[
quote="hester prynne"]Now that is one groovy picture I can sink my eyes into! Wow!
Hello to all....from hester prynne. Since my identity disppeared from here a while back, I have to confess i've felt estranged from studio eight, much like I have been feeling estranged from the world at large lately.
How easily we disappear, what we loved and stood loyal for disappears, on all levels. Acceptance rears it's stern head. The process can be bumpy.
It's Sunday, a day off and I have no inclination to go outside. Getting online was a chore I finally forced myself to do, though really ive nothing much to say. I'm mostly drained and partly disappointed. The gleaming ray of hope in my life is that Stella is away at a camp that I am hoping will inspire her to keep dreaming, and stop growing up so fast in the predictable limits of small town ways.
If she chooses to attend school there, I may be moving to the east coast again, or at least I toy with the idea. As if the flavor would be any different.
I also toy with the idea of letting her go away to school and then taking off on a long ass road trip of my own. Shit, something other than the rut I am in.
I fear the drone I must be to survive financially, along with the many other more global issues, is taking it's toll on my creative, happy go lucky side. I can't stuff it anymore.
It's not like this hasn't happened before to me, and in the past i've welcomed the changes and risks it's always inspired me to take. But this time, i feel stuck and uninspired. There is a pull to root in disappointment, a logic to it that i'm seeing and at the same time loathing.
What's an old 53 year old broad to do.
Longing for meaning in a boring sweat to survive.
How do you all stay so cheerful?
H
[/quote]
##You don't even realize just how ripe you are, do you? I don't mean in any carnal or earthly ways either. I recognize the pangs of a hungry soul.
Many years ago, living alone in a one room apartment in Montreal as a young man of twenty-one I awoke one morning to a crushing depression. I lay there in bed, unable, unwanting to get up. I thought 'another fucking day, just like yesterday and the day before, and like tomorrow and the next day, week, month, year, 'til the end of life. no meaning. no real relevance beyond relativity. what's it all about? why the fuck am I really here? how did I get here? where am I going after here?' And many more thoughts of this nature overwhelmed me. I felt trapped as in a nightmare, running fast as I could but not moving. I was the object of some cosmic joke. We all were. Only I finally realized it and determined to get out of it. I had recently read a book called The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, which gave me the fundamentals and my first inkling of something beyond stolid Christianity. I was suddenly seized with the urge to meditate. I would try this 'new thing' and see if it brought me any answers my innermost craved, could no longer live without. I decided quite seriously that if my attempt at meditation brought me no answers that I was going to check out for good.
Rising from my bed I took a pillow and laid it on the floor, set a small votive candle on the seat of a chair and lit it, pulled down the blind on the room's single window down, took a razor blade from my old double edged razor and placed it beside me on the floor. If this 'meditation thing' didn't do anything to allleviate my utter despair at the meaninglessness of life I would cut my throat and at least allow my blood release from its endless cycles of pumped and meaningless, empty repetition.
Sitting erect on the pillow I began to concentrate on the flame in an effort to slow my thoughts down and reign in the unweildy mind. For some time I sat there quietly and focused until my mind reared up and told me I was being foolish. There was nothing beyond this world. I was wasting my time. Go out and meet up with my friends. Blow some weed. Find a chick and get laid, etc. I started to tremble and knew these things no longer had the capacity to turn me on and pacify me. I started to feel hopeless and looked down at the shiny razor blade next to me on the floor.
Suddenly a tiny light appeared in my forehead and a 'voiceless voice' that said 'don't mind those thoughts, just keep coming.' Hmm'. peculiar, I thought. 'Never had that happen before.' I went deeper into the Stillness. Again, after some period of 'time' had elapsed I was again assaulted by the mind and all its mechanisms of emotion, feeling, sensual perception. At times images of delicious foods danced before my consciousness, actually causing drool to run from the corners of my mouth. Other times sexual scenes of such explicitness forced me to look down at my utter arousal...and then the razor blade again.
There was some kind of battle going on inside me. It seemed like forces of Light and dark were fighting for me. Suddenly, I could not take it anymore and actually reached for the blade. Instantly this great light filled my forehead and a peace beyond description with mere words. The candle seemed to suddenly glow bright as the light in my head. Then the chair it rested upon. The little table next to it on one side and the tiny fridge on the other. I glanced around the room and everything I looked at turned to light. It was not a light of this world. I looked down at my feet. They turned to the same light. Then my legs, torso, arms, whole body. Everything within the sphere of my sight was pulsing with this strange and wonderful light but vague outlines of form still defined everything.
Suddenly all the lines of form vanished and there was only one great pulsing light of which I knew I was part of, irrefutably. With this light came a realization of a greater reality. The 'voiceless voice' of earlier now rang with crystal clarity "I am love. I have ever been and ever shall be. I am He." Waves and waves of bliss shot over my being and I ascended somehow from my physical body and rose up and saw it sitting there on that pillow with its chest heaving and uttering sounds of "Ohhhhhh, ohhhhhh, ohhhhhhhh." I knew I was witnessing my own bliss.
When I was finally able to function again I slowly rose and moved about the room. Everything seemed in slow motion, like a movie picture slowed down. Making my way to the small bedside table I picked up a still semi-glowing alarm clock. It said seven o'cloclk. It had also said seven o'clock when I first sat down. I had been there for twelve hours and had no idea of the time.
In a state of consciousness I never even dreamed existed I made my way to the common bath in the hallway. I was covered in sweat and wanted a bath. As I turned the spigot on I saw the water coming out as its own living entity with its own kind of 'soul'. Even the heat in the hot water had a different kind of 'soul vibration'. Everything had its own vibrational signature, much like we all have individual fingerprints or retinas. All my movement were still being observed as in slow motion.
After getting dressed I walked out into the streets of the city of three million people. I was still in slow motion but things and people seemed to whiz by uncannily fast and stagelike - a movie turned up several speeds. I wandered the streets for a while and found myself standing at the bottom of a wrought iron staircase on Hotel d'Ville, off St. Catherine's. I had no idea why I was there but ascended the staircase and knocked lightly on the door. To this point I was an observor only, even of myself. Things were happening to me, not by me. The door opened to a pretty blond girl who said, "Lenny! Come in, quick. What are you doing without a coat? You're going to freeze to death." She seemed vaguely familiar but I really had no clue.
Voices from the other room called out, "Robin, who is it?" She replied, "It's lenny, but he looks really out of it. He doesn't even have a coat on and its freezing outside." She led me into the kitchen where a bunch of people were smoking weed, drinking beer and playing cards. "Hey, Lenny. You look fucked up man. What did you take? Got any more?" I could not speak and just stared in wonder. They seemed like actors who didn't realize the parts they were playing. Like actors who had forgotten they were only acting.
Robin led me back into the other room and told me I better sit on the couch and rest and warm up. She put her face right next to mine and gazed deeply into my eyes. "Lenny," she spoke, "what are you seeing? You are looking at me so deeply. I feel almost like you're looking through me." She then leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine. I found the sensation odd and was confused. What was this pressing together of lips? It was like another scene unfolding in some drama I was caught up in. It seemed so shallow and superfluous. I got up and headed for the door, unable to make my mouth form any words. Robin called out, "Lenny, where are you going. It's freezing out there. Please stay here 'til you come down." 'Come down', I thought. 'Come down from what?' I left and wandered the streets for a while longer, never feeling the cold of that early April Montreal night.
When I got home the waves of bliss descended on me again and stayed with me until I fell asleep. I knew my life would/could never be the same again. This world was far too confining, prisonlike, devoid of meaning and lasting joy. It was a world composed solely and completely of duality. For every action there has to be an equal and opposite reaction I now realized was not confined to the physical laws but also to the metaphysical. I could no longer live a life circumscribed by ignorance of my own being. Too much had been revealed to me that night. At the time I never kept track of holidays but the next day I realized the preceding day had been Easter Sunday and I truly had been resurrected from the sepulchur of ignorance. Six months later found me in Asia and India where I spent the next ten years. My life has been blessed with much pain, pain being the best prod to progress in this lazy world.
For what its worth,
lenny
None of us ever gets anything we don't either need or deserve. Dry those liquid emotions and move on.
I know I know, not a good question to ask babes our age! 
... or two
)
