Letting Go

sometimes I wonder how to begin a stream of consciousness post and then I say to myself why worry sure you can start anywhere and then continue on without concern as to what will come out for the piece will write itself and some flowers will appear like lotuses from the muck and gunk and bilge and all that slime and all that slime and somewhere deep within it there will be something fine formed like a poem coming to birth coming to a shape forming forming from all those Freudian depths from that cesspit from which rises the Self like some exotic phoenix  and so I keep on writing keep on thinking keep on doing and basically keep on keeping on following my nose to quote my late great mother and all I can do is go with it go with the flow of it the flow of it the flow of it and then even the trickle of it the stop of it yes the stop of it the stagnation of it the vile vile smell of it and I have often been amused that even from the cesspits from the tanks of shit from the tanks of effluent that's anything but fluent anything but fluent without flow stagnant stagnant but this is no angst-ridden piece this is no depressive's account of life no no no it is an observer's account of life as I sit objectively sitting in my body that I almost do not recognize as me as I grow older and older in this out of shape container that bulges at midriff  and I sit and seek and seek and sit and type and write and attempt to compose to find some shape some form some structure some way of being in this world that is light and light and lighter still I search and search for enlightenment for an elongated light-bulb moment for some dawning of the light some dawning some dawning of the light and I write and I think of the shit that has happened not to me no not to me but to those dear to me dear to me those who I hold in my heart in my heart for some strange reason why that link why that holding why why why that holding of them in my heart why and yet I am drawn drawn to their suffering and I am with them yes I am with them in compassion in compassion and all that meditation and all that falling asleep and all that seeking and yearning and searching and then sleeping again and all that reading all that reading all that philosophy and psychology and becoming more and more theology and literature and languages and all the things that I have studied and learnt and I say why why why why and I write in search of what I do not rightly know anymore but I know I am getting to be more observant of the whole thing more and more of an objective watcher of life that is coursing through this body this body enlivened through its blood its blood its blood red vitality that rises from God knows where in some gap some gloriously small gap some Goldilock's window where the light of life came in came in at some temperature suitable to life formation and suddenly there was something that stirred at the quick of things at the heart of things somewhere where the music of the spheres chimes in harmony chimes and spins and spins and chimes and all I have left is this stream of consciousness to warm my heart this damp night this damp night where everything is cold and objective and I long for a passion for life I long for and enthusiasm for an en-god-ening of myself as that word essentially means etymologically being filled with the godhead being filled with a spirit a life a vitality beyond me and I experience this life this vitality this vital-ism that is pure pure gift and then the bolt from the blue the punch in the stomach the headbutt and the knocking senseless of the cerebral way of processing things that knocking punch-drunk of us all at your death Sean and I cannot get you out of my mind anymore after your final act your final act under a beautiful low-hanging evergreen tree where you ended your short life where you tied the rope around your neck where you climbed upon a big strong bough and jumped until the rope strangled you until the rope suffocated you knocked your life from you under that evergreen tree so near to the school where you were happy and you ended it all ended it all there and I went there twice and wondered and wondered and cried and wondered at the awful suffering you must have endured before that final act that definitive act of saying no to the vitality the vital essence that ran through you whatever that essence of life or living happened to be and at end of some nerve ending at some synapse at some strange interconnection of neurons in your brain some dreadful thought leapt forth and shrieked at you and screamed at you that the only way was out that the only way out that the only way was that short lonely drop from a strong bough under a beautiful evergreen tree and I still see you in my mind's eye in the corridors of the school in the corridors of my mind caught somewhere in a synapse bereft of meaning throbbing sparking between neurons and you jumped and let it all go and let it all go and let your life's breath ebb away in the shadows under a beautiful evergreen tree

Uplift

and then there is nothing like action to lift a drooping spirit to be up and doing because such action brings us beyond that microscopic looking at self that magnification of everything out of all proportion and like a strange and powerful medicine it transforms us through the sweat of our brows and so i cut the grass and prune the hedges and in so doing to an extent i prune away at myself i cut off all those decaying bits of self-pity and shake free all those ripe fruit and beyond ripe fruit which must needs fall to the ground and in a sense that is what we are doing when we exercise or go to the gym or perform any physical activity as these bodies that we possess are stone age ones and they need to be exercised as too much living in the mind can bring a person down down down and a balance is needed between the spiritual the intellectual and the physical and we need to be rooted in our bodies which after all are all that we have got and we can only dismiss the body at our peril and as i age i am beginning to become more comfortable with this body and realise with st francis that it is brother body it is all that i have and soul or soul is just not contained therein like a fluid in a container oh no oh no there is a unity of being between body and mind between body and soul and so i like the formulation body-mind or body-soul because these two realities which we separate for convenience are really not two realities at all they are ONE ONE ONE calling to the universe in a ONENESS in a oneness in a oneness and we feel that we are whole and this writer needs to feel whole needs to take stock needs to sit with and listen to what the body can tell him and not to get lost in the mind or intellect for that really is often an escapism and escape from the reality of the material body and yes the body is material and yet and yet it is more because i am not just a material body i am in fact a body-soul a body which feels and thinks and moves and cries for joy and sorrow and so i am a body-soul or a soul-body and never again the cartesian dualism for me which divided the reality that we are and left us with nothing but a soul or spirit inhabiting the husk of a body the shell and that and that is all in the past and i write and i write and i let the stream of consciousness flow because i need to comfort myself by allowing my unconscious my great unconscious to speak and to go on speaking and i want to listen because i know that i know so much so much more than i am actually aware of and so like freud i want to make my unconscious conscious i want to be open to all nooks and crannies to all the corners to all the shadows to all the demons as well as to the spaces of my unconscious that have a little more light i want to take out all the dusty ornaments that are lying in the dark corners of my mind i want to accept all the creepy crawlies all the mess and sweat of life all those ants that live under all those un-upturned rocks and yes i want to go around the labyrinth and dungeon of my mind and upturn those rocks and let all the shadowy parts of myself all the neglected parts of my self all the suppressed and oppressed parts of myself let them all out and let them dry off in the sum and become that dried and lifeless fruit they really are for then all my fears will be dried up and lifeless and will not be crawling around and frightening me in my dreams and yes we are just that a unity a strange unity gathered up from bits of this and bits of that within us and i am many selves seeking a union in a greater or basic self if only i could find it and i am left with this with this with this and i repeat it because i need it to sound like a chorus calling to my soul indeed more properly to my body-soul to gather together all the bits and pieces of this ageing self and let it bloom until it is time for the fruit to fall until it is time until it is time to go back to the earth from which i came... 

SAD

.... and this is the summer season unusually damp and wet here in ireland land of mists and more mists and sixty shades of grey as well as sixty shades of green and the sun has departed and no wonder we feel sad and sad is named so well that is seasonal affective disorder and we must surely suffer from it here in hibernia named winter by the romans and so i sit here in my attic den and am slightly down and hope that by writing these few words i will exorcise the devil and these words alone bring me back to some thirty years ago and i in  a monastery fastness on the side of the dublin mountains not far from the famous or infamous hellfire club to which we used climb as young men to put in an afternoon that would not lie heavily upon our souls and i remember passing one other student who asked me what i was thinking and i said i was exorcising my demons and boy that's what physical activity does it helps us exorcise those demons that haunt our souls nay haunt our body-souls for this writer is no believer in cartesian dualism this writer is seeking a holism yes a holism that knows only this solidity that i am at the moment this solid blob of flesh this solidity or solid blob of flesh that can think and write and move and do this solidity that wants no self-pity that wants to explore its real nature of which it is at once a captive and yet and yet can fly away on paths of escape in imaginary lands of thought and i sweat and i sweat in my attic room for it is at least 20 degrees centigrade today and my keyboard has become a little sweaty with my fingers and i think of the great gerard manley hopkins sj who wrote of human beings as bearing man's smudge and sharing man's smell naked we came into the world and naked we shall leave it and as i type i realise that there are many things i have let slip many things i must do things that i have been too lazy and too disinclined to do almost like freud as if i wished to let those cares go let them fall away and embrace an ageing that knows that letting go that knows that dying and that death is so much part of this body-soul that i am so much part of this thinking mass of flesh that i am and yes it sounds so good does that phrase thinking mass of flesh that will become a stinking mass of flesh and then no more no more no more and the great freud himself called this the death instinct and he was so right so right so right and all the things i must do are pressing in on me pressing in on me and yet i know that after this writing after this stream of consciousness i must go and do something because doing something is part of my rescue my rescue of this self struggling to know itself struggling to come to terms with what it is with who it is with the shadows that fall as well as the strong sunlight of italy that i tasted for a while and these fingers now are caressing these keys as the stream of consciousness traces itself across the screen of my laptop mirroring the screen of my mind and i am calling out like the psalmist of old the psalmist of old whom the old scholars traditionally called david he the leader of the jewish nation all those years ago and these thoughts keep falling down and shaping themselves like a stream that finds a channel like a stream that finds a channel and i will find a channel and that will be my identity that channel that will be carved from the earth by the beads of sweat on my brow and i need courage to do all this diving down into the unconscious and owning all those demons that live in the shadowy corners of my mind and how i need a fellow soul an anamchara as they put it in the irish language to lead me forth by the hand and say don't think so deeply just go with life just go with life and follow where it leads...

dry desert of the soul

all spun out and no inspiration and it seems as if this is the drying time of the soul when there is an emptiness within that dry deadening emptiness when nothing inspires and yet it is not like depression at all because that's a rather painful state but this is a painless indifferent state where nothing seems to matter where all is a certain objective dispassionate cold observation and that's all that's left just me here sitting in an attic study waiting on words to behave upon a screen waiting waiting waiting and there is not even one tear to indicate that something stirswithin that something moves within that something lights the fire that something sparks that something that something somehow would tear through these indifferent clouds set them alight with a passion for life for all that makes life good and wonderful and full of surprises and yet i had all that phony type of jesus saves type of thing so many times before and i ngrew so tired of it of its easy answers to the big problems always so neat and so self-assuredly right - so sugary sweet with all the answers laid out like the icing on a christmas cake laid out like the icing on a christmas cake and here i feel like getting a chorus going to enliven this piece of cheerless stream of consciousness which is failing to gain access to any cave like a potholer in search of a hole down which to descend and as there is no hole through which to descend i am fated to dwell now in the world of mediocrity in  the world where all is dull and dreary but not depressing just lacking lacking lacking any passion any engagement with the depths of life and if we can find no door or cave mouth through which to descend into labyrinthine caverns of the soul and if the ego cannot descend cannot go down into the depths it will never be purified it will never never be able to come up once more from the depths of the caverns where it will meet the shadows of the self the shadows of the soul the shadows of all that is real and once it has been purified in the deep cavernous places of the soul only then only then will it have eaten enough and have drunk enough to ascend to the world of light and enlightenment...

stream before bedtime

ah and the sitting here in the silence of the spacious room that is my mind and i sit and listen to my heart beat in silence silence silence and in the background there is a leonard cohen song playing on my sound system lulling me ever deeper into the stillpoint the stillpoint where i long to be this night as the tears trickle from my eyelids as life ticks away away as memories of ann whom once i loved is now just a fading memory and it was a love that was meant to die die die as we all are dying and yet i am not too sad because there is a peace of acceptance beginning to drop like the dew on the grass in the cold of the early morning and i type these words and wonder at their healing power and i will never dwell in the valley of self-pity never never never because it is a selfish waste of precious time no no no i will climb to the mountain from which i can get a viewing point where i shall rest a while and look back at my climb at my slow and winding climb ever upwards ever upwards towards the acceptance of self the only truth the very centre of self the very centre of gravity of all life and this is all we have that journey to the centre or core of self that centre which alone will hold in this mystifying universe this universe ever expanding expanding expanding and i type and listen to the healing words of the lyrics of a song and these words are healing me as they pour like a balm over my soul ah these words are the sweet waters that heal heal and heal ever more deeply and cohen sings on dancing me ever deeper into my soul ever ever deeper like a caver of the cavernous labyrinthine soul and these words are lighting the way down down down and dance me deeper deeper to the end of love and in that end i will surely find a beginning and these are the words that sound out my heart and then the music ah yes the music that enchants my soul that brings a tear with every stroke and caress of string for i need this music to play on and on for i need more healing that once i thought i never needed i need to be cherished and cuddled and comforted in the arms of mother earth in the arms of mother earth in the peace of mother earth in the peace in the peace of mother earth at her bosom at her bosom and i need more more more than a thousand kisses to heal my wounded heart and yet my soul is light for it courts the beauty of the imagination the imagination oh yes the beauty of the wondrous imagination that can enchant the soul to sing its song oh so strong oh so strong and i listen on not alone to cohen and his songs but to my own soul song that sings as these words will out as the truth of self will out as congruence and authenticity play the strings of my heart and they play them sound they play them sound they play them sweet and what a music those strings make what a music what a beautiful music and the truth it lies in the spacious room that is my mind and it is a room that has some seats and chairs and loads of lovely bookcases with those sacred books of knowledge that once my mother bought in the poverty of my youth in the poverty of my youth in those far away times those days almost forgotten when little or so little was such a lot and sometimes when the night is slow i sit and listen to cohen singing a thousand kisses deep and let those words lull me to sleep to sleep perchance to dream and in that dream of death what sleep may come and thus ends this and thus ends this and the rest as they say is silence... and the fading words... a thousand kisses deep...

Grief Therapy Group Stream

and there i was just sitting and listening letting it all in mulling it over in my heart hearing him talk and talk and talk because he needed that space that time for speaking for telling the story that major story of all our lives the story of the dying of the light the dying of the light and it was so moving as he spoke through his experiences of letting his father go and at so young an age only forty two or something like that and here he is barely nineteen years of age and he himself a father of a baby girl and yet this little fellow sitting before me has truly lived in this his short life for as he said himself in his own words that he chose to be present as his own daughter was being born and that he chose also to be present as his father drew his last breaths and as the machine beeped and beeped and beeped and slowing then to a continual drone of death that droned away until unplugged and i was moved and i was touched as the other four boys sat and listened and embraced him in that listening and that listening is a powerful metaphorical embrace and it was powerful so powerful that it was empowering of all there present and i continue in this world to wonder at the opportunities where i am graced by these chance occurrences and moved and touched and inspired and shaken to my foundations and yes i do need this shaking of my foundations and i do need my roots pulled somewhat because that is the way with life we are made stronger in being challenged and all the old wisdoms come calling at the door of my memory that adversity makes us stronger that we would not grow as persons were we not tested in the fires of such adversity that like st paul said of old that we are somehow broken but never crushed with christ on our side and to my old and fragmenting mind this christ can be a metaphor for all new life that is created within us by those trials we experience as we make our way through life and these words i want them to be a wisdom for me i want them to be reminders for me of the tenuous hold we have on the fragile plant that life is and with my former friends who are now dead and gone lost to the world of the flesh these words are poor mementos of my conversations with you and here as i type i remember gerard smith and gerry donnelly and eugene murphy all gone but their presence remains in my life by their questions their enthusiasm and their humanity and these words are forming themselves against the background of the cold drops of rain spattering the window panes of my attic study and i sit and let the click of the keys of my laptop be a mantra a sort of prayer for these my late friends and for the boy whom i listened to today i still marvel at your courage because you are a liver of life you are a drinker in of the mystery it is in its birth and in its death but yet you must be good to yourself you must learn to listen to your own paining heart and be gentle on it for you have much life to live...

Authenticity and Self-Acceptance

and so once again i sit and type these words without the normal punctuation marks in the tradition of the great James Joyce he who let his soul shine forth in sheer authenticity against a society set in stone ah yes he let his self pour forth on every page and in every word that he wrote and how he took all the criticism and rejection i'll never know and yet he persevered and kept right on going calling a spade a spade saying it as it was never once covering up the truth as he saw it and here i go again this evening writing these cyphers which are shaping themselves into words and words into sentences with thoughts running after them rather that the other way around and yes that's what i so love about the creativity and spontaneity of the stream of consciousness way of writing that thoughts are chasing words rather than words chasing thoughts and i will write on here without censorship because being true to self is the most important thing any of us can do in life and today i did so much so much and yet i am not too tired perhaps i'm a little enervated by the way i seemed to let my connection with life lead me through my day and what a day it was beginning with a funeral yes yes yes yes a funeral the inevitable call of the grave which is a universal call and the funeral was that of a young man of 43 years of age the father of one of my sixth year students poor boy poor young man struggling to make sense of life as it is and he only after getting his father back in his life and i was touched by his pain his pain and yet i am powerless to do anything for him but be there with him but be there for him among the many hundreds of others who attended that funeral and the songs that were sung and the hymns that were sung are playing away in my deep unconscious as i write for they touched me they touched me but not in a phony religious way but in a deep spiritual way for these were little children from the young man's little sister's school for that choir had come to lend support to lend their voices to sing this grief ever more loudly and beautifully to the heavens and then they sung their little hearts out bless them bless them and the words of Jesus come into my mind as i type on and on suffer little children to come onto me for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and i so wished to descend into the well of my self into the well from which my soul springs and taste its healing waters to return to the child within me to the little boy sitting in the back lane long ago that little innocent boy who i was playing away happily with a little toy lorry playing away playing away happy and the little boy then and these boys around me now here and now and their poor friend who had lost his father and his grandmother his father's mother still alive and i type and wonder what it is all about at all at all at all and the words of the great John Henry Cardinal Newman come to my mind and i must keep reminding myself that i have not sinned against the light oh no i have not sinned against the light and by light here i mean the light of my innermost self the light of my own authenticity that innermost light even though i am using Newman's words for him for that great Cardinal for that great luminary of the Roman Catholic Church he meant the Light of Christ and i capitalise i capitalise because i realise the power and the control that those purveyors of the TRUTH in capital letters would have wanted it and oh no i want to be modernist and post-modernist and post-post-modernist and so on and so forth and that is why the stream of consciousness suits me because in it truths run free truths run free in lower case letters and these are authentic encouraging and approachable truths not fearsome ones blaring themselves out shouting shouting shouting in capital letters oh no oh no i am feeling so reduced so small so insignificant and i feel like Yeats' great sentiment in one of his great poems i feel like my soul must clap its hand and louder sing for every tatter of my mortal dress and like Hopkins i feel so much this evening that i am in the mud that i am wearing man's smudge like that great Jesuit poet and Greek and Latin scholar that oh he knew great desolation great torment and great despair no wonder he wrote about wearing man's smudge and sharing man's smell and i feel like one of those prisoners looking down from prison bars and seeing the mud but envying the other prisoner who saw stars or as Oscar Wilde put it we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at stars how i yearn to look at the stars and to leave the gutter heave myself up and embrace the universe in love yea even make love to the universe yea  yea yea even make love to great Mother Gaia Mother Earth Mother of the Earth and i want to write on and to return inward and downward into the chambers of my heart to make my home there to be comfortable there to be true to myself to be at home there to be true to myself to be enriched by the joy of being myself despite all the mud and slime yea yea yea despite all the mud and all that slime that seems to clog my soul at times and i was truly present today for that young man truly present because i was truly present to myself wanting to be there wanting to be really me in solidarity in solidarity yea yea yea in solidarity with the fragility of it all with the impermanence of it all with the finitude of it all with the ending of it all with that sad ending knowing knowing knowing that i had no control over anything over anything except my self except my self now at last coming home coming home coming home to self...