Saturday, 19 May 2012

The Spider and I are One


I tried to write a short story set inside the mental processes of a guy, really me, walking around Lancaster one day. Like John's Gospel, the story started with the One. I can't remember the passage but it was something like a poem that I also tried to write:

"One energy,
"With many changing forms,
"Builds complicated ordered patterns of itself
"On different psychophysical levels
"And spatiotemporal scales
"And becomes conscious of itself
"Whose body is the universe,
"Whose sense-organs are living beings..."

Then the One becomes conscious in a guy waking up. He sees a spider trapped in the bath but does not free it, notes that a Spider-man film is showing at the local cinema and refers to the Upanishadic passage which compares the Eternal and the universe to a spider and its web.
 Going to bed, he sees the spider still in the bath and realises, "The spider and I are one."

At the time, I was unemployed so the guy in the story had plenty of time to walk around. He also leafleted outside the Benefits Office and referred to clouds and sky as Ymir's brains and skull. I practised counting-the-breaths meditation so the guy in the story did, with the counting interrupted by an imagined dialogue. He conversed with the universal self who said things like, "She, your beloved, is a sage who knows my nature and dances with the Earth." That was how I felt about someone at the time. But the only passage that I thought worth preserving described a drug experience:

"The sun explodes.
"The canal,
"Like the road to Oz,
"rotates to another dimension,
"Where every particle is alive
"And dryads dance to the water.
"We watch
"The light
"Come
"From the sun."

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