For me, “meditation”–Kum Nye–is a continual struggle. It is wrestling down on a mat.
I saw/felt this image today of me rolling on the ground with a knife wound to my abdomen. It hurt like hell. No matter how I rolled, or if I sat, or tried to stand, it hurt. There was no way around it, no way through it. Time simply stretched on. I hurt, and I did not die.
And I can see how abstraction, for me, is like taking the Blue Pill (I will note: is it not INTERESTING that in The Matrix, the Red Pill represents truth, and the Blue Pill illusion/delusion? HOW APT!!)
You take that pill, and the landscape fades away. My body is renewed. The sun shines, and the world becomes a garden. The only cost is I have to move regularly. I have to stay in motion. I have to “abstract” regularly if not continually. I must constantly be seeking new ideas, new forms, new things to look at in my mind.
And this motion, when done by someone intelligent, leads to discoveries. In my view, this emotional dynamic animates much of our world today. We discover things, but it’s like a dog digging up a telescope: we have no idea what to do with any of it. Our technology, in important respects, is wasted on us. It is the output of sheer mania.
And it is worth asking what unde
Ah, I had to go somewhere. Returning, I choose not to finish this. I will share instead a poem, Poop, by Charles Bukowski:
I remember, he told me, that when I was 6 or
7 years old my mother was always taking me
to the doctor and saying, “he hasn’t pooped.”
she was always asking me, “have you
pooped?”
it seemed to be her favorite question.
and, of course, I couldn’t lie, I had real problems
pooping.
I was all knotted up inside.
my parents did that to me.
I looked at those huge beings, my father,
my mother, and they seemed really stupid.
sometimes I thought they were just pretending
to be stupid because nobody could really be that
stupid.
but they weren’t pretending.
they had me all knotted up inside like a pretzel.
I mean, I HAD to live with them, they told
me what to do and how to do it and when.
they fed, housed and clothed me.
and, worst of all,there was no other place for
me to go, no other choice:
I had to stay with them.
I mean, I didn’t know much at that age
but I could sense that they were lumps
of flesh and little else.
dinnertime was the worst, a nightmare
of slurps, spittle and idiotic conversation.
I looked straight down at my plate and tried
to swallow my food but
it all turned to glue inside
I couldn’t digest my parents or the food.
that must have been it, for it was hell for me
to poop.
“have you pooped?’
and there I’d be in the doctor’s office once again.
he had a little more sense than my parents had but
not much.
“well, well, my little man, so you haven’t pooped?”
he was fat with bad breath and body odor and
had a pocket watch with a large gold chain
that dangled across his gut.
I thought, I bet he poops a load.
and I looked at my mother
she had large buttocks,
I could picture her on the toilet,
sitting there a little cross-eyed, pooping.
she was so placid, so
like a pigeon.
poopers both, I knew it in my heart.
disgusting people.
“well, little man, you just can’t poop,
huh?”
he made a little joke of it: he could,
she could, the world could.
I couldn’t.
“well now, we’re going to give you
these pills.
and if they don’t work, then guess
what?”
I didn’t answer.
“come on, little man, tell me.”
all right, I decided to say it,
I wanted to get out of there.
“an enema.”
“an enema,” he smiled.
then he turned to my mother:
“and are you all right, dear?’
“oh, I’m fine, doctor!”
sure she was
she pooped whenever she wanted.
then we would leave the office.
“isn’t the doctor a nice man?”
no answer from me.
“isn’t he?”
“yes.”
but in my mind I changed it to, yes,
he can poop.
he looked like a poop.
the whole world pooped while I
was knotted up inside like a pretzel.
then we would walk out on the street
and I would look at the people passing
and all the people had behinds.
“that’s all I ever noticed,” he told me,
“it was horrible.”
“we must have had similar
childhoods,” I said.
“somehow, that doesn’t help at all,”
he said.
“we’ve both got to get over this
thing,” I said.
“I’m trying,” he
answered.