Creativity habits
I've slowly developed a series of practices that help me organize my days, reinforce my goals, and make the most of my chores and duties. Earlier I sent out some information on the quest?ON deck, but the larger part of it is a series of practices that keep me oriented and motivated. Here is a draft of some of the habits I have built.
It is long, so skip around.
Daniel June
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Creative Space Creative Time
After the Divine women go to bed, I am alone to my work, in the womb of night and creating. The first thing I always do is enjoy a moment of contemplation, preparation, valancing and balancing, where I speak to my creative center, before my work.
First -- Mirror Meditation
The best meditation is Speculation: to contemplate a mirror, to mirror your mind on the all.
We begin, meditating. It is fine and well to meditate for half an hour a day, a Saturday a week, yet we really meditate throughout the day, every day. When we are not talking to friends or addressing our immediate situation, our mind wanders. It remembers, imagines, ponders, and plans. This is meditation. We do it all the time: on the car ride home, when work gets monotonous, as we eat. This time could be more profitable, and equally relaxing, if we perfected six meditating habits. They are perfected by meticulously executing meditations in private, to set out the steps and movements, memorize these movements, and practice them like a dance, until they are part of our everyday thinking. The six meditations are of the past, present, future, of self, problem, person.
First, the meditation of memory, the past. It is to recall significant recent events and unriddle their meanings and lessons. What mistakes did we make? What did we rationalize? What should we have done or said? We might think of the perfect comeback or perfect action, yet it is better to lose a fight merely so it will stick in our minds. Worse is it to win and forget. Reflect on all that makes you uncomfortable, embarrassments and shames, and unravel them until you have them figured out and transfigure them to lessons learned. When a mistake is proud to remember, you have earned the solution.
Secondly, the meditation of narration—the present. This is the internal monologue which notices the details of your surroundings. Describe the lighting, the smells, the temperature, the expressions on your friends face, the inflection in your voice, the texture of your jacket. You may say, "I stepped into the spring air, with the humidity of impending rain in my breath. The skies are senile gray, yet the buds are preparing to burst. The grass withers alive, crushed and brown. My cologne is a bit strong" etc. This keeps us actively aware of our world, and the details which we ought not take for granted. Or if one is not interested in the outer world, he can paint over his actions with a continual poetry, a leaping of words and ideas that paint the moments of life like an acoustic guitar paints a drum beat.
Thirdly, the meditation of fantasy—the future. This meditation imagines the future, and stages possibilities for consideration. What can you do? What is possible? What is impossible? Where can you go? What will you work? What will you create? Who will you love? How will you approach your family? What will you eat for dinner? It is an playing out of possibility. One must create his goals, small and broad, and fully participate with their imminence. It is to live within the world of the future, and bask in the sun of your success.
Fourthly, the meditation of self. What do my current moves and positions mean? Who am I, in a sentence? Who am I in a paragraph? If my life were a plot, how can I summarize its theme? What is the lineation of its movement? How does every present presentiment mean? What are my base assumptions? And, most importantly, what am I at any given moment? What does this say about me?
Fifthly, the meditation of argument—to explore a problem. Every man is a philosopher, his a mind made of assumptions and reasons. Argue dialectically with yourself, imagining the wisest adversary to your values and goals. Imagine what is most damaging to your prepositions, and argue it out. The beginning of this habit, then, is the inner debate, the fertility of a warring soul. Yet it is also as a man who meditates on a mantra for years, incorporating it into his system in profound and dynamic ways. It is to believe it in such a profound understanding that all else is put into new perspective. For if one man understood only nine things, he would be wiser then every man on earth. Indeed, to understand any one thing to its fullness is to have the world at a word. A password may allow this deep inner argument, such as a Buddhist who meditates that "there is no self." By what science makes a mantra effective? Consider a list of mantras and their biographies in men, and you will know. An antinomy, an error, and an awakening. For to say one simple truth repeatedly dissolves the mind. Declare in the affirmative, personal, present truth. Or if dialectics is not the sword's way, then approach the problem through definition, evaluation, categorization, and systemization.
Sixth, the meditation of character analysis. What is the character of the other person and how can we best apply ourselves to interacting with that character? We do not linger on faults, but realize hazards, cleaning ourselves of the dirt we see in the face of others. To fully analyze another, we consider them as a text: what do the details mean, what are the overall general movements? In sum, what is the outline of the plot of his life? What is the outline of a year of his life? What is the outline of a day of his life? What is the outline of an hour of his life? Note also what witty things he said that seem original—those represent a problem that bothered him. What is well formed took work. Note the details and tendencies of personality.
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Through meditation, we can explore an issue for hours and days. Is not the furrowed brow a joy? And after exhausting ourselves over a problem, revelation will hit, and our eyes will open. Brilliant is the mind that has forged truth in the passion of wonder.
Meditation is required for some truths. Some students, though enlightened, because of pride or fear or embarrassment perhaps, will not act immediately. More often, they cannot. The lesson may excite or bore, but sometimes a truth, once swallowed, must be digested for weeks, or longer. Sometimes the truth is boxed out of reach, and a key is needed: another teaching perhaps, a golden precept in a single sentence, or a dull brass key which you took from no man. The world comes in place, for gold or brass, the treasure is the joy of intellectual life. The box is complexity, and seems complex. Complexity is superficial.
Introspection, the seeking meditation, this is the joy of the introvert; and he is too jealous of his joy to advertise it. For it is not at a height that one meets the delicacies of personal needs, not at a height and as a spectacle that one self actualizes, for each need fulfilled is a tumbler click, till the innermost black whole past me-myself into my center self pulls my focus into aspects of the void and fullness I never guessed at.
What of the meditation of the Easterners, breathing meditation? This is the meditation that holds the mind in a state of focus on nothing. By it, we learn to control thinking, and learn about how thinking habits work. It is said to relax the mind and teach. It is also an art form which requires discipline fulfilling in itself. However, when practices make mystical promises, don't believe them. It is about as effective as prayer, which is, not at all beyond the material benefit of focusing the mind and disciplining it. There are no supernatural benefits.
Even the deepest whale surfaces occasionally. And again, distance sees best. Oscillate between introversion and extroversion. One can rarely see the first time. Six times I doubted, the seventh I believed. And again, some truths becomes lies when spoken. Keep your innermost free from community. For as I say: repenting would be my first sin. Hold on to that darkness and inner light, that deepest sun. Own as little as is reasonable; hold unto these inner truths and do not let another's lips confuse them.
And so what shall we say of meditation, as to its form? Sitting unmoving, with unmoving thoughts? It has brought many men to enlightenment. I resist it by instinct. Rather, dance, alone and joyful, dance. Think your movements as you do the dishes, think your joy as you shower, think your prayer as you enjoy yourself. Dance, yes, a new dance, something completely unique. Flunk precedent. We are our own. Walk through nature. Walk through the city. Run. Swim. All these allow both meditation, the movement of ideas, and unmeditation, that silence of ideas when the emotions of calm and peace come.
What then are the modes of meditation best for you as an individual? Buddha by sitting in meditation, Socrates by dialectics, Nietzsche by aphoristic ejaculations
Yet again, I say to create. Find your distract, some creative dance, some creative scale-forming, some creative figure scrawling, meditate in creation. In a mindless exercise which minds the distracter for you, focus fully into the depth of being, the inside. That is to say, analyze your zotext for its millionth time, draw that circle a thousand more times, improvise a hundred thousand scales, and let your red knife cut. Formula for meditation: a mindless engagement to allow mindful blossoming. Breath your breathing exercises five thousand times, dance your dance of depth, make it that moment of greatness, and make it instinct, only then will your mind blossom. As Nietzsche hiking for miles, or the runner on his daily marathon, the shuffler shuffling, the flautist flouting, whatever is your greatness, engage it. Then you will blossom. Creative meditation is the only meditation.
For I've learned much from mirror meditation, as well as sitted inquiry. But what does history teach? The walking philosophers of the Greeks learned so much more than the sitting mystics of the East (simply compare their written conclusions). Where does that leave us? I will say the deadly advice: both. Learn what you can from sitting, learn what you can from walking and teaching. All roads lead home. And so take all roads.
Therefore, let questions be your guide. As the student, approach each friend and person asking inwardly, "What can you teach me?" After every activity, book, conversation, chore, ask, "What have I learned?" Then effectively answer the questions. Likewise, in each of the six meditations, work out a personal stream of questions to bite apart the rind and fruit of the meditated object. Reconstitute her in the stomach of your thought.
Maintain then a regular dialogue with silence. Find your time daily: an hour to pure mind, with no bodily distractions, nor even mental ones that do not sign the chime. Know that strong passions require recharge; a fountain requires underground sources. You must invent and insist on a certain set of rituals to keep the fountain vital.
The Easterners have meditation, for peace. The Westerners have Creativity, for action. Creativity allows exuberance and joy as profound and enlightened as anything Eastern.
Mirror meditation is to meditate in front of a mirror. Seeing yourself should make you comfortable and confident.
Clearly define your problem into a question, write it down on an index card, and place it on the mirror
Meditate naked, or clothed, self touching, or still, sing, flash a lightning neuron of the whole environment, emote, scream, shout or whisper, and throw your head back and let the motherverse talk to you.
Develop a personal program of thought, on how to analyze a day, schedule a plan, how to propose a thousand ideas to yourself in a brain storm and how to test them all.
Questioning the deck is a better way to explore more ideas visually. However, anxiety is best spent fueling a contemplation with the mirror. After you have thought your ideas out, letting your mind wander, like a net thrown, and brought always back to the same central problem, you will have created many alternatives.
Now arch your neck back and close your eyes, and let the motherverse speak through you. Your own inner voice will praise and adore you, as a living aspect of herself, for she does not doubt but congratulates who you centrally are. Never a word of warning or a breath of judgment does she give a man. And after she has lavished you with the love of one who is you and adores you, let her touch your intuition where your decisive action lies, so that you no longer doubt yourself or your problem, but feel fired with anticipation and excitement at the certainty of a new prospect.
After you build your patience, reason, and imagination, you will be able to meditate like this for hours.
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When you meditate with a question deck, always draw to a conclusion. When you have a question session, you must arrive a conclusion, even if it is not ultimate, but only partial. You can draw each idea of a problem, or if you tape record your significant thought on a computer or tape recorder, you will have some material to return to when are done.
When you have a complex set of related ideas, write them all out on banner paper, until you have exhausted them. Then relate them together with crayons or highlighters. Once you have fully ordered your thoughts, create a Complexigon, which is a dense and difficult symbol, of which every nook contains a meaning.
Banner planning is merely one way to organize a set of ideas. Another is to assig each idea as a diagram or word, and imprinting it on index cards.
* * * *
Every single second of the day is an opportunity for creativity. Every problem, every ache, is a call to destroy the tradition, and start a new one, or to reinterpret and tweak tradition. Every step is a dance, every sentence a poem, every intonation a melody, every decoration of your house, architecture. Let everything you own be alined. Give personal names to your instruments, and spare no expense to get the best instruments.
Convert all your principles and ideas into a personal sign language, and tie all these signs into a daily ritual dance. Make a ritual dance for your family.
Live in your own world. Layer your world over this world. The wooden bookshelf is really the tree of knowledge, and each leaf of paper is a lea of knowledge.
Externalize your memories. Put a coupon in the last page of your book, so you know to buy the next. Put an empty shampoo container next to your car keys so you remember to buy another bottle. Put your running shorts on top of your alarm clock.
View your hands as shades of the yin yang, the first 4 days of creation in your left hand, the apocalypse in your right. Clean as you go: let your mind breath by taking breaks from your outflow to clean and order your creation. Hands full in, hands full out: like a waitress who carries dishes with her in and out of a kitchen, make both your act and your relax equally purposeful. Let every stray twitch accomplish a miracle. Importance is involvement: what you are interested in, you will do. This is always true. If anybody says he would only do such and such an act if he had more time, he is lying. If he had more time, he would do more of what he is already doing. The times may lengthen, but the ratios of his day would remain the same. Remember then that hypocrisy is irony. Nobody ever lied in the history of the universe.
Your mantra dance will be a sign-language dance. If you do not know sign language, invent your private language, so you're every stray hand gesture denotes a meaning.
As you wash the dishes, each plate is a petal of the lotus, growing from the dishwater, the narcissus, with petals of the infinite onion, which you wash transparently, so you can see the entire to the center.
We all have chores and tedium to accomplish. Layer them. Let your external acts be metaphors and reinforces of your inner work. As you sweep the floor, sweep through your thoughts.
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As for the Eastern Nothing Mind meditation, it is a horror to me. I am always thinking, and when I am distracted from my thoughts, grow bored and dull, I begin to die. My mind is always thinking, constantly studying, constantly self overcoming, always compounding interest. If I get a seed idea, I might write it down, or I might sweep floors and wash dishes for an hour until that seed grows tremendous, and then in an hour write down a seven page torrent. Nor am I lacking for constant pruning. Like Emerson, I am creatively manic one month, editing from my depression the next.
As for the utter peace, the feeling that I am in my heaven and all is right with the world, this peace I feel only when I am utterly alone.
Nobody longs for peace except the exasperated. For us Westerners, sitting and breathing for 7 hours a day not only looks foolish, but has no allure whatsoever. Who ever wanted peace? Why not, rather, passion? Why not creativity? The East may stand for spiritualism, but the West stands for creativity.
Rather than being boringly "Mindful" of your environment, putting your full focus on what is, instead, constantly write poems to halo your hands. Let your hands glow with the blue of creativity. Let everything you do be a creative challenge, and not a mere "mindful" awareness of the "way" of things.
To center yourself, repeat your name within your own head. Center on your name, when your focus scatters, repeat it back to yourself in an approving tone. Make you name your mantra, and know how to use tones to stretch that name.
Plateaus, ruts, nests, stupors, comforts are good for recentering oneself, for building up energy, but ultimately they endanger us heroes. Odysseus satisfying his heroic lust in the arms of Circe—the Gods grow impatient with our comfort, and breed imps and gremlins to sabotage our system towards the next big thing. Look at your life and how when things get comfortable, little gremlins are summoned to mess with the gears. Those are Godborn gremlins, and God is the imp in your heart.
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People become fat for lack of goals. A Profounder loses all taste for food, can only eat bland foods, when his eyes open lucid.
There are methods for increasing delight. A moderate abstinence increases appetite:
Increase the time since last eating
Eat opposite foods that sharpen each other
Eat complementary foods that improve each other
Before this, Imagine your food to titillate your appetite.
Look to the climate and customs of a geography to see who survives there and who dies. Some are made for the desert, and if they are not born there, they can migrate, or die off elsewhere. As Hippocrates suggests: study and observe the unique seasons and diets and you will know what the local diseases will be.
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There are few consistencies between the necessary individualism of brilliant men. Walking is one of the few. The great thinkers, artists, and men of profundity all exercised their minds and their bodies through daily walks. Socrates, Aristotle, Kant, Rousseau, Emerson, and Nietzsche—to name only philosophers—were all famous for (among other things) their regular walks.
Why walking? The truism of our age is that exercise, diet and rest are the trinity necessary for health and happiness. We thinkers who find exercise strenuous and boring grudge this sort of advice every time our doctor reminds us of it. I myself attempted attempted many exercise programs, from morning dances, to calisthenics, to running, but even with the aid of books-on-tape, I found the habits disruptive and consumptive of too much will power. One problem is that you cannot think while you are sweating. When I ran cross-country in high school, my mind focused mostly on persisting despite my cramps and shin-splints. Lifting-weights, pushups, jogging, and swimming allow no focus of mind, and if we can't have that, then what's the point? A thinker never wants to escape his mind, beyond the eight hours of sleep. Besides, if I am spending calories, shouldn't I get paid for it?
Walking is unique among exercises in that it allows you to focus on your thoughts while working your body. It does not exhaust you, nor does it sprain your ankles nor give you shin splints. It gives you a good workout—especially if you walk an hour day—and because it doesn't exhaust your body and willpower, it is fun to marry your habits to it.
Walking encourages genius. The parapetic philosophers of Greece famously taught their lectures while walking. The walking stimulated blood flow to the brain, allowing the students to digest the ideas more thoroughly.
Nietzsche came up with most of his myriads of ideas while hiking for hours a day. He even rebuffed Rousseau for thinking up his ideas while sitting, claiming that to be the "blasphemy against the spirit." He "trusted no idea that came from inactivity."
Indeed, we see this again and again. Emerson spawned many of his sermons, lectures, and books while walking in nature.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote in his book, Creativity, that walking takes some attention, enough to free the unconscious. Walking speeds the necessary gestation of ideas. Blood is filling the brain, but you can also free your thoughts from over-attention by looking about you. He also wrote that novelty, beauty, and nature are excellent for "incubation and insight" of ideas.
Some people prefer to walk in the morning. Not I. I prefer to begin the day with a scripting of broad plans for the day, a song, and then cleaning, cooking, and books on tape. Only later, after I have studied and filled my mind with tough problems and question marks to I go for a long walk to let the ideas play amongst themselves.
I walk, like Benjamin Franklin, after dinner. Or if I wish to make a day of it, in the early afternoon.
Thoreau wrote:
"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements."
"You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors."
"What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder when I found myself so implicated even in what are called good works—for this may sometimes happen."
"Roads are made for horses and men of business, I do not travel them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead."
"But possibly the day will come when the land will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only—when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be constructed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. "
"There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony."
It is imagined that prayer is the West's alternative to Eastern meditation. But the psychological benefits of prayer are nothing compared to meditation: I disbelieve it. The western alternative to meditation is walking. For it was not by prayer, by walking that great ideas come to our thinkers.
Walking allows exercise, communion with nature—fresh air and sunlight—, and increase of blood flow to the brain. The difference between walking and sitting as exercises for enlightenment renders broadly different results. The active spirit of the West allows for discovery, exploration, energy. The inactive spirit of the East allows for peace, calm, and relaxation.
While many of our thinkers have in fact been stationary, Stephen Hawking being an obvious example, but again, even Voltaire spent most of his day writing in bed, the best of our thinkers were at least walkers. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, the American Fathers, all walked daily.
What is it about walking that attracts the practice to great thinkers? First, walking is often independent. You can walk alone. And aloneness is the womb of genius: here we grow, here we find our sustenance. When alone, you are always in the best of company. Indeed, the entire genius of the East is summed up in the tranquility of solitude. Yet in the West, it is active solitude that allows us to think through ideas, to observe the beauty of nature, to allow colorful distractions to hold the conscious flame away from gestating thoughts—to let thoughts alternate between consciousness and forgotteness.
For surely, bipolar is the nature of genius. History marches forth by the swinging of the pendulum. Mere "balance" is inactivity. If everything were crystal balanced, life would depart. Wisdom progresses by falling into folly, then catching itself with the step of insight. Passion is balanced by boredom. A writer counts himself "blocked" when he doesn't write, but if he is a writer of the blood, part of his brain is always writing.
The more you exercise, the more you hunger for healthy foods.
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Before, masturbation was said to cause mental illness. This was another Catholic deception. I find the practice not merely a great sacrament to my individuality, but also another physiological interface for exploring my mindheart.
Masturbation is one of the great strokes of luck we have found in life. For sexual gratification is a basic need, but gratifying sex is not always possible. Often, we are single, and emotionally unprepared for a sexual relationship, which should always involve mature mutual understanding (otherwise, sex is a mistake). Or if we are united with a partner, perhaps that partner practices sex differently than you, less often, or in a way that does not fulfill your full sexual being. No worries. For we can always masturbate. It is not only free, easy, and as near as your hand, but it has no negative consequence, but in fact, builds the personality.
Mere pornography is often useful and commendable, but only as long as a regular and fully engaged fantasy life is used intermitted. In fact, it is the fantasy life that is best. We must only allow one rule here: forbid nothing. Explore everything and go everywhere. And thus, I heartily recommend that you masturbate philosophically.
A great affirmation of your individuality! Use your excitability to explore your own mindheart, your own enjoyment as a guide into your inner labyrinths. Never be ashamed before yourself, but consider what is desired by you as the most natural and perfect thing, even if it should never be "enacted in real life."
Once you look at your sexual turn ons, there is the follow-up of exploring their philosophical significance. Sex is never only sex. Your sexuality is an integral part of your complete personality, your creativity. Wonders await, if you fully embrace your full being, the joy of excitement, the joy of orgasm.
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ME
WE
Interweave your goals, your designs, your plans. Make connections between your friends. Solve problems with other problems.
When you meditate, imagine your needs as a sphere, your heart as a sphere, your mind, your body, as spheres, your family, your house, your neighborhood, your workplace, all as consecutive spheres. Listen to the singing of the spheres. Where is a sphere out of shape? Where is the circle squared?
Behind all talk is the mental symbol of the talk—hidden in the underconscious. Tthrough this that the light shines upon the ego screen. This shape is the first form of assumption. The mental shape that has served me best is the image of layers of spheres. My hearts I hold, around that my mind, around that my speaking, and around that my acting out. The sphere grows larger, from me, to my wife, to my family, to my friends, to my work, outwards to city, state, country, and world, all layers of consciousness that I participate in, by which the world thinks through me, in all thigns I do. The coffee shop too is a perfect sphere—buzz from buzz, task to task, indents in the sphere, the anxieties of attention. A sphere ever moves from order to increased complexity, attending to business, tensions out of shape, the surface thick with texture. The speaking sphere is grooved with the threads of text, the words that bind us.
We spread our Monarch wings, posed for the flutter of dance, and fly into the smile of the Motherverse. And at last we emerge from the chrysalis, that crowned prison in ribbons around us. We burst the bond of the bracelet, and take our freedom, a red band for eternity on one arm, a wrist watch of the present on the other. Breath falls on a shivering body as we pump new wings into fiery discs. Likewise, each of us spends the beginning of his life enthralled in lessons, learning, growth, and the creation of personality. We enter our chrysalis, metamorphose, and emerge a monarch butterfly. The monarch caterpillar eats the poisonous milkweed which will make him, when adult, poisonous to the devouring birds. Each man and woman is a monarch.
* * * *
Buddhism repeats the Yoga of Hinduism, and adds nothing to it, merely a few glosses to stand in for the overly complex hindu "philosophy." Do we also have nothing to add to meditation? We are the same: we meditate in order to create an aesthetic experience, by which to test and guide the rest of our active experiences. Having achieved a peak exerience, and basked long enough to judge from its light, we know how to appraise our daily lives in the world. For Hinduism, it was the feeling of wholeness, for Buddhism he feeling of emptiness, and both of them variants of passive peace, to guide and test every other part of life: what feels peaceful like hours of breathing exercises is also enlightened, that flow of breath I and out and the mind focused intently on nothing. Only for us, we do not isolate in order to grow a Bodhi tree of peace, but to grow the Dionysian vine of Mania.
Bring me wine, but wine which never grew in the belly of the grape, let its grapes the morn salute from a nocturnal root, which feels the acrid juice of Styx and Erebus, eternal life, the eternal return of life; the future promises and hallowed in the past, the triumphant Yes to life and beyond all death and chance, true life as the over-all continuation of life through procreation, through the mysterious of sexuality, and turns the woe of night by its own craft to a more rich delight, blood of the earth, that I may float at pleasure through all nature, the bird language rightly sing, as beauty roses spell, torrents of wine like sun: water and bread, food which need no transmuting--+the God on the cross is a curse on life+ rainbow-flowering, wisdom fruiting, the orgiastic as an overflowing feeling of life and strength, which already is man, food which teaches and reasons. Wine which music is, music and wine are one, that I drinking this shall hear far chaos talk with me, for he who lacks a womb of chaos will never give birth to a dancing start, and the poor grass shall plot and plan what it will do when it is man: I think the joyful juice for all I know, winds of remembering, of the ancient blow: Pour, Dionysus, the remembering wine, retrieve the loss of me and mine, Dionysus cut to pieces is a promise of life; it will be eternally reborn and return again from destruction, let wine repair what is undid, write my old adventure with the pen which on the first day drew, the eternal men.
We live and ever develop a line of normal over the grades of joy, which each day will fly or swoop around, like a hook on a string; and we develop a best, the moments we save up for and enjoy for a while, for a best by nature cannot and should not be sustained. Meditation in the Eastern style is only valuable insofar as enlightenment gives a touchstone feeling by which to set what is normal for all other behavior. Or for the creative mania of my own tradition, the feeling of creative outpour is my normal, and I know I am doing any given act correctly when I am doing this.
I would never take a vacation from work unless I could bring the joy and peace of that vacation back to every other day of work again.
Spirituality is in breathing: if one can breathe well in life, he will achieve spirituality.
Interface
It is difficult, as a father, husband, and employee, each day, and at the convenience of others, to insist always on my own goals and passions. There is the inner fire which will never be snuffed, but near the surface, the cell wall must negotiate. I must smooth my passion into the daily grace of the mundane groove. At work, there are rules and guidelines that I must bend only so far. At home there are family "duties" which I must abide if wife and daughters are to be happy. The night is my own. Yet how to manage the tedium of the day? I cannot read, write, and sing always. Yet there are ways of facing the daily chores that develop my ideas and expand them.
Like a computer that has a graphic interface, one can develop a better memory through imagination, song, poetry, and dance, even while he does his tasks. To imagine a drawing board in front of the forehead, and to envision your ideas even while looking at the things you can do, you may work out ideas, philosophy, and art, all along.
If one is to sweep the floor, he may yet dance the broom in such a way as to draw out deep insights. Make rules for everything you do, strive for efficiency, grace, finesse, and eloquence, even while you wash the dishes, and those same virtues can later be applied to other things you pride in. you can practice the guitar while walking the dog. You can study psychology while talking to your boss, coworkers, or customers.
Learn to fix ideas to tasks. If a chore is made to symbolize an idea, you can metaphorize deep and sublime ideas, even while you cook dinner.
Self dialogue, quiet humming, or open singing, are always possible, asking and answering questions to yourself, or if you have friends who are not too keen on philosophy, shaping the inquiries into every day terms and stories will engage them.
Question Guided Thinking
Every moment is a thought, every experience part of a thought. Some thoughts contain themselves, some thoughts are only fully thought after years. A few thoughts take thousands of years to develop, and though they are believed and loved, are in fact false, until finally they become something true. Since effective thinking feels powerful, and thus is joy, and aimless thinking feels weak, and thus is misery, we ought to train our mind the habit of effective thinking. This begins with a process of slow and deliberate question guided thinking.
What begins as a catalogue of questions to ask in every situation becomes finally a mind which naturally pulls up the effective question at the prime moment. But why a question? A situation is interesting when it is a problem. Every problem is pain until it is formulated in a direction to a solution. The bridge from problem to solution is posing a question, then pursuing the answer. Questions, therefore, orient the mind, giving it focus and direction. What questions ought we to ask?
In any situation there are some basic questions to ask:
What am I experiencing? What self-evident experience do I have and what situation does it describe?
What deeper principle does this experience relate to?
What concepts best encapsulate this experience?
How do I define these concepts?
How does this experience fit into my system of ideas?
What further experiences should I follow this one with?
What insights and conclusions can I achieve from this situation?
How will I change my habits based on this experience?
Exhausting the answers to these eight questions will take you a long way in comprehending your situation. Questions are eyes. Every situation calls for its own eyes, its own questions. Just as every book and every writer requires its own method of literary criticism, just as every human being requires his own form of love, just as every patient requires his unique counseling techniques, so too will every situation, every experience empower certain questions.
The best thinking and teaching optimizes live issues. It solves current problems, rather than preparing for unknown problems. It is a voice to the future by maximizing our eyes on the present.
A man is only as powerful as he can command himself. He must be able to follow his own goods and persist in practicing them. Insofar as he cannot, so he is not a man. Channeling a constant questioning, then requires the same discipline as any habit.
Asking mere questions is not enough. You must net every experience into the great flow forward. All your energy must be devoured on the path toward your goal, every obstacle on the path must be devoured to force you forward. Know how to question aright, and you will see through most errors. Know how to question aright and you will outsmart all manipulators. Knowing how to question is a form of omniscience.
Philosophy is defining of terms. A dictionary has no terms in it, but only words, common usages. A term is a word used in a technical sense, and the technology is the machinery of the system that comprehends it. Every man is a system, every mind an engine made of ideas in dynamic activity. You must invest all your experience forward. Let no sparrow fall without you willing it.
Therefore, at every moment, formulate questions. From these, invent hypotheses, and then test these hypothesis with action. Take your recurrent problems as fitting subjects of inquiry. Take your tragedies as fertilizer for thought. Suffering is rich in future joy. Suffering is profound. Figure out all the annoyances of your life. Your life is a work of art, and you outsmart all your obstacles into further beauty.
Consider the cynic. He sees every man as depraved. How does he pull this off? With every man, he asks: "what despicable motive explains this man and his actions?" The mind rationalizes. It will find what it seeks. Once we have a prejudice, we will bend every fact to fit it. Therefore, be careful what your questions are doing. Question your questions. Know how to turn every applause or scowl back on yourself: you are what matters.
Ultimately, you must invent your own thick of questions to approach life, and must apply them deliberately and carefully till they are instinct. Darwin, for instance, knew what to question, and sifted through crowds of minds to get at the information that answered his question.
You ask how to strengthen your unconscious. The unconscious enjoys suffering. Therefore, feed it question marks. A rich diet of questions makes the unconscious strong and vital.
Be ambitious. Ambition, the great golden arrow from your heart pulling you forward.
Daydreams, Reveries, Floating, Walking with Mattria
When you are meeting a new person, whatever idea or image first pops in your head, latch unto it and combine it with the image of him, the sound and meaning of his name, the puns on his name and the way he looks – let your mind go manic with it, and unite it all together into a few staunch symbols. An active mind never forgets. Work your mind as fast as you can, and fast it will always be.
When you listen to a musical album or a symphony, imagine every image, memory, feeling, or sense for every musical phrase. Let your imagination dance and paint to it. Listen to the CD through many times, relate the parts together, and structurate the whole so you see how it all fits together.
If you are fortunate enough to own insomnia, you will not need coffee. Listen to the symphony in the dead of night, with all the lights off, and with your eyes wide open. Let the temperature be cool so the music can give you chills. The darkness on your open eyes will heighten your hearing. Lay back and look up at the dark ceiling.
In the library, read the author who interests , catch a reference to another book, and then look up that author. Float through the library, gathering up handfuls of books. Read a book here, a chapter there, a page of that guy, take weird cryptic notes, half doodles and figures, half words and quotes, and then go home and integrate all your notes into a staunch few lines. I've spent whole semesters at the University college haunting the library from after class till 2 a. m. reading books, building up ideas, contemplating.
Séances have the right idea, but they are mostly bullshit. To have a séance of a spirit worth talking to, a great genius, you must immerse yourself in everything he wrote, created, or accomplished. To talk to Plato in his heaven, you must submerge yourself in the flesh of his work. Read everything written of the times, the good and the bad, listen to the music of the era, see the architecture. Only then will his spirit approach you.
Shuffle your quest?ON deck and seek your answers.
This will open your imaginative eye, and may lead you to the ecstatic vision world of flow. I have been here many times, seen tangible visions and imagined visions. But the best of all is Flow, where every moment and every happening, every phrase, and every accident flows together in a providential inevitability, so that you say "of course" after every chance. To get the images to flow, you must associate and comprehend every idea, everything that happens. Flow is to relate all things in your mind into one idea, and all things you do into resonations of one themes, so your work, your desire, your play, your family, all seek one goal together. The mystical joy of it may be sometimes missing, but a good vacation is one you bring back with you forever to your work.
Walking with Mattria, the universe as a whole, is to internalize AA, Ama, your persona of her, and in front of a mirror after you have talked in circles around your problems, bend your neck back and let her speak through you, with your own mind. If you feel silly because you believe it is not her, do not worry, it matters little if the voice is hers or yours, if the result is the same. That is, talk to yourself as by the one who incarnates through you, knows you to be great, approves of all your deepest desires and longings, and expects you to do great things in life. Talk with her before the mirror, or before the mirror of nature.
Second -- Question Deck
While most of us regard creativity as envious if we don't practice it, or as essential if we do, we still regard Tarot readings, palm readings, and interpreting coffee grounds as peculiar, if not self-deceitful. It is "New Age" and a waste of time. Maybe. But not everybody who reads cards or looks in crystal balls believe spirits are talking to them. In fact, when we study the biographies of famous scientists and mathematicians, we discover that their greatest discovery was aided by an "irrational" connection, as in a series of dreams by the mathematician Poincare, random associations by both Newton and his apple, and Archimedes with his bath water. Many other scientists claim that they made their greatest discoveries by accident, such as the discover of penicillin by accidentally getting bread on the bacteria cultures.
Thus, I use this deck not as a substitute for rigorous, logical, disciplined thinking, but as a complement to it, either to stretch the mind before thinking, or to apply directly to thinking through the problem. Or, if you are not a scientist or logical thinker, it can aid you in whatever creative act you pursue, again either as play or as exploration.
The deck is not supernatural. But it is structured to ask questions using basic symbols we are all familiar with, in order to get you to think in a new way.
After you lay your hand, you must imagine all connections as a spirit conforming about the deck, like a hologram from the table. Handle them, raise your hands and turn them, see them and feel them.
Laying the Deck
There are 88 cards in the deck. Organize your problem into a sentence and think on it while you shuffle the deck, looking occasionally at the cards as you shuffle, but blindly cutting the deck at the end.
Lay 12 cards out from the upward facing side, in a counterclockwise circle, as illustrated:
These 12 cards are the Question cards.
Now flip the deck and place four cards down facing down in a clockwise fashion as illustrated:
These are the Answer cards, and will be revealed at the end.
Separate the four corners of the Question Set, as follows.
Read the cards as follows. Card 1 is a restatement of your question. Card 7 is your personal relation to the question. 10 is the shape of the question. 4 is what the problem touches.
After you have interpreted the question in this way, the noun of the problem, you can look at the verb of the problem, (cards 2,3,5,6,8,9,11,12).
5 and 6 combine into one idea or story about the powers you now have in relation to the problem. 11 and 12 combine into the idea or story about the powers you ought to seek in relation to the problem. 2 and 3 combine to show you how you influence the problem, and 8 and 9 combine to show how the problem influences you.
By combine, I mean to unify the two cards, creatively into one idea, one event, one object of thought.
After you have finished this, you have restated your question. You are ready to face the cards in the middle to form an answer.
If two people are thinking this out, the expert may be active in the reading of the question, but the questioner must interpret the answer himself.
The four inner cards, when faced, are combined as a set of four into one idea to answer the problem. As the sets of two bordering the inner cards formed into units, so also these four form into one entity.
There are three movements of thinking in reading these cards. There is the very first impression, which you might dismiss subconsciously before you even hear it. There is your first conscious reaction to the cards, which if you are nervous you might settle on to get it over with. Hold these in mind and value them, but also, let your mind take in the full feel of the cards meanings, and explore second, third, fourth, and fifth impressions.
After you have combined the four answer cards into one idea, go back and review the major parts, and see if they take a new shape in relation to the revealed answer.
Example Reading 1 – Initial attempt
The type of question you bring to the deck is up to you, be it to open up your mind to write music or a story, to relax after work, or to stretch your imagination muscles before studying math or psychology. The example, I give, therefore, is merely an example of how I use the deck, and not a limit on the question you use.
The deck will be shuffled and unrigged.
Question: How should I present the deck?
Figure 4 the cards laid
Figure 5 The cards tweaked
Part 1. Interpreting the Question Circle.
Lower right corner. Determining my role in this question. I, the questioner, am hard. Am having a hard time? Am hard-hearted against this presentation? What is hard in me or about me? I am keeping my heart hard so as not to make this demonstration personal?
Upper left corner. Renaming the question. The question was: how should I present this deck? The new question is "fire?" How are those one? How can I present this deck so it spreads like fire? How can I spread my passion for creativity? How can I make other excited about it?
Upper right corner. How is the problem shaped? Like an X. X is an especially interpretable symbol. It can mean both negation and multiplicity, and yet again, ambiguity itself, as in the missing X of an algebra equation. It is shaped like a fog, I don't know its limits. Its shape is beyond my current knowledge. I will
Lower left corner. What does this problem touch? It touches light. It touches the light I shine? My personal knowledge? It touches the the enlightenment of others?
Review of the noun of the question.
As a novice myself, I am having a hard time presenting the fiery ideas encoded in this deck, of which I don't know if it will touch the light of day.
Part 2. The verbs of the question.
The lower cards. What powers I now have. Darkness, how. Dark: my dark moods, my uncertainties, my own hidden powers, hidden truths? How: I know how to use the deck, how to be creative.
The upper cards. What I aspire to. 10, Who. Ten: both hands, full control of them, full control of the creative process, reduced tension. Who: knowing who could use this, who I am, who to talk to this about.
The cards on the left. What I can do to the problem. B. Need. I can address my being to it. I can nurture it (B for breasts), I can apply my needs to it. I can need it.
The cards on the right. What the problem can do to me. Flesh, out. It can flesh me out, flesh out my experience, it can open up the body of my experience. It can affect my pleasure, my moods.
Combining the twos
I know how to use and explore my darkness; I aspire to controlling who I can help with this; I can apply my need to be, my basic survival needs to spreading the fire; the problem can flesh itself out before me, melting my hardness.
Summary of the verb:
I know how to explore my darkness, I merely need to master sharing it by sharing it with others and applying my needs for greatness to spreading it, and also letting itself flesh itself to me as we go along.
Reformulation of the problem as a whole (combing noun and verb summaries):
Mastering the deck will require a personal struggle with my inner darkness, in order to start a fire and reveal light. How is it mastered?
Figure 6 The answer faced
Part 3. Facing the Answer
5, sour, slow, air. Take it slow? Air: talk about it a lot? 5: keep it in hand, gain power over it, live it? Sour: it makes me sour? I should be sour with it, acrid, dissolve it into my being? 5=air? Five pointed star? Slow=sour? Don't rush fruit or it will be too sour? Slow=air. A slow moving song? 5=sour? Five sided fruit? A sour man? Sour star? Sour power? Surly father? Slow=5? A slow fight? Five years? Slow like a five year old?
5=sour=air=slow? Hmm. Restate the question:
Mastering the deck will require a personal struggle with my inner darkness, in order to start a fire and reveal light. How is it mastered?
Go through it more slowly, with an air of grass, letting my sour ability ripen, practice for five years. Hmm. Slowly air the power to overcome my sourness. Hmm. Talk about it with five people, slowly?
Answer:
Work towards mastery through slow talking till my ability ripens.
Conclusion:
To teach others how to do it, slowly master it yourself, trying it out on others.
Perhaps an obvious answer to anybody, but the journey got me thinking about a vast network of things that will influence what else I write, think, and talk about tonight. Which was the point.
I could have gone much deeper into each symbol, but I kept it simple for demonstration. I also left out any personal references, such as: 5 reminds me of last week when such and such happened.
Example Reading 2 – one year later
A follow up reading is in order, now that I've practiced on and off for about a year. A will try another in another year or two.
| 7 | fast | S | ʘ |
| Friend | | | Flesh |
| Child | | | ? |
| R | ▲ | chaos | ♦ |
Question initially phrased: how should I structure my day tomorrow?
Questioner corner: me in relationship to the question:
♦
I'm structured like a diamond. I should focus on money. I should make a crystal lattice of deeds. I should look through a diamond lens….
question in relation to me corner:
7
I should do a week's amount of work, I should unite earth and heaven. The problem is a seven, a Saturday question (tomorrow I don't work), the problem is unifying my day.
shape of question corner
ʘ
bull's-eye of concentric circles: the problem is shaped like the celestial spheres, like a layered problem, like the seven of heaven down to the zero of hell, a lateral journey inwards
What the question touches corner
R
The glyph for head, it touches my head, my planning, getting ahead, heading off problems etc.
Combining all the possibilities into one hallucinative vision above the deck
The diamond stands for infinite marriage, as the two triangles of male and female sexuality are combined in a diamond ring, rather than at odds in the hourglass of transiency, and indeed my state of marriage is questioning the 7 of union of heaven and earth, how to unify heaven and earth on my day off, how to bring a complete whole of the day. This is shaped like the celestial crystal spheres, and they touch the "R"tist's head, the imagination. Therefore, above the deck, I hold up my hand and see within it:
The marriage diamond, with the 3 of heaven pointing in both directions, and the four of earth at the middle, and within it like Russian dolls, layers of diamond lattice, and in the center the living flame of the crystals imagination, which when it thinks aright, holds the unit in order.
My effects on the question side
Child, Friend
I befriend the child of the crystal, the shared intelligence between me and my wife, the cooperative imagination between us, the liquid center of the crystal
Questions effects on me side
Flesh, ?
The structure of the crystal can challenge me to hold it in one material shape
Initial rephrase of question
Our schedule depends on holding up the diadem of our goal, and negotiating a stable pressure upon it to let the warmth of the imaginative child with in to keep it melted enough to be flexible, yet cool enough to be strong.
My current powers bottom
▲, chaos
The upper triangle is me, and my base is on my wife, who is Terra, Gaea, and Psyche, beneath. I am the delta triangle of change, and it is chaotic. My strong mood shifts, which empower my ideas but cause strife
The powers I seek top
Fast, S
I seek the ability to transition, smooth and sibilant like an S, to quickly change to new situation and new demands upon me.
Final rephrase of the question
With all the things we are scheduled to do tomorrow, how is my family going to get everything down, without fighting, and I yet get my personal goals done too? How can I use my chaotic mood swings to help me smoothly transition to a changing environment?
Or as a vision:
We are passing around the diamond, which heats and cools as each of us hold it, and we pass it around when it burns us. How do we do this?
The four card answer
| | | | |
| | Sovf | Air | |
| | □ | * | |
| | | | |
Sovf is holy ghost, Lucifer, Venus, and she is a goddess of air, or of the desire of words, the mythosphere, the morning star, so already those 3 cards resonate. She is Wisdom. The 6 sides star is her sexual charm. The square is mother earth, or order, the solid unit.
And so the transitions of the crystal of order can be wrought by wise and rigid talk.
In vision form:
I charmingly yet rigidly bring things back to order as we move all our stuff out of the apartment, watch our daughter, and negotiate the help of my friend, and transition the work to her when I need to get my personal work done. So the vision is setting the crystal on my tongue and blowing it as a kiss of wisdom to her.
The pragmatic difference
This would be idle if I did not change my actual plans for scheduling tomorrow based on my reading.
I will focus on the most graceful transitions tomorrow, where my wife and I do not expect clashing things from each other, but I can get all my personal goals done between larger moving projects, as gracefully as a crystal blown with love on the wind.
Succinctly: I will be graceful and charming in all transitions, and not let my mood wax angry.
Notes
Full deck includes:
0-9, 10, 11, 69, 88,
A-Z
à,@,¯, p, P
., ?, !, (,),#, *
+, =, /, X, -
red, blue, yellow,
hard, soft,
light, dark
fast, slow
eyes NN, mask K, system å, cash $, mirror Ò, maze Æ,
father, mother, child, sibling, friend
all, earth, fire, air, water, Chaos
sweet, sour, bitter, salt,
bread, fruit, fish, flesh, fowl
need, memory, assumption, habit, mind,
Wotan D, Sophia ÿ, Hermes, Satan,
who, what, where, when, why, how
up, down, in, out,
have, is,
(feel), [think], "say", ~do~
How to read
Don't just look at the circle on the page. You must develop your imagination: with your eye's hands, pick up the circle like a glowing ball of blue. Juggle the shapes, and combine them. You must be akin to those who do not play high-graphics computer games, but those from an older generation, who played games like Dungeon Hack, and other character based games, or even Zork, a word game with no graphics. Graphics and movies are good only insofar as they augment the imagination, and not stand in for it. Milton wrote his greatest poems once he went blind, as did Homer; Beethoven wrote his best symphonies once he went deaf.
Spend hours daydreaming. This very book grew out of my hours of day-dreaming on my daily commute to college, in which I would imagine writing the ultimate book that would explain everything a human being needed to be great: a sort of encyclopedia of life. Perhaps it was French of me to replace the Bible with an Encyclopedia.
Blessed are the insomniacs: they write best.
Third -- Cluster Pad
After the Question Deck has been mastered, when interpretation is second nature, after a graduation of 200 hours practice, the cluster pad is ripe.
The practice of cluttering are easy to learn: use a blank book. Read and underline key passages from dozens of books, magazines, and other materials, especially books worthy of only one read, but perhaps the uberdense books as well. Copy these passages out, or paraphrase them, randomly in the cluster pad, using various colored ink pens, so that when the pad is thick with randomly placed symbols and sayings, the ink colors will keep one source separate from another.
After the pad is thoroughly cluttered, use a pencil to draw relationships between the different sentences.
Example Reading 1 – Initial Attempt
I spent a few months reading a series of books of my various interests, underlining the key points, and writing my comments in the margins. I found it easiest to "clean as a go" and copy the passages into the clutterpad as I went. Perhaps 70 books' worth of notes went into the clutter pad, whom I named "clutterbug," on topics as diverse as biographies, philosophy, physics, mythology, religion, literature, psychology, and art.
Example Reading 2 – two years later
Store all your ideas, and every good idea in the world, like a pack rat. Cut out magazine pictures, write down quotes, steal ideas from all your friends, and meld them all together. Like Whitman, put all your best lines into envelopes and let the envelopes turn into poems. Like Emerson, index every idea from your daily journal, till the grow into bodies of ideas.
Four -- Visiopad
Five --
As you read, learn to doodle. Put graphemes in the margins.
I wonder why the great minds are not my diagrammatic. They leave the charts and graphs to their disciples. I recall Freud's little doodle of the Id, ego, and superego, Darwin's penchant for tree diagrams. I myself am obsessed with bull's-eye diagrams, and have used that little tool to organize most of my thoughts. My first philosophical breakthrough at seventeen years old was to admire the diagram of Maslow's, and to sum up what I thought to be true in the Map of the Universe. Fine-mapping this diagram as given me years of pleasure. As well, I feel I truly understand something when I can put it in diagrammatic form, or when I can doodle it. Is not the mind seeing as the heart is hearing? Is not all thinking a form of seeing?
It seems to me that most muddled thinking comes from lack of definitions. And all definitions can be iconized.
The complexigram is my aim, and I work towards it: to make a glyph which is thick and detailed, like a painting, but each of its shapes to stand for an abstraction.
The entire key insight to Chaos theory lies in this new practice: to put complex data in a graph that appears graceful. There are multitudes of different graphs a single set of data can look like. What is chaos in one set is a neat set of circles in another set (as in the Lorenz attracter).
For complex games, such as this book you are reading, the act of playing the game changes the rules of the game. How you play changes how you can play: the rules are reacting to you now.
No therefore how to assemble all the information into one single picture. Once you can do this you will achieve enlightenment.
Six -- Shuffling
During my undergrad years, I enjoyed two incomparable joys: chatting with Ama five hours a day at night, and before that, in a great preparation and dynamic attractor of it, I would study at the campus library. Only I shirked my schoolwork. I preferred, rather, to saunter the aisles, find an author or topic that caught my whim—or usually one, two, five, ten books at a time—and read them, sometimes a page here or there, sometimes a chapter, sometimes the entire book; or if another book was referenced that sounded fascinating, I immediately dialed that one up and sought him down. Hours and hours each day, and every day of the week, this was my great love. Joy knows no Sabbath.
And so my studies were shaped like a brain, which folds up on itself to increase surface area; my studies spread their tendrils like arterioles, each artery branching, branching, a fractal universe down, till every topic of knowledge I had scented, sniffed, licked, and dined.
Swimming through the library, or if you are at home with your own books, swimming through your own Walden pond—what joy!
Seven --Flow
I would suggest finding a flow of mind.
Turn your daydreams into feelings, turn your feelings into questions, answer your questions with whatever matter is at hand, even if its washing the dishes, always set up equals signs between experiences and thoughts, so that you are metaphorizing constantly, and thought becomes so lucid that everything is everything, till finally some great condensations emerge, compact and dense metaphorical symbols.
Eight – Hymns
Our hymns and paeans, songs to marriage and reason (the gods Hymen and Apollo) for us express the daily gratitude we feel towards the universe for giving us a stage for our beauty. To develop a hymn, choose the daily activities you always do, and do mindlessly, and over the weeks develop a hymn to express during them.
For example, I have written these:
Upon Waking, sing
Scatter you shadows
Fly away night
Flee here you darkness
Welcome Light
Arise my soul!
Open my eyes!
Greet you your day
Find you your way
And know
Perfection is easy!
Upon drinking a sweet drink:
I accept this wisdom from you my love
As a dancer's joy
as a poets thirst
as a butterfly's ambrosia
Sweet to taste but sweeter to be
The flow and swallow of the flux!
(Choreographed, in line 2, the cup is raised to the forehead, dropped at line three to the mouth, and stretched to the right, as the other hand stretches to the left, as wings, with the butterflies ambrosia. The other hand touches the mouth with sweet to taste, and the heart with sweeter to be, and the same hand draws a circle with flow and swallow, and upon from fist to star with flux.)
The sweet drink, or whatever drink you sip, is akin to any food you eat, which you sip and eat philosophically, connecting your ideas with the tastes, and tastes with ideas, so that a lemonade reminds you of the sours and sweets in life, the ice of the icy woman you met, the chocolate or coffee the soil of life, eating the dirt, the excremental fertilizer of increase.
Upon dusk.
Lay down dawn of thought
Upon Atlasian shoulder
Bleed to bed
Tears of gold
Dream of death
Her beauty.
Bow to moon
Flow of cow
Muses swoon
Her Madness
The cloak of night
Spoken from a thousand eyes!
I turn all rays with cauldron's wand
Till Robins song bemuse me.
Upon laying for sleep
Good night Universe of my love: Allmother!
Today I pride my perfection in all of my doings
And sleep in peace of my right way
And great my way
And love the universe sings to me
Blameless Child
Fellow Creator
And poet from heart to hands
Momma and I are one!
So rest this mind, rest this heart, rest this tongue
Drink in your deserved dreams
And hum into the joysong of the all
I am all I love all
So sleeps this little God.
Upon cleaning and choring
Structuring square of order
Draws a Circle upon Chaos
Mountainous hands
wrive the waves of my way
Circular heart
Loves the fall of my Sway
Crystal structure
Blood stream system
Flow for me.
(And these are the words for a hand dance. The square of order of a square of fingers, the circle of chaos is a full arm circle, mountainous hands are the W of flat palms angling at the thumbs, which falls into a finger circle with circular heart, which falls in two fell swoops with fall of my sway. Crystal structure is interlaced fingers, which beat like a heart for the blood stream system.)
ÿ
Perfection Is Easy
www.msu.edu/~junedan
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