ever since i posted this blog i've stopped writing in it. well, life has felt fragmented, so i'll only share fragments from this last week, and that will have to be enough, and this space will be a tiny exercise for you and me -- sort of like friends gong to the gym together except we will never be that -- in me saying that has to be enough and you maybe saying that to yourself somewhere far away.
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what it feels like to be asked a question
Hi to you,
what are you?
Good, down two.
You too!
What are you?
I am how
Up and down
Have you been to how?
No, just to one.
Just fine,
How good!
How hi up you are!
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two edges
i appreciated the sun for doing this. it felt like a bit of a 'fuck you, you know less than you think you do.' and the park was beautiful, and most things are simple, if you sit there for long enough, letting flatness become something more dimensional.
i have a special love of reading contradictory things. i've been reading the yoga sutra. It talks a lot about paradoxes.
One: We define ourselves by our experiences and memories, and yet we feel dissatisfied when our identity feel defined by things we somehow sense are artificial. To get to the core of why it's artificial, or what exists instead/beyond it, you have to try and get the fuck away from the experiences and memories -- meditate -- which is different than taking trains to parks and getting hungry there and needing a coffee and oh look a cute bookstore! I love Brooklyn!
Two: We desire permanence in a fundamentally impermanent world. Permanence of self -- feeling like I know who I am and what I want and what I'm like and who likes me, especially what makes me laugh -- and also a stable life. I.e. "I'm chaotic, I'm such a mess" etc etc is a reaction to this constant cognitive dissonance.
Then I am also reading Exodus, which is a great story, okay? Everyone out in the desert, big ass waves, crying babies, hunger, sex! Say what you will but those were the days.
Where they converge, beyond the poetry of both, the raw and beautiful intimacy with the sensible world (the touching, the bodily feeling), is on one key point:
Sometimes you have to get the fuck away.
I recently directed "The Zoo Story", in which Edward Albee writes, "Sometimes it is necessary to go a long way out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly."
In a very confusing ordeal with a secret society, under my name card was the quote by James Joyce “Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
Elliot writes that there is "the still point of the turning world." But I don't really believe it. You will always be on the spinning world. What looks like a still point is moving, a clock tower is actually ringing out and bouncing off of you, there's nothing actually beautiful about an empty fountain.
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