Sliced backward over life’s cliffs. She has arrived at her destination of wanting absolutely nothing. Water in the clouds, and facelessness. Nothing is as it seems or is as it once seemed. Time comes in grasping, trying to hold on to that which is unstoppable. The past present and future merge and laugh at each other side by side. Life’s punctuation ridicules itself. Builders are at it again, and paid good money for knocking down and putting up again, making interiors fancy and pebble-dashing the outside, leaving it spiky, like the back of a porcupine.
A lady sits on the staircase and cries a thousand tears into an ironed handkerchief. It belonged to her beloved. He was killed in the war of his own delusion.

Pinkness is painted everywhere, but it’s not always like this say the whispers from another universe. You may like the luxury of wombs, but they will throw you out the moment you aren’t looking. The Mother holds her child to her breast. They rest in peace, there is nothing else, just the happiness of a transaction based on the life-support that is milk. The child grows indebted till the end of time, when she in turn feeds children as they turn up one by one neglected and with malnutrition. Together they are dead to this earth.

A girl sits at the table, it is the last super (supper :)), everything is available and the invitation to eat is strong and full of temptation. She has never felt this welcome. This is her very first meal. It is her Holy Communion, taken along with the vows of brothers who are keeping themselves to themselves and recommending that everybody else do the same. It’s simple and good advice, and near impossible to execute. They sleep separated by columns of stone, dug from the earth and impregnated with the sweat of slaves. She hears their screams as she traces her fingers across a patch of rough damp stone. Twisted fates spiralling across a platinum moonscape, they are speechless, with absolutely nothing left to say. Mutated and shaken, they dance across a fertile landscape dropping seed and planting busily in time for winter’s fright. She runs home and chops up old furniture in order to keep the fire ablaze, and he brings home quietude. And they are richer than Kings & Queens as the world disintegrates around them.

15th August Sri Aurobindo's Birthday XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The Mother

I watched my good buddies 'The Krishna's' perform this classico old story on Sunday afternoon, after disco dancing with them in a drum & cymbol frenzy, before eating their kind offering of holy prasad:

Check it out. And dig that diagram!

The Boatman

A Sufi Story from the Middle East

A scholar asked a boatman to row him across the river. The journey was long and slow. The scholar was bored. "Boatman," he called out, "Let's have a conversation." Suggesting a topic of special interest to himself, he asked, "Have you ever studied phonetics or grammar?"

"No," said the boatman, "I've no use for those tools."

"Too bad," said the scholar, "You've wasted half your life. It's useful to know the rules."

Later, as the rickety boat crashed into a rock in the middle of the river, the boatman turned to the scholar and said, "Pardon my humble mind that to you must seem dim, but, wise man, tell me, have you ever learned to swim?"

"No," said the scholar, "I've never learned. I've immersed myself in thinking."

"In that case," said the boatman, "you've wasted all your life. Alas, the boat is sinking."

Part of the story for you.

It is a simple day, not much going on outside, not much going on inside. Plain dissatisfaction has become a reliable friend, and its orientation a rope from which we springboard into the stars.

 A teacher cries into a glass and wipes her brow and invites a growing demise, the end of delusion, the days of fishing for illumination are over. It was never anywhere else. Everything has been placed carefully into the giant trash can. Thoughts, hopes, desires, possessions, clothing, the lot, naked, she is determined to have nothing on her plate but that which is real and the real comes and goes every night, they are lovers and travellers, whose eyes have met after a lifetimes separation.

 She enters the tomb, but she is awake, and the body is vital and not dead. Thrice colonized, first by man, then by flesh, then by the emptiness of walls and plaster. An empty mirror at the edge of town, the periphery of existence. Perfectly still, while swimming at the speed of light. This bird is small and brown feathered, gathering seeds and planting a love that surges forth from a raging sea, battering all that comes in its way. Sinking lost ships, at the dead of night.

Under the tree there is great theatre to be had, she sits with her beloved, arm in arm, they watch it unfold, love first, then tragedy, then warmth and acceptance. A different fragrance blows in the wind. Frangipanis littering the floor on a humid afternoon. Winter is over, yet it is only just begun.