Games

No, do not conflate competition with decision making, do not assume competition is the only model extant in nature. Many models co-exist and intermingle in this world and as we, humans dear, shed awkward models of ourselves as Ur-versions of our present day technology, we'll find and appreciate our subtle, ambiguous natures and grow systems that echo them. No more body as machine, no more brain as computer, no more cosmos as clock or simulation. We are enamoured with the products of our hands so much that we think they mirror the thing that came before us, the thing we find ourselves in. There is always an analogue, yes, but we are the products of a greater hand, this world. If we will play games of infinite regress, let's play them right.

Fashion Chances

I'd sooner wear a hair-wrap than attend a body painting session. I'm good with jodhpurs but not so much with top-knots. Shoes are judged by the foot and the leg and the circumstance. You know as well as I do what to wear to the gravel pit or the picnic. Baseball hats are for a segment of the population I can't relate to. I'd wear a fringed leather jacket or even a fringed suede jacket but the fringes better be long and supple. I'd wear make up if it was already on me but I won't put any on outside of someone wants to put some on me and I say ok. I would say ok and I'd also be ok walking around with some, but not for long. I've thought about skirts but not enough to do anything about it. Kind of like eating insects. Plenty of thought, haven't done much about it.
    I'd travel most places, I think, but won't plan enough to make it happen. I'd plan certain trips to certain places though. I need incentive.
    Maybe I'll gather my energy and build myself a great graphic design studio so I can make art that I like in an easy way and have the tools I need to produce and share it properly. I'd wear comfy clothes while I worked but would try to gather a nice wardrobe for special events. Something along the lines of Han Solo semi-formal. I'm thinking of one of those urban adventurer utility belts. I'd carry around with me a small note book and a pen, my mini-tool, business card and stickers, cash money and keys. One of the pockets would be reserved for ground scores.
    I'm going to look up some of these belts right now so I can imagine myself properly.
    I wish I had a jacket I'd be cool with covering in patches. I've had a wicked 'Follow Me' patch with a sword on it for decades. Never got the nerve up to commit to wearing it. That might have to change as I approach my fifties. I want to be that guy, that guy who never looked as good as he now does. That way, when I crack out the cloak and staff at seventy it will all make sense.

Starting Right Now

Do I have the time to show up at the office and churn out a short paragraph about my thoughts and feelings ? Do I have the time to moisturize my face after working outside with sun beating down and pallets of earth moved across alleyways? Do I have the time to worry about Antarctica and the ice sheets and the people and Hydro Quebec and radical skepticism and ill informed rationalism and people who think way too much ? Do I have the time to consider and reconsider and reconsider still my contribution to what seems like a confused and collapsing civilization? Do I have the time to make a comic book and dream of a career in the arts instead of selling everything I have and moving to a small cabin in the countryside?

    Ask me what I would do if I had five years to live and I wouldn't answer 'what I'm doing now' so why am I doing what I'm doing now instead of what I'd do if I had only five years to live ?
    Tell me about it. Tell me about my choices and my decisions and my set backs and cop outs and excuses and fears and paralysis and devil you know. Devil you know will strangle every last breath out of you, five years or no. And by you I mean me.

    Here we are accumulating garbage for the big parade. Accumulating garbage to tuck into the loose corners of our coffins. And coffins ! What an extravagance. We'd be so lucky to get a nice lacquered wooden box to rot in. Some folks never get the option. They sink into the field where they are struck down, maybe thrown into the ravine with the others.

    Sure, go back to school to get a masters degree, join the post docs in line for food and clean water. Wait for the corporate overlords to have their ghost of Christmas past moment, wait for Dick Cheney to shudder at his reflection and take it all back, take it all back, restore the droned children to life, restore the forest to it's majesty, restore the women to their humanity.

    Let's work a tad harder, let's do a little spring cleaning all year round, let's whip it out and get it on, let's high five until the sun rises, let's sort the recycling, reuse the reusables, take out the trash, forgive our shitty neighbours, rejoice with our cousins and see where that takes us.

    This is a moment of missives, this is the time for all times, we've made so many children, let's scrub the sidewalks for them so we don't have to pick glass shards out of their kneecaps. Let's turn off the power so they can breathe. Let's stop with the filth so they can eat some decent food and make their teenage parties something not tinged with ragged desperation born of hopelessness.

    We'll turn around in circles until we straighten out this mess. We'll pull the plug and wear extra sweaters in the winter. We'll collect family members to live with us. We'll turn this boat around, I swear, and plant gardens in every cop car.

    Starting now, starting right exactly now.

Tools Of The Trade

Along with the image of a cavorting chess board, disorienting poor existing creatures like ourselves come a few other images in the same category. The chess board, as seen earlier, divides the plane into white and black tiles, each colour representing one of two possible perspectives. Then they come together and form a lattice they hint at grey, the third path. This chessboard, when seen through the fish eye lens of dream, cannot help but tilt and quiver. The strategy game men play in the park is a far cry from this cosmic farce. This playing board speaks of unknown and ever changing rules. One quickly forgets what side one is on. Which are my playing pieces? which my opponents ? My opponent looks a lot like me. Why are there Monopoly playing pieces on a chessboard ?
    Some situations in life call for drastic measures. Sometimes, on the battle field, when faced with non-stop absurdity of the highest order the options for response are limited. Either on slumps to the floor, starts drooling and thrubbing ones lips with a forefinger or one takes action. The action in this case is to quickly make a Napoleon hat from scratch. If one is adept at shaping aether, all the better ! Fashion yourself a hat, this token will bestow power. If all you have is cardboard and tape, get cracking but I will say, your imagination is quicker and doesn't lead you into the dead ends craft time can land you. The hat, often seen in the loony bins of funny pages, is a shamanic item that will lead you through chaos mostly intact. It will allow you to stand up tall, take charge of the situation irregardless of whether or not you are a natural born leader of men.
    The next things you'll need are a clipboard to take down notes and a pointing stick. The stick will allow you to isolate details that strike you as absurd. Aha! you shout, that thing is melting and/or dancing. Take a note of it. These tools will help you analyze your environment thus gaining control over it. Remember, the battle field, the game board, the mean streets, the drawing room….all these places are stand ins for the fun house, that shape shifting ground that can topple you as soon as set you on your way.
    The last image that will help the weary traveler in these rolling lands in a clear understanding of the origins of language. It is imperative that the black and white of the chess board are understood to also represent the twin parents of spoken tongues - the laugh and the cry. These two primal modes of expression twist together tightly and within that nexus is the fruit that ripens into all spoken communication. Heed this. You can switch easily from one to the other if you understand this key. As you take things too lightly you can add a dash of gravity. If you're sobbing through the jungles you can add a sprinkle of levity. What's funnier than a monkey lost in the forest, especially if that monkey thinks it's a man ?
    I offer these dream images to you, dear reader, in the hopes that you see what a silly place this is. It is of course heart rending and at times joyous. It can be both, damnably so. One must be equipped to tramp through these wilds. A hat to cover your head and lend you authority, a notepad to document the madness, a stick to notice things with, an expansive understanding that the roots of language can change your moods. Onwards !

Guess What ?

Certainty is a crutch. Knowledge is false comfort. Being informed is one of the biggest wastes of energy one can participate in. Go ahead, read the news, see if I care. Oh damn it, I do care. I care about our collective search for meaning, I care that you think keeping up on the press releases from our owners is a good and important pursuit. I care because I have compassion. The news junkie is akin to the Moonie, hanging on the every last word from his master. Of course, I'm not in the deprogramming business, so every man for himself.
    I've been in a cult already. I know that sweet flavour of group mind. It's real. It's also short lasting and in the long run no one can say if the pros outweigh the cons. Having done my short tour of duty in a group project, a group intent on worshiping the elementals and celebrating feast day after feast day, I am better equipped to realize that I partake of belief systems. I know that I just may believe certain things. Knowledge of what my faith may be, mind you, is false comfort. It is also widely inaccurate in that everything constantly shifts. Some pet opinion of mine is dashed to bits with a new article read. Just like changing shirts as some old bastard said of belief. Switch it up.
    The sorriest fools I've encountered are the one's with faith unrecognized. They puff and preen regarding the latest finding, doled out to them from sanctioned sources of course. Sceptical about any questionable thing except their own news sources. This happens time and again. If you are going to be sceptical, go for the whole thing, old friend. Question everything, not only the straw men your favourite podcasts have already selected. Question what and who you are, why you eat what you eat, why you feel how you feel, always and often. Question your brand loyalty, even if their reputation is based on quality and low low prices both. There is a catch somewhere.
    How is it that one can recoil from pundits and authors and honoured guests of Oprah yet swallow whole lines fed by governmental agencies. The mind boggles.
    It's not that I side with the legendary Hashishin and the wry motto hijacked by video-gamed slaves, 'nothing is true, everything is permitted'. No, not so. Lots of things are true. Even some contradictory things. Permissiveness I leave to the society at hand, without having any inclination to agree. We are, to a one, searching for meaning in our lives. Even the cynics and the materialists, even the ones who dismiss meaning and it's search as wastes of time. Even them. They too search. They may search for it in endless fouled up relationships, in extended grudges with best selling authors, in the collecting of immaterial details surrounding television serials. You do it, you think it, you feel it, chalk it up to your humanity. No one can shake that search. Cold grave or waving dead relatives welcoming you into the light, same thing. God, no god, moot point, same thing. Paradox all, paradox always. There is no escape. The thing is the thing. We are one, we are splintered fragments. There is no difference. Pull out all the logic stops, draw charts proving my words empty and I'll laugh if I have the time to honour how you have wasted yours.
    What do I believe ? Who's asking ? And why would you care ? Follow me around and gauge my deeds. Crunch the numbers and conduct severe meta-analysis. There is a creature out there who tricks. There are liars and there are storytellers. There are magicians and wizards. There are cobblers who hoard diamonds under the floorboards, still others who heal the poor souls who come to get some shoes repaired. The cosmos is made of a warp and woof, a black and white tiled checkerboard floor like the stodgy Masons dance on. This fabric wobbles and careens. Upon, within and through it exist all manner of realities, enjoying all grades of existence. That there monster is only sixty-four percent real, that table closer to ninety-eight. Of course, it all depends on where you are standing and who you really are. Stop it, my head hurts. Now, it's yours, is it ? We'll see about that.
    The trickster lives in a place between places. The world axis may determine the land that is ours but others still creep about the borderland. Two is not the biggest number around. Who among you relish ambiguity ? Come then, we'll sit at the same table and tell jokes at the expense of those who think they know what's going on.

Working Title

My story veers towards disaster and switches course. The disaster is never something too dramatic. It is simply the slow dissolution of my dreams. I dodge bullets by adjusting my dreams to my reality and continuing.
    I have always assumed success of some sort. Fame, money, status. All these things were for me to choose, flirt with and ultimately reject for a path of contemplation, art making, study and wisdom. Sometimes I think I may have to forego the idea of the roundabout route and head straight for the goal. I am pulled towards the luxuries of status as I am making towards a simple life here on the middle path. As a fifteen year old I declared that wisdom was my aim. I then started in earnest on a path of accumulated social attention. Some people think I'm famous because I know a lot of people and I get my name out there, so to speak. I publish and exhibit widely. I'm a chatterbox. I'm a local scene stalwart. I'm a natural networker with one catch, I don't know how to 'use' my connections. I don't get paid for introducing people to each other. I am behind the scenes, match maker, glue. Has any of this lead me to wisdom? Kind of.
    A few years ago I realized that maybe I should have went for the cash instead.
    At this point I realize I have done little for my future except plant a thousand seeds. I'm unsure which ones have actually taken root. My mother warned me about planning for my old age but who listens to their parents ? The seeds I planted are mostly arty ones, books published, art work shown, press kit organized, classes taught, students inspired. I have a bookcase full of publications that my work has appeared in, approximately four feet of shelving. I am now looking for the process that will activate these blocks of paper, reassemble them, Transformer style, into a printed robot that will go out there and get me rewarding and well paying jobs.
    My story always assumed that some big shot would knock on my door, offering me the deal of the century. That grace would swoop down and kiss my resumé. That rock stars would flock to hear my tales of transcendent wisdom. My story is being rewritten as we speak. The assumptions are drying up and blowing away like so many ninety eight pound weaklings. I still can't do the splits like I hoped to as a child. My superpowers are negligible. My riches come in friends and snacks, which is great but no country cottage will come of that anytime soon.
    It's at this stage in the game that I'm snapping awake to life on earth sans fantasy. I'm finally discovering work. My procrastination problem just may be subsiding. What did this to me ? The time honoured cliché that turns boys to men - having a kid. Since that happened six month ago, and since several months before the big day, I have been running ragged. There's no 'do it later' option. I can't 'hold on a minute' with a baby and his mom, who both need something now. Right now. So I'm up early. I'm up and out of bed performing a task. There is no lead up, warm up, test drive. Get up and go. So I go. So I do other stuff while I can. Rinse plates right away. Adopt a daily drawing regimen. This is my forty ninth daily text. Quality can kiss my ass. I don't have time to shape and craft. I express, I check for typos, I miss some, I upload onto the fucking internet. Done. Next.
    My story shifts with the shifting of dreams. Ego gratification has changed. I've tricked myself into actually working towards my goals instead of assuming they will crash through my ceiling like errant fortean ice. The story now includes a change of scenery and a new cast of characters. I think it'll be a trilogy, a best selling one.

The My In Myth

In Mister Feher's grade ten math class I experienced something that would forever change my life. It was an otherwise normal day, the teacher regaling us with the enthusiasm he derived from mathematics. We were teenagers with better things on our minds than functions. The teacher himself was a bit on an odd duck. Proper, turtle necked, eye glasses Carl Sagan would wear if that makes sense, Carl Sagan's hair around the facial equivalent of Hush Puppies. Always some kind of wry semi-smile. His signature was signed, on important documents like test deferrals or late notes, via a fine rubber stamp bearing his name in a light cursive. He enunciated clearly.
    I was sitting there, spacing out or trying to understand the topic, one of the two, when I wrote something out in my exercise book. I don't think I still have this Ur document but I have it's near descendants. I wrote four capital letters, block form. A B A C. Not those letters, I'm simply showing the repetition and relative sequence. I wrote this un-word, this geometric arrangement, each letter having no curves or diagonals. Nice vertical or horizontal lines only. X and Y axes. Maybe I was picking something up from the lessons after all.
    Nonetheless, I wrote these four letters down in my book and the world stopped.
    I wrote down this code, this gibberish, this … name. My eyes widened, my breathe suspended for an instant. The world stopped. I was flushed with meaning completely unknown. I was in class, I couldn't exactly turn to my mates and say, "It came to me ! It came ! A magic word ! A secret name !" Nope, couldn't do that. Still can't do that. Not allowed.
    Here I was, some fifteen year old kid and I stumble upon a sequence of letters that opens a door to the mysteries. I took this name home, this cypher. I tried a two letter suffix, an add-on. Nothing. I kept it as is, all caps. I drew a picture and realized it was only good to associate this new name with this new style of drawing. I still added my civilian name. I was not convinced that this ABAC was my name. I still don't think it really is, even though I used it in art and eventually in scads of global correspondence art, signing and yes, rubber stamping, the name on postcards, envelopes, letters, poems, collages and drawings mailed to artists around the world. The stacks of mail I received were addressed to this name. Years later I attempted the awkward process of conflating the two names, my magic one and my real one, transitioning to get my affairs in order and have only one name that represents this artist, the name I go by today, the one my folks gave me.
    I searched for the meaning of this secret name, one half could be construed as Hebrew. But my tetragrammaton wasn't in the angel dictionaries. The stoner junior cabalist I knew wrote out what each letter or it's Hebraic equivalent might mean in gematrical values. Tables of correspondences followed. Elements, animals, minerals. It wasn't Enochian. No entity revealed to John Dee came close enough to sporting this name. It may be as yet unrevealed Atlantean but I've never been able to commit to full time space cadet, I'm still too shy for that kind of thing. What would my cynical friends, some no where near as cynical as I am, say if I cracked out the lavender robes and started channeling entities? I know I shouldn't care but sadly I do. Maybe I'll save this crazy shit for my old age. Hopefully I'll still have my wits about me to take the plunge in earnest.
    Of course I had dreams where I saw the word. One time it was tattooed on the back of a male First Nations person, another time hidden in plain sight amid the text in an antique Shakespearean folio. The internet has given me English and foreign acronyms, it means 'relative' in one language, and describes a carved domestic item in another. All in all, it remains more mine than anything else. That strange elation that came over me in class kept my imagination busy for years. It has, of course, faded into the background of my life but is an essential part of my personal mythology. My origin story. I sometimes think that my capacity to encourage and develop a personal myth is mostly responsible for the good cheer I enjoy. I have given myself meaning, regardless of any objective standard that may exist. No one can call me out on it, no one can whistle bullshit in my direction. These are my sacred things, these are the details that prod me towards wonder. I spin yarn in my own service, I spin yarn into gold and you can keep your baby. I'm still trying to figure out how to spend my earnings, I'll get old and hopefully wise trying. I may end up on the street corner, staff in hand, amethyst headband, beard Darwinian in it's glory, twinkling eyes to those that walk among us but are still afraid to describe themselves as magical.
    It's important to pay attention in math class. To something you feel if not the lessons.

Tiny Lessons In Magic

To make an easy sigil, write out the phrase you would like to focus upon. Strike out any letters that repeat, leaving one of each. You'll find that most letters fit easily into the shape of an H with it's top and bottom closed off, as if superimposed with an F and an L. This blocky figure eight can incorporate A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,L,O,P,S,U if you sacrifice curves. Add a few diagonals and you can accommodate K,M,N,R,V,W,Y,Z. T and Q can make an appearance with another straight line well placed.
    This, of course, is for an efficient no nonsense design, the zen of sigils. You are most welcome to stick letter to letter forming a more ornate sign. It all depends what you are after. After completing the design that pleases you or your client the most, discard the original phrase by removing any written trace of it and try to promptly put it from your mind. Now take this abstract design and sit with it, place it on your desk, put it somewhere you can see it. Meditate on it and and and.
    And what ? Well, magic can occur. The so-called essence of the original, now forgotten phrase should be firmly implanted in your less than conscious mind where it can get to work transforming your sorry life. Or not. That's the gamble. This stuff isn't science.
   
    Sit in a dim room and face a blank light coloured wall. Dress comfortably in loose fitting clothes and take a few deep breaths. Raise your hands a foot or so away from your face and look at them. Turn them about, examining your fingers well splayed, gently bent, slowly moving about. Note how the shadows fall about your hands in the semi-darkness. Bring the fingers of each hand in close proximity without letting them touch. Softly move your fingertips to and fro away from each other. Don't try to see anything in particular, simply keep breathing and looking at your hands. Look at the space between your fingers also.
    Eventually, if you are lucky or good at this game, you will see light around your finger tips that cannot be accounted for in that dim room. You'll also see strands of light from finger to finger, pooling as you near them and stretching apart as you distance them. You may also see cascades of shadows cross your palms that do not reflect what actual light may be illuminating the room. If you are particularly graced that fine evening you may be startled to see flames leap from the centres of your palms. Do not panic. Remain calm. Keep breathing. The flames may dance there for a while. Avert your eyes and you may risk letting these visions escape you. Just like a dream upon awakening they will recede into another world and you may chase these flighty apparitions for years to come, maybe reliving them maybe never being able to see them again.
    And what were they ? They were things you saw.
    Were they really there ? Well, where else were they ? Of course they were there. You saw them.
    Does this mean they represent something real ? Walk around the block and think about what 'real' means. When you get home and you are certain what is real and what is not, then you've answered your question.
    If that walk around the block was the only time you've asked yourself that question and the answer satisfied you, you really need to take more walks. Walk every so often, maybe once every year or so and take stock whether your answers are the same. If your answers are always the same, you're most probably wrong.

Now And Never

Bullshit, loads of crap and onwards. Stifling thought, fidgeting body, aches and pains. The whole kit, not being able to sit still. Not being able to leave the ground and fly away. Pulled between worlds and tendencies. Monastic fantasies of one small room, a cot, a desk, a bowl, a rug.
Here I would read and write. I would contemplate the mysteries and The Mystery. I would tend my affairs, small and humble, away from the mad rush of the world.
    Off to the side of the magnificent Saint-Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal is a small building that I have visited a few times. The room above the chapel that Brother Andre lived in has left a deep impression on me. What simplicity. Of course, the small church beneath was opulent enough to render the stark wood of his homely room in relief. The saint lived simply, I'm sure, but he was a few steps from religious gold and wrought works of master craftsmen. I must visit this place again, and forget the line of tourists behind me, and just grip the hand rail that leads me through the tour and stare into that simple single room.
    The monastic fantasy, the single cell or tiny house, also echoes the recurring fantasy of true independence, answering to no one. I have never had the privilege of being truly alone. I have never been without sight of another human for longer than a couple of days in my entire life. It is something that lures me and terrifies me. When I first entered an isolation tank, I snapped the lid shut, turned the lights and soothing sounds off and floated in the dark alone. Within moments I pushed at the light switch and threw the door open with a gasp. I am not so hardy as I'd like. I may go stir crazy in the cabin in the woods. The creatures of the wilderness will quickly creep out from between my ears and unsettle me. I'll plan the trip nonetheless, a week on my own. And if not in complete isolation then close to it. I'll bring books and paper and drawing tools. I'll bring a good knife to whittle and food fit for a pauper playing king.
    The other world I'm pulled to is closer to the one I live in than Brother Andre's world. Opulence and grandeur, the feeding of a growing insatiable ego, servant boys bringing me fresh fruit. Luxury and whim, a not over large estate but one linked to a world of adventure and fine dining. Night life with a driver and a table reserved, companions fresh and charming, bottles filled and emptied. No care for the morrow, for others are doing the caring. Basking in the art of living, tasting culture refined and plenty. Plenty, that's the word. A buffet when I want it. The righteous privilege of choosing only steamed mushroom because it pleases me. Padding about great carpeted studies, selecting volumes rare and lavish. Devoting hours of study, brandy nearby. A huge door to throw open to let the night air in as I smoke a pinch of hashish rolled in fine tobacco. Guests asleep in the far wing.
    This tug of war leads me nowhere. I'm not having any of it. A bowl of steamed mushrooms next to a paperback, my child sleeping in the other room, my partner trying to rest. Planning a camping trip or a morning outing can exhaust me. My man servant isn't up to the job. Push it aside, the task at hand and worry. This isn't what I wanted. This cascade of adulthood. But I never threw a duffle bag over my shoulder and I never hit the road and I never starved and buffets are ok but they are sad things too. This world that pulls me to pieces, it's a world I made. This war is my war alone and both sides fling their error and assumptions at my feet. I wade through it, victim and jailer.
    There is light somewhere. I'll have to rake the ground to find it. I'll have to cast away thought to find it. Stretch this aging body and trade my lust for love. Learning to sit still in my old age.

Blooming Late

A few things came late in life. Learning to tie my shoes, learning to tell time and learning to ride a bicycle are the triumvirate symbols of my late blooming. My tricycle was large and green and I couldn't keep up with my brother and his friend from down the street. I do remember ramming into the friend's bike, with him on it, because he was teasing me. I didn't do the damage I craved, but the hit was somewhat satisfying. I don't remember clearly but I probably had tears streaming down my face to ensure total glory could never be mine.
    Shoe laces are confounding things and I didn't get the hang of the over under loops until several months after my peers. I have no particular story associated with laces from back in the day but I do choose slip ons almost exclusively now. Is life long enough to tie and untie shoe laces? No, it isn't. Life demands footwear be thrown on for feet to move body quickly out of the house, down the street and to the coffee shop where it can loll about over a damned game of Sudoku and a coffee enhanced by an unnecessary pastry.
    Clocks went digital for a reason. Time is a fiction we don't need to encourage by sweating over which of the arms is long or short. I still have trouble with analog clocks. I pause over them a little too long for an adult. It took me years to tell the arms apart, that fast third one whipping around confusing me. Of course, so many clocks get fancy with roman numerals, or no digits at all. I don't bother. I stopped wearing a watch, usually a black plastic Casio, often strap snapped off and watch rammed in pocket. I stopped because I would check the time incessantly and forget what I read the moment it went back into my pocket. I lament the endangered status of pay phones, my current source of time telling when out and about.
    Other examples of tardiness are things like responsible adulthood or saving money or acquiring a credit card. Anything that requires bureaucratic process, finance or planning ahead more than a few weeks has only lost it's fear factor in the last five to ten years. Now I open the envelopes as the come through the mail-slot, unwilling to let the snarl of the tax man turn to a bite.
    I have conveniently forgotten the best example. I still don't have a driver's license. This avoidance of the driver's seat is, in what passes for our culture, the prime symbol of ineffectual manhood. Are other areas of life that require proactivity affected because of my lack of driving skills ? Once I grab that steering wheel, will I also grab other opportunities and sail away to self-actualization ? To becoming some archetypal top-dog ? Climb to the top of that ladder in my slip on boots ? A box of gift watches in the drawer of my power desk.

Waking Up Again

I used to meticulously catalogue the experiences I had that pointed to what could be understood as spiritual. Nervous system bucking, giddy spinal flashes, hot coal palms, tightening forehead focusings, sensations of enlarging or shrinking body, precog moments, sustained deja vu, odd dreams, distortions in my visual field, synchronicities, transcendent moments, unity consciousness. I was excited and excitable.
    By the age of twenty three it often felt like every step I took was a step deeper into an ever unfolding initiation. Some of my anomalous experiences were induced, many predated any experimentation with drugs. I'd go so far to say that my willingness to experiment with drugs was encouraged by a desire to have more such non-ordinary glimpses into a larger world. I hoped that my first foray into joint smoking would send me down the path from Hobbiton to Rivendell. Suffice to say, it didn't turn out quite like that.
    I was a cautious and over-read drug dabbler. I was hellbent on recognizing the stronger hallucinogens as sacraments even if my friends were happy to just trip out. My catalogue of oddities surpassed my infrequent and few trips. I would meditate and feel intense heat in my body. My palms glowed with tai-chi. Aura exercise yielded results quickly. Most overtime I scored some transcendent points I would promise myself to be more diligent, to investigate further, to develop a daily routine that incorporated the body and the spirit.
    I was a poor student. The old men in my dreams held out scrolls to me, covered in holy script. I would shake my head and look away. Twice I was offered torahs, twice I botched the move. Even once, sitting in my kitchen and aided by the fungus, I saw intricate Mayan cartoons play out on the wall, I shook them away, confident that this kind of thing is dime-a-dozen. I'll check it out later.
    Later came and with it the insight that rare gems shouldn't be tossed out. I repeated my mantra, I'm a poor student. I feared the universe would abandon me, reveal nothing of itself. Cosmological models and geometric symmetries stopped showing up to my drawing pad.
    The visions faded. The magic retreated. Occasionally the universe would make a reappearance, proving to me that though I slept, things churned lively just beyond my eyelids. I shut up about it though. Maybe ten years without a peep to the muggles. I quietly read and read. I shook the poor student status. I joined a goddess study group. I peaked in magic. That didn't last long and I set out on the deepest darkest mundanity yet. Beer and bagels set themselves up as staples.
    Nowadays I still read, more than ever, and am steeling my nerves for a rebirth of the body I mistreated for so long. One thing at a time, first body then mind, then both or all three and I'm off.
I'm starting over without a care for the trophies I once thought I had won.

33° Burns

When I turned thirty three years old I was six years past the age I thought I'd be when I got my shit together. For some reason twenty seven was the magic number. It popped into my head in my late teens as the marker when I'd be what I was destined to become. It sounds good to a younger person. Still young but far away enough to continue being a little dumb ass.
    All I did at that age was actually move out of my parents house. One maybe hoped for something more dramatic, something beyond the 'well, you should do that anyway' category. It was a step for me. I had friendly support and the change was made. Moving out allowed me to no longer crash on the floors of my friends who lived downtown. It also allowed me to have people over to my place, which I rarely did. Jesus Christ, six short years later I moved back in with my family.
    My father convinced me, he is very convincing at times, how awesome it would be to move into the building he bought. I could run the shop he opened, live upstairs from it and never stray too far. I bought it hook line and sinker. It was a tug, for sure. My mother was very clear that I didn't have to do this. I should have listened to mom. Well, I didn't and the lure of low overhead won out. And what was I doing with my life anyway ? I was making bits of art while unloading trucks and pricing stock at a downtown record store chain. I had two university degrees that occasionally worked out at parties but I was not using my so-called potential.
    I ran the shop. I still run the shop. I moved into the bigger apartment in the building when it was vacated. I did so in anticipation of a future girlfriend maybe moving in with me. Now we both live with my family so to speak. We enjoy the perks of a low cost of living along with the agony of being between a rock and a soft place. How does one untangle the lines, move to another place, away from the business we've claimed as our own and made fancy ?
    Today, almost twenty years later, the conundrum reverberates in my heart every day. We have a great apartment that is too noisy at times above a business that looks better than it operates. In the heart of a great neighbourhood surrounded by the best community anyone can ask for and yet…and yet. Gratitude exercises come and go, privilege is seared into every mouthful I eat, kids making noise in the alley is constant. The traffic outside my door will never ever stop. I'm middle aged and I can't help but feel I took the easy way out in this life, the road paved with minimum effort. I live in my father's house which means I haven't built my own yet. That lost hobbit hole I dreamed of as a kid.
    I am not a carpenter like he was, I'm kinda handy but not so much. I've learned a thing or two about odd jobs and upkeep. I open the bill envelopes when they come but have a hard time saving any money. My mother warned me about planning for the future, I told her things would work out. Somehow they have worked out but on their own terms not on mine. I've left life to do it's thing and only recently have awoken to the fact that I'm the one steering this clunky boat.
    At thirty three you're either crucified or given honorary degrees. I retreated into my nest.
    At forty six all I can think of are my fifties. So how does one steer a near lifetime of passivity into total action ?

Day 31 - Approaching A Corner

The recurring dream goes something like this. I'm embedded in some darkness, an organic mass. I manage to emerge out of it onto a number line (an elementary school math tool used to teach fractions). I count to infinity and end up on the top of a tower, bright and clear, so high up above the clouds. I immediately find myself in the murk again. I have to count to infinity again. I wake up screaming.
    Screaming, agitated, crying, scared, shook up. I may have had this dream twice, maybe three times. I've considered going to hypnosis to see if I can recall more. I have told it so often to myself and others that I fear a broken telephone has set in, a memory of a memory, infinite regress.
    I must have been five the first time, by seven the last time.
    Number lines. Imagine a ruler of ten segments. Draw an arc from the start of one segment to the start of another. Do that the whole way across. Draw an arc spanning two segments. Draw that the whole way across. You'll have five of those arcs. Draw an arc spanning five segments. You'll only need two arcs. Now imagine if each segment was subdivided into ten. Arcs aplenty. You can go on forever. Counting to infinity, I guess.
    When I was older I was drawn to mythology and later symbolism. I read a bit about motifs found all over the place in human history. Art, stories, architecture, dreams, myths. Lots of overlap. I read enough to know that my dream was text book symbolism at it's basic. Dark, cold, wet, organic to start with, Light, airy, angular & crystalline (the rooftop was diamond shaped). I emerged horizontal, I ended up vertical. Here we go again.
    I've interpreted it to my own satisfaction at times through out my life but have often missed the crux, literally, of the story. How did I, the roving point of view that was me in the dream, for there were no figures, turn the bend from my horizontal number line and start climbing the tower ? That's the missing part. Where the X and Y axes meet.
   
    •••

In 2012 I completed my first graphic novel, Inside Outside Overlap. It used this dream imagery as a spring board. It was clear that this recurring dream was the story I needed to tell. I had poked around with some poetry and graphics before but never a project of this size devoted to this topic. As far as I was concerned, this was the only topic to tackle. This puzzling dream, often thought of, came to be my story. At least my first story.
    In the comic my character uses ritual and meditation to enter an inner world wherein he finds a dormant version of himself covered (made?) with goo. He dives into the cesspool and begins the arduous task of digging through the mire, pulling the sludge off until a clarity is revealed. This leads to a crystallization and voilà, our hero is made peaceful.
    I haven't been able to pull this off. My sludge is chipped off at a rate of a flake a month if not a year. I'm not shoveling the shit out of me fast enough to reach catharsis. My meditation practise is still nil, despite my age-old yearning to integrate one into my life. Too often for a healthy mind to deal with, have I wondered what benefits such a routine may yield. I wonder more than actively explore this domain.
    I have slid into mundanity these last many years. Fourteen, I'd hazard. Before that I would perform ritual, pray to deities one and all, change my mind like I'd change a shirt. I felt initiated into the mysteries with each step. Of course with the years I concretized and calcified, gained weight and developed nagging health issues. My thyroid slowed down. My bowels rebelled. My skin said fuck you to my hands. My middle-agedness jumped out of the bushes and beat the shit out of my skinny rock star delusions about who I thought I was always going to be.
    Here I am today, the last day of my self-imposed daily writing routine and I don't know where to go. I can pack it all in, like Greek school or boxing or yoga, and continue the gnawing interior welt that has dogged me since I awoke into adulthood. I can banish the murk by embracing what I seem to fear most, stepping confidently into the light of a daily balanced routine. I can abandon that clarity and sink again into the morass of my many broken dreams. I can go upsy-daisy and down-under a thousand more times before I die. I don't want to wake up screaming every time I hit the squishy starting point again. I don't want to keep starting over. I don't want to count to infinity again.     I'm going to get to the crux of this thing, turn that damned corner, shoot to the top of that tower and stay there.
    You coming along ?