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
I hope everyone's had unique and interesting experiences over the break. I had a good, mellow close to the year, and now I'm looking forward to 2004- forcing myself to be optimistic about the next 12 months despite all evidence to the contrary. Maybe we do have a chance to make something big happen this year. Maybe we can change the world for the better, or at least keep the evil bastards from making it worse. 2003 had a lot of good- and very bad- moments, but it still felt like a waiting period, like something we needed to get through in order to be ready for the next stage. What the next stage could be I have no idea, but event horizons are like that.
I hope for an end to the war news, I'm sick of it.
I hope to spend more time outdoors.
I hope to see you more often.
Yours as always,
Peter