A BRIEF STORY OF MY BONES

My bones torture me in the night. They make pains in my neck and back beyond my imagination. I can literally hear them twisting and growing there, as though they are aliens moving within me, causing my bones to be as a cage that closes tighter and tighter upon my body, crushing me totally. Though, with the proper medication, I am able to sleep for six hours if I am fortunate, before the pain enters into my dreams first, making them into nightmares of true pain in which I am wounded and tortured, being twisted and stabbed and burned, and then I am awakened as I realize the dream is not a dream but is actually happening to my body. Realizing the actual pain I am in, I rise and only then does it subside a bit as I do my best to move my body around, stretching here and there. My bones, it appears, are to subdue my spirit, to kill my creativity if they can. This disappoints me for my bones have always been my allies, my friends. It is true that I have put them on the front lines of my physically demanding existence. It is true that I have at times stretched my body to the limit chopping, chain­-sawing, carrying and splitting with a hand-held axe very big blocks of wood, with nary a thought of the effect on my body and my bones. I have done insanely dangerous and stressful activities with my body and its skeleton time and time again when I was younger and even not so young. And my father also flayed my back and ribs as hard as he could hit with a thick belt upon my back and ribs for years on an almost daily basis. I know that this damage my spine and cracked my ribs; my spine, to protect itself, started creating new bone over and within the old to strengthen and protect itself. My whole body sought to protect itself since I could not. And so I should feel compassion and love for this body and these bones that tried to protect the child of which they comprised, but they could only do so much. So, though my bones seem to literally crush me now, they have only functioned to help and protect me all along. I have no real right to condemn them or what they are doing, the action upon which they have been set for a very long time, which I only became aware of ten years ago. And, in their steady movement, I am crushed though not smothered. The pain distracts a great deal but I remain able to think and to write. And so I am grateful to this body for its loving action and overstated protection. It has, time and again, saved me from literal death. As a young child, my body moved in the water, even though I had not yet learned to swim, and moved me back to land where I could safely stand. I have had more than nine lives, my guardian angel, my instinctual second sense has always been right there at my side and in my body instantly. So much of the universe moves for my benefit and safety. Perhaps it is even what is called God. Either way, I am grateful and will remain grateful, for my body now bends under the pressure and the pain in my neck and spine, and now both shoulders and arms. Of course I always hope for improvement and believe that it will come. I have prayed when the pain has been utterly unbearable in the middle of the night. I thought even that my prayer had been answered by the next morning and I was grateful and willing to believe in the God though not in the religion. Now the pain is back on an even greater scale and I feel it torturing my body. Moving this way or that, even slightly, brings it to the fore in my neck, back, and arms. However, it was in the nerves in my head and it is not there now, and I am very grateful for that, for that causes a severe headache. With all this I will take a walk in the redwood forest today and sit on my redwood “perch” quietly and peacefully without moving in the enveloping great silence of the forest. One must know how to suffer properly and with gratefulness and understanding.

INTERLUDES

At times I experience what I call an interlude in my train of thought which is essentially constant. In this interlude it is as though my thinking stops, though I am aware that it has stopped. The interlude expresses as a kind of suspended animation, as if I suddenly find myself floating soundlessly in deep space. In this interlude I see with my eyes but do not define or register; I just see trees moving (in the wind) or even people moving their mouths and making sounds (words). It is a most pleasant experience in the sense that everything just stops and I find myself floating soundlessly, without gravity holding me down, without thought driving me on. I hope this is what happens at death—that everything just stops and one floats without thought in pure silence; without worry, without even any sense of oneself at all. I can generate such an interlude when I go deep into the redwood forest at Nisene Marks, walk up the trail, and sit on my redwood “perch” high above the remote trail below. The silence and stillness there are so palpable that I find myself in an interlude. But today, as I worked at my desk here in my office, I looked out my window, saw the trees moving silently and it happened again without having to go into the forest. I suppose the forest, with its silence and stillness, has been somehow “absorbed” into me, even into my being, as it were, and now emerges into my consciousness when reminded by certain natural occurrences, such as the trees moving in the wind. And I suppose that this is not particularly new to my experience, since, as I was once told by my mother, I would lie in my baby carriage for hours, mesmerized, watching the leaves fall from the maple and oak trees in the park where she brought me. It may be that I have always had such interludes occur but was never aware of it as I am now. These interludes are almost trancelike, like a form of hypnosis—one which I prefer to being perpetually occupied by thoughts and at their mercy. Such interludes have also occurred, now that I think about it, during my long practice of Zen meditation, which is simply sitting and letting thoughts flow without following them, just kind of watching them and watching oneself as if from a distance. Such interludes were never intended but simply occurred when there was a sudden “break” in the clouds of constant thought. I would prefer to be able to live in this kind of thoughtless mind, which is quite peaceful and clear: one is able to see things simply as they are. One still has the ability to relate appropriately and necessarily with the vagaries and demands of existence, but one is of a different mind as well, not getting pulled into the drama of existence or even that of one’s own life, one’s own self. And one is not aloof or withdrawn, but is still active and participant in the world, though without the “attachment,” the emotional ups and downs, the anger, the disappointment, the hopes, the despair. One remains affectionate and loving and able to express gentleness and tenderness to others, as well as able to not fall into identifying with the occupying thoughts of another, which is the general social and cultural activity that misleads societies and cultures into their own particular lost worlds, if not hells.

PITYING THE POOR OYSTER

At a certain point he had lost his propensity to believe. It was not any particular decision or conscious awareness; he simply reached a point at which he saw through belief itself to its inherent lack of reality, its emptiness, pointlessness and foundationlessness. He was neither agnostic nor atheist, which to him, were simply more beliefs, more labels for believers, even believers in non-belief. He did not feel “lost” or “rudderless,” but rather perhaps afloat upon a great sea, heaving high and falling low, which was no belief on his part, but rather a sense of the circumstances or situation of being in life itself. He was aware that various philosophers and philosophies had said such similar things, used much the same metaphor for existence, but it was not his belief; it seemed more his observation, his metaphor for existence, to him. He asked himself, “So, is one’s metaphor, one’s explanation for what one observes or senses to be considered as one’s belief?” His response: “Only to the extent that one finds oneself clinging to such a metaphor or observation or sense.” He felt that metaphors or observations or senses were not concrete or otherwise solid, but were changeable and passing, or at least open to such change. Certain things that he considered to be perhaps “truer” than other things were “observable facts within nature itself,” such as regeneration of life in a similar form: leaves on trees, corn, animals, humans. To him this was not “belief” but was real and obvious as well as “provable.” So if a tree is “reborn” each spring with a new layer of bark over its older layer, to his mind it was still the same tree in essence, though now with new bark on the outside and new leaves on the branches. Humans were born as babies. It was logical to him that they should in essence be much like trees that retained the “same basic identity” from life to death/dormancy to life.” He had to admit though that he was using the “progression of nature” to present his own belief in a kind of “conscious immortality,” or at least a certain kind of awareness stretching through numerous changes within a particular species. But, as initially stated, he had lost his propensity to believe, while still keeping at least a few “essential beliefs” in place. But he knew he was in fact still a believer, God forbid. There could be no denying it. With such a context still intact, the world remained his oyster, though he still rightfully pitied the poor oyster and himself feasting on it.

BIDING TIME

As it is true that we make ourselves, we also must unmake ourselves. Our lives ultimately do us in, closing around us until we just can't live them. To the extent that we are compelled to "put ourselves together," such is done in the awareness that it is all a farce. If we are of this mind, we are unable to see "the point of it all," including the point of our own existence. I am one who has fervently believed so many things that explained life and "the point of my own life." I believed I "knew" so many things about Truth and Reality. And I was certain. It all "made sense" and was "quite logical" to believe what I believed. It was certainly easier than not believing, than not have any particular "point" to my existence. Belief and hope are a very weak crutch. And without them I found myself in despair. When one is young and healthy such despair can be quite fashionable; one can praise the "darkness" and romantically feel the pain of such lostness. But as one fades to oneself and loses any momentum, which is actually faith in the "proper turning out of things," there is nothing to hold onto any longer. And I don't believe that this nothingness is any kind of a passing state; one does not "get better" in life. Living loses any inherent fascination for us; we bide our time.

A BRIEF MOMENT

God is not quite reaching to save me but then this is something that I have to deal with and get through before life gets through with me. The situation is not ironic at all; it is simply the process of life—which ends on the physical level. It is not personal but much greater than that. It often feels personal, partly because I was indoctrinated with this notion of a “personal God who cares about me.” One who believes such things, even “just” deeply and even if they “understand” it is false, is bound to have expectations and consequent profound disappointment as well as disillusionment, for it is a most insidious illusion. However, life is not unfortunate; it simply is as it is. Life is not to be blamed. False teachings of a God of Illusion by religions of delusion are to be blamed. The fact that we are stupid and unable enough to possess the discrimination through which to think adequately is absolutely unfortunate. But some of us are able to escape the cave and its darkness and falseness, finding ourselves initially absolutely blinded by the light of the sun, which may last lifetimes and lifetimes, but ultimately we do see. All is not lost.

THERE AND NOT THERE

Once he had “made a name for himself,” and then rather quickly discarded it, for it was false to him, he was false to himself, and the name that came to be on a small but real pedestal, the personage that he now fulfilled and had to keep fulfilling not unlike a balloon full-filled with hot air, had become an overinflated role that he could keep fulfilling or could just let the air out and walk away, which is what he did. As much as he enjoyed the power, the image he now had built, had earned even, he knew it was false and no longer to be maintained. He understood the meaning of “false images” and conceived that perhaps all such idols in the eyes of men are false. While he didn’t necessarily want to be invisible, he realized not been seen or known to be much closer to the truth of things: to be empty of self is truer than to be full of self, for self has its own way of claiming and identifying with power, thus becoming the role it plays, the masque it wears. We all become what we think we are, often to our great detriment, be it notable or notorious, famous or infamous. And now, in his old age, though he regretted his invisibility at times, he also relished it; for he could walk in the forest unseen and unheard, like a breeze among the trees, or saunter upon the beach in the surf, watching his footprints vanish behind him at each step he took. That was invigorating to him. For, in looking back, he could see so clearly now all the mistakes he had made in his life, all the hurts he had inflicted in his self-absorption. For he had been so blind to others and their needs, never knowing or caring who they actually were or how they cared for him. He felt this now, deeply in his heart, in his soul. And he could not “make it right” to those others. As for the sorrow within him, he didn’t know if it was due to his sins of omission or if it was a reflection of the great sorrow of humanity itself in its own lostness.

THE INHERENT WHOLENESS OF BODY AND SOUL VS. THE NEED TO ADD CHEMICALS

Of course the question is: Adding these chemicals, the drugs to my body for the purpose of having a certain effect or a counteraction in my body including my mind, does this actually improve my health and functionality? What of the “pain-killers”? Am I to actually have my pain diminished? The symptom placated, as it were? Does my experience of the pain as it is have a “higher” or, for that matter, “natural” function that is necessary for my human experience? Is serotonin, which reduces symptoms of sadness and depression and their particular perspective, actually to not be taken, so that I might feel certain things and attain perhaps a deeper and more comprehensive understanding and experience of myself? For the serotonin taken in this way seems to cut my consciousness off from the pain within the depths of myself which seems to hold certain kinds of awarenesses and revelations for me. It seems to me that many of my bodily ills come to me as a result of a adding these noxious chemicals to my body.

          In the exact same vein, as it were, there is the world of technology that takes control, that takes over society and culture, replacing, it seems, a vital “natural connection” within us. People become, in many respects, as almost crazed automatons, addicted to the electronic devices that come to control their minds and their behaviors. I can see that this kind of monitoring and supervision could improve the human race but that it definitely has not; it seems that this cyborgian reality has disconnected humanity from itself and each other, at least on a deep “human” level, far more than bringing it together.

The body begins to fail in all its pain and in all our loss. It stops working properly, required medical external treatments, some of which seem somewhat effective. One never wants them for one finds oneself more and more less human. Is this part of God’s Plan for: to us to see these meds and drugs that effect us in the body as they do as part and parcel of God’s Work? We are much better off if such is our experience, if our “improvement” is simply another expression of the goodness of “what is”. Or have we become cyborgs, part literally machine and chemical with a rather smaller claim at “being human” and a “greater need” to see ourselves as “less human/less natural” and more mechanical and lacking in human qualities like emotion and, in due times, intelligence itself—as WE become worked on, manipulated, even controlled by forces greater than ourselves. What we once called miracles are now part of the treatment for the machine that we become.

          In my mind I still find myself actually “praying for miracles” entailed healing in my own body and in my wife’s that enable me to endure as her companion and caregiver. This is my biggest prayer and it seems there is much rejected of the reality of “what is” in existence and specifically in my life and other’s lives. Most often, people who are “afflicated” must follow their afflication “to the end” without either recourse or alternative, though if a “still greater context” is found and experienced dependably, the existing rules, as they were, may be alleviated if you know how. I see myself as “somewhat advanced”, both my focus and preference, but also by a “faith in what is” perhaps even more than a faith in God, though what God is, or perhaps the function of God, is quite squarely present is all that is, denoted a level of faith at least as strong—and by my criteria immeasurably stronger than that of Christianity simply because it is not based in sentimental, magickal, elemental theory but it foundation laws of existence.

          But now I begin to tire and consequently fade quickly, having gotten up and finally taken the meds I use to help me get through the night with sleep and reduced pain: glips, hydro, and zolps. I suppose they are now part of me—as much as I’d prefer otherwise. Part of my dream now, though I think I can skip the “happy pills” and just let my depression down dips drown me a bit before I return to a semblance of human once more. I don’t know if “crushing the soul” on a regular basis weakens its fabric and future performance or if has the effect of consequently keeping it “flexible” and able to “go with the flow,” or hopefully create its own. The latter is what I ultimately count on. “Happy pills” make too much of a buffer between myself and myself able to be in the world; such buffer becoming a “wall.”