Get Your Pipe Ready

I was in Mexico City, having returned to my little apartment on the fourth floor, huffing and puffing, yet still full of energy.

I’d just been reading my latest book club offering, Money by Martin Amis. 

[Odd. I have a sense I’ve written an account of this before, maybe even in this Substack. Well, I think I’ll just soldier on. I’ve written more than 50 of these posts with video, so I’m not eager to go over them all, to see if there’s been any redundancy. Especially when I began so energetically, happy to have a topic to write on! Hey, if you’re game, look back over the last year’s posts and see if you find the one that tells this story. If you do, well, maybe that means this is a recurring issue that needs more attention. Maybe it means I should write the dang novel I allude to in the story, which you may not even be familiar with, especially if you had not read my first post about it, or if I, in fact, never did write about it before today and this is all just news to you. Back to the action.]

In Money, Amis writes in the first person. I love how honest he is, how “balls out” he is, letting us know everything he’s thinking about, going through, describing in detail lot of nasty stuff related to addictions of all kinds. Food, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, fame, attention. A real laugh riot. Not so much.

But what I think I was excited about most was the sense of freedom I imagined he was feeling in the writing of this. Unfettered. Letting it rip. And from the gut. He wanted to let us know what was going on with him. Maybe he wanted to be understood. Or at least, known. Me too.

So I called my writer friend, Cheryl, and left her a very jazzed message about this novel I want to write. About a guy who wants to write but has a problem: His spiritual path has brought him to a spot where it appears there’s really nothing to write about. That, up until now, most of his writing has been little more than an extension of his “character defect” of calling attention to himself. Not only that, he now can see that all his thoughts, feelings, sensations, ideas, opinions, realizations, are not that important. In fact, they may very well be phantoms, not “real.” They are all creations of his ego, and his ego is just a faulty way of thinking that does not reflect reality or Truth. Eek. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

So the novel is about a guy who tries to write when he knows his writing is frivolous, inconsequential. Yet he still wants to let someone know about his “experience.”

And that’s where I am today.

These Substacks are getting a little harder to write every time. Even the videos are losing their luster. Which is shocking because I’ve always been enamored with seeing myself on video. What’s changed? I believe it’s because I’m aware of my being as being something very different from what I thought it was. And words themselves are part of the “problem.” Words are limited. They can only hope to point in the direction of what I am seeing these days. Truth be told, I know something really really big: I know I don’t know anything, when it comes to explaining what this whole world/life thing is. I don’t even know what is is. Where’s that pipe?

So what’s the purpose of writing when one gets to this place? Beats me. I do like how Rupert Spira says the purpose of relationships is to share the joy of being. Two souls, or more, fully enjoying being Awake, not craving to fill some imaginary void that they think can be filled with food, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, fame, attention. Two souls who comprehend their newly discovered Identity as Consciousness, as Vibe, as Awareness.

To quote Pink Floyd, Is there anybody out there? Anybody tracking?

I do live in this thing we call the World. I can’t explain that. I do have a body. And I know that somehow I am not my body. I’m more than that. “I’ am not even “I,” a person. Do I contradict myself? Of course I contradict myself. There’s a lot going on in my life, as we say. To be specific, and current, in this box of Space and Time, this earthly life, I’ve just come home from a driving trip out East. Julia and I visited friends and family in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, then drove back home via the Ohio and Indiana Toll Roads. Lots to write about, talk about. You’d think. But I can feel how if I were to start writing about the various things we did and saw, it would feel like mere reporting, not attached to my deeper self.

At our little party here yesterday, a pre-Labor Day barbecue, I wasn't going on and on about the visit to my childhood summer home in Cape Cod, or staying at the home of my first girlfriend and her husband in Philly, or hanging with 98-year-old Aunt Nancy in Lexington. Mass. I must say, I really did enjoy talking at the barbecue with my old college pal, Mel, who’s got a serious neurological condition that looks like it could be dementia or Alzheimer’s in the works. We can’t really reminisce anymore. Mel has little memory. So we act silly together, make faces and funny noises. We improvise. We somehow connect in the moment. And we laugh our asses off. Conversing in gibberish, using intentionally nonsensical words and language. It’s a blast, weirdly satisfying, and utterly liberating. Somehow, that seems worth writing about.