Tag: nothingness.

• ger.

  Condors and cinereous vultures circled overhead, surely an auspicious omen he thought to himself. The walk had taken two, trying days, though this valley was where his people had found wisdom since time immemorial—an axis mundi of the world, centre of all. As he stood on a ridge overlooking the glacier-scarred topography, he spied a good campsite, spotlighted by a sunbeam.

  After another two hours of walking, he reached where the sun’s wise rays touched down and began to unload the camel that had been just half-a-step behind since he left. As it began to sink beyond the mountains framing the valley, the sun recalled its light and warmth. Just in time, the ger was up. The circular tent was constructed from warm felt, with an opening in the centre of the roof to let smoke out. This one was much smaller than those usually seen in the area—this was a shamanic ger, utilised for isolation, deprivation, and vision quests; all the reasons he found himself in this particular spot at this particular time.

  He unfurled the flap entrance then sealed it. It would not open again for another week.

  In silence and darkness he sat; solely being, not doing. As the days meandered, merged with the one prior, his stomach sang out for sustenance; the only thing having passed his lips being water from the water buffalo skin bladder lying next to him. Boundaries dissolved as his thoughts slowed and the sensations from within the body—and the deep informational base of awareness—became more prominent; though he recognised it was probably always there, the acknowledgement of it was, apparently, not. His mind’s eye constructed (or revealed?) an immense column that stretched from his forehead to the godhead—constructed of symbols, sigils, and signs which he now recognised as nothing but different sides of the same coin. All that was, was information. I within I, 0 > 1. Time, merely emergent from consciousness, revealed its ruse to him. From his belly, he felt a cool sensation spreading to his limbs, before passing out.

  He awoke—minutes or months later, he was unsure. Though he was sure that this part of the journey was over, and gathered himself and his thoughts. After a quiet morning of meditation, he began packing up the ger—all was deathly still, apart from the occasional squawk of a vulture or bellow of a camel.

  2026.10.11

• bodhisattv-her.

  She knows.

  See the way she ebbs and flows,

  through the now // osmose

  awareness deathblows.

  Circled by crows,

  the corpse of tomorrows.

  And though she chose

  the austerities it bestows,

  it’s the path to dispose

  of the scarecrows in the meadows

  of delusion, which ego does impose.

  2026.10.07

• witness.

  As it had done ceaselessly for the last 4 billion years, the sun crept above the horizon. Turning the indigo sky shades of orange and yellow—along with a river of bright white darting out across the ocean’s surface—the golden orb signalled the dawn of a new day.

  Bats turned in and birds awoke, beginning an ornithological orchestra that fell on deaf ears. A breeze arrived, whipping up the sand whimsically before mindlessly dumping it and moving on. A mother oystercatcher admonished her chick—high-pitched life lessons screeched squawked up and down the beach. Dark clouds in the distance, initially a churning of greys, dissolved, defeated by the arrival of a stern southerly. No one was around to record or reminisce, these repeated scenes unseen by human sentience, a morning left to unfurl without perspective nor preconceptions.

  Yet—and yet—as eyes pass over these words, experience itself cannot escape the morning breeze.

  2026.10.04

• cylinder.

  His legs stretched out in the shade as he made more notes in his notebook, scribbles now filling up the margins, the only remaining space. Geometric constructions and complex algebraic equations created an impenetrably dense wall of knowledge, making his work visually off-putting to most. Today, as the midday sun bore down, a date palm delivered him shade, allowing him to work uninterrupted. A gentle breeze touched his cheek.

  As he scratched an itch on his side, he noticed his ribs were more pronounced—the past weeks, as he honed in on solutions for his work, has had neglected food and comfort; his work all-encompassing. Notebooks—stacks and stacks of them, as well as loose leaves of crumbled and folded paper, scattered all around his house—contained the synthesis and syncretism of ideas and theories from far-flung thinkers, old and new. Diagrams and schematics of geometries that warped the mind, graphs plotting exotic equations, mathematical alchemy and esoterica; theoretical threads he hoped to pull into answers, solutions to reality itself; as if that needed to be solved.

  He sat the notebook down softly beside him in the dry dirt, closed his eyes, and let out a sigh. The sigh evolved into a deep exhalation. Then an inhalation; the cycle repeating. And then again. He wasn’t sure exactly what drew him in, and back, to his childhood as an orphan at that monastery in the mountains. Remembering how the monks used to guide them in meditation, he crossed his legs and sat up straight. Decades receded in his mind—before his time as a renowned thinker, before his time as a young professor, before his time spent travelling to far-flung lands to study, before he left the monastery, before everything.

  Slowly he opened his eyes, his gaze drawn upward. Mouth agape, he saw the sky as a monumental rotating column, stretching as wide and tall as was possible in every direction. Slowly it turned, a towering cylinder of shimmering indigo iridescence, though at this moment he wasn’t sure how much he could trust his own perceptions. The very essence of existence was being projected onto the inner surface—people, houses, trees, himself—all mirages. A salty tear ran down his cheek. Overcome with awe and abject astonishment, he witnessed the geometry of his notebooks in motion, the two-dimensional informational base of all that is. More tears flowed as realisation set in—this was it, all there was. The bedrock of being was not something solid and enduring, the tombs of kings, but rather ephemeral and ethereal, flickering and fleeting. All that he—that anyone—had lived and breathed and died for, decried as fundamental and final, was nothing but conjurings from the surface of the cylinder.

  In the distance, plastered on the wall of the cylinder, he recognised a mountain formation from his youth; he hung his head. It was all an illusion—a hologram projected onto the consciousness. Hopes, dreams, fame, infamy; all phantasms of the great, cylindrical construction. He had nothing, was nothing. His face softened. He was free.

  Combs of cirrus clouds appeared on the column, before being projecting into the sky, then dissipated just as quickly.

  2026.09.13

• perception.

  She flopped her hand into the water—the outrigger canoe was moving at a quick clip, urged on by the Trade Winds. She had made this passage many times before, and this explained her languid posture, slumped casually near the stern, the canoe barely wider than her hips. The wind pushed relentlessly on the sail; hand-hewn trunks arranged in a crab claw rig suspending a woven sail, as her ancestors had made since time immemorial. The outrigger counterweight, the ama—little more than a coconut tree trunk—raised up and took flight, further increasing the canoe’s velocity. It sliced over the small, smooth waves like a machete through a tuna. While one hand dragged in the water—the crisp Pacific combed by her fingers—the other loosely held a fibrous rope, which adjusted and trimmed the sails, maximising the little boat’s speed across the limitless tranquil turquoise that was spread out before her.

  Clouds travelled above, running their own errands, and she used them—along with the ocean currents and bird life around her—to chart her course to her destination, a nearby atoll. At this pace, she would make landfall at dusk; just as many of the seabirds she was currently watching would begin returning to shore before the fall of darkness.

  With the whooshing of water and the whistling of wind, she couldn’t help but be immediately present. Time dissolved; just her, a speck in the cerulean expanse. Her hand dissolved in the water; the separation between her and the watery depths seemed increasingly arbitrary. There was movement—a wave occasionally washed over the side, birds divebombed in the distance for lunch, a flying fish flew alongside—but nothing changed. How could it? All that has existed, and all that will exist, is as it is.

  The horizon became inverted. Actually, or allegorically? Or perhaps it doesn’t matter? Sea overhead, the sky submerged; whales soared, birds swam. Blue stacked on blue. And yet, nothing had changed; except perhaps perception. To perceive—to attempt to understand—is to experience the illusion of change, the myth of separation and distinction. Ocean oscillating, cosmos churning; movement, and yet changeless. Awareness, the now—outside of thought, circumventing the thinking mind—oblivious to time, the measure of change. All that is, just has it has always been, still just is as it is.

  2026.08.30

• ritual.

  Obfuscate obliteration,

  ideas pulled into oblivion.

  Dissolution of information,

  on the exhalation.

  Hubristic construction,

  an arrogant comprehension.

  Temporal disintegration,

  annihilation in meditation.

  Inversion of expectation

  in the subversion of separation.

  A return to origination.

  through ritual connection.

  2026.08.26

• river.

  Helix of awareness,

  conduit of consciousness.

  From the original,

  via fontanelle.

  Astral source to mental river,

  sentience a fractal mirror.

  False belief in two,

  deduction askew.

  Illusion of separation,

  errors in perception.

  2026.08.19

• chai.

  The near-full Moon lay down lunar light all over the arid landscape. It gave everything a milky tone, sharply contrasting with the midnight blue shadows, which ran from the Moon’s gaze. Low shrubs and rolling rocky meadows dominated the plateau here, all bound tight under the Milky Way above—a convex strip seemingly securing the serene night sky. With the scene barely varying in its tone of sparse monotony, he decided to press on until dawn encroached on the horizon.

  With the slender fingers of a new day beginning to filigree the morning sky, he acknowledged it was time to pause and set up camp. The hobbled camels made a fuss, as they always do. It was understandable, he empathised with their collective animosity. Several bellowed in contempt, then others signalled their approval of this disapproval with long low lamentations.

  As the Moon sunk lower, he began to gather nearby scrub to start a fire. Once the orange flickers had warmed his fingers, he set a brass teapot right into the flames. Covered in dents and scratches—a knowing, a world-weary patina—he had carried it with him for at least a decade now. A small handful of leaves were retrieved from a tin tucked away in a pair of saddlebags slung across an unhappy camel. Boiling water ricocheted inside teapot, the steam announcing that tea was soon to follow. Easily he held the teacup in his hand, holding it up level with the horizon, and directed the spout towards the vessel’s waiting lip. Deliberately he sipped, savouring the smokey essence; a flavour that seemed to transcend time, as if tinged with the experiences of centuries past.

  Using the sleeve of his flannel shirt, he wiped the last vestiges of tea from his beard. Kicking away a few of the larger rocks, he laid down a small, intricate yet well-loved rug—the oasis towns in the area were famed for their textiles and carpets—on a flat area of red earth. His tired legs effortlessly lowered him, and then crossed themselves in front of him. As if almost to steady himself—physically, yes; but more importantly, metaphysically—he anchored his palms squarely over his knees. He paused; then emptied his lungs of their last remnants of oxygen. Again he paused, before closing his eyes, and ever so slowly inhaling. As he gently opened his eyes, his vision was filled with the innumerable stars above, though bit-by-bit they were being consumed by dawn’s light. Like a silhouette burned into the eyes from too bright a light, the Milky Way was seared across the sky; though ghostly, two-dimensional. His thinking gradually faded—the cogs of thought, the constant clockwork of analysis, grinding to a halt under the immense presence of the cobalt half-dome overhead. A laminar flow of awareness spiralled upward—inward—into space, into nothingness.

  2026.08.16

• medusa.

  A liquid desert. Oases of life here and there; upwellings of plankton, balls of baitfish, the corpse of a recently-passed whale offering up a feast to other ocean-dwellers. Above and beyond, mellow dunes of waves, blue as far as the eye of the albatross can see. However, there are itinerants, adventurers, those wandering beyond the enclaves and safe harbours of life. Seabirds, sharks, cetaceans, searchers, and scavengers looking for lunch.

  Bobbing in an ocean gyre that initially generated strength on the other side of the planet, the gelatinous giant was amorphous under the water, suspended from gravity. Its bell pulsated rhythmically while flecks of blue, ruby, citrine, and indigo were visible amongst the tangle of its trailing tentacles—some many metres long—their ends unseen, beyond the visibility of the open ocean. Embodying surrender, its direction, diet, and desires at the whims of the ocean, accepting things as they come, and go. Apotheosis of ebb and flow. Unburdened by a thinking mind—beyond the grip of of thinking’s manufactured past and future—it experiences all at once; and yet is deathless—a moment-to-moment time traveller, free to roam, unshackled from temporality. Oblivious to an illusion of control, it wanders wherever the ocean sees fit. Sailing both time and space, unimpeded.

  For aeons it meanders, having witnessed infinite dawns, each more beautiful, more alluring that the last. Clouds speed over head, while decades pass with equal abandon. Mountains form, impermanent things—all things—return to dust. Change; yet there is no measurement, no desired state, nothing not as it shouldn’t be. Nothing outside of now. Following the currents and winds, as it did yesterday and the day before and the centuries before than.

  In the now, everything is as it is.

  2026.08.12

• 0>1

  Nothing lasts—an acknowledgement of the way of things, the indefatigable efforts of entropy. Desires, aversions, feelings, thoughts, opinions—all fleeting, lost eventually to the fading memories of time. Yet, knowing this, we still place such importance, such vehemence, upon these things; conveniently forgetting they are impermanent, yet our lust for permanence is insatiable.

  Decision by decision, brick by brick, we build lives on shifting sands, sandcastles to be washed away in the tide. Thoughts—despite being constructed in ephemera, the past and future—appear as fact, monoliths of truth, add the illusion of control and safety to an existence that contains neither. And so we masquerade—peacock-like charades of how successful, how beautiful, how intelligent, how kind we are, while internally our thoughts and emotions churn amongst the uncertainty.

  Paradoxically, contentment can be found in the nothing—beyond thoughts, decisions, preferences. For in the present—absent of past and future—anxiety, doubt, fear, separation of self, cannot exist without anything to cling to; without an imagined remnant of the past or an imagined glimmer of the future. In this sense, nothing really is greater than something. In the nothingness—the great suspended unknowing of mind before thought exists—is the abode of contentment.

  There is no thing greater than nothing.

  2026.07.08