Dawning Luminosity

Pondering how to write in a different tone. Thinking I am creating myself with these words, with little desire to be re-created. Thinking about reflexes and habits. I start to write and negation comes out. Habit or a mirror?

Now, in Toronto, in September, I am in the back room of an apartment above an unused storefront. Streetcars outside, noise, brick and board amalgam, wires and alleys and people strewn about. I like the green paint and windows. The wooden furniture. The company. And I’m reminded of the great expanse of life afford me by my rural home. The space in which I can stretch my thoughts out and allow them to breathe. The lack of psychic intrusions.

You see, I stop typing for a moment, the mind drifts, and negation returns. A moistened eye mistaken for allergies. Like an old sump pump, when shut off: water rushing back down. Am I fighting my own gravity?

Hence slowing down writing here, at least the past month. Approaching some anniversaries the coward in me does not want to face. The repetition of familiar words. But it continues whether I want it to or not, endless gravity. Believe it or not, this feels vaguely positive.

I am feeling the past few days a little distressed about not writing here as much. Yes I am back to some regularity after an amazing experience, very tired from not sleeping, and thinking is a little dull. But I should still write some.

Now that I’ve been back for 3 weeks, I can definitely say that I’ve returned to a feeling of “this is how things are”. And I have resisted this feeling, because I don’t want things to be the way they are. But again, since returning, it feels somehow in-arguable

That may change. I am stubborn.

Another feeling going on is a type of dulling. Right from 9 months ago I’ve had the sense that these experiences could wreck me … as in defeat my personality, my will, and leave behind a very low-energy, depressed lump-type thing. This is more a side effect than the intent of the experiences. And I’ve tried very hard to not let that self-deflation happen, though I am usually my own worst enemy in this regard.

Part of that overall dullness is the feeling of not having much to say, so nothing to write. Wishing, though, a hello, to the wonderful spirits I have know. Eyes closed and sleep is galloping fast. The moon was next to Jupiter tonight. When I see it again it will still be beautiful. The lark remains the lark. The future holds itself open.

Up at 02:38, writing this instead of sleeping.

There are no breakthroughs, just wordplay and mental games to distract from the slab of responsibility and acknowledgement that awaits. I know that. My current distraction is wishing for more dreams, so I could write without needing to right the many tipped vessels. A dream will tell other stories, weave a mystery, concoct an excuse, invent a future, forgive a past.

Although every moment is its own world and myriads of future ones await, I’m still fixated on the clock showing me the year. This year will pass, with its anniversaries and memories, just as the next year hauls them out again. I need a string of blanks.

Awakening thoughts, pre-coffee, though they may be fuzzy, for me are often very direct and unscattered. That is, the thing thought about comes through with tangibility and a strength of emotion that later-in-the-day coffee, computer, and other thought influenced thoughts don’t have.

I assume this is due the proximity of awakening thoughts to the dream world and the unconscious world, and hence more direct access to what we might otherwise want to filter out. I often find awakening thoughts quite depressing. This morning was no exception. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about the desire for a steady state and one thing I dislike about going to sleep is knowing that these awakening thoughts are around the corner.

One more cup of coffee ...

Sipping coffee now I’m remembering the dream that awoke me. I’m living on the second floor of a house with an entrance at the rear with stairs, outside, leading to the ground. I’m trying to replace the lock for the door at the top of the stairs. It’s an in-the-knob lock: cheap fake brass type. So I go to a hardware store, one of those Toronto old-style contractor’s supply places, where I choose the same cheap lock, but even as I take it out of the cardboard packaging it seems broken. The helpful service man at the counter says: “No, no, those are crap, you need a proper heavy-duty model”. I agree, always preferring the right heavy duty type thing, so he goes off looking for one.

At this point the dream leap forward: me, in this apartment, lock installed I assume, waking up groggily. I head down a long hallway to the shower and hear music playing above me. Once in the washroom it’s quite clear that the music is Bob Dylan from the early 1970s, Blood on the Tracks era, although the song is unfamiliar. I listen a bit and the record sleeve suddenly appears. I look on the back It says: Recorded: April 6, 1973. That date elicits such a strong emotional reaction from me that I wake up.

April 6, 1973 doesn’t mean anything in particular to me, though I see from Wikipedia that Pioneer 11 was launched that day. Perhaps I am receiving a psychic message that aliens have recovered it and are en route. More likely it’s an internal indication of the passage of time, related to a growing feeling I have of both aging and having little to show for my many efforts. This is not a complaint, but as I feel like I’m now starting over again, there’s a strong temptation to give in, give up, resign myself to a possible nothing that awaits. And it’s almost driven by a laziness. The concept that, at this point in life, things should be different.

Of course I won’t succumb to this, and I know that there are no prescribed paths for life. But the sadness connected to that date is, I think, seeing myself at that time, age 10.5, with a clean slate, unaware of what lies ahead: good and bad.

Another beautiful rain filled weekend. I suppose another question would be: why do I find the above thought of the 10.5 year old me to be a sad thought, rather than an excited, about-to-embark, joyous thought? Just the present re-writing the past?

Listening to an ambient-style CD from Argentina
Looking at a sesame seed on the oak table and imaging it crushed: oil dispersed, shell discarded
Hearing the repetition of sounds, continuous, multi-sided
Dreaming about extending that wire, resting ugly for months
Breathing the cool night air, feeling Autumn nearing, fearing that change when there is less of your own space around you.
Beating heart, that little piece more closed, chamber-locks tighter
Shutting down our hopes slowly kills part of ourself.
Thinking about the geographic space where words are spoken and sketching out a map
The rug’s fringes have not grown back, but perhaps they could be willed to life?