Breath in A Box of Light
The November sky mingled; breath in a box of light.
Tonight, thinking about what matters. The light, always the light. The color splashing in the eye. Laughter that comes from the small text of associations we all keep within us, the small comic book of little comments that kept, evoke a larger OTHER time when we laughed together. How a person can say one word, and all the hours and hours of whatever weird magic happens when we laughed before opens up in us, replayed in the feeling centers. One right word, one gesture, and the whole soul could probably open up, flash light. Unravel all the things it knew or thought important, or even possible.
Memory, where are they hiding in us all the subtle aspects of the dream?
Memory--for some of us we chase the old happiness and the known and never get to a new explosion; of flowers; of color--witnessed in another. Have you ever dreamed so vividly you wake up terrified or in passion for some other worldly concept of an other? You were just kissing the most amazing light in-dwelling person, you wake up and its late, you missed breakfast and all you want to do is go back into the place where that vibration of joy within wrestled with your ideas of reality.
Have you ever dreamed and been in war or found blood on your hands and woke with your heart sounding in your mind so loud you think someone is breaking in the house? What layers the soul must keep, locked mostly, out of some mercy to us.
The soul is wealth and we glimpse it in a squinting eye, half afraid to overwhelm the current circuitry.
What good is music without silence in between the notes? Its like writing turned into a big blop of ink. Maybe we can project onto the blop and see other things, suggestive, but its not that zen writing. The letters don't open up and breath on the page. I love white, linen paper. Ink. Pencil. I have been listening to a zen master flute player lately, its old school stuff, very simple, but you would swear the guy could blow his soul into your heart space and open it up. Stretch its current boundries. Listening, I feel like a kite being flown by another soul's song, I go up and over, and then glide on a string of his notes, then I am dropping fast, devastated in heart, lost in his intake of breath. It might be the closest thing to experiencing mouth to mouth resusitation--I mean like something else, something profoundly other, larger--is actually breathing me.
It takes attention, to listen; then its like being lifted again, higher, faster by a gust of strong gentle handed power--a form of mansuetude in action--this flute blower. Its something people who ride roller coasters might get from their thrill seeking selves. I on the other hand will stay off those things. I am not one to be taken by friends (or sisters who plead... ahhmm) to places like that... no not a second time or a third or a sevententh.. But I will ride my flute blower's song, his ... essence of practicing quiet to offer song. (I don't have words for it exactly) but I am not sure the roller coaster riders I know will ever understand, I mean if they could separate the apperatus of the rollercoaster's bulkiness and its mechanical weight, to see that for me, the ineffible Yes that rides up to me is a rollercoaster, pure sound its only structure, asking, wanting me to flow with it. To be carried... away. A lover's phrase. Yes.
Like a great bird this one man with a flute makes this soulful music, it comes to carry me, weightless across the balmy clear-through-blue ocean--just while the sunset splashes colors I have yet to dream of or see combined across a horizon that yes, could be, just another dream scape in the inner mind's eye. Absorbing me. Absolving me. Of all that I have held, or willed, or grudged...in myself or another. All of it--lost and I am carried off, into the light.
Wonder. Imagination. It's what's for dinner. (O/K. I stole that part from a commercial, but It had to be.!) I love that guy who does that voice. Sam Elliot. Chance. He's in one of my favorite movies... Off the Map. See it. Its not one of those action films, more like a play, and its got a great narrator.
"Tonight" I think imagery needs updating like everything else. The sun really doesn't rise. The earth turns into its light. Similarly, the color doesn't splash (a quantum splash, hmm) into the eye. Electromagnetic, an awkward six syllable word to be sure, radiation zips through the lens, muscle held, in the iris and slams into a light sensitive molecule in a cell crowded together with other light sensitive cells in the small fovea arena. Light sensitive, photon sensitive, energy sensitive. Not until the photon generated signal reaches several layers higher up in the visual cortex is the color painted on, painted in.
To have the eye of a bird! They mix their colors from four differently tuned light sensitive cells. We poor humans have only three. And there's more. There is a film of tiny oil droplets that filter out extraneous wavelengths. It would be like going from using just three cheap grade-school powder primaries to paint a picture to using four colors of the very best and purest artists' colors made.
"Memory" It' in those dendritic trees, those tiny touching discharging tunnels of surging ions. No info yet on how a bunches of discharging neurons make pictures or create emotions.
"The soul is wealth and we glimpse it in a squinting eye, half afraid to overwhelm the current circuitry." That is a very potent sentence. I don't think I've heard or read collaging "soul" and "wealth." I especially like the play between "current" and "circuitry."
Have a many-wavelength-filled day. (Comment this)
This is fascinating. The whole bird thing especially (what about the dog), how do you know allthis? You are a scientist (exacting in his knowing) and yet as artist (open, stretching, experimenting)--alive to the dance. The phrase above, "The earth turns into its light" does such inner visual things to me, I love its imagery. Sorry about the use of phrases, sometimes if I analyze too much what I say I feel no need to say at all. Its all rough draft song splash paintings.
When we imagine inside ourselves, and there is no (is it really radiation?)entering of the above described into the eye, into the cells, into the brain--when we make pictures inner mind or wherever--where do you suppose those images are born of? The images we have seen outside and held within, or/and an inner bank of imaginal info--where does the NEW thing emerge? In collage? Is this stuff in that book you recommended? (Comment this)