The art of sleep

The mind in its weird way of functioning demands that things are done in its own rhythm and way. The focus for work needs to be cradled out of the perfect alignment of sleep, rest, caffeine and sugar.

Sleeping is no different and the elements that have to align are not dissimilar, tiredness, mental rest, food and drink all contribute to the right process but if the mind refuses to sleep the stars can be aligned that you will not.

Helping in those matters an old hobby of mine came to the rescue. The sounds of what surrounds me are elements of solace are the elements that earth me. Some are of trips others are homely all of them formed part of my life daily or otherwise in the months since my last post.

Enjoy, and sweet dreams.

You can find them all here.

9 Stances of 1ism

The Last few months have offered a special time to look back and observe life.

Observe it in its most peculiar way and from a very close distance. When  that happens little time is left to think or ponder about what is going on. When that happens the aftermath is usually a rich experience in which a lot of things come together fuse and unify. Those moments can take several shapes and usually they have come in the shape of texts, but this time I wanted to do something different.

I made the 9 stances of 1ism, and old crazy project that has been around for a while. You can listen to it here.

Back to an old turf

As of late, owing to certain twists and turns in my existence, I have found myself  in anther city having a completely different routine.
It all started with the Telepathic sessions but since all is still ongoing I found myself with the opportunity to go back to an old passion of mine, radio. So I made a small 10 minute segment which aired in the show of a friend of mine over at mycy a Cypriot radio station. The show is in Greek except for my segment which starts around minute 41. You can listen to it here.
 And here goes a gratuitous pick of the city I am in. Just for those who wonder where on earth I could be.

 

Transmission 3

  Homo sacer, Lamella, or pure life, devoid of any rights. Those are words and concepts I would much later learn, but right now in my void emptiness something had changed. There was something, and that something felt very unique.
  In fact I was feeling myself. I was feeling that there was a dividing boundary, that there was a craving to fill my insides with whatever it was that was in the outside. And that further I could not keep it in, still and quiet, I needed to empty it. One transition giving way to the next, one only being fulfilled by the other, and the other only being possible because of the one.

There was no consciousness of any state, just the transitions. My insides did not feel full or empty, they just needed to be filled or emptied. No awareness of the end result, only of the transition. Only of the action, not of the purpose of it. I did not inhale to fill my insides, I inhaled because I had to. I did not exhale to empty my insides, I exhaled because I had to.

I was being driven, my will, whatever that may be, was of no importance to any of this. I could not stop breathing, I could not stop crying, I could not change the way I did nay of this. I was trapped in something, that though I had no control over was telling me what it was doing. And I could not stop that information from arriving. Who, what or how could I ask for it to stop. There was nothing but me, and I just was.

Transmission 2

The plate was packed to the rim, steaming hot sitting on top of the table in the small cold room. The day outside was bright, but windy and cold.  So cold the humid locked house felt just slightly warmer than the outside.  He sat at the chair in front of the plate, and shoveled steaming spoonfuls of chicken rice and fried fish in absolute frenzy. The steam from his breath mixing briefly with the steam coming from the spoonful that he was shoveling in.

He did not flinch at the temperature of the food, as if his mouth, like him, was devoid of any feeling. Shoveling food in as if filling the whole inside. There was no purpose to the eating, he just ate. No attention was paid to the dog that was standing on its hind legs waiting for scraps to fall. The chewing was tough and restless, not hurried nor purposeful.   As if in every spoonful from the heaped plate his life depended on.  

Bread was then grabbed by the mouthful, barely leaving time for the spoonful of rice to be swallowed. Chewing was being alive, and it could not stop. Any stoppage in that activity was the end of the world, so the split second there was some room in the mouth it was filled with another heaped spoonful, or another mouthful of bread.  More steam coming out of the plate  mixing with the exhalation, mixing the inside and the outside as a single continuous.

  Eating as if the void was never filled.

  Eating as tomorrow may never come.

  Eating as his life depended on it.

  After the plate was emptied, he reached for an apple. Snapped the twig from its top and bit into it with a thunderous crunch. There again mastication was a costly process that could not be interrupted, chewing non stop in the same cadence as if the apple had committed the most horrible sin of existence and needed to be redeemed.

  As if death by mastication was the only penalty for the mere crime of existence.

  As if he was the only judge, juror and executioner in the world.

  All living and formerly living matter left for his perusal and enjoyment.

  Life for the sake of life, for the sake of his own existence, all was there to be devoured.

  All was there to satisfy his only craving, the filling of his inner void.

Transmission 1

My eyes opened, I opened my mouth and felt a very unique sensation.
I became aware of a hole in the middle of my face, there was nothing underneath and between my eyes,  the outside and the inside where connected somehow.
Even those ideas were unclear to me, what was inside, what was outside.
The inside was itching, I became aware that the inside was there, because of how it reacted to the outside that had gotten in.
Then I made a noise louder than anything else.
I was aware, somehow, that I made the noise but I had no control over it.
I had to expel the outside, and that, I somehow knew how to do it.

Then an ocker smell filled my insides.
My insides now filled with that ocker smell where itching even more.
I carried on crying only interrupting my cry to gasp at the outside and try and grab as much of it as possible to fill my inside.
As if my insides where empty and all that I could do was try to fill that void.
As if it was necessary, somehow for my insides to be filled, regardless that they itched.
Regardless that the itch was unbearable and I had to eject the outside that had gotten in.

I gasped again,  as my eyes closed, filled my lungs again, the inside was constrained, then I cried again loud as to release my inside from the itch.

As I was gasping for air another sensation appeared, it sat outside me, it was a repetitive unorganised noise, many years later I would recognise it as a thunderous noise, as a noise close to a thing called rain.
Yet through my eyes I only saw bright light. Nothing more that a bright light.
The sound was omnipresent I could only hear it during my gasps, my crying drowning it entirely.

I cried and gasped from what seemed like an eternity, in fact for a whole lifetime.
For the whole of my lifetime so far.

Then I could not hear a thing, I was back where I came from.
What had that all been?

I re-lived the sensations, now with more calm.
As if They where not in the boundary, as if the outside and the inside where just abstract notions.
As if all was a drill, as if all was being told to me without a language, but I was not experiencing it.
 
Then all became dark and uneventful.
This unbounded continuity was what I was accustomed to, How things had always been.
I had no idea of even what I was, let alone consider the who that I would become later on.
This infinity, was my home, this void was what I was.
No boundary, no sensation, nothing but an awareness of existence.

That was perhaps the weirdest of all, where was that awareness coming from.
What had that ocker smell been?
What was it all about?
What was it in the first place?

How had all of this appeared in the void?

Ode to the geek

The true power of the geek is that of being capable of taking ownership of its environment and circumstances, and not be afraid to introduce the changes that may be necessary. This ownership is not exercised in a tyrannical myopic and destructive way, but rather in a comprehensive way. In a way in which the scratch complements the itch, and fulfils it, but does not leave a rash behind. This is due to a profound understanding of the space in which the itch is present. The myopic decision-making that generally contributes to the destruction out of an over simplification or of a fiduciary drive disregards the itch in order to consider it as an opportunity. This difference from itch to opportunity is what has driven a lot of the big business but it fails to take place in a world in which to be in touch with reality, the reality that incommensurable values bring, is a lot more valuable. It is then to look at the world as a space in which we live, as a place which supplies and environment for our existence, as a vessel that contains us, that feeds us and clothes us, not as a mine from which we extract all that we want without returning its due. As a place from where we can watch the stars, and not count them to impose on them a virtual ownership. As a big roller-coaster ride that provides us with our joys and our sadness and all the experiences that we live. A place in which love comes out of understanding and experience. Out of opening the mind to imagination and itching the way through life fixing one problem at a time. With each problem and each solution, finding a new understanding, a new element that makes us proud of who we are in the space that we have transformed, out of a selfless act of creation. The geek gives more than takes, for the geek understands its environment. It is an intellectual in a modern age in which the language and knowledge are technological, but not devoid of a human component.