in such seeming

it is possible that to seem - it is to be,
as the sun is something seeming and it is.

the sun is an example. what it seems
it is and such seeming all things are.

wallace stevens

the past is a place of description - whole experiences reduced to pointillist depictions that resolve into form when we stand back from them. the tiny speckles of coloured moments merge until forms appear and from these little forms come relationships and in that we articulate our knowing of what has been.

from that knowing of what has been - coupled with what is - we articulate our expectations of what might be or what we wish to be.

it is in that space - between the selective remembering of our known experiencing and our anticipation that what has gone before must necessarily repeat itself to some degree - that we articulate the suffering attached to unfulfilled expectation.

the arced line of connection that we draw through past and present experience is compromised by its apparent discontinuity when extended into the future becoming present, and that is where so much disappointment is focussed. our apparent entitlement to expect what is not "seeming and it is" to

a recurring dream

théo van rysselberghe "voiliers sur l'escault"


and so -

it begins with a dream.

a recurring dream that I have about abandonment. about being given up by someone - my mother, my brother, my wife, my children - in the dream a person who is intimately and emotionally connected to me leaves me for someone else.

i cry.

i hit them with anger.

i throw things, and as i throw things i have a sense of myself as a child and all that i have carried from that time.

vulnerable.
powerless.
inadequate.
unworthy.

my intuitive sense is that the "other" person constitutes the world.

it is also my sense that i have worked very hard to earn acceptance from the world. that i make every effort to earn this acceptance through my work, my behaviours, and through my self-deprecating attitude towards my apparent self.

it is there.
it is associated with me.
it has damaged me.

it is my perception of the perceptions of the world towards me that i strike out at. it is my own idea of what constitutes 'acceptance' from the world that i have worked towards. it is an empty game.

because 'the world' only exists as a construct of ideas in me that i need in order to give my self context and form.

it is my self that even now i am trying to accept.

and so the fight is between my outer (perceived) and inner (actual) selves.

last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street

"daylight moon v" parisa tirnaz

the new rule

drunkards fall upon each other, quarrel,
become violent and make a scene.
it is the rule.
like the drunkard and
worse than the drunkard is the lover.
to be in love is to enter a gold mine,
but what kind of gold is found there?
the lover, king above all kings,
is not afraid to die and cares nothing for a golden crown.
just as the dervish, with a pearl concealed beneath his worn out cloak,
is not ashamed to beg from door to door.
last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street
“get up,” i told my heart, “and give the soul a glass of wine.
the moment has come to join the nightingale in the garden,
to taste sugar with the parrot of the soul.”
i have fallen, with my heart shattered
i have fallen on your sacred path and broken your bowl
i am drunk my idol, so very drunk
shield me and take my hand.
a new rule, a new law has been decreed.
break all the glasses and fall toward the glassblower.
rumi


"let the water settle; you will see the moon and stars mirrored in your being." - rumi