rain run

you ever get so high you need to climb back down the rope to earth and find your feet again, find your own little patch of earth?

that's kind of what i've been dealing with for the past few hours, but it's fine - i am already seeing myself step back into the /usual/ normal, whatever that is.

it's been the same rainy day for a few weeks now. every day we get that it is not raining has been a gift, and i've tried to use them wisely by being out in them. rainy days are also beautiful, and i can hardly remember when they weren't part of my every day.

frank wilbert stokes  - the phantom ship

one of the things i like about the rain is that in it i have started running again. running in the rain is almost more fun than running in the sun. you are constantly getting cooled off by the drops and the surroundings are alive and moving in ways often overlooked under the sun's glare. running with my dog is an even more interesting phenomenon. with her leashed to me, i feel almost as though i am driving a sled, and she is pulling me. i have to stop when she stops to explore whatever smells she must because it's about mutual respect, in the end. and then we are off, together, back into the mist and the green.

where we run it is as if we are at the bottom of a giant bowl with a mountainside wall of trees spreading above us in a giant semi-circle. looking far up the sides of that darkly green and lush wall the white mist claims the tops of the trees and the sky seems both far and not far. me then green then white then beyond. to stop amidst the onward push of your body's pumping machine and find yourself right in the middle of that giant crater of beauty, surrounded by birds and the rushing of the river water and the wetness of the dripping leaves, is to be placed right in the center of an all-encompassing experience of nowness.

heart racing and breath acutely aware of itself. that's why i run, in the end... to feel the most alive i possibly can, to be as close as i can stand to the physicality of what my body was made to do.

hello. when you hear that "god is on your side" what does it make you feel?

these days i have been primarily concerned with what the self is, and what its importance should be, if any. the self, the atman, is our own individual spark of the divine contained within us.

"The final stage of moksha (liberation) is the understanding that one's atman is, in fact, Brahman" (source).

i've been thinking a lot about what it means to be on "god's side," because isn't that the same thing as accepting that "god is on your side"?

"god" is just one of the infinitude of words we have created for the One, for Brahman - the great and all-encompassing primeval love which contains/consists of the very fabric of existence.

if it's on our side, then we should try to be on its side too, no?

(oh so typical of a human to think in such dualistic terms)

mc escher - fluorescent sea

雨

so it's been raining a lot.

i always like rain but there have lately been fewer raging thunderstorms than i would like - the kind where the air is positively electric, and the sky is both dark and light, and one hides in a warm, well-lit place to watch tiny rushing rivers form in the grass and puddles well into pots of dirt.

no, these rains have been light and unceasing. gentle mists with varying pulses of intensity scattered across fields. my favorite part of rain in this season is what it does to the colors. already brilliant, flashes of new greens, yellows, pinks take on their fullest hue as they reach adulthood by feasting on sunlight. and the rain melts together these petals and leaves, budding shoots and tattered bark strips - a palette for the eyes to paint with.

i'm not the first to notice this phenomenon - it is well known that rainy days make for wonderful photographs, swirling inspiration for paintings. being a central shadowy figure both in and outside of this saturated landscape is quite a beloved experience for me. walking among the mossy, sodden ground, a light spring in each step - the great roaring stillness of the vast earthy surface is overlaid with a curtain of raindrops, faintly drumming. even the sonic landscape mixes the sounds differently - variables no longer dry and lain next to each other with their sharp edges, the air is a-hum with our shared experience of water and the nesting inside of wetness.

i encountered these beings whilst walking through the wet painting and as ever when i encounter wild life we sort of sized each other up from a distance with what felt like gentleness, an urgent curiosity. we passed by each other without much of a fuss but these moments always stretch the boundaries of time for me.

i think i'm always subconsciously looking for these moments, as they feel more close to whatever alive is supposed to mean  than does my normal state. of course, i am always alive - and it is wonderful to be breathing, to have a mind, etc... but then there is being alive, where you are even more aware than usual of this quality of having a consciousness, and it's an electric feeling. like the node in which you reside on the infinite fabric of reality shows itself to you, makes itself known, and you get a glimpse at a little bit more of what this experience really might be...

a shared experience of the elements with each other, with the other, with yourself.

'tis pretty neat.

雨

with the global pandemic going on i encounter many less people when i go out. trudging through what feel like ruins i am always awash with thoughts on the beingness of the structure which surrounds me, and i think i've had enough. the enjoyment of conjecture has its limits and i must say i have long since reached them.

this much is absolutely true - that i will be miserable if i try to measure myself by anyone else's parameters. 

it is said that the concept of self (and concept of concepts, too, really) is a source of suffering, but i have yet to figure out how to transcend an experience of self and reach pure experience. it is said that having a mind hurts a little bit, and that meditation is a way to sort of neutralize the pain of consciousness by sitting with it and accepting it. these are things that i have yet to sort through fully but i want to keep meditating on them until i come to my own understanding.

ciao~

 雨

cat power - "say" (moon pix, 1998)

joanna brouk - "going through the veil - becoming a swan" (hearing music, 2016)



caroline polachek - "ocean of tears" (pang, 2019)



modest mouse - "gravity rides everything" (the moon & antarctica, 2000)



HTRK - venus in leo, 2019