Clouds I
We begin at the top of the crown of the head and map downward in concentric rings, counterclockwise motion, slowly mapping the entire field, scalp, paying attention to the follicles, or not simply in a counterclockwise motion just radially advancing concentric rings down to the level of the top of the ear, and sometimes in glowing patterns, sometimes multicolored, but then suddenly realize that we are projecting this onto some homunculus some doll as if a hologram were being mapped before us, and so quickly snapped back to reality from the projection to the actuality of the scalp in the skull the sensations on the scalp and skull.
Now it begins with a sweeping motion sweeping down from the crown of the head to the jaw feeling each section, cross-section of the skull like a black onyx segment sliding into place, first at the crown then the segments of the level of the forehead, the eye sockets, nasal cavity in the nostrils, feeling the nasal cavity in the sinuses and the passageway there that connect to the ears, then at the level of the upper lip and the septum, feel the teeth all the way around and then remember to keep the tongue away from the roof of the mouth always coming back to the tongue kept away from the roof of the mouth, and this would always be a reminder that one had lost track of their breath that the mind had wandered run wild with thoughts again, and it was time to return to the breath, release the tongue from the top, the roof of the mouth and maybe need to begin again, but in any event, now, the tongue, the lower jaw and the lower teeth, chin. All of the cross sections of the skull slid into place like invisible, black Onyx divisions of space, partitions of space, and much of this was about partitioning, sensitivity of the ears, the skin on the forehead, feeling temperature, eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, the totality of the face and the scalp and the ears, and then moving downward to the neck, maybe perhaps swallowing voluntarily as a reminder to be embodied, feeling the wind pipe the carotid, the pulse of blood, musculature, the imbalance of a twisted vertebrae and pause here for a moment to compare both sides symmetrically before moving down to the shoulders, the patch of the skin over that top vertebrae at the bottom of the nape of the neck that is pain-free that is like a touchstone or a baseline. Any tightness in the shoulder is expanding out to the shoulders, radially scanning down both arms, maybe one at a time and the shoulder feeling the strength of the bicep, the meat of the bicep and the skin, blank areas which are not used to sensation or being touched down to the elbow scanning down over the forearms, the wrist and here on the left side, there’s a tightness something out of place because of an injury, a broken bone in the metacarpal that causes the metacarpals of the pinky and ring fingers to impact on the wrist bone and a tighter angle, but anyway it’s subtle but imperfect and pain in asymmetrical and scanning forward beyond the rest, the metacarpals knuckles each finger bone, each joint to the tips, and then one by one scanning each finger to the tip of the finger from the pinky to the thumb and back again and then reverse back feeling the totality of the hand, the palm, any heat sensation there, the arm, the perspiration, the perspiration from the stress of sitting upright for hours, and the pain of the gross cross-sensations ricocheting around the body finding no way to balance the body, will be at rest and accepting that for now. The perspiration, the touch of cool air from that air conditioner that is turned on, blowing on the skin of the neck, of the shoulders, side of the face, and then still moving back upward past the elbow again, the bicep, fill the blank area underneath the bicep, and then the other side and then both sides and then comparing the shoulders. The tightness on the right side of the shoulder, where it was dislocated when I was younger, and the muscle memory continues to hold it tight.
Now that the arms have been scanned, I straighten up my back; the knees are screaming, but they will be all right later. We can dissect the origin of the pain so that the sankharas may rise to the surface and dissolve after scanning downward down over my back, which is crisscrossed with gross cross sensations that are solidified again; see the scan of my back, my muscles, the musculature of the upper back that cover the shoulder blades that line either side of the spine, the obliques that carry the pain radiating from the enormous spasm that runs the length from my lumbar spine to T5 or T6, that has been that way for a decade and a half, or, well, that has been that way for seven years now, and has settled into an enormous thick spasm that continually cycles between lower back pain and thoracic pain, but that is most acute in the thoracic area, deriving from a mistake that I made when I was younger, a glorious fuck up! And I can see moving down over the surface of my back as if the scanning lines of a CRT (like Leibniz, “Summe, Summe”), or maybe like the orange scanning lines of a jack-o’-lantern from the opening sequence of a 1980s slasher film, and then all of a sudden it occurs to me that once again I’m projecting onto a model a transparent homunculus, a doll, maybe a foot in front of my actual body: a visualization, 75% reduced, and my awareness moves back to the very surface of my back and tries not to visualize anything and again scans and finds the solidified gross cross-sensation along the left side of the thoracic spine at T5–6 which radiates beneath the shoulder blade to the front of my chest and also the other pain point beneath the right shoulder blade that seems to be connected to the top of my right pelvis hip and perhaps also the first thoracic spasm on the left side of the spine but then again also maybe C3–4, where there is a torqued disc, but that’s been there for a quarter century, buried. It’s all connected, and again, I tried to scan down from my shoulders over my chest, noting the relative lack of sensation in my pectorals, the small nipples, and the solar plexus. The stomach were recently I had a minor surgery, four or five scars, one above the belly button, and the pain from the corrected hernia in the lower right of the abdomen, but it feels like some degree of numbness, fatness, belly overhanging lower abdomen, the flaccidity of my penis and balls, sensations in a loop running through my genitals into the perineum and anus and back and then we’re onto scanning down from the back, rings, the cross section of my body that is the ring at the waistline, top of the hips, that moves down again, feeling the tightness at the top of the pelvis above the right hip, where there is the degenerative condition and then curling through going down over the buttocks up through the inner thigh to scan the buttocks, the gluteus maximus, and then again radially extending out like the arms to the axis of the femurs, scanning the thighs, the knees — the source of constantly protesting pain, and, yep, as soon as they are released from this lock mainly going back to normal, “You can mess with the Gods, but not with your knees,” and how do we dissect? I can feel, then, that the left leg, particularly the foot, has gone numb. I break with stillness and tap a little bit on the left big toe, assuming that is my toe. I feel something there, but whatever extension of myself it is does not feel, it’s lost sensation in the foot and perhaps in the calf, sitting Indian-style with the left leg in front, sitting on some stacked pillows on the mat and again I can feel where the pain in the knee travels down, obliquely in an arc beneath the left side and connects with tightness in the ball-and-socket joint of the left leg where it connects to the pelvis, and there I sat and waited for the feeling to return, for the tightness in the hip joint in the inner thigh so deep inside the acetabulum, to relax. It must’ve been so deep that it was constricting the blood flow; I feared I would be hamstrung.
Over time, that released, but it took days, so I sat with the numbness, in attention with my hamstring coiled like a mouse trap, but that gradually lost its tension, and we moved onto other things. That’s the spirit of impermanence, I thought, and I realized that I should not be forcing myself to sit so still that my heart rate increased or my breathing became belabored.
And scan upward again through the calves through the thighs, radially up through the buttocks and the nether regions through the waist, where it felt like I was bearing the constriction of some sort of tightened belt, a medieval torture device, or several of them, overlapping, elliptical, and up again through the trunk, over the skin and muscles at the back; the spine, the lateral obliques, up through the armpits, the chest, solar plexus, sternum, pectorals, nipples, shoulders, shoulder blades, clavicles, and again symmetrically sweeping down each arm in each finger, and then back again, and up through the neck, feeling the symmetry — any imbalance of the symmetry there up through where the neck muscles connected to the base of the skull, and again reintegrating the sensations in my head, being aware of the spaces and cavities within as if filling up, as if integration, across the ears, eyes, the forehead, and then the scalp, and then finally again to the crown, and then I stopped there and imagined the sensation at the very top of the crown. Did I feel anything the first time I completed a scan? I did. I swore it. It felt like there was a ring of energy dancing there.
Once such scans were completed, I felt that I could then scan with more fluidity, down and up, down and up again without too much interference from the solidified gross cross-sensations, which I could always examine independently, putting them aside to later pore over them, trying to keep in mind the sensations rather than the placement in space and visualization, the tightness at the base of my skull, straightening up, not moving the lower half of my body, but once again, pushing my shoulders back, trying to straighten up, feeling the pain. Sometimes it felt like they were cenobites inside, torturing me, the feeling of back pain, the inflammation coupled with the memories, memories of hurt, and the mistakes that I had made.
I envisioned her, I could see her awaken in my apartment without me, perhaps before dawn, and feeling small and in the chasm of space. Violin and flute played, and where I sat frozen Indian-style, I could not comfort her. Forms emerge from space in the light of an abstract sun. My first view of the Pacific Ocean emerging from the Wine Country onto Highway One, with no definition between sky and sea, and the sun a hazy abstract orb, overwhelming, terrifying and wonderful.
Once a day, at some point during the day, Kathleen, in all the various paths of her day working in reception, the laughter and chatter, small talk, and scheduling, might at one point pause, when no one was around, in the silence, and wonder where I had gone? Was this to be it? Was this what it would be like? Perhaps, look at an image of me, or of us, and then recede back into the ghostly pathways of her duties. The distant stare turns to a look of resignation, turns to a look of ambivalence, turning away from the desk, returning into the ebb and flow of daily life.
I had left her there. I had left her in a liminal position, in that Abyss. In the abyss of the Void. Left too quickly, and without thinking about how she would feel, and how that would make me feel, without reassurance.
There might be a moment of reflection, later in the afternoon, sitting in the reclining chair, TV off or paused, with a shot of espresso, vacant reflection in the late afternoon light. Was it one of resignation? But Kathleen, eventually, we all must part, one way or another! Please don’t be sad.
The crescendo of violin and flute descended a ladder of analog synth, as her face turned away, resignedly, and she moved back into the spectral paths, the rhythms of the everyday. And would this be the way it would be, from now on?
The little moments of time, as she would later say. And the silence at night. The sound of my voice before falling asleep.
Kathleen, all things end, one way or another. Everything changes. One day, you will have to let me go; one day, I will have to let you go. The emotions presented themselves on an even field, an open field with sensations, thoughts, and memories.
The acute, stabbing pain like a giant needle in the center of my back, like the biting insects in the shadow works of Alex Grey, Despair. I felt the heat rise in my body, gritted my teeth, felt the perspiration on my skin, and straightened up my body toward the rafters of the meditation center with closed eyes, and thought I would scream. There were torments inside. I heard the AC cycle on, heard the birds chirping outside, and the chaos of life, and tried once again to put it all out of mind. Someone burped quietly. And I knew that the teacher was still seated motionless on his high white chair, draped in all white.
Thoughts of Kathleen, singing happily to herself in the kitchen. For a little while, we had a home.
In the best moments, when the calm settled in, and everyone was still, a hot wind would blow through the tiles of the roof, rattling them, in the heat of midday, while everything, all the world rested in the shade. No other sounds. Just the vacant sound of wind in the rafters, perhaps the AC blowing.
I let my body go numb.
“Ani-cca…” was the sound that broke the silence, calling us back.
They teach equanimity. ‘Anicca.’ Impermanence. Change. Something has changed.
Sometimes, after an hour or so of scanning my body, I felt like I was sensing the interior space of my body, like the negative image of a Bodhisattva or seraphim.
No Jesus in the dhamma hall. He can’t reach me there. No Amitābha, or Chenrezig, either.
Yet again, through the vicissitudes of elation and confrontation with emotional pain, longing, isolation, and alienation from loved ones, the inability to talk or reach the ones you love or know how they are, periodically. The same monosyllabic words returned:
I WILL FIND YOU.
When they made love, she could feel his body moving through hers, all the spaces and interstices that she had scanned, all the images of him now made concrete, that had occupied her mind as she struggled to observe the breath, to quiet her mind and achieve equipoise, equanimity. But now she felt the waves of pleasure rush over her body, the cascade of love and ecstatic union — of pleasure, yes, but also its own form of balance, of emotion, staring into his face as she gripped his back, his face and stared deeply into his eyes, felt the equanimous motion, rhythm of their bodies, like a vibration running across her entire being, their entire beings, and filled with the crystalline light of ardent purity, of seeing.
The silence of closed eyes, the waves of pleasure, and his hair and beard in the light, radiant light on-streaming through the morning window, that poured through the crystals that hung from the ceiling and refracted around the walls and ceiling, connecting and space, structuring the space in geomantic patterns, a resonance with celestial bodies, moons and rings of Jupiter, Saturn…
She remembered him, the resigned gaze after the retreat, reminiscent of that first time they met, and lovingly set upon her, but with such kindness and calmness.
When she awoke from her nap, there was no sound in the house. The wind barely ruffled the white curtains. Sunlight refracted prismatically throughout the room from the crystal hung from the center. Laser shrapnel.
“What are you doing?” She moved into the living room and saw him standing there.
“Don’t come any closer.”
She froze, eyes wide. “Put down the gun.”
The self-same morning light that had seemed so unifying and bright moments ago now seemed cold, itself frozen. Her mouth hung open awfully, the lips quivering, eyes wide, blonde hair matted and tangled, and she felt the nakedness of her body, its thinness and frailty.
“Please,” he said. “I can’t. I just can’t anymore.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Please, sweetie. My dear. Let’s talk. We can talk it through.”
He jerked the barrel up beneath his chin, finger adroitly on the trigger. Eyes fixed on hers.
She saw his naked, thin form in the sunlight, the dark, thick chest hair that ran over the slight frame, pectorals, nipples, and abdomen that she so adored to fall asleep on.
Then he looked away.
“Whatever you felt, it’s over. I’m here — ”
“I’m really fucked up,” he said.
Get Pure Villainy’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The space exploded with a resounding gunshot. There was a cry of agony, and it was hers, from her rounded mouth, wide eyes, matted curly blond hair with little braids here and there, and she rushed to his falling body as if in a dream.
But as he fell, the blown off face, the missing jaw, the horrible ragged red where his visage had been, in the indifferent light of morning, something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. One remaining eye looked at her. She ran over and caught him, pulled his body up to herself, and cried — wailed a monumental sob from her being, misery, closed eyes, and wide frown of despair, and then looked down at the ruined body of her lover through the watery veil of tears. Holding his body close. Blood stained on naked skin. Warm blood. The flood of grief, mind deep in her knees. She would meditate for the rest of her days, but with a vacant stare.
Change. Something has changed.
Laughing and circulating in the courtyard of the retreat, watching the other attendees circulating. Bodies in Maya. The Wheel of Samsara, the retreat itself, which used to be a desert resort at one point, in the sunlight.
I saw the castle when I rounded the bend. Now that was something to see.
When one went around the bend, past my unit and my air conditioner, there was another section of the courtyard. There was, on the far wall, a large weeping willow that provided excellent shade in the afternoon. There was, under a tarp to the right past the row of units that contained mine, much stowage: dusty chairs and tables, stacked chairs and disused items beneath a canopy strung over them between the palms. The palms over here had their seeds tied into large nets. There was also a small alcove with a shelf containing clay pots, ready vessels to grow more life.
And indeed, on the first afternoon, when I had arrived, just after dinner, as I was perambulating, I walked over into this section, the one with the little shelves in the alcove, and the wind brought an empty plastic bottle in an arc right to my feet. And the whole time I was there, I confess, I talked to the bottle, as if it were a vessel. Unalive.
I remember when it rolled up to my feet, animated by some supernatural force, brought to me, I picked it up, brought it over to the alcove, and stowed it discreetly beneath the tarp-covered stowage, across from the shelves and the unused pots. On the shelves, there was one lovely white ceramic vase with ornate blue designs on it, a Chinese-style vase that reminded me of something my grandmother might have had, chipped and broken near the rim, perhaps, or the handle, I can’t recall just now, but still perfectly good, I supposed, and I placed that empty bottle under a tarp that covered some stowed bicycles. Sometimes, at various times of day, particularly at night, I might come by and wink at it.
I debated whether to give it to the dhamma servers for recycling. Or should I take it with me back home to the city? What had my yoga teacher said? They can be put to good use.
Whatever the case, it rolled up to me, chose me, the willow, the one good for shade, to my left at the far end of the courtyard by the stone wall that obscured the minaret from which the muezzin sang at night, and some ornate dome the function of which I could not discern, sandstone, and a Persian-looking design. That was looking to my left, to the North, and of course, looking directly out toward the East, the castle, high on the hill, arid and blasted and austere. It was an abandoned hotel, an edifice designed to look like a castle rampart, and over the days and over a week or more, I observed that the doors and windows of some of the high suites were open.
They were open! In the morning light, I saw it there, framed by the gate in the wall like some insane tarot card, on the blasted hillside, with its rocks and short, gnarled trees that grew impossibly and spitefully from the arid earth on the jagged, sheer slopes.
I even saw the white curtains undulating from out of the open sliding glass doors, standing alone there like a dumbfounded dipshit at 7:15 in the morning, flanked by the sun; or earlier, just after waking up around 4:30 or 5 AM, as the dawn came up all around the jagged desert foothills, the low, gnarled trees, the branches of the willows, just before the excited twittering of the birds — a midnight blue with a gilded horizon like the interior of a flame, from orange to white, like the event horizon of those simulations…
And hung above that rampart in the sky, in that midnight blue, the morning star. And me perambulating in the court nearest the dining hall, a few other souls similarly, waking up, seeking the water, staring in puzzlement at the world beyond the front gate, where we were forbidden, the abandoned mosque and the oppressed trees. I saw the structure that morning in a different light than on that first afternoon when my friend rolled up in a discarded bottle, and many subsequent ones, on the other side of the compound, the courtyard with the weeping willow, and the stone wall and the other gate that framed the whole scene like a tarot.
A parking lot surrounded that castle on a hill, also empty, and tubing that led down from higher floors to a large metal bin, indicating that there had been renovations. But for now, simply the undulating white curtains, emerging from open sliding glass doors that must have led into an infernal empty interior.
I paused beneath the willow and sat momentarily on a petrified log that was upright as a seat. It was not recommended to look at the other people or make any attempt to talk, and frequently I worried that I was irritating them just by openly laughing and smiling at times (or hiding my tears at others). Not just irritating interfering.
Some of the men hung their laundry on little racks outside their units, and I thought how fortunate I was to have my own room. Good karma!
When we first arrived, the four of us were congregated outside the dining hall. This was before the vow of silence went into effect. One tall German fellow, one Russian man, one Indian businessman in his early fifties, and me.
Sebastian, the German, slapped Ivan on the back. “Isn’t it great to be back here in the dhamma?”
“We’re the lucky ones that get exposure to the dhamma in this lifetime,” said Ivan. He was Russian but had lived in India for a while and learned about Ayurveda. Both men were returning students. “When we get out of here, we will have shiny skulls!”
Sebastian laughed at this and replied, rubbing his short-cropped hair with both hands. “Well said, my friend.”
“Can you believe that we are the senior students now?” said Ivan.
Sebastian nodded his head. “Feels like we were just beginning, it was just yesterday.”
“How many times have you been?” I asked.
“I’ve done ten ten-day retreats and one 45-day retreat,” he said.
“That’s incredible.”
“When I started, I was just like you. But after the first time, it was about five years until I did it again. And then I wanted to do more. I have been doing it for more than a decade.”
“And you did a 45-day retreat?” I said.
“That is one of the only ways you can really get close to the dhamma,” said Ivan.
“Many people devote their lives to seeking enlightenment,” said Sebastian. “I remember the people coming out. Their eyes, my God — like lamps!” He held both hands up before his widening eyes, smiling, zealous.
How could someone monitor every cell, molecule, and atom in their being? Down to the tiniest motes? What kind of intelligence, consciousness, being could do this? To relieve suffering.
The Sankhara lie beneath the surface of the veil of consciousness, streaming and cascading and euphoric flow. Yet, Gautama resolved, brow furrowed, to look deeper inside, and soaring above the erupting volcanoes of illusion, of the nevarana. Only then, opening their eyes, do they touch the earth. There was no God here, or a soul — no heaven in the proper, Judeo-Christian sense, just sensation, and Nirvana, and the syncopation of variegated standing waves and scans in the body, until the dance of perpetual motion was realized.
When the guru mentioned that Gautama resolved that he would sit down right in this spot and not move until he achieved Nirvana, I saw him approach the Lotus tree, I saw the shimmering rainbow light, the rainbow, prismatic reality as if all the space and matter were shimmering, and permeated with crystalline droplets, the Buddha himself, the air, the branches hung with prismatic light, swaying in the breeze.
“The second day is over, and you have eight more to work…”
After that second day, I sat respectfully and watched the guru lecturing on the film projected on the wall in the windowless meditation hall, the one with the high, metal roof and mock stucco. Where the windows were blotted with cardboard and anything that they could find. The Indian men were at a separate lecture in Hindi, and this talk was attended by the Western students and those Indian men who preferred English. Like clockwork, the returning students sat at the front, after a day of sitting, upright and motionless. I couldn’t believe it. I marveled at their resolve.
“Eight more to work diligently. Patiently and persistently, you are bound to succeed. Bound to succeed.”
The discourse lasted an hour each night, and it was a nice, fun way to punctuate the days of silence. But it felt as if I were sinking, we were all sinking in the hall. The fake stucco was illuminated by the white light coming off the lens of the projector, and as he talked, and as we were immersed in the aura of the one thus gone, and, when the talk, which was about the importance of being non-sectarian and not having any religious iconography to cling to, ended, bathed in the blue light of NO SIGNAL, it occurred to me that there was no God here. No Christ, and no Amitābha Buddha, as I would later learn. Not even a Bodhisattva could reach us here. And so it was that I felt we were all sinking.
I returned to my room and bedded down for the night in the cool, with the blue and purple bedsheets, in the prismatic light thrown by the single nightlight above my bunk that also illuminated the armoire and the empty bed against the opposite wall, casting vague shadows. The pane of the window over the bed by the opposite wall was translucent, and vague light filtered in. The AC unit on the far wall set to a comfortable 23 C.
What if, I thought, we were trapped, and I felt the shadows and their penumbra on the purple necromantic bedsheets of moons and stars begin to sink into the representation, the projected image of the guru, like a poster of Big Brother, hovering on the wall of the room in my mind’s eye, and it became a negative, inverted. The blue screen of NO SIGNAL. Was this hell? Were we all in hell?
I could hear him speaking, the low voice, also a recording, just a representation.
See Pt. 2 → Clouds II
