The Woman Behind The Dream: Chopin and the Timeless Tuning

“Because perhaps to my misery, I already have my perfect one whom I have without saying a word, served faithfully for a year now. Of whom I dream and in whose memory the adagio of my concerto has been written.” Chopin, The Women Behind the Music

In the memory of such early genius as Chopin, our cultural continuity glorifies bygone eras with a creative resurgence only known to Western opulence. And looking out from the window of one's own, the sparks of desire light. At first, softly, the Earth burns. Then, the air plumes in a haze of smoke. The bonfire of magic absolves the moon of its light, and the stars become mere smoky display. Inside, and from underneath, the imagination fires the kindling of co-unity with the mind.

___________

And in such as a bout of unspent night, where slumber is deep and each morning fresh, I woke into dream. The longing test of emotive fire, the blinding seed of passion instilled. To work, and to find solace in worldly accomplishment deceived! The wakeful night spun an inglorious frost, a loosened hold on the sunless firmament. 

The Night with the Genii of Study and Love by Pedro Américo

A summit revealed the greatest of depths as the wounded sky bled rain and ice, brewing over the darkening clouds. We traversed impossible concave stone, sharp as a split mirror, the ice moved our flesh towards the brink. In a vivid flash, I saw memory itself, bear unto the apex of Earth. The stars crowned the lonely top as we gazed into our battered arms with hands of ice and stone. 

Storm in the Mountains by Albert Bierstadt

From the greatest of heights, the shadow of a man fell to die. Scattered in the colourless flush of snow, the piercing rock dashed all hope. Still, with chests full of heart, we climbed on and to the frozen prison. Alone, I emptied my eyes and climbed the last step. The day sped past in a hearse, as a vision of unity stung my heart with its sole truth: alone with the Alone. 

____________

To close the album, "Evocations: district.Columbia" the track, "Untrained Timeless Tuning" consists of improvisations on piano (keyboard) and xaphoon (bamboo sax). The age-old American sound of piano and woodwind hearkens to the unique sonic fusion that is completely unique and characteristic of the country. Especially in the use of a certain type of improvisation, the classic sounds evince an internal discovery of not only the human soul, but the soul of the land known to Americans as home.

In such a time as today, when war after war knocks at our doorstep, we can be reminded of the cultural heritage that more prominently identifies us as a unified people: music, the one common language of humanity. So, the sound is masked with electronic innovation into the 21st century, where the piano sound is a controller, and the woodwind is a recent invention. The first xaphoon was made only forty years ago on the island of Hawaii.

Further, the title, "Untrained Timeless Tuning" speaks to that harmony that is basic to all regardless of class, education, ethnicity or religious identification. There is a way to shared harmony, and it emerges through a music untrained by the classism and privilege of modern higher education. Whether speech, or instrumentation, the music that is untrained, while in tune with the essence of human life as pain, raw and blunt, is the very timelessness that high art seeks to capture. That timelessness is bred in every interaction and exchange whether within or between us always.

When we speak of Re-Writing our STORY, as in the chapbook wherein this piece is written, this very realization is the voice that carries our experience to such wonderful stretches of the imagination; present and transformational. So, the traditional keyboard and woodwind sound is transformed into an electronic movement of triumph in contemporary sound creativity.  

The following six-poem chapbook, Re-Writing our STORY, is the final series of works from the district.Columbia collection. The pieces reflect the penultimate phase of true revolution as a spiritual transformation of one's narrative. That is, one re-imagines their perspective through a revolutionary act of storytelling. This kind of storytelling reflects personal truths, daily experiences and common points of view with regard to the larger narratives and mythologies that consume unknowing minds through belief, propaganda and pride. The feature piece, Untrained Timeless Tuning, was published with Poydras Review in August of 2012.

Re-Writing Our STORY

The Poppy and the Pride of Death: Interpretations on a Famous War Poem

Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny by Claude Monet

"Poppies have long been used as a symbol of sleep, peace, and death: sleep because of the opium extracted from them, and death because of the common blood-red color of the red poppy in particular. In Greek and Roman myths, poppies were used as offerings to the dead." [1]

"Another candidate for the psychoactive drug is an opioid derived from the poppy. The cult of the goddess Demeter may have brought the poppy from Crete to Eleusis; it is certain that opium was produced in Crete." [2]

References

[1] L. Frank Baum, Michael Patrick Hearn, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, p. 173

[2] Karl Kerenyi.Dionysos.Archetypal image of indestructible life.p 24

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields. [John McCrae]

The above poem, written by John McCrae, is one of the important war poems in history. Today, it is read aloud by veterans at remembrance ceremonies with solemn intention. The symbol and metaphor poppy, here depicted, is especially relevant for the topic of war. 

The poppy symbolizes death. "In Flander's Fields the poppies blow" would then mean that in Flander's Fields, the dead sleep in peace. The second line further supports this. The last two lines, "We shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flander's Fields" emphasizes the simple metaphor of the poppy as a symbol of eternal rest, however, in this sense, the poem transcends symbolic import and represents the pride of the soldier as immortal, and sleepless in constant struggle. This is a poem to incite emotion for the dead, and where we might once believe they lay in respite from worldly cause, we are wrong. So the poem is a call to action, "Take up your quarrel with the foe". 

Further, it symbolizes how the poppy is a metaphor for the illusory nature of war, as seen from outside the veteran perspective. It uniquely distinguishes the veteran, whether alive or dead, as having an eternal place in the battlegrounds and in the generations of youth to follow. The poppy symbolizes our ignorance as non-military, as we remember the soldiers who fight on. 

And so, in the land of poppies, Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history wages on. Remembrance, in the metaphor of the poppy, can also fog our vision of the dead, and of their eternal struggle for rebirth in the fields where men are laid low. 

Peace author Arthur Clark once said the poppy symbolizes all who die in war, not just the soldiers of one's own nation, but every victim of war, every innocent child, mother, elder, the destroyed lives and communities. The poppy is the drug of pride, and like all drugs, while instilling disillusionment, it reveals truths of the human condition. 

_________

The inborn drug of sleep has yet to bear new visions fruitful and enduring. I travel eastward towards the desolate earth, and find matchless beauty in the serene quiet of petrified earth, the resonance of death lingers like a gentle breeze.  

Westward! (RK)

Son of the Brown Earth (RK)

Hiker's Meadow (RK)

To The Mountaintop! (RK)

The Canyon Calls Me Forth (RK)

__________

An untouched grand awe
Landed finally to rest beside the sickening mildew

Mulch-pressed nude lakes
Praised unto the natural moon

Lowering close over the beached horizon
A thirteenth name

Pleasing those raised on the island to visit their blood
Despite being insane

A malformed genetic waste
Purchasing birth

Towering over the healthy dead, grovelling
Ensnared by the angry temptress who walks entombed in mind

And spiritually blessed beyond our mundane knowledge,
She treasures the feminine life

...

To put to death philosophy, and cursed forms of common language
Now replaced with magic and divinity

Inert
Enough to overact above the spilled heights

Grandiose unity
Frontiersmen who bite at raw flesh and faint under the jeering of native rumblings

In the overcast dusk of Western humanity
Fallen alas to the bitter womb of civilization

And the crass membrane stew of our unalienable forebears
Freaking us out

Into stomachs without mouths
To feed on the juice of the horned phantom

And only lick from inside
The wounds stinging our nameless pride

excerpts from "Untouched Grande Awe"

The Madman Within: Valery and the Personal Energy Crisis

Paul Valery par Jullien

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."

 
"Breath, dreams, silence, invincible calm, you triumph." 

"To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth." 

"At the end of the mind, the body. But at the end of the body, the mind." 

"A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key." 

Paul Valery

Here, I continue on the themes of an essay regarding a theory of sleep cycles, and the natural course of the human experience of time as espoused in my previous post, Metaphors in the Art of Goya: A Theory of Unconscious Development. Beyond the bounds of the twenty-four hour time bomb, the seer lives to posit the cyclical nature of time in the natural course of creativity as it rises and falls based on the "internal clock" or "the internal orbit" as I will more aptly describe it. Leading through to an experience of time in the twenty-four hour day as much like the seasons, at different stages of life, or the year, we will be naturally disposed to certain times of the day. 

To keep a fixed schedule of waking and sleep throughout one’s life is unnatural and unhealthy, leading to an incomplete understanding of one’s self in relation to the ecological rhythms of the earth, and one’s own nature. Put more concisely, the mad genius intellect of Paul Valery writes, "A man who is of 'sound mind' is one who keeps his inner madman under lock and key." So, continuing on this theme, I would say that, a great foreshadowing to the resolution in thought from the prose essay writings on SoJourn(al) can culminate in formulating a creative practice so that any person can discover the certain time of day that best suits their activity and temperament. 

When allowed to our own devices, we naturally settle into a certain time of day based on the kind of activity with which we are engaged as our primary focus in life. For example, if one is studying texts, the predawn hours may be optimal in terms of the energetic rhythms and ecological harmony involved in the practice and the setting in which one lives. This could potentially lead to invaluable developments as a repertoire of useful information for employers seeking to offer work-life balance and optimal efficiency and motivation based on the kind of work in which they are engaged. 

All of this, in both theory and practice, is based on variables of ecological distinction (the character of a place), individual temperament (how one relates to a certain time of day), and the focused activity (one’s primary work or occupation). Regardless of the person or type of work, with the application of guiding principles, one can find a harmonious relationship with time and productivity through attention to details of place (ecological awareness), energy (sleep cycles), and activity (work medium). 

__________

He is silent and still as stone. His face a petrified grey, staring blankly into an off-white wall. His mind has long gone, and yet his body remains. 

The Battle between Carnival and Lent (detail) by Peter Bruegel the Elder

A rodent gnaws into its raw skin. Dirt falls from its brittle hair. The animal dies before my eyes. I was happy and excited to see what once meant my life, and now...

________

As the tired groaning of racist America brews a proud glory of personal despair,
more,
An interpersonal contemplation on the theme of color:
Hair,
Eyes,
Fingers,
Pubis,
Nose,
And Shape,
Body of form,
And the formless desire

White against the all-escaping cloud of solar obscurity,
Who rushed civilization into the neighborhood of the absent & poor

Breaking the long arduous fast
with an unwelcoming community,
founded not on Love,
only on a hope to pray
before the Cyclops’ rise
over the crossed horizon
...

Stretching beyond the bounds of individual reaction,
To choice.

excerpts from "The socialist epoch"

Metaphors in the Art of Goya: A Theory of Unconscious Development

The Dream (preparatory drawing) by Francisco de Goya

The Dream (print) by Francisco de Goya

"The dream of reason produces monsters." Francisco de Goya (source)

The purpose for exhibiting the creative process of a master painter as Francisco de Goya, showing his initial sketch, and final print, runs parallel to a theory I have in relation to the role of the unconscious, and its impacts on the life of both the sleeper and the awake. 

Firstly, my theory is founded on lived experience. The foundation is as follows: If a person follows their natural sleep-awake patterns, without conscious intervention, the body cycles through an internal clock more expansive than the twenty-four hour day. Incrementally, each day one wakes later, sleeps later, and eventually earlier. In the course of over a year of practicing this experiment of consciousness, I have found the twenty-four hour clock to be limiting and a mere fixed point around which my sleep and waking cycles orbit, as a celestial body around its true source of gravity. 

Is this an effect of seasonal, environmental, or psychological pressures? The theoretical part now kicks in. With the exhibition of Goya's creative process in visual representing the night of Man, he is accosted by a host of demons, and in turn, upon waking, those demons become monsters of reason. So, if we allow the regenerative natural patterns of sleeping and waking to unfold, with complete abandon and in lieu of the normative twenty-four hour clock, we give way to a natural creative energy sourced deep within our unconscious, that nourishes our very life-breath with the heartbeat of self-knowledge. 

With this, the world of dream is merely a doorway, as is a metaphor or a myth, towards a more holistic regenerative consciousness of self-awakening. 

See related post: In Defence of Sleep: Regenerative Sleep Cycles of Archaic Man

__________

After hours downtown mall. Winter night. Midwestern city. The street is dim, and I stand, as to wait for a companion, or a bus home. Alone, my eyes scan the glass exit doors with a longing nostalgia for company. As I consider my absolute solitude, two prostitutes brush up against me. They closed in out of nowhere. After a moment of disdain, I begin to hear an inner curiosity.

Cocotte on the Road by E.L. Kirchner

"How much?" I ask, imploringly. "500 dollars" she says with a soft smirk. "I don't have that much." I respond, with dry humour, having never intended to act on my curious insides. Surprisingly, my wife steps through the hall behind us and into the background. She sets up her instrument and begins to play. I drift, flying towards the awake. Her unconscious body, her subtle spirit had called me forth, from the fantastic night of isolation.

___________

What of human sound,
The frequent lust to prepare noise in strength of intellectual wonder
and produce unfathomable beauty
            of the entire body
                        descending to and from the ear’s tragic centering
In our musical society, and what to compare “human music” to the grandiose law of nature, expressed in the mere calls of bird and beast revolving their unchallenged voices around the veil of a gross acoustic hall,
            whose rendering dreams an unforgiving welcome to the Earth’s living
            hall,
                        led to a thoughtless demeanor
                                    yet within the mind of man
...

to find a source,
                                                not necessarily of communication
                                                            between human, bird and god,
                                                but a direct connection
                                                            that spells mystery
                                                                        from an inspired gift to all
her sound.

excerpts from "Of human sound"

In Defence of Sleep: Regenerative Sleep Cycles of Archaic Man

“In the age of the rude beginnings of culture, man believed that he was discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the origin of all metaphysics. Without dream, mankind would never have had occasion to invent such a division of the world.” From Nietzsche’s Human, All-Too-Human, aphorism no. 5 

 There's a great lesson I have learned during the writing of this arts weblog resting on the role of the unconscious in the creative life. Firstly, let it be said that this weblog is a compendium of writings, research and dialogue on the wealth of inner inspiration that all of humanity possesses by the sheer facts of physiology: we dream. 

I have learned this basic lesson: sometimes in a person's life, they must be allowed to rest. Occasionally, every person must be allowed to sleep to bear witness to the whole nature of their lives inside and out, to witness the natural course of their consciousness as it dips and lingers in unconscious and semi-conscious states. Are we prepared for this timeless need? 

Truly, depending on the individual, one may require years of extended sleep cycles, to allow the mind to explore the natural caverns of its own self-regeneration through the deep psychic image-language of our internal/eternal life that lies exposed only when the body is at full rest. I can imagine that in more matured human histories and traditions, the seed power of meditation engages the body/mind in a life of inner exploration, even more profoundly restful and intuitive than the subconscious dream state. 

As we are not keen, and even unable, to allow the natural course of our inner lives to take hold and draw us inward for much needed psychological rejuvenation, there is imbalance in the world. So, we are guided by a higher power we sometimes call fate, or even God, but in both realities, is actually the seed of our own imaginative creativity too deeply buried to receive the light of our conscious recognition, reflection and inspiration. 

The old, or second world, that Nietzsche refers to in Human, All Too Human, has been divided and cut off from human life in an age of serious neglect, ignorance and escape from our own inner natures. Thus, there is imbalance, and we continue to deny that we are human, all too human. 

___________

What a massive elevator! I arrive at a doorstop to a metallic behemoth of elevation. Inside, a group of stewardesses welcome with open smiles. As I step inside, I am filled with anxiety. Am I ready to ascend to such heights? The levers at the side of the door are reminiscent of a plane cockpit. With a hefty forward heave, one lady initiates our ascent. The ground of Earth is suddenly imbued with an all-pervasive light. 

Light Paint by Rjcastillo

Huddled in a corner, fearing for my life. I notice the elevator has stopped rising. Has it been hours? Days? Years? I had gone blind, deaf and nearly faced death by astonishment as the incredible rise continued unceasingly. I am weak. I can barely look out into the world, whatever world lies beyond the doors at this elevation. The stewardesses are machine-faced, and continue to smile with an unsettling clone-like smirk. I need to descend. This is not my stop. My brain and face go brittle with overstimulated light energy pouring in through the walls, and it's overwhelming. Suddenly, I can't breathe. I am stunned. 

abstract photography by Getüm

Mysteriously, I am back at ground level in the blink of an eye. Looking into the doors of the elevator, the stewardesses welcome with their inhuman smiles, pasted like ice sculptures under their empty eyes. Do I board again? Can I rise this time? Or, return to the world? 

____________

Observing the skull-emancipated wisdom,
Risking vertigo and the sure endless night
Bringing sugar, tea and a companion’s brethren tide,
Bracing a felt language

excerpt from "Manual speech, a felt language"

Goethe and the Existential Life of Modernity

Ginko Biloba, a poem by Goethe

Who are ye that thus rudely banish slumber from my eyes? What mean these vague and insolent glances? Why this fearful procession? With what dream of horror come ye to delude my half awakened soul? Goethe's Egmont, Opening lines of Act V. Scene IV. 

A play about liberty under the thumb of oppression, my preliminary inkling about the Egmont drama is that it forecasts the oppressive momentum that lives within, and supports, heroic independence. I have been contemplating the uniquely liberating present that I experience with my love. American and Vietnamese, we are from two countries whose people, not long ago, brutally killed each other. I wonder sometimes about our extended family relations. How is it possible that the same blood now joined today by love, once was spilt by hatred. As Goethe writes in the poem illustrated above, "Is it but one being single / Which as same itself divides? / Are there two which choose to mingle / So that one each other hides?"

Read my Letter to the Editor "Embracing Diversity" on BlackCoffeePoet 

& See a Collaborative Interview & Essay "Busking and Creative Ecology" by Vi An and myself on In Stereo Press

Previous Post on Goethe: To Dream in Red is to Uncover the Veil of Consciousness

________

I sat under the opaque cloudy open. A dark rain hovered in the misty atmosphere. The pressures of a battered mind fill my eyes with a salivating remorse. I've since exiled myself from a gathering in my city's core. Restless, I fill my mind with blank unease, ass wedged against the wintry pavement of a curb. This area is one of neglect and rage.

Street in Venice by John Singer Sargent

Checking my phone, I have a text. I'm to be on CBC Radio. A talk show host tells me my words are acid and wry. I'm paid. We've settled. The night lingers. I wade in thoughts of a lonely walk. I kill time, staring into the light of my phone. What's it come to? What's the noise? Why do I do this? After raising the question, I feel light enough to carry on. I stand up, and walk. I am a question.

_________

"Falling as a failed lilting feather from a broken wing

Clinging to the unforgiving cold mechanical dawn

Still dreaming an entire civilization

And how illusory, how ultimately disillusioned I am by my youth

Drained of all wicked savagery and raw earth

Into a vegetable gladness

Thawing next to a lone rock

Cracked by a lightning strike from the changeless ice age broth of sky

Almost infinitely long ago, and now rinsed, overly purified by the fresh rains

...

Fathers and mothers in my cultural upbringing
The writers, artists and musicians
Spouting intelligent insanity

From within forms called the book, record, image
All a lie before the transcendent spontaneity of creation from newfound inspiration
To be and do what feels harmonious and complete
...

Finger-pointing to stars and storm clouds
Washing away mud with a healing presence,
A profound humbling that presents power and at once feigns innocence

In departing from all with humility
Yet a fearless flesh-traded mastery over the air,
Stares eyeless into the stoned intuitive rendering"

excerpts from "Contemplation's Itch"

Seven Hours of Music: Natural Sounds of Subconscious Entrancement

When tired, listen. 

Music is the breath of life. 

Listen, I am tired. 

Asleep, I hear a visual language, 

A deeper mind. 

Music, now.

__________

She slips in the doorway while I lay in bed, listening. Grandma Nana’s come to pick me up for a day of visiting. Yet, aren’t those the footsteps of my wife? She enters with uncanny similarity.

A painting of the artist Kete Ephraim Marcus by Kete Ephraim Marcus 

A style of musical motion stamps on the floor of my eardrum with the gentle line of breath, issuing as her unspeaking voice through our apartment of dead morning air. She is memory, alive.

Morning, Interior by Maximillien Luce

As I wake to the glorious open space of an apartment, couched in the warm light of a restful morning, and my friend’s visiting. Apologetic and endeared, he respects my unconventional successes, gifting me seasonal greetings with the cheeky light of a sparkling card and pagan decoration.

Paris: In memory of the young deceased friend by Shalva Kikodze

We sit together in the freedom of being up and awake for the sun and its glowing gaze. The room is just so cool to comfort the body in an easy choice of soft, wooly over-garments. He begins to recite the melody of a waltz, for playing on the guitar.

Guitar and Pipe by Juan Gris

With heavenly beckoning, his sweet and delicate face points at the brown stand of Indonesian wood in the corner, my acoustic guitar. I repeat the melody, as it glides effortlessly on the airy surface of my mind.

_________

"The spiritual recluse

On a steep decline

Passing without Failure,

Churning with Thirst,

& Separated

from life"

excerpt from "Age of Fire"

A Joycean Saga of Psyche, Muse of Endless Night

Mary Ellen Bute's only feature, "Passages from James Joyce's 'Finnegan's Wake'" begins:

One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wide-awake language, cut-and-dry grammar and go-ahead plot. (James Joyce)

“History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” James Joyce, from Ulysses

As my sleep cycle changes, I wake later in the day. It is winter. I rise at sundown, fall at sunrise. The sun and I keep a syncopated rhythm of broken and drunken days. My consciousness rains down on my dreams with the lucid bearing of a child at home in the nonsense play of indecision and fear. I listen only to night. I am not a human. I am not adapted to earth. I am not a person. I am not adapted to houses. I am not. I am adapted to mind. I think, therefore I am not. 

_________

a blonde, a young woman, of especial high class, buries herself in the busy sheets of a paid for hotel room as she awaits her dowry, and her parents exit, content with the happening, for she is to be their high dollar ticket, and they are proud 

Blonde Nymph by Paul Emile Chabas

and in the fading night, she switches rooms to bed in a flophouse, the creaking wooden floors spell prostitution and drug rings, alcohol seethes from speakeasy days, and she cowers belligerently in her room, a knock at the door bleeds into her chest with suicidal unction 

Metropolitan angle (angle whore) by Hans Baluschek

as she opens candidly, two brothers of separate age walk in gently, greeting her with an offering of simple company, yet as the night creaks on with their failed step over the late seeds of a youthful calling, their clothes are shed 

Youth in a Blue Coat by Sasha Schneider

and then she is open arms as they both slide neatly under the covers of anonymous life, and as hours pass, they become good friends, while the older brother hangs his head by the window, all are naked and congenial, the two younger playfully brush paint over a great canvas blocking the doorway and most of the wall

Beatrice Addressing Dante by William Blake

she says, “you’re a fucking brilliant painter!” the Blakean shapes form over the imagistic head of the younger brother at play with the feminine creation as he eyes his brother to gain inspiration into the form and build that supports the color and stroke of their altered midnight state of sudden friendship 

Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid's Garden by John William Waterhouse

a hollowing filled with laughter and unending play, and in other rooms, an inkling leaks through the creaking floorboards and drip-coffee ceiling, filters of sound are pierced through with eager ears, willing to join, and finding true human pleasure of heart in the abuses of Psyche’s night 

_________

An irony to amuse
This, my, and our patchwork of brains,
To walk, or march,
Perfectly balanced in dress
With the polluted eye of an urban observer
Taking in the sidewalk trash as the stuff of inspiration
...

In one outlandish, unruly day,
Simultaneously, all vibrations still,
To skeletal ghosts, ravaging the blank canvas of history
With painted cries

In the evil fornication on a wine-lush express
Down each and every late Saturday street
Dead with incestuous chores

In popularized & Westernized dreaming
Gone, gently in the summer prairie heat,
Dealing prostitution’s cape
...

Breeding a kindred sisterhood
In the tall, and greatly embodied community of passionate grace
In today’s great human victory against the undead tyranny
...

Cyclical pain follows in succession
To unchain confederates, bothered,
From American poverty
Filling the sobbing eyes of migrants, sacrificed
To a brutalized ending, motherless & lost

excerpts from "1st Independence"

Alchemical Poetry of Terence McKenna and "the last Renaissance Man"

"Awake is where the laws of physics are fully operable...I've found by observing sleep, and some of you may recall the motto in Athanasius Kircher...that's chiseled over the alchemist's doorway, I can't do it in Latin but it says, "While Sleeping, Watch' 

I've noticed that while going to sleep there is a barrier, a place in the process of going to sleep, that is like the mercurial edge, it's a river, it's a zone of hypnagogia...true hallucination...

At any given moment on the planet, because of the way the planet is, as a thing, some considerable percentage of human beings are asleep always, and many are awake. And so if the world soul is made of the collective consciousness of human beings, then it is never entirely awake, it is never entirely asleep, it exists in...some kind of indeterminate zone...

The real truth that dare not speak itself is that no one is in control, absolutely no one...It's like trying to control a dream, you see. 

The global vesting of the species is somehow unfolding the logic of a dream. Well now a Jungian would say, no surprise here, history is the collective dream of humanity, it is run by the archetypal energies of humanity...

You choose to be asleep or partially asleep or fully awake...if in fact we exist inside some kind of morphogenetic field that is created by the sum total of human minds on the planet, and if in fact in half or more of those minds in any given moment, the rules of the dream hold sway, then it is no surprise that when we make our way into society, or just when we live our lives there is an eeriness to it, there's a fatedness to it, there's a plotedness to it, we are inside some kind of engine of narrative...Greg Egan and others have suggested that this could even be a form of recorded medium...you can see the thumbprints of editors on our reality if you are truly paying attention...

...it is the plasticity of historical time and the acceleration, a sense of an out-of-control spin-up or spin-down into new domains of possibility, that is the strongest evidence at hand that we in some kind of dream.

 The world is made of language...reality can therefore be hacked...if it's code, then it is far more deeply open to manipulation than we ever dared dream."

I stared into the posthumous cyber webs of knowledge and insight, uncovered from the alchemical poetry of Terence McKenna and other renegade pop philosophers of the American psychedelic era. Often listening and reading through the dawn, I touched the cosmic giggle in the meeting of minds, my young sensitivities saturated by the egoless dreamscapes of the oft-unspoken myths of immemorial lifeways in the light of a kind of thought that assumes the entire body of Humanity and the World in a universal freedom of sight and meaning fruiting on the branch of the Tree of Knowledge as a clear and lucid dream of sensual immersion in the core and nature of mind. 

Visit the Alchemical Archives for a fantastic resonance of thought!

_________

the island forest, cycling with parents, where am I leading them? where are you leading me? they gaze interminably confused as we map out the vineyard over a restaurant stave, the dripping loss and upended commotion, a swill of pain in the forgetting distance, they follow diligently beyond manicured brush and antique streets. 

Crescent of Houses II (Island Town) by Egon Schiele

at a rest, I stop into a hotel, and serendipitously meet a band of world music ghosts, swimmingly seeking my attention in their anxiety, and they are old friends, I promise to return, yet with bigger gripes out front, my family argues over plates and glasses in their passive-aggressive fate, and I saunter off, towards a third direction, a middle way, of indifferent pastures in the awake forest of billions of gods

Burial place of Hone Heke, Bay of Islands by Alfred Sharpe

the damp leaves are cool in the thanksgiving autumn wind, as I step forward towards a drying pond, and above its shores, lounging in a rest chair, atop the indiscernible ground of multicolored arboreal death, my professor of ethnobotany, what eyes of fire and livable sight, she sees me above her book, and I admire her smiling countenance in all its simple glow 

Vali and Sugriva Fighting, Folio from the Dispersed 'Shangri Ramayana' by Unknown

and then, to my right, through to the thick of woods, a billow of smoke, and an old friend, luring me forth into the wilderness bed, yet with cooling head, I steam off in another direction, leaving his darkening crown of endless dreads and staggering worldview to dry with the faint bearing of the unreflective pond behind us

_________

The unwritten page, a calming exercise, a psychic intuitive drive measured by release

           

In the catalogue of words strung into structured grooves

     In our common sonic language,

     Yet to scalp the music in speech & create 

     Only the pale imprint and seed

...

     Mindlessly astir on into the human binge on space, land & foam

...

As we enjoy the insane destruction,

The chaotic living wilderness

Dreaming up deadly bared weak sleep into our holy lawless cast,

With land forsaken by mistreated burdens

And the murderous pride in a grieving home

excerpt from "A Gorgeous Nudity"

Requiem For Our Unconscious Friendship With Spirit, a Paradise Lost

In the description to the above post of Zbigniew Preisner's "Requiem for my friend" written to commemorate the death of brilliant filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, a quote from John Milton reads, "Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen, both when we sleep and when we awake." From Paradise Lost, Book IV Lines 675-6

"Evil into the mind of God or man
May come and go, so unreproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind: Which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,
Waking thou never will consent to do."

From Paradise Lost, Book V, Lines 117-121

These lines speak to me today, as in yesterday's dream I experienced from myself such burning intense rage as I never feel for anything, never mind, as in my turmoiled sleep, directed at the smile of a new friend. And in the day after, the crooked seething in waking light transformed to deja vu and the peaceable contemplation of homeless sky, observing the street life and empty catharsis of the unreproved recollection of day, gathering myself inwardly to confront the daimonic psyche through an entropy of silence, night and dreams.

See my Reflection on Preisner's "Silence, Night and Dreams"

________

Two Latin men, both uncles of the word, they are as family, a safe haven of fraternity. Their abode, in relative disrepair, offers the kind of humble solace for a younger counterpart such as myself. When my family arrives to take me away, I shed tears of remorse for having become so loyal to their gentle friendship. Almost having left with a few of their possessions, they do gift us a curious metal mug, bedecked with silver broaches and a handle of aesthetic opulence. They warn us about a nearby volcano. If we are to mount, they say, we should not mount the East side, as the activity may fuse in a plume in that direction. 

With naïve innocence, adventurous, I lead my parents up the steaming mountain. Near the summit, the rumbling foment cracks the ground in a spray of unwelcomingly hot earth. Racing down to the foot of the mountain, the flowing lava is within earshot as the steam fills our lungs. Before the raging momentum engulfs us in its deathly cast, I raise the mysterious chalice to the sizzling winds and behold, the steam is vacuumed with the power of the entire energy of the volcanic surge into the mug, the handle remaining tepid at the touch. 

________

Interpretation: "Borges on Volcanic Riddles of the Unconscious"

________

"that squirrely rascal who defended his money based on numbers and licks,
a body caressed with growing sores,
living excrement fumigating the stringy jewish marriage,
wafting scrawny alzheimer's brains over the stovetop dream,
fanned and purring as the asian lynx,
whose stormy eyes behold the revolution
behind the First Kingdom's daring ring"

...

"where words exist as bones and sculpted mountains
fire myths into the freed air"

- excerpts from "unreliable fortune" 

Lucid Remedies Affects Waking Consciousness

Lucid Dream Tea from Algonquin Tea Company is a wild-crafted sweet gale / bog myrtle. Drink 1 cup, well-steeped before bed.

The tea has the effect of extraordinary stimulation, wherein the mind is active with constancy, which is why the normal state of consciousness carries over beyond the threshold of sleep. Beware, sleep on the tea is not as restful as without.

- testimony of a personal friend

__________ 

In Monterrey, Mexico, I am living in my old place with parents. I was the same age as now, though living with them. It’s funny because my Dad is dead. My brother was around but did not talk, he was just a presence. We had to pick up someone from my old elementary school. As we drove by, with my grandparents in the truck, we saw a big new door on the school. There is a park across from us. As we drove by in the park, we saw lots of birds. They were having a feast of food from the street vendors. There was an owl, crow, peacocks, turkeys and other strange birds. As we passed by the door, a girl shared a corn on the cob with a huge black turkey taller than her. The turkey would bite a few grains and the girl would bite from the outside. She was waiting to be picked up. We went around the corner and parked behind a tricycle. I got out of the car. I walked in the park and chased the birds. There were people there waiting for the kids. The birds got angry and the people ran away. Now the school is empty, all the kids have been picked up. I crossed the street and went in the school. A big patio is caked with mud. A few kids were playing soccer there. Since I was there to walk through the school, I searched for my old classroom without success, the school changed a lot. They had new buildings with big glass windows.

With my cousin, we received some coupons from the newspaper. Mine said “Monterrey” in big, red letters, handwritten as by a child. My cousin had a different piece of paper. I looked at his.

On another night under influence of the tea, I am with a group of people in an isolated cabin in the mountain wilderness. We are besieged by a ravenous pack of wolves. The cabin is invaded completely. All we have to fight back are pillows and straw brooms. 

_________

There is slight chance that the Dream Tea may affect daily waking consciousness, i.e. in the form of recurrent deja-vu as “dream characters” and “dream figments” however in life. In these cases the recurrent manifestations which trigger a dream-life liminal state are in the form of plants and certain characteristic features of people. The following stories are two examples.

In Michoacán, hiking through mountain range. I traveled much these days, walked a lot. On the corner of a road, tall up to the torso of a medium sized person standing with small, orange flowers in the shape of trumpets. Seeing the plant became a catalyst for dream recollection, it was as if the plant had existed purely in dream, though was interestingly present in my waking consciousness.    

If you’re in Mexico, this kind of person sticks out. He was 14, but looked 8. He looked like the main character from the film “The Blue Lagoon”. He was very blonde with curly hair, a strawberry or crystal blond. He liked to dress with a loin cloth and perform fire juggling. I arrived in Palenque and was hanging out with street drummers. Among them there was this kid, playing drums with a girl. I thought she was his mother. Later on, we stayed in the same place close to the ruins in Palenque. He asked me if I could buy gas for him for his fire show. He looked to young. That girl I saw with him wasn’t his mom. I helped him. He started his show on a street crossing. I collected the money. We got money at least to pay the hostel camp site and to get burgers. It was already dark and we were heading back to our place, some cabins near to the pyramids. He told me a bit of his story. He said he was 14, and fled home to look for his brother. His brother was a drum player and hitchhiker. He started telling me incredible stories like traveling to India and practicing mantras. We were hanging around a hippie commune with Hare Krishnas so I wouldn’t believe him. He sung mantras like, “Hare Hare Hare Hare Sham Bo”. I wondered how such a young kid traveled alone. He had his own tent, all by himself. I think he would have liked to travel with me, but I didn’t offer and he didn’t ask. This is a recurring situation with many of my blonde male friends and even my Dad (who was also blonde).

_______

“A struggle to exist.
In any form, taken
whether through ideology or bread
the resonance of the painful universal cry
into an imperfect echo that was never us.”

“In the process we have transformed
and become unrecognizable to ourselves
as the mirror casting our own reflection dirties with our pathetic work
for the sick sighs that last only in the mind after the inescapable is approached
finally
with complete resolve
in the last gasp
before the drop into…”

- excerpt from "Haunted by the lack of breath."