glimpse of the eye on the other side

she was not sure how did she get there… just in one moment she realized that she was standing in the exact middle point of the circle. she could feel presence of people rotating around her but she could not see them. she was naked…

it would have been easier if she had not had the Knowledge of what is going to happen here. but she knew – since very few moments only – but she knew. it was a trial.

her nudity normally would embarrass her as she could feel all eyes focused at her but it did not, this time it was so obviously Natural that no other way was possible. not only eyes but also thoughts were piercing her. she could hear them…

she did not feel Fear as she probably should. there was no time and place for it.

middle point of the circle. she felt like Fire, Light, Power, pure Energy started to cumulate in the spot she was standing in. it was primordial and clean in its Might. it was accumulating fast – filling her in with every second. Pain. she felt it will blow her from the inside…

that was exactly what others were waiting for. result. but they would not set her to this test if there was not a slight chance of… indeed of what?

she closed the eyes not to feel these gazes on her skin. they were distracting her as they were transmitting hidden expectations… so the point of focus was wrong. the moment she left the lids down she realized that. by listening to outside world she would not focus at internal requests. Fire burning inside was asking for… she knew for what. she pressed feet tightly to the floor – rooting herself in the Earth. Energy started to flow faster. hands raised over her head, hair follicles opened. Light started to stream out of every possible estuary in her body spreading the radiance all around the Circle of sacredly scared figures…

she was The Middle. Nude and Bright. she knew that they were on their knees…

nudity

nudity… when body emanates with its internal power, primordial and irrepressible, shedding everyone and everything around to their knees… expansive to the borders of potent Pain, intruding the farthest corners of Self with its Might… filtrating and filling in the Space with its natural Beauty…

nudity… when body is torn out from any material coverage, that would enable it to conceal underneath it… when you try to hide, runaway and curl up inside of yourself, so nothing and nobody could reach you there and hurt… full of a fearful Pain that is preventing you from the smallest movement… hoping nothing from external world would get you here… the Space is filled with behavioral power of Fright…

nudity and nudity… and between them only a thin border… of the skin

retrospection 3

4 February 2007

dialogues for two hands and two legs – that is: a dialogue with myself

Sometimes human being needs to stop and spend some time with itself. It may also just happen when Nature decides to stop you on the spot by a power of its Beauty. Beauty that emanates with strength, eternal power, forcing you to be humble and to feel exactly where is your place in the world, what is a sense of life, way ahead and its goal.

Changing of environment, moving out faraway from your everyday routine is fostering this kind of pause. Trip is an interruption of daily routine carousel.

Now I understood more clearly words found in the Chinese fortune cooky: “You are not going abroad to see new things, you go to see old ones in the new light”.

Being on the trip in a train somewhere between Brussels and Rotterdam, stream of my self-conscience got stopped on the station called “deliberations over a sense of life and the wisdom”. Fatality of transience… transience of every drop of the running water of our lives.

In front of my closed eyes, there was standing 24-years old girl – naive in her youth but with a huge luggage of knowledge enucleated by means of letters taken out from books. Idealism was streaming in every single drop of blood running in her vanes… filling her with eagerness to come into possession of Wisdom, that would help her in understanding the world surrounding her. That time she wanted to achieve great things, save the world and help all human kind. I looked at her with a small smile on my face…

Wisdom, that I wanted so much came to me – for a start like a small sip of wine (like the one you get in restaurants just to check if the bottle suits your expectations – and when you still can change your mind). It stroke me with its intensity, forcing to open the eyes really widely, got me torn out from naivety and set into new reality – naked and defenseless on the whistling wind – It was asking if it is really what I desired? Pain, Fear, Loneliness were blowing inside of my empty body, the same as did a storm outside. Defense reaction tried to call inside of my mind thoughts of warmth, sweetness and of easily foreseen everyday routine. Standing still at the edge of those two worlds one eye was focusing on the idyllic reality, while the second was set already underneath of it, being able to perceive all shades of grayness and being shaped by infinite number of dimensions. This space was attributed with multiplicity of aspects, subjective truths and reasons – that were changing with every movement (as then subjective “middle point” of perception also was changing). This world was so unreal and at the same time frightfully true. Part of me – sweet and small girl wanted to run away and hide somewhere far from this wilderness but as a unity I already knew that there is no other choice for me, even if it meant to be condemned for solitude.

At the same moment when the choice was made, both realities blended into one. However, inside of my head, edges stayed very sharp like if the second eye was still focused on the inside world. Feeling of warmth came back, stormy wind ceased to whip my naked body, I’ve felt the lightness of orange dress on the skin and in the back – weight of something… I couldn’t believe it, it was so long time ago that it felt like in the previous life. I was sure I lost it irrevocably… I turned around carefully at the same time being filled with calm certitude… I’ve tried – they listened without any delay to the command of my will. There they were – spread in their entirety, beautiful in the might of opalescent whiteness. I felt that with a breeze on my cheek also hair tighten till now in the knot on the top of my head just got loose and felt down brightly on my back. Wind started to dance with them filling with joy and feeling of Freedom.

I understood that desire of Wisdom doesn’t have to mean necessity to annihilate a small girl inside of me. Words that were hanging on my childhood room’s wall flashed in my head again: “Take kindly the counsel of the years” and “you can’t get twice into the same water”.

I knew I would continue my search for Wisdom, reveling with every sip of it – and if I ever stop in this eagerness – I hope to find those words to remember what I decided to crave and pursue at that moment of life.

part 2 of the triptych

when I was translating into English posted yesterday  story one thought just stopped me in between of my work and I knew what I was looking for. pages I’d received few days earlier… Going for rationality of mind – is a scientific way of trying to understand the world… believing in destiny (even if denied by the logical part) is one that follows the rules of esoteric perception and intuition (gnosis)… but it is said in the received pages – it doesn’t matter in the end – as God is behind of both ways of reception and studies of the world… is it really so? if yes, I would have to go back to the conclusion from two years before – maybe there is some Power behind that is trying us, playing or just observing?

Unified are we both in life and death? every second some cells of my body are dying, every second some new are called to existence… by the fact that we are born (or even earlier – nine months earlier – when we are created…) – this moment has inscribed in itself the necessity, indispensability of death… question is – if loops of time are having implications also here? does it mean that moment of death is implying passing to another life?

can we come back to the story from two years ago, where it was said that maybe sleeping is some kind of preparation for death… going into the other side, crossing to some other world? “dream is a smaller brother of death”… well… I was always fascinated with magical realism from Ibero-American prose – Marquez and short stories by Cortazar… one where motorcyclist had an accident and in the hospital he was once waking up in his bed sick, once in Mayas’ village…. waking up and dreaming… which side is real? Like this story of an Chinese old philosopher that was having a dream that he was a butterfly dreaming of being a men…

youth and old… that is a tough one, but the most cherished by me. Being young I was dreaming to grow up finally to be allowed to have responsibility for myself and independence… then growing older I was inevitably trying to reverse this process. I try to hide and protect deeply inside of me the part that is still a kid, letting it go every time it wishes to do so…

…without spontaneous and idealistic thinking we are becoming cynical and old.

…on the other hand it is truth that we are more vulnerable as kids are just innocent and believing/trusting in others and the world, but only a kid can see the things clearly like they are – grown-ups are restreining their minds in the rigid frames of thinking according to the rules accepted by “all” to be followed in given society. kids… don’t have that – as they are still learning and exploring – they don’t question reality, just accept it… they are not easily shocked as they are surprised and astonished all the time (for them it is normal to be fascinated by the surrounding world)… on the other hand they don’t stop asking questions in terms to satisfy the hunger of knowledge inside of them… I will never ever accept getting old… without protecting and cherishing the child inside of me, the world will loose colors, smells, taste, intensity, beauty and vibrant liveness of being… and I think that it is a value that I appreciate a lot also in others – if you just can still let go without thinking all the time what would “others said or think”…

…it is easy to see if the other person have this side or just manage to kill it – just in terms to be responsible and respected member of the society…

I am not saying it is not important to be responsible and having respect of the “others” – it is extremely important as well… but life in  the “unity” for me it is a struggle for reaching the perfection – and for me it is heading to achieve the balance between old and young inside of us.

…because the former things having changed are now the latter, and when those latter things change, they become the former…

loops of time – not sure how to put this one in simple and clear words… as for me it is so obvious that I can’t describe it. Hegel spiral of time – history searching for perfection and due to the fight of the contradicting forces it is always in imbalance trying to get to “the middle” point… by those trials it is making circles, rotating… as through intuition it is trying to fix mistakes and repeatedly follow good experiences from the past – as at one point it gets back on the crossroads  but wiser due to new transitions it went through… so we are in the same point but a bit higher up.

There is also interesting quotation of Hegel that I found to be a nice reference to the  quotation of Heraclitus: “the essence of reality and truth is in contradiction(s). It is equal to the concept of changes, process of becoming oneself and building eternal memory of infinity. Reality and truth are created (or maybe just discovered) by stating, neglecting, analyzing and synthesizing” – it is on the move all the time, like a rushing water, in search of eternity, infinity, balance. perfection… Reality and truth is the unceasing process of making synthesis of infinite contradictions…

retrospective 1

20 February 2007

I will start unconventionally…

the only one thing that can fight with rationality of my brain is a strong belief in destiny. it is deeply and irrationally rooted in my Self – it went the evolution with me while I was growing up. Small girl continuously keeping on believing that somewhere out there, the “knight on the white horse” is waiting for her – her second half of the orange… Student fighting with the weapon of cold logic with these fairy-tales for good kids (and frankly speaking also for elderly naughty ladies that are disappointed with reality of everyday life of the house-wife…). Today, only exists a shadow of these old-times stories but it does (as shadow should) follow me all the time. Even thought, trying to disperse it I am switching on a light of reasoning and wisdom,  the belief in destiny is deeply there inside of my soul like a splinter. How to get rid of it if all events are just perfectly fitting into one logical whole? This belief is not anymore pink, it become more dark, like a cloud before the storm. It is based on the conviction that we are only a part of the bigger plan, that there is Somebody or Something – some Power(s) staying outside of the scope of our sight – they play with us like with pawns on the chessboard that is being our life. They put new obstacles, pleasantries, blocks…. and they observe choices we are going to make, ways we overcome barriers and manage to avoid the traps…

Sometimes I have this feeling that it is me, the Master of my life – that it is me who makes choices, decides which way I want to go… till a moment – when some coincidence is falling down on my head – it opens my eyes, screening on the internal side of my eye-lids situations from the past (looking totally unimportant from the first look and not related to anything else) that in one second start to lay themselves in order cause-effect domino… nothing happens in life only by blind chance… – and how now not to believe in destiny… even in a residual and lame form?

that is a story of one of those coincidences that hit me by surprise in the back of my head forcing once again to admit that I am small and that I was defeated again in the fight of the mind with irrationality…

I have to start in some point of that story but it is not going to be easy as one event is related and connected to another creating time loops – which leads me to suspicion that it is probably not the end…

I finished yesterday reading Milan Kundera “Identity”. Not, that it was my intended choice. Going to the bookstore I was looking more for “Unbearable weightless of life” or newly translated into Polish “Le rideau, Essai en sept parties”. Well, the ones mentioned above were not in stock, there was only “Identity” by Kundera at that moment. Something shivering tickled me while I was opening the book on the first page… that maybe the title is going to have some prophecy in it, that I will find myself from the begining or discover some terra incognita of my nature?

“you are not going abroad to see new things, you are going there to see former ones in a new way” – these were words I had found before going to that trip in the Chinese fortune cooky. They came back to my mind while reading pages of “Identity”.

In about middle of the book I found a part on dream and death… I left a bookmark there with an intention to come back to this point with a deeper reflection later.

That is only half of the truth as that moment in my memory a picture of the Museum in Rotterdam appeared (I was there two weeks earlier). It was a scenery of one of the rooms there… actually it was a kind of artistic installation  – a room where you could enter and close the door after you… a bed in the middle, covered with a soft woolen blanket, two pillows – everything kept in a creamy-white toned colors. a sign: “please make yourself comfortable – if you feel tired this room is for your disposal”. After lying down relaxed, over my head there was a view: some not specifically shaped mosaic of bones – not defined skeleton that did not induce fear but was suggestive enough to bring on my mind thoughts of transience… “dream is a younger brother of death”… I’ve read a title of this inspiring artistic installation while leaving finally the room…

life is like a tree… standing at its roots and looking up we can see range of possibilities ahead of us, but by choosing one of the branches we cut ourselves from other options… but is it really so?

in the end on our way there happen to be also turns of 90 or 180 degrees…

dream is a younger brother of death… – but why don’t I ever remember any of them? is daydream also a dream? on which side of the day – the dream we really are living? can we make a mistake in our estimation what is a reality and what is only an oneiric illusion? is death an unnoticed for us passing to the other side of the dream?… continuity of the nightmare or of the pleasant dream – can it be indeed what we call hell or paradise?

Dream – my bookmarked part…  by chance I guessed the end/concept of the story (at that moment still subconsciously). Probably that was why I felt stronger a hit in the back of my head of irrationality and coincidence, again by surprise – while reading the last words of “Identity”.

…loops of time… I have a feeling it is yet not the end of this story..

 

Heraclitus

Fragment 88

As a single, unified thing there exists in us both life and death, waking and sleeping, youth and old age, because the former things having changed are now the latter, and when those latter things change, they become the former.