keeping out friends

Every door in this hunting-shack that leads to the outside has a lock; every night, as I practice my tactile awarenesses by stepping gingerly throughout this hovel with the lights off, in pitch-blackness, I activate these locks one after the other, with a few flicks of my fingers locking out the dark, the cold, and all things unforeseeable. And yet, every night, after basking briefly in the fleeting surety of my false security, I laugh out loud at myself for ever having believed such nonsense in the first place.

Locks only keep out friends and people who might desire to enter one's home but who are too nice to smash in one of its windows. Robbers and thieves are not deterred by locks – they never have been; they never will be; and there is nothing one could ever do, short of encasing one's entire home in a shell of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick and never leaving, that would be able to prevent a dedicated and determined person from gaining access to its dusty interior. (I doubt that even such measures would keep out someone with time, a cutting torch, and a pneumatic jackhammer on his side.) Locking one's doors at night is a good idea, especially where I live out in the sticks where there is really no one else around to watch my door or to keep an eye on things regularly; and few insurance companies are likely to compensate for stolen goods if they discover that exterior doors had been left unlocked; for the most part,however, leaving doors unlocked is a sign of one's abiding faith in the goodness of mankind, a beacon of love to one's neighbors, proof of one's detachment from material goods, and a strong indication of how little value one places on the trappings of the harsh outer world and how greatly one cherishes the tender peace within.

A better writer than I once urged us to invite in anyone who knocks on our doors, to grant entry to any person coming to call – be that person angry or joyful, bearing arms or bringing gifts – into the shadowy recesses of our homes, and, thereby, to allow him to plumb the deepest depths of our buoyant and exuberant souls. I struggle to follow this saying, preferring too often the calm of safety to the excitement of risk, trying too often to erect walls against the messy Great Unknown instead of welcoming it in with open arms. If I have learned anything during the past three-and-a-half decades, however, it is that, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or stop up my ears, the Universe always finds a way to access those areas I would prefer to keep hidden, and to pierce such veils as my ego tells me I need to keep in place. Slowly, then, and only with considerable effort, am I learning to let go of my fears and to drink as deeply as I can of the horrible beauty of this wonderful thing we call life. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

on changing perceptions

Every day, we get the chance to change our perspectives; every morning, with our first few conscious thoughts, we reshape for ourselves entire worlds, crafting from the aether of the Universe's chaotic jumble the seemingly ordered environments, things, and people to which our brains have become accustomed, all that our minds have come to expect from life. Such is the power of these perceptions, and so deeply ingrained are they within what we sometimes call the psyche, that we convince ourselves of their eternal and abiding presence, of their immutable and tactile realness; occasionally, however, some cursed and lucky few peoople among us step across the boundaries of our commonly-held, consensual hallucinations, mixing old thoughts with new ones and pulling stray bits of Truth from the Great Pulsing Void, from the Ever-Expanding Vastness of That Which Cannot Be Named.

The power of these strange and lateral movements is so great, and so broad are the Insecurities and Fears which buoy the petty and shallow ego, that the person who sees the Truth all too often runs away from his unanticipated and unwanted burden, forsaking an open mind for the rigid patterns of old and comfortable thought and burying his head in shifting and shallow sands, in booze or in sex or in the dim half-truths of his parents' religions. If I could but muster the courage to keep looking into the Truthful Void, if I could but bring myself to stare into the Generous Folds of God's Vagina, perhaps I could free myself from slavery to my small and pitiful needs, from my longing for this substance or that, from self-torment and sadness and pent-up old anger; I am too weak, however, and too spoiled, too pampered and worthless and small, to do any of these things, to rise above what I have been told for is Myself and cherish the Primal Simplicity that burns at the core of my deepest and most mystifying of cores. Oh, dear friend; oh, cherished reader; I am not worthy of the gifts I have received; I shall try harder, though, purging my soul of discontentment and allowing the shadows of this strange and beautiful world to pass me by unnoticed, and undisturbed. Please know that I love you, however, and that I take your sacrifice of time as among my greatest of rewards. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit