore.

And now, the flip side. Listenting to Awake by Scala, and thinking of what can be created when voices join together and create something bigger than the separate parts.

Haunting, ethereal, collective union reaches in behind the throat and eyes and pulls the soul out in naked fragility, if only for a few moments.

Grace.

28-21

28 - 21
Vas is das?

Let's see.

Knife Net, if you were into mnemonics and the peg system.

Or 4, if you were into numerological reductionism.

Or 25%, if you were to look at it as intended, which was an exercise in amusement that ended up, as always, leading my train of thought to deconstructing things to such an extent that the resultant pieces probably had more psychic weight than the original thought structure. To wit:

Driving for a doctor's appointment, through 45 minutes of drizzled traffic. Three quarters of the way there, late as I always am, I started thinking about those lollipop nightmares that can help or hinder a trip so effectively - you know, traffic lights. More specifically, I started thinking how much of perception is projection. The lights don't give a hairy rat's ass whether I'm late or not, and they certainly don't have feelings, thoughts, or the ability to take a willful engagement in my thoroughfare.

And yet, the natural reaction when approaching the x+nth light, [where the value of n inversely proportional to my rising level of frustration] is to squeal a mighty fuck you to the light.

...oh man, this is unbelievable. Every f*ing light that I hit is red. FUUUUCK

The intimation, of course, is that it is unfair. The intimation of the intimation is that they are stacked against me. They being the lights.

Across the firing of synapses, electrical activity becoming chemical and sorting itself off through god's own organic decision tree, I have very, VERY quickly gone from starting and stopping in a Pavlovian haze at every light, to anthropomporhizing the hapless bastards and making them little arch enemies of my traipse across town.

Even now looking at it on epaper, it sounds absurd. But thoughts are. And a car commuter's thoughts even more so.

Anyways, I chewed this over for a bit and decided to start keeping track, to see what the score actually was. On the mental left, ladies and gentlemen, the green light winner circle, and on the right, the red light winners circle. Simply stated, every green light I hit would be 'tallied' on my left hand. Being this was a mental process, it was an imaginary left. Why the left for green? I don't know, maybe something to research later out of curiousity, but for me green red left right seem to 'feel' more correct than vice versa.

So probability cloud wafted into my perception, and collapsed as I hit each stoplight. What was interesting, though, was how this simple act could become so awesomely complicated with very little effort. To wit, I had to decide:

-What constitued a 'true' vs. 'non-true' green or red? Simplest case, pulling up to the light, no cars ahead of me, and the light turns as I approach. Trickier case - pulling up to the light and being stuck behind one person making a left hand turn. The light was green when I got there, but I could not proceed...Does it count as green or not green? What about coming up to a long line of cars where there was no obstruction per se, but it took a while for me to get to the crossing point and then the light changed. Green or not green?What if I arrived at the light behind cars and it was red, but turned green after I had only just tapped the brakes on?

Which led me to think what my motivation was.

And on and on.

I settled for some simple rules, clear cuts were clear cuts, any marginals would lean one way or the other based on the flow. Did I ultimately get held up at the light or get to proceed based on the light's status?

The take-away friends? Several thoughts:

• Ultimately, even though it SEEMED I had a shitload of lights to wait through, 25% MORE of the lights that I went through in total were enablers (green) as opposed to hindrances (red).
  
  
• At times during the trip, it was pretty much balanced. My guess is the longer the trip, the more normalizing the curve would be.
  
  
• That modelling something even this simplistic needs to rely on lots of variable and interdependencies - some external, some internal
  
  
• That I could easily decision-tree out from there to the universe and beyond without much skull-duggery:
  
  
• 28-21 today. Thought experiment. Let's take all the lights that I hit in a day, and use them as a marker as to how the probability cloud 'favoured' or didn't 'favour' me today. Let's add all those up for a month and see if it's been a good bad / month. Let's keep going - year, years, life. Now let's add similar markers from across my life - how many elevators are waiting for me, crosswalks with a walk sign when I approach, change rooms at the pool there for my taking no waiting, on and on and on. Let's graph them all and slice them and dice them and numerologically reduce them and chart them and look at my life through a shimmering blanket of scatter points that fold in and amongst themselves then explode in a glorious unending cacophony of light. yes, Cacophony of light.
  
  
• Now, lets take all those numbers and add them to every number-reduced word and number I have ever had associated with me. Let's reduce them all and see what number I am.

36/9?

Good Night Chuck

Good Night Chuck

Sharp black eyes, quick hands
Taut spring
Fueled.

Instinct drawn into your fingers, voice, and loins
Currented through me
Shes;
Us.

Electric black center
Bolt of colour; careless focus - or a zen cut
Tears - or laughter

Rainbow splayed tannery
Many costumes cut through the years
Until
No color left
Fabric tattered and diffused into emptiness

May you rest now,

Peace

Choking on this

Sadness, a bird
Caught in the throat and struggling for release
Then crushed in sallow passion

No heart here, just the offspring
Moving towards the cavity that should embrace
Proffer, dance and heal

No stomach here, just a slow descent
Without detachment
Malignancy, waiting in disbelief for the dawn