There is something in the act of writing. A something one hopes to reach, yet it is already here, floating in front of me. A something in opposition to a nothingness. A writer’s longing. A sphere of whitish smoke in front of my eyes. It is not enough for me to contemplate it, I need…
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I am fascinated by idealisation, the way the mind changes reality to suit its needs. We have limited senses and a limited capacity to interpret the inputs we receive, with which our mind must draw a picture of our surrounding reality. Our mental representation is our only reality. Things are as they are, but not…
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(continues from here; begins here) To come here in the mornings to sit before this Rothkian void. A filled void that contains everything. The narrator wonders, do I care? But there is nothing to care about or not, there is nothing to feel. That seems to belong to another reality. Here is everything that is.…
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I think about those writers today. Not about their characters, but as the voice-over, the narrator recounting the inexorable succession of events. I wonder if the narrator suffers more anguish than the characters. If he knows what is going to happen, if he feels he cannot feel as his characters do. If deep down he…
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Sometimes we fantasise how it would feel to live in a world full of elves, trolls, fairies, giants, hobbits, unicorns and, of course, dragons. We see ourselves drifting towards that realm of fantasy, which we idealise as a much better world than our own. More suited for our spirit. But if we had been living…
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I have often wondered about Odysseus’ last words to Penelope before he left for Troy. How would the ultimate hero say farewell, how to explain the necessity to leave? It may be easier to use the excuse of duty than to explain the powerful attraction of the other side of the world, calling his name.…
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Ask yourself, “What is the real motive behind everything I do, think, want?” You’ll see that your real desire is to be desireless. Your real desire is peace. Jean Klein, The Ease of Being The main aim of each want is to end the want itself. To be desireless, as Klein says. Once we get…
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I have a mug on my desk with blue stars on it. Each star occupies an empty blank space in the shape of a star. Some blank spaces lack their star. I had this silly feeling that those spots had not yet found their match. But then I saw them for what they really are:…
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I’m a CreepI’m a weirdoWhat the hell am I doin’ hereI don’t belong here Radiohead, Creep For many years I felt like this, in a life that now seems a million years ago, as if I were someone else back then. I felt different from ‘the others’, I wouldn’t fit. I reached the conclusion that…
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We spend most of our life searching, trying to fill the void we are born with. The original sin of the separation of our conscious and unconscious minds. We enter the labyrinth of the million corners, lanes, and fake lights. Just some sugar to get us going until our next ‘discovery’. To no avail. Why…
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Reading Hesse’s Siddhartha again, I realised that I read books as I look at a river. I read and read until I find a sentence, a paragraph that resonates with me. Then I stop. I wonder why my mind focused my intention on that idea. I immediately discard it… ‘No, that cannot be me’. But…
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I sometimes have the feeling that I talk and discuss ‘the Search’ more than I actually search. As if I were discussing the pros and cons of each strategy to climb the Everest without actually taking a step up. Or maybe the Matterhorn. After all, I’m an introvert and I wouldn’t like to find myself…
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Why do we want what we want? One day we discover a new hole that wasn’t there before, a gap we need to fill, a want. It becomes a need we must satisfy. I don’t mean wanting water when one is thirsty, but the other things we want, the ones that look like choices. What…
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The music of Philip Glass makes me feel at home. Apparently flat but deeply mysterious. The nuances of repetition. Change in no change. Peaceful and yet disquiet. A tension of opposites. Quiet and yet so loud. An inbetweenness. I often dream of windows through which I get ‘to the other side’, usually some sort of…
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I recently finished watching the fourth season of The Crown. Throughout the series, the characters explain how the Crown and the elected Government represent the two sides of power. One side that is changeable, works hands-on, gets dirty and suffers the blame, and another side that is eternal, idealised, immaculate, almost magical. There comes a…
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It’s funny how we think we have read something in a book, in a blog, something that touches us, and when we go back to read it again it’s just not there. Maybe there are some words that vaguely resemble what we remembered, but the clear idea we had in our minds is not there,…
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I once read that Bruckner’s symphonies might not be as beautiful as Mahler’s (?), but that they advance relentlessly, inexorably, almost unavoidably. Sometimes, it seems, against their own will. I wondered about the music I like and I realised that all my favourite songs and pieces have something in common: an underlying sense of inevitability.…
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As we ride towards the sunset, I ask myself whether the end will ever come, whether the sunset is a place, a real place. An end to the rainbow. A place to rest, to die. This thought makes me stop. The others look back at me, no words. I am not ready, I say. Ed…
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Trailing behind. Trailing behind. Trailing behind… but do I actually want to keep the pace? A few years ago, I felt as I had fallen off the train. My train. I still have the mental image in my mind: a meadow with short grass, the empty rails, the sunset, silence. Nothing. I just looked at…
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My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. I did not think that my soul is a desert, a barren, hot desert, dusty and without drink. The journey leads through hot sand, slowly wading without a visible goal to hope for? How eerie is this wasteland. It seems to…
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The Introverted Tree 