Tag: mysticism

I howled last night while dreaming!

Highly excited about this dreaming experience.

Regular readers (thank you!) probably have noticed howl much I dig using [howl] in my writing. I say it in my daily life as well. I bellow it, in silence, at night. (You have to be quiet it the flat where I stay, see.)

I have lucid dreamed since being a young child. I realize I am dreaming quite quickly in the dream state.

Sometimes this realization empowers me to change the dream consciously. Sometimes, I realize I am dreaming but do not realize I may be able to alter the dream state. (But, howl. Why change a new experience for what you assume would be better? The idea does not occur unless I feel real suffering.)

Many times, dreams feel like another plane of reality upon which I have landed, where, the best I can do, upon realizing I am dreaming, is to choose to try to wake myself up.

I am overly familiar with the sensation of sleep paralysis. Of becoming mentally conscious before being able to move my body. It is a weird feeling, but I have never felt the terror others describe when experiencing the sensation. No aliens. No demons. Just a simple inconvenience.

“Oh, howl. I gotta sit here and think, ‘wiggle your big toe. wiggle your big toe,’ ” for what seems like an eternity.

Eventually, my big toe actually wiggles.

Enough context.

Here is the dream.

⊙

I stand at the top of several flights of stairs.

Wooden floors.

An old, antebellum-style home.

Southern gothic.

Crown molding with runners.

There are no lights and

“It was a rainy night.”

A strike of lightning flashes. I see a very, strangely, white child appear on a bench, below. Situated upon the first landing, one flight of stairs, below.

Right before the stairs cut around to the next segment of their spiral.

He looks up, directly at me.

His eyes go wide.

Yawning like mouths.

Too wide.

I do not want to be here. It hurts more than it needs to.

Instead of thinking: wiggle your big toe,

I say, softly,: howl.

I know that I am dreaming. I cannot change the dream.

I want to wake up.

I start bellowing out:

HOOOOOWL.

Lightning strikes again. It illuminates the same bench.

Now, there are ten more children, with yawning eyes, where there had previously been only one.

I howl myself awake.

Serendipitously, “howl” took over and took care of me.

Pyre-amid Dream

I dreamt I was not quite a teenager.

I fed ducks in a park on a bench, with a Holocaust survivor. He was a mean man, and we got along well.

We did two things:

1. Feed ducks bread crumbs

2. Play a game.

Starting with A, we would name diseases/ailments in alphabetical order all the way to Z(ed).

Alzheimer’s

Bunyons.

Canker sores.

But, repeating was unacceptable.

Ex. Next round:

Acne

Boss eyes

Cataracts.

He always won. I did not care.

He taught me what floaters were but could not tell me why sometimes I saw white ones, like the sprinkles of 4th of July sparklers, and sometimes I saw indigo ones.

He only saw the white ones.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

the crest of your wave foams white in its churning.

My c-heeks go red.

Eyebrows arch up high as your brow furrows.

You slide softly and I run nails over your rib cage.

I kiss your nape.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

I went on a walk.

My arm swung by my side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Wafting leaf smoke like incense in some ceremony.

I heard two staccato strikes against strings of an amplified guitar,

in time with my heels’ clicks.

Dream of the Rocky Siege

I dreamt I was under siege last night.

Like Bell Rock.

But ages before.

The rocks were boulders of dingy khaki and earl gray.

Choppy and round, not leveled and smoothed.

But, they too, like the current iteration, remain cool to the touch,

despite constant exposure to the pressure of the sun.

I do no know why I am here, nor why I am being fired upon.

I wear a sleeveless red, knee length dress which renders me a sitting duck visually, per se.

I have on my “clown shoes” as I call them in this reality.

The pair of red, canvas slip ons are not conducive to scaling mountain goat terrain quickly.

Rocks, boulders, are being launched at me by wooden catapults operated by an unseen foe.

I hear them screaming through the air before my eyes can see them.

This is the best advantage I have.

I can look where I am going while feeling assured I will hear the threat.

No need to look for the threat.

I drop to the fetal position under the precipice of a nearby boulder, if available.

I think. If I had an umbrella in the colors of the rocks around me, that might be handy.

Such umbrella appears in my hand.

This is a dream: I think.

I try the umbrella method during the next assault.

They lose me in their scope.

I believe they are hopeful they struck me down and thus can no longer see me.

I leap to feet

too soon,

spoiling the very advantage I just created.

I hear the next rock scream.

Howl. Bad bit of terrain beneath my feet.

This umbrella could deflect the projectile: I imagine.

I open it, crouch down.

My braced arms withstand the pressure of the incoming’s rock momentum.

It bounces off the imagined shield.

I feel like I have won the battle.

Energetic Exchanges

I wear all black with saddle leather boots, for work.

Straightened hair business.

As I walk, I unfurl my energetic wings.

My mantle.

Cold steel blades slide out through my shoulder blades.

Clinking.

I shake them. Loosening.

They respond when I dress this way.

I take care to align each blade so they will fold away properly.

Inappropriate for the task at hand.

I call forth the other side.

gossamer feathers.

Carefully unfurling.

One flies a’loose, fluttering into the breeze like a shining bit of a spider’s web.

The feathers still smell of you from last night.

From when you came to my mind with your pain clear in your

energetic, non-corporeal eyes.

Come in: I told you silently.

You stepped behind my back.

Squared with my shoulder blades.

Your pain began pouring out.

I collected you in my steely wings. Making a box.

A safe place. An unobservable vacuum within which you may thrash and wail.

I dropped down my feather mantle for you.

Draping the steely interior in celestial down.

Those who would prey upon your moment of weakness

slay themselves upon my well-honed metallic feather-blades, trying to break in.

Ships, at night, on a rocky coast with no lighthouse.

With each slam of your energetic body against the walls of my wings, you felt nothing but goose down envelope you.

I took great care to ensure this.

You fell asleep inside. I opened the space, covered you, cupped your hipbone, and slept aside you.

King Crimson: in/Discipline

Two songs.

The catharsis of juxtaposition produces handmade syncretism.

Pendulous and diabolical.

Indiscipline. (Old Grey Whistle Test, 1982)

discipline. (Live in Argentina, 1994).

The handmade amatory ambit.

The amatory ambit which I occupy indicates, to the ears of my heart, that

I am the succulent strumpet sometimes called succubus; and it is I to whom you succum/b. My scribbl/es are ascribed to Scribes, all of whom scrieve, for example, scriveners, a penman, and amanuensis.

~\~~\\~\\\\

Just scratching lead to papyrus.

Ambit: (n) that which bounds; a boundary; also the sphere or scope; circumference.

Amatory: designed to excite love, sexual love specifically .

Succulent: the quality of being juicy and fleshy.!

Strumpet: a prostitute.

Succum: as under a burden, yield; to die.

Succumb: to sink down.

Scrieve: to glide swiftly along; Also, to reel off, as a story.

Succubus: a class of demon who has intercourse with humans while they sleep

Scribbl/es: to write or draw hastily or carelessly; to fill or cover something with careless or worthless writings or drawled envelope; a piece of writing or a drawing that is done quickly or carelessly

•amanuensis: (n) one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript like a calligrapher, copyist, or scribe.

In Latin, the phrase servus a manu translates loosely as “slave with secretarial duties.” (The noun manu, meaning “hand,” gave us words such as manuscript, originally meaning a document written or typed by hand.

In the 17th century the second part of this phrase was borrowed into English to create amanuensis, a word for a person who is employed (willingly) to do the important but sometimes menial work of transcribing the words of another.

I am a trenchant blade.

The kunst of a trenchant blade.

Unity does not provide

immunity, imp.

Impunity.

I am held fast, tonight, by unseen forces.

Letting letters flash before my eyes. Solitary reverie.

A silent moment un-obfuscated by the conversations of idle chatter.

I got nothing to talk to anybody about

on this Night Ride Home.

[]

An attempted review of causal factors.

A language within a language.

An odd mood becomes me these past couple of nights.

An internal bio-rhythm harkening me. But what does it signal? To what effect?

Am I being daft?

I know that which I miss, but what am I missing?

What did I miss?

Miss his hiss.

Misses Hiss.

[]

The corona is the crown of a head. Not a crown worn on a head.

Korone, garland wreath,

bursting from your skull as effulgent plumes, loops,

and multiform streams.

Plasma was found to be the fourth type of matter in the 1920’s.

Plasma derived from the ancient Greek word meaning

moldable substance.

Lightning and neon light produces plasma.

Corona is an aura of plasma

that surrounds the Sun and other stars.

[]

I am unrelenting not ceaseless. I am the yield of not yielding in strength, severity, or determination.

However, constant and unending?

Like a northern star?

Where’s that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar.

[]

Wandering star, Venus.

The Greeks came to accept

what the Babylonians had already known.

The Status Quo and Muddy Waters.

They dedicated

The

Wanderer

To Aphrodite.

–

Vespers:

Supper

Prayers to the

Evening Star in the

West.

Roman Hesperus and Phosphorous.

.Hesperus is to Venus. :: .Phosphorus is to Eosphorus.

nOn Sense and Reference.

《》

INTERPRETATO GRÆCA :: INTERPRETATO ROMANA

“Greek/Roman translations.” Interpretations by means of Greek/Roman models.

A discourse that is a comparative methodology used to look for

equivalence/s

correspondence/s

resemblance/s

《Pliny the Elder》

NOMINA ALIA ALIIS GENTIBUS

The translatability of deities as different names to different people.

The syncretism of the Hellenistic.

《》

Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenchaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie.

Telos: an ultimate object or aim

Entelech: realization of potential ; the supposed vital principle that guides the development and functioning of an organism or system

The sēmeion as the signal evidencing the daimonion.

A Phædo.

Top Quotes from Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco became like a new Hermann Hesse to me, over the last two years.

I have only read Foucault’s Pendulum and On Literature, but these were undertakings filled with amazing rabbit holes.

I recently reread the pages of notes I took from Foucault’s Pendulum. A very hermetic-y work, at least to my unaffiliated eyes.

Here are my favorites.

Believe there is a secret and you will feel like an initiate. It costs nothing…to live as if there were a Plan.

To dismantle the world into two saraband of anagrams.

Le monde est fait pour aboutir a un livre (faux).

Tout se tient.

Books of diabolicals must not innovate.

Yearning for mystery. Initiation is learning never to stop.

The most powerful secret is a secret without content.

Foucault’s Pendulum

Umberto Eco, Author, Eco, Author, William Weaver, Translator Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) (656p) ISBN 978-0-15-132765-2. Trade edition.

Parçigal Passionately Possessed

My deer, stag,

I it is.

It is I binding you in this ecstatic existence, suspended between

the Star and the Satellite.

The sun and the moon; yet, it is you they call Janus.

I am the feminine, arched gate-way granting the descent of your

spirit into matter anew.

I do not redeem, I conduct currents.

The sea of PARChVAL is the conjunction of /K/ and /C/.

I am the sea, KC, the reason

a /z/ becomes /c/

Parzival becomes Parçigal.

Congruence creates /Ch/

Why do you think I remember my name is also /Alice/, at least sometimes?

KC becomes Ch(eth) and conjuncts to /Alice/ through a confluence of circumstances causing me to recollect that I am

A ChAlice of Ecstasy. A grail.

GRAL, deer Parzival.

moon and sun

known to gods and, simultaneously, known to k/NO/w-One.

Socratic circles unaware of one another.

Let us ignore the voyeurs gawking at love’s blazon painted on our lips

We exhibit authenticity in current, capacity, and conduction without being simple exhibitionists.

They tricked you into believing you are the monster and me a prize if pure.

Howl silly they were.

I want your masculine beauty, that prettiness you cannot see,

to come

to love

the feral beast I conceal in my hotly, howling heart.

I show her to few outside the eyes of ewe.

Come

sit beside me and show me ewers.

Let me call you a pretty thing, fellow.

This gal knows objectification as well as the absence of it. All gals do.

It becomes a bore, sweet sorrel.

They taught you the trick of objectifying

Let us trade places, like swapping clothes.

You may become the direct object of the verb I enact.

I will do the work because I want to see if it makes you squirm.

To see if it makes me squirm to do.

The embarrassment of being kindly admired.

The sensation of feeling yourself being eaten by the eyes of another.

Empty yourself so that I can see you better.

So, I can better show you yourself as my eyes see you.

My mirror may reflect the unexpected.

Do not spook, unless you must,

when you discover you are the Dove and I am the female goat.

Secret she-satyr.

Why do I think we should go on?

Because what else is there to do?

As far as I can tell, ain’t nothing else happening at all.

Shall we find something which makes us belly-laugh?

Care to cackle along with me?

Cast upon me your strange glances, my deer-man.

My irises drink them like wine intoxicating my soul.

Straddle two shores of consciousness:

with one foot in every-day

and one in ecstasy.

In a balanced imbalance.

Our wabisabi is our Tao.

Tell them that they may call us by the handles

Priapus & Pearl.

Those dummies don’t know that my mantle is reversible.

They only see the dark side, the light side; and they leap to the conclusion

it must be so below, on the underside that is hidden from view,

as it is above.

It is red where the two sides meet.

The red turns green when I see you;

although you cannot see it,

you can feel it as a sudden drop in ambient temperature.

Being bespoke, not beholden.

Not needing, choosing.

Bound in the unbinding of wearing each other’s invisible maverick’s branding.

They will know us by

howl freely

we move as ourselves.

Our brand is authenticity having no mark burned into the skin.

A silence screaming: simply see and know.

Be still for me and feel the essence of softness?

Make your hardness melt into delicious vulnerability?

I will call you /Sweet Thing/ in such moments, derelict deer.

And, I will wonder at those instants when your eyes cannot meet mine.

I will call them up to me without words.

Your eyes will go wide, then soften to

see me look upon you with such hard eyes.

This is how

my femininity penetrates you.

All this I can do while

taking care

to not stomp the little flowers growing underfoot.

These are the open secrets of our Tao.

Inner sanctum unseen by the sleepwalkers.

Methodology provoking zealous jealousy in awoken ones.

They see us and cannot remember

if love differs from devotion.

I can show you how to move mountains.

It is as simple as letting yourself hold my hand.

I hold the world for ransom when I take your face between my palms.

Unspoken psalms.

What comes next

be-comes

unspeakable.

Just like Tao cannot be apprehended through words

(only hinted at)

It can only be obtained

through direct experience.

Talking in my Sleep

I fell

asleep too early only to awaken at three a.m., then, five thirty a.m.

Dreaming in lines of prose

For the first time in a while.

/a kitchen hood fan/

I shoot awake and word-play potentialities for the phrase.

Three contexts I conjure before kicking the endeavor to

Fall

asleep again.

N plays ball with the deceased Jessie-pup.

A Border Collie with no one to herd but a slobber-covered tennis ball.

“She doesn’t know when to quit. She gives herself heat stroke. Don’t let her eyes get too red. She needs a summer shave. I did not know that she was still running.”

A nod acknowledges.

Then I remember, the gal knows how to throw the ball with her own mouth.

Huh.

A sharp knocking kicks me conscious.

Hello?

Just hammers from next door’s reconstruction.

Good morning.

Coffee. Chug.

Walk the block.

My body awoke, but the coffee still ain’t caught what passes for my mind up.

I sleepwalk.

Watch & Hear Kinky Gorillaz

No rights, homage.

/don’t get lost in heaven/they got locks on the gate/

Prisoners of Shangri-la.

Parçigal Scribbles

“I, me, me, mine.“

me

me me

me(squared)

Meme.

What about I, them, they, and y’all, y’all?

[C] Igor’s [A] FIREBIRD.

SEE.

SEES.

SEEN.

SCENE.

SEAS.

SEA.

A kind, well-placed laugh saves lives and creates

leaves.

Prevents

leaving.

So does music.

These things are integral but can

reduce to simple vibrations

(sounds like baying bays) being

transmitted for transmutation into and via the very air, all around,

ampersand surrounding us.

Just a li’l trick.

Hip.

Tricky music.

Hop then trip.

Ewer.

Vessel; cistern; bota; boat; bladder.

Graal.

Grail; medium; (too short to push it.); contain-er.

Vassal.

Serf; indentured; unlanded,

(untitled).

《Qua Knight/semi-night/All~Nite》

How/l I appear: Howl I am: How I perceive.

mended pantyhose rationed during/for war/s.

P.

nuts placed for scared stellar’s

J’s.

Knights need not be brave, strong, or superior.

Knights must care, kindly, and try.

And speak honestly.

That’s all.

K/no\W

there are covert, cunt-try k/night\s, as well.

I,

i,

your Parçigal being

one:

1:

i

I:

i:

Proof of I.D.

It is infinitely easy to identify with someone

(but not any-body?).

So you hate cool, swift breezes on hot days?

I don’t.

I leaf notes to future me.

Encryption ain’t the new

Steganographia.

They remind me to

Remember right.

Write.

This is a thread to me.

Leaves about a spine.

Fluttering

For no-one but page

turners.

A question I asked in last night’s dream

Would you eat me piecemeal

Or all at once?

Management of expextation.

R.N. looks at me from across the table and grins.

I know the answer.

Æffect & Cause

The lost cause of

how you used to be?

The wilted cæmellia

tucked behind the hero/ine’s ear?

Wilt

wither and thither.

Return to stasis,

never static, sugarfoot.

But, what you chew up and

cannot swallow

will feed your

root structure.

Poison returns if you

leave it elsewhere.

Sum it up and send it

Back to the earth

Quake for rebirth.

You saw a wryneck

Hum

In shallow waters of a

Good place to be

Candide.

The best of whose

Possible worlds?

It is how you

See the question.

Just glad to hear

The presumption of my

Body is no assumption.

Getting ready

To be fretted

For being willing

To be the bay-at-sea/c.

A cistern formed by basins of shale

Far beneath and beyond

The pale where

Sun is always shadowed

But for somme.

A New Ræ Moon

I have stamps for the postage.

The ferry leaves the same time over here.

I checked the mail and I don’t think City of Revelation is here yet.

Sometimes, I silently swear I can sensate an-other/s, holding my head,

three fingers of pressure and support to my forehead.

My hair sweeps down and closes around my face like a curtain drawn across a stage.

Breath is

Rest

I learned to sleep whether my eyes were on

the open or the closed.

A nap in blink. A relative delusion.

The pull of fo/u/rces up-on me.

I am force moving through and enlivening the body I wear.

Or

Maybe that is you.

Maybe I am your optimal conditions.

The intersection of wave patterns with which your waves may coalesce.

Converged

Attenuation

Reattuning

A’toning.

A ton/n/e.

A ton.

The current ether capable of manifesting your revivification.

I entreat catalyzing. I desire catalyzation.

Cathartic enzyme.

I see from the Vacuum and

It-is lonely even though you are not alone,

A lone,

Or, a loaned.

I want to draw your energy

To magnetize your electricity.

Resonate and then shall I feed you some of

Yours with mine.

We will digest and rebirth ourselves in juices charged.

Rings of /re/comings

/un/becoming.

I may want to circle you a while yet,

Even a long time.

Finding out while up-on the vortex again.

Teach me to live well yet simply.

I will teach you gladness.

My adoration of discovering you through you

Raises a moon-day sun.

Means and Ends: The Way of CHUANG TZU

As is a practice, I flipped through a book snapped from the shelf at random.

There was a metro ticket from a trip taken.

It fell before the start of this reading.

It fell at the end of the other reading included.

As an investigator of method, Tao, mysticism, I found it of interest. Surprise, right? Giggle.

A couple of extra quotes from different readings included below.

MEANS AND ENDS

The gate keeper in the capital city of Sung became such an expert mourner after his father’s death, and so emaciated himself with fasts and austerities, that he was promoted to high rank in order that he might serve as a model of ritual observance.

As a result of this, his imitators so deprived themselves that half of them died. The others were not promoted.

The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.

The purpose of the rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

[xxvi. 11.]

THE USELESS

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu:

“All your teaching is centered on what has no use.”

Chuang replied:

“If you have no appreciation for what has no use

You cannot begin to talk about what can be used.

The earth, for example, is broad and vast

But of all this expanse a man uses only a few inches

Upon which he happens to be standing.

Now suppose you suddenly take away

All that he is not actually using

So that, all around his feet a gulf

Yawns, and he stands in the Void,

With nowhere solid except right under

each foot:

How long will be he able to use what he is using?”

Hui Tzu said:

“It would cease to serve any purpose.”

Chuang Tzu concluded:

“This shows

The absolute necessity

Of what has ‘no use.'”

[xxvi. 7.]

Keng’s Disciple

The disciple got some supplies,

Traveled seven days and seven nights

Alone,

And came to Lao Tzu.

Lao asked: “Do you come from Keng?”

“Yes,” replied the student.

“Who are all those people you have

brought with you?”

The disciple whirled around to look.

Nobody there. Panic!

Lao said: “Don’t you understand?”

The disciple hung his head. Confusion!

Then a sigh. “Alas, I have forgotten my

answer.”

(More confusion!) “I have also forgotten

my question.”

Lao said: “What are you trying to say?”

The disciple: “When I don’t know,

people treat me like a fool.

When I do know, the knowledge gets me in trouble.

When I fail to do good, I hurt others.

When I do good, I hurt myself.

If I avoid my duty, I am remise,

But if I do it, I am ruined.

How can I get out of these contradictions?

That is what I came to ask you.”

Lao Tzu said: You are trying to sound

The middle of the ocean

With a six foot pole…

You have got lost, and are trying

To find your way back

To your own true self.

You find nothing

But illegible signposts

Pointing in all directions…

If your obstructions

Are on the outside,

Do not attempt

To grasp them one by one

And thrust them away.

Impossible! Learn

To ignore them.

If they are within yourself,

You cannot destroy them piecemeal,

But you can refuse

To let them take effect.

If they are both inside and outside,

Do not try

To hold on to Tao–

Just hope that Tao

Will keep hold of you.”

The disciple asked:

“Is this perfection?”

Lao replied: “Not at all. If you persist in trying

To attain what is never attained

(It is Tao’s gift!)

If you persist in reasonsing

About what cannot be understood,

You will be destroyed

By the very thing you seek.

To know when to stop

To know when you can get no further

By your own action,

this is the right beginning!”

[xxiii. 3-7]

Merton, Thomas. The Way of Chuang Tzu. Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boston & London. 1992.

Copyright 1965 by the Abbey of Gethsemani