neelkantha

“Don’t just do something. Sit there!” - Zen proverb

I received the gift of a lovely New Yorker essay from a relative, which blessed me with this opportunity to reflect on and clarify my feelings towards travelling.[1] I was at first reminded of my time spent online dating. “I love to travel” became a clear signal to me to just move on! But why? That essay put words to some of my feelings that contributed to developing that heuristic.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children,
and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,
and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor,
and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America,
and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila
                                     and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions,
and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion,
and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

A lot of hopelessness, I think, comes from amnesia.
The past helps us understand the future.

Somebody said, “What’s the best thing I can do as an individual?”
And… he said, “Stop being an individual.”

I think we’re beginning to recognize that individualism is lonely and we have a deep crisis of loneliness that Silicon Valley, pandemics, et cetera, have made worse… the solution is community, being a part of a community, finding a community, supporting community… I think that people deeply want to be part of something larger.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
          So how should I presume?

T.S.Eliot

behold your dark eyes,
glittering with the knowledge
of ancient wisdom

behold your sleek wings,
divine shields, warm blankets, and
instruments of flight

behold your sharpness
beak and talon fiercely honed,
delicately used.

you seek the wounded,
they beg for transformation.
you sanctify them.

you digest their world.
you purify their remains,
you nurture your kin.

great mother spirit,
beautiful, inscrutable,
behold yourself in full.

Audio sources

Knoll by Nitsua, sonsofu (license pending)

i am the peacemaker.
i do not choose one side or another.
i bend the world to my will to bring us together.
from this world you may choose to step away,
but i love you dearly and wish for you to stay.