Sunday night dose of reality

Tags

buffer, catalysing, Depression, dream-like consciousness, get out of Dodge, Guru, karmas, Money, obligations, past life karmas, PTSD, Reality, Society of Beggars, The Matrix, thousand shredded pieces, uphill shit-fight, Waking up, Yoga

Try not to be alarmed by the failure to see a clear picture...

Ahhh, more turns of the wheel are completed! Hear them? Clink-clack-clink-clack as the cycle repeats and once again, wherein patterns I thought I’d shed reappear and remind me it’s not over yet… not yet, don’t drop that mallet and chisel until every line is smooth and true.

<existential rant>

I tried a little more honesty with my sister today as she prepared her family to leave the country for a month, only weeks ahead of when I myself, was meant to be going away. My parents are already out of the country themselves.

This, at a time where my life… well, it’s still in a thousand shredded pieces around my feet. My sister’s only words were to “think positively”, which caused me to laugh derisively. What do you think I’ve been doing all these years? Thinking positively doesn’t always work…

There’s this thing you’re meant to do see, when people are leaving on a trip. Be happy and excited for them – and I am. But, my entire family is not in the country at a time when hey, if they were gonna be supportive in any way, right now would be really great. I still have that fantasy to some degree, that one day they will actually be there for me when I need them the most.

And so I couldn’t be all just hey, how wonderful it is that you’re going away! Which wasn’t fun for either of us, but at least it was honest.

Am I feeling sorry for myself? Desperate? Incredibly unsure as I once again face a gaping void of complete and utter un-surety? Perhaps, yeah. But I think there’s more to it than that.

The honesty I tried to share with my sister is really about coming to terms with what I’ve done with my time here since returning to my home town. It’s true, none of it has really worked out the way I wanted, expected or imagined. But then, does anything, ever?

Actually, all of this reminds me of something a good friend of mine told me once: when he got his very first motorbike as a teenager, he took it to pieces in order to learn how to put it back together. That resonates with my experience of life… it had to come apart in every possible way because of my intense curiosity about how we ‘work’ as human beings.

It’s been like that since I was very young, and has only intensified over the years, especially once I met my Guru (and y’know, those kind of teachers are renowned for catalysing your karmas!). Having a Guru is not for the faint of heart!

So it’s all stuff I’ve asked for, sort of. Well, what I asked for and very specifically took vows to do, was a commitment to waking up from the dream-like consciousness that we humans generally function in. That’s how we manage to get by in this funny old existence… while we yearn for unity with everything around us and at the same time, mostly feel completely separate and isolated. But there’s another game we can play, if we’re willing!

Being a yogi and also, being a yoga teacher… does NOT mean that I’m automatically an angelic and together person. I’m not better than anyone else. I haven’t dealt with all of my stuff (and if you think you have, you’re probably lying to yourself!). In fact, the very work of being a yogi involves getting uncomfortably intimate with the truth.

A sister yogi and I were recently discussing life lessons, and she suggested that perhaps they present themselves in an appropriate way for our personality display. Like… for the fiery types that she and I both are, we can not be reached with lessons unless they too, are fiery. To really learn and grow, we need to be jolted and shocked out of our complacency in a way that makes sense to us.

Most people don’t want any part of such lessons and so they buffer and buffer… reality has to knock really loudly to be heard. Most of the time, the call goes unanswered, because it is truly painful to even begin the process of really waking up.

Think of everything that happens in The Matrix when humans are plucked out of the CPU of human minds created by the machines – there’s nothing particularly comfortable about it (that movie in fact, is quite accurate in explaining some of the enlightenment process, to a point anyway), and one of the characters (Cypher) even wants to “forget” the truths he learned:

You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
~Cypher, The Matrix

And so… I ask myself if it’s possible that I could’ve learned what I needed to learn about anger, sadness, desire, grace, compassion, love, trust, listening to my intuition and a whole bunch more… another way? Maybe. But then again, maybe not. And if that’s the case, it’s impossible to feel unhappy about it. And yet… here I am, still facing so much uncertainty. Still feeling like it’s a complete uphill shit-fight to develop a more stable structure for my life.

Or, maybe I’m just not meant to have that kind of stability and this fight isn’t going to get me anywhere?

It’s hard to say without further guidance. And the annoying thing about my intuitive gift is that it doesn’t work on command, and it also doesn’t give me the big picture very often.

So here I am, still feeling like I’m “stuck” in Melbourne. In almost six years, I’ve managed to recover from PTSD without medication, I mostly have a handle on my depression tendencies and I’ve gained yoga teacher qualifications. None of this is what I came back here for…

The reason I did come back is because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because I was fulfilling a long-held pact between my sister and I… and if you buy into past life karmas in anyway, then I’ll add this: the pact was not just of this life-time. Anyway, that’s arbitrary for those who are dismissive of such things.

Since my return, I’ve put my family’s needs and demands before my own, and generally that has not been returned in kind. Especially when I was doing everything in my power to cultivate an air of normalcy over my completely abnormal state of mind. Apparently I did a really good job of that.

Because when asked point blank – What did you think when you saw me shaking and bruised and distraught and unable to sleep? Why didn’t anybody consider that perhaps getting assaulted wasn’t something you could get over in a single week or even a month? Why didn’t anyone in my family ring me? Call to see if I was okay? Check if I was eating? Encourage me to get help? – the answer was that they didn’t see.

This is despite both my mother and my sister accompanying me to court on two separate occasions and witnessing how I could barely speak about what happened. How my entire body shook in fear. They wondered why I didn’t invite anyone over to my place, but didn’t bother to find out why. They noticed that my behaviour changed, but didn’t question it except to think that something was “wrong” with me. Something that was my own problem, and nothing they could help me with. They didn’t even try. I don’t blame them as such, because I get that they have so much going on in their own lives that they simply couldn’t see. Or didn’t want to.

However, I now feel like I’ve fulfilled whatever obligations I had to my family in returning home. I have a very strong urge to get out of Dodge, and yet I don’t know where I’m meant to be instead. Also, I have a bit of an issue with money in that I don’t seem to be able to get a job… and a job = money = the ability to do whatever I need to do…

So yes, I am frustrated. And I wish it was me heading overseas. And I feel very humble at the same time, which is perhaps a contradiction. But it’s true.

I feel the need to spread my wings but it seems I’ve forgotten how to fly…

</existential rant>

Now returning you to your regular viewing…

~Svasti

P.S. What I really wanted to do was to find y’all a copy of one of my new favourite songs online. BUT the band is so new that they’ve only got one or two songs on You Tube so far, and not the one I wanted to share. The band is an Aussie one, called Society of Beggars. You can check ’em out on MySpace!

**UPDATE** I got an email from someone in the Society of Beggars camp via Facebook, and they sent me this link where you can download the entire album! 😉

P.P.S. This is another one of those posts where I seriously had to think hard about whether I should publish it at all. But heck, this kind of honesty is what my blog was founded on… And y’know, real life isn’t neat and tidy with story lines that always wrap with “happily ever after”.

Samskaras in samsara – part 2

Tags

Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti

I’m not a tibia

Tags

Accident, amputation, India, Reality

Here comes reality – can you dig it? A friend of mine lost the lower part of her left leg a couple of months back, and was actually very lucky she didn’t lose her life. In India, which has been her second home for the longest time until a truck almost tore her to pieces and four surgeries later, there are the photos on Facebook to prove it (just recently posted)… nurses in white sari-style uniforms and swamis at her bedside along with many ex-pat friends and family (she’s back in Australia now).

But in all those photos, looking fragile and vulnerable as she is, my friend is still radiant, serene and peaceful. She’s cool with what is and she’s surfing those waves of reality right into the shore. She’ll probably try to hop as far as she can when she gets there too, before eventually falling over in the sand giggling at the fun she’s just had.

How well can you deal, folks? How much can you accept and remain steady of mind and heart? What if, like my friend, you could no longer do what you’ve always assumed was your birthright and part of what makes you who (think) you are? Like, on a permanent basis, not just for a while?

Pre-assault, I think if something like that had’ve happened to me, I would’ve wanted to die. But maybe something like that DID happen to me, just in different packaging? In any case, I see that my natural response to her situation is quite different than it would’ve been perhaps five-plus years ago.

Like, right now I’m thinking about a possible asana series for the one-legged (seated and floor asana, with some balancing) and encouraging her to plan a trip to our retreat center in Thailand. I am sorry my friend was injured but I don’t mourn for her lost limb. Perhaps it’s because of where I’ve been on my own journey. And/or perhaps because she doesn’t, AND also, because who she is does not reside in those toes, that calf muscle, Achilles tendon, sinews, blood vessels or that tibia or fibula.

She is not lessened. She is not without. If anything, with less surface space to stretch out in, the very essence of her being radiates more intensely than ever before… and she is glorious.

~Svasti

What ya wishing for?

Tags

Anywhere but here, Broken bones, dandelions, Healing, living in the moment, modus operandi, Post-traumatic stress, progress, PTSD, Reality, Recovery, Swine flu, Therapy, Trauma, Truth

No matter how you cut it, there’s always more ways to slice and dice anything. You can take the tiniest sliver, and if you have the right tools, cut it up again and again. You can make shavings of slivers and get all microscopic about it.

What’s that got to do with anything? Umm, nothing. And everything.

It’s just that y’know, measurement is highly relative. So is progress.

Where do we really ever get to, other than right where we are at any given moment? We’re just where we’re at, period.

The wanting of other things, that’s where we get ourselves into trouble. Wanting to be somewhere or someone else, or another version of yourself – thinner, wiser, funnier, smarter and so on. We want to be healed. We can’t forget the past. We reminisce of happier times. Want to be on holidays again, go back to places we’ve been.

Anywhere but here.

Or, we think of where we want to get to – being in love with someone wonderful, being a parent, healthy and whole, nicer teeth, earning big money. Or, just more simply… we look towards a place where we’ll be really happy.

Trying to just live in the here and now is difficult. Western culture is set up to either think of the past or look to the future. There’s really not much here and now in our lives at all.

Sitting on a tram surrounded by strangers, most people are thinking about getting away from such close proximity (BTW, did you hear Melbourne is now Australia’s Swine Flu capital?). At work, we’re bored or annoyed or looking forward to lunch or going home or socialising after work.

We’re rarely living in the moment, but it can happen: riding a push bike consciously, getting a massive fright, meditation, having a really intense meeting, seeing an amazing live band or dance performance… these are just some examples.

When it happens, for seconds or minutes (if we’re lucky), we feel intensely alive.

Some people get hooked on that, and then get into adrenaline-based activities. Although, it then becomes less about being in the moment, and more about the ‘rush’ we feel afterwards. And looking forward to the next time.

During the worst of my PTSD, where it wasn’t so much ‘episodes’ – more just one long waking nightmare, day in, day out… I wished away much of my life.

Truly, I believed it was possible to wait out my trauma. I thought I’d get better over time, like healing a broken bone – sure it hurts for ages, but eventually it gets better.

And while I waited, I shut down the rest of my life. Just sat there, waiting. But never in the moment. I was too busy thinking about that unspecified time in the future when I’d be okay again.

Never worked out that way of course. Turns out the source of a lot of my pain was about avoiding. Didn’t want to be in the moment at the time (quite understandably) and didn’t want to know about it afterwards, either.

Thing is, to start to move forward and just to begin the healing process, that’s exactly what I had to do – get very present and very real with the pain, the terror and all of the rammifications.

Its the polar opposite of our standard modus operandi: dropping out of reality.

No wonder healing feels so scary and hard at times!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wrote a draft of this a little while back, but Brooks’ recent post reminded me it was there, casually sitting in one of my writing files. So I looked it up and thought… yeah, time to come out…

~Svasti

Euphoria & other things

Tags

abundance, Corporate-landia, Denial, emotional honesty, Employment, euphoria, Hanumanasana, Malasana, Meditation, nadi shodhana, new job, Reality, Release, samskara, Spirituality, Surrender, Yoga, yoga retreat

Of late, my yoga practice has been revealing inner layers of truth, ironically ‘visible’, during meditation. Especially post-pranayama.

The other week it was two words, pulsing and glimmering like a coin underwater – emotional honesty – yes… that’s taken a little while to understand.

I cast my mind back to Sydney, mid-winter several years ago, on one of the numerous yoga retreats I’ve attended. We were about to do some kind of serious meditation work, and it’s customary to do such things with clean teeth.

Before we started, my Guru looked at us and asked, So have you all brushed your teeth?

My first instinct was to nod my head, even though I hadn’t. Nod, and say yes, rather than admit I’d forgotten, be different and stand out.

I learned a great lesson right there, when one of my fellow students unashamedly shook her head. Go on then, we were told. I scooted out the door with a couple of others.

I’m not a liar as such, but there’s been many a time like that where I’ve lied rather than face a perceived ‘scary’ reality, no matter how minor.

Emotional honestly is not something I grew up with. Just… telling it like it is. Instead it was a constant stream of deny, deny, deny. Deny anything, deny everything. My blood was steeped in denial.

These days I’m much braver but still, I have my moments.

Today, sitting in near stillness, once I was able to ignore the constant stream of inner chatter long enough… I could see… wow, almost like the mechanism of grasping, desperation and neediness that drives my actions sometimes.

Briefly I saw how this force sometimes creates activity that causes me to behave in ways I’d rather not. And I saw that somewhere in there, is the capacity to set that aside. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. But sometime, sure.

Today in our yoga class, we did a lot of very deep forward bends ending with Malasana (garland pose) and Hanumanasana (the splits). Reaching into places that are usually left dormant, un-stretched. Moving slowly, repeatedly and determinedly.

It’s not surprising to find that yoga both generates and releases emotional states. Today’s asana class was highly, deeply and strongly moving and energising in the pits and creases of my body.

After some counter-poses, we eventually finished with nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing), which I always find very grounding and centering. It’s important to sit still for a while once you’ve finished and just… allow the sensations you’re experiencing to flow through you.

Right there, the chattering sufficiently ignored… I could see the ongoing suffering I cause myself through my samskaras (deeply embedded patterns of behaviour), and the choice we all have to step away from these patterns. Not without a lot of effort first, of course.

Leaving class, I felt incredibly euphoric and I’m still floating in that state…

Anyway, now for some other news:

Finally, after more than three long months, I HAVE A JOB!

I know… I should be celebrating this fact a little more. But I’m not. I am grateful – it came along right when I was about to have absolutely NO money at all.

However, it’s not my dream job. Sure, I’m working in my industry (digital media) but it’s a contract role (not permanent), its back in big Corporate-landia, and it’s really not the best money for a contract job either.

I also discovered the contract heavily favours the rights of the company (they can terminate my role with no notice – I’m sure a sign of the current financial times), while affording me almost no rights… except to get paid.

Then, the organisation I’m contracting through pays fortnightly, but it’s actually going to be three weeks until I’m paid for the first six days of work, leaving me with precious little cash (all I’ve got) to get by on until then.

However, the people there are nice. So I’m trying to stave off the sense of foreboding I feel being back in an uber-large company (it’s been almost twelve months since I quit my previous corporate gig).

Ironically, the day I was verbally offered this role, I was also offered another (less lucrative) contract, and an interview for a permanent role. Even more ironically, I had that interview at lunch time of the first day on the new job this week (Thursday). Then, on the Friday another recruiter rang with an interview request for another permanent role. That one will be Tuesday after work.

Feast or famine, right?

Usually, I’m very loyal to my employer, sometimes to my own detriment. But recent times have shown that’s not the most prudent course of action. So, given the relative lack of stability of my contract job (when is a contract not really a contract? When there’s a ‘no notice’ clause in it!), I’m taking a slightly more aggressive line.

I guess I’ll see what happens – could be I get offered neither permanent role (my fate in recent times) – but then again, I might. And I will keep looking.

In the mean time, I’m repeating my yoga teacher’s oft-repeated mantra – there will always be enough – while I prepare to live on a tiny amount of cash for a few weeks to come yet.

And, I’ll also keep attempting to disengage with the samsaric patterning I’ve just witnessed so clearly. If I can surrender that, and strive to live as emotionally honestly as possible, hopefully I’ll be open to new opportunities I might not otherwise have a shot at.

~ Svasti

Wheels, whispers and all that is

Tags

Aztec calendar, Chapel Street, Constellations, Cricket, Dogma, General consensus, Greasepaint, Gypsy curse, Paris Hilton, Reality, Religion, Sport, Unrehearsed, What's left, Yogic studies

Today there was almost a teensy stoush at my office… a handful of us working the two and a half days til New Year’s Eve, with only my good self representing the female quotient. The boys – keeping tabs on the cricket.

I made the error of stating my opinion – I don’t think cricket is actually a sport – partly in jest, part seriously… which earned the wrath of certain geeky developer types… how dare I denigrate one of their sacred cows?

Is sport a religion? In Australia, possibly so! 😉

Which morphed into a ridiculous conversation on definitions, general consensus, labels, logic and meanings… as I purposely steered towards the whacky, the offended were determined to take issue.

Whoops, just slipped beneath the radar of ‘accepted’ reality for a moment there folks! Wrong audience, yeah, wrong audience…

Oh, and apparently Paris Hilton dropped by for a spot of shopping – Chapel Street is an uppity shopping zone – I missed the whole thing. Yawn…

If there’s anything I’ve learned from the past few years in recovery, as well as from my yogic studies… one person’s definition of anything is not another’s.

And whilst some may accuse me of dogma, that is their right. But – that does not make them right. And – at the exact same time, nor am I, for that matter. Stick that in yer pipe!!

What matters… is seeing reality as it really is. Not as easy as it sounds, slippery varmint…

I backed away from today’s is-cricket-a-sport-or-isn’t-it debate, knowing full well it could’ve become unpleasant.

Not because I’m incapable of holding my own intellectually. But emotionally, I’m in no place for a battle where unpleasantness is included.

Of course, it wouldn’t look like that to others. But I’m not explaining myself… and so the great divide of reality reveals itself, in part.

If you look close enough.

Who says everything has to make sense, anyway?

Get used to contradictions and accept both positions, a wise man once told me.

Then, if any-thing that’s without is also within, who am I to argue?

I’m turning, the year is whirring, there’s a buzz in the air. Magic’s happening, transforming, time returning to itself. Tendrilly strands float lightly – some forwards, others back. Yet all is here and now, anyways… so, what to do with that? There’s a pace, slightly speedier than a meaningful stroll to complete important chores…

I see now, where I am… it’s not so much where I’ve been, but that which remains… still real in some way. The apparitions fade as the year drains away; dying moments wafting like fragrant incense. But mostly… no longer here.

No, I don’t know what I’ll say tomorrow for the most part, or the next day. I purposely hold off from planning it out. Therein lays the excitement… possibility… potential.

I want it to be real, not imagined or rehearsed. My opening lines may sputter before natural brilliance is revealed, but then, you’re seeing me as I am. Without the greasepaint. No costumes.

Oh sure, there are bigger plans afoot, the constellations by which I navigate my course, now that I have a future again… if I ever did, if I have a say at all (I’ve sometimes doubted that), and assuming that gypsy curse ever has a use-by date.

~Svasti