It's been an absolutely grinding few weeks since New Years, trying to get a handle on new projects, new organizations, new schedules. I noticed I'd gone completely self-referential on Friday when I got off the bus at the campus and was hit with a sudden overwhelming wave of disorientation. I called out, "Where am I?!" and my friend Siobhan, always a joker and thinking I was just kidding, said "You're at work, Pete."
It's been too much. Too much bullshit, too much monoculture. I've been under this for too long. Was walking around Copenhagen today, mailing some software to Jeremy, shopping, buying a couple of pairs of pants and a book of Japanese woodblock prints, thinking about this. I know the experience isn't supposed to be like this- that I've been highjacked temporarily by something that's not really me. Finding a way out is always the tricky part, when things get this way, but sometimes just recognising the problem is the most important action you can take. That and beginning to take a first tentative look at alternatives- grad school, bartending, dropping out completely and trying to write fiction for a living... whatever. Alternatives are important.
Synchronicity is one of the recurring themes of new age training, itself informed by Zen and Buddhism. To me it's the idea that you sometimes get nailed with an experience at exactly the time you need it and are ready for it. So tonight when I was screwing around with MT templates (no progress yet as you can see from the sorry state of this blog), a documentary comes on DR1 about a pilgrimage of Tibetan Buddhists to Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in Tibet where believers say Shiva lives.
Part of the documentary showed a dozen monks painstakingly building a sand mandala- an incredibly detailed geometric mural created almost grain by grain with colored sand. The level of detail in the geometry transfixed me, as well as the nature of the patterns and structure in the design. It looked exactly like an etched circuit board. The amount of care they took in building it, and the excruciating precision and symmetry, made me think that there may actually be some functional element to the design of that visual geometry. Why put so much effort into making it perfect otherwise?
Then the ultimate thing- which I knew was coming but was still painful to watch nonetheless... After several days of constructing this perfect object, the monks gave the pilgrims a few moments each to look at it, and then they wiped the mandala away with large hand brushes. The course of destruction took maybe thirty seconds.
Suddenly all these stupid things into which I've been putting so much energy every day became obvious for what they are. Meaningless.
Reality is somewhere else.
Lori Carson and Bill Laswell collaborated on an album called City of Light a few years ago, which dove deeply into Hindu mythology. There's one line Lori repeats in a song called Kála, which always gives me chills when I hear it, because it's so obviously true. Maybe the most true thing I've ever heard spoken.
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Madman, here's the cause of it all... |
Love you all,
P
lordy man, I know exactly what you mean. that feeling is cyclical for me; I can work through it, but I know it'll be back.
I'll have to dig up my copy of city of light, that quote is phenomenal.
and thanks for the package, by the way.
peace,
-j