Did I choose these thoughts?
embarrassing!😳 3 bits from a notebook
Between you and me, between the space, shape, and time of the digital mailbox, this delivery mechanism is our contract, our mutual yes? Would I write more if I studied less?
7/20/23
“A hundred?” Rollins grits his teeth.
Did he whisper? Images branching as the axons branch, compounded in three hundred — three? thousand branches…
Or, “A thousand,” Rhoades complains. The chess board torques again, new dimension to the game. Lofty, tapping her sharp heel, ash drifting sideways toward the floor from the stem that touches her lips, then touches them again.
Whose story is this anyway? Lofty, mulling possibilities in her head. Smoke floats, the black and white checkerboard pattern of the vinyl floor, an echo of the slam of the bathroom door. Beyond that door, a pink tub, rosy foam effulgent at its rim, interrupted by an elbow, from which sprouts a man’s thick forearm, damp black hairs glistening in the steam, that bit of foamy bubble in the dark hairs on his thick chest, the bathwater cooling to lukewarm, a crystal ashtray, square-shaped, on the other arm of the tub, thick cigar smoldering there, red flower glowering within the fat circle of silvery ash, thick thumb and forefinger closing around the cool brown middle, skimming the damp end, lifting blunt cigar to the thick lips and square teeth — A thousand,
Dusty growls, then bites onto the cigar. A curl of white light comes into the room, headlights. Dusty stands up quick, thin waterfalls sliding down thick limbs. Rhoades throws him a towel, caught in a thick fist.
2/12/24
(This week’s Rorschach, coffee stain with blue ballpoint pen. I do this when I can’t make any other kind of mark, when the channel from the mind to the pen is just too vapid, I spill tea (literally), coffee, anything to make a mark, then trace it.
Later I’ll write around it, lists, reminders, empty froth of the everyday, most likely.)
Mind care is life care*
1/9/24
Intense and strange meditation. I began to feel — I’m not sure. Outside of will my face twisting into uncomfortable contortion, I started to cry. This after a physical jolt and a yelp — a sound I frequently make when meditating. I continued to cry, eyes closed, face squished into this screwed-up position, hearing the same question over and over, What did I do? The tears flowed — & visions I don’t now remember. My face felt as the face I wore as a child, bitterly, confusedly crying — what did I do, what did I do? I felt guilty — but for what? I went deeper into the meditation, I asked for the answer, I asked to see Maharishi, I asked to see God. (Did I choose these thoughts?) Some colors, some intensity (but what do I mean by that?) — at moments I thought maybe I should come out, but I wanted (DESIRE) to continue as long as I could. I went deeper. I felt sensation at the crown of my head, I felt a presence of something — I continued to shed tears — concentrating intensely. I let it continue until I became afraid — of death — of going too far / going beyond. I still feel some remnants of this intensity (but what do I MEAN by that), I feel heat in my belly. Some kind of transformation digging deep? Was this life? Am I guilty of something? Can I guide?
*Vaidya. Jayarajan Kodikannath
housekeeping
++In fact I must study more, the board exam is coming. Tuesdays (weekly, biweekly, thrice or once monthly), is where I’ll aim to meet you here.
++If it’s too much, you’ll let me know. If it’s not enough…you’ll let me know
Yours, friend,
Suzanne
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