Every time I kill time by playing computer games I could be writing drivel here instead.  Often think of things I'd like to write but they pass off into the ether without taking hold - which might be a good thing!  Suppose what's prompted this entry after more than a month of silence is a dream last night in which my father informed me that he was reading my journals.  My old journals.  I told him that perhaps it wasn't a good idea.  Those old journals are full of sex, drugs and rock and roll, well, not rock and roll I preferred classical music even then but there was definitely sex and drugs.  It didn't seem to bother him.  He was driving, fast as usual, down some night cloaked rain slicked city street taking people to a party.  I was in the back seat and climbed into the front after we'd dropped them off.  (Did I want to stay at the party?  Went and had a look but it was all 30-somethings.  Did like the ancient white aga with decoupage butterflies however - and the room full of everyone's shoes).  I and my Invisible Companion managed to find ours and rejoined Dad at which point the I.C. disappeared.
     The random thoughts are things like a) I bought a packet of eye makeup applicators, little double ended sticks with sponges on the end, and thought, 'these will see me out' meaning I'd be dead before I ever wore out five of the buggers and b) Death is more or less a constant companion now.  Not in a morbid or fearful way, it's just a part of my mind map.  I'm no longer immortal like I was as a youth.  There is a definite end in sight made more real by the death of my uncle on my birthday and the death of a neighbour at the young age of 51 of cancer and c) the world and all its dramas sometimes seems more like a stage set where we can act out every and anything we can think of.  Prem Rawat asked why people needed to go to the movies.  Around us was suspense, adventure, drama, pathos, humour and tragedy (my adjectives, his idea).   He's right of course.  Syria is on self-destruct, as is Egypt.  The climate change summit at Doha is again doomed because money is more important than survival and our politicians are no better than we are or we wouldn't allow this farce to continue.  There's a part of me that takes this all very seriously and another part that says, wow, how interesting!   

The Love of Noise

We love noise and hate silence. That's what Prem Rawat said during one of his talks, along with loving war and hating peace. And it's so obviously true. We have what we love. We love upheaval not serenity, we love living on the edge, dicing with death, frenetic activity, and above all else, the false security of money. We do anything for money. We shit in our nest for money. We wallow in it, we eat it and smell it and clothe ourselves in it, all for money. If we can't have the money we'll support and admire others who do. How else would we allow the obscenities of Big Business to continue other than that they have the MoneyGiven, not GodGiven, right to do so.

Sometimes I get caught up in the blame game, the fear and anger and resentment. I have to turn it off. Which brings me back to the first sentence; loving noise and hating silence. In silence there is peace. The noise is reading Care2Causes and all the wrongs done in the world. The noise is signing petitions and wringing my hands. The noise is the radio, the television as well as the computer. The noise is all distraction and playing the Maya game. I can make my pulse race by thinking of the evils of the world. Isn't this why we choose this game of life? To pretend we are mortal and vulnerable and less than perfect so that we can scare ourselves silly? Why are horror movies and thrillers perennially popular? We love being frightened. Why do we ride rollercoasters and jump from planes? If that's all it is, just an illusion we create to make scaring ourselves real there's no reason to get upset. Is there?

Perhaps not but why trash the most exquisite set, the most perfect, complicated and wondrous life *movie* location to test the theory? Couldn't we find other ways to get an adrenaline rush other than pursuing war, pestilence and environmental destruction?

It's a mystery. I don't know the answer. I have to live as though it's real. Try and leave a small carbon footprint, sign those petitions, do the things I can but also, for the sake of my sanity, I have to turn it all off and sit in silence. My silence isn't very silent. My tiny little mind is brimming with slogans, commercials, snippets of songs, images, internal conversations, memories, remorse, plans, have to lists, details and physical sensations. It isn't very quiet in my mind. But I go there anyway. Sometimes the consciousness streams dwindle to one or two or three strands instead of a dozen. Even that is a relief. Because, finally, all that Noise is a Distraction from what Is. The noise is all about what Is Not.

Dreamed a dream straight from prime time television. Vince, no better name, held fifty people including myself, hostage at gun point. I knew Vince. We were driving in the parking lot of a shopping centre. Previous events contributed to the hotage taking but I don't remember them now. What I do remember is driving a car in which we were picking up people who were trying to get away from him only we didn't know it was Vince at the time. So, he was rescued as well. Richard was in another car behind ours. We ended up in a department store. Vince was distraught. We were frightened. Then I asked him why he hadn't sought help for his problems? Didn't he have anyone to talk to? Wasn't there someone somewhere in a position to help him? He pointed the gun straight at me but I kept talking (so cliched a screenplay I am almost embarrassed to record it. Couldn't my dreaming self come up with something more original?). Eventually he dashed down a long hallway. I tried to slam and lock the door behind him but it kept bouncing open. So we all dashed out the door on the opposite side of the building, ran down the mall screaming, Man! Gun! Hostages! Police! That's all I remember.

Sulawesi Breath

I often listen to a CD of birdsong from Sulawesi while doing yoga. On the last track there is a recording of a bird singing near dusk or night as there is a frog chorus in the background. I suppose you couldn't really call is singing, more of a calling, in a breathy descending minor key, of two and then three notes. It is the loneliest sound I have ever heard. There is no answer to that yearning hello. Just this waiting for a reply that never comes. The bird finally stops, the frogs chirp on but the silence and the infinity of the night is deafening.

I don't know what kind of bird this is and knowing it's name would not make it any dearer to me. It's all tied in with 'if a sparow or a leaf falls, would God know'? This bird symbolizes, for me at leat, all that we've lost, all that we could lose, if we don't clean up our act. What sound did a Dodo make? A Carolina parakeet. It's wretched that we will never know, that those sounds are lost forever. And this bird sings in the wilderness for a mate that never replies. Is that how it feels to know yourself to be finally and forever alone?

While I was meditating today and concentrating on my breath I could hear Tony the budgie talking to himself on the verandah (I love you, The Regurgitator, pretty pretty PRETTY bird). In the poinciana outside this room Felicity was lamenting her (to my mind at least) on off again relationship with Suki. Her calls didn't sound like contact calls but more of a lament. Suki came home yesterday but is gone again today. As I hovered in the indescribably state which may be a percursor to mditating it occurred to me that the breath which was the focus of my concentration and which was starting to define that oceanic feeling I sometimes get while meditating, was the very same breath Tony and Felicity were using. We were united by breath. In and out, no matter the rate, the air flows from one through another.

Listening to Words of Peace the other day, Prem Rawat spoke of how this planet, this Earth, is as far as anybody knows the only place with life on it for millions and billions of miles. He spoke of the miracle of meeting another who is alive and breathing This Day, and how we should greet each other with that shared miracle in mind. No one from 150 years ago is alive. No one today will be alive 150 years hence (barring medical miracles). And this Earth? A teeming, violent, buzzing, symphonic, fragile, resilient, chaotic yet ultimately precious place is the only place like it anywhere. This tiny tiny little light, this soft soft little sound in an infinity of empty space yet we live as though there are billions of Earths just a footstep away.