pondering—purpose.
Maybe purpose means so much to so many is because it is our bulwark against the unconquerable tide of entropy? How strong must the motivation be to engage in an unwinnable war?
poetry—senescence.
Memories and opinions
are merely stations
along the train journey of being,
soon to be loose
in the rear window of the caboose.
Nothing lasts.
Loss, at half-mast.
Yet, this existence—subsistence
then senescence—
is as it is.
prose—flicker.
He stared intently, drawn in more by instinct than inquisition—the butter lamp flame waved gently back and forth, mimicking the drafts undulating through the small stone hut.
Cross-legged he sat, deep in acute awareness of his movements as his hand moved from lamp to lamp, hovering over each momentarily in mantra before moving to the next. A thick haze hung in the air, drawn from the many incense stick lit around the room. He was unsure how long he had been sitting, alone in the square shack, as time had a way of acting like a rubber band during retreats—in a way mocking our human expectation, or insistence, that it is linear, continuous, obligatory. The single window barely allowed any light—reflecting the decades of use the hut had seen as a hermitage, generations of saints, seekers, and skeptics having locked themselves away here to journey through awareness and the mind.
Occasionally his concentration was broken by the caws of crows and voices of vulture—omens and oracles, both. Shadows and shapes shifted on the walls, sparked by the luminal interference and decoherence of the butter lamps. His mind was drawn to reimagine and redefine the shape of the darkness, creating stories and meanings—a hope for definitions amongst the randomness. He smiled weakly at his thoughts chasing the threads of purpose, the need and necessity of our consciousness to construct ceremony from the void, acknowledging the apophenia.
The nagging of negation flowed through his body, each aching in a different medium—physically, mentally, emotionally, socially. Food, water, sensory inputs, and conversation had all been in very limited supply since he withdrew into retreat. And yet, the greatest gains come from the most acute austerities—contraction into the condesate of consciousness.
