No Drug Required

February 10, 2009

It is wonderful to sit out the sleepless night, which the fire of anger has lit! Like watching the full moon rise over a lake, or sun ignite the ocean: a little light comes, then more and more, until a new whole landscape is revealed, in spite of yourself.

In the case of rolling and turning in your covers, your sheets tying you in a knot, or if not your sheets, your thoughts: when you have practiced the art of watching, and watching becomes a habit as opposed to effort… then the mind’s parade, illuminated, entertains, exasperates, troubles, triumphs. A blaring, dancing dream of possibility and otherworldliness, each idea capers in, accompanied with sense, each sense cradled in a rivulet of heat, at its heart an explosive charge: as one draws near its features clarify and colors smear, its sweat and power reek and roil, its face approaches, flares, then rears and turns away; another steers into your line of wonder, blunders into this and that, falls flat, lifts itself and shivers dust motes from its hat, winks, and thunders past; the smallest steps so softly it’s a whisper in the din, imagines invisibility and it within, its sound is thin, as if to hold it would draw finger into thumb, then what have you, what have you; a great volume of water crashes to the ground!; a paper figure passes, flicks your finger, catches tinder, touches flame to each encounter, makes a word a cinder, becomes a sheet of little substance, if it holds you leaves you empty, more crashes, this time ashes; then the brass; then drums; then drumming heels; then humming ears; echoes like ghostly fears; empty tears; farewells; stories left to tell; quelling; quiet; quit.

If you watch as that terrifying, baroque coterie rages by – if you can keep your Eyes open, behind your eyes – then each passing thought is truly an object you can stop, and pick up like a stone, and put down like a stone; or plucked, delightful like a flower, and held to the heart like its sweet scent. Each emotion rides in on its wild horse, with its mane flaming and nostrils flared, and that untrammeled madness may be tamed, or it may trample, or may be left to run away.

An archaeologist is careful with his or her finds. You should be, too. More precious than the gold of a Pharoah’s forgotten crown, is the lightest scent of understanding from your own fragrant life!

Here you lift a judgment, heavy as a decaying beast, while the stench of it fills your nostrils and makes your throat tighten and stomach lurch in harsh reflex. Still it’s all yours. You have carried this carcass before. There is truth in it, but also the sickening smell of death. If you are practiced, and balanced, you know it is and isn’t you, and can release it. Just set it down beside your road: you are traveling elsewhere. If you’re less practiced, and you see it as some truth instead of some disguise, you must carry it until you open other Eyes, and it releases you.

Another entrant in the parade: razor-sharp, angular, a glint of steel. Another follows, then: organic, but distasteful. Still another is a silken siren, raising a glass of poison to your lips: do you drink? You can feel a sympathetic bile rise within you, as though a kindred fire, in some unhealthy dance of deaths.

You say to this one: so much projection, so little truth! You say to the other: too much rejection, so little truth! Each movement of the mind’s attempt to tally and to understand is proper, and is prosperous, and is an option for your thoughts and heart to find a little needed rest. But stopping here might bring distress, might be a desert, when a little further on, oasis, copse or jungle is far more fruited.

With practice, you perceive, and you discard. With familiarity, you find a friend and foe. Why not wait and welcome the wild unknown? If sleep gives you the slip, what better trip, your half-lidded wonder at the wilderness within?