What if Cupid shot you with a hollow arrow
and you broke it off,
would the part of the tube
still set deep within you
resonate with the sound of a voice?
It's like even after I
pulled the fletching from my side
some of the hollow shaft remains
a tunnel straight to my heart
and that's how his words bypass my ears.
And,
what if Cupid aimed
not for the heart,
but the mind?
I've done many things wrong in my life,
things I sometimes wish that I could change,
but few things that I regret.
Each to different people,
different times,
different places:
(1)
Your voice and your eyes asked if I'd stay for another drink and more conversation, but I felt compelled to keep a promise to myself to start the next morning early. I thought I did the right thing, so why did I feel only regret?
You accepted my decision,
but I never have.
In my thoughts, I go back and say, Yes, of course
of course.
(2)
On early morning of the first and last night that we kissed, we were both standing there, but I'd already moved on into the next day.
I should have kissed you back.
(3)
You held me in your arms in our pile of nightfall covers,
and I heard your voice, saying with a touch of wonder,
"What did I do to deserve this?"
You weren't asking me.
Fool that I am,
prodded by memories of times I should have spoken up,
I tried to answer.
I wish I'd let the silence hold us.
For the last two days,
the Earth has seemed unwilling
to open its eyes.
Thank you
Giving me a better chance to dwell in an empty cave within fog
and notice what patterns arise from the mist
The trivial perception:
mapping me to myself.
(I've found you in the past.
Our lives will be a hide and seek.
Please, remember the many tiny lights, and gratitude for what reflects them)
Now how did he put it...
It may have been a gritty Shanghai night,
unrinsed rain coating the city streets.
I think he was asking, why choose? Why couldn't you love everyone?
The one you love to talk with for hours
The one you are sleeping with
The one you wish you could wake up beside
I may have tilted my head under the streetlights.
We'd been talking for hours, walking along our own maps.
I balanced empty beer cans like offerings on windowsills, utility boxes, dented cars.
I loved him with my very veins,
crisscrossing like streets
under hidden stars.
I watch
I learn
I travel
I wander through landscapes of unperceived chaos,
mapping the metaphors,
patching together the photos like on the Truman Show,
looking up at the sky like it was a throneroom; as if the stars were your mirror.
Sharing my collage, asking everyone I see,
"Have you seen me?" I'm lost.
I'm looking for a girl
who is making a collage.
She left, you see, because she knows that we can only percieve
what we already understand.
She's looking for me
Trying to understand everything
so that she'll be able to see.
And, I miss her.
(discovered in the notebook, probably written on the train between Hue and Ninh Binh, probably around Dec 11, 2017)
(I don't remember writing this; it must have been part of the dream, and near the Source)
... It is interesting to see what hallucinations rise up out of emptiness.
I think these are potentium dreams. When we want to disconnect into nothingness, yes, it is to touch that primal energetic chaos of creation. But it's not all chaos; perhaps just undifferentiated signal.
You have to wade into it.
That's The Quest.
You have to wade into the nothing.
The nothing that is the seed of everything.
And, you have to become nothing enough
for the chaos to accept you as one of its own,
for you to accept the nothing as yourself
and see, at that point, that it's not really nothing...
It's an energetic nothing
A bundle of everything
humming, softly dormant
without a shape
That's where you come in.
Your curse
is that, being something, you cannot fully return to nothingness,
you can only befriend it.
But relax and let your chest be hollow.
As the energetic nothing accepts your body, it tunes its hum to fit.
It listens to you,
listening to it.
Quiet down.
Learn to listen to the energetic hum
of shapeless everything.
Noise is not chaos, but signals out of place,
ungroomed, uncivilized,
running rogue.
Let your chest be empty
and observe the nothings that make you hum.
They will not come at once.
They are timid and quiet. Wait for them like rabbits.
They will not come in an orderly way. Some will not stay.
Do not try to catch the first you see.
Tempting as it may be,
you'll scare it and the others.
Let your hollow chest become a stage.
Watch their dreams rise and fall, and ask yourself:
What shape must my heart be
such that these nothings
choose to visit? Which persist?
Your empty body is a flute
a singing bowl
a taught, but silent string.
Provide the tension.
Pay attention
to hear which nothings sing.
[...]
These visions are not meant to be futures; only possibilities.
They allow me to consider potential realities without commitment.
I try to listen to all the harmonies that make up my own voice.
The Quest is to retrieve something from the primal chaos: a signal
You are the vessel.
Quiet yourself to receive the signal. Listen carefully to its guidance.
When the hum of every/nothing has chosen a song in you,
Arise and depart. Return to the village with your gift:
a song in the shape of your heart.
An adopted energetic something
filling your empty chest.
This is not all predestined. The songs fit between your ribs like hermit crabs in shells.
It takes another level of patience, but if you can change the shape of your heart,
then different songs will choose to stay.
You can sample different signals. Give them time to rise and fall.
When they grow strong enough, you'll begin to see yourself expressing them.
Retain the quarantine
Allow them to grow stronger.
Practice singing them back to yourself before leaving the cave,
this energetic,
silent chaos.
Nothing is not empty
Nothing is future everything.
It is your sanctuary.
Let your body be a temple
Let your mind be a priest
Let your heart be a choir,
an organ
Breathe
Become a conductor
of the songs that choose you.
Breathe
Become a vessel
that harbors the music.
Listen
to what they tell you
Watch
the dance of potentials
Carve
your body
like a violin maker
and listen to the nothings that hum within your frame.
This is your Quest
To learn to sing your songs
First to hear them,
then to sing them to yourself,
then with others.
Observe
what gets your attention
what gives you energy
and what you begin to naturally produce.
Too much
static and we begin to see shapes
silence and we begin to hear voices
nothing and we begin to manifest patterns
Chaos is a fertile nothing
given a seed,
it cannot but drink the energy that matches it.
The Quest
is none other than man's effot
to unearth a sliver of valuable
signal from a sea of noise.
Some people mistake Potentium Dreams for instructions. They may be instructional, but they are not instructions. They merely reveal your wishes.
Watch their dance and learn from them. Do not obey them. They are not your gods any more than the trees and weather are.
But, ask yourself
why you allowed them to appear, and what their signal means to you, these mirages.
Wait for the consistent hum.
Its patience outlives the others.
This will be your heartbeat. Observe yourself with curiosity.
[...]
An energetic nothing makes it easier to hear
the rhythms I would like to have
and to practice.
I dreamed them, one early morning
My body lying beside you in bed
My dream-mind still with you, picking its way along a mountain slope
And then there were the snakes
Looking down at my feet,
they seemed to leak from and over the rocks like a spring
already flooding over my ankles, swimming over each other towards the way I'd already come.
My heart fluttered panic, then still.
They seemed not to notice;
fixed unblinking eyes on their own horizon.
They hadn't come for me.
I could choose to fear them, and in doing so, cause commotion.
I focused on my own horizon; let them keep theirs.
A fate that has not come for you has no fangs.
My mind focused on their faces. Snakes of all different colors and sizes.
Smooth like grass and rough like flowing boulders.
My dream-fears, seeking confirmation of danger, identified one in particular
an adder or rattle-shape, cheeks fat with poison
yellow slit eyes staring straight ahead; not at me.
I was but a boulder in his landscape.
I breathed a sigh of relief atop my own mental tightrope.
One misstep could prompt a thousand poisoned teeth.
But, only if I drew attention with fear.
I breathed in and out in this valley. The sun was out.
These fates were not mine unless I chose to demand their attention.
I breathe out again, grateful for tightrope practice
and content to keep the egos of my fears invisible.
Grateful that I can look to my own horizon and let my fears choose theirs.
Grateful for being exactly where and when I am:
Descending a mountain, with snakes not meant for me.
One by one,
I respectfully lifted my feet,
and hopped down the rocks to join you.
