"Meditation... disolves the mind. It erases itself. Throws the ego out on its big brittle ass." Tim Robbins

Café cruising in Cape Town a little while ago, looking for breakfast with a view. It’s 7:45 and a crew of teenagers order a bottle of wine. I wonder if they will have cereal with that.

I’m thinking about my day in the world, I am thinking about not really thinking about what happened this morning … well, I am thinking about it all right, but it’s slippery.

Strange experience, good, but strange. For odd and boring reasons I’d spent the night in a hotel in Long street … I am a few years past that being a good thing. Dead tired but not able to sleep I decided to just get the day started.

I have a pretty set morning routine … get coffee going en route to the study. Chat to God, meditate, work on my step … then it’s back to putting the coffee together and a day in the world.

So the meditation. Simple stuff, candle to focus on, follow the breathing, mostly stop the thoughts of the day from intruding by holding them and gently letting go, persistent little suckers though … and they tend to swarm. Mostly that’s it. It’s calming though. Sometimes I get to relax inward enough to hear my heart, that’s cool. Less often I can get in touch with my blood flow and get my hands to warm, or my head … whatever, that’s something I reach for. I look forward to whatever is beyond that for me.

This was a morning of low expectations. I was in a hotel room, unwelcome gift of a migraine. It had been a noisy neon flashing night and not much had changed. About an hour before dawn I sat on my pillow, got the old om namah shivaya going in my head like elevator muzak and started to follow my breathing. I wish I knew how I got there but this, I guess, was about being unconscious

… I felt a connection from the base of my spine, like a tail rooted in the world but linked back, through time and forward through me, my chest, to the future. One.

A bead on a string of selves. Heavy. Older. Wiser. Harder.

Cloaked in an older self like a coat, a second skin.

Muscled corded thighs, woodgrain hands, tools.

A sense of healing and healing.

Sage and storyteller. Younger and older.

Light flows and rolls, gentle pulse, it felt like time.

Long time, no time.

Falling, falling. Held dark and warm uncoiling. Quiet. Quiet self. Still. Still self.

Blue, white, white, white. Belly deep voice.

A calling. Insistent, irresistible gentle pulling. Warm wise eyes, eldergrey.

Wearing this self fills me, really fills me, with a warm dark comfort … viscous, liquid, it’s a holding place.

Then a rush, a foreign emotion, unfamiliar … Teeth clenched, hot and hard and sharp. I want to howl, can only groan.

No label, no value, no register.

Linked, through me, cog and wheel.

Forward, behind and here. All Here. Only Here.

Stand with me now. Stand. Here.

Now, with me, in me, through me.

Caught breath and a little manic shiver.

It’s been an hour. Where the hell have I been?

And that is why it was so slippery ...

Namaskar, thanks, again, for visiting. Keep coming back.

Bathed in monitor light

Computers are getting smarter all the time ... scientists tell us that soon they will be able to converse with us; computers that is, I doubt scientists will ever be able to converse with us. I spend so much time in front of this machine. Portal to the ether, vast repository of knowledge, albeit provenance unknown. I seldom read newspapers or magazines anymore. I check my mail on my mobile while I drive on the freeway, respond too, on occasion. I have somehow succumbed to the pace, the urgency. That shift where I have ensared myself in a need to be informed fast and to respond faster. There was a time when, if a man missed a coach he settled down at the inn for a few days to catch the next. Today I get irritated when I miss the first gap in a revolving door. Evolution or insanity?

Chat has made email seem pedestrian and formal. I prefer text to voice. My monitor, my shield? A filter, holding communication at arms length? I can no longer compose with a pen and paper, I need to spread my fingers qwerty-wise to engage brain (or bath and be damned by my inability to record).

Life intrudes ...

Shirky's an inspiration. "For the first time, we have the tools to make group action truly a reality. And they are going to change the world". With respect Clay, tense error. They have changed the world, irrevocably ... and it's extrapolar. Gathering pace in a way that makes be think that there's a barrier out there, about to be broken ... a social sonic boom.

Around 1440 Johannes Gutenberg triggered massive social change with the invention of his printing press, heralding the renaissance era and a century of social chaos in Europe. (Stephen Fry on the Gutenberg press here www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zqgs4iS76c) Then keepers of history, the core of catholicism and much else, scribes, gifted literate monks, are consigned to a role of decorative calligraphers. Fifty years later, a well meaning Abbott demonstrates the effectiveness of the shift in publishing his impassioned defence of that profession ... in movable type. And so, through the growth of literacy, enlightenment, the next quantum leap, and the next and the next. Personal computers, irc, the internet, email, mobile phones, social networking, blogging. It feels to me like we are moving from evolution, through revolution to ... to what? Change is becoming like watching cornstalks in a field from a passing train. It's breatholding to contemplate.

And where, pray tell, am I going with this? Hmmm ... you may well ask. Random orange thoughts these are Yoda. No more.

Sleepy

Hum

Best intentions cast aside

bath and rest eschewed, computer bound

dabbling in trivia, bathed only in light of monitor light

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

dipping toes

testing water

committing not

and much left undone

luxury of anniversary

of a day inhumanity marked

giving procrastination space

a way to end a day?

Thoughts trip skip. Gambol tumble lightly

mayfly lifecycle, slippery lil suckers, nothing sticks

Back another day I think

blink and wink

When facility returns to line em up

dust em off

write em down

g'nite

More NOT SURE I CAN LIVE DOWN HERE ANYMORE or maybe … RUNNING ON EMPTY

So, as I lie in the fragrantly bubbled bath, a wrap around analgesic really, writable stuff drifts through my head faster than I can remember it, much less record it.

I have been reading Clay Shirky (yes, in the bath), by way of learning something about my latest interest, means of whiling away the better part of my days and potential source of income. It's very good stuff. I'm on a mission to apply the "being conscious" stuff. I have defined myself by what I do for too long. I spend so much of my time earning a living. I start well and then fall back into most of what I do being an unpleasant effort, not so much losing interest in what I do, rather taking my eye of the ball and finding myself in a space I never really intended visiting. I think that a positive step is to earn my living doing something that really interests me, with people I like and respect and learn from.

I digress.

Clay Shirky. He speaks with clarity on how scribes became redundant professionals after the advent of Guttenberg's press made mass publication cost effective. In much the same way, several hundred years later, the internet threatens the livelihood of publishers and makes journalists of us all (if we so choose). The internet, social networking, blogging … these are not inventions … they are events, they have already happened, they can’t be undone. Like my relationship with my higher power … they don’t require my approval or even my understanding, just my acceptance. So what, what now? Where do I go with this?

Judge me arrogant, naive or ignorant but for me this is a nexus point. Having found myself here … what do I do with it. It feels just too important to let it drift by unnoticed, to become a victim of this circumstance rather than engage and master it.

And so I blog.

And now the phone rings and I see another facet of this form of communication. The ease with which I can interrupt myself.

Blog #1

Well. Here we go.

Ten years playing with the internet thing, many more a wannabe writer and here I sit ... fingers dance nimbly (well, nimbly enough) over the trusty keyboard and what do I have to say?

damn

I think about cutting and pasting from my "writing" folder, but I can't find it. I see that I am in my "my pictures" folder ... that explains it. Mark personal, Writing ... that's the one.

Hmmm ... what would I share out of this collection of non-sequiteurs? The proverbial "ass in the wind"

How did this get in there ...

My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it. - Daniel Gilbert

That's just a quote. Was it meant to inspire me to write something profound?

I miss my format painter ... I am distracted by this font change but will show my mastery over my obsessive tendencies by ignoring it and pressing on.

How about this:

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Another inspirational quote? Iconic really, where I live.

Or this:

NOT SURE I CAN LIVE DOWN HERE ANYMORE

or maybe …

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Lying on my back, I open my eyes in the dark. I am surprised by the tears on my cheeks, wetting my neck and my pillow. I don’t feel sad. I must have been asleep, I don’t cry when I’m awake. That’s good, crying, that is. But I feel like I have been awake all night and I know that I am not going to get back to sleep.

Hours later I sit on the parapet, kicking heels on weathered brick. I have always liked rooftops, and early mornings. Enjoying the height and the freshness of the night’s lingering chill. Warmth of the sun’s first rays. There’s a quality to the early morning morning light. Kind. A promise of beginnings. Below, birdsong and the muted rumble of distant workbound traffic. Abrasive aubade in the calm, like the call of a loerie, sorry, it’s a turaco now isn’t it?

Some joggers go by, breath steaming, feet in trainers pad padding, metronoming their conversation up to me, punctuated, like boxers’, by their explosive talk on steamy breaths. There are always joggers. I remember a fellow falling man asking “where the fuck do they come from? Go to the middle of the Congo with nothing but a knapsack, a book of matches, and a package of trail mix. Sit in a lotus position and become one with nature. In ten minutes a jogger will run by. I'll wager you $100 on this.”

Most days I can pull off my impersonation as a member of the species pretty well and without too much effort. It’s been more difficult recently and I am starting to wonder whether the fault might not lie with me after all. I think that I am just getting tired; tired of the pretense of it all. It’s been so long now that I am not sure what’s real anymore. So many days and months and years of meeting expectations; of trying to meet expectations.

… I just don’t know what parts of me are me and what I’ve conjured up for somebody else’s benefit and found myself stuck with. What am I if not an amalgam of experience? How much do I chose to carry and choose to discard? How much is unconscious? And there, of course, is the key. It’s getting grounded, in touch, conscious.

A splat of metaphorical birdshit on my shoulder interrupts this reverie. I need some coffee and to post this before I chicken out and start editing it.

Namaste … thank you for visiting … keep coming back.