A message through the snow

 Last night DC and I together with a freind saw La bola negra  at the cinema. A stunning and moving film, of rich images both visually and metaphorically, its key message about authenticity, love and the forces that turn people against themselves and each other, is beautifully captured in snow. Often snow is a symbol for purity, here that element is present but more strongly it stands for loss. Loss of the self. Abandoning the person we truly are, we become a snow person, seen in the closing parts of the film, carrying our wound, lost in the cold snow. Black balled by society and/or individuals we must choose whether or not to black ball ourselves, to repress, abandon and deny who we are, or to choose life. Of course, it isn't so simple. Choosing life often requires some repression, some fitting in. But what is being said in this epic film I think, is that we must be authentic with ourselves. In that mindset we don't become snow people, we don't walk the cold life, the life of the shadows, haunted by the unlived life, living the life left when warmth's invitation seems too risky to accept. But this film isn't just a tapestry of platitudes, no, far from it. This film also shows clearly the horror people are capable of inflicting upon each other. And in that context the price of authenticity is sketched out. But the sketch is also shown as unavoidable- no life can remain exempt. What's being shown is that through the repeating patterns of life, rebirth like, a key choice lies before us- love or fear. One of the most moving elements of the film is that our life has a truth, almost a message that our living must convey... And we can carry it any way we like, but we can't abandon it, for one way or another it is always with us. And I thought a couple of times whilst watching of a line from a poem- the day came when the risk of flowering was out weighed by the cost of staying nipped in the bud. (I may not have the exactly correct wording.) This film seemed to me to suggest that the flowers of our lives are set in motion by our karma and the colours of their flowering, the landscape in which they flower and who they flower with are both something cast upon us and something we can either deny or shine our light upon. But the flowers and the light remain either way. And all the time we're sowing the seeds of our future, walking towards story of our past.

Story telling is another rich seam in this film, but that's for another post. 

Process

How is it even possible for me, to write something here which illustrates an understanding which itself is not captured by words? And then to instil within that writing the element of formulation within that understanding which is at odds with the very understanding? Zazen seems to express it but how could I really 'know'? And of course my own experience is only that- the experience which is expressed in the paradox of apparent separation. Without digressing into solipsism, and without dictating and imposing a formulation onto everything, where is the middle ground? The term 'heart-mind' is sometimes used in respect of all this and like all words is both useful and confusing. And so yesterday DC and I revisited in new clothes an old argument we have been having off and on now for almost as long as we have been together. He is an academic and in my fantasy (for all assessments are to a greater or lesser extent fantasy) totally fused in his occupation and identity. Further, the academic process is a web of knowledge ever refined, added to and rebuilt without end in pursuit of expansion of the mind's purview. And this is good, larger than any individual and meaningful. It is not however, reality. Reality is both larger and smaller than words. Our argument comes when for me the lens of this process is placed in front of every aspect of life and I feel squeezed by it. As I push back against it he feels rejected. As my life is informed by my own fusion of Zen, Taoism, western psychology, ecstatic movement practice, work in the construction industry, etc. etc... I write to craft a lens by which the small glimpses of that which defeats capture might be seen. Seen not in itself, for it has no self, but by what it reveals. And always with the knowledge that any realisation / appreciation / whatever word fits best, that may have passed through my being is very partial whilst neither partial or whole. And the thing is that not a word of this is any different to what DC wrestles with in his writing. Where that difference lies is possibly, in the validation of the academy. I do not wish to be dictated to by that which in my school years was as much a filter of ascribed worth as it was a vehicle for growth. Nor do I wish to have every creative floret of life assessed by it. However, I too am very given to intellectual rigor and greatly value this process. It is enough for me to play with words whilst wrapping them in their own limits, trying to avoid saying nothing of value or let them generate their own sophistry. In all respects there really is very little difference between DC and me.

I largely wrote the above before walking over to an EMDR session. What follows in this paragraph is post session, recalled as best I can remember. The focus of today's session was the period between about 16 and 24 years of age where it seems there is still unprocessed fear informing the emotional landscape of the present. Initially the images, memories and feelings are diffuse, vague and not readily available. There is probably a lot of numbing out in it. That after all is the function of compartmentalisation, set aside, don't fully go there, not feeling this, we have to keep this ship sailing. But sticking with the EMDR process images come, felt sense and meaning surface. I seem unable to meet the only available script, I'm not enough, small, isolated, rooms and others disappear to be replaced with black. My head brightly illuminated remains. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above and the feelings of fear and of tiredness, about a 30/70 split. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. Images across this period of time come and go, a sense of younger to the left, older to the right, the black clears, left to right. The rooms return the people return but I've been erased. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. I reappear interacting with others, thin, sparse lines of connection form, there's a brittle feeling. The enormity of the task of surviving starts to penetrate, there is fear, tiredness, there's no option but to keep going. I do not know that it is ok not to be enough for the script, there's no other available. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe the brittle connections, feeling not enough. I add '...and I wasn't enough, I couldn't inhabit the available script'. The sequence and timings written here may be slightly muddled, but the tone is close enough. Somewhere in the process the split of fear and tiredness shifted towards 50/50. The aloneness, heavy and dark shifts with lighter periods of connection and progress and threaded through all of it is determination. As the session draws to a close after similar cycles I'm aware that the erasure, from today's vantage point where so many other scripts are available including the transpersonal, resonates less with fear and more with liberation. But this vantage point was only reached after traveling in the boat of the erased. At the time it was out of range. I'm sure the coming weeks will see the process continue.

Saturday, DC and I visited the Bowes museum to see the Vivienne Westwood and the Norman Cornish exhibitions. Both vibrant with the wider creative life force yet very different. The Westwood I notice is mainly of clothes for women and I note that there are more opportunities for women to dress up in more different ways. Dressing up hasn't really ever featured large in my style. The Cornish exhibition is virtually alive- the sketched figures seem almost in motion and totally at one with the culture and environs in which they resonate. I casually wandered past resident exhibitions wondering vaguely about aliveness, the wider erotic and sensuality just short of sexuality. Later I would play about with this territory in 'conversation' with an AI. Setting up the scene with it and feeding it previous posts it did generate some interesting depictions of what I was circling. I particularly liked this:

The beautiful is the appearance of harmonious vitality within a relational field. The erotic is that same harmonious vitality experienced as participatory and generative. Sexuality is one possible flowering of that participatory vitality.

I think it was probably my poem, 'Returning' from the 7th July that put it on the map! What I think is at the root of this is life's deepest desire to express. And how can we as human beings be the conduit for the richest expression? Illuminated and illuminating. What is it that remains after the erasure? What resolves in the synthesis of the diversity depicted in the above paragraphs? What remains to be resolved? What flowers in both the resolved and the unresolved?

Love

If Whitman sings the body electric

I might say smooth creamy vibrant

Grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast

Sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning

And a day full, all liminal in fullness

Then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass

The very breath feels heavy

As if to weigh down the too light body

Where it should float the vibrant smoothness

And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Bright mind where aligned is flowing

Like Whitman's choir singing

But here stalled and waiting

Fear drives each slow step, twilight

Cheeks blow

Mind notes parasympathetic

Breathe

The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now

This is not the liminal of fullness

Past comes into present

Present orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness

Though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass

And so another turn around the spiral

Yet tomorrow

The very air sings the body electric

Liminal in fullness, bright mind dances

Joy as it turns the diamond, in Indra's net it sparkles

Sharpest thoughts, the fastest flowing

Liminal in fullness, body whiplash fast

Then earth and sea too sparkle

Gentle flowing as fire rises

The body breathes

The smoke of his once-ness lost in its embers

In each body our embers sparkle

Glow in each other's light and turn the diamond

And so another turn around the spiral

Desire in the beginning

A couple of evenings ago DC read out a description of 'the beginning' from one of the Vedas which noted that desire was present at the One becoming many. I've mused in past posts that the universe seems to have both the desire to make (and reabsorb) forms and through forms to know itself. And in humans through enquiry and knowledge systems, is gained understanding of the origin of the universe and in 'spiritual' practice to 'know' the unknowable. It is then, easy to associate 'the beginning' in different discourses with an historical event such as the 'big bang'. But this isn't my sense of what is being said in eastern spiritual texts. The beginning is each moment and each moment is both form and emptiness for all forms are interdependently arising and there is nothing behind them existing in time other than their is-ness in each moment. Blaha, blaha...

But another word has come to my attention recently- liminal. As part of my EMDR therapy taking a turn around the spiral of integration I came back to the liminal version of my body. Liminal in that whilst medically unremarkable it was in teens and early twenties socially salient for slightness. This generated an internal sense that I was neither medically suffering from 'something' nor socially what was expected. The degree of this salience is lost in mists of time and the psychological effect of it was doubtless amplified by both my compartmentalised sexuality and perception lag as I gradually gained mass. The liminality being a space of loose anchoring in perceived masculinity. All the while fighting an education system made to sort sheep! Blimey! And all the while each moment is the beginning, pregnant with desire to be. To be in my case, both liminal and wanting not to be so. What the moment / universe 'desires' and what each of us as selves desire don't always line up. Everything of course is liminal- being is a movement- an equipoise of change- perceived, perceiving and perceiver are One.  Blaha, blaha... And what of the felt sense of this desire and fear? If Whitman sings the body electric, I might say smooth creamy vibrant, grounded and flying, still and whiplash fast sharp and flowing gentle as good night or morning and a day full, all liminal in fullness, then fear is tight, constricted, like fragile glass, the very breath feels heavy as if to weight down the too light body where it should float the vibrant smoothness. And breathe... Tight, foothills of panic, tension, cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Bright mind not aligned with education system filled with I'm behind... peers moved on to university and... like Whitman's choir singing... but here stalled and waiting fear drives each slow step in twilight... cheeks blowing, mind notes parasympathetic response... Breathe... The smoke of his once-ness, in the beginningless now... this is not the liminal of fulness. And this is just the past coming into the present. The present is actually orchestral in hues of vibrant smoothness though yes, still shot with fear of broken glass. And so another turn around the spiral.

And today, a fit and healthy body of good proportions supports a mind still sharp and asking- desire...?  

Illumination

I saw in the news yesterday that the Sagrada Família in Barcelona is finished and the report showed the following picture:

It's such a beautiful image and I could feel the tears well up. It's decades since DC and I first visited the site and I was very impressed with the imaginative works. We toured the various Gaudí works in Barcelona and I loved them and the city. Then some years ago after the space shown in the above image was finished and accessible we returned. I remember the wonderful coloured light, the soring joyous space and thinking - what a place to dance this this would be if it were allowed! And what a place to pass through to then sit and meditate! For here, surely the highest in human kind is saying joy, we are here! And on seeing the above image I also recalled the image of the restored Notre Dame:

See Beauty post 30 Nov. 2024. The word illumination used in that post is again so relevant when we see what has been created at the Sagrada Família. So many skilled design, craft and trades people of all disciplines, funders and supporters have made these buildings sing in resonance with our hearts and minds. I'm reminded as I write of Walt Whitman's I sing the Body Electric.

And were it not for a telephone call last night from my mother I would be leaving this post at that, for it says enough. But, after only one night back home out of hospital she called to say she wasn't feeling right. And so I advised her to phone 999 and DC and I drove over to be with her and dad. I helped her out of bed into a dressing gown and travelled with her in the ambulance. And holding her frail body so she would feel safe and not fall I recalled how as teenager I'd done this (when she was seriously ill) and for a second I was holding him holding her. And we were tide and time as recent posts have illuminated and I thought - but how could I have ever not loved him in his fulness? But it is those times we wince at ourselves that let the light in, for everything is cracked. And yet it holds. I will go to the hospital now to see how she's doing. Bless.

The smoke of the Russian dolls

The past continues to come into the present as is to be expected at this time when I'm consciously going around the spiral again, this turn with EMDR. My last post laid out some of the dimensions of this. Details though important to me in some respects are of course but the shape of the white horses that ride the waves. The real weight is in the roll of sea, for there the waves surge towards? Ah yes, the metaphor fails, and in so doing reveals the shifting sands of tide and time. I danced with them those Russian dolls as we bobbed in the waves and rode the white horses, or they ran by us. But I've no time machine, I can't really be there to lift the weight off the shoulders of the child, the adolescent. I can't let them melt in my arms, I can only hold the smoke of their once-ness in the arms they've become. And the perfume of the smoke drifts away in the tide and time of the now-ness. And where am I? And why? And does it matter? And will the past go home? Too many metaphors, too much water. More strongly I notice the smoke of their once-ness.

Russian Dolls of Self

Recently the past has been coming into the present and I've been very much feeling the emotional landscape of several younger selves. There were some difficult times and they live on in each other and in me now like Russian dolls nested inside each other- events and developments at successive ages. Sometimes one particular doll or age seems very present and it's easy to forget how the previous ones were at different times more or less active in that one. As was true then so it is now. Ourself is a layered conditioned ongoing process. In my own case I also see this another way. There are at least three lives playing out to greater or lesser extents - the chronological life which unfolds, the life that might have been if conditions had been a little more aligned with my temperament and the life that I avoided. The life that might have been would have been easier and more fun in childhood and adolescence and might have made me an easier adult but it would likely have produced a flatter person. It's a life that lives now in grief. That grief has been unfolded; the loss of experience that wasn't, the connection with other the connection with self and at its root the cost of abandonment. There are deeper layers there too no doubt. The life I avoided is in a way the life that fear has tried to keep safe from. But sometimes that fear was too influenced by the smallest of those dolls and almost caused the thing it wanted to avoid. The avoided life is the one that died in bud, that failed in every way to flower. There were times when the clock ticked very close to that. In the tapestry of time and tide where the Russian dolls live and fill each other with their empty rattling there is stillness, spaciousness. Fear is the knowing of the empty rattling whilst we cling to the painted faces. And thank every nothing there isn't that it is so! For we only flower in our fullest in our pain and joy our depth and magnificent flash in the dark because we have some of it. At some level the smallest doll knows it's all empty but it must grow, it must flower. And so on Wednesday in ecstatic dance to jazz funk feeling into the body-mind moving as the embodiment of the dolls and the music the tapestry of time and tide... breathing... there was release and there was I now and I from then, and I from before, and held, the three of us child, adolescent and adult all in the embrace of time and tide. And in this way the stillness comes to dance and sees. And the music was flowing, and exuberant and joyous and sad and still and alive and vibrant. And there was Nina Simone singing Black is the colour of my true love's hair and the tears ran down my face and I placed my hands as if to set reverently upon the floor that which she articulated in its known unknowable and breathed. And the jazz came back and it was blue and funky... and the flower shone.

And returning home there was DC and he holds me as we continue to weave our tapestry in time and tide. And I hope in his time and tide he feels me hold him.

Departure

On Friday evening DC and I watched the 2016 film Departure. We both enjoyed it and noted that it had way of getting under one's skin. So on Saturday I was musing just what is it that's resonating there. The film is about lots of currents in various relationships and is described in various reviews as a meditation on desire. Indeed one of the characters Elliot, a dreamy teenager with aspirations to be a writer says he wants to write about desire...'the way it runs through your fingers like water'. At this point I think it becomes clear that the writer is using the character for his own exploration of desire and there's a slight failure of film's plausibility. But this failure soon dissipates. Thinking about this line I note that for me desire might better be described as like water soaking into blotting paper and running through fingers like cream, coursing through the body like electricity, celebrated in Walt Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric... And here we have it, the resonance, the reality of our paradox - we are both all One and all separate, we long to be the fullest we can be, but we can't do it alone, we are our interactions. But this is not all that gets under the skin for gay men of our generation. Elliot is gay, and in the film we are invited to consider where he lies on the journey of realising, accepting and coming out. He doesn't appear to have much gap between realisation and acceptance, there's no indication of repression. Repression wounds. It amplifies separation in the human paradox. It holds us in the bud, denies flowering and turns us against ourselves. Eventually for most of us we break the bonds and out we come. But we carry grief for the lost years. This then is the added element getting under our skin. And we all have aspects of ourselves that get lost in our everyday lives... This meditation on desire then is wider than we can know... And that wideness gets under the skin...

The title of this blog is taken from case 5 Mumonkan and I consider that this case is basically asking us what are we and how do we live our life given that we can't ever capture the totality of the unfolding situation and neatly live it using only the power of our own reasoning. No, we can't control and be 'right' and just and true and free of pain in all moments. No amount of knowledge, planning, control and the like even with the best, kindest and 'highest' of intentions will do it. But the key is our intention. And here we return to desire. In 'spiritual' discourse desire, craving and similar words are often described in their problematic manifestation and indeed there are many ways in which we must see through their turns and snares. Less well explored and pointed to in the red thread koan, is desire's messy creative passionate compassion. Without this we are the withered tree hermit saved only when the old woman comes to chase us away and burn down our hut! We have shunned life and become trapped in a small selfish existence. But if we are to respond to life with warmth and an open hearted intention then its creativity, its desire to be, to flower, is an expression of that intention and vice versa. This is wider than we can know...

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul...

And as I might have said to Elliot, Whitman's rather said it I think, but it's so sweet to see you try and how I would have liked to have been able to spare myself the wounding though its healing would repay the wound ten times and more.

A Handbag?!

Yesterday DC and I enjoyed the glorious spring sun walking along the beach from Alnmouth to Boulmer and back. Whilst walking (and reminding ourselves and each other to enjoy the sparkling sea) we discussed thoughts raised by our recent viewing of the BBC's The Great Philosophers (a history of western philosophers in 15 parts). We've not been watching in order but rather selecting episodes which look appealing. We will get round to watching them all I'm sure. The series dates from 1987 and is quite wonderful in its no nonsense, no frills straightforward serious approach. Just two erudite people sitting on a sofa illuminating at a reasonably high level the writings of some of the finest minds. No fancy camera shots, no trips around the globe, no pandering to short attention spans and competing for an audience. Much of our discussion was to reflect that one way or another we're all dancing around the same handbag of the empiricism v idealism conundrum, this ultimately leading through questions of causality towards the question of free will. But we decided to stop short of that question for we had quite done the rounds of something which had made it already a largely irrelevant question. I'd approached the ideas from a Buddhist perspective; interdependent origination which to me, through emptiness (śūnyatā) takes the handbag away.

We stopped at Boulmer and drank tea from a flask and enjoyed my mother's home made cake, which was lovely. That she and my dad are still despite their frailty able to make cake and that we all share so much love despite the inevitable frustrations of life is a constant source of amazement to me.

In the evening we watched the film Pride about the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). It's a feel-good movie as opposed to a detailed documentary but I think the take home message is not weakened by that - connection, community, acceptance, care and compassion are what give life joy. And as I write this a phrase which is a favourite of DC's comes to mind - "distinctness without domination, with the distinct participating in each other" by Theodor W. Adorno. For my own part Adorno's “Greyness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbour the concept of different colours, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole” reminds me that all my fears and frustrations must surely stem from the beauty of the possible. I should add at this point that I've not read the original works of any of these great thinkers and I'm grateful to those that both have and have produced works that I might appreciate. The film Pride covers the interaction of the LGBT and mining communities, a coming out story and the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. There's a moment when the fictional character Joe 'Bromley' is taken by the hand and kissed in a night club. The scene marks his initiation, is late in the whole story of his involvement with LGSM and is suffused with warmth and the ripening of his coming out. It is sharply contrasted by later scenes of his parents hostile response and the victimisation and queer bashing of other characters. But eventually we see Joe leave the parental home and thus take another step to come home to himself. The sound track to the film is a rich and joyous one and very much in harmony with my own dance inclinations. For me emptiness / śūnyatā doesn't take away our individuality it invites us to truly expand into it. It's an enormous ask - to truly respond with openness to each moment, not to shrink back in greed or fear from what is being asked but to be the living embodiment of the highest potential available to each of us. This is our humanity, our compassion, although it comes with clouds of confusion and fear and is inevitably way bigger than we can grasp or fully meet. To truly live is to dance this koan. It isn't enough to only read philosophy, or think about it in the abstract. Sooner or later we will be faced with the 'chopping wood and carrying water' of our everyday lives. But can we JUST chop the wood and carry the water - FULLY in response to that enormous ask? Can we live each apparent choice of our everyday lives in each arising moment as the bright colours of the distinct dancing with each other in mutual co-operation, support and enjoyment? In our everyday lives we are described by neither empiricism nor idealism, we are suspended between heaven and earth. We must not recoil like Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest exclaiming 'A handbag?!' for we are all in and dancing around the handbags of delusion. Much easier said than done. And even then always with our own little grab bag of karma...

Our Humanity

 I'm sitting trying to work out what this post is about. A number of things seem to have energy for (or be draining energy from) me. I continue to work with the challenges of our house moves, reawakened trauma and the changes and challenges that we all face in these times. I'm reading In Any Given Moment by Ajahn Munindo. I find this very interesting as I reflect upon my own spiritual journey in the light of how he describes his in this book. I'm still digesting that but the salient energy there is that I feel warmth and respect for him and renewed appreciation of the complexity and simplicity of the path. Homage to the triple gem.

The geopolitical situation is alarming. Trump and his tech oligarchs are a serious and dangerous threat to peace and democracy. I'm not convinced sufficient people realise how close rightwing populism, fuelled by  the disenfranchised fallout from 40 or 50 years of neoliberalism is taking us down the road to full scale fascism. As a gay man I'm hyper-vigilant to this. I have a sinking feeling; it may already be too late to save any hope of a world where cooperation with each other and the biosphere take precedence over the power of a very few very very rich people (mainly men). Toxic masculinity in the broadest sense is spewing out throughout the world.

 In this body-mind is squared the circle of this life. Trying to work out what this post is about and/or trying to work out what things have energy / drain energy is a manifestation of the koan; the resolution in a balance of trying and allowing tends to escape me. Sometimes the best that can be done is to look after the body and try not to spin the wheels (of the mind) too much.

Driving to work today a Spotify playlist came to Take me to Church by Hozier. It was this track that prompted me to post. There are a number of themes in this song but the basic energy in the music is our humanity.

Maria

Last night DC, a friend and I saw the movie 'Maria' about Maria Callas. I loved it and found it both aurally and visually stunning. Often there were tears streaming down my face. It was also I thought, cleverly constructed cinematographically to portray something of the state of her mental health, her use of medication and the way in which narratives are constructed and revised. Depicting something of the traumas of her younger life and alluding to the ways in which these informed her appreciation of the meaning of the music we are moved by the biography, the music and the energy and humanity of the characters. For me what shone through was an expression of the inevitable heartache at the bottom of human life. In life our hopes, dreams and aspirations seldom come without loss and suffering and however hard we try to control, plan and manage our life there is almost always a different outcome. In Buddhist terms we cling through delusion to things which are empty, they aren't what we ever thought or hoped and so at some point our experience disappoints and may even be so painful as to approach destruction of an integrated personality. The film portrays Maria as having taken refuge in the music. The music articulates suffering and our humanity and it is this which is both moving and beautiful. Through it we feel the nature of our predicament and ascend like the lark of Vaughn Williams above our separation and into a promise of... of we can't quite articulate... and 'it' remains just out of reach but nonetheless we have been suffused by it. But this refuge in music which has provided both articulation and meaning is ultimately taken from her as it is based upon the empty body and its dependence upon so many conditioned forms. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form came to me in various ways as narratives were constructed and revised time and again though the aural and visual fields of the movie. There is a celebration of creativity, work, care, love and affection. Life has value.

Heaven Can Wait

I was looking for something to refresh the type of music I've been listening to via the Spotify A.I. algorithms and ended up listening to Meatloaf, Bat Out of Hell again. This album can impart upon my experience... memories, flavour, feeling, perfume - these words don't quite capture the nature of a charge, not particularly strong but there and of teenage years and time with a friend who introduced me to Meatloaf's music. He was as straight as they come and I'd no erotic feelings towards him. The charge isn't painful or longing and isn't anything more than the imprint of largely ok times but they were times sat in the midst of a lot of complexities. Anyway, what has prompted me to write isn't this charge. It's the track Heaven Can Wait which moved me to write. Jim Steinman's lyrics might be read as say poetry and would be enough cause for reflection but add the music and I'm moved to tears.

Heaven can wait
And a band of angels wrapped up in my heart
Will take me through the lonely night
Through the cold of the day
And I know, I know
Heaven can wait
And all the Gods come down here just to sing for me
And the melody is gonna make me fly
Without pain, without fear
Give me all of your dreams
And let me go alone on your way
Give me all of your prayers to sing
And I'll turn the night into the skylight of day
I've got a taste of paradise
I'm never gonna let it slip away
I got a taste of paradise
That's all I really need to make me stay
Just like a child again
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
And I know that I've been released
But I don't know to where
Nobody's gonna tell me now
And I don't really care, no, no, no
I've got a taste of paradise
It's all I really need to make me stay
I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
Heaven can wait
Ah, Heaven can wait
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

Now, many have commented upon the meaning of these lyrics and writers don't always have a clear meaning but I think what I find moving is as follows. They might depict someone who has had a transformative experience of love. This love could be anywhere on an axis from romantic projection with potent sexual energy through established sexual relationship, an asexual love, an opening in life to purpose and meaning with a sense of belonging and value, the love of being alive, right through to 'religious' / metaphysical experience. Whatever, they've all passed and the transformation remains. Now, even if I consider that Steinman wrote these lyrics for the musical Neverland and put a Peter Pan lens in front of them, I'm still moved. Afterall, J.M. Barrie's Neverland alludes to our deepest desires.

What is moving is that the transformation is to a place of acceptance. The suffering of the past is gone, there's nothing but time until the end of time, the transforming ecstasy has passed and taken with it the suffering. Any pain now can only be pain and not drive suffering. The axis from earthly ecstasy as a glimpse of eternity to the eternal is drawn out for us and the sorrows of the past rendered foundation for peace. The striving and desperation are gone. There's release, it doesn't seem important to where. For now, time remains but it will end. When it ends there will be no loss. No loss of pleasure or suffering.

Our lives are driven by our desires and our desires by our lives. And we all return to the Red Thread koan - the left hand path (of spiritual practice) or the right. There's plenty in the lyrics to point to sex as a vehicle to spiritual experience but they need not be read that way and other vehicles to paradise are clearly there too.

I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home

Home to ourselves as incarnated beings... with all that entails.

Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

For me these closing lines place a foot both sides of eternity. Each of us finding our own altars as reflections of our true nature.

Lest we get too detached from our earthly musings it's good to remember the humour in the next set of lyrics by Steinman:

On a hot summer night, would you offer your
Throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes
I bet you say that to all the boys...

Boundless or bounded?

Last week talking with my friend Niels about life in general he made the comment '...we just get pushed about...' he was referring to life (or perhaps some greater being) doing the pushing. Yeah, and who are we? That's the question. Is it that we are entirely physical beings who's consciousness is an emergent property of matter and the entirety of our experience is the moment by moment arising of conditions stemming from a vast interconnected web of a basically physical universe generating a complex flux or is this insufficient to capture our nature? Given that we don't and probably will never fully understand the nature of the observable physical universe and that there is likely far more universe which is unobservable it seems that both positions come to the same conclusion- our ground of being is unknowable. What then of the question 'who are we?' We are our life it seems. Boundless and yet bounded we are, and likely as not can't say much more than that we can't really know. All knowing being limited it would seem by it's own apparatus of knowing. Anyway you look at it 'it's turtles all the way down'. In my younger years I saw the story of 'it's turtles all the way down' as an illustration of the foolishness of folk believing in farcical notions of reality. Now I see it more of a warning that any notion of reality is actually only an approximation, a partial explanation and liable to require refinement, and constant modification. This of course is Sunyata - Emptiness. And it is pregnant with possibility. At times seeing reality this way offers the possibility of what might be termed salvation - that life is so much richer and more complex than I can know and that there's the possibility that I might reach such a deep understanding and experience of / insight into this that my entire life might undergo a significant and liberating shift. At other times this seems merely a philosophical observation without any likelihood of such a shift. Overall I suspect that my appreciation of Sunyata has and continues to deepen even if any significant shift may elude me. And perhaps a significant shift might not be such a good thing- I may not have the temperament to accommodate anything radicle. In which case a gentle softening of the more unhelpful aspects of my personality may be enough. As I've said before I'm too given to seeing the entropic aspect of Emptiness rather than the creative. The fear that I'll be pushed around to some suffering that I can neither stand nor control has been with me for as long as I can recall. Softening to see the 'I' in this in wider terms and trusting that it is enough to respond to each moment as fully as possible in the moment without writing the drama of a self trying to control the future isn't always possible. The combination of awareness and surrender doesn't always manifest. Often there's awareness but alone this isn't enough to avoid suffering. This is particularly true where there seems to be trauma. At present I'm reading (or listening to) a book about how we humans 'break'- I may write more about this in a future post. For now I'm just rolling with the being pushed about and wondering who's being pushed.

Remembrance Sunday

Yesterday, remembrance Sunday I attended a Quaker meeting in the morning then had a walk with DC through the local area. We had lunch outside a cafe as DC has Covid. It was reminiscent of those lockdown days. We watched Hotel New Hampshire then I took myself off to Sunday conscious dance group. It was Bob's set of tracks. I generally like his music - he generally has a good mix of tracks to get us moving whatever the energy and mood of the participants. The Quaker meeting had been naturally infused as it has been for a week or two with thoughts of the current conflicts and previous ones. The ministry was heartful and upon reflection indicative of a processing and care of troubling aspects of human nature. Through this care some understanding and peace seemed to evolve and through that the better side of our nature was alive and visible. Bob opened his set with the reprise from The Eagles, Wasted time. He introduced this as his acknowledgement of Remembrance Sunday noting that the track is about one minute long. I remembered a comment at the Quaker meeting that maybe we should add a minute for the damage we have done to the environment. The dancing was good and I could feel my body respond positively to the music and the connections with others. There was a nice warmth in the group. I returned home to a lovely dinner prepared by my wonderful DC.

That track Bob opened with reminded me straight away of this post from April 2015. I mentioned to Bob that it always brings tears to my eyes. It's that line from the full track - 'And maybe someday we will find, that it wasn't really wasted time' that still gets me. Somehow the music and the words for me at least tap straight into that wider human journey with an acknowledgement of suffering and growth.

But will we humans ever grow enough to end the self inflicted suffering?

The falling leaves

Yesterday evening DC and I saw The Father, a play by Florian Zeller at the People's Theatre. Although an amateur production the performances were good and the experience in no way felt amateur. No small feat given the nature of the play. With no consistent narrative position we experience the unfolding story of an elderly man with dementia. The uncertainty of 'reality', his decline from robust demeanour to second childhood and the frightening isolation as his awareness no longer holds a coherent picture of the world or even himself is played out in an ever shifting field. Time, place and relationship constantly fail to join up into a coherent linearity. The sequence of past present and future as the temporal backdrop to the physically apparent world fragments. The who is who of the people in his life fragments. The where is where fragments... His closing lines 'my leaves are falling away, my branches are falling away' leaves us asking the same question he has just asked '...but what about me... who am I?'

And so it seems fitting to remember the title of this blog - for who is holding on to what? Who is it that might ever hold on to nothing, to be with what is, as it is? Inspired by the koan (Case 5 Mumonkan) at a time when I was recovering 'myself' after my sense of who I was had been, if not shattered then certainly knocked about a bit by an anxious depression caused by long term stress, this blog aimed to capture some movement into a wider sense of being. And what I sought was a place where I could be alive to life without again being overwhelmed by any pain it could cause me. Even to the extent that the very notion of 'me' was to be kept under scrutiny. And I was all too aware of the danger in this! I kept it reasonably soft... the grasping in this was clear to me and I fumbled my way through the dharma... So, the years have passed and what might I say now in answer to the question - who sits? I've no idea! And I don't mean that in an elliptical or 'knowing' way. It really is a mystery. But it is a mystery sitting in a coherent consensus reality. I'm not dementing. (As far as I can tell.) What and how do we know the nature of ourselves to be?

Meanwhile, the play reminds us of the last days of DC's father and the increasing fragility of my parents. We are aware of the passage of time and the movement through the seven ages as we cast about the stage of our lives, interconnected and separate as they are, in this unfathomable and yet obvious paradox.

The Father is a moving play and the theme of loss and death resonated all the more strongly as we spoke with the director. We know him and his wife through other friends and we acknowledged the sadness in the unfolding falling away that accompanies the last days of life. And as we all agreed it's shit. The loss of function and the physical pain taking up the time before death, squeezing the precious remaining moments of connection. It IS shit. And as family and friends gather and share, as the days pass, there is that which has been and that which remains.

The merit of this post is for those approaching the end of their life and all who love them.

For John

 On Sunday DC and I did our usual walk on the Beach, had tea in a teashop then headed off to Movement Medicine Dancing before returning home for dinner. Various anxieties were in my mind but they were fused with feelings provoked by the short hours of daylight; the winter darkness seemed to evoke both negative and positive emotions. On the one hand the short days are gloomy with all that entails yet on the other the darkness seemed to wrap around one in a soothing soporific blanket saying 'hush now, take it easy, all in good time, this is a time to wait, an inward time'.  And so it was that the sun was replaced by the moon and stars and I found my self thinking something along the lines of 'why can I not be more relaxed and see life as a playful dance?' A similar theme was I think in my mind on Saturday and I felt the inklings of a blog post inspired by the feeling or thought that it's because it's all so important that one can become so despondent. There speaks a perfectionist I suppose. I had planned to explore this mixture of... well as I say I'd planned to explore it. But this morning I got the news that our friend John Kennedy had passed away peacefully at 6am. John had been in hospice in the later stages of motor neuron disease and DC and I last saw him just before Christmas. He seemed as ever, in amazingly good spirits and DC and I had commented to each other how positive John was and how his basic warmth and generosity still shone through despite his physical condition. Wanting to write a post to celebrate John I logged on and saw the note I'd made Saturday as an aide memoire - it's because it's all so important that one can become so despondent. I can hear John saying 'ah yes, I quite agree...' whilst maintaining his positive and generous demeanour and asking if we'd like a drink! Before his health failed John would make the most fantastic kedgeree and I have fond memories of the four of us - John, his wife Ann, DC and myself sat at Ann and John's kitchen table talking politics, life, people, you name it and enjoying good food, drink and the company. And it was all so important and we all did sometimes feel despondency creeping up but we'd generate between us warmth and good cheer and there was gratitude. And that I think is a fitting celebration of John - that he would generate warmth and good cheer and gratitude. Bless you and thank you John; you knew that all sorts of things are important and you cared, saw the difficulties and generated warmth. Even in the middle of your own poor health you still cared and generated warmth. Thank you.

Good Luck To You Leo Grand

 DC and I have just been to see Good Luck To You Leo Grand at the Tyneside cinema. (I love the Tyneside cinema it's a great independent cinema and so much nicer than the multiplex chains.) We both enjoyed the movie and commented to each other on the humanity and genuine care depicted whilst at the same time staying clear of sentimentality. (Follow the link above to get the plot.)

What kept coming to me throughout the movie was the word tissue and an image of a sheet of gently forming and disappearing tissue paper sort of between us the viewer and the body of the actor, not directly between but to the side and within the movie. It's not so much that the various selves, persona etc. are a tissue of lies but rather that the fabric of our selves is fabricated and more mesh than solid. This is a movie put together I think by someone who knows their transpersonal psychology and clearly the character behind Leo knows his. We have layers here and we pass through them - Leo Grand, Connor, McCormack, Nancy Stokes, Susan Robinson, Emma Thompson. The vehicle taking us through is the depiction of Susan's fantasies and the crossing of boundaries as she looses sight of the professional relationship in which Leo exists and imagines extending into the 'real' life of Connor. Here we start to see the fuzziness of 'real' and that tissue paper forms and disappears in my mind. Overlaid in this I consider their conversation about sex work and the question set by Nancy to her religious education students asking if sex work should be legalised. Like the periods of history when acting was regarded to some degree as immoral we see that the question might be more usefully framed as to what degree can sex work or any other work keep Leo separate from Connor and Nancy separate from Susan? As ever the interesting thing about human sexuality is its complexity and ability to reveal. The revelation might be as small as the details of a fantasy or as enormous as the realms of existence. If ever an aspect of humanity might bridge the formless and the formed and be captured by a name that name is sex. In this it is essentially spiritual. Connor is towards the sacred intimate end of the sex work spectrum. By the end of their sessions together Susan is substantially more free to wander playfully in the garden of her existence and we are touched by the honesty of her and Connor seeing, respecting and caring for each other without attachment.

We need a self solid enough to see its fluidity, fluid enough to be in the moment without being washed away. Well, something like that... some pithy epithet that captures the sage like wisdom needed to enjoy what is to be enjoyed in the challenge of a human life... 'There is no test..' says Leo to Nancy whilst trying to relax her '...only a dance'. Of course there's no test but we are tested. Life is not without challenges. What comes back again to me in contemplation of all this is perhaps summed up by the meditative question 'who sits?'

Leo is good looking and has a gym toned body. At the end of the movie Susan admires her aged form - it's a nice touch and thinking about it now I can imagine a different version of the movie with a less attractive Leo... and I seem to recall that sort of territory (as well as a woman searching for her first orgasm) is rather beautifully explored the movie Shortbus which I think I'll watch again...

How much freedom do we have not to wriggle?

I think I developed OCD sometime around 9 years old, although it may have been a little later but not older than 12. So I've lived with this condition as it has waxed and waned for at least 40 years. Over those years it has shifted shape and modulated in magnitude; subsided so as to virtually disappear, returned some times in familiar forms sometimes in changed form, highlighted aspects of its root and moved with the rest of this body-mind as part of the flux that is life. A complex and pernicious condition that one is always recovering from it has flare ups and remissions. And a bit like many other dis-eases the reasons for the ebb and flow, the waxing and waning are obscure. However, the root of this condition is basically an attempt at a bargain with life to be granted certainty. Why attempt this bargain when the very attempt itself sows its own frustration? Because like Alice down the rabbit hole it wasn't clear at the time of following the rabbit that one would end up falling down the hole. And rabbits pop up! And having seen a rabbit it can be very difficult not to follow it, for if we pay no attention to anything then where is the meaning in our experience? We wouldn't ever find the wherewithal to make even so much as a daisy chain. So seeing 'a rabbit off' ie something that seems not quite right, not quite stable it's in our nature to be drawn to investigate. And there is compassion in it, for I would say that at the start of the OCD feeling a glimpse of impermanence was perceived; vulnerability, potential loss and suffering, and with that came the desire to control, to make safe. So we reach for something. But like the jar of orange marmalade which Alice took from the shelf we find it empty. And so begins the search for a suitable place to put the jar... and we are still falling...

OCD is a potent mix of thoughts and emotions. And like any mental health condition the tricky thing about it is that the very tools you need to restore some balance to the situation are the ones affected greatly by the condition. OCD is an addiction. The clue's in the name - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The obsession is the fear, the compulsion the trying to fix it, the result is ironically the dis-order where order was sought. Such mind states affect the subtle feelings involved in how situations are perceived. The overall flavour of it is sticky, tight with itchiness.

And so, one learns that from time to time one will find oneself falling down the rabbit hole. And the tricky thing is just what to do with that empty jar... All one can do is to be open to putting it in the cupboard as it passes by. One way or another we're all moving the empty jars from the shelves to the cupboards. Sometimes like Alice we reach out in curiosity at other times we reach out for security.

 I read recently in a blog I follow, that Victor Frankl said:

"The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity...”

Well, I'm not so sure about that because it seems to me that what is being assumed here is a stable self, a centred, grounded self able to absorb the situation whilst remaining capacious enough not to be overwhelmed by it. And I'm not sure that such capacity is granted to us except by what might be called grace. Now I'm not saying that it can't be cultivated. I am not saying that one can't acknowledge but not become. Clearly it is possible not to add unhelpful energy to one's experience to just let it be and respond to what is needed without adding or resisting whilst still engaging with the flux of life. It's just that in 40 years of OCD waxing and waning by unfathomable reasons I have seen how the feelings forming choice and which impart one's attitude are not anywhere near as stable as might be sufficient ground to stake a claim for freedom. And the surrender to the falling not so available at times as would be required for freedom. And if such stability of mind and surrender were at all times available to all beings I wonder - what shape meaning? What shape compassion? It seems to me that such freedom as Frankl points to resides in the divinity of our humanity. And, as we span the space between heaven and earth such capacity for absorbing life's vicissitudes from a centred vantage modulates. I'm doubtful I would have survived in a concentration camp. It's possible, but I'm not sure what was available to Frankl's mind would have been available to mine. The modulation of capacity - to what extent is this ours to control?

It takes a great deal of energy to negotiate the rabbit hole of an OCD flare up. Depending upon the intensity and other aspects of one's life the ability to remain centred is affected by the depletion of energy. Beyond this there's a more straight forward seeing emptiness- that there's no separate self to be centred. I am always at the centre of my life yet there's no separate person to grasp and although I say 'my life' in reality it's a much more diffuse experience than 'my' indicates. And so it comes to this- what if anything needs to be done to let the stickiness pass? The difficulty is sitting in the not knowing. And as with quicksand the key is not to wriggle. It's not that I disagree with Frankl, it's that I question what causes the modulation of capacity.

Priceless time

Listening today to The Eagles; Wasted Time, I came again to that place of reflection. It's a song about the death of a romantic relationship but I wonder is it also just as much about the little and some not so little deaths we face on our journey through life. And that line 'you're afraid it's all been wasted time' is so poignant. Has it been so far, a life well lived? Were the 'right' choices made? Well, were they ever choices? Coming out of the void, entering samsara we make our way seeking experience and perhaps eventually sensing the longing to return home. At this place is there a looking one way at the life so far lived and the other towards home; the source? And if there is doubt or sadness then what part is it that feels sad? And sad for what? The line 'So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can get on with mine' reminds us that we do seek. But it's the line 'And maybe someday we will find, that it wasn't really wasted time' that moves me to tears. Can we ever but square the circle of our own life? I'm reminded of this post on Jade Mountain Buddha Hall. Is this moment anything but complete? Whatever it might seem, we are the answer to our koan. Bodhidharma is indeed the red bearded barbarian! I just need to keep saying YES!

Then and Now

Playing Atomic the album by Blondie I had the thought that I've liked this music since I first heard it as a kid way back in the late 70's early 80's and I noticed a warmth at the continuity, the sustaining element of self; I liked it then and I still like it. This generates consistency and I notice how warm that feels. Noticing this I immediately recognized that basic human (ego) need to be an 'I'. And more than this, in middle age it's nice to feel some connection to a 'me' from childhood - some part that has not changed, not got grey hairs! Having the awareness of this as part of the way a self [sic small 's'] emerges and some awareness of a Self [sic capital 'S'] holding this is indeed a gift from the difficult years that have passed between then and now and I further notice a sense of gratitude to the child within as I recall him as he was then and even younger.