Let's All Look Up and Not See What's Right Infront of Us

This is a facebook status that states a positive self-prescribed outlook about events without necessary stressing whether or not I'll pursue the integral time-consuming, social-space-inhibiting steps essentially required to achieve my hallucinated dream, for which the optimistic outlook is referencing. Many will like this status while others will add their own positive truisms that are more or less re-worded versions of my own; which I'll in turn like even though they have nothing really to add or respond to what I wrote.

The Compromised Purging Flame of Consciousness

I had a dream. it was a collective exhibition, that took unedited grazings of events and from the shadows of their memories built a carousel of mirrors that mocked my reflection as it spun, and made the riders nauseous. A singing rogue with his ears perched on deaf musings seemed ignited alight by the velocity--he in fact, controlled the dials. I watched as down fell the motions of night's alumni, returning yet again to be seated amongst themselves as the valid audience of murder. I could do falsehood no greater disservice than by right this moment admitting to you that I believed myself a man, wrapped heavily in the permanent hands of Death. My lungs, once diving freely into the silken tapestries of air, now burrowed in the sketch of frantic; as they debated with retired reserve for the nerve to crawl the sharpness of chalky smoke. It burned the ions of sight, it froze the neon neurons of voice. A gasp funneled into my throat and there a knot of pain curled into a fetus before trembling into stone. It was in this nature that I withdrew from consciousness, omitted myself, sensibly, from the portions of space and time. Gently was I greeted by the crumbling void. Finally was it so that I washed away from the waking senses and found myself bound to the heat of the groaning dirt. Ablaze, became the dry cracks that drew thickening branches on the pavement. And as the fire stretched high, vividly and overzealously to the sky, with it went my flesh easily removed like wet posters. I awoke here and passing my hands over my skin, quickly confirmed the encasing flesh that dressed my naked soul had not been stripped. Disappointedly confirmed.

Ladders

Before reading Jeremy Narby's book, The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge--I watched Lars Von Trier's latest film, Melancholy. I dreamt that same night, after being exposed to the reoccurring, almost base image I found in Melancholy. The front lawn.

The characters are set in a manor, and the lovely house has a beautifully simple lawn in which, with a Magritte sense of surrealism, we see a sky with both a moon and a smaller earth-like planet--both casting two shadows onto earth. Much of the character's observations of the planet, Melancholia, occur under this perspective. We, the viewers, are placed with our backs to the front of the house, facing out into the sky, cup-framed by the u-shape green of the lawn and trees. Its this exact view that I saw in my dream that night. In the dream, I can't recall if it was day or night, it probably doesn't matter. In the middle of the lawn, however, I see a ladder. Erect, without any support, the ladder reaches upward. I don't climb it, nor does anyone else. There isn't anyone to climb it, at least I don't remember anyone being present. The ladder is perfectly centered and just stands there, being. This is the only part I remember from the dream.

The following day, a Friday, at work I briefly join a conversation about Time and after my shift has ended I end up in Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers. I am looking for anything on Time and practically have an anxiety attack upon picking up Einstein's work on relativity. The Cosmic Serpent caught my eye. If nothing else, the cover was a whole lot better than some of the other books. Somewhere along my debate on whether or not to purchase the copy, I opened up some pages and immediately found the word LADDERS, actually it was THE LADDERS! (all caps). I had watched a set of youtube videos by Freedom of the Soul, entitled DNA & the Serpent's Lie. These should've been the first to come forward along the forefront of my memory but all that came was the ladder from my dream. This, along with my interest in genes started by Richard Dawkins, lead me to read Narby's work.

I'm not here to review The Cosmic Serpent, which I did in fact enjoy. I'm not here to review Melancholia, which you've by now guessed and which I also did enjoy. I am not going to rant on about coincidences either but the one thing I got from Narby's work, is the idea about flexibility. Be flexible, keep an open mind--don't be afraid to connect things around you. In an Alan Watts jovially british voice, I hear someone say "play with the universe because it certainly wants to play with you."