This Unknown Life

two minutes ago is now here

2008-06-15T09:50:56+02:00

every clock in the house is approximately two minutes fast.

even the clock which receives a radio signal and is meant to be accurate to within a few seconds in a million years - is two and a quarter minutes fast. as often as i re-set the clocks, watches, mobile phone, video recorder and diverse other timekeepers, their hands or digits creep forward until once again they are two minutes ahead of what the recorded voice would have us believe is 'the time, sponsored by...' (as if anyone could sponsor time).

now, the only reason i can give for this, dear earthworm, is that this house has edged itself slightly into the future. this being the case, it follows that i should be able to use the slight edge to my advantage. but, so far, as with so many of my advantages, i haven't worked out how best to make use of this curious anomaly.

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The Solace of the Dark

2008-03-23T11:57:38+01:00

you ask, dear earthworm, why art is so often shadowy, even dark?

art at its most profound, i think, deals with archetypal human dilemmas, and though not prescriptive it could be said to be a way of defining and containing these dilemmas, re-drawing them to a more human scale.

for myself, art is a place to seek restoration (as a fragmented, and dislocated, being). it is a kind of sanctuary: a place of wholeness and repose when i cannot find resolution for my soul any other way. the contained world of a painting is where i discover that what i do - no, what i am - has a purpose.

my answer being (in a roundabout way, honouring the meander and its fertile wanderings) that art, however shadowy, however dark, is actually solace. perhaps it is, as well, a kind of bacterium-sized protest at the incoherence of being alive. the darker it is, the further the painter has ventured down the rabbit-hole, chasing something which disappears and reappears, but can sometimes be persuaded to linger briefly in the confines of form.

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now here

2008-03-16T13:38:14+01:00

moment by moment being here and nowhere

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incognarto

2008-03-15T16:23:10+01:00

today we shall talk to hairdryers

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we shall fly again

2008-03-15T11:45:55+01:00

it is my understanding, dear earthworm, that we create reality with our imagination.

yet by being convinced of the immutability of what we encounter, rather than perceiving its essential fluidity, all too often we abide by a default, rather than achieve an intentional, reality.

the idea that reality is external, that it is what happens, amounts to creative powerlessness, does it not?

for instance: we believe we cannot, without machinery, fly; but is this just another stone in the thought-castle you and i have painstakingly built during the thirty thousand years of our existence?

might we not effect an imaginative shift, switch the points so to speak, so that our reality runs on different tracks altogether?

yes, we shall fly again: as i remember we did before we began the naming.

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An Alternative Lord's Prayer

2008-03-14T19:01:44+01:00

Life
which is everywhere
and in everything:
wholeness is your name.

when this is recognised
we will be of one will
in worldly as in spiritual things.

give us each day
what we need to survive,
and forgive us our misconceptions
as we forgive the misconceptions of others.

and lead us not into painful confusion
but into wellbeing and love,

for Love is the essence,
the power and the beauty

now and forever.

amen.

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The Grail isn't Zen

2008-03-10T16:36:01+01:00

good afternoon, my dear earthworm.

not long ago, apropos of everything, a friend of mine said with a sideways smile:

- the grail isn't zen.

are you ahead of me here, or should i explain? well, let me unfold this a little.

zen is finding, the grail is searching.

the whole business of longing and seeking, wounding and healing, losing and finding, is at the heart of the pursuit of the grail, but it is not zen.

true, the grail knight has the expectation that when the grail is found, the search will be over and all hunger, longing and desire will evaporate and give way to bliss. yet because the finding of the grail is zen, the grail must remain lost. if it were found, the grail quest (the justification for the seeker's very existence) would have to be abandoned.

you and i have a grail knight within, don’t we? we are story tellers, and all story-telling is grail. there is no story to zen.

once you reach zen, you’ve left the story.

consider that.

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GOODMORNING I AM YR MIRROR

2008-03-09T11:02:52+01:00

my mirror has a dark small animal inside it

sometimes it pokes out its snout just the tip of its nose it's
smelling the world to see if it's safe it's got curious eyes and
swivelling ears it's furry with little white teeth it's afraid of
everything it's particularly afraid of loud noises and bright
lights and it hates being seen it's at its best at night that's
when it come out though it never comes right out just pokes its
nose round the edge of the mirror & sniffs and if it's safe it
sits there quivering a few minutes but the slightest noise will
send it back in

when it's hiding you almost can't see it at all it's the same
colour as the mirror it's not only hiding from me of course but
from the thing inside the mirror the thing it shares the mirror
with the strutting thing it's terrified of the strutting thing
when the strutting thing is doing its stuff the dark small animal
makes itself into something very unimportant and doesn't move at
all it doesn't make a sound

can't see why they have to be in there together it doesn't seem
fair to the dark small animal though i suppose it doesn't matter
to the strutting thing which just carries on doing its i'm me
you're rubbish stuff being a real pain but i suppose it has its
uses must have really when you come to think of it these things
don't get put in the same place by accident do they?

there's this grande dame in there too sort of a leftover from
better days she pretends she's alone doesn't take any notice of
anyone else doesn't see what she doesn't want to see but there
you are some people are like that they make the world in their
own image and good luck to them it's a lot more comfortable that
way isn't it?

oh and there's the accountant he calculates everything how long
how wide how frequent how deep he divides everything up and adds
it back together again he's a lot madder than the old dame you
can tell she doesn't like him she snubs him but at least she
admits he's there

musn't forget the grasshopper well who could forget the
grasshopper sometimes it jumps right out of the mirror and can't
find its way back it's always here tomorrow and gone today and
leaping before it looks but it's the only one the dark small
animal isn't afraid of

and there's the clown he does his falling-over act and the thing
with the paint but no one laughs any more maybe he needs a new
routine he does his best sometimes he teams up with the bear but
what could be sadder than a performing bear it's tragic really
him and the bear oh and the contortionist too and the painted
lady but there you are that's show business

the mirror does get crowded yes and there are lots of others in
there i haven't mentioned but the trick is to see through them or
at least round them it isn't easy you have to be careful you
don't stir them up or they'll all start -

the small dark animal scurrying for cover the strutting thing
waving its arms the grande dame complaining the accountant
whingeing the grasshopper pinging off the mirror the clown
slapping himself in the face with the brush the bear growling the
contortionist tying herself in knots and the painted lady
bursting into tears

but if you sneak up quietly keep very still let your mind go
loose until the mirror softens you can just make out a face my
face that is my face the one that's been in there for so long
looking out remembering remembering

how peaceful it used to be before the mirror became so full

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A Letter to God

2008-03-08T16:44:07+01:00

dear God,

dear? God? but the dubious imprecision of my greeting matches perfectly the dubious imprecision of my understanding, so 'dear God' it will have to be. and indeed at times you do seem most dear, though at other times as blank as this table, and as uncommunicative as my own soul when it is sulking.

my dear, i am going to write to you anyway, though i hardly think you will reply – either because you have overlooked my existence, or because you yourself do not exist – as such. and that ‘as such’ is burdened with all the irony i can summon, because i am well aware that it is within the ‘as such’ that you are to be found, if you are to be found at all.

well, never mind whether you exist or not. really, i hardly know whether i exist, even though it is becoming clearer to me (or am i becoming more deluded?) that since i am you – or an infinitesimal fragment of your celestial hugeness, struggling on in an unknown direction for an unstated reason and with the vaguest of procedural instructions - my confusion as to whether or not i exist is certainly yours as well.

or entirely yours? after all, you are the one broken in little pieces. you are the one who can’t seem to get from here to there, from now to then, without taking in everywhere else, doing everything else, being everyone else. so who has the problem here, you or me?

if that sounds a little hostile, you'll accept, won't you, that it is difficult for me to be magnanimous under the circumstances. buried as i am under the circumstances – in fact, overwhelmed, and yet, also trying to take refuge under the circumstances from all the emptiness which would otherwise devour me.

was this always the deal? all or nothing at all? utter profusion or the void? did it ever occur to you, my dear, that i might one day stand up and speak out, and indeed have a justifiable grievance to express? oh yes, pure comedy of course: this tiny, belligerent bacterium and its list of ills and grumbles, bellowing upwards in its gnat's voice to a god which it knows about as well as it knows itself – that is, not at all. but expecting all the same to be taken seriously; expecting at least a courteous reception.

no, but why would you listen? as broken as you are, with everything flying away from you, everything irretrievable and irredeemable and lost? surely you must be sitting there with your hands over your ears, your legs drawn up and your face buried in your knees, grieving the absolute loss of meaning? surely the last thing you need at this moment is to be confronted by yourself, even such an insignificant fragment of yourself, crying out the words you dare not cry out - daring at last to put the ultimate heretical question:

‘what is it all for?’

dear god, what is it all for?

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Time Zone

2008-03-07T16:14:59+01:00

it must be as clear to you (my dear earthworm) as it is to me, that time does not propel itself along one second after another, in perfect step: it is all over the place. each of its nameless possibilities which we call moments are constantly being shaken out and spread as a canopy of eternal presence and attention over the void.

time is capricious and lingering and flighty and ponderously encompassing. it congeals and speeds up: fails entirely to be here one moment and inexplicably returns the next. it has dark currents and iridescent eddies, shy neap tides and feral spring tides. it dreams of running in circles, to wake revolving on the pinprick of the present.

it has us in its paws (its very many paws - for it walks in all directions at once) and we are its helpless cubs clinging to its lurching back, tangled in its rough fur. we hold on, oh how we hold on, telling ourselves that there will always be time for what we want to become; but then - one day (but what is a day?) we simply fall off: into eternity.

consider that.

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An Otuk Saying

2008-03-07T11:04:57+01:00

- Akziko zuga, akziko zuwa, akziko zuka
(There is no other thing, there is no other person, there is no other reality)

......... and so i am writing only to you: that other, who is not other.

my fellow earthworm, depositing your wormcasts, as i do, in the hope that you will not be forgotten; that you matter.

we are matter, vitalised. you and i, the living self and its reflection. it seems we have a requirement laid on us, to live. to be - without knowing what being and living are. to go on - without knowing where we are, or why we should continue. to persist - without knowing whether we matter. nevertheless, we must go on: reflecting. reflecting. reflecting. and trying not to lose hope.

and one day - will the mirror and its reflection be reunited? or is that another face of the same forlorn hope we cling to: that our lives have meaning? that even our wormcasts, those laboured excretions of description and observation, have meaning?

there seems to me to be only one way in which we can possibly claim to have meaning, and that is: if our lives do not belong to us, and never have. we only have meaning if we are life itself: if we compose it, and we become it, and in time step out of it to give way to new manifestations.

if our lives are not ours but life's living of itself, then we are one. a fragmented one: broken and confused and always being brought back together in new configurations; and always being lived, and lived out, and abandoned and resurrected, abandoned and restored. life is so careless of itself. but it is one, we are that one, and you and i are each other's reflection: you and i are life itself.

'There is no other thing, there is no other person, there is no other reality'.

consider it.

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