some people think that they’re right because what they believe in is quite dramatically ancient. yet what about those truths even older?
nuwa & fuxi
do i see compass & square with depictions of black sun and white sun amidst cosmic constellations? male & female / yin & yang (even buddha & dao!) traversing the universe peacefully while leaving behind a star-studded (or particle / matter studded) trail of double-helix?
***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully typeset version is part of the SYSTEMICS II book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
[ on why writers aren’t writers anymore and publishers aren’t publishers ]
I came upon this funny discussion between Amazon and Hachette the other day (chance, fate, arrangement …) and since it really coincides with recent developments on my end, I decided to dedicate a few words on this. As things stand in terms of present-day reality unfoldment (what I exactly mean by that I’ll go to show), I’d consider, seen from both my angles as an Author and Publisher, the following conclusions to be quite valuable.
really happy to have released my ‘little booklet to break the spell’ for lulu, exactly 12 years after it had seen the light of day on christmas 2009.
may scrub ebook editions, so make sure you get a real copy – ‘owning something’ as opposed to supposedly great reset ‘own nothing be happy’ sentiments …
***UPDATE – i have now scrubbed all ebook editions. spring 2024. they’re pathetic, lol.
another ‘open letter’, this time a job application i composed in response to an ad by austrian ‘wochenblick’, a weekly newspaper (and a new tv station called ‘auf1’ since last month). they’re one of the very few ‘independent’ news outlets (especapially among german speaking ones) and i felt thrilled when i wrote this thoughtful and sensitive piece to perhaps become part of changing the totally rotten and corrupt media landscape in germany, austria and switzerland.
***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS II book.
(made available to read online for free once in a while or generally with a donation based password.)
[ about notions of home, real and imagined, written for a homeless shelter open-mike gig ]
I
It used to be that the home is where the hearth is. It was, for the most part of human history, the centre of living, the always welcoming source of food, warmth and communication. Entire Greek cities used to be centered around the original fireplace laid down by their respective founders. It had to be kept burning as the flickering symbol of a flourishing society for as long as the city that grew around it existed.
Things progressed, obviously, and after many decades of struggles and petty achievements, as the new centre-of-home has now established itself a mighty piece of flashy machinery. The television. So much for the evolution of mankind.
so this is where our promotional activities culminate it seems, at least for now. everything left to say on this project is there on this little inconspicuous piece of work. i’m well pleased with this, not only design-wise where i’m for instance getting the cute apple dingbats skull out of the dustbin. it works even in tinyiest sizes and the layers of meaning revealing themselves are extraordinary, the more you look at it and really think about it.
about the latter, the shades of meaning, i’ve come across a red-white-and-black packaged dvd of ‘blow up’ the other day, where a brilliant commentary reveals so many more layers that would definitely remain hidden from the casual viewer.
for a while i’ve been thinking whether we should run a teaser campaign but in the end we decided against it. as you all know, i don’t like hype at all and considering the present situation where i’m somewhat proven correct on this, a situation where campaigning, in the face of gigantic truths unravelling, is increasingly rendered thoroughly ad absurdum, it could be said, that any more than a mere notification of availability, any hustling or underhanded marketing strategy, would imply that whatever is attempted to be sold, as being suspicious, if not outright dodgy.
***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of both the SYSTEMICS II as well as the MORE LOVE book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
[ a little experimental essay on something rather enormous ]
Better begin with what it is not. Let’s say, for the purpose of this paper, trying to cover the human angle from a purely human vantage point – whatever it is for animals and plants, for humans it isn’t. Yes, propagation does occur (sometimes is getting out of hand) but a pure angle of biologism seems utterly ridiculous in the face of what we’re going to say. Besides, what is Life anyway? Who’s to say that only molceular-biological duplication patterns constitute life? Hasn’t it been talked about in the Buddha school, for example, that everything is alive and the mere frictional movement of matter can give birth to new matter?
download link from there. if you get a chance to pick up one of the precious hand-made copies, here is a picture of their shelf situation at cafe 1001. they’re the ones at the bottom. cards of my books are to the left:
a more elaborate rationale of POEMS & SNIPPETS
Like all my other work, the POEMS & SNIPPETS are very responsible about maintaining what I’d like to call a ‘thread of righteousness’. The sheer amount of information available today makes it virtually impossible (unless one cultivates an upright teaching of ‘The Law’) to discern straight from crooked, aboveboard from underhanded, righteous from wicked or, simply put, ‘good’ from ‘bad’. The whole conspiracy scene, for instance, has been infiltrated by yet higher conspiracies and those again of even higher ones in order to establish a covering of tracks and a climate of utter confusion, leading to deception within deception, without the hope to see any light amidst an endless loop of digging in dirt. The ‘Powers’ (let’s call them that way for now) have essentially used any possible flaw of human frailty and its tragic pettiness to lead them astray from true history, the truth about the human body and any true human heritage. The goal of this undertaking is essentially something everyone is supposed to enlighten to for themselves and shall thus be labeled – in here at least – ‘unspeakable’.
The ridiculous theory of evolution is a good example of how such large-scale deception can take place. I was indoctrinated myself as a kid in school. Charles Darwin had been timid, apparently, when he was putting it forward (one could almost say he was ‘bullied’ into publication by dark forces around him). It also had, it must be repeated, an embarrassing racist innuendo to start with. He, like most people of his social sphere, honestly believed that black people were an evolutionary link between humans (them) and monkeys. They glossed that over later on, after Hitler and during (hypocritical) bouts of ‘political correctness’. But regardless, there was and is up until today not a single piece of evidence for any intermediate species although the geological column as well as the present world should be flooded with exactly those forms of life, if any reasonable logic is to be put into tangible practice. Later ideas to tackle this problem like Elliott Gould’s ‘hopeful monster’ or anti-pope Richard Dawkins’ snobby adult children fairly tales simply take the piss for those who do know. Which is not to say that those authors haven’t actually lost the plot themselves (due to their flawed an used attachments for fame and glory perhaps) to be ‘earnestly’ wallowing in such complete delusion. Anyway. Charles Darwin, after there still haven’t been unearthed any fossils to prove ‘his’ theory, was in great doubt about it in his later years. But for the higher purpose to be achieved – to separate the human reasoning from the dignified notion of ‘design’ to be led into the black hole of ‘randomness’ and ‘meaninglessness’ – the machinery was already rolling out impeccably at that stage. Information about all of this does exist, but within the established mud-pit is really not easy to be extracted aboveboard and righteously (‘The Evolution Cruncher’, behind its creationist packaging, is maybe as concise as it gets …).
Meanwhile, the cultivation community, (Gnostics, Hermeticists, Qabalists, Freemasons, religious scholars, yogis, etc), essentially everyone higher up in the food chain of ‘knowledge’, is obviously well aware of this. One just has to look into the infamous ‘protocols’ from the British library to realise the disdain of those well-versed in the Human Tradition towards ‘ordinary’ human beings, or the ‘mob’ (also known as the Hypcrites or the Ignorants), who’re deemed to be devoid of any kindness, human reasoning or virtue – and any student of history would agree on them having a point there. Why is this so? Until our present day, all of human history is essentially shrouded in mystery entirely. Why has the teaching of re-incarnation or transmigration mainly been passed on through the Wicca tradition in the West, for example? Why is almost everyone lying and seemingly, on the surface, even rewarded for it? Why are there still people left then, despite this prevailing ignorance, mediocrity and darkness, who’re still upholding and even cherishing truth, virtue and kindness? Why are we born into suffering all along and die not knowing anything for most part. “Like a dog”, as G. I. Gurdjeff has aptly put it.
In this light, segregation from the contaminating dye vat of a ‘mob’ that just mindlessly follows any however ludicrous flights of fancy or wherever they’re sheepishly being led astray by tapping into their petty ‘flaws’, makes a lot of sense as cultivators everywhere and at all times were very aware of. Following the crowd, although giving the fake-impression of safety, doesn’t resolve any of our core problems. To be answering the ultimate question of “why am I here?” is solemn and requires our utmost attention, solitude and dignity. Does it need bravery as well? In a hyped-up stream of vanity, pretending to not die, perhaps. Or while being entangled in ridiculous games or power struggles among each other or between the sexes. Or while being busy with finger-pointing at various ‘authority’ figures to put our blame for any twitching unease. The true tragic, perhaps, of human existence might as well be that by trying to fool someone or something – fate, friends, god(s), society, life, the system, whatever – we’re only fooling ourselves, really, and the only one to blame for this ‘notional habit’ is again, only ourselves. While the loss and the regret might as well be eternal beyond the mere cycle of transmigration (if, let’s say, the Asura realm Buddhism talks about does indeed exist – the nine layers of heaven forming the three-realms of our perceptual confines: Heaven, Earth and Netherworld).
This is getting quite large now but just to conclude, coming back to deception, I’d like to use modern science as another example. Any trail of thought is based on axioms or working models. If the axiom at some stage turns out to be not valid anymore then the whole building, however vast, crumbles like a giant deck of cards. It is thus, that science follows ‘avenues’. The avenue that the ancient Greeks followed was different than the avenue that the civilisation who came to build the first pyramids in Egypt. And the Chinese human body science leading to things like acupuncture, say, followed a different trail altogether again.
What cultivation is, essentially, is the ‘highest science’. Why it has been kept ‘secret’ for most part is a question that touches pretty high levels. Like, why has the Divine created this environment in the first place? Certainly not because the Gods were bored. The Gnostics, Qabalists, Alchemists, etc were all studying ancient scriptures to learn. Knowledge was primarily encoded in stories as they provide the amazing ability to be passed on through centuries on one hand, and on the other hand offer the initiates to decode them according to their own level of understanding while concealing their message to those ‘unworthy’ of knowing.
Even more secret teachings involved the human body and the magic arts – elixir, the philosopher’s stone, the third eye, chakras, apertures, etc. What is widely known as ‘meridians’ in Chinese medicine is only the very tip of an iceberg of knowledge that has been passed on secretly over millennia through Daoist cultivation practices, for instance, who talk about ‘small heavenly circuit’ and ‘great heavenly circuit’ or about the Microcosm of the human body being equally vast than the Macrocosm of the universe outside of it. Studying the human body, life and nature directly is consequently a much more advanced science than the geeky probing for smaller particles through the prosthetics of clumsy machinery or the stretching of one’s imagination through mathematical formulas relating to the origin of the cosmos – while all-the-while ignorantly taking oneself out of the picture. “It’s a particle if you look at it and a wave if you don’t” (Quantum physics). Right.
Molecules that are constantly moving (waves), connected with everything else in the cosmos through mysterious intricate rotating mechanisms are rendering a three-dimensional animation for our equally molecular flesh eyes that we have been taught to call, perceive and regards as ‘tangible reality’, that’s the true situation, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the theory of gravity is only yet another theory. Doesn’t sand actually fly off a plate when we spin it?
So much so well. Happy digging with an upright mind and a compassionate heart.
Hope you enjoy the show :)
Reinhard Schleining
London, 5th July 2012
© 2012, all rights reserved
***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
[written for FLUX magazine, issue 69: ‘ideas that could change the world’]
¶
LIKE A SALT-CRYSTAL, or a colony of ants, every framework has its structure. The structure of our human journey has been the societal network of Rank and Status. We spend our lives mainly chasing illusory promises and dreams within this structure, ultimately moulding ourselves into the Persona / Profile / Stereotype which our parental, cultural and sociological programmes compel us to become. These mechanisms are what game theory utilises. A loophole of human consciousness. We’re predictable. We’re not free at all. The Paradigm of Outside-answers, Outside-blame, runs through most of our Human Endeavours. We can ‘do whatever we want’ (capitalist piss-take freedom) as long as we’re not looking Inside, discover ‘something’ (Truth) Inside of ourselves, lest the ultimate punishment of social segregation is awaiting.
***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
I – SATURN & PLUTO
¶
SO WE’VE HAD the first hit, from around new year’s eve up until a couple of weeks back. Several aspects of what it means, Pluto in Capricorn, have already shown their first, subtle glimpse. Since Pluto is now back in Sagittarius again, until later on in November, we have a chance to reconsider our stance towards those passing Jupiter related issues (Jupiter as the ruler of Sagittarius), which we’ve had to integrate into our collective framework since 1992. The overindulging, celebrity-worshipping credit-card-spenders compulsively feeding on cultural and culinary junk food, as well as the Viagra-popping whore-humpers earning big bucks under the magic wings of multinational corporations will both have to cut down quite a bit on their life-styles. The learning outcome, according to modern Astrology, will be for us to be stripped bare of any illusions and hopes [JUPITER] which do not adhere to the ultimate, naked truth at this time and age [PLUTO]. We’re asked to display a healthy, mature attitude towards our vision of growth [JUPITER] and this way understand our actual role in what we commonly perceive as our fate or destiny [PLUTO]. Any over-inflated ego might easily burst like a bubble, leaving behind the bleakness of what is left, without fake, glitter and fame.
This streamlining of excess during the next couple of months will pave the way neatly for what is about to come, once Pluto will finally start its full journey through Capricorn. Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, is an Astrological symbol for our concept of Reality, of the Framework, the perception of Time passing. It also stands for our internal fabric, the wiring in our brain as well as the molecular structure of our DNA. Everything we perceive as the visible, tangible reality around us, is traditionally associated with Saturn (it is also the furthest away Planet we can still see via the retina on our flesh eyes). Saturn is also The System, the political / social structure. Psychology, the mechanics of our day-to-day interactions, is therefore also a Saturn related issue. Boundaries are Saturn. The skin as the interface between Me and You is also Saturn related, as well as the bones, the structure we stand on. To express the planetary transit in a nutshell we could say that Pluto would probe into our understanding of Reality [SATURN] and squeeze out the essence of what we need to do [PLUTO] in order to keep growing as a human society [PLUTO, SATURN]. Part of the truth is that everyone is connected with everyone else, we’re all in the same boat – namely a planet which can go, from time to time, through some really serious trouble. Whilst at the same time, our brains are making this all up, aren’t they, inexplicably wired into the Holo-movement of what we have come to call the Universe (according to the ingenious Quantum Physicist / Philosopher David Bohm – 1).
Let’s try and coin this Pluto / Saturn constellation into more practical terms: All our defence mechanisms to face the truth about ourselves and other people [SATURN] will be ruthlessly disintegrated [PLUTO]. How will this happen? Through the public awareness that Psychological Literacy is paramount in order to live a healthy and balanced life – not money, status, guns or religions. Because at the end of the day, what we call ‘our reality’ are simply those people around us, how they treat us and see us and how we ourselves feel about them. The eventual insight into our unhappiness – the psycho-mechanics of it – will compel us to get a grip on the reasons why our Life Scripts keep running the way how they do (as one of the true heroes of modern psychotherapy, Eric Berne, calls the emotional patterns set in place – through mother’s breast, family bathroom and dinner table – all before we even reach the age of six – 2).
Where does this lead us? It would point exactly at the ‘collective rise of consciousness’ as the more serious predictive sources would usually claim. And as a consequence, the breakdown of any too-rigid frameworks (corporate / religious / political) incapable to cope with this ever accelerating speed of collective growth. Through gaining psychological / emotional literacy we would be able to heal inside [MOON], work through our insecurities, anger and sadness, whilst we increasingly feel the need to do our own thing [SUN], whatever that means to us, in our sadly too-short life. A lot has to do with regaining the freedom to do what we should, according to what our heart really tells us. Failing it would result in an increase of pain [SATURN] as long as the deterioration of our core potential [PLUTO] continues. In a general public climate of emotional maturity, feelings like jealousy will increasingly come across as silly, embarrassing or even pathetic. In a world of ignorance, devilishly fuelled by the mystery of a cycle-of-abuse, there is simply no one to blame for any painful buttons being pushed on our fragile emotional space-suits. We just have to let go of any invalid suits – get real / naked – and all of a sudden we could be happy even under the cheapest, shabbiest of duvets. Instead of compensating with money the constant craving for a hot piece of meat (men) or hopefully one day meet somebody special to enter symbiotic salvation (women), we feel it is alright to accept the truth that we’re all alone in this Life – as soon as we can relax and actually enjoy it.
And yet, Psychology is of course not the highest plane of what we, this time and age, perceive as Ultimate Reality. There are many Planes, many Angles, many Dimensions. Each of us has vastly different ones and they furthermore even change all the time. Preferably, our Planes / Views are supposed to be constantly rising, so everything makes more sense as we look back on our own, individual growth patterns and thus become able to clearly identify many of the others around us. In the end, we need to subscribe to Beliefs and Values which are as much in touch with the Truth as ‘humanly’ possible. As long as they can convincingly describe what we really feel inside, we should be absolutely fine. But if not, we’ve got a problem, since any decisions we arrive at from those subscribed Beliefs and Values are essentially political. They systemically pave our way into a quite predictable outcome of personal – and therefore, however marginal, collective – future. I feel that this is somewhat the crux in our historical development as a society, that psychology, culture and politics are in fact intrinsically linked. Any political concept, be it Socialism, Capitalism, Democracy, will be bound to fail if it cannot ensure the psycho-hygiene of its people, thus creating the fertile cultural soil from which society can be successfully nourished from within, grow in the most beautiful way.
It would be difficult enough to achieve such an Utopian state of society. But there are quite a few other things involved, it seems. Stargates, other dimensions, extra-terrestrials, timespaces and space-times. Sub-quantums, holographic universes and shuffle brains. All sorts of sometimes more, sometimes less reasonable conspiracy blurb, as well as fairly inexplicable post-ice-age sudden seeding of knowledge – not to mention 2012, of course.
¶
¶
II – 2012
¶
WHAT’S THE latest story on this? According to David Wilcock, anyone who’s either been gifted enough by supernatural abilities, or by otherwise using one of the apparently existing time-travel devices (reverse-engineered from the pineal gland and UFO navigation chairs found back in the forties!!!) only encountered White Light as they hit the date 21st of December 2012 on their journeys. Whilst further down the timeline they’d all see entirely different futures. Like so many other mythologically encoded clues embedded in our culture, this reminds us of a scene in a movie. In this case it is Luke Skywalker having to face the illusion of Darth Vader in a small cave on Yoda’s planet where whatever he takes with him into the cave is what he is eventually going to be confronted with. Could this be the way how it works? Are we really – to such an mind-boggling extent – creating our very own futures?
In this light, it is definitely important for the existence of timetravel technology to be kept strictly secret, since our flawed ego-states would inevitably lead to rather horrifying, selffulfilling time-feedback loops, the closer we would get to the 2012 date. But on the other hand, perhaps that is what’s already happening, the White Light is the shrieking feedback, and perhaps it is true, that we can be anything we want to be, a grain of sand, a superhero or a galaxy, as we roll over the galactic centre on that miraculous date. It would be a paradigm-shift indeed …
I personally quite like the idea, however radical, so instead of going on about global catastrophes, conspiracies, aliens and the likes, let’s stick with the White Light for the moment. It also ties in nicely with the general concept of psychology, that through our emotional outlook we are masters (or slaves) of our very own, customised future. This way, a paradigm-shift would already mean that maybe external growth – doggedly pursuing our worldly interests – will not be that important anymore. It happens on its own anyway, as time passes, people come and go and new overall growth patterns are constantly being created, even in ‘stillness’. And then, perhaps, our lives will be more about internal growth – self-cultivation – about becoming a ‘better’ human being. “Returning to our True Selves”, as the Dao School, for Millennia, has succinctly described it. Could there be something like ‘salvation’, then, in the end?
Why not? Perhaps major religions do actually allow us to cultivate our Souls / Selves into different unitary Paradises (as contemporary Master of both the Dao and the Buddha School, Mr. Li Hongzhi, suggests – 3). And so do perhaps other, more solitary pagan / shamanic cultivation ways of mind and body. Perhaps we can arrive in Heaven even within our lifetime, as preferrably conceptualised in the East, when we for instance reach Enlightenment / Consummation / Unlocking through successfully cultivating Buddhahood or the Dao. We would then be able to use our Third Eye to see the Ultimate Truth and our real place within the hitherto unfathomable Fabric of the Universe. Perhaps it is then all really true, as Sages throughout thousands of years have always adamantly been claiming, that what we see with our flesh eyes (or telescopes and microscopes) is only a veil, a ‘deception’, covering ‘hermetically’ what actually, really is there.
Being born into blindness, without ever being able to see before we inevitably crash into ingorant death, sounds like a rather cruel predicament, doesn’t it? It might therefore as well be that Earth is in fact a ‘prison planet’, as many of a counter-historian is bold enough to claim. But also, perhaps, it’s just the way how it is, that we’ve completely lost touch with our True Nature, on our hefty sail-ride throughout History. The truth is, we don’t know anything about our True History. We’ve only been given hints through scripture and by ourselves came up with all sorts of funny theories. Behind the back of the currently envogue Darwinist Canon, for instance, there is an entire ‘Hidden History of the Human Race’, reaching back Hundreds of Millions of Years (all meticulously recorded in a book by the same name). In this staggering scope, we’ve certainly been faced with total annihilation numerous times, lately not long ago, only between 15.000 – 7.500 BC, the most recent ice-age. In the more remote past, there must’ve been many meteorites, tsunamis, volcanoes, earth quakes, continental drifts – even earth-crust replacements or tectonic shifts could have taken place. There also used to be an atmosphere on Mars, in most likelihood, to remind us of the reality of complete planetary annihilation. And the asteroid belt could’ve been part of our Earth once, as well as our dear, beautiful Moon. Maybe a tenth planet hit us and split us apart, we simply don’t know.
Countless theories have been put forward to shed light into the entire Mystery of ‘why we are here’. But the word ‘theory’, as David Bohm wisely points out, comes from the Greek word for theatre. It is being put forward, presented on stage and it is therefore only another angle which happens to make sense – seems to be real – to the rest of us, at one particular time-spacecoordinate on our galactic journey. Without having our third eye / pineal gland open, and by being trapped in the Three Realms of our concurrent dimensional plane, we can only perceive as Reality what our alleged monkey-brains allow us to ‘see’. In terms of Quantum Physics, the torrent / stream of Matter, the Explicate Order (David Bohm), persistently permeates Us Beings – and is thus being decoded in realtime, like a flickering movie, by our desperately grasping Consciousness / Mind – before it dissolves back into the unfathomable Implicate Order of the Ground (God, the Aristotelean Unmoved Mover) where everything originally comes from.
Contemplating all of this, perhaps those who until the 2012 deadline, either through science, religion or self-cultivation, can penetrate through the illusory curtain of in-your-face reality, will be able to truly ascend on that prodigous day. Perhaps some of them will be levitating in ‘broad daylight’, perhaps with a glass of champagne in their hand, over a planet which has just been saved from extinction by everyone’s collective efforts. Or perhaps nothing will happen at all and life goes on as usual, similar to back in 1999, when no ‘millennium-bug’ brought everything to a worldwide, hyped-up standstill.
In any case, the planets will keep moving. From around 2011 to 2015, for instance, electrifying Uranus will join deep-grinding Pluto in a tensional square to unearth the same issues which the Hippies first raised during the conjunction of the 1960’s. Whether by then we’ll be throwing computer-generated Molotov cocktails into fascist corporate mainframes or whether we’ll have successfully learned how to ‘fly’ – be truly free – the likely reality will largely depend on how we cultivate / conduct ourselves in the years to come. Pluto’s next stop in Aquarius at around 2024 will then give us a lift into yet more lofty realms of existence. By then, everything should be eventually ready to progress into the 2.160 years of the next Precessional Age – the long-anticipated Age of Aquarius – which will be ruled by emotionally detached, but utterly collective-conscious Air-planet Uranus.
The bottom line is that our future is entirely up to us, really. My final prognosis therefore is:
We Shall See!
¶
1 – David Bohm, ‘Wholeness and the Implicate Order’, 1980 & ‘The Ending of Time’ (with J. Krishnamurti), 1985
2 – Eric Berne, ‘Games People Play’, 1964 & ‘What Do You Say After You Say Hello?’, 1972
***EDIT – a slightly more polished version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.
(made available to read online for free once in a while or generally with a donation based password.)
[ heartfelt ponderings on the psycho-mechanics of human failure and freedom ]
I
WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING
As we vigourously slither towards yet another year’s end – 2007 – we once again wonder: What the hell is it? What is still wrong with this world? Why are we still killing, abusing, torturing, spoiling, if all we really want in life – from life – is just to be HAPPY? Are we again not going to get anywhere near, also not this year, towards perhaps at least marginally altering the glooming crash course of our poor planet? Climate change, poverty, famine, terrorism, environmental mayhem. The terrifying prospect of nuclear wars. Corrupt and cynically anti-liberal governments. Intensified media-spin of pivotal public information. Further intrusion into our ever so sensitive privacy. And, on a more personal level, the soaring deterioration into depression and resignation, intertwined with the weird sensation of being increasingly alienated from people around us – friends, families, partners, colleagues, lovers. Continue reading
***EDIT – part of the LOVE ETC book.
(made available to read online for free once in a while or generally with a donation based password.)
[a short story]
¶
¶
¶
Swaying down the catwalk like she’s done so many times before, the photographers’ flashes this time spit up on her like venomously striking sniper-fire. Zoe’s presenting the fifth outfit of McQueen’s Spring / Summer collection – when it suddenly dawns on her – she isn’t at all ready to die. Her long, staggering legs bend and everything’s slowly fading away as she stumbles off the planks she’s thus walked herself to stardom on. A unified gasp ruffles the audience. The soundtrack of the show, a bizarrely confident punk track, cuts-off abruptly as if backstage somebody’s head’s just been smashed up against the mixing desk’s volume control. People are panicking all over the place. Another storm of flashes strikes even the remotest corner of the elegant Parisian Art-Deco venue. Behind Zoe’s closed eyelids, everything’s starting to slide away. “Where’s the fucking ambulance?”, she can vaguely hear someone screaming. The voice is distorted and not much different from the all-encumbering noise in her head which increasingly seems to be coming from millions of miles away. From some other dimensions? She’s grasping some last, fading fragments of tremor. Until there’s only just silence – absolute.
Has this been it?
Lucy from the agency’s sitting next to her in the neat and bright room of the private clinic they’ve booked her into. She’s completely withdrawn into an inane game on her latest phone-toy.
“Hey – oh wow … Zoe – you’re back,” she suddenly bursts out, clasping her hands in front of her chest like a child. “How d’you feel?”
She bends down to kiss both her cheeks as if they’d just met at some party. Such a sweet girl, Lucy. Kind-of totally innocent which is pretty hard to find these days, especially not in bloody fashion.
While Zoe’s slowly getting accustomed to her re-gained consciousness she notices that the sun is shining straight on her face. She can also hear birds twittering and their soothing tunes gracefully cocoon the grinding sounds of a remote city – was it Paris? Next to the window, a calendar’s showing some beach scene. Mediterranean. Lots of yachts – Nice, Cannes, Monaco? It is Sunday, it says, the 21st of July. A hot, French mid-summer afternoon.
Lucy tells her that instead of coming to see how she’s coping, David, her current ‘boyfriend’, pretends to be simply too busy to fly all the way across the Atlantic. Presumably he’s shagging yet another talentless wannabe actress, in yet another generic Manhattan five-star hotel, instead. She can also already see the guys back at the agency, looking all deeply concerned and-what-not but in fact only adding-up any financial losses her accident might’ve caused to their annual company turnover. Most of her friends are unfortunately just as shallow. And as to her mother – she wouldn’t even dream of contacting her, a deranging ex-crack-whore rotting away in a West London old people’s home. She’s utterly alone, basically. And she’s just had a near-death-experience – a ‘wake-up-call’ as her counsellors would soberly put it. And yet – weirdly – she cannot seem to find the emotional tune to drown herself in any misery or some kind of self-pity. Instead, she just looks at sugar-sweet Lucy and smiles. At this very moment, she’s deciding to change her life completely. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do or how she’s going to do it. But things have definitely got to be different. Who is she anyway? She basically hasn’t got a clue. A brand-new and much more genuine Zoe is only just dying to be born.
“To be honest, Lucy, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my entire life”, she whispers. Her voice is still weak. She‘s breathing-in fresh air and it explodes in her lungs sharply. This is how it must’ve felt at the time of her original birth. Another couple of deep breaths and she’s beginning to feel quite inebriated. Everything’s spinning, her face flushes. Goose-bumps are crawling all-over her body. It is as if she’s just downed several salty shots of tequila in one go before hitting the stage life has chosen for her to be on from now on. With confidence brimming and a huge smile on her face, she’s scattering her fullyblown kit across a gathering audience of befuddled fools. Until she just stands there, naked and sacred. And up for virtually “To be honest, Lucy, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my entire life”, she whispers. Her voice is still weak. She‘s breathing-in fresh air and it explodes in her lungs sharply. This is how it must’ve felt at the time of her original birth. Another couple of deep breaths and she’s beginning to feel quite inebriated. Everything’s spinning, her face flushes. Goose-bumps are crawling all-over her body. It is as if she’s just downed several salty shots of tequila in one go before hitting the stage life has chosen for her to be on from now on. With confidence brimming and a huge smile on her face, she’s scattering her fullyblown kit across a gathering audience of befuddled fools. Until she just stands there, naked and sacred. And up for virtually anything.
From her Upper West-side apartment she’s got a lovely view over Central Park, which is always nice, for sure, but freaking awesome in summer. She bought the place about two years ago and it was certainly one of the most life-changing decisions she’s ever made – somewhere along the lines of her abortion three years earlier. Although she really liked the guy back then and in a way getting pregnant by him had felt somehow right, she decided against becoming a mother at those particularly early stages of her career. And puff – just like that – the very same career almost overnight shot through the roof, cementing her face and her body on countless fashion and lifestyle titles all over the world. Funny how things go sometimes.
“Thanks Rachel – yeah it’s definitely been a wake-up call. I just can’t carry on like this anymore,” she says on the phone. She’s talking to her best friend, a similarly successful model – although she’s got to star in an urban-cool glam-rock pop-promo not long ago and is now keen to get into movies. Zoe lies on the couch and rants into her flip-top.
“I haven’t done anything else in my life apart from modelling and I know it sounds pretty pretentious, because, y’know, we’re all stars and whatever”, she contemplates. Rachel feels silent on the other side. “But at the end of the day we’re still always hanging out with the same bunch of people, y’know – ‘our own kind’ – and the rest of the world feels like a threat in a way – d’you know what I mean?”, she asks Rachel although she herself doesn’t really know what she’s actually talking about. Well. She’s gonna take a bath, she decides.
“Anyway, good to be back and let’s catch up soon. You going to Giorgio’s party tonight? … well perhaps see you there then. Byyye.” She throws her phone on the loo seat and slides-off her panties. Steaming-hot water pours into the warm and soft polymer-tub matching the luminescent-green toilet next to it. She found them both in her favourite designer-shop downtown, like the eggshaped, musk-flavoured candles neatly spread-out across the room. She ignites some and turns-off the main light to have one of her favourable looks at herself in the mirror-wall facing the tub. Sighing and satisfied with what she sees, she finally slides into the water.
This is it, her life so far. Looking at it from the outside it isn’t actually too bad. Only that ‘something’ deep inside her – something essential – is missing ‘something’ in it. After puffing away half of the joint a Moroccan model-friend left her the other day – “is really niiice”, he promised – it gradually dawns on her that she’s got to get out of here in order to find out what this ‘something’ may be.
“To say I’m shocked would be a complete understatement, Zoe”, Françoise throws back at her, looking down on Broadway from the striking panorama-view of her office.
“It’s only six months, Françoise, not such a big deal. It’s not that I’m telling you I’m quitting, is it?” Zoe takes a deep breath. “Why don’t you look at it as a big holiday, I haven’t had one for ages anyway”, she further reasons. A pin-board behind the desk is plastered with pictures of ethereal, pretty outlandish models.
“I need a holiday too, believe me”, Françoise admits after a while.
“You should get one, Françoise. It really doesn’t help anyone if you’re not happy.”
Françoise doesn’t look at her but has spotted a strangely peculiar ant crawling along 127 floors below – and it might as well be one of her model-scouts she’s stubbornly convinced for a while.
“In a way, your whole life is like an endless stream of addictions”, she finally says, almost to herself, “and at some point your career, your hobbies, your friends and your love-life simply become yet another series of bad habits – increasingly difficult to break the older you get, really.”
The humming chords of another day passing in New York City are all they hear for a while. Never before has Zoe seen her agent this serious and the whole confrontation has turned out quite touching – if that’s the right expression.
But then Françoise-the-business-woman returns and their conversation changes tune once again. “So I’ll take your new bookings from the 1st of January, is that correct?”, she wants to know.
Zoe laughs, “you’ll get over it, Françoise. There are lots of other hot models under your roof to keep you perfectly happy.” She steps over and kisses her cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple of months again. I won’t take any mobile with me and I’ve decided not to do any emails either.”
Zoe’s spreading her arms and bending her knees in an ironical stage-performance. “This will be it then …”
“So where’s this place you’re going again?”, Françoise asks her, mainly to keep her lurking melancholy under control.
“Iceland. A friend’s already been there a couple of times and she says it’s absolutely amazing.”
Françoise glances down on Broadway again. She catches another ant-scout and thus once again successfully represses any too uncomfortable emotions. “Sounds great”, she mutters, in her mind somewhere else already.
“Take it easy, Françoise. I’m already looking forward to seeing you again”, Zoe says in her sweetest voice. “Byyye.”
She turns around and leaves the office, passing by a ridiculously busy agency floor – to reach the postmodern, slick hyper-speed-lifts bringing her back down to baseline.
“Yeah baby, exactly, for six months … that’s right.” She’s back at her place and on the phone to her ‘boyfriend’ David. For a few minutes he’s totally with her, something he hasn’t been since they’d met at last year’s Golden Globe after-show party and which also then only lasted right until they’d fucked-out their brains back in her room, coked-up and turned-on like two lonesome lab-rabbits. Now he’s again behaving like this boy whose mother’s just told him to stay put while she’s gonna pop down to do some extensive Christmas shopping. Her announcement’s obviously triggered his ‘caring instinct’ again – let’s call it ‘love’ to keep things simple. Well well, my poor David – perhaps you do want to progress into some deeper and more serious, perhaps even lasting relationships, after all?
“You won’t miss me anyway”, she jokes while packing her suitcase. “Yes, of course I will”, she replies to his almost fatherly advice to look after herself. Toothbrush? Tweezers? She roams through her bathroom cabinet. His tone of voice’s gone back to normal again. Like so often, he’s probably with a girl or two and even as they’re talking about her leaving for quite a long period of time, one of them will have already pulled down his pants in giggling anticipation of his admittedly accomplished lovemaking skills. She’s suddenly got to laugh at this thought. He just loooves sex and never really gets tired of telling her – good old David.
“Well David, I’ll see you again in winter. Have a good time until then – I know you will. Thanks. Byyye.” She closes the phone and chucks it onto the bed next to the suitcase. Has she got everything? It really doesn’t matter since most of the time she’ll be naked anyway. “The only thing you need at the retreat is your Self”, it promises in the brochure. Somehow this makes sense, to turn up like a baby, fragile and exposed, if any rebirth is supposed to happen.
¶
¶
¶
The mud is completely covering her body like a second skin. She can feel the cooling, caustic consistency of the loam-pack even inside her ears. Alone in the darkened room, which looks a bit like the tomb for an intergalactic war hero, she notices that this earth doesn’t smell too bad at all. Slowly drying, its rejuvenating juices are dissipating into her slender and tanned body. The whole thing is indeed beyond anything she could’ve ever imagined and – well, definitely absolutely amazing.
Later on in the evening, she has a swim in one of the hot sulphur-pools outside. Through the thick, crawling steam she can glimpse the vast ice-crusted landscape surrounding the spa. For a good while, she cheerfully paddles with her arms, hanging in the water, before leaning back to let herself float on the surface. The beauty of the stars, as they glitteringly flicker through heavy layers of steam, overwhelms her on the second day. She’s starting to cry – an already poriferous valve has suddenly burst open. Between alternating waves of pain and bliss she lets go, at once, of all the stress and tensions accumulated from years of hiding. The years of lying. And it just wouldn’t stop for another three days.
“Do you like it here?”, the short, chubby guy asks from the opposite bench of the sauna. At this time they’re the only guests there. His white, fluffy towel has been carefully draped around his waist so that the flabby chunk of his belly can present itself to the dry heat of the room with a sweaty but polite bow. She’s noticed this guy for a couple of days now. Despite her flawless body and her pretty relaxed but all-the-more in-your-face way to present it, she hasn’t seen any signs of the submissive demeanour most other men would usually display in her presence. She’s getting up from her comfy position for her cute, pear-shaped tits to poke straight into his eye. Not the slightest reaction and he doesn’t seem to be gay either – how funny.
“For me it’s the first time I’m here and to be honest with you I’m totally blown away by the whole thing”, she finally answers, introducing herself on the way – “I’m Zoe.” She stretches her slender neck every-so-subtly.
“I’m Paul, it’s very nice to meet you”, he says, “for me it’s also the first time and I’m also absolutely loving it.”
“It’s beyond any dream.” She gives him one of her sweetest smiles. He seems to be a really nice guy.
“I’m a … molecular biologist”, he then says, a bit awkward, somewhat out of context, almost as if he was a bit ashamed of it, but then again, not really.
“Oh wow, that sounds really fascinating.” For some reason she feels very relaxed with this guy and somehow trusts him completely – although she couldn’t exactly pin-down why. “I’m working in fashion, basically selling clothes with my looks”, she tells him, leaving her job description as low-key as she’s spontaneously being capable of.
“I see”, he nods, understanding.
Still smiling, she goes back into her favourite lying position. It feels so good to meet this guy.
A friendly staff member pops in with a wooden water-bucket, obligatory at half-hourly intervals. “Aaah, very good”, Paul welcomes her and then gets up while the woman leaves again quietly. He draws water out of the bucket, adds a few drops of the mandarin oil he’s been hiding somewhere deep in his towel. Then pours it all in one go on the gleaming-hot stones of the heater. Outbursts of steam keep flooding the room and they’re both groaning in unison – eaten alive by zillions of rejoicingly gnawing water-particle piranhas.
Breakfast usually takes place between seven and eight in the morning. If you don’t turn up on time you’ll not get anything to eat for another five hours. After almost two weeks, she still can’t get used to the tight regime of the sanctuary. She’d gone to bed late last night and couldn’t possibly drag herself out of it this morning. Now she’s bloody starving and unfortunately has got to hold it for another three hours. To manage, she opts for the steam-room. There are a few people there. Paul is one of them, although almost entirely hidden behind the thick fumes.
His day’s so far been quite good. He enjoyed a green loam face-pack in the morning, followed by some therapeutic deep-organ massage which had been really painful to start with but after a while felt almost outrageously relieving. This was then followed by a refreshing swim in the eucalyptus-chambers around the main pool area. He now feels fairly ‘content’, if that’s the right expression. ‘Happy’, if that wouldn’t sound too silly.
After everyone else has left, him and Zoe move closer together. She stretches back into her favourite position, naked and dignified. A goddess. Endless layers of fog sweep through the room like vacant, translucent visions.
“Did you know that we’re continuously photocopying ourselves?”, Paul starts. His voice is calm and consistent, she finds it extremely comforting to listen-in to. “This photocopying seems to be Life as we know it.”
She doesn’t feel the need to answer or to interrupt. In fact, she can’t wait to hear more.
He continues, “every single minute we photocopy several kilometres of our DNA. That’s like … – … it’s in a way like the heartbeat of the universe, isn’t it?”
With her eyes closed she’s riding the waves of thought he’s just imparted on her. It’s quite an odd journey but she can’t remember a time when she’s felt that much at ease with herself.
According to his experience, it’s definitely not an easy task to take the truth about life on board – about us, the futile, transitory machinery that we are. Awareness needs time to settle. This gives him a chance to look at her for the first time properly. Through the heavy, hot fumes he examines her excruciatingly flawless grace. What a sheer perfect code. It is in fact of such mind-boggling magnificence that he can’t remember of ever having seen anything like it, not even under the microscope and most definitely not this alive and sprawled-out right in front of him. Her magnetism is so overpowering that he has to literally force himself to look away. Endorphins rush through his brain in a frenzy, underpinning his general contentment with a broad grin on his face. The hormones of love. Yes indeed, he does feel profoundly ‘complete’ at this particular freeze-frame of eternity. What an amazing experience. He breathes in and out deeply, indulging in the feast of comfort swelling up in his chest.
Slowly he carries on, letting it pour out from even deeper, this time. “Any sloppy copying alters the initial code and thereby results in mutations. Some of them are advancing us, making us ‘better’. But most of the time they’d simply just drag us down. Ageing itself is ultimately just a mutation.”
Heavy wafts of steam continue to float through the room quietly. Again, he’s letting the data settle before he eventually concludes, “hence life on earth is merely a six-million-years-long history of photocopying primordial soup-recipe to eventually look like you and me here, sweating away in an Icelandic steam-chamber.” Pause. “And while I’m talking to you and you’re listening to me we’re actually photocopying ourselves into the future.” Another pause, this time it is final.
She sighs. So this is what existence comes down to then. Here it is, the truth she’s always felt somehow. The steam above her head is now so dense that it almost seems to stand there, without any signs of movement, without any sense of weight, just waiting for something to happen, some code to be generated, some time to be passed, some light to be shed into yet more corners of darkness. Pinned down to her bench. her mind is drifting-off deeper into this world – the Real World, the Universe and her deserved place within. This is for sure the most amazing trip she’s ever had. Both her body and mind have never been more pristine and clear than at this very moment, in this timeless parallel-universe of an Icelandic steam-room where she’s having the time of her life with some overweight guy who just happens to be incredibly sweet. And she’s starting to feel like a crystal.
After another day of massages, steam-baths and saunas she wakes up from a dream where her and Paul have been touching each other in one of the sulphur-pools outside. The dream really irritates her, firstly because she hasn’t had any sexual ideas for ages. And secondly, because she doesn’t even remotely fancy Paul. Of course he’s really cool – an absolutely amazing guy and everything – but making love to him, that’s a different story entirely. Perhaps it is sad, but looks to her are really important and in this department Paul’s definitely not her kind of guy – sorry about that.
Unable to go back to sleep, she heads towards her kitchen. She flicks-on the kettle and prepares herself an organic nettle-tea. In the mini-fridge, there’s still a little bit left of the flame-grilled soya steak from the day before, garnished with still surprisingly succulent leaves of baby-spinach. She decides to devour it cold. The steady chewing calms down her itching nerves nicely. “I know, the realisation that our life is futile and pointless is a very lengthy and painful process”, she remembers Paul’s words and takes a sip off the tea. It is nice and further contributes to calming her down. Can she ever go back to her old life again? Could she basically ever do anything else than model, snort coke and hang out with people who’re only pretending to be her friends all the time? And what’s all this about Paul? It is true, she really likes him and everything and there’s something really strong goingon between them. But what does this ultimately mean?
It feels odd the next time they meet. There’s also a pang of loneliness in the air as she knows that he’ll leave in just a few days.
“I can’t sleep at the moment”, she starts today’s conversation in an attempt to distract from the extremely uncomfortable situation. He moves closer towards her on the sauna bench that day and rubs her back comfortingly. It must be the first time that they’ve actual physical contact. Although he remains as distant as ever, the gesture alone is soothing her.
“I know how it feels,” Paul says with a hoarse and low voice. Father to girl. It all feels so bloody comforting. Zoe resists the urge to drop her head on his lap, allowing herself to turn into the melting receiver of his delicate strokes through her hair. What the hell is happening? Could this be love then, after all? Is this how it feels, this ‘love’?
No, it’s simply impossible – it can not possibly be. And yet, there’s this almost painful urge to be close to him and … whatever, today she simply can’t deal with it.
“I’m really sorry, Paul”, she finally says and gently pats on his shoulder. She gets up, grabs her towel and heads towards the exit. Before she’s leaving, she turns round, with a shrug and a grimace indicating something like ‘it’s-just-too-hot-in-here-today’. And it skilfully allows her to escape without leaving any traces of tension or sadness behind. At least not this time.
They’re in the sulphur-pool outside. It’s around 11.30 pm and most guests have gone to bed already. This evening, there’s an icy breeze pulling the steam swiftly across the water. It’s Paul’s final night. A grey cloud of depression is hanging above their heads, waiting to come down as soon as they’d lose their frail composure. It’ll be extremely difficult to say goodbye. Of course they’ll try to stay in touch but it’s in reality highly unlikely. He lives somewhere in countryside England, with a wife and three kids. And she’s going to be back in New York again, with an after her absence most likely to be even busier timetable than ever before. The prospects of a friendship like this are not particularly rosy, are they? Perhaps an email every now and again. But she’s just not the kind of person to bother about typing what she feels into some machine connected to another machine. And she knows all-too-well that he wouldn’t be the kind of person either. Mutual holidays here in Iceland every two years? How pathetic.
“More or less this is it”, she thinks. “More or less this is it”, she says. Finally, after four months of innumerable loam-packs, steam-baths and massages, her thoughts are entirely in tune with her actions. Everything comes out pure and unadulterated.
“I’m not sure how to deal with this either”, he answers after a while. His voice is coarse and trembling.
The stars have now become completely hidden from them. They’re both entrenched in an infinite capsule of white fog. Here and now. The heartbeat of the universe. She’s resting her head on his shoulder and doesn’t say a thing. He also remains silent – staring blankly into the lucid, transiting steam as it keeps changing its shape, size and position.
Fractals. Fractals passing through time and space.
Both their lives are nothing more than this. But then again. They’re also nothing less.
¶
¶
london, june 2005 – march 2009
© 2005 – 2009, all rights reserved
