le départ

l'année dernière à Marienbad
une sirène dehors de la fenêtre
le mal de tête s'apaise

un, trois, cinq, sept

un jeu de cartes
un journal français
le départ de mon amour

le poids de pensées vacants
je les sens tous les mêmes.

Zazen v. Nancy

i started reading Norweigan Wood this weekend and was immediately taken in by its sense of loss. i didn't even make it past the first page before my mind started drifting, and i could smell the cold German mist of the narrator's world colliding with the humidity of past life Floridian summers. i felt like i knew Naoko, but was unable to place how, or to whom.

was it Nancy she reminds me of? those broken cryptic warnings that masqueraded as invitation? was it her deception or my projection? and what difference does it make now, a decade later? karmas have been incurred, lives have been altered, and we have both stumbled into worlds safely removed from the other's.

was it a trap door?

ever watched a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat?

those six years stand like a giant pillar in my life, blocking a clear view of what came before and bathing the years since in its shadow. is it messianic time flowing in two directions? everything before and after anchored to the memory of what came to pass, of what lay ahead. sometimes i walk around that pillar and watch the shadows stretch across the ground, but the sun is never moving.

i continued reading Bodhisattva Archetypes over the weekend, and i've been thinking about the Zen understanding of a sitting meditation. in the Zen tradition the point of sitting is not to attain altered or transcendent states of consciousness – it is merely to sit. the concern among practitioners is that these other states of consciousness can lead to attachment. sublime attachment, but attachment nonetheless.

another point that jumped out was the notion of 'no-self,' which has a certain linguistic resonance with my dormant nihilism. no-self is not a purely negative construction, however, but an understanding that there is no personal existence except as it relates to all other beings. i've heard my own teacher, recently, mention his changing understanding of a 'transcendent individuality' that exists as a way station (or stomping ground) between the identified, limited self and re-immersion into the Godhead. the Zen understanding of 'no-self' seems to overlap with my teacher's 'transcendent individuality,' though i'm not certain either the dead Dogen or the living half-Canadian would care to hear so.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that no-self holds resonance my deepest meditations, which seem less like an expansion of self than the dissolution of self. (not that the expanded sensations don't exist, it's just that they seem somehow to be more 'me' and less free.) the no-self is also easier to reconcile with my concerns regarding the balance between the material and metaphysical realms. unlike the yogic concept of the atman, which is ever unaffected, ever outside of relationship, the no-self lends itself more easily to seeing ourselves as constituted historically as well as atemporally, helping to understand one's place in the world for those 23 hours each day that we're not transcending our living rooms.

the only problem is that, while my sitting practice resonates with the no-self, the experience that started me on this whole rigmarole four years ago is beyond my comprehension unless it is framed within the notion of some sort of unaffected, unchanging core of existence.

[lapse]

a man walks into a store.
the clerk asks, "atman or no-self?"
the man answers, "one of each please."

[return]

either way, it doesn't really matter. the answer (which is the question) will reveal itself in its own due time. until then, one continues to sit...

on dark irony, assassination, and happy birthdays

item 1

assassin |əˈsasin|
noun
a murderer of an important person in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons.
• ( Assassin) historical a member of the Nizari branch of Ismaili Muslims at the time of the Crusades, when the newly established sect ruled part of northern Persia (1094–1256). They were renowned as militant fanatics, and were popularly reputed to use hashish before going on murder missions.

ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from French, or from medieval Latin assassinus, from Arabic ḥašīšī ‘hashish eater.’

item 2

item 3

there must have been a lot of sin in the air...

yesterday my yin and i were able to open our windows for the first time since early spring, enjoying a pleasant pre-dawn breeze that made the air conditioner superfluous. a mass of cool air has blanketed South Florida for the past 48 hours, and i keep trying not to get my hopes by thinking it will last us all the way to November.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that there must have been a lot of sin in the air yesterday because, by the end of the day, there were 36 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper in the living room, a dozen more in the trunk of my car, and 5 pints of ice cream in the freezer.

this is the ice cream in our freezer, like mana from heaven

when she got home, i told my yin two things:

1) don't look in the freezer.
2) it's not what it looks like.

the root of all this consumption, of course, was the confluence of sale and rebate at the local big box retailer. amazingly enough, however, all this sugary dairy goodness remained pristine and untouched last night, like an avid gamer on prom night. in fact, we retired not long after 9 o'clock and read Murakami in bed. this fact helps to explain not only why i woke at 5am this morning, but also why my dreams were so uncomfortable.

my present pleasant diversion

i'm reading Sputnik Sweetheart and finds aspects of the narrator's life eerily familiar. his relationship to the object of his gaze is not unlike one of my own past obsessions, but this, in and of itself, is problematic – the nature of obsession is the nature of obsession, too well-tread and well-read to be of much bother.

what truly disturbs me, though, is that i identify with the object of this gaze as well. as i read i find myself slipping back and forth, alternately becoming the voyeur and the seen. i think Jean-Paul Sartre had something to say on these matters, but it's too early in the morning to start digging through existential philosophy. suffice to say that this mood found its way into the Dreaming, and i began waking sometime after 4am. eventually i grew tired of falling back asleep, turned on the light, and started reading all over again...

Pyrex dreams

last night i dreamed of a giant rectangle, subdivided into twenty smaller rectangles. the rectangles were equidistant apart, four columns across and five rows deep. the proportions of height to width of the smaller rectangles matched the proportion of the larger rectangle holding them all.

this isn't entirely accurate.

i didn't dream of these rectangles but rather i dreamed them. in other words, these rectangles were not the content of my dream but rather its form. inside the dreaming, each small rectangle would fill with substance of the dreamscape, and once that individual rectangular cell was full, i would wake from the dream. this did not make for a restful night's sleep.

the rectangles were made of Pyrex, but i'm certain about the substance of the dreamscape. the nature of the dream's movement implies a certain viscosity, but beyond this i know nothing. likewise i do not know how many cells filled during the night, nor how it is i know there were twenty of them because i did not count them. i wonder about the arrangement of cells, and if the gaps between them would have eventually filled if only i had stayed awake longer. i wonder if this dream is measure of portent or promise.

upon each waking i would consider time, and speculate if perhaps it had stopped altogether. it was before sunrise, but it seems the same distance from sunrise upon each waking. perhaps they were separated by mere seconds, but it seemed longer. maybe the gaps between the rectangles correspond to the time i spent waking. if this is the case, then what is the larger rectangle – a diagram of my consciousness itself?

if the large rectangle comprises the extent of my being, then i have come face to face with some clue regarding how much i am sleeping and how much i wake. there was nothing outside the large rectangle, only voidness, but what about the border regions? it was the waking regions that touched the edges of the large rectangle, not the dream.

i was reading a book before bed about various bodhisattva. (how does one pluralize bodhisattva? bodhisattvas? bodhisattvi?) perhaps that has something to do with my dream. maybe Avalokiteshvara was trying to tell me something, maybe Shakyamuni is fluent in Pyrex. maybe it was a stranger knocking at my door, maybe the stranger is me.

clay statue of Bhairava, seen this summer in New York

and now the waiting game...

i've finally reached the point of starting to write my thesis, and so far the only thing i've learned is that i have nothing to say. actually, that's not true. i have too much to say.

(what's the problem?)

the problem is that i suffer at present from some sort of stuttering stunted starting disorder. in an attempt to ameliorate this condition i have rearranged notes, redrafted outlines, eaten Cheetos, listened to Beethoven, researched Dostoevsky, and regretted eating Cheetos.

thus far nothing has worked.

for the time being i've returned to one of my perennial favorites – adding another piddling dribble of drivel to the ten billion other piddling dribbles of drivel that constitute this monument of post-modernity known, to those pretentious enough to say it, as the 'interweb.'

(how clever, a portmanteau that really isn't.)

anyway, besides amusing myself with my own snideness, i'm being driven slowly crazy by a beeping alarm that emanates from the elevator control closet where i live, which has compelled me to abandon the Beethoven in favor of Mozart. even now his requiem begins, and i wonder if it foreshadows these endless waking moments. i wonder if the relationship between the dearth of meaning and the death of meaning is asymptotic or linear, or if memories of childhood have any ultimate effect on the nature of being.

[lapse]

i finished another book yesterday, unrelated to my research, and a man's shadow made an interesting point: if life can be known only in relation to death, then 'eternal life' cannot accurately be described as living at all. the shadow called this endless state of being a mere "existence," but the man stood his ground, deciding to stay in the mindless land and wait for memories to return him to the world of the living.

i do not know with whom i identified, the man or his shadow, but in the closing pages of the novel i found myself brought to the brink of tears.

the moral of the story?

"It ain't easy bein' cheesy."

on (someday) turning 90

yesterday my yin and i went to her mother's cousin's boyfriend's birthday party at his country club, and although this sounds like the start of some impossibly long and complicated joke, it is actually the simple truth.

(Note: no truth
- even if true -
is ever simple.)

but this is beside the point.

the point is that it was this mother's cousin's boyfriend's ninetieth birthday; and, to put this fact in perspective, one has to remember that when this mother's cousin's boyfriend was born, alcohol was illegal and the 19th Amendment was only 6 weeks old. but this is also beside the point, overly didactic, and fails to adequately set the mood, which was:

we walked into the clubhouse to find a room full of gray hair, red wine and mimosas. we say hello to the mother's cousin's boyfriend and then locate a corner table where the mother's other cousin (not the one with the boyfriend) sits with his wife. we sit with them, answering questions about my yin-in-law and her beau until they arrive. at which point, we continue answering questions, albeit more quietly.

after drinks we move one room west and take our place at table #4. there are perhaps 45 people scattered about, fewer than ten are under 40, and disinterested servers move from table to table asking, "chicken, salmon, or prime rib?"

(the room is too hot.)

i ask for a vegetarian plate, and after a house salad and rolls, a bowl full of over-cooked veggies doused in butter arrives. i try not to think about it, thinking (wishfully?) 'at least it's not margarine' as i attempt to eat around the spinach, which has been cooked so thoroughly that its characteristically vibrant green has been transformed into a hue resembling nothing so closely as pine needles at the height of wreath season. at this point my yin and i exchange a grateful look, wordlessly acknowledging the wisdom of our decision to forgo a traditional caterer for our upcoming matrimony.

after the main course there are speeches, and ultimately a ten minute DVD montage of the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life. i find it fascinating, especially how the change from black and white to color film stock in the Sixties marked both a metaphoric and historical break in the story being told. i saw not only the Polaroid emergence of a post-War consumer society, but also the tipping point in the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life as he crossed over the threshold from youth to middle-age. the pictures of the soldier and young husband and young father were suddenly gone, replaced by a man whose children were nearly grown, whose remaining years seemed less certain.

this is the deceitful nature of images.

in the mother's cousin's boyfriend's life i saw the history of America in the 20th century, from Depression to War to the boom that followed the Bomb. i watched the mother's cousin's boyfriend move from the Bronx to Harlem to Paramus, New Jersey - the decline and white flight from the burroughs across the Hudson, Jews and Gentiles alike.

i watched children appear and grow into parents.

i watched parents, and then siblings, fade from the picture.

(do photographs,
as Benjamin argues,
truly destroy the aura?)

the mother's cousin's boyfriend told the story of a boat ride in 1936. it began at the Bowery, Hudson-bound, and stopped at 125th Street, where the mother's cousin's boyfriend's childhood friend had arranged to meet two girls. one of them, named R______, became his wife.

they were together 70 years before she passed.

how much death do the most fortunate among us witness? is watching our loved ones die the price we pay to ascend to the title of patriarch? of matriarch? is this why our elders see so much so clearly?

(a final question)

placed next to

the unintelligibility of death|the problems of life

how can

compare?

after this video came the group photo, which may someday resurface at his 95th or 100th birthday. it was another tiny fragment of life enshrined and embalmed - the present moment ferried by the camera into the past...