now vacation! i feel kinda whigged out with so much free time. i made a list of things to do, in no particular order:
-practice piano
-alex grey gallery
-blog (here)
-read (books- finishing "the jungle", gonna try some meditation/innerpeace books, then maybe more social justice bullshit)
-plants (buy 'em for my balcony)
-paint (walls of my apt)
-take a free tour of the bronx that someone told me about
-beach (got a few recommendations of places in the bronx)
-buy a couch
-buy a mirror
-buy new computer speakers (they done for)
-study/practice spanish
-study medicine
-get some car repairs done
-buy a bike!!!
-find a printer wire so i can use the damn thing
when i meditate, i'm often trying to think of inner peace and shit, like concentrating on my intent, to have a more stable sensibility to better serve the justice of the universe, or to be more emotionally generous. or sometimes i think of my heartbeat, and being so skinny, i can feel pulsations in my chest and stomach, and sometimes in my digits. sometimes i'm thinking of the ole S1, S2, and my atria and the elastic recoil of my chest verses the negative pressure of a deep inspiration. yep i'm a nerd. but i try try try to concentrate on death. i flew to see my bro and his 2.5month baby (super cute, lotsa work, enough said), it was a good time, played rock band with my bro, got into decently intense but healthy-enough arguments about politics/justice/class, took daytime naps. but, on the way there, i flew through atlanta, which was having bad storms, and there was some sickass turbulence flying into that city, and it was the scariest flight i've had on this continent (there was a super scary one in a little two engine 18seater plane out in kali gondagi valley in nepal when i was travelling with mike 4yrs ago, but for some reason i wasnt as freaked out... i guess it was easier to accept crashing to my death at the top of the world in a super holy place). every time i thought that that little shift in altitude was the last, there'd be another, and outside the windows was only dark clouds, and most people in the plane were quiet, and i'm ashamed to say i was scared of dying. i didn't want to die! i told myself (of course) all the rational explanations that it's unlikely that we will crash (compared to dying in a car, etc), and i thought about how i should breath deep and think on a higher level and use this as a lesson in my own neurohormonocardiovascular automaticity, blah blah... but in the end i was like: i haven't done shit that i wanted to in life, i'm not happy in my life, i haven't achieved a damn thing, and i'm gonna die amongst all these goons, the world moving on without me, some randoms crying at some random funeral, my silly family lamenting for years, a huge investigation in the pilots' sleep deprived work schedule, an indepth interview of the one survivor, and i would be nothing. there is no reincarnation, there is no heaven, there is this moment of pain, then a huge eternity of frustration in that i bet on some sort of delayed gratification, the gratification of figuring out everything and myself, and in the end i lost the gamble, now i'm dead. i thought of how, in one sense, death could be like time frozen and me still alive, the last one alive somehow, but unable to interact with anything meaningfully, with nothing mattering, with infinite time to think over all that could have been (i.e. the pyramid song). and the other sense, which is the one i was busy worrying about, was that death is time moving on, and me frozen, no longer pertinent except as a dead body, like the ones in the ICU, as a topic of deep deep thought as assorted family crowd around as the doctor explains that this is over, and they discuss what a life he HAD, and how it HAD been, and they cry and feel bad no doubt, but they'd be fools not to worry about tomorrow. but me, i'm frozen in time, there is no tomorrow. fuck.
and then we landed. some fellow passengers clapping for the safe landing, and hurrying to my connection...
so, i have tried to figure it out a bit, because the feeling of fear is gone, of course, but i'm ashamed of how immature my spiritual processes were during this sort of common event. I remember once mike was telling me about an experience he had, which i interpret to be an episode of sleep paralysis. He said he woke up unable to move his body, but was conscious with eyes open. So he either focused on the thought that he was truly dead, or tried to concentrate on the concept of death, and was able to utilize the experience as productive and meaningful. I had a similar (but different) experience when i was about 19, living with sarah in uptown, a whole different time in my life. I woke up unable to move, but awake, able to move my eyes, and i got really freaked out. I could see light underneath the door, so I figured sarah was awake in her room or the kitchen, so i tried to yell out, but couldn't. after a short while, as I kept trying to move or talk, i eventually could and fell out of bed (no frame), and went back to sleep. I was pretty freaked out, though, and my experience on the plane reminds me of how freaked out I was. I admire mike for his ability to calm/focus his mind/spirit when it counts, cause it makes me realize that, though it was hard for me to get to the point of just being able to meditate for a decent period of time... well, there is a long way to go beyond just sitting still when i have a quiet room to myself with no distractions (like fear of death).
the image in the wikipedia link reminds me of a class i took in college: a women's studies english literature class about "gothic" novels in the 16th to 19th centuries. they used the image to exemplify gothic depictions of women/sex/violence (the point of the class, i guess... i didn't really like it much) which were in all kinds of pop literature in those days, but it's interesting that this painting is also about the sensation during sleep paralysis.
so one way i feel i can think/contemplate constructively about death is, surprise, with mainstreamy/alternativey music. thus, here's a radiohead video, enjoy and think of your own demise!!!
pyramid song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLOPO-z7xh4
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