I watch the characters of my dream from across the room. They're laughing, seeming happy. Why? A funny situation, bizarre because everything went wrong in unexpected ways to negate any serious attempts to achieve anything. I walk over to their table. Tell me, then, what would you talk about if everything went perfectly, if there were not a single thing left on your to do list and nothing to relate that was done in the past because everything goes so smoothly and uneventfully? Are problems the basis of our lives?
They're baffled, but I force them to answer. Answer anything, say something before we all run out of time! What would you do if the fulfillment to every desire was instantaneous, once all your appetites were fulfilled? Here you are, all satisfied from meals and sex and baths and sleep and exercise and in perfect health, blissfully enjoying the thankful glow in your body. How about your mind? How long can you keep it up? Your mind begins to wander, so we invent games in which everything goes wrong all over again. Now, what if you could download every skill so that even in games everything went perfectly, instantaneously, and just stacking a blocks as you used to do as an infant, loses its appeal along with its challenge? What if every obvious goal were achieved as soon as it were thought of?
Goals are things that happen over time. When all that involves time is gone, all that's left then is meditation, which is poetry, a prayer in worship of existence. But what form does poetry take on when all that concerns form is gone and nothing is left but the raw sensations of life? We trade the sensations themselves — that becomes the ultimate form of creativity.
I force the thoughts into their minds, hoping to see a reaction other than their bafflement. What would your prayer be? What moments would you look for? Right now, what sensations and emotions would you look for? I don't care about narrative. Look around you, or better yet, close your eyes and look within!
Am I asking my own mind to look within? How many layers yet do we have to dig before we find something? Is there anything buried underneath but survival instinct? I'm so tired of trying to prove something. What summarizes the state of my mind in thoughts and sensations? What does a mind even mean if it is alone and has nothing to reflect but itself? Can a mirror reflect itself? When two mirrors are placed facing each other with nothing in between, all that's visible is the dust on their surface, again and again until it turns the light into a mist. But what else have I to reflect but empty space? And what is anything in the universe but empty space?
Perhaps my prayer is to the devil, praying for destruction, destroying the universe with my thoughts. My mind is a serpent that eats everything whole, to disassemble it inside its stomach into its constituents. It will eat anything until nothing is left of the universe outside itself, and when nothing else is left to eat it will turn on me. That's my purpose, the purpose of my mind, to turn everything to nothing, or to more of myself, and that is the same thing for I am nothing, nothing but a mirror, and when all has become reforged into part of the mirror, there is nothing left to see. The transportation network has become the world and there is nothing left it can take me but more stations and roads and highways. Everything's picked clean. Where's the poetry that makes up real life, the meaningless riddles, the koans, unafraid of their imperfection in their lack of an answer.
Answer me! But there is only silence, and in the silence we hear the clock ticking, and the tinnitus in our ears, and they all just sound as more signals that we are growing older and our time is running out. Well don't answer then, but I'll get what I need, whatever you choose to call it, whether it's an answer or the denouement that there wasn't a question, but I must feel it somehow, and I must get that feeling from somewhere. What makes me feel whole?
Everything's just a road to nowhere. If I break up the road and dig, and I feel the clay in my fingers again, will it give me the substance of life? But how do I share that? To them it's just a roadblock. What do I do? What do I DO? What do I give that they can understand? Meaning is communication and all that's meaningful is what we communicate with each other; all the rest is just roads leading only to roadsigns that welcome us to new places, telling us to communicate in a particular way now. But what's left to say when all is done? Just that it's done, perfect, that life is beautiful and therefore so are the living, to find new, more refreshing ways of saying "I love you" when the latter loses its meaning. Meaning is context, and repetition of the message causes loss of meaning. So we vary the message to turn it into its own context, because nothing else is left to give it a context. The prayer of worship should in some way or other be one of appreciation of life and therefore of vitality, so that it confirms our existence, consolidates it, and so strengthens our health spiritually just as work used to be needed to strengthen our health physically. I guess that's the meaning of life, to express love, which is such a primal force that it can't be reduced further by analysis.
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