{"id":1290,"date":"2020-05-25T07:38:39","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T14:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2020-05-25T07:38:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T14:38:39","slug":"hypnagogia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/2020\/05\/25\/hypnagogia\/","title":{"rendered":"Hypnagogia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am so glad to come into this holy blank page space right now. <\/p>\n<p>The days come in irregularly sized chunks. <\/p>\n<p>This moment is on the cusp between them. <\/p>\n<p>A few nights ago during bedtime reading, I came across a passage where Maturin, finishing off a long arduous chunk himself, fell into a sleep in which his body was perfectly relaxed. I&#8217;m tempted to go find the passage, but that would be too distracting. It was just the single image, that struck me with an aching and longing. I want that. Unknotted carefree sleep. It seemed like an tragically impossible thing to wish for. <\/p>\n<p>Sunday, yet another day where nothing seemed to happen. A pretty successful day for quitting purposes. Also, I&#8217;d got some major old prof things boxed, labelled, and put aside properly&#8211;the maelstrom of paperwork is thin and manageable. Still many important things undone. <\/p>\n<p>In the evening I felt weary early. Maybe about ten, ten-thirty, I took the off-ramp into slumber with another dose of altumal fiction from two hundred years gone by. <\/p>\n<p>An hour or so ago, four-thirty in the morning, I found myself on the edge of waking; still dreaming. I was at the owned house finally, cat-ranching &#8230; once again, the detail is just a distraction, for the current purpose. I became aware. Conscious, that my body was perfectly relaxed. <\/p>\n<p>The connection to the literary passage hadn&#8217;t happened yet. It was just an independent fresh experience of wonder. <em>Perfectly relaxed. How oh how did I make it here, and how to do it again o lord &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t believe it can be manufactured. <\/p>\n<p>I think life is a long series of hateful bullshit, punctuated by these momentary experiences of complete bliss. They&#8217;re gifts. <\/p>\n<p>The best we can do is remain open to receiving them. <\/p>\n<p>A couple minutes into the gift, it was shattered by the neighbor letting her dog out at a quarter to five in the morning, like clockwork for two years, and specifically by its idiot barking at nothing. <\/p>\n<p>I held on to the evaporating happiness for a long moment more. <\/p>\n<p>When the canine bitchery started up again, I pulled the window open wider and bellowed at the motherfucker to SHUT THE FUCK UP.<\/p>\n<p>Which it did. My dutiful training paid off, in a Pyrrhic victory. <\/p>\n<p>I fell back with regret. The blackened sticks of the fading moment were blessed again, by a soft strong cool breeze flowing in from the flung window, and I smiled. <\/p>\n<p>A few chips of insight can be salvaged from it all. <\/p>\n<p>Falling into a tension-less state is one of the highest goods. <\/p>\n<p>Dying free is a goal. Living free, of such tension in particular, is a lived process. <\/p>\n<p>One of the watermarks of freedom is freedom from noise, and that one is a rare luxury, even on a dirt road. (Part of the perfection of the paradise downtown of my waking dreams is that it is so often so absolutely still, in the night.)<\/p>\n<p>Add it to the list.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Free from addiction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Free from debt \u2026 those two are easy and obvious.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Free from worry &#8230; tension \u2026 a much more nebulous thing, partly consisting of &#8230; <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Free from their noise&#8211;literally of course, and it&#8217;s a good symbol.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Free from illusion, particularly about the immortality of my own ego or work\u2013a working copy of what the Zen Buddhists mean, I think.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We\u2019re (still)&#8217; talking about what the philosophers call negative freedoms&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Stuff it all in a life pipe and smoke it. Judiciously, without dependency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am so glad to come into this holy blank page space right now. The days come in irregularly sized chunks. This moment is on the cusp between them. A few nights ago during bedtime reading, I came across a passage where Maturin, finishing off a long arduous chunk himself, fell into a sleep in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vairtere.com\/spill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}