I am so tired right now I feel like a plane crash; limp dead laundry draped on innocent green fields... listening to Toots and the Maytals, "Pressure Drop"...
would I live it All over again? yes, now I would: every pang, every pain, every laceration, all desires, total joys, enlighten'd eyebeams, Loves, all nights of supreme tiredness, earning the right to be who I am...dissolution, completion...
Kali has been so good to me She must want me to blink my eyes and see Her...and I do. I do, in sunlight through trees, in black night sky so perfect a star is an ache, in all beauty and even pain...Shiva opening His eyes...
I belong to Her...seeds of karma left askance at the end of the universe...what will we be when we rise again after the end?
Friday, March 2, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
The Songs of Ramprasad
I'm listening to a CD of my guru singing the songs of Ramprasad, a CD I listened to every day on the way to work for several years...until I saw the light of the rising sun on the clouds and in the trees as Kali's Shakti infusing Her creation...it's one of those works of music that I can get scared of after a while, for the emotions it encodes are so intense I'd rather avoid them.
The music is arranged in a treacly Western style, but Ma sings the traditional Bengali melodies and Her voice is such a marvel--fragile but vibrant and filled with love and light (weirdly, She sounds not unlike Billie Holiday towards the end of her life). What happens as I listen to this music is I feel my heart chakra open, an opening I wanted for many years and that happened finally, in the initiatic sense, the summer of 2004...but I wasn't counting on the fact that, as Thoreau wrote, "There is more day to dawn." I was working from that Calvinist playbook in which you score the spiritual touchdown, win the God game, and celebrate with an eternal glass of grape juice.
Mother Meera, my first teacher, likes to say that since God is infinite so is the spiritual path; we always have more to learn and can always become More...we can always grow and move beyond, and we have a duty to keep growing. This sounds nice, but in practice...sometimes I don't want to long for Kali this much or feel the painful intensity of my Angel's love for me...I worry that one day I won't be "functional" any more (though the more of a religious wacko I become, the better I actually seem to be at my job and in social settings), I worry that I could turn into some religio-geek who can't talk to anyone and has nothing in common with anyone, I worry that, since Laura tricked me into taking the Oath of the Abyss that fateful summer two and a half years ago, and since I have mightily been battling Choronzon of late, at any minute I could fall down the stairs of sanity all the way to the rubber basement of nutso-dom...
I dunno, man. Ramprasad fell down those stairs, it's clear from his words...and as Laura said yesterday, after I apologized profusely to someone at Wal-Mart for something most people wouldn't even think twice about, "If you think doing the right thing all the time is hard, try doing the wrong thing all the time." It's beautiful outside today and I'm sitting by an open window, being caressed by soft, cool winds...whatever darkness may roil inside me, whatever fear, whatever night, there is always that inner sun, always the light of Kali. Once when I was privileged to be in the presence of my Guru and hear Her sing Ramprasad's songs in person, She sent me into such a samadhi with Her singing that the whole room was filled with golden light, and slowly everything and everyone disappeared except for Her and that light...
as I floated, not knowing who I was anymore, the people sitting in front of me abruptly sprang up, scraping their chairs and muttering, "This is boring! Let's get out of here." I would have guffawed had I been more grounded--not at their expense...but at the possibility of two such varied perspectives on the same "reality." It's all a question of what I'm tuning in to, and I want to stay tuned to the same Kali time, same Kali channel...
The music is arranged in a treacly Western style, but Ma sings the traditional Bengali melodies and Her voice is such a marvel--fragile but vibrant and filled with love and light (weirdly, She sounds not unlike Billie Holiday towards the end of her life). What happens as I listen to this music is I feel my heart chakra open, an opening I wanted for many years and that happened finally, in the initiatic sense, the summer of 2004...but I wasn't counting on the fact that, as Thoreau wrote, "There is more day to dawn." I was working from that Calvinist playbook in which you score the spiritual touchdown, win the God game, and celebrate with an eternal glass of grape juice.
Mother Meera, my first teacher, likes to say that since God is infinite so is the spiritual path; we always have more to learn and can always become More...we can always grow and move beyond, and we have a duty to keep growing. This sounds nice, but in practice...sometimes I don't want to long for Kali this much or feel the painful intensity of my Angel's love for me...I worry that one day I won't be "functional" any more (though the more of a religious wacko I become, the better I actually seem to be at my job and in social settings), I worry that I could turn into some religio-geek who can't talk to anyone and has nothing in common with anyone, I worry that, since Laura tricked me into taking the Oath of the Abyss that fateful summer two and a half years ago, and since I have mightily been battling Choronzon of late, at any minute I could fall down the stairs of sanity all the way to the rubber basement of nutso-dom...
I dunno, man. Ramprasad fell down those stairs, it's clear from his words...and as Laura said yesterday, after I apologized profusely to someone at Wal-Mart for something most people wouldn't even think twice about, "If you think doing the right thing all the time is hard, try doing the wrong thing all the time." It's beautiful outside today and I'm sitting by an open window, being caressed by soft, cool winds...whatever darkness may roil inside me, whatever fear, whatever night, there is always that inner sun, always the light of Kali. Once when I was privileged to be in the presence of my Guru and hear Her sing Ramprasad's songs in person, She sent me into such a samadhi with Her singing that the whole room was filled with golden light, and slowly everything and everyone disappeared except for Her and that light...
as I floated, not knowing who I was anymore, the people sitting in front of me abruptly sprang up, scraping their chairs and muttering, "This is boring! Let's get out of here." I would have guffawed had I been more grounded--not at their expense...but at the possibility of two such varied perspectives on the same "reality." It's all a question of what I'm tuning in to, and I want to stay tuned to the same Kali time, same Kali channel...
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Drones
No, not the people you work with, but the sound...some believe that the entire universe averages out to a single, reverberating tone, and whether or not that's true I have always enjoyed monotonic, shimmering soundscapes with as little variation or ornamentation as possible. One of the classics is Metal Machine Music, a series of alpha-wave generating pieces whose reputation as a chainsaw symphony of sonic punishment seems more based on its reception in the fern-bar milieu of 1970s yacht-rock than its actual sound (though maybe my sensibilities have been permanently clusterbombed by listening to all that Merzbow)...Metal Machine Music can sound too pop to some of us...
but the drones on Jliat's web site are perfect: pretty yet powerful, peaceful yet intense. Years ago I stumbled across the Jliat CD The Ocean of Infinite Being and bought it because the cover art was so great, and then listened to it and felt I'd found the drone holy grail. Ocean is available here, as well as some stuff that's even better (16.05.94; A long, drone-like piece of music...; Jliat "J").
This is good music to meditate to, space out with, go to sleep listening to, get a massage to...or just have playing in the background as sonic laudanum.
BTW, as you probably know, Indian classical music is based on drones rather than on a key signature; the harmonics created by a complex drone instrument like a tamboura make it possible for a skilled player to create a complex and satisfying raga using just three notes...I've heard this done and it's awe-inspiring. There are performances of Indian music that reveal the original purpose behind the raga system--allowing performers and listeners to tune in to the molecular machine musick of God's creation. The best example I know of this is Out of Stillness by Gopal Shankar Misra (also available on iTunes). (I know I've mentioned this CD before so please forgive the repetition.)
but the drones on Jliat's web site are perfect: pretty yet powerful, peaceful yet intense. Years ago I stumbled across the Jliat CD The Ocean of Infinite Being and bought it because the cover art was so great, and then listened to it and felt I'd found the drone holy grail. Ocean is available here, as well as some stuff that's even better (16.05.94; A long, drone-like piece of music...; Jliat "J").
This is good music to meditate to, space out with, go to sleep listening to, get a massage to...or just have playing in the background as sonic laudanum.
BTW, as you probably know, Indian classical music is based on drones rather than on a key signature; the harmonics created by a complex drone instrument like a tamboura make it possible for a skilled player to create a complex and satisfying raga using just three notes...I've heard this done and it's awe-inspiring. There are performances of Indian music that reveal the original purpose behind the raga system--allowing performers and listeners to tune in to the molecular machine musick of God's creation. The best example I know of this is Out of Stillness by Gopal Shankar Misra (also available on iTunes). (I know I've mentioned this CD before so please forgive the repetition.)
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Something funny
I drove past this sign every day on my epic commute from East Podunk to Stonewall, where I work. I moved to Stonewall and it's pretty great...quiet, easy to get around, people are nicer, no crack addicts knocking on your door. But I miss this sign and the fit of laughter it would provoke, every single day, until invariably I would drive into a ditch and my car would burst into flames but I was laughing so hard I didn't notice...
I told grigorss I'd post something funny...a Cherish'd Reader who has probably long since stopped being a Reader said I seemed very serious, and I can see why she would say that...people who know me well, on the other hand, probably wonder if there's anything at all I am serious about, while the people who know me best know that I am passionately serious about a couple of things and those only (and no, I'm not talking about Zankou Chicken, but if they would open a branch in Stonewall I would want for almost nothing...)
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The Dance
I want to go out and play with Isis...I want to brush aside my microscope, slides, science books...images, idols...and dance with the Beloved...and I did this evening, while out walking, when my walk had long since become a trudge...
I thought of Izzi, thought of my own rational mania, and made myself stop and notice the next dear instant of Her unfolding...which happened to be a leaf in the street, a fragile and imperfect one, to be sure, which I picked up and wondered at--not forced wonder but falling-in-love wonder...wondered at its involute folds, its heart shape, lover shape, river and vein and mother tree there reflected...reborn...
This is SO going on my iPod
scroll down, and up...tons of good stuff...I've listened to most of the Robert Anton Wilson interview...it's good. I was having a fairly intense email dialogue with Fiorenza this a.m. and it seemed like her and Wilson AND Laura were triple-teaming me! I would read something in F's email--on the mp3 Wilson would say the same thing a second later...I'd type a word of reply to F...Wilson would say the word I was typing...and it was all stuff Laura has been saying, to the effect that I am in the process of becoming someone new and while that's happening the old slimy tentacles of my past patterns will be trying their damndest to drag me down. so make sushi out of 'em...
Wilson wrote somewhere that maybe you don't know you're in the Illuminati until it's too late to get out...
Wilson wrote somewhere that maybe you don't know you're in the Illuminati until it's too late to get out...
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