The closest thing to poetry I write… summoned from the absurd depths of existential ennui.
My surroundings are familiar, but still there’s an odd sensation of not knowing quite where I am.
It’s the stirring feeling of being just about to wake up from a dream, except I’m already awake.
The pestering sense of having forgotten something, and the strained reaching into the recesses of memory, coming up with nothing.
The trying to focus on “the stuff I have to do,” not disliking it per se, but perplexed as to what its significance might be; a vague memory of it being quite compelling at one point.
The dizzying, cavernous ache of mind trying to to stretch itself wider, like an iris trying to take in too big a picture.
And every once in a while, it crystallizes into a sharp longing to return “home,” only having no idea what or where that might be; a raw, primitive grasping for something that feels known, enclosing, safe; a not finding anything.
The shielding my eyes from a blaring, massively unknowable expanse of future that offers no guarantees (save death); like standing too close to the sun, the voltage threatens to atomize whatever bits of matter are left.
The rise of what could become a tight, hot panic, followed quickly by the learned response to soften instead, to go limp and allow the mind-bending oddness to roll through.
The impulse to look over my shoulder, as though God is just about to sneak up on me with the “Surprise!” that will somehow make sense out of it all.
And all of this… all of this while I sit in a cafe with a bright blue pot of tulsi tea, watching the redwoods sway and sparkle in the afternoon wind and sunshine, their twinkling which feels like a whispered, encrypted message, a playful taunting.
This is the void I visit every once in a while, when the existential bottom falls out of everything and “all thoughts vanish into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”* It always passes, but not before it untethers everything from everything else first; not before it renders into liquid everything I thought was a solid, including myself.
Eventually, the particles coagulate once more and it gets easier to arrange my face and my voice into the familiar expressions and sounds that others (and perhaps I, too) will recognize as me. The sense of curiosity, inspiration, and enthusiasm for “the stuff I have to do” sparks back to life, though it seems perhaps endearing or sweet… nothing like the self-important seriousness it can adopt in other kinds of times.
And thankfully, at some point, a sense of remembering returns. I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is, only that the Earth and my body start to feel like home again.
Until the next time, anyway.
*Quote by Chögyam Trungpa, from “The Sadhana of Mahamudra”
