Friday, January 7, 2011

Popping Candy, cool like life

Snap, crackle, pop, rice crispies only not.

Full of tartrazine, no fibre to be seen.

In my mouth, an electric storm,

I want to control it, but it journeys on its own,

from tongue to ears confuse



Hop, skip and jump, I want to play like the candy on my tongue

Feels like frivolity, carefree Duncan dance

Choreographed with no rules,

a way to live my life

Open mouth liberates changed experience

Music made with popping instrument

Death when lips touch, silenced



Thank God the packet, not infinite, has more

My mouth laughs

My mind races to reason

whirls for a moment as

Pop ‘n sound distract to non-sense

To end, the shutters of joy close

Aftermath, sugar induced mimic of play

What my mind doesn't know won't hurt it

So on New Years day I woke up. I went to the kitchen to prep as I was serving on a Vipassana course. Chop, chop, chop and for fun we baked! (anyone still with me?). Then to a meditation. All very innocent really, except for 3 days I had been in a routine of serve, eat, meditate, sleep, and the night before I had changed rooms with someone at her request. I had wanted my own room so the opportunity seemed like one to jump at. I over-ruled the little voice saying well, I am actually quite settled and happy where I am surrounded by wall of curtains and other close bodies asleep.


It is the meditation and the energy within the embrace of the mountains I previously christened Profile Mountains that must have been the catalyst. From the female dorms you can see human faces profiled at different angles and sizes and sexes along the profile of the mountains themselves. Very awesome. It is like having a grandfather or mother holding the space for you as you travel inward. It can’t have been the peace and quiet of meditating, because even to take a nap felt like work – to squeeze in the most amount of time in a short hour of zzzz was pressure to fall asleep, deeply, quickly. You can imagine how well that worked?

The new room was less than desirable for many reasons, and I realized that sometimes we get what we want but we were better off with what we got. Note to self, don’t want.

And the meditations (3 hours of 1 hour each) on day 2 which was New Years Eve were all excruciating as it seemed my mind would just not shut up, and my emotions were hovering dangerously close to that thing called anger…at someone in particular – maybe 2 someones, whose names I shall keep to myself to protect the innocent. I have since committed to figuring out how to let my emotions come out safely when they need to instead of being stoic. A deliciously frightening challenge. Do something every day that scares you, right? Enter, the weeping willow?

So meditation on Day 3 arrived with much trepidation. An hour. More emotional blackmail? And well, this is what I love about Vipassana, yes, there was more, but today was the unraveling of yesterday. Or rather, somewhere in yesterday I had processed so much that today was fresh, new, realized! A new kind of emotion surged up in my body, a whole body BORED. Then a whole body SMILE that couldn’t help but erupt on my lips. And a decision. Somewhere between bored and decision something happened. Bored is not necessarily the right word for what I experienced…it was boredom not with the situation, it was boredom with my year of decision making, none of which had really served ME, boredom with myself as I knew me, and an apparent idea of what I wanted (we see this theme again of what you want and what you need are not necessarily the same, and former not necessarily true, accurate, or good).

So, somewhere between boredom and SMILE I made a decision. A decision that made so little sense that I had to spend the rest of the day trying to let my mind catch up with this decision that seemed to have skipped the compulsory (?) hierarchical stopping places on the way to being made. But as I sat, completing the hour, I knew the decision was absolutely not negotiable. But, I will have to explain this decision, I will have to come up with reasons, I thought?

I love that meditation is so many things…

So, then I chopped, allowing a space for this decision to percolate. (If you wondering what the decision is, it really doesn’t matter – but broadly, is a decision to make different kind of decisions, because staying within the familiar of what and how I chose in the past hadn’t worked for so long, it was time to try alternatives as risky as they seemed). And, I looked forward to the next meditation session where I hoped that somewhere in my being, I would galvanize my own strength to stick to new guns. And all the while, my mind was trying to catch up with the decision. How could I have made this decision that my mind didn’t even know about?

And then, I sent out some feelers to people who know me, one opposed the decision with all the internal dialogue I had already thrown at it, another supported the decision with all the internal dialogue I had interjected in amongst the first internal dialogue (yes I know, it sounds schizophrenic!). And somewhere my mind caught up, and the decision was made. The wheels of the Universe started to spin in new ways that proved to me it is right to do crazy (nonsensical) things sometimes, because what makes sense is only the box we have created for ourselves.

And since then, making new decisions on a daily basis, has proved to spark new experiences completely. In the old, my faith in life had started to diminish, my faith in magic and faith in serendipity, in all the right things arriving at my door at the right time. This was because I was controlling the exchange with more firepower than at the Berlin Wall. The Universe respected the barbed wire I put up.

Without the reinforcements keeping the Universe out, I have noticed an amazing abundance, that somewhere I knew about, but had started to believe happened to others.

It all makes so much sense, and then I speak with someone who doesn’t see what I see of threads connecting magic to me, nor who believes in the Universe and it’s big hand that responds to us, and I am tempted back into that ‘safe’ world of control where I alone create opportunities…until it is decision time again, and almost counter-intuitively, I make it going against the ways of pro’s and con’s and all the old valuations I used to apply, and make it from a place of non-thought.

My mind can catch up later.

2011, welcome! Universe, welcome! Magic, welcome!