The odds are against us, I think to myself, bowing before the wall and grabbing the mala beads to throw back over my neck again. Whole histories of people and language all caught in a long slithering web of information, Indra’s net - everything reflecting off of everything else on and on again it seems, Pick a street, anyone will do, and picture yourself stumbling down it, the warm glow of too many drinks swirling around, as a kaleidoscope of thoughts pools into the soft base of the mind. The feeling of having absolutely nothing and being damn grateful for it. And, the incessant search for that afterward, when the chemical clashes with what little bit of reality is left, and suddenly there's a whole new expanse of shit to deal with. How many people does it happen to? How far back does it go? Karma? Or just a long string of predictable results with a history that is full of the kinds of weird stories you only half believe half of the time.
What comes after that? A good meal this evening, mixing meat and eggs, salt, pepper, garlic, and onions. Music playing somewhere in the background while the burner clicks on.
The odds are against us. I was thinking about Alan Watts saying we are god playing hide and seek with ourselves, how maybe this is true, and maybe after a while even god gets tired of destruction or looking for a soft exit. It’s hard to explain when you look around at the world, all the suffering, and all the joy. A stupid contradiction, a beautiful one too. We spend our time making dark jokes, laughing at the absurdity of it all, and here from the sticky comfort of a false empire. But places come and go, the objects and fantasies of capital, histories, and bad stories. What’s left? The experience that rises and falls day to day, the potential we all seek in some way or another of something quietly transcendent, the conversations and light, a bit of dance, something simple and good to eat.
A bit of time. All of us are fighting against the makers of clocks and their incessant need to categorize everything - productivity measured by exchange and stolen labor, that alienation, the very same.
It’s hard not to romanticize it, after all, romance is exciting, beautiful, and passionate. Immediate. The clash of idealism mixed with the spit and bone that is being human. All life is suffering, but the next line is suffering comes from desire. So? We let go gently maybe, or we find desire as something playful again, it’s not something to be rid of. I have an appetite and that’s only human, the push is only to recognize it for what it is, a bit of play, some dance or music. Improvise.
You pull out a dollar bill, and insert it gently, as a rush of cars flies by, and the quiet hum of air conditioners flows across the tops of the city, you read and watch things carefully. The whole play is just another piece of things. You pull a lever, and some wheels spin: out of luck. Nothing comes out of it, this isn’t a parable. You get up and squint at the hot sun, there’s a few days off coming up, that great time when you can pretend as if all the obligations that are forced on us disappear, there’s nothing to do except wander around, look for interesting things to jot down in a notebook.
You sit outside, light a candle, and a third cigarette. The one tucked behind your ear that you were saving for later on. It’s unusually quiet outside right now, and cool enough to feel like the whole city has just let out a sigh. You plan things in your head, call them desires, make them ones that have no cash value, and then reject those too.
You think about how to compose this, you give up on any notion of doing that either. Lay back in the chair and stare up looking for the one star that hasn't been drowned out by the city lights, and you focus on it until the whole thing grows and covers the whole field of vision. You smile, none of that matters, this doesn’t either. All the shadows from the lights pull over the wood, dancing into little shapes, running down the sides like musical notes. A plane flies overhead, there’s nowhere else to be. This is it.