I'm swimming in the lake -
miles from one and all,
feeling peace and calm - when
the monster comes to call.
What could drag me under?
I'll never, ever know.
Some will always wonder
what caused the undertow.
The lake is surface calm,
and should be at its depths,
but in its muck lie bones
of those pulled under breath.
Some will swim tomorrow,
and in the days to come.
Most will come and go,
and just feel blissful numb.
bars at your back,
and their stripes
permanently etched
into one's field of vision.
so much so,
that you feel they're
a ubiquitous feature
of the world beyond.
the cage should be a hated place,
but one can grow to love the cage.
the cage is shelter.
the cage is delivery address
for food & water disbursements.
the cage forms rollbars --
like on a dune buggy --
protection in the event
of a sudden & unexpected crash.
the cage offers one a range --
narrow as it might be --
of distances at which one's captor
may be kept,
and, as long as the cage is shut,
that gives one a delightful
illusion of control.
what a hated place a cage should be,
and yet how conflicted are the captives?
boulders in a pond become the stone monolith islands in a sea.
Do you know how deep the darkness goes? No. Chiaroscuro black conceals all but what's divulged by echoes, and figments spastic minds reveal.
Not by hearing or listening,
but by feeling the rhythm,
body / mind resonating to it,
being effortlessly attuned to it:
That is how the music transports one --
how it changes one's mind.
There was a psychiatrist named Jung who thought the Unconscious was far-flung -- like Sandman's "The Dreaming" that you've seen on streaming: farfetched and fictional -- with heroes, unsung.
There once was a psychiatrist named Freud who thought all were obsessed with filling a void... a void in the pants! Though some looked askance, and those whose cigars weren't cigars were annoyed.
the sharp caw of a crow triggers a monk's enlightenment. a second crow responds. a sailor doesn't look up.
Describe something you learned in high school.
A Psych teacher told us a story of what he called “a gestalt of expectations.” A man from a city in the East is driving out West, and he passes a gas station – despite being low on fuel. (He’s used to gas stations being everywhere.) Anyhow, he runs out of fuel. He can’t see anything around except desolate desert bisected by a line of asphalt. He decides to walk back to the gas station he passed ten miles back. There is no one traveling on this remote stretch of desert road. As he’s walking in the intense heat, it comes to his mind that the employee at the service station is really going to gouge him on the price of gas and a jerry can. As he walks and walks, skin prickling with the heat, he keeps thinking about how he’s going to get screwed by the gas station attendant and also how he’ll be chided and ridiculed for running out of gas in the middle of the desert. He imagines it in great detail. Finally, bedraggled and with heaving breaths, he arrives at the station. The gas station attendant rushes out to help this poor man, and the man punches the attendant square in the nose (for all the offenses taking place solely in the man’s mind.)
In a broader formulation, I think this is the most important lesson any human can learn. Our personal perception of what we experience is not equal to what it is that we experience (the exterior world.) This is why some people dealt a crappy hand can turn it into a wonderful life, and also why some people who seem to have it all commit suicide in the prime of life.
I could be angered or dismayed that the single most important lesson I learned in secondary school was via off-curriculum ramblings during an elective class, but I choose not to. Instead, I’ve been trying all my life to make that bit of knowledge into wisdom.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 