On official Business

At first there were very confusing conversations about the unofficial business of making a decision. And let it be known that i tried on decisions like multicoloured pantihouse for a rainbow nation parade. I'm going, I'm staying, I'm moving to Cape Town in a post card on my myspace page. There was no perferct fit like a push in the right direction by unruly circumstance, a mentor and a conveniently placed cliff. But now this the official business of letting you know of my leave of absence.

Strange, how a leave of absence from all worldly responsibility is the closest thing we can invent that resembles freedom. A holiday, vakansie, pre-graduation sabbatical to pre-empt the would be quarter life crisis following the presumptuous maturity of my still somewhat pubescent adulthood. And yet for someone who always subscribed to a freedom described in Krishnamurthi's teachings that need not flee from society in order to exist freely within it, I STILL cannot deny the power of the effect of a change in circumstance on the fragile human mind or rather my rather unripe one.


Our perceptions are fickle and in many ways i regard it as one of our more virtuous attributes or perhaps a symptom of youth - but it allows for the oppurtunity to redefine our realities and therefore re-invent our expereince of our lives. And for me I must admit that I've always craved a bigger bite of the the cookie, a thicker slice of life, gnawing at the bone of its meaning - a deeper experience of life's essence.


I used to as a child experience that intensity in the most mundane things. From a sunset or the rising of the moon from the wrong side of the pool through a pair of goggles, i was certain life was pouring forth it secrets. But somewhere along the timeline we stop trusting ourselves, stop listening to our innermost voices. The acquired cynicism with which we graduate to adulthood drowns out our intuition and there is less innocence, less purity in our day to day living. These for me are not moral definitions - I see innocence as a state of mind without assumption. It does not claim to know and therefore its experience is pure, intense and truthful to the situation.


Deep within me there is a craving, and the craving creates a knowing that I long, I live to express authenticity. An authenticity that would demand mastery of my craft, that would feed my art and an art that i could call a life well spent. I know that when you leave behind familiarity you leave behind safety, comfort and all things sugar and spice. But you also leave behind the past and any solid notions of who you think you are - a daughter, a sister, a lover, a friend and a piggy bank of adjectives to go with it. You create an oppurtunity to be defined by your own constitution rather than circumstance. I have felt that authenticity before and yet it flickers away when the experience is still premature and past settings bring back past limitations.

So I leave knowing in my heart that i look forward to a life of bolder artistry when I return. And I've been warned against it by many people whose lives I really wouldn't chose in place of whatever balls up may lie ahead. ha, But I have made my choice and this is my notice so you can't claim absence without leave. The details will be revealed as they are confirmed but a rough sketch on the globe will include India, Europe, South America. 10 months of solitude.

Philosophical Quickstep

It is a distressing thing when your thoughts appear to have abandoned residence and the only notions in your head are squatters, tresspassing all certainty. The corpratisation of my headspace is strangely not to blame. If anything its the brief moments when you come up to breath between the clammers and chatters of "ought to"'s and "shoulda's" that leave my world dissected in doubt. Bisected by it. Split open two halves, two paths, diametrically opposed, and yet the outcome is inevidably some place called home. And so I feel lost and wondering like a planet with no trajectory, no grounding sun or teasing lunar counterpart. No.

A solitary wanderer, questioning the world from way up above and clenching my fingertips at that the excrutiating, unbearable lightness. And yet it is calm up here. peaceful, serene. There is no up and down, no in between. Just here and now and trying to be. I speak of the stillness when you've questioned everything you've been taught and renounce everything you think you've learned and open yourself up to some still, safe inner truth. And it gleams like a light shining, not from above, but from somewhere behind the tonsils, somewhere between the ears and reaches down with one equal breath and out.

I speak of that place that is only vacant in a moment of revelation when all things make sense and nothing is witheld. When all solid ideas, certain truths are lucid and the similarity of all and nothing can be seen. Blink.

blink. blink. blink. Down comes a tower of cards. Like a foot in my sand castle or a splinter in my heart. Because all things were once renounced now all things become questionable and such is my current state of creative confusion. An oxymoronic delusion.

There is certainly certainty somewhere that is not nearly so brief.Do I venture out to find it capture it and bring it home, a poacher of truth, or do I wait for it to arrive as an unexpected guest. A foot on each path, is no way forward.Until then i guess I'm just biding my time with coffee and that very occasional cigarette.