jedicist.org Blog

I’m in Tucson, Arizona now, visiting my friend and working on some writing projects.  I’m writing from a waiting room to a surgery ward in a hospital, because that’s where we get wi-fi close to his apartment; he sits here nighttimes, watching anxious families waiting news of their loved one’s families, surfing the internet for jobs: welcome to America.

I’m trying to come up with something interesting to say about the immigration law which was partially halted by a judge yesterday; it was scheduled to go into effect today.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that it’s more of a national issue than a local issue here; people aren’t really talking about it, as far as my buddy reports and as far as I can tell so far–I’m sure that the hispanic community is scared, but there hasn’t been a lot of local media on it.  I’m not sure why that is, yet…check back.

I’m more focused, though, on the psycho-medical-rehabilitation system of Tucson, Arizona.  Nothing to say bout that.

I’m back in Brooklyn on August 10, if anyone’s curious.

It is a massive Self that is responsible for these myriad injustices, tyrannies, exploitations which plague us all, which prevent us from pursuing a life of intellectual, moral, or spiritual purity without implicit and inescapable hypocracy–we are (I am) ultimately responsible, we are (I am) ultimately powerless.  I speak of an inclusive Self comprised of all of us who live silently or loudly within an organization of bodies complicit in its own oppressions.  This is the ego of all our egos.  It is very different from the ultimate Oversoul/Brahmin which binds us to All and then to One through our divine spirits: that Thing which is free from karma.  No, this Self is the amalgamation of all our karmas, and thereby binds itself to that Brahmin by binding all of us to materiality via injustice and despair, preventing us from even imagining a collective enlightenment.   This is the shared Self of the Polity, the self-loathing ego of humanity, at once a national, corporate, and global being comprised of all us Masters and all us Slaves.  The cruelty is that we are ultimately powerless over this Self (what can I do against all this ocean of injustice and dispair) and yet ultimately and inescapably responsible for it, for it is ourselves, not Other; its crimes are our crimes.

To be able to speak concretely, let me reference one pathology of this Self among many many that I could choose, brought to mind by this article on Rampant Racism in the Criminal Justice System on Counterpunch today.  This is nothing new, but must be constantly revisited and reminded, because this is a massive and brutal injustice being perpetrated IN OUR NAME, as citizens, whether law abiding or not.  And yet, I can do almost nothing except point to it.  Understand it.  It is our history and our legacy:

Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the  criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African Americans just as  the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended.  Her book, The New  Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness sees these facts as  evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African Americans – a  racialized system of social control.   The stigma of criminality functions in  much the same way as Jim Crow – creating legal boundaries between them and us,  allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from  millions, and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted  people.  She calls it a new caste system.

Or, say this issue doesn’t bother you like it does me: choose another: coorporate control of our environment, human trafficking, war war war, poverty and inequity, and so on and on.  What of Afghanistan?  How can we ignore the documents leaked today of misery, coversion, incompetence, and collusion?  And yet, how can we act on them? we cannot.

How is a civilized individual supposed to pursue self betterment, artistic creation, spirituality and purity, when s/he recognizes his/her attachment to this political Self?  Must we intentionally and powerfully continue to cleave ourselves into Individuals and simply ignore the incredibly strong ties that bind us together–the bindings of economy, culture, government, labor? Oh, Guruji, please explain and enlighten: my mind is clouded by confusions!

I’m on my second week of my introductory bookmaking class, and I adore it; although I’m not the most crafty of gents, I think that with practice I’ll be able to bind the books that I want to.  My end goal is to be able to offer limited hand bound editions of certain books that I believe will be treasured, chiefly, Upanisads transcreated by P. Lal, as well as other worthy poetry and creative writing.  I want to learn bookbinding myself because I want to do this old-school, cottage industry style, and don’t want to have to accumulate a large initial investment.

All this long-term stuff aside, I now just love the act of folding pages and gluing covers.  I love my bone-folder: a piece of bone used to fold pages and make creases.  My teacher told me that it needs oil, so now I carry it around as a bookmark and rub it on my neck while I’m reading.  I’m like a little boy with a favorite new toy.

I admit that my interest in hand bookmaking is reactionary; the world of publishing is supposed to be obsessed with the e-book.  I am excited and optimistic about e-books: I think that with some technological improvement (which I am, of course, unable to participate in), they could really bring about a renissaince in reading and writing, and, in the best case, could create a more open and participatory literary environment.  The challenge is to make e-books literary, to make sure they’re edited, and to get people to pay for them.

But I wonder where my place will be as an aspiring publisher in the e-book world.  I forsee a near-future where the e-book market is easy to enter; like iTunes, publishers (or just authors!) will simply submit a book to the apple bookstore, and it’ll get uploaded and subsequently downloaded.  Which is good, but doesn’t constitute a real vocation.

That’s why I’m interested in raising the aesthetic and material value of paper books.  In the publishing company I envision, e-books will be an available afterthought, but customers will be more excited to have access to beautiful, unique textual objects that manifest the personal values that they place on text.  When I show someone a hand-bound and gold-stamped book from, say, Writers Workshop, I like to watch the way they hold them: gently, carefully, caressing the cover, or putting their hand on top of it as if it were a bible on which they were swearing an oath. Placed in such a setting, words gain more authority and beauty (assuming the content is there–that’s the important part, but a whole other game than what I’m talking about: I’m lucky to be working with breathtaking translations of ancient holy texts).  These books aren’t for everyone, or almost anyone–that’s why they come in limited editions–but those who do end up posessing them will treasure them.  And, anyone who wants to simply read the text can get the e-book (or, we can always consider doing a traditional mass print run if e-books fail to manifest their potential in the next few years).

I think that as a culture, we need to conciously and mindfully re-create and re-think the place of literature in our culture.  It’s not as easy or as gratifying as TV or movies, but it is vital to our health and development.  Part of that might be to raise the aesthetic and personal value of books.  These books will help show younger generations the importance of writing, illustrate why literature ought to occupy a more sacred position in culture than TV.  They can be valued as a legacy and a tradition, constantly being added to and improved upon.

Jai, Jai Saraswati!

From a friend of mine in Hyderabad, Prakash Kona

http://sociologicalimagination.org/posts/prakashkona/iron-man-and-the-%E2%80%9Cbigger-dick%E2%80%9D-us-foreign-policy-in-the-third-world/

Iron Man is an arrogant, patronizing, racist prick who stands for everything that makes the United States such a crazy drunk ape of a regime. He just belongs to the long line of James Bonds and Supermans and Rambos and other dickheads who are out there to save white Americans and their families from the wretched others. There’s a point Baldwin makes over and again: what is missing or rather repressed in white American consciousness is blackness. This blackness takes myriad forms from the “blacks” themselves to communists, Arabs and gays. The stupidest American movie gives you an idea of what this hidden face of blackness is all about.

I have to agree.

Yesterday, I was thinking about the elements.  Without being didactic, today the word refers to the possible atomic configurations represented on the periodic table, which includes elements that are unfamiliar or nonexistent in nature, but possible in a laboratory.  Once, of course, the word referred to Earth Air Fire Water.  According to the atomic notion of elements, these are not elements at all but are rather composed of the elements (or the combustion thereof).

But the traditional notion of elements still seems to have relevance overlooked by science–this shift of theory of elements seems different to me than other scientific advances where an erroneous notion of reality was replaced by a more accurate one, like the Ptolemaic cosmos or creationism.  Because ecologists, geographers, and geologists will still tell you that the four fundamental forces that shape and comprise the natural world can be grouped into Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  The ancients recognized that there were different types of “earth”; they didn’t think that the one word described the most fundamental component that could be discovered, but they did recognize that “earth” was material that had a distinct set of properties.  It seems that in this case science has wrested a word away from traditional knowledge, which is a natural and laudable development as our language becomes more specific and useful to scientific advancement.  But we must not forget to restore Earth, Air, Fire, and Water to their rightful places of respect.

Rather than elements, Earth Air Fire and Water are natural presences and forces; they are at once energy levels (temperature) and aspects; they are forces of transformation and change.  They are not the most basic components of physical existence (elements), but they are the dominant aspects of natural existence.  Each carries its own uses and associations, its own energies–water can cool, fire can cook, earth can build. I also think that each one carries a subtle set of associations that we respond to as humans, a relationship of deep signification built over the evolution of our species, ingrained deeply in our collective unconscious.  If you have a camp fire or a bonfire and manage to pull yourself away from staring into the flames for a moment to watch your friends around the fire, you’ll see the obvious and powerful pull that the element has on the core of their beings.  When I am in the presence of water, my mind is set at ease.  Yesterday, me and two of my friends sat by a creek to meditate.  I sat on a rock down by the water, he sat on a boulder high above me, and he sat on a sun-drenched rock directly in the sun.  I am a water sign, he is an air sign, and he is a fire sign.

I think it’s important to reclaim the category of natural elements because I would like us, as a western culture, to be able to open up dialogues between traditional sciences and our potent and inspiring scientific advances.  Many traditional systems of medicine are built around these four natural forces.  Astrology depends on them.  A dialogue like that would go no-where if it amounted to a squabble over the definition of the word “element,” but it would be fruitful if Western science could become more sensitive to subtle and natural energies and if traditional knowledge could become more rigorous and able to justify itself.

In looking for my keys (aargh, where are my keys?) I pulled out my small pile of scraps and fragments that my typewriter has generated over the last few weeks.  This blog was originally conceived as a public notebook, and this post is in line with that: these fragments are totally raw, unedited, personal; they are a blend of fiction and reality; sometimes I was writing the emotional state of a fictional character in my mind, and yet I cannot hide the truth that I have been focused on vocational anxiety, and what little writing I’ve managed to eeke out of that unproductive emotion can only wallow in it pitifully.

–

THE PLATFORM OF THE SATISFACTIONIST PARTY INTERNATIONAL (DRAFT)

What is is all that is, and so it must satiate.

Since what is is all that is, any economy predicated on growth and dependent upon expansion for its health is inherently a lie.

We have been lied to by expansionist policy: humans are enveloped in finity.  We cannot escape our own skin.  And yet, we must eat.

The past has put too much energy and investment into expansion: we will turn the movement inwards, to provide sustenance for our own bellies first.

Therefore, all capital relegated into abstraction by history must be liquefied into usable material.  What is, must be made available to consumption; what was always only hypothetical must be rendered as a lie.

i e, all capital must be liquedated.

Capital that exists as human potential must be either liberated or more fully utilized.  Labor is not the only human potential.

All assets owend by previously incorporated national entities must be liquefied and fed back to the bodies politic, including all back stores of grain, inks, papers, oils, and other commodities.

In the case that assets owned by a particular national entity are human in nature, i e of an emotional or creative value, or expressed in terms of potential instilled by a process of over- and elite- education, these assets must be brought under liquified scientific scruitiny and re-administered to the intellecutal elite who will re-create value to be fed back to the Taxpayer in aspirational morale.

And so on, ad nauseum.

–

The mind has become obscured.  It can no longer differentiate passion from desire, dharma from vocation.  I am controlled, manhandled by the anxieties of desire.  I am not my situation: my days run through me as a river in the desert; I waste myself unwisely, expend myself in diversions, offer myself to those who are unworthy.  I spend energy trying to ignore myself.  I cannot sustain creation and balance.  I ebb and flow rapidly, I find myself unpredictable and unreliable; I surrender myself to myself; I bow before the ferment; I am too ready to accept faliure as fate.

Again I will try; today again I will remake myself.  I will become…

–

What truths can economies manufacture?

What productivity does anxiety wreck?

Why am I so determined to obey?  Why do I so virulently seek my own powerlessness?  What am I doing to my lungs, my body, my voice?  Oh, great risi,  advise me, I know not my dharma.  AM I to function, to languish, or to revolt?  I am comfortable with any of these, my path is not yet formed.  I get no directions from community or environs.  Individualism has taken me too far off any recognizable road.  I have something to offer any who is not myself, but I do not know who or what.  Like a child lost in a forest, I watch capitalism but cannot participate; like a child in a forest, I can walk through streets lined with mighty buildings and cannot enter any; what I call my home is a temporary shelter, a camp.  Will I reach home in this life?  Is this my desire?  Is desire what ought to guide me?  I am mighty.  This, I have never doubted.  But the nature of my expression, the manifestation of inner power in the form of a life’s work, I do not know.  I have long believed that when I am old, it will become clear what my life’s work has been.  I have never thought that I would know beforehand. I thought perhaps that it would only be a soft touch that was required from myself to enter the chute of karmic works, to begin to truly create, to feel desiring products to spin daily out from my fingertips.  Effort is worthwhile, and yet I am lazy: I have been lazy; I must soon reposition myself, delve into some rich atmosphere of intention, intention that most valuable of treasures, which brings significance to every action.

–

drive, drive that beast along.  That unyielding desire, drive it to wealth justified by art that does not lie; the forum that is a lie.  White space is expensive in this land, white walls do not come easy.  Through riches and on to death.  Through fame and on to failure.  Through love and on to war, we drive, holding drinks and passing out printed cards, we try to thrive through mimosas and martinis, barely balancing on the edge of sobriety, we drive, through convention centers of hungry eyes, through failure we drive.

Jai Jai Navia

Zed

I’m sitting here in my white polyester pants and a white t-shirt waiting to go to Capoeira.  I began stepping up Capoeira training about two months ago, and it Sometimes I feel like I wait all week to go to Capoeira, I look forward to it all week.  Then, on Thursday and Saturday, I feel like I’m in a training montage.  (Everyone knows from movies that if you want to get really good at something physical, all you have to do is a quick montage…)  I am learning to be confident and gently aggressive in the hota, to both act and react to an opponent; I am learning balance and gaining strength and flexibility.  It’s the most fun I can imagine having, pretty much.

I just got distracted watching videos, which I like to do.

The group I train with is here:

http://www.lampreiacapoeira.com/ (click on Videos if it pleases)

I’ll start going in to City Center when I’m better…

This one, among many videos, is good–there are faster games of Capoeira, but slow games like this demonstrate the artistry and are much more demanding in terms of form and the communication between players.  Notice the shaker in the middle which never gets disturbed, then tell me about control and discipline…

P. Lal and his translation of The Mandukya Upanisad teaches us that there are four components to the symbol Aum (seen above).  To write Aum requires three separate strokes of the pen, each of which corresponds to one of the three sounds in the sacred vowel (A-O-M)

The first is the A symbol and sound, written like the number 3.  This is the waking state, the reality we all share with each other.  The enunciator opens his or her mouth wide to engage external reality; our external gates and senses are open.  From P Lal’s translation:

Sloka 3

The first is the waking state.

It has seven limbs and nineteen mouths.

It knows the external objects, it enjoys external objects.

This is common to all persons.

Sloka 9

The waking state is A

Its root is ap, to obtain

Or adi, first.

Who knows this is first.

Who knows this obtains all desires.

As a Buddhist will tell you, the waking state is full of strife and suffering.  We are vulnerable, attached to our bodies and our desires, doomed either to faliure or success.  Realizing this, the enunciator closes his or her mouth a bit, rounds it into the O shape to make the U sound, which corresponds to the tail of the written Aum:

4

The second is the dreaming state.

It has seven limbs and nineteen mouths.

It looks inward.

It enjoys the subtle and the brilliant.

10

The dreaming state is U

It is the second.

It shines.

It exalts.

It is mid-way.

Who knows this transmits knowledge.

Who knows this is stable.

None is born in that person’s family without knowledge of Brahman.

The third is the dot above the sign, the anusvara or the bindu (yes, like the bindi that women wear). The enunciator closes his or her mouth and hums, making the M sound.  The mouth closed, the enunciator has pulled into him or herself and into the highest state, the state of dreamless sleeping.  This is the highest state a yogi can attain:

5

The third is the dreamless-sleeping state.

It does not desire anything.

It is deep sleep.

Its face is meditation.

It is pure knowledge.

It is one.

It is a mass of knowledge.

It enjoys bliss.

It is bliss.

11

The dreamless-sleeping state is M.

It is third.

Its root is mi, to measure,

It absorbs.

Who knows this, is absorbed.

But wait!  We have exhausted our symbol!  What fourth state could there be, what have we forgotten?  The most important one of all, the whole point of all this: the page on which Aum is written, the silence in which it is spoken.  Nothing can be without being opposed; if Aum is everything, it is opposed by nothingness.  The enunciator falls silent, and it is in this pause before his or her next in-breath that the reward of peace can find a foothold.

7

The fourth is the atman.

The fourth is what should be known.

It does not look inward.

It does not look outward.

It is not a mass of knowledge.

It is not knowledge.

It is neither knowing nor not-knowing.

It cannot be seen.

It cannot be possessed.

It cannot be dealt with.

It is the essence of being one.

It is serene.

It is auspicious.

It has no second.

12

The forth is silence.

It does not grow.

It cannot be dealt with.

It is without a second.

It is auspicious.

The syllable Aum is the atman.

Who knows this knows what there is to know.

Who knows this enters the Atman with atman.

There are about 10 people a day who read this blog, so I feel comfortable sharing this knowledge; such truths should not be shared lightly, but they should not be withheld from those who seek them.

Anyone want to sign up to comment/submit writing in this space? email me.

First of all, I want to open this blog to comments and participation in a non-spamming kind of way. For that to happen, though, I need to control who has an account on this blog, so send me an email. Details are Here.

So, I’ve joined this lovely writing workshop here in Brooklyn. Besides meeting and doing writing prompts every week, the group is also doing a long-term collaboration with an equivalent group in Dublin, Ireland, that works like a long exqusite skeleton: one person will send a kernel, the next person on the other side of the pond will rewrite it and add one element, and so on. I just began a new thread of this project with a fragment about Solemna Navia, a character of mine who remains stubbornly fragmented and storyless; I thought this would be a perfect venue for her to grow into more minds than my own:

Solemna Navia was a plant. She had installed herself within warriors and made them farmers; she sought to use their Power to make a place for herself, at least a body for herself, beginning with food. The Toxic Event had taken the place of food, of plants; they all had trampled over their dinner on the way out the door. Her stomach felt the absence almost immediately, and now, years later, she wondered if the void would ever be filled. Perhaps once she had been a dedicated and careful anorexic, but now she began to mourn food, to miss it as the lover she had lived to hate. So she decided to begin to produce, to grow. She wanted to become life, and life is food, and love of food could teach love of the earth. Land in the city was disorganized, cut into unstable chunks of ex-lawn. So she hatched a plan to go south, find some land. She had found the Banks, an old tobacco farm, the soil depleted by decades of monoculture in service to addiction. Her warriors held her in their mind, planted her dream into the earth.

This is for the soil that once was never unclean.
Roots grow into leaves
May you be clean again.

Solemna Navia knew that the life of plants is in the dirt, that their intelligence comes from their roots. Though her field was irradiated and toxic, she coaxed from it lives purer than the food that had been eaten before the Event. Her crops were fertilized with the oils and plastics of decaying gadgets, once coveted motherboards whose silicon strove to kill the lives she strove for. A rebirth is a slow thing. Irrigation is a small canal. Clouds of ash are unforgivingly dark. Jai: jai Navia!

Though I am barely a poet,

There be a poem published

in Issue 5 of Caper Literary Journal