The Enigmantra

Many years ago, in me sparked the desire to write a book, a novel. The characters and scenarios began unfolding in my head. But, as I busied myself writing paragraph after paragraph, I started feeling the need to write in a more terse manner. I saw my work shrink and over time the entire book was reduced to the following two words: "Ocean Ghost". My work was complete, the book was finished. In no way could I add a single word.

Over the years, most of my fiction of the poetic kind would go through a similar diminution, a compaction that prompted me to call this type of writing "crystallized literature", which is also befitting for, just as one handles a crystal, it is well to closely (but not analytically) scrutinize these tiny, literary parcels of thought, and to shine the light through them from various angles. The term still applies but the style of writing has for me taken on more meaning.

I found that concentrating on these small phrases that I constructed helped me reach higher states of mind and thus I now playfully call them "enigmantras". Similar to zen koans, they are typically not meant to be decipherable by the intellect and yet they can be intriguing. In addition, they are either poetically enigmatic or they simply possess the power of sparking the imagination in a way that evokes a sense of beauty, sacredness, and/or ethereality.

I present some of these "enigmantras" below. The sequence is unimportant, although they can play off each other. I recommend not trying to analyze their meanings, but living with the words in your intuitive realms.



Twilight Absorption


The Embrace of a Cosmic Flux


A Spectrum Discharged


The Luminous Floods


The Voyage Behind a Nameless Gesture


To Conjugate Existence


The Color of Twilight Supercedes the Eye


The Sudden Illumination of an Inner Metropolis


Obscured by a Windscape


Poignant Light


Jovial Heartbeat


An Undefined Sunrise


Time's Condensation


Where Shadows Shine


The Visual Matrix of a Capsized Dream


Burst Meadow


The Holographic Pivot


The Immeasurable Distance of Shadow


Archetypal Flora


Reduction Symphonic


Color Reversal Anatomy


Motion Wings Distributed



What is enigmatic to one person may not even be slightly interesting to another. I would be interested to see if anyone else out there resonates with the above words like I do. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated, as always...