Step Back and Breathe

I read in a book that the objectivity of thought can be expressed using the verb "to think" in the impersonal third person: saying not "I think" but "it thinks" as we say "it rains." There is thought in the universe -- this is the constant from which we must set out every time.

Will I ever be able to say, "Today it writes," just like "Today it rains," "Today it is windy"? Only when it will come natural to me to use the verb "write" in the impersonal form will I be able to hope that through me is expressed something less limited that the personality of a individual.

And for the verb "to read"? Will we be able to say, "Today it reads" as we say "Today it rains"? If you think about it, reading is a necessarily individual act, far more that writing. If we assume that writing manages to go beyond the limitations of the author, it will continue to have a meaning only when it is read by a single person and passes through his mental circuits. Only the ability to be read by a given individual proves that what is written shares in the power of writing, a power based on something that goes beyond the individual. The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, "I read, therefore it writes."

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Throw away the mantle

Awake from your uncertain hesitation

No way to describe or equate the feeling

No end to what is at your command

A million thoughts run through you

Concentric circles, ever greater

But you have always known

That this is not who you are

To your questions there'll be answers

VNV Nation - "Perpetual"

Rebirth

[...] in the sense that it is a totality that includes not only what is physically around us but also what is below, or inside, or around or before or after, and founds it and/or justifies it.

But in that case, if we are talking about everything that can be spoken of, we need to include the possible too.

Umberto Eco on trying to define "being" from chapter one of Kant and the Platypus

Spending the day in the Franklin Institute and visiting the King Tut exhibit, I felt like a child again. Awed by how much I don't know. I could breathe there. The quietness. The history. The gods and goddesses that I don't worship directly. But even after thousands of years they still have power in their stare. I felt something stir. The air heavy with possibility again.

Isis wasn't represented, but I said my little thank you prayer anyways.

A necklace called my name in the gift shop. A scarab within an ankh.

Ankh = life
Scarab = to become, to transform

In tarot, the Death card signifies change. In the various readings that people have done for me over this pass week, this card has come up too many times to be coincidence. Change. Death + Rebirth. Transforming and becoming Life. Healing those deep wounds from too many years not speaking up.

I am not a negation.

Eco's "being" includes the possible. I am a possible. I am. I am trying to be. I am here, right now.

Four women, a Greek Chorus:

First Woman

I no longer live in the beginning.

Second Woman

I've lost the beginning.

Third Woman

I'm in the middle,
Knowing.

Third and Fourth Women

Neither the end
Nor the beginning.

First Woman

I'm in the middle.

Second Woman

Coming from the beginning.

Third and Fourth Women

And going towards the end.

(and later:)

First Woman

Open.
Close.
Separate movements.
Stretched-out fingers.
Nails into skin.
One to open.
One to close.
Separate
Motions.
No matter how I try,
These movements
Are not one.
There is a stop between open
And close, and between close
And open.
No effort
Makes these two movements
One.
Close.
Open.
Close.

-- The Serpent A ceremony written by Jean-Claude Van Itallie

Two movements. Two. Separate. Entities. Duality. Yet not conflicting. Or so conflicting that it has become their identity. Their being necessitates them to be contrary. To be at odds. And this is accepted.

I am still trying to accept my own dualities. To take them as a whole and become. To take that next step and live. To change, but not to forget, but to incorporate. Build on top of my deaths to create my lives.