corona/covid, thoughts

i see intuitively (and hope) that our European way of indifference, egomania, the arrogance of relatively rich countries, all false feeling of safety, this idea of a right for a everlasting healthy happy life and to maintain that all is manageable : this will be destroyed.

although...

there is magic in poems,

it is my blood living there

as a dead thing. they are

open to interpretation, but i

know how much this gift

is a poison.

and i say:

as long as none of my legs

will be cut off, i walk the earth

as a man, dressed as a human, i am soul, spirit, earth and fire:

i don't want to be boiled in a

kettle, my essence distilled through

copper tubes by witches in reclining

chairs clapping their hands, nodding

rhythmically with the burbling steam,breathing my earthly life through their spoiled nostrils, humming a 'how nice he suffers' as if i was a frog to end in a fishsoup for degustation.

so, why publish.

i don't want to write poems, i hate all of them for wasting my life , to write instead of kissing, embrace, the sharing of days and nights: how poor.

i write, i die. i have no choice.

is it true?

on writing: also a discipline with variation in intention

sometimes i write as i do paperwork, see last night's 'poem',
it is like turning prayer wheels or mills, a way of mindful slow motion
for going inside.
not all is written with 'blood' and at the same time it is, even this.
this way of writing will lift nobody out of his/her chair,
but it helps me to find the end of my days
and to leave turmoil and functioning.
and this i see as 'good', for me more than for anybody else.

as if

poetry speaks as if and is true.

this is not in itself a contradiction.

in each molecule billions of possibilities

are hidden: these are adressed by poetry.

poetry is dancing alone with music

which only the writer hears.

and he hums with it but in words

as if and as if another could listen.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,Hannah Arendt, meaning, Paul Goodman, language, silence: quotes, thoughts

Note:

Today i could not stay silent. 

Too much happened, bad and good.

All in all, we all stay in the continuous tension between the quest for meaning 

and being (existing) in the presence, our experience shaping our consciousness.

It is and remains an immense effort to walk out of culturally imposed egocentricity and 

concentrate our flow of kindness into this world and to other humans in spite

of doubt and thought. It is a pure act of perception, feeling and participation. It is the transformation

of our  true despair into the creation of hope, the music rising from our own hells

and out of the suffering of the world  towards the vision of  possibility for joy.

A. Camus:

"I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that is what I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world."

...

"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."

[…]

"I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death — and I refuse suicide."

Albert Camus, consciousness

supplement:

Hannah Arendt

“The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same,” adding: “The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.”

Hannah Arendt, thinking, meaning, truth

on silence and speaking:

Paul Goodman

"Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos."

Paul Goodman, Defence of Poetry,silence, need, meaning, language

From the same book, Paul Goodman, Speaking and Language, Defence of Poetry:

"The transaction of speaker and hearer is fundamental, though the hearer my not respond 

nor even, as in poetry, be a real person.

For this transaction, the speakers use an inherited code (which could be called a "means"), 

but it is not constant, and the actual language is the tension between the code

and what needs to be said,

Communication is not the conveyance of meanings from one head to another 

by means of language: it is the language itself being said and understood."

later on in a summary, on himself:

"I have to justify my needs with meanings."

note: i had to smile on this last sentence...
for me it is not to justify...it is to make my life richer
and to create 

ego trap

i heard about foxes and wolves

and a climber that they bite and gnaw 

the stuck part to regain freedom.

what about the ego trap, the soul caught in the mind unable to sing? 

is this why people commit suicide or enter a monastery? is this all?

love, silence, language, Babylon

when as i see true all

language is translation

(in Babylon)

then love will be translated

too when it reaches another

or me, a translation not in words,

not even poems, but in embrace

and kisses, soul and skin

touching together with faith in good

and in recognition of essence.

in the nakedness of language and in the nakedness of soul and in the nakedness of skin we are nothing and all,

parts of one and not parts.
still, we are translation ourself and must walk through the land of confusion.

this is the beauty of love, to see and feel essence and giving self nakedly in all ways with a music which has been there all along, but we had remained in the shadow before, it is joy rising like a bird and self taking a bath in the sea of life.

this is ..grace.

and this is to be true: not to say all but to do what is necessary and what flows out of the core of sharing good and bad.

or maybe one way to see, all written.

not in context but in flow,

in a river of which i know no name

but one i will not say.

Kafka, writing is a form of prayer- quotes and thoughts (Kafka, Zenon,Woolf)

Franz Kafka,

 he is quoted to have said:

writing is a form of prayer...


i CAN be!


Zenon:
..the flying arrow is at rest..

or more difficult:

 “What is in motion moves neither in the place it is nor in one in which it is not”.

Virginia WOOLF

"From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. And I see this when I have a shock."
_____________________________________________________________

Why do i bring these excerpts and quotes in any connection.
First of all because.
because my mind is free to do so.

then because i see all we do as fiction, we narrate us, 
we narrate each other to us, we walk around with
a fictional conscience changing with fictional experience :
as true it may appear for each one- but experience changes in the space of time.
we really need to see this if we ever wish any approach a freedom
of being in this world. and we have to see us as inter-dependent
with the essence and breath of the universe in each being.

We have to invent us day for day and relate to a world
changing each moment and moving, 
a world  which is meaningless when we have no way to see through it, the "cotton wool", inside and outside.

and as we move we have to act, at rest in what we do, and to find the way of action is not looking how to escape and avoid difficulties, no, we must invent our way.
and doing this we need language, navigation, sign posts in the otherwise
senseless wheels of chaos and void.

we can call this way towards finding and keeping close to essence 
and continuously  navigating through clouds the art of living.

Here, in my life, we wasted a lot of time not being soft and sweet
and fearing communion because we know all about unreliability, lies,
impermanence and separation in so many ways, we know we are fallen angels
and will often fail each other and not reach essence all times. 
only the grace of love can unite us and give us joy and happy moments,
and only seeing from a space of peace and warmth inside we can meet and walk together.
When we know we can protect this space and truly know the other one will, 
we can hold each other close, hold from falling, laugh, cry, console, caress and
open and be.

the flying arrow, the word yet unheard is at rest: when it reaches its aim it may not have been the aim at all but a miss.and everything can happen. let us be careful with arrows and words, we can all hurt each other much too much,
we need to find a space for intimate silence. at least i need this, even if this is only with me in solitude.

in seeming contradiction to this: i need to write.
and then reflect.
after.
alone.

i agree that writing can be prayer, to manifest what was already present
but not seen yet, to give a presence and a present to the loved person, to oneself,
to the suffering of his world.
this way prayer is the purest from of presence, be it music, a poem,
it can reach the deepest in soul and flow out of it to embrace and touch.

we are incorporated, so is the term, though i see us as emanations
and travelling spirit with a physical experience and consciousness,
with a desire to sparkle and a longing for union, for fusion with the source of life and death.
it  is a  film , we are actors and directors, producers and drops on the water,
we are nothing and all.
and then..there is the music too...calling, pausing, teasing, initiating
old rites of becoming. and it has always been there.

the didactics of intolerance

tolerance is a word in which intolerance hides.
i tolerate you to be here but i don't like you and if i could chose either
you or me wouldn't be here.
the pre-conditioning is: i cannot tolerate you as you are so and so,
from such and such parents, race, religion, appearance, background,
behaviour. i don't even like you talking but i have to deal with it.
you are blind and stupid and ugly and i cannot listen, i will withdraw my presence
a bit , just in a way that you will not feel offended and i will not be disturbed by your reaction,
i am busy with other things in my mind now.
and then the tolerant feels good, after all he himself
tried to be peaceful and non-offending or so he thinks.

to me a clear intolerance is much better than the lie of tolerance-
which when recognized is an insult, a way of domination. game.

clear intolerance with speaking openly when asked and come out with
prejudice is the better way not always to peace but sometimes to insight
following a serious and honest discussion or just a reflection
seeing oneself  stand in the open to be violable and opinionated.
it doesn't work, unfortunately, when one doesn't
quite "know" and "see" why one cannot stand the other person in the room or film.
This needs a lot of researching inside oneself, usually it is hiding deep down in the past.

nevertheless, tolerance is what you feel when your dog pees on the neighbour's new
house.
don't try to be tolerant with humans.
ask, talk to them.
put up a sign at your gate if you wish such as 'we tolerate peanut butter, sausages, children ,dogs and litter in our garden'. it will remind you of what to be stupid means.


Tolerance, this must be clear, means nothing but the social convention not to kill each other.
Isn't this  nice ?


much of what i wrote today are ways to find through ideas and historical big words,
a material i intend to use in a different way in my next book.
comments are welcome.

mindfulness, acceptation, embrace, freedom, depression, illness, health, treatment, pain, gates, impermanence

a full mind cannot be  mindful.

the process of emptying the mind is a
necessity to re-open the blocked gates of perception.
it can be painful to do this.

there is a certain arrogance in acceptation:

i accept you can mean to say you cannot be better anyway.

it is the way of the detached mind dealing with trouble and it is often an illusionary,
loveless and avuncular way.

to embrace in spite of shortcomings is never arrogant
and has the ingredient of love and hope.

the minimum it needs is empathy, awareness of essence,
mindfulness and the right moment to do so.
i am afraid to talk of love.

to accept conditions we cannot change anyway is
easy when we know it: it makes more sense to embrace life
and it is an illusion of omnipotence to think anything will change
because we accept it .

it often looks a bit like a prisoner for life accepting his prison,
though only in the moment he will care for a lonely flower there or
music in  electrical wires or a stone or a small insect
he is free from such acceptance of prison.
he has then embraced life.
not the prison.
and can still look for a way to escape these walls.

to accept not to see or to accept anyway what can be changed is laziness,
blindness, fearing the consequences of acting or just mere indifference and indolence.

to be healthy as defined by the WHO is an ideal for those who want to live forever, an illusion.
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

so, we have to come to terms with the fact that nobody at all is healthy this way,
and we have to leave the prospect of a right for an eternal healthy life thrown at us daily in so many advertisements. 

to accept illness is never enough, though we don't have to like it we should try to embrace
it in us and in others, when we can life will be much richer.
and what is illness really? we can also talk about the illness of humanity on our planet or see it as a swarm of damaging viral beings better  eradicated with strong chemicals.


to be free ..see the Declaration of Independence..."We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
to be free..to pursue happiness, and all are created ...equal. all an illusion.
but the slaves were freed. equal...to the law, good.
still, the pursuit of happiness is leading to another kind of consumerism
attitude, the view that happiness is a right and not a grace.
everybody should be treated as potentially equal but not everybody is equal.

all are equal is a boring and unintelligent view of human diversity.
and when this is the tenor of modern democracy, then it is not astonishing to observe what can happen when a majority of "equals" could be in an illusionary rule of a country's welfare.
of our welfare.

we have to accept that we are not all equal and that this is good and rich in many ways
and that freedom is born in two ways, inside and in choice.

all else is big words. and in this way we can try to embrace a concept of freedom and others,
not seeing them as equal nor as higher nor as lower. each one has something to contribute,
and this is why we should sit and talk and try to understand and to receive and give insight.
when we can leave self  for a little while and empty our mind to listen, we can communicate so much better and treat each other as equals taking home an enriched life and new possibilities and space:
out of not being equal.

in music the notation flows and jumps from one to another, none equal, some in dissonance,
some in harmony, some punctuating the flow together with pauses-and each is to be treated with the same care and full awareness and the right intonation.

freedom from pain, another illusion.
modern therapists come to see rather ' tolerable' pain.
everybody has pain but it is not always an illness to be treated, pain belongs to life.
we have to walk with it and can be happy when we just forget it at times.

depression, another word i came to be an enemy of in its all encompassing use
for each disorder of the mind and suffering of the soul and body.

it is society and with it doctors and psychologists defining "illness".
.
therapy in the way of psychiatric treatment or psychotherapy will not change
most so called depressions, a word in fashion like burn-out.

treatment with drugs with these is often dangerous and
in evidence-based research has not shown so much more effect
than trying without drugs.

therapy will not heal suffering and the experience of loss and of abuse,
states of feeling very low and despaired about a sudden severe illness,
the loss of a job and financial worries and troubles, the conflicts in
love and relationships, in families.

when we have in front of us quite explainable reactions in body and soul to
difficult circumstances, we should not use the word depression
as it classifies suffering as an illness which can be treated.
and suffering requires presence, not treatment.
and for the one suffering it may be just a stage of bardo
on way to a solution, an end or a  beginning.
suffering is a gate. all is a gate.

when we could believe in the benefit of priests and prayer,
it would often be more helpful than chemicals. but we cannot.
I cannot.

here, people come to hospital , a prolonged stay, they don't know
how they will come out,
they cannot sleep, are in fear and suffer pain
and cannot explain their condition and nobody helps them to explain.
there is always a loss of movement and there is a general disorientation.
after a short time a  psychiatrist will be called,
they are  labeled depressive, then receive chemicals.

but they still have to live with fear and find a way to courage
and  make sense out of their change in life.

all these big words, health, freedom, happiness, eternal beauty and a painless life give
unrealistic expectations and enforce a consumerism attitude lo life which can never be filled
and will create just as much unhappiness as a tractor in a forest. or parents to a child.

These are untrue ideologies, a lot of them based on the consumerism
attitude of rich countries, and we have to accept that  they are untrue and
that we will die and do it each moment though we live and live.

where i worked in Uganda, most people didn't see the world along the
lines of big words and ideas. they ate and drank when théy could
and they sat down when they were hungry and thirsty.
they cried when they were sad,
and they could be happy in the moment much more than us here in Europe.
of course they tried to project, to create, with procreation there is always a
need to build a nest and a future. so maybe they built a new house:
but when they failed they didn't see it as a personal offence from God or the
government or their neighbour. ok, some tried to see a reason,
such as that they offered the wrong chicken to an uncle's ghost
during funeral rites, and then they tried fearsome ways of reconciliation.
but most of all they always knew about the impermanence of buildings, plans,
safety, food, shelter.

They didn't need to accept it. they knew.

films, communication

two people liking each other sit in a cinema. they watch two different films.
then they try to talk about the film..
it happens all the time.
professionally this is clear, i notice quickly..
:-)..privately, different. i am too much in three films,
this is called 'presence'..

professionally , today, rather 4 films, one translating between two
but a relative to my patient making it somehow a 5th film..
i can definitely deal with this...
in here it is possible to make sense out of confusion...
with a bit of patience, and the WISH and INTENTION
to do so. there is no "self" in it.

all these dimensions in one, languages, cultures, translators,
self, others, ..
my patient suffered from back pain but his trúe problem was
not this but panic and fear...

post-scriptum Dec 13th, 2016:

The patient's son was here today.
He had started an unstoppable twitching of his right leg,
still complaining about back pain. Before he saw me he had been to the hospital
to be seen as an emergency. Now again he went there at night and my colleagues 
there thought: back pain and anxiety, but kept him there this time and could observe the twitching, then transferred him to a neurology department: metastatic growth in the brain- he has had a kidney carcinoma 8 years ago, diagnosed because of back pain, by chance!, but first i had at that time sent him to hospital for myocardial infarction- found it by instinct as his back pain had appeared "weird",
this time instinct was there but couldn't work because of insufficient information.
I had actually sent him for X-Ray as i was seeing the possibility of bone metastasis.
Here we see: still another film, another dimension...an inability to fully communicate
leading to another few days of confusion and more suffering.and the film of life going its own way...

musings of the evening

there is something which disturbs me.
i read a lot, daily. such as brainpickings, a website i really enjoy.
but: wheresoever, there is always this talk on creativity,
i am slowly saturated with it.
it sounds like a must do.
suffering, depression, melancholia, loss, illness,
sadness, madness, all exquisite, all meaningful,
all can enhance creativity:
"they" say.
am i born to be creative same as supposedly to propagate?
listen, i don't really like to write poems so much,
fuck around with paint or have long discussions
leading nowhere but to feel out.
if there is this creative force, i'd rather like
to take it into daily life, cook, eat well,
take time for leisure, create space and enjoy slowness,
make love and rest in loving arms
and dream and sleep and walk and take time out.
maybe- if i can- care for my love, for my horse, for a garden,
possibly make an old house inhabitable and a garden to bear fruit.
and i don't wish to do ALL alone. not at all.
it needs a partner who does not only want to be out
but can be ready to create and actively share perspective and a full presence,
warmth and soul and skin.
creativity made a religion for people living alone
and bearing disillusionment is for sure not an aim
to follow. it just happens. and maybe a little better than
mere boredom and frustration and despair. well, yes.
but that's all.
all the time, really, i read this stuff as if it could be a solace, a consolation:
it isn't.
i don't wish, i say it clearly, to be alone for the sake of so called
creativity.
nobody, nobody at all, is really alone.
nobody can be, neither the I nor the non-I.

on karma, processing inside (re-revised)

when i was a boy, my father taught me on buddhism, on karma, on the path of silence.
i was in deep thinking and feeling.
it appealed to me to find a possible meaning of my travel through universe,
to be reborn and to travel with more or less weight depending on this life,
the one now, to be reborn on earth or on other planets, somewhere in the universe,
a theory following cause and effect and giving so much space to see continuity and unending possibilities.
i remember how i thought why do small children need to die cruelly,
how can being murdered or slaughtered make any sense? Karma was a welcome image here.
another chain of associations was to see no sense in endless numbers of humans
to be born, each one different, each one new, it looked something like mechanic to me, like a series of robots or new cars-
and i felt our spark and essence and energy coming out of another energy and substance, a living intelligent energy:
what could be the sense of individual travel in near automatic replacement?
i never felt sure about it.

now, coming back to childhood's thinking, i cannot safely see the same in thought.

first in all modesty, maybe this energy and essence out of which we are born and in which we are living and dying doesn't need me to find a sense and meaning at all.

then we cannot remember past lifes with any scientific evidence. and when i see individuality as
existing but non-important in the face of death, no argument for karma counts.

we don't die taking us as a person to another sphere. what happens with what i imagine and feel as essence is another matter. but it is not MY essence, it does not belong to me forever,  i see
an emanation of another energy. in chemistry the essence of various probes can be mixed..so in life and maybe after, because when i wish to imagine the time after death i will not be a person but will be taken into the sea of all energy.

but i always have felt karma being, a hidden truth giving me winks which i cannot profoundly grasp.
I try to listen, i try to analyze, deconstruct these winks, try to explain with personal history in this life now:
some remain as obscure as my karma if it is there. i believe it is. mine and ours.
the kama of all humanity.

karma as a way to see that all our/my actions are alive in the circle of causes and effects and in the end fall back on us one way or another appears to me clear and true.
karma in connection to re-birth  and past lifes cannot be postulated
nor does it closely belong to pure buddhism nor can it be fully recognized.
it is an idea, an image of a hidden reality.

but i am deeply convinced that we are not only formed and shaped by our present life-
the only one important now-
but that we bear an imprint of past with us, in our essence,  which gives us possibilities and winks to change and grow in presence on a path of openness and kindness-
this path and travel being more important than any theory or obscure and parallel reality.
i stay open to  unexplored space.

walking between re-flect-ion and meditation

now i am not so very busy with "self" as this is an egocentric job.
to be an egoist is ok enough.

i walk around and drive and work, here in alive exchange with others,
there in half sleep and in between reflecting and meditating
a lot of my time.
reflection...not so much a mirror, more of a prism,
and it goes in a talking inside , forms thoughts and words, makes me write,
sometimes-
then i let it all drop as on water, watch the rings spread and meditate
already having forgotten what i was thinking about. it feels good.

in the end i wish i could do it with all on which/whom i re-flect
and which/who re-flects on me,
and in between i can.
just to watch rings expanding...so nice. silence. so delicious.

self-protection, quotes rom lionsroar

quotes from: http://www.lionsroar.com/the-4-noble-truths-of-emotional-suffering/?utm_source=Lion%27s+Roar+Newsletter&utm_campaign=21e4659219-LR_Weekend_Read_July_21_20167_21_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1988ee44b2-21e4659219-22284457&goal=0_1988ee44b2-21e4659219-22284457&mc_cid=21e4659219&mc_eid=83cbb78504

"Many of us recognize that our emotions are out of control—or in control of us. We long for close, intimate relationships with others, but our feelings are often so overpowering that we can’t find the way to open up to others and relate to their experience.

Because we are so focused on how we feel, we may become self-protective and defensive, constantly worried that others will hurt or take advantage of us. These feelings of self-protection can be part of an ongoing emotional cycle, feeding even stronger emotional reactions that cause chaos in our minds and in our interpersonal relationships."

...

"We suffer because we continually choose to identify with and focus on how we feel. But identifying with our emotions is like throwing fuel on a fire. "
__________________________________________________________

emotions speak through the body, thoughts speak in words.
we cannot live without emotions, body, thought and probably not
without words forever.

in a love relationship with myself or with for me a woman,
to see me and to see her i need to take a distance to my feeling and emotions 
in between.
it is not about control nor about negation, it is about the 
transformation and opening of self, about giving way to life
and space.

we can love another one only when we are ready to love ourselves
and when we are open to be loved, to let love happen and flow freely.

this is all.
and somehow so often so very much difficult.

i walk through my days in good and in bad.
i persist as much as i can in my own way,
a way in which i try to find and give the heart
of life as pure as i can.

i am a western educated man with an identity 
which is a different one as when i would have had my
childhood in Tibet. 

for my consciousness i had to stand against concepts
foreign to the soul, follow rules  which i wanted to break and broke,
question and analyze and deconstruct everything i heard, saw and read,
all what was "put" into me.
it formed and forms along the experience of life in this society, of my body,
my emotions, longing and frustration. it changed and changes
with continuous narration and invention of a self and even lies to myself,
it is nothing fixed nor is it transparent. 
and it babbles a lot, often it is hard to see through the noise.

i learned to follow true feeling and see it as right,
and i see it also as right to relax and  change perspective.

i cannot deny my needs forever and i can.
i cannot deny that i have a child in me
who wants to be loved, looks for protection, warmth
and welcome and embrace-and i can.
i cannot deny that i am a man in love and i can.
i can: for love or more so because of it.

so, these are two 'matters'.
one is to take a distance to self to see the other.
one is that without love all looks pale and meaningless.

corrected: leaving etymology, linguistics and conventional meaning for personal context and translation

In my language there is the German word "Sehnsucht".
It is not directly translatable. It is similar but not the same as saudade(Portuguese).
At the roots of the word it is clear that it contains tension and suffering , it is the expression
of missing really one self or/and  another loved one but it is also "Sehnen der Finsternis nach dem Licht und der Kraft Gottes" (Jacob Böhme),  it will stay with us for life and sometimes we are more aware of it as other times possibly depending on our own growth of soul, our experience of space,
our way to joy.
I always try to translate according to what i wish to express.
There is no Sehnsucht for a glass of water not even in the desert, this is thirst, it is not comparable to "lust", not to wanting- it is filled with a person's whole being, soul, emotions, body, past, memory, dreams and essence.
I would call it a creative driving force - which without intelligence and spirit
can turn into obsession or depression.

Once i translate into desire, a word  which probably roots in waiting for the stars,
i mean with desire the deep craving for fusion, i must be honest if not true and true if not honest, fusion with a loved person, with trees, rivers, wind and fire and fields and stones,
or the experience of being one, for paradise lost, for life,for death:
it is quite clear that this desire can never be filled
though it can be filled all the time for NOW, only for now.

so i translate desire into a primordial wish for transformation,transcendence, salvation,
it has a more or less spiritual accent.

I translate into longing when i want to express missing to be at home with my self, with a loved person,for warmth, for care, for a time of happiness and peace and joy, for intimacy in an atmosphere of trust and welcome, it can even be more simple and mean to miss a good friend. In the end it is also missing to be one with the stars and God, but it has in my usage of the word the elements of more precise wishing and missing and stretching out of soul and skin.

so i translate longing into something more as a wish for a physical home, for warmth, care and affection, for simple love.

In my context i do not desire a woman , i do not desire cherries and i do not long to go
to cinema . these i would put under wishes and wanting
and lust and hunger and thirst. i see these more external, peripheral-until i get too hungry maybe...

Sehnsucht, desire and longing i see as coming out of the soul, and at the same time as we are all physical beings i can 'feel' , they stretch out ( to be long, longing) into space, towards another soul
and body, or inside and in the skin or through the skin, they search for space: i do. I do physically too.


It is not the words which are a problem. It is the context. The estrangement from true Sehnsucht,
desire and longing as all these have been made into marketable objects and they have been given
social values and then symbols we are told to buy such as cars, valentine, halloween, christmas, easter, birthday. Though it is not bad to have feasts to come together, it cannot be good to
pay attention to our selves and to each other in this way: it is mutilation.
It would be much better to go along with our deep frustration and pain and sadness
and appreciate it. When we cannot do this we cannot find true joy.
This is what i have been convinced of all my life.

Now i am coming to another context- it goes towards meditation.
to be free of all desire..for all life....i object on the grounds of what i said above.
but i do not object meditation: it is the only way of transformation
and at times transcendence we can find apart from through a hell of suffering,
maybe a sudden wholesome shock coming to cancer patients- often when they know
there is not much time to live they can appreciate life and presence and now.
in meditation Sehnsucht, desire, longing are there and pass ,
all thoughts and emotions and words and memories pass, we leave the noise
and then sometimes we can be still.
when we do it often and regularly enough we can find our inner space,
with time we learn to keep it, and walk out with it and
we will see what remains of value and meaning for us and in others more readily.

meditation is not giving up, it is transformation, and so is love.
love is a more difficult word-when two humans love each other it can be simple to say
and good. when they talk about it: discussion kills original meaning for both, and it stops flow.
"Love" is too heavily loaded.,

Kindness is a simple word: kindness is the most valuable quality
and the most difficult to keep in the run of life.

My God, said the Rabbi

My God, said the Rabbi, why is it always my own problems which affect me most of all?

so again a note on love and being in love.
both can change everything inside and outside to good or bad,
for sure change occurs.

all gets examined, a continuous unsafety in finding identity in between and of keeping integrity.
it is in parts a cruel process in which emotions can be overwhelming and also can  transform by distillation.

nothing goes with partial presence and learning to love is so difficult,
this is why everybody finds pets easier...or as me, horses, they are not pets.

when feeling is not deep enough and readiness for presence and for giving oneself is not enough,
when pain and fear overgrow joy, love may find another way inside and outside or stay an illusion
or when a person has enough courage to embrace the demons and dance  with dragons,
he or she may find true love inside for being, for animals, plants,stones, humans, for life and death.
to love all is easier than to love one, no?

me, i have walked all ways, walked, walk...with cherries singing in my eyes and with a hand in my hand, with anger, frustration, with joy, with dreams and with care and with a deep feeling of nearness and with always again heightened awareness:
i don't know where i go and where i will be.


I am sorry i don't comment the bad weather, he tornados, the floodings, the wars and the poverty and misery and the brutality and the spiritual blindness of this world-
i am too busy. i don't want to be.

on the ambiguity of language in women

In  Japanese language and in conventional conversation
communication happens on a level of  inter-being.

Each party listens, it is unthinkable that only one person speaks all the time.
None says what they think but, and this is important,
both try to say nothing in such a way that the other one can
either find a safe retreat or a way forward or possibly
even can try to understand and understand that he/she is understood.

There is space, for both.
And this space is respected.

There is a yes in this language, when it is used without annotation: then it is a yes.
Otherwise the yes will mean no or rather no.

There is a word for no in Japanese which translates as "perhaps certainly yes", it is of course no.

The most you can get of a no may be an answer to a simple question,
say "Do you want to go to...?" will be "I don't want to go to...".
Mostly you may get another answer,
such as "my aunt's birthday will be in the way for the next days"...which is also no.

Now my hypothesis is that in Europe women are the "Japanese" here,
referring to the use of language.

As they are an object of desire and a prey for consumption in all patriarchal societies,
they need to keep a space of their own.
Also they do not wish to evoke aggression by someone losing face
when they say no to an invitation.
They are masters of ambiguous language,
leaving it to the other one to understand what they mean.
The roots of this language are in history and personal social experience.

And they have a talent to deeply accept and cultivate a "maybe",
after all they bear a child nine months until it
maybe can be born alive, healthy and maybe grow up in safety
and maybe find happiness and a meaning in life.

When they bring up a child, they have to find space for themselves even more,
and at the same time they have to create and keep a space of emotional security for their child,
day for day learn and apply mindfulness, compassion and kindness,
they have to give space.

In fact, they have to give so much space that for some time
when the children will have left the house,
they can fall and must find new borders
and create another space of their own altogether.

Go in contrast to Chess is a game making use of space, not direct fight but setting borders
and creating space.
Thinking in Go is in the root thinking space not enemy.
What the games have in common are the tactics of distraction and evasion.
Man looks for an opponent, woman for space.


Of course, not to be misunderstood, Japanese people do have a no in their language,
to be used in more violent and primitive scenarios, by army or police too.
And I didn't say Japanese are kinder than other people in other countries.
They  have a fairly brutal and horrible history of war and violence, same as us.

This here is merely about the use of ambiguous language and the kindness
as well as the defensive basis of European women.
I feel i can say that women here are the kinder men
and that in the course of their life they can learn emotional intelligence
better than men-because they need it.

journey

once you spend weeks and weeks on board of a ship
in the desert of a green-grey and impenetrable sea, a for long hours dull sky,
the sound of wind only interrupted by the the call of seagulls,
your sleep accompanied by the continuous noise of the engine,
you stop thinking, you sway inside in the rhythm of all, and
you get tired. you are not bored, you sleep, you wake,
you watch birds sailing the storm and you just breathe
the salt, you are.
whatever you are and whosoever.
you become as impenetrable as the Northern seas.
you feel inside.

this kind of impenetrable being is what you will
find in many a sailor.
some talk to you.
and you see that the ship is often their retreat from
an incapability or displeasure dealing
with social obligations on land, at home,
wheresoever.

this impenetrability is not happiness and it is
not unhappiness.
it is just one way of life.

maybe it is even all i can manage.
i feel too disturbed by having to stay
peaceful when i am not: either i am or i am not.
alone i don't have to bother.
i don't know.

no...thoughts

all thought begins with the word NO.
It is the first word a child learns to claim borders
and identity.

so , no, attitude means nothing, education means nothing
in meeting another one when one is in love.

what happens in being in love is, when the feeling for the other
one is strong and clear enough, what happens is self-recognition,
finding oneself in infantility and emotional blindness and then seeing oneself
painfully exposed on a stage in one's own mind.
not to fall in these traps and holes is not a matter of attitude, attitude is artificial, but of
a un-pre-meditated readiness to see the other one and oneself in a new light.
and this is a surprise.
i heard we are too old to surprise each other:
for me, this is totally untrue.
each molecule in me says no to these words.
when i give up the ability for surprise, wonder, astonishment
in another one and in myself  i give up myself so much that i cannot be and give
anymore out of me: i would be spiritually dead.
all i call love would not even have ever existed.