Contemplating Enigma - Part II

I was threading my way through my backdoor neighborhood. I reached the edge of a large park whose trees stood tall and dark, as if to refute my entry. I walked along the row of houses and came upon a fenced area where there was nothing but shrubs and grass. And as I looked through the barbed wires, a question surfaced in my head on its own, and not without some force: "What is the language that you speak?"

(Never mind that I was dancing.)

Transformative Music - Appreciating the Indecipherable

In my music, I sometimes add the sound of someone speaking with the intention that the words are indecipherable. Thus, I use samples of people speaking, if not in a muffled tone, then in a foreign tongue. Those listeners who happen to speak that tongue are out of luck. For, to be spoken to while there lies no hope of understanding the intended message can feel as if the realm of the mysterious were knocking on one's door.

I here present a small collection of my music that utilizes this technique to provide the effect of mystery.

The Diminution of Suffering in the Face of Infinity

My vacation in Beirut, Lebanon, ended just a few days before a wave of violence hit the streets last week, forcing the airport to close and killing or wounding hundreds.

Since the two opposing factions have little common ground upon which to agree, it was certainly plausible that the country would plunge back into a long civil war. There is no greater fear for the Lebanese people than for Lebanon to become a blood bath like Iraq, with suicide bombers blowing up at random targets and claiming innocent lives. Already, the terrorism related websites were urging the killing to transfer to Lebanon but a few days into the fighting last week.

My own concern over my loved ones in Lebanon gradually grew over the days, especially since many of them work in the line of journalism, which forces them at times to follow the action rather than to hide from it. The worry ate at my being and I slowly saw my integrity slip, my spirits sink, the world growing black all around me. A veritable black hole of existence is the result of war. It is a traumatic shredding of the very fabric of one's being.

As I saw myself falling I made a resolution to put a stop to my fears and worry and to shift my state of mind to what Castaneda used to call the "Point of Indifference". In the past, this has been very helpful when I found myself apparently sinking to a place of no return. There is no easy way to do so, especially when one feels heavy and weak already.

I happen to believe in reincarnation and that we live on beyond physical death ad infinitum. My beliefs have been fairly strong since my teenage years when I was first waking up to my own maturity that I seemed to be born with.

I began to envision myself experiencing lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, and thus I began contemplating the breathless incomprehensibility of infinity. In comparison, this life of mine is nothing more than a blink of the eye. Were the worst to happen, it will only roll over with time...

With this meditation constantly in the back my mind, my spirits stopped sinking and I once more had a foothold on my bearing.

Contemplating Enigma

Lately, I have been preparing a long post about art, enigma, and mysticism.

Yesterday, I was taking a stroll through the streets of Beirut while contemplating enigma. Specifically, I was wondering why I had not been experiencing synchronicities on the subject despite having been concentrating upon it for a number of days. As if in response, I experienced the following synchronicities:

First, my uncle-in-law, who has been writing a movie script filled with enigmatic scenes, called my cell phone and his voice was very, very low so that the words were sometimes entirely obscure and indecipherable.

Then, after I had just gotten off the phone and put it in my pocket, it started ringing again. I looked at the name of the caller and it said: "Mystery". It turned out to be the name of the currently activated ring-tone (I had not known this because it was my brother's phone) and I must have accidentally triggered the ring-tone selection feature when I put the phone in my pocket.

As I stood on the corner to write about these synchronicities in my PDA, I suddenly heard a "What are you doing here?" It was a friend of mine who, it turned out, lived a couple of blocks away. This sudden meeting was a meaningful coincidence in that it highlighted how my trips to Beirut were always full to the brim with socializing, which in turn explains why I have not been able to detect many synchronicities. Gregariousness can sometimes dissipate one's focus and therefore the warping of the existential matrix is reduced. (See Synchronicity Clusters and Warping the Existential Matrix for a related discussion). On the other hand, a gregarious lifestyle presents more opportunities for meaningful coincidences due to the increased richness of external experience. One's faculties of observation should remain on high alert despite the distractions from socializing.

In summary, within the span of no more than a couple minutes of wondering why synchronicities were not surfacing about enigma, I experienced three meaningful coincidences.

Childhood and Integration

I am currently on vacation in Lebanon, staying at the apartment in which I grew up as a child. I typically come for a visit once every year or two.

On a visit three or four years ago, I found they had moved the heavy furniture around in my bedroom after painting the walls. And my childhood bed now was located at the opposite side of the room. I had massive difficulties sleeping there.

One night I decided to move the bed as close to the original position as possible (there was a heavy bookcase in the way). When I did so and turned off the lights (I was totally sober, mind you), I started hallucinating thousands of shards of light going everywhere all at once, some of them were stationary as if they represented fixated thought complexes. The hallucinations were so bright, they blocked my vision of the darkened room. Quite scary, actually. I left the bed and came back and they returned once again.

What do these hallucinations mean? In the least, they suggest the special power of a place frequented during childhood.

Any ideas?

Travel and Integration

I've been on vacation since last Friday. I am currently stationed in Lebanon, my country of birth, but I stopped in Paris for a couple nights.



Sitting in Cafe Hugo in Place des Vosges...reading the biography of Robert Walser backwards...one paragraph at a time...




When I finally made it to Montmartre, the hilliest part of Paris, a deeper part of me let out a sigh of relief. My being felt integrated with my surroundings.




In the picture above, this tiny dip in the road followed by a symmetrical climb caught my attention and gave me comfort, perhaps because it represented a common psychological pattern of movement. The coming and the going...the falling and the rising.

In the middle of the valley there is a road that leads to the right. From my point of view it was hidden, and it represented a mystery. Did I walk down this road to find out where it lead? No. I much preferred to leave it a mystery, so that the feeling of enigma bloomed within as I walked further through the winding streets.

I have always found wandering through the streets of an unfamiliar city quite fascinating, for the act resembles dreaming one's way through the maze of consciousness. This is especially the case when the landscape is hilly, for it more accurately represents the valleys and peaks of the mind.

The Intersection Point - Art and the Paranormal

The Writer, shown above, is one of my earlier works of art. It was drawn during one of my dry spells as a writer. The figure is shown doubling up on himself with his right foot resting on his book, keeping it tightly shut.

The image has much more meaning to me than can be discerned from the picture alone, however. Drawing this piece resulted in one my earliest and simplest psychic experiences and the story demonstrates how the creative act can help enhance an artist's sensitivity not just to the visual image on the canvas but also to the world at large.

I completed the drawing in an hour or so. The main outline of the body was drawn quite rapidly and I spent the rest of the time finely tuning the piece. Every line I drew or faded out, no matter how tiny, produced an effect in me psychologically as I reached for the precise overall effect that I wanted.

After I was done and I washed up, I walked outside my apartment for a breath of fresh air. Standing there was a girl I'd never seen before, no doubt house-sitting for my next door neighbor. We exchanged some brief words and both of us went back indoors.

As I was readying myself to go to sleep, I began feeling an extraordinary sadness swell up inside me. It gradually took me over completely and I finally found myself imagining that I was at a doctor's office being told that I had only a short time left to live. Right when I felt my sadness had reached its peak, I suddenly heard the girl next door burst into a flood of tears from behind my bedroom wall.