On Purpose

Not long ago, my good friend Trey and I were conversing via Skype (him being in Texas), two lonely souls talking at a box and pounding at its keys. A good number - 50+ - of his poems were floating around on the internet. The actual quality of them is neither here nor there, but he was ashamed of them, and it baffled me, because most were written in high school, and to me it was, at the very least, a quantitative achievement, if not qualitative. In a now-clear-to-me cruel joke I dug them up and had a bit of fun. For me, it was the excavation of something lost - irregardless of what it actually was, it was now found. For him, in his sly self-loathing ways, it was rather like the exposure of ghosts long since past, and preferably forgotten. So, he removed them from the internet, and virtually, from existence. Fair enough.

Recently I brought this back up - I was curious why he would ever be ashamed of something like that, even if just for a level solely derived of passion and, at the time, self-pleasure. Perhaps I was, or am, a little envious that he had something to his name. It's still a mystery to me. He explained that he has become very wary of leaving anything behind, in the written record, with his name attached to it; he is concerned about legacy. Fair enough.

But he is he, and I am me; or more simply, he is, and I am. My basic conceit - if I ever uttered anything of value - is that even Achilles will one day be forgotten. Achilles, who traded a happy, inessential life for glory, for legacy. If ever a figure actually existed, it worked: in the annals of the written human record continuous with the present, Achilles, mythical or real, is remembered. But there will come a day when he will be forgotten; or perhaps not forgotten, but his legend, his legacy, will simply cease to exist. Count on it.

Beware, the signs in the back alley of my mind read, beware those who would advise to 'live everyday like it could be your last.' This is not that.

What I discovered in my endless probing was that I am not concerned about legacy. I am simply looking to create, and claim something as my own. Not in a decidedly voluminous manner, though - quality is also a concern. But quality must, by neccessity, come second to the act of creation itself. 

When I am working on screenplays, I keep in mind that it is intended to be sold. For any movie I ever write, fates willing, to be -mine-, it must actually get made. Alone, a screenplay is, by its very nature, incomplete. I cannot allow myself to masturbate* 120 pages script and be done; it must get made.

Prose doesn't have the same 'limitation' (some might call it a control, or boundary). Though it may not be my intention to do so with anything in particular I write, I could self-publish it and it would be thus: my own. Regardless of legacy, I seek something to call my own. 

*I hereby claim masturbate to be a transitive verb, the direct object of which thusly being: the result of the act of self-pleasure, be it in a sexual, creative, emotional, or moral capacity. 

Cursed Fig! Or: How I witness to Lost Souls

Gather 'round, ye boys and girls, children of all ages, cloth, and stripes! It's time for a Bible story, taken from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Chapter 21.

16 And said to him: Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus said to them: Yea, have you never read: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise? 17 And leaving them, he went out of the city into Bethania, and remained there. 18 And in the morning, returning into the city, he was hungry. 19 And seeing a certain fig tree by the way side, he came to it, and found nothing on it but leaves only, and he saith to it: May no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And immediately the fig tree withered away. 20 And the disciples seeing it wondered, saying: How is it presently withered away?

Boldness has been personally added, to impress upon the memory of our 'busy' sons and daughters the Moral of the Story.

What lovely thoughts! What terrible places we'll see!

Semi-sentient beings,

I like to think that the world isn't the horrid, beautiful place it is sometimes. At times I like to think of it as a big parade balloon, floating down the Avenue, a magnificantly commercial product, full of nothing but hot air, and yet not unpleasing to the eye. Guided by the few - I won't designate them either fortunate or not - bouncing around between the babel-towers of the powerful, with a great big smile painted on. Alas. I just go wild sometimes.

I anticipate that, despite the fact that I've cancelled my Paros, Greece, plans, I will nonetheless be residing in Athens within a year. Possibly as early as February, no later than August, both in the year 2010 of our Lord. Often, in the midst of daytime reverie (which, given my current Walden-in-a-room situation, doesn't happen as often as you might expect), I see myself in fantastic drunken orgies with girls and boys cut from the same cloth, or maybe sitting in a Platonic symposium, lying casually in some divan taken right out of the Orient, talking republics, realities, all while - not without some distracting discourse, mind you - the girls play their aulos between topping off our coblets of wine. Naturally, these orgies are in honor of Dionysus, for I do believe that the god himself placed a piece of his torn flesh in my soul before he was resureccted, Christ-like. The symposiums are not in honor of any athletic or poetic achievements; simply discourse and and making merry for their own sakes. 

Well, there's only two ways to view these scenes: in a year's time, I will be furthering these pipe-dreams in a Psychology lecture; or I might, in retrospect, just be comparable to the famed oracles of Delphi. 

But anything that's been sprung from my woolgathering and shape-shifted into these flimsy words must be possible. Rest assured my palate will be ready should the opportunity present itself.

Pray softly and dream loudly, romantic hearts.

Post script:

It should also be noted that the term 'literary onanism' is quite sufficient for everything said heretofore, and the term strikes such a positive note, with the exception that, after such rigorous reverie, one does not face what the French call la petite mort, which strikes the adult male so often post-climax. 

Only Many Frontiers

Brave souls,

Perhaps you may be confused about my intentions in keeping this web-log. Perhaps not. 

Perhaps it may seem that I'm full of it, and these entries, and their illuminating contents, are mere jestures. This is not the case.

Everything I write here is true. Not really True, but true. If my tone seems less than sincere to the naked eyes, it's because here we are talking about enlightenment, and attaining higher states of consciousness, be it through external stimuli or internal subjective Mind processes. For enlightenment is surely beyond words, and I offer no attempt to convey my journey therein. After all, 1. have fun.

So what then is the point? What is the point of philosophy and Consciousness Exploration? I do seek enlightenment, I do seek to awake to the fact all space is One, and all time is One, and all everything is One, or None. 

Revel! There is neither a point to all of this nor is there not a point to all of this.

Why worry? I asked the world, why do you worry so much? Because you seem to be worried all the time.

Dear world, I'm pleased to meet you. 

What the world doesn't want us to see

what the world wants us to fear

is what we grow in our gardens

Everything is welcome here

Life itinerary: change of plans! I no longer plan to stay in Greece for 2 semesters. My current plan is to only stay in Greece from Sept 09 - Dec. 09. Then, barring unforeseen obstacles, I just might return to the Uni of Alberta in the winter. 

But that's the future, and it doesn't really exist. 

To the sink then

A monk asked Zhaozhou to teach him.

Zhaozhou asked, "Have you eaten your meal?"

The monk replied, "Yes, I have."

"Then go wash your bowl", said Zhaozhou.

At that moment, the monk was enlightened.

Dream Cycles

Regale: the Dreamworld is beyond my reach. The Lucid region of it, at least.

I've continued with Exploration A.1, but I cannot breach the walls of Exploration A.1.1-A.1.4, so named because I've attempted this exploration 4 times, and have come to the same results. That is, the edge of Lucid-ness, quite within my grasp and still unable to fully reach it.

Alas, there have been setbacks as well. Internet-men scouring the house for faulty wires, unexpected visits from family during my Lucid Nap Time, and electric-men fixing a power outage. I'll spare you the details of these other sub-explorations for now, because they're irrelevant and mostly unamusing. When the power went off once, right as my body went to sleep and my mind was still awake, I opened my eyes, and I could see the ceiling fan slowing down. Of course, I didn't know the power was out, because I couldn't turn my head to see if the clock was on or not. I just thought time was slowing down. Eventually the fan stopped completely and imagine me! Thinking I stopped Time. Silly me. No, it was just a power outage.

Reality can be such a tease.

There's Vaseline on the handle of this gate, but now that my classes are officially over until the end of the month, I should have plenty of time for some Exploring. 

Should we rendezvous somewhere in Dreamsville, darling? I'm sorry, I have no map. But I do have some hastily-written directions in a language I'm just learning, for your benefit, good heart.

Suchness

Is there a fourth dimension?

One can only imagine being able to answer this question amongst the dregs of society, in the gutter and gazing at the stars, in a flux of consciousness no man should endure if he (quite idiotically) fears for his life, to be that derelict pretender to the cardboard throne of Henry Miller....

Forgive me, old sports, as I ponder.

If we can say that time is a spatial dimension - the 4th dimension, natch - well, what does this mean for the future of human development? Can we ever be sure? Will this current body I inhabit ever know?

Eternity can only exist if the traditional concept of 'time' is held fast. This I cannot do. 

Mayhaps this 4th dimension is seen only in dreams. Or rather, in a dream state, we catch only a chaotic glimpse of this world, where there is no time, and all time is everywhere all the time. Often in a dream world, we see a clock - and the numbers are in an abnormal state. In fact, Lucid DreamMasters encourage you to, if possible, look at a clock in order to become aware of your Dream-ness - for what place does a clock have in a world where time has no meaning?

I suppose then, to be truly enlightened, is for one's consciousness to be aware of this - The Ending of Time. Samsara and Nirvana and all that. "To be in the now" perhaps means to understand that there is no past, and there is no future, and there is no present - there is only the now; which is to say, there is only the past, present, and future all at the same time (such as in my hypothetical 4th dimension) - which we might call the Now.

Very soon we will see Buddhists being gratified all around the world as relativity theory and quantum mechanics catch up to the old religion, where the non-existent walls between empirical science and subjective psychology fall, and thus they won't be non-existent because there will be nothing to not exist. 

Can you see the smile on the Buddha's face now?

All life is suffering, but this will be a marvelous Now.