September 2011
5 posts
the harrowing of hell was daily
It was an everyday descent, the purpose of which was unknown, and often still is. It was a permanent state of going down. Things are about to get a lot worse. Something terrible is about to happen. The sounds of the soundtrack.
who's who?
Was I like the sleeper or the demon? Was I the sleeper or the demon?
Both? Neither?
I think what may have helped the most was that I was invisible. Invisibility made it impossible for them to know me. Perhaps that’s why I survived. I didn’t see it that way then.
the beginning
No matter how far back I’ve gone or tried to go, I haven’t found the beginning. I was dropped into the situation after it had been going for at least a few hundred years, which is to say the patterns had been established, the grooves worn in well.
They got it in their heads that they had to live here. They said I had to live here, too, but they didn’t say why.
...
creative nonadaptation...
…is another name for it, or an aspect of it. The basic situation demanded it of me at all times, as I remember. I didn’t see a choice.
- family portrait, 1979
August 2011
4 posts
a new term
I felt happy when I came across the term “positive maladjustment.” I think I understood it right away. The more I read about it, the more I realized that I had indeed grasped it…insofar as it could be grasped.
I felt relieved that someone had thought about it, named it, and provided an explanation.
“How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually.”
Joseph Campbell
Summer grasses
all that remains
of soldiers dreams. - Basho
May 2011
1 post
