iv/ third pocket: back alley of the soul

Journey in my pocket finding a journal page after learning how to use the strike through function on the text I had chosen first.

January 11th, 2002 Puna Hawaii.
June 9th, 2009 Point Roberts, Washington

Like some poem
these entries.
Shall I call the soul a non-linear processor of the mind? Do I want to say that that is all there is to it? Norman Mailer said it might span life times. Is that necessary? Of course, isn't that the linear trying to exert some influence. Clare said language dictates how we perceive. It is a form of control over our minds. We are brainwashed through conventions of language. We are socialized through language. We define our identity through language, mostly through spoken words. Other 'languages' of the world that span cultures and species are operative. They are non-linear and probably not very verbal. Some will call them the languages of emotion or desire. I call them the languages of connection. They may be from my soul or from my heart. They are my animal languages. They are my animistic languages. 

I can speak of stones. 


Connections are about my desire to know and be known. Will I learn in these seasons to speak these languages more directly. When they are spoken, they are literal and then linear. Even though they are clearly non-linear in origin. I have trouble with linear speakers. I fear that they will label me as a tease or even worse as a threat. Why do some of us repeat themselves incessantly? 

I am not really going anywhere: I am here already. I am simply playing, opening my heart, accessing my soul. So the exploration of connection makes more sense. Exploration of puzzles fit here. The exploration of language indirectly touches core beliefs. The exploration of layers and significance, including the most recent revelation that of course as one penetrates deeper and deeper one is likely to end up much of the time passing through meaning back into the primal ooze or some chaotic molten substructure, or even through to the other side, which rather than being some new or future or heavenly plane is just the back alley that runs behind the room we had entered on the most current quest for meaning. 

There are a series of these short quips about such. I am sensitive to them. I've carried them with me lodged in special recesses. Here is the elephant parable peeking out again about perceptions of the world. Above we just entered the rooms of mystery deeper and deeper until we're back out on the street. Ah, here is the meaning of life, being that there is no meaning of life. Here is my grandfather's tale about pessimism being a luxury that can't be afforded. Pessimism wastes too much of the  precious resource that we all use to create a vibrant world. This resource perpetuates itself and wages peace and holds the mystery of the present moment at the center of a spiritual practice.
 
If I succeed in writing a book about play, it will tell stories threading intuition and serendipity into presence. It will link fragments of a larger story about a world order that continually and playfully solves the most seemingly serious dilemmas of maintaining balance. The wager is justice, a justice that isn’t fair but rather attends to the subtle differences of all organisms in a complex web, valuing the unfolding. 

Some of the important play instructions are about activities that impact least on global resources and most on a quality of life. The stories come from a level of excitement. Take time to fiddle with the outcome based on new threads that lend themselves to expression in the moment of telling. All these packages of found objects impacted by the creative machine of our commodity-culture are wordless stories about unraveling and near savored memories. But are they about the present moment? They are only about something as they are playfully fitted together. Once they are fitted, they are about the past. They are about memory. They trace something valuable that no longer exists. New constellations unfold. Take time to savor new relationships. Sometimes the old ones hold an evocative power to fool us into believing that the past contains more valuable than the present. Address this disservice. All acts of coveting objects of beauty for any other purpose than preservation of the delight they evoke is folly. This is true about the golden objects in the safe deposit box There is no treasure greater than this breeze. Can my exploration communicate this? Or does my play have it’s own message that I keep trying to nudge toward this story. It might be that I am saying something quite different to different people and I only think I am speaking these metaphors against scarcity and aggression. That would be disappointing on several levels. Do I need recognition? Will I have anything to say after I say this? Will the exploration successfully alter the consumptive processes in time? Am I willing to proceed, knowing they won’t? Which treasure is my consciousness to the world?