Oddly petty crimes...

Yesterday, as I was strolling down the street I live in, I noticed a sign on the wall of a property, asking visitors to phone for entry as the intercom had disappeared. That got me wondering. Wouldn't you get bad karma from using a security device that had been stolen in the first place? I mean, if it couldn't have stopped that crime, what makes you think you would be luckier?

It also brought another incident to mind. Years ago, I worked for a food delivery service and one morning when we arrived, we discovered that the security camera had been stolen...

Are some cats more empathic than others?

Yesterday, there was a car accident around the corner. Quite a loud smash. All three of our cats were startled by the sound, but two of them went right back to sleep. Not Beanie, the 14-year-old female. She continued to look distressed (despite reassurances and a little bit of TLC), for as long as the stricken vehicles still stood there and as the traffic police took down statements. I should add that all of this went on completely outside her field of vision. There were sirens, briefly, but no loud voices or arguing that I could hear. Yet Beanie only relaxed once everything had been cleared up.

So, what would you say? Are some cats more empathic than others?



(This particular photo of Beanie had been taken some years ago.)

A Thousand Breaths...

What if no life was longer than a thousand breaths...

Our society defines and measures life in terms of bodies. A birth marks the beginning. A death marks the ending. And everything in between is called life. In many ways, this is a flawed mode of perception, a bit like defining what you are, from the perspective of your shoes or your coat, if you ask me.

Consider the following paradox. The aforementioned physical body does not always cease to be immediately in the moment that life does. Instead, it slowly stops working and runs down, but, as science has proven, machines can take over the functions of that physical being, such as breathing and heartbeat. While we call the inflation and deflation of lungs the prolonging of 'life', it is not really enough by anyone's definition. The running down/decaying process too can be halted by artificial means. But, although that spark of life does occasionally and miraculously return, it remains the wildcard of the arrangement. It cannot always be dictated to. What life really is, remains invisible. It is the symptoms of life that we mistake for life itself.

Which brings me to the next thought. Physicality is a side effect of life. It's not the other way around, even though everything in our society and around us tries to shove it down our throats. Life comes (invisibly) before bodies. Life continues (invisibly) after bodies. Perhaps in many of its purer expressions, life exists entirely independently of bodies. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you are flying, as far and as fast as you want to. Now, open your eyes and behold the dense imprisonment surrounding your body with limitations. My point? Why bodies? Or rather, why bodies with such limited features?

So, let's throw away the concept of bodies as yardstick and begin again...

Years ago, when a friend of mine was going through his divorce, I made the statement that perhaps, within a "lifetime" we go through thousands of lives and deaths, as we constantly change who and what we are. In his response, he compared those past "lives" to snake skins, still retaining our shape, but no longer filled with our essence. Like beads, we string along millions of lives held together by the frail, false continuity of our physical identity. And when that physical identity ceases? Do we run out of beads, just because we run out of string?

Like I said before, what if no life was more than a thousand breaths.... but at the same time we had access to an infinite number (and "infinite number" is in itself a paradox and a contradiction) of lives.

An infinite number of new beginnings...

A thousand breaths...

From inside a tree...

... the view is surprisingly magical.


It's such a peaceful place to be too. If I was on my own, I would have stayed much longer...



I suppose you would want to see the tree from the outside too, so here goes...



And another...


The photos were taken earlier this year. Although it was a warm place, it was cool and quiet inside. Like I said, I could have stayed in there for a long long time if I was on my own.



Who knows? Maybe I'll come back here sometime in my dreams...

Dog park reverie

Joined my sister for a walk in the park with her dog Anabel and some of our visiting Dutch relatives. We sat at one of the tables for cool drinks and sandwiches, when I noticed that we had a furry observer. He sat a little way off, trying not to be too obvious about the fact that he was intently focused on our sandwiches.

My sister and I immediately saved some pieces for him. He growled at Anabel, when my sister also gave Anabel a piece of hers.

Our one relative (my mom's cousin's husband) observed that the dog belonged to no one. That his coat lacked shine and seemed neglected. And that he was ignored by the other dogs. None of them engaged him in playing or chasing games.

The dog was not thin. But he was on his guard. He had no "protector", obviously. This sad dog had the freedom of the park. But it wasn't the magical place of fun and excitement for him.

I thought how this park - it's a fairly big park, and like I said, very popular with dog owners - could be such a special place for all the happy dogs playing and cavorting with each other (Anabel included) and here was one for whom it was something else. This was a little like the paradox of the starving wolf that is free and the chained dog, who is well-fed - and the myriad of character compromises that lurks within the shiny coat of that chained dog.

After we gave him our tidbits, and my sister went off to play with Anabel, I blew some luck on him. I asked if I could touch him (I wasn't sure because he had growled at Anabel.) He let me stroke his head. Another tidbit of mental nourishment? Then he got up and somewhat stiffly walked off, not minding all the frivolous pouches cavorting about.

(The pics in this post are not of the sad old dog - by the time it occurred to me to take one of him, he had already gone off)

Exactly HOW are we dumbing ourselves down?

That's the question I posed this morning to my IF (Imaginary Friend) and he immediately returned with counter question. It was a good one. He asked On what level does this dumbing down take place?

So, we narrowed it down to comprehension (although perhaps you could also say understanding or awareness) and expression. In other words, the one happens internally, in the privacy of your own mind, while the other is about communicating that awareness to others. An interesting and helpful distinction.

That means we can create questions for further clarity:

1. Am I still having the same level of awakenings as I did a couple of years? And if not, why not?

I had one this morning (which is what I'm writing about), but I have over the past year or so felt a type of 'thinning'. I would be asking myself, if something is interfering, what is it. I've been looking at a number of possible suspects. Last year September (2016), I got my first real smartphone (I still have only the one) and yes it is a distracting and absorbing device. So many of its features are designed to trigger some form of neural addiction and there were definitely times when getting prompted into compulsive consumption of digital content and services served to disable some of the super features inherent in my consciousness. In connecting to infinity and my inner awareness. In many ways, paying more attention to social media compels you more and more to take linear timelines for granted, and that has the unfortunate side effect of lessening your awareness of less linear ways of perceiving.

On that subject, I should add that I think I have been reading more this past year. Now my relationship with reading is a very interesting one. For nearly all my life, reading has acted as my passport to wonder. Growing up in a locale where I felt very little connection to the society around me, I have always looked to books to discover new worlds and imagine new versions of myself. You could say, the librarian is my dealer. One of the side effects of my awakening, though, was reading less and also reading in different ways. I would absorb a book randomly, rather than going page by page. Around this time, I also discovered the most ironic of books - The Goddess vs The Alphabet by Leonard Shlain - which argues that learning to read has profoundly influenced our ways of perceiving our world and the infinity that surrounds us. It suggests that reading has rewired our brain and since it functions by a linear process of revelation, has forced our minds to act in more linear ways. Reading typically follows a marked path. Wandering off in your thoughts still happens but is it really possible to imagine how revelation might take place to the non-reading mind?

Remember, clickbait articles also function on the very linear process of hook/reward, often delaying that reward over several installments. It guides your perception and your thinking and the question should be asked: Is it a good guide? Or does it have its own agendas? But I digress.

Another change this year, has been doing new kind of work. From 2012-2016, I worked ghostwriting on travel destinations. This year, I began doing transcription work and faced different kinds of deadlines. That change could well have contributed to more distracted and less aware me. I also began to work on an ongoing new writing project (more about this at a much later stage) which has also turned out to be quite absorbing.

2. How has the process of communicating awareness to others changed in the past year or so?

Wow. Lots of ways. What I've noticed is that nearly everybody seems to be so much angrier of late, no doubt a sign of how polarizing the news media has become. One sign of this is that the truth depends very much on who's telling it. But we all know that already and while I may philosophically approve of variable realities, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed by some of the dominant ones that are surfacing. There is NO respect at all for opposing viewpoints. There is an ongoing chase to join the coolest SJW lynch mob. The majority of contemporary output is reactionary to something.

But because of this, I suspect everybody secretly fears themselves to be under attack in their most holiest place. Notice, even my phrasing in the last sentence could serve as a trigger to the militantly atheistic, even though I meant it as a figure of speech. Language has become both weaponized and monetized and sometimes it's difficult to find words and phrases that aren't inherently offensive in some way. In an ideal world, communication is a bridge between souls. But in reality, we are becoming so fearful of honestly expressing our thoughts that we introduced the checkpoints, with our internalized memes as border controls to keep undesirable thoughts from settling.

Now, first a word or two about the benefits of exposing yourself to so-called undesirable thought. If I look back on journals and past stories and story ideas, some of the best have resulted from some very abrasive undesirable thoughts. Remember the oyster and the pearl. It creates some awesomeness, but it's not a happy relationship. So I have always appreciated and welcomed thoughts that anger me and hurt me, because many times, they have acted as my muses. But that's me and I'm still trying to figure out why other people don't work that way.

But with the increased saturation of weaponized and monetized content, some of those internalized memes are sneaking across the borders of my consciousness. Because everything we take in, changes us in subtle ways. It's very difficult to de-activate those memes that interfere with our thinking. Outrage is also addictive, and on top of that, it often disables compassion and imagination.

Doors

There's a door of starlight and a door of woven pain. There's a door of rot and a door of rain. One door works only for geckos and rats, and, boy, does that annoy the cats! Beware the door of fear and feign and don't be fooled by the door of tain. Tread quickly through the door of fire and lightly towards your heart's desire. Don't trust the door of love and lies, blink not at the door of a thousand eyes, for doors can harm and doors can heal. Door can betray and doors can steal. Doors give, but demand a toll, if not in coin, then from your soul.
(the image was sourced from Pixabay)

Forgiveness

Forgiving someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You don't have to give them your mind. You don't have to be hijacked by their opinions...



Something from my personal journal... my ongoing conversation with my friend from the other side. The photograph was sourced from pixabay.com, which is a great resource for royalty free images.

The moment you try to define infinity you lose it in essence

This morning I came across a scrap piece of paper on which I had written We somehow come to believe that we will understand the infinite by expanding the finite. Instead, expanding the finite adds more filters.

So. You are warned. We are back to that one topic which can only be answered with a question.

On the same piece of paper, I had also written There is no easy way to talk about personal mystical experiences. It's not (just) that people question them or go sceptical on them. It goes beyond (that, in that) language (itself) is the language of the sceptic.

Infinity. When I was a kid, when I was taught to count, the impression was left that infinity is somehow just 1 digit beyond the last number known to man. But, it's not that at all. If you write down LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS ONE, you are still firmly in the realm of the finite and you can continue to push back the boundary with LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS TWO and so on, all the way to LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN PLUS LARGEST NUMBER KNOWN TO MAN and so on .... Infinity only happens when you finally get tired and stop the count ....

Oops... did you see that happening? I've just sneaked in a definition of the infinite, which is, sigh, as helpful as it is problematic.

The moment you try to define infinity, is the moment where you lose it in essence.

Angel at the Bottom of the Well

To the guy who sat on the sidewalk opposite my apartment yesterday afternoon and spent four hours fishing around for something that must have fell into the gutter and down the drainhole...

I hope the wire hanger helped.

I hope you found what you were looking for.

You reminded me of a song I wrote over a year ago, for a girl caught in a desperate situation. I hope the past year brought her healing and happiness, but here's the song:

It's a long way down
From a princess
to a clown
It's a long way down
from a churchyard
to a shanty town
It's a long way down

I'll be your angel
At the bottom of the well
I'll be your angel
in the sooty, smokey pits of hell
I'll be your angel
But who can tell?

(Chords 1st verse: Am-G-Am-G-Am; 2nd verse: F/D-G/D-F/D-G/D-F/D-Am)

Or I hope you woke up in an alternate reality where nothing is lost or missing or missed. (I hope that for the girl too) Go well.

"I cannot eat your fire, I can only eat your flesh"

This is an encounter that takes place in the realm of the subjective. My imaginary friend (IF) and I were visited by a large brown bear. It was very amiable, but when the bear licked my face, I flinched, thinking This is a wild creature, it could eat my flesh. The bear was surprised by my reaction and IF pointed out that this should not be a problem in a supernatural realm. We experimented. I let the bear eat my hand and grew a new one. But I discovered that it was harder to let it eat my face. I seem to indentify stronger with the brain and the face as "me" than with the hand. We tested this, by giving the bear my brain as a meal. IF said that, if the astral body left the physical body, I would still be intact and the bear would have a meal. The real me, it seems, is the energy of the astral body. At this point, the bear said. "I cannot eat your fire, I can only eat your flesh." Those were his exact words.

The above incident "took place" about a month and a half ago and I am writing it pretty much as I experienced it, but I've been paging through old journal entries of lake and discovered something equally dark. This was something IF said early in the year, "If the mouse connects to the snake, it's never a happy ending." He was reminding me that there is a darker side to the universe.

One such story can be found at this link.

Interestingly, though, the universe did kick up one exception to the rule.



The video clip is about seven years old and the best I could track about what happened afterwards it seems that the snake and the hamster were later separated and the facility where they were housed later went out of business.

The Creation of Fiction (a story of the universe)

Once upon a time, the great pools of energy that whorl and moved about, were like a canvas and all souls used them to create the ever-changing art of lives and worlds. Change was the only constant. If one soul said, my hair is purple, it was so. If another said, I want rain, it was so. All were like gods, co-creators in the playground of the universe. Anything was possible.

One day, one of the souls did not like the way things were going in another's world and said, "You are dead." The other soul was snuffed of its life, but someone else observed the interaction and said, "He will be alive once more." And, because all stories were equal, the one who was dead, became alive again. But his enemy was furious. He muttered and huffed and puffed, searching for a way to permanently destroy his rival. One day he found it. In the presence of all, he declared, ONLY MY STORY IS TRUE. ALL OTHERS ARE UNTRUE.

A shudder went through the fabric of the universe. There was silence for a long time. Eventually, someone tried, "I have a farm of dinosaurs." Nothing happened. The world had changed and reality had lost the ability to flow and alter with the thoughts of all. Will it remain permanently locked, or is there a way to fix this? This is my riddle and another koan. What words will undo the creation of fiction and liberate the universe to become once again, like it was, a world drawn by the stories of all?

(t.y.m.)

The Sea and the Mountain (on the interconnected-ness of things)

The mountains say "look, the sea" and the sea says, "look, the mountains", but they are part of the same landscape. You cannot really tell where the mountains stop and the sea begins. The sea could rise up and climb the mountain, when possessed by a tsunami. The roots of the mountain extend deep below the sea. And they are beautiful because they are together... (t.y.m.)

Perspective...

What you need to remember about perspective is this. It works differently for everyone.

The "truth"

We tend to think that, when the truth comes to us, it will be in a box, clearly marked The Truth and pre-organized for easy use. It does not work that way. It's more like a huge haystack, with a few tiny needles hidden inside.

So what am I doing? Well, I have a few needles in the palm of my hand. Which means I'm probably looking for a haystack. Or two...

The Art of Understanding

Some time ago, I wrote a somewhat wry blog post on the joys of being misunderstood, which can be found here. Soon after I realized that I would inevitably end up writing about understanding as well, or rather, the art of understanding, because to me, that is what it has become. An art form, like music or painting or story-telling, rather than an absolute.

One way of explaining what I mean by that, would be to tell you about Table Mountain. This mountain dominates the scenery of Cape Town and has a very distinctive outline, from the city side, but there are many other faces and perspectives to it. From Kirstenbosch Garden it presents a completely different face and again, from the Atlantic seaboard side. You really wouldn't say it is the same mountain at all. To borrow an analogy from Robert Heinlein, how do you know the WHOLE house is painted white, if you've only seen one of its walls?

In the same way, the process of attempting to understand something, keeps shifting, showing new vantage points to the reality you are trying to grasp. Understanding, in its true form, is an active, ever-changing song, that keeps playing different phrases to your consciousness. It keeps refining itself... finding new pathways to the same destination. It is not frozen within a single moment. Understanding does not stop unfolding. You are never, ever finished ... in fact if you are done understanding, it probably means that, really, you are done with the process of understanding... you have thrown in the towel, or perhaps, you arrived at a certain spot, grown attached to that particular viewpoint, and now you do not want to move on anymore... It means, "I've made up my mind; stop adding things to it. I don't want to know any more. I'm closing the door and switching off my brain now."

Being understood, often hurts.

Understanding hurts doubly so.

Understanding is like an alchemy of ideas that briefly blends to a particular compound. But, tomorrow, life will add something... perhaps time, perhaps another element or thought to consider and then the compound is transformed into something completely new... the only constant being the ability to continue changing...

A personal koan...

If you have been painted into a corner, how do you escape before the paint dries? There are at least two solutions to this one...

(definition of a koan: 'A paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.')

You're the most misunderstood person on the planet? And this is a problem?

... this train of thought began months ago, when some metal musician (I think it was Mike Portnoy, ex of Dream Theatre) called himself the most misunderstood person on the planet... and my first knee-jerk response was: And this is a problem how?

Having spent 40 plus years on the planet, I can safely say I've probably had a fair amount of experience being understood and being misunderstood and when the dust clears and the smoke and mirrors road show that is the human ego goes silent, I'll say this... being understood can be a heck of a lot MORE uncomfortable than being misunderstood...

Being misunderstood, on the other hand, can be one of the greatest opportunities for entertainment and inspiration. Being misunderstood has given me some of the best laughs of my life... and an untold wealth in song and story ideas. In my opinion, every creative person should relish and embrace being misunderstood. Sure, the ego wants people to get how clever he/she is, but let me tell you a little secret, the ego is neither the artist nor the genius, so screw his/her precious little feelings...

Life is a game, and words can be the game pieces or the boxes you hide in... if you truly want to play, hold your secrets close and stay just beyond the edge of shadow and mystery... because, if you want to have fun, then being misunderstood is definitely the longer game...

But that's just me...

Not quite #fridayflash fiction: Pondering the Rat King

The Rat King first came into our world three years and three moons ago. He brought a gift, but hid a barb. And in his wake, nothing was ever the same again...

This week I read The Dream Hunters by Neil Gaiman. After I cried for the fox and for the monk, what lingered were the dour words of Dream: 'Lessons were learnt." This is true also of the Rat King. Lessons were learnt. But at times, I can't help wondering:

Will the marks of his claws and his teeth ever heal completely?

Would it be wise to wish some of his trickery undone?

Who was he really?

The Rat King

The Rat King steals
from door to door
Across the wall
and through the floor
He nips your scars
scratching your pain
Because he wants
to make you bleed again

The Rat King sniffs
at your mistakes
He chews and chews
till something breaks
The Rat King rules
the underground
Where only tears
and misery's found

The Rat King tends
that patch of weeds
and waters all
the bitter seeds
and don't you laugh
at his modest size
The Rat King's plotting
your demise

The Rat King sans this wry introduction is one of the poems featured in Secret (a collection of nine poems) by Carine Engelbrecht (i.e. me). It is a free download.

Fishing

A little bit more than three years ago, I told someone an admittedly strange story and was promised 'There will be an answer'. I waited for a while, but then things started to happen around me and the patterns that formed, told far more than any words could.

There is a saying that people sometimes use to patronize the poor in Africa that goes Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

Well, the absence of a verbal answer taught me to fish in the greatest reservoir of them all - the universe itself. Try it sometime. It's lots of fun and the results may surprise you.