I Thought I Was an Alien (2011)

Time to settle accounts with 2011!  So I tried to sum up what happened in this short film. 

If you'd better not be in it - I mean, if you can't stand the idea of being viewed - you can let me know and I will remove the part or... most probably the whole. Liz, I used much of your work here; let me know if you do not want it to appear. 

Well, now go to the link!
If something doesn't work, then you need to update either Flash or Quicktime on your computer. 

I Thought I Was an ALien : 2011

Breaking of the Patterns

The joy of total surrender comes in waves of self-denial. I had never thought I was able to bear as much reality and live. Stripping off the bandages and the rags covering old wounds, layer by layer. Fresh air rushing in, and the dear self bleeding, in tears, aching like hell every day, because it is being denied the right to hurt. 

But love is simply there, standing still within the turmoil, unharmed, there for you whatever you do or say. It will not go away. It will not vanish nor be denied to you, unless you reject it. Even then, it would simply sit quietly in a corner, invisible for your eyes.

We alter reality and change our lives by refusing to react to the same situations in the same destructive way. This is the radical novelty. This is the breaking, breath-taking news . This is the souls in transition.

I would like 2012 to be the International Year for the Breaking of the Patterns. 

Bodies of Water - One Hand Loves the Other

This is not The Song I was talking about, Richard; but such a nice melody!

Poem in anticipation of Epiphany

Epiphany

I

Balanced on the tiptoe edge
Between reality and illusion
A falling was prepared for me
Set in train from the conjunction point of sperm and egg
And affected by every moment before and since
And I, unaware, wrapped myself in sweet sin
Jumped
And breathed pure headiness,
A spiralling force,
Stretching the extremities
Until, hollowed out inside
And denying the need for mere earthly air,
I arrived in my own world,
Desperately connected
Yet horribly alone
And, at the place of no thingness,
With dying itself pointless,
Only a reflected pulse from the range beyond the mountain
range
Kept me in time
Not yet heard, nor felt, but projected beyond mere senses
To the not me skittering inside

II

Such strange lovers – the Everything and the nothing!
Such a strange sensation
To feel the inbreathing kiss
And the inspiriting transfusion of want
Within one so wantless
Grace most openly admitted
When most keenly rejected
The vacuum is filled by that which creates it

III

The new creation sees without eyes
From inside,
Lower limbs flowing into the pavement, taking root,
Hands losing definition in contact with air
While the signals transmitted
In the world’s search for contact
Flow through the nerve-aware centre
Adhering uncontrollably
Semidesert dust, cherry petals and shrivelled autumn leaves
Appealing for a meaningful chance encounter
Only discoverable in the generative attitude of openness

In the touches self loses self
Views beyond the view appear
Diminishing safety, cast off,
Leaves encounters
Never before conceived
And poor circumscribed sight,
Halting on behind, bound in the familiar,
Is coaxed generously out of prejudice
To behold
A grey sky not merely grey
But of sinuously interweaving shades
Expanding the simple earthbound heart


.

Distance and Direction

More dreams about transport. This time (last night) I was quietly going against the tide of a crowd of commuters in my own familiar nearest metro station. Interestingly, the crowd seemed to go in, while I struggled to get out of the station... I swear --  I don't do it on purpose!  Waiting now for aicrafts, flying carpets, camels, horses, ships and bycicles, and other devices the enlightened humanity uses to deal with distance. 

Distance and direction. The way the movement occurs:  fast, brutal; slow, uncertain. My unconscious attempts to communicate with the tiny portion of my personality which happens to be controlled by reason, and which I usually call "I".  I am rather grateful -  clearly, I am not spoiled by the amount of communication received from the outer world; and wish some  people communicated as extensively as my unconscious!

Well. Just joking. 

Tuileries

And I deserted the battlefield,

Took a leave from anxiety and fear,

A holiday far away from my own dear self.

Was lucky to find a chair beside the fountain

And stretched out my legs,  and turned on music,

looking sleepily in the face of the world.

And the sunlight came and washed my face 

descended into my heart, and dwelt 

there,  as a huge leafy tree,

an undivided sea of peace, 

a simple well-being that comes after much pain and tears:

the mild happiness of being alive.

So the world passed by, and in deep golden peace

I was holding you close to my heart.

And everything fell in place: in love.

So my sin lays before me no longer as an open grave

but as a lead bullet taken by the surgeon

out of the muddy broken crushed flesh.

With the shameful knowledge,

of the sin that methodically ruins my life:

that I am utterly unable to trust,

that I am functionally disabled and can't close this gap

that my love is weak and does not chase away fear 

that my faith is largely an entertaining fiction

I am now back into the sunlight of your blessed heart.

Paris 23/10 2011

Water Walking vs Camel Herding

The first security rule when walking on the waters is : sod the security. Because as soon as you start inquiring whether it is safe (of course it is not, you fool!)  the surface will invariably let you down. 

As soon as your attention is directed inwards, where the fear arises, you will find yourself splashing water and crying for help. Jesus will have to come and fetch you, but you'll drink your cup all right. In other words : worry about your security, and you'll be in danger. Just forget yourself, and you shall walk. 

Nevertheless, camel-herding might be my vocation after all. I doubt the Anglican Church needs much camel-herding... 

The way back is the way forward

I was so emotionally exhausted that I went straight to bed and slept for an hour.

Still struggling to understand why I subjected myself to two hours long torture of being convincingly told that I was not loved.  It was unnecessary and stupid, and added nothing to the sum of knowledge the enlightened humanity has on the matter.  The funny thing is that I seemed literally to ask for it. Couldn't stop it.  Something in me was nodding and saying : ay, there is nothing, just drop it all. Go back to your hole. 

I suppose the dear self again... Come, Lord Emmanuel, it is becoming urgent!  

Please mind the gap between the train and the station

Different means of transport seem  to have  invaded  my dream space. Last month it was about me driving a fast car, then about getting out of a metro station... Last night, a vivid graphic dream about leaving a train in movement. It was gaining speed, first slowly and then faster and faster. There were other people, all quietly and without panic going towards the doors. I  hesitated a moment to reach  for my coat. The train was now moving quite fast, and I thought, in a dull detached emotionless way: well, it will be lethal now.  

Do  not know if I jumped or not – woke up , feeling my body as hard and  as inert as stone.  

Go and catch a falling star...

Feel so strange. Almost detached, powerfully recollected, withdrawn in my heart. It just seems to become deeper and deeper, it feels like gazing into a bottomless well, into a life rich, exuberant, alien, yet known to my heart even before I knew I had a heart. Becomes too dazzling for me to behold... Feel suspended. Feel like I'd better go and mind my business while Powers are sorting this out.

We are not the same people who left the station... We are struggling to sit still while our compulsions and fears make us jerk and convulse. To give any meaningful response to the reality, we must learn to sit still; before acting or reacting, simply  pause and accept what there is: take it in, drink our cup, taste it. Otherwise our jerking compulsions will be responding for us; and not to any objective reality, but to the imaginary hellish world they created for us.

This is How It All Started (well, almost)

I

 …And I felt

Ageless and homeless,

Under the floating skies

Of my love ever errant, more than ever at war.

Utterly dark in the city of million lights,

Utterly lost, so happy to live and die,

So blissfully present  to the heavenly court of stars,

So sad with your grief. Please don't mind that it's now mine. 

Falling upward, how awkward, 

again and again,

Through the cloud of unknowing, 

like a raindrop or a coin,

into the palm

of your hand so fine.

Feeling sleepy now, and the steep hills

of my childhood creep along my nightfall.

Feeling weak and breathless, listening to the spinning wheels.

II

So I still have that impression of being elsewhere,

of having left my body and floating beside myself,

like a battle banner in the fresh autumn breeze.

Still have sleepy eyes, though was laying wide awake early,

listening to the loud purring of my cat

and waiting for something to happen,

while obviously nothing happens at 6 o’clock in the morning.

I am so tired of that intense being elsewhere, so really exhausted,

yet can not bring myself to get back to my here and now.

So helpless, bound by desire, waiting for something to happen, in the darkness of this morning,

someone to open the shutters and let the light stream.

Paris 05 - 06/10 2011