A Creation Story

From within, a bit of green dances out as from oblivion, an insemination of grace planted by unseen dimensions. There is no word big enough to contain the abyss, yet here it is anyway throbbing inside me, spilling into me and out of me. I am not a being, but rather an exchange; participation in this mystical marketplace is an act of being. In those first moments I knew nothing more than everything--formless were thoughts, and so they were capable of infinity. 

There is action in the start of love: bursting, flowing, cascading. Healthy and warm are the colors of creation: green and gold. 

In the Second Moment all matter shared a single memory. Words then an explosion, pinwheels of transcendence spinning in every direction, then finally the quiet work of existing. 

Before this, none; and now, all. A flood displaced the void. Waves and particles congregate in festivals of laughter. Shapes emerge and settle into a hierarchy, unseen gravity shaping a world before eyes that have only just been made. 

I cry out, "AYE, YIP, WOO" in my shrillest, loudest falsetto. Terror and gratitude return in the echo, but mostly my is yawp swallowed in the merciful indifference of created things. I gaze into existence, that mirror sweet and true. Whispers bounce back and forth--ripples across clear water: I am myself, am all, am one, we are, will be. 

A Great Breath, outward and inward. Birth and death, creation and completion. In the morning I set off on an adventure into the world around me, into the unknown which is known by my atoms and cells. And my soul. In the evening I return, different from before, more myself and less myself.

A word of thank you comes at the beginning, not the end. And love is in the middle. That's all there is to it. 

A Brush with Peace

A book I've been reading introduced me to the topic of holotropic breathwork. I was interested by a firsthand account described by the author, so I watched a short video on the topic.

Then I gave it a try. 

V was gone for the day, so I had space to be alone and vulnerable. I laid down under a light blanket, put a sweatshirt over my eyes, and began focusing on my breath. I allowed my breath to become deeper and slower, until I felt ready to be present to the current moment. I then pushed the breath to become more rapid and strong. Faster, faster, faster, until everything seemed to be breath. 

Then it began. First I was aware that my body had taken over the breathing for me; I was no longer concentrating. I gave up control, the pace of breath oscillating between fast and slow. I stopped caring, more preoccupied with an energy that settled throughout me. Stomach, hands, face, and feet tingled with it. It was a delightful sensation. After some minutes I was aware of a pain in my stomach, so I performed a short body scan. The pain lessened. 

Images began, memories from the past day, then a bird swooping toward me. Then nothing. 

No body, no breath, no feeling whatsoever. There seemed to be an absence where I had just been laying, and all that was left of me was warmth. It was silent, I could no longer hear my breath. Ambient noise seemed simultaneously faster and slower, then it simply ceased. 

I couldn't hear, I couldn't see, I couldn't feel. Just warmth. Just peace. I didn't feel these things--I was these things.

I don't know how long until it was over. Gradually, I started to feel again. I could feel my body pressing into the bed, could hear laundry tumbling, and cars on the wet streets outside. I removed the sweatshirt from my eyes to find the room filled with sunlight, and I had the impression that the sun was an old friend. 

It was 30min well spent, even if I don't quite know what to make of it. Amazing that all this came from the mere act of breathing. 

Dogs

V had work this evening, so it was just me and the dog, home alone. 

When I'm home alone, I usually watch a movie that V wouldn't like. As soon as she left, Winnie came and laid his head on my knee. He looked up at me, lovingly. So obviously I wanted to watch something about a man and his dog. 

If you draw a Venn Diagram of movies V wouldn't like and movies featuring a bond with a dog, the overlap contains one standout winner: I Am Legend.

The movie a slow contemplation of loneliness, and the "Other." I think it's ultimately about curing racism and hate, but what do I know? You laugh at Will Smith's attempts to stay sane, talking to mannequins and horrendously singing Bob Marley. 

The movie is fantastically paced. You slowly piece together a tragic story: 

     Humans cure cancer. 

     The cure mutates into horrible disease, becoming a pandemic. 

     NYC is cut off from the world; a desperate attempt to keep humanity safe. 

     Will Smith's wife and child nearly escape, before dying in front of his eyes. 

     Will stays in NYC trying to find a cure, as all living things disintegrate into soulless super-zombies. 

The only thing keeping Will Smith alive is his dog, Sam. His love of Sam is true, the last piece of himself left untouched. They go everywhere together, and Will risks his life several times to save the dog. Theirs is a special bond, perhaps the last living bond left on the entire planet. 

Sadness strikes. 

Sam contracts the disease while saving Will Smith from death. He rushes Sam home, the last hope being a recent successful trial of a potential cure on rodents. As Will holds Sam in his arms, he realizes that the cure has failed. Sam begins to "turn," and the camera zooms in on Will's tortured face while he strangles the last living thing in the world. 

Total. Loneliness. By this point in the movie, you know that Sam was it. Sam was the last hope. His dog was his last friend, his only friend. It ends quickly. Will tries to kill himself, a suicide-by-zombie affair. He discovers people, realizes that he has cured the disease, and then sacrifices his life to save both. 

I regret watching that movie tonight. That bond between Will and Sam are so real, so believable, that the strangling scene is almost too grotesque. It's tastefully done, but the emotional horror of that moment is too much. My heart rips itself from my chest, and I am spent. 

What a good movie.  

The Tyranny of Normal

I have a friend who's been through it with me. Together we explored and drank and listened, had adventures and made terrible mistakes. Nowadays, he's better friends with my wife than he is with me. Not that we've grown apart, it's just that they've grown closer. It's a thing of beauty, to have two worlds integrate like that. I mostly marvel at the setup, and am grateful for it. 

Yesterday I did not feel that way. They were chatting about an old memory, one that predates her presence in my life. She asked him about my shenanigans, and he didn't remember most of them. All he could remember was a single moment, where I had written a poem and recited it. They laughed about how hard it is “to put up with” me.

They both groaned at my eccentricity.

-- 

Desperate for safety, we love things that are normal. It's an urge that is probably evolutionary in its origin--familiar roads that didn't lead to pain can be traveled again without fear of harm. Well-trodden topics are comforting; we can let our guard down and let the conversation guide us, rather than the other way around. 

Conversations like this are safe, but also boring. When humans trade shared, mundane experiences it's not very interesting. What have you been watching lately? or Did you hear the latest news about Andy? or I heard the Campbell Bridge is closed. Boring. We reach into our experiences and search for the things we have in common with others. This holds a sense of safety--we walk on known paths through familiar environs. But I also find it aggravating when the conversation dwells there indefinitely. 

I enjoy taking conversations off the path, into the wilderness of divergent experiences and misaligned perspectives. Not always, of course: it takes a lot of energy to explore. We simply can't live on asymptotes, traveling wildly off the beaten path at all times. It's exhausting, and exposes us to pain. Things need to return to center--the mundane has utility, and it's own marvelous brand of beauty. 

But the most memorable nights are the ones spent in wonder at a new point of view. The conversations that cause us to grow are the ones that expose us to the abnormal. 

I figured this out a while ago, and embraced it. I let myself be weird, in the hopes of being a spice for others. It's like taking off my jacket in the cold--everyone suddenly has something to talk about, and I have a simultaneously refreshing and painful experience. 

It's disappointing to be picked on for this. After all, by expending energy to be unusual I'm providing a sort of service, playing the part of yeast in a slosh of white flour and tepid water. Without me, they'd have just spent another 25 minutes comparing notes on Tiger King. 

But normal is safe. Though there are decades between now and the middle school playground that mercilessly punished the abnormal, the experience was formative. Normal is wired into our brains, tyrannical in its rule. Normal imposes its rule in the halls of every palace. All must bow to the Average. 

--

I am affected by this swirl--pulled in two directions. I crave adventure and beauty, earnest to follow the sun over the horizon. But I'm also sleepy and afraid, longing to give up traveling against the flow. I'm regularly faced with a choice about what kind of me I ought to be.

The deciding factor is time. I don't have long: some fraction of 90 years. What will be accomplished in that time? What is my life worth? 

It's worth the effort, the pursuit of the abnormal and the beautiful. It's worth the fight, the turning of cheeks when slapped by those afraid of otherness. It's worth being authentically abnormal, beautifully distinct. 

That's something that we all can share. 

Mountain Air is Good for Growth

When I was 22, I moved into a mansion with 11 other guys my age. 

The house was tucked into a mountain pass, surrounded on all sides by Pikes National Forest. We agreed to a few rules: wearing the same clothes, spending most of our time in silence, keeping up the property, etc. We did this for a year. 

It was a good experience, for many reasons. I read 82 books that year. I meditated twice daily. I wrote poetry. I composed prayers. I conducted a research project. I frolicked in nature. I wrote constantly. 

While looking for something else that year, I made enormous progress in finding myself. 

It feels like cheating, almost. Most people don't have an opportunity like that, to stop and reflect and listen to the voices around and within. To walk slowly under fir trees and breathe mountain air. They are simply poured into the world from the graduated cylinders of high school or college, frothy and unassayed. I had a chance to settle, and it changed me. 

Yesterday, I happened across a file with several things I wrote that year. One thing made me smile, a short poem: 

The man with no abode, 

his days marked by waxing moons.

He wanders in search of greenest pastures

and eats richly of harvests he did not plant

but were planted for him. 

Thoughts from a Deserted Moonless Beach at High Tide

Where in the body lives my soul? I need to know this, as I am now empty of spirit. Vacant of vitality--ether exhausted. I am desperate to be me again. 

I am desperate to be, again.

Fear. A total lack of light. 

Fear. An overwhelming presence of sound. 

Fear coursing through me, chasing away my soul. 

I am now something less than a man. I am serf to the surf, bondservant to the blackness. Me no longer.

I need to get out of here. I need to stay in this moment forever. I am the heavens, I am the earth. I am the end, and in this moment the truest beginning. 

Wordless as waves crash in my chest. Is this death? Am I dead? So be it.

Emotion: the 5th Dimension (and other dreams about mysteries beyond my comprehension)

Yesterday I went for a hike. The sun sprinkled rays through mossy branches and everything was green. My thoughts gave me an interesting idea:

The only constant across every human’s spatial experience of existence is time. This is an accomplishment that we reward with the designation of “4th dimension.“

But outside the boundaries of the definition of spatial, every other experience is a constant, each to its own magnitude but all exceeding zero. These are emotions. 

Empathy is just multiple unanimous experiences in distinct spatial moments of 4 dimensions, while simultaneously a wholly shared other-experiential “moment” in a 5th, distinct, dimension. Therefore, empathy is a metric that can be used to measure the units of this 5th dimension.

Imagination is a machine that harnesses combustible amounts of tension in the fifth dimension to power exploration into areas higher than the fourth dimension.  

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut proposes that there are aspects to our experience that we are blind to, due to our ability to only perceive in 3 dimensions. The most thought-provoking example is when the aliens in the book explain that there are actually 7 sexes on earth, 5 of which exist in the 4th dimension and are therefore imperceptible to humans. In order to procreate, all 7 sexes must be engaged and therefore play a role. Human's understanding of reproduction isn't entirely incorrect, it's just incomplete. There is a fuller picture beyond their capacity for understanding. 

In Flatland, Edwin Abbott illustrates higher dimensional beings interacting with lower dimensional beings, introducing paradigm-shifting revelations. A cube moves across the plane of a square's existence, which seems like magic because of the square's inability to perceive in more than 2 dimensions. 

It's hard to believe that there aren't dimensions higher than the 4th dimension. Writers like Vonnegut and Abbott have an expanding effect on my imagination, causing me to dream about mysteries beyond my comprehension. 

Causing me to dream about mysteries beyond my comprehension. Wow.

That's what gives me thoughts like the ones above. What if emotions are some higher matter of existence, and we simply move in and out of emotional "spaces" in the 5th dimension? What if empathy was a metric, and the ability to use empathy is the ability to understand a higher dimension? What if imagination was a tool, and the ability to use imagination is the ability to navigate a deeper aspect of existence? 

The world is already beautiful; I don't know why I spend time imagining it as something even more mysterious and wonderful than I can already perceive. But I press on anyway, eyes wide at the idea that your happiness and my happiness are not distinct experiences in time and space, but is instead you and me coexisting in some higher dimensional space.