Four Dreams

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Recently I’ve been taking part in a dream workshop over zoom, where a group of us get together each week to talk a bit about various notions of dream theory and then discuss some of our dreams. It’s been a while since I’ve posted to this blog, so I thought I would update it with some recent dreams I’ve had over the last month or so. There are quite a few of them (more than I will include here), and while it may be a bold reveal on my part I figured I would post several of them as a sequence. As best I can I will let the dreams speak for themselves. What context I will provide, for those who do not know me or who are otherwise new to this blog, is that I am an out of work carpenter who is dealing with cancer. Although I have spent most of my life in and around Chicago, I have also lived and worked in Wisconsin, among other places. These dreams are presented chronologically, but many dreams are omitted.

Free As A Bird

I’m standing in an empty room. It feels like an office, or some kind of commercial building. Maybe a doctor’s office. It’s after hours. No one else is around. The walls are tall, lots of steel and wood and glass, lots of tall rectangles, a bank of windows in front of me. The floor is a gray carpet with a textured pile. I’m looking out at an interior landscape, typical office furniture beyond the windows I’m facing, fluorescent lights etc. A hallway on the other side of the windows opens up to my right, into darkness or a forest, but I’m not looking in that direction. There are windows behind me. I can tell that it is dark outside because there is no light coming through the windows. There’s some sort of closet to my left, but I’m not looking there either. My attention is drawn to a pair of doors that make up the corner of the room to my left and in front of me, at right angles to one another. It’s the door on the left where the action takes place.

The doors are typical for a commercial install, heavy oak slabs, steel frames, commercial hardware. There’s a consistent 3/8″ gap between the door, the jamb, and the stop the whole way around. This wouldn’t make sense in the real world but the important thing for the dream is that the gap is uniform. Some type of bird, maybe a finch, gold and black, is trying to squeeze its way through the gap between the door and the jamb. In its beak the bird is carrying a twig, or maybe a sprig of cedar, for its nest. I have the sense that the twig is one thing and then another. The bird is trying to squeeze itself like a mouse through the tiny gap, and it makes itself round, but it can’t fit through. It’s stuck there, round, wings flapping, like a cartoon. There’s a right angle where the door jamb meets the door stop, so the gap is L-shaped. I feel if it were just a straight gap that the bird would be able to make it on its own, but it’s stuck there in that corner. I decide to let the bird in.

I’m Batman

I’m in the basement of Wayne Manor. There’s some sort of heist or siege underway, and Alfred has the evening’s security detail up for me on the monitors. The monitors are holographic and display the stats like a classic video game – strength, stamina, and various attributes alongside a portrait of the character. At issue is whether I’m going to take care of the situation myself, which would be a guaranteed success but which would betray my secret identity, or whether I leave it to the hired help. The guy on the monitor is the quintessential ’80s video game commando. His credentials say that he’s a trained assassin. I decide to let him handle it.

The scene changes to an overhead view of Wayne Manor, from high up in the air. It must be a drone. The camera is looking down on a tall crane, several stories high, which is involved in the heist. Although it’s late at night and dark outside the crane is lit up and outlined in red, like a wireframe from a first generation videogame. It looks sort of like a stock market chart. The roles have changed and the guy who was supposed to be in charge of security is now leading the heist. He’s in the bucket of this crane and there’s some sort of sci-fi trope with a magnet or mechanism not lining up with the top of Wayne Manor, a lock or a hatch. The connection doesn’t happen and the guy in the crane is in real danger as there’s a precipitous drop.

Next I’m in a hospital room with my brother. We’re watching the siege take place on television. It’s early the following morning, just after dawn. There’s a brown shriveled up woman in the hospital bed, in an embryonic or fetal position, almost like a husk, or an alien. She doesn’t say anything the entire dream. There’s a curtain but it isn’t drawn shut. I’m trying to get news of the siege but the television coverage changes from a live update to the regular morning news program, and they just mention the siege in passing as something that happened earlier, on to the next segment. I’m like “well, that’s all we’re going to get” and my brother and I are discussing who is going to leave the hospital to deliver my dad his meds. Even though the news coverage has stopped, there’s still an ongoing situation outside. It’s like a war zone, or the aftermath of one. There’s difficult terrain to traverse, a white haze everywhere. It’s not safe. I volunteer that since I’m already on meds, I can take my dad his meds. A cake and eat it too scenario. A nurse interrupts and asks if it’s a good idea for me to take somebody else’s meds, and I realize that no, it isn’t a good idea. I look at the meds in my palm. There’s a single dried up pill that looks sort of like a cashew, and also reminds me of a fish that decorates a small urn which I keep filled with water on my shrine at home. The cashew also looks sort of like the woman in the hospital bed.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

The first part of this dream is hard to recall, but there’s a sense that there’s a lot of work to be done, and that a lot of work is getting done. There’s a number of vehicles driving to and fro. I can see them all from overhead. The image is reminiscent of a circulatory system. Materials and product are getting delivered. It’s a big production. It’s probably late afternoon.

Scene change. It’s late at night, maybe even midnight, a blizzard in Wisconsin. Somewhere rural, with pine trees. I’m at a four way intersection, simple two-lane roads in each direction. Although the light is green traffic proceeds as if the light isn’t working. First one pair of cars goes by, then the adjacent direction takes a turn. Half of the vehicles are pickup trucks. There’s a sense that the cars can’t get through on their own, and that the trucks have to go through first and crush the snow so that the smaller cars can pass. First a truck, then a car, then another truck. There’s a figure looming over this entire scene, someone I’ve worked with in waking life. Although he isn’t present in the dream I can hear him commenting on the situation. This is someone whose politics I find loathsome, but whose professionalism is beyond reproach. I wouldn’t want to spend much time with him outside of work, but when it comes to matters of his trade I trust him completely. As the cars and trucks are taking their turns clearing the intersection, I hear this guy comment over the dream that this is just what we do here, we take care of each other. Polite society! I’m two or three cars back in line, and when it’s my turn I make a right turn at the intersection. I’m driving an even bigger truck than I ordinarily drive, and as I clear the intersection and feel the snow crunching beneath my tires I’m filled with a real sense of pride and joy, that I have a job to do, and that I can help others by doing so.

Now I’m driving along Main Street, slowly, in a small Wisconsin town. Every other storefront is a bar or a deli, a butcher shop, a supper club. I can see the patrons through the windows and everyone looks like they are having a gay old time. Since I’ll never get home in this blizzard, I decide I should spend my night at the bar and have some fun, maybe even get something to eat. I look for somewhere to pull over and find a spot next to this convenience store. It’s a store from another era, hand painted signs in the windows, white sandwich board out front. I size things up and if I pull my enormous truck right up tight against the storefront, there will still be room for traffic to get by on this small street. There is no traffic, and my truck isn’t anywhere to be seen either. The street has already been plowed and packed down, but I need to clear away the snow from against the storefront to make room for my truck (which isn’t really there, but still takes up a lot of space). There’s an oversize steel snow shovel leaning against one of the storefronts, with a big square blade, but when I look again all of the snow has been meticulously cleared away.

I cross the street to one of the bars, and when I enter it’s an amalgam of bar, supper club, deli, and cafeteria. There’s a winding mahogany bar or deli case, serpentine, as if for a very long queue. The lighting is subdued, with sconces and lampshades. I make my way to the back of the bar, directly to where my ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend are seated. I make a big show of pretending not to see them and they don’t acknowledge me. Instead I’m perusing the deli case directly in front of them. There are some sort of dressed buns in the case. I think they’re dressed with sauerkraut.

Someone’s carrying a tray of Easter ham with pineapple through the restaurant. It smells so delicious that I can still taste it long after I wake up. I follow the tray like a cartoon character, lifted along by the scent, to the center of the cafeteria, near the counter with all the plates and silverware, by the register. Someone asks for my order and I ask for ham and pineapple. In the deli case in front of me there’s some sort of slaw or curry made from ham and pineapple, but it’s a cold dish and it looks like it would be better as a side. I ask if there’s anything hot, but I don’t find anything that appeals to me.

Park and Ride

I’m back in Wisconsin. It’s early morning, and while the sun is bright there’s snow everywhere. I’m looking for my vehicle. I find it in a parking lot next to the on-ramp of an expressway. There’s a ticket on my windshield, maybe multiple tickets, but when I try to read what the ticket is for, I can’t make any sense out of it. I pull an orange ticket envelope out of my shirt pocket, but I can’t read that either. There’s a dim awareness that I can’t read these things because I’m dreaming and that there aren’t any real words there, but I let that go and disregard the tickets, perhaps not wanting to wake up from my dream so soon. My vehicle isn’t familiar to me, but it might be the first pickup truck that I drove, which I sometimes still get to drive in my dreams. That vehicle would be thirty years old now. This truck has a rusted hood and various colored, mismatched body panels. It’s either an SUV or there’s a cap on the back. I try to back the truck up onto the ramp – there’s plenty of room to back up, as the parking spot is overly long – but traffic is stopped along the ramp. I get out of the truck to see what’s going on and there’s snow piled up all the way to hood height between the tires where the truck was parked. I look down the ramp and Chicago cops have got the expressway blocked off. I can tell it’s Chicago cops because the barricades are those blue wooden sawhorses with the ward number and alderman written on them. I don’t pay attention to which ward or alderman.

I’m in my truck, stopped in traffic on the ramp, sitting behind an industrial looking pickup truck, maybe belonging to a utility company. It’s the kind of truck with big metal toolboxes and cabinets on the back. Out of nowhere, some vehicle tries to squeeze between my truck and the truck in front of me. He scrapes through but he pops open the cabinets on the truck in front of me and gouges up both his vehicle and mine. I don’t really give a shit about the hood of my truck because it’s a mess anyway. Whoever this other guy was he’s gone like the breeze.

The scene changes and I’m in a different vehicle, but I’m still trying to get around the traffic jam. I’m driving along a winding wooded road in a forest preserve or suburban area. It’s later the same morning but it’s no longer winter. The trees are dense with leaves, almost overgrown. It feels like late summer. I’m driving very fast in what is the wrong direction, in order to get around this backed up traffic and come at it from the other end.

Now I’m standing in the driveway of a sprawling suburban ranch in this overgrown woods. The house isn’t rectangular but branches off in several directions, like a couple of conjoined Y shapes or maybe a chemistry diagram. I’m with my mom’s BFF, and her mom is there too. Her mom is Mrs. Stone. That’s her actual name, but it feels significant for the dream that the woman’s name is Stone. I don’t recall how long ago she passed away but in the dream she’s in her 90s. She’s sitting on a chair in front of the garage, and her mouth is stuffed full of straw and cable, almost as if she’s intubated. She’s chewing on this straw, swallowing it and spitting pieces out. It’s gross and vulgar. I ask my mom’s BFF if her mom is okay.

I don’t get an answer because we’re interrupted by the arrival of another character, a second rate Christian Slater wanna-be who also reminds me of a transphobe that I used to work with and would just as soon not see again. This guy is just sitting on his ass next to the house along the side of the driveway like we owe him something. I’m about to approach him when this crystal sports car pulls into the driveway, and I’m like “Sorry! Can’t talk, my ride’s here!” There’s something not quite right about this crystal sports car. It’s in fact a paperweight that my Dad used to have on his desk, probably a ’53 Vette. There’s a sense that for one thing this car is too small, and also that it’s a solid piece of crystal – the doors won’t open. It’s these concerns that bring me out of the dream and I wake up.

What’s a five-letter word for Precognition?

Here’s a stumper for you. What do you do with the rest of your life after you watch some guy dissolve into a rainbow? I haven’t figured that one out yet but it hasn’t been the rest of my life yet, either. There are bits and pieces that seem to point to something, a metaphorical trail of breadcrumbs so to say. I get hung up on those and maybe my interpretations are off track for a while, and then a while later it turns out that yeah it really does mean that one thing but it also means something else. Whoa, then a year later it also means this third thing! The hits keep coming. You gotta run your own data sets to find out for yourself. I decided to start running more experiments. Here’s one that uses Wordle. I’ve been having a blast with it and it’s been less than a week.

In reading Eric Wargo (Time Loops, Precognitive Dreamwork and the Long Self) I became familiar with the experiments of Daryl Bem, social psychologist and somewhat controversial figure. Bem ran a series of experiments that appeared to contradict the nature of time. In one experiment, subjects were given a word-recall test. Subjects who were then given the list of words and allowed to memorize them after the test it turns out did better at recalling the words before they were given the list, versus the control group who did not memorize the words after the test. There’s a lot of hoopla around the internet around whether any of this is bunk. You be the judge. I thought about my obsession with Wordle lately, and wondered if I could use this as an opportunity for exploration.

Here is the gist of the “experiment” I’ve been running. When I sit down to do the Wordle I contemplate that in just a short while I am going to know the answer, and I visualize myself reflecting upon that word periodically throughout the rest of my day. In a few days I have had mixed results but they’ve been interesting. This morning I solved the puzzle at my first guess. Yesterday I didn’t solve the puzzle at all. That experience shaped my attitude to this morning’s puzzle.

I tried yesterday’s puzzle on my morning break at work. Sitting on my tool box with my thermos of black tea and my phone in hand, I looked at the blank Wordle screen and contemplated that in a short amount of time I would have solved the puzzle and know the answer. I pictured myself at the end of the work day, sitting in my work van, still in the drive way of the job site, contemplating this morning’s Wordle and “sending” the answer back to myself. It’s important to make these visualizations as concrete and detailed as possible, to make them VIVID as it were, which it turns out was the answer to yesterday’s puzzle. I couldn’t solve the puzzle in six tries, and as I sat on my tool box trying to imagine my future self knowing the answer, I came up blank. I also did not sit in my van in the driveway at the end of my workday and contemplate the day’s answer for even a moment. Hmm.

Somewhere between that moment and this morning I supposed that my failure to follow through with my visualization in effect “broke the circuit” and prevented me from getting the answer. I don’t wanna get hung up on causality here because that really isn’t the point of any of this. I do wanna relate that, as I sat down with my phone this morning, the sun barely coming in through drawn blinds, I was deliberate in my visualization and determination. I imagined myself walking around the block with mug of tea in hand just after sunrise, as I often do, and pictured that at that time I would know the answer to the puzzle. I was also firm in my determination that this would be my course of action. I would do the puzzle, make my tea, and walk around the block, quickly, in order that I could get out the door shortly after sunrise.

I pulled up the Wordle on my phone and without even thinking the first word that came to mind was SPILL. I typed it in and lo! There was the answer, Wordle in one! As soon as I solved the puzzle my phone also did a weird glitchy thing that would be an entirely other blog post. Suffice it to say this stuff goes layers deep, and I’ve noticed certain patterns playing out for a while. That moment noted, I put the kettle on boil and got about the rest of my plan. Despite February temperatures in Milwaukee I hit the sidewalk in my slippers and hoodie, no winter coat, making sure that I could get around the block while the sun was still early in the sky, just as I had visualized, mug in hand. Around halfway around the block I recalled that I was supposed to be contemplating the word SPILL. I read stop signs and street signs instead saying the word SPILL out loud. I noted a frozen puddle of ice on the sidewalk and said SPILL. I got to the sidewalk across the street from Meg and Adam’s house and saw that Adam was waving to me from inside his living room window. I raised my mug in return, at the same time trying not to slip on a patch of ice, and spilled my tea on the sidewalk in doing so. Satisfied that I’d now accomplished at least one impossible thing before breakfast, I finished my walk.

The previous Wordles of this week also led to many interesting associations. I won’t go into them here because, like my dreams, the associations don’t really mean anything to anyone else and they would take up too much time to explain. The point of all of this isn’t so much to “prove” anything as much as it is to observe and notice all of the little correlations and discrepancies that make life interesting. Our lives are meaningful because we assign them meaning. In a sense, that is what all this precognitive work reveals. It isn’t random or hocus-pocus and it also isn’t likely to help you figure out tomorrow’s lottery numbers, but if you wanna give that a shot knock yourself out. Maybe if I can solve six Wordles in a row I’ll set my sights higher.

Let’s play two!

Wow, I can’t even again. So, somehow I ended up starting at a boxing gym a few months ago. It wasn’t what I was looking for, but I saw a post on Instagram and decided to check it out, and it turns out that it actually was what I was looking for all along. I stuck around and signed up for a few classes and made a few friends and lost fifteen pounds and took home a belt and that was all in the first eight weeks. I guess you’d call what we’ve been doing circuit training. There wasn’t any actual sparring involved, although that is also a thing that can happen. When Otto announced a six week sparring camp, I was one of the first to sign up.

Yesterday was week two of the men’s sparring camp. It’s Saturdays only, so that means it was also day two. They had a ladies only sparring camp that began a few weeks earlier. One of the many things I like about this gym is that it’s very coed, very welcoming, sensory friendly (I mean except for maybe when we’re cranking Slayer), really community focused. If I was gonna pick somewhere to get punched in the face for the first time, this would definitely be the place. And yesterday I got to cross that off my bucket list.

I wasn’t expecting we’d get into the ring on day two and I’m glad that we did. All of the training, drilling, footwork and bag work, that all goes out the window when you’re actually in there. Everything gets small, space is really tight, and time is compressed. It’s a tight focus. The guy I was matched with isn’t anybody I’d ever pick a fight with, and I really don’t believe that he’s never boxed before, so of course he was who I wanted to go up against. I probably got punched in the face three times and I never even saw his gloves coming. We were both wearing head gear so it didn’t really hurt, it was more of a surprise than anything, and then the lag of comprehension of what just happened, all while the punches are still coming. It’s a lot to endure, and it honestly wasn’t all that much.

Once I stepped out of the ring I got right on the exercise bike to cool down and let the adrenaline wash out. Pro tip, this is a really big thing to do whenever you want to make sure a lesson sticks. Give your nervous system some down time immediately afterwards, preferably five minutes or so, before you get distracted by anything. It’s one of the reasons we do shavasana at the end of a yoga class. So, I’m not really thinking about anything, just getting some zone two cardio while I let whatever just happened sink in and let my heart rate settle into a comfortable rhythm. And I watch another couple guys duke it out and then after a while I’m like all right I’m done and I undo my wraps and head for my truck.

Somehow I managed to run a few errands after all that and then I got home and went for a jog through Humboldt Park. At the top of one of those hills I called “fuck it” and crashed right there for probably the best nap I’ve had in a while, all on a bed of autumn leaves. And I don’t know exactly when I had this reflection, but I’ve been thrown off a bicycle in the Rockies and gotten a concussion, waking up with no idea of what had happened or how I’d gotten there. I’ve administered first aid on the sidewalk in front of my apartment on the West Side of Chicago a couple of times. Gotten injured at work and had to declare bankruptcy before the work comp claim ever got settled. I’ve held on to my mom’s hand and said her favorite prayer for her while she died. I promised the rest of my life to a woman that I loved only to have her tell me please don’t ever talk to me again I’m in a relationship with another man now and I’m happy. All that and I’m still standing. What the hell is gonna happen inside a boxing ring that I can’t handle?

The men’s amateur match is set for December 11 and I’m here for it. I’m under no delusions about the amount of work I have to do to get ready for that date, and I’m 100% confident that I’m going to give it everything I have. Because that’s what I do. I go the distance.

A tremendous shout out to Otto and everyone at Dropout Fight Club for giving me the chance to learn a few more things about myself. I can’t recommend them highly enough, and if you just wanna get a great workout with a great vibe and a fun crowd and not any face punching, that is totally a thing that you can do there too.

it’s been a minute

Oh boy. Almost two years since I’ve posted to this blog. Plenty has happened since then, most of it still too difficult to get my head around. I’ve had some ideas for things to write about, but it’s been too intimidating to hash them out after not posting in so long. A funny thing happened this evening, though, and I thought I’d use it as the momentum to get something started again.

I’ve gotten a little into crystals lately. I’ve gotten a little into a lot of things over the last little while. Yoga teacher training, for one thing. Precognitive dreaming. Chakras. Here’s a funny little anecdote where a few of those come together.

A few weeks ago I visited Angelic Roots in Oak Creek for their customer appreciation weekend sale and bought myself some fancy rocks. Some of them called out to me and others I selected for specific purposes. I’ve been playing around with them, feeling them out, trying to discover what they have to tell me, which ones I should hold onto, which ones I don’t feel any connection to. Sometimes I put a crystal at the top of my yoga mat when I begin my practice. Sometimes I take them in the bath with me. It’s been an interesting exploration and this evening it got a little more interesting.

On my way out the door to yoga class I remembered to pick out some crystals before I left. I stood by my nightstand where I keep them and did a whole chakra thing that I might explain some other time. With my eyes closed, I shuffled my crystals, spread them out, and then felt which one was calling to me at that moment. I chose one and opened my eyes. I had selected amazonite, which I bought specifically to protect me from EMFs and the like. It has other purposes but I haven’t learned them yet. I thought to myself, well I won’t be needing anything like that at a yoga studio, or basically “that’s not the answer I want!” and shuffled the stones again. I ended up selecting a combination of different stones and bringing them with me to the yoga studio.

When I got to the studio, my gut sank immediately. I’m hugely sensitive to LED lighting and the studio had installed new overhead lights. They were offensively bright. The lights weren’t turned on in the yoga studio itself but the window into the studio from the lobby let in enough light that I had to set my mat up in the farthest available corner. I did the yoga practice with my eyes half closed and it was okay, although I wasn’t really able to relax into it. I did have a nice time with the stones I had brought with me and I got to know them a little better.

After the class had ended I spent a couple extra minutes in shavasana, waiting until the studio had emptied to roll up my mat. As I gathered my belongings, it suddenly hit me. That amazonite was calling out to me in order to protect me from the LED lights to which I’m so overly sensitive. I haven’t been drawn to that stone since I purchased it, but tonight, the first night I visited this studio since they changed their lighting, that stone is the one that wanted to join me.

I’ve been working for a while now on developing my intuition. I’ve started to accept that among other things, I’m a little bit of an empath, a little bit of a precog. Part of what I’m trying to suss out is when to listen to that intuition, and when to listen to my reason, or whatever the other thing is. One lesson that seems to keep coming up is learning to know what it feels like to reject an answer because it isn’t the one I want, versus rejecting it because it doesn’t feel right. This is exciting stuff to dive into and I’m happy that my little rocks gave me something to work with tonight. Thanks, rocks! You kind of rock.

Meeting the Guru face to face

Once again I don’t know where to begin. A few weekends ago I traveled to upstate New York to attend the cremation puja for Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche. This event will be one of those before and after points in my life, defining everything that surrounds it, but I can barely express why it was significant. Have you ever watched reality unravel before your eyes, turning every frame of reference inside out? Not so much? How about trying to describe what salt tastes like? It’s that sort of conundrum. Words are inadequate. It’s just something you experience, without interruption. The danger is that the more I try and recall that experience, the further away from it I get. My memory gets in the way and tries to solidify and reify the whole thing, when the experience is of reality itself as something less than solid, something a little more relative. Trying to convey or capture it with words or concepts defies the experience itself, but the real lesson learned is that spaciousness is always available to drop into. The nature of mind is the same in Delhi, New York as it is in Chicago, Illinois. It’s no different in Lhasa or Berlin. It’s there for any of us to realize, but it takes consistent practice to see clearly. Our concept addicted minds are usually too busy throwing barriers in our way, all in an attempt to make sense of that which ultimately can’t be pinned down.

Khyabje Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche was born in East Tibet in 1924. He is one of a very few who received their monastic training in traditional Tibet prior to the communist invasion of the late 1950s, and managed to flee to the West. At the bequest of the Sixteenth Karmapa, Rinpoche came to the United States in the 1970s to establish a monastery and three year retreat center, which eventually blossomed into a network of dharma centers, continuing the 900 year old tradition of the Karma Kagyu on a new continent. Rinpoche was a living treasury of knowledge, widely respected across Buddhist traditions, known for his boundless compassion and also tough as nails.

I had not originally planned to attend the funeral ceremonies for Rinpoche, once they were announced. I was already scheduled to attend a group retreat in Wisconsin that weekend, and besides, upstate New York is quite a drive from Chicago, much farther than Wisconsin. I was content that I would at least be on retreat that weekend, and that I would try to honor him in that way. But then Lama Sean let it be known that another member of our sangha was making the drive, and looking for a co-pilot to share the wheel. With two drivers, the roughly twelve hour drive could reasonably accomplished in one day, and I could attend the ceremonies without missing any more work than I’d already blocked out for my retreat. I had only met Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche once, on the occasion of His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa’s visit to Chicago KTC, and I had on a few occasions attended teachings he gave via webcast. I was saddened that I would never again have the opportunity to study with this great master, but here was perhaps one final chance to strengthen that connection. I decided to make the trip.

Impermanence is one of the underlying tenets of Buddhism. This life is seen as transitory, and death is merely another stage on that journey, a seamless transition from birth to rebirth. More so than perhaps any of the Buddhist traditions, Tibetans have developed a number of practices to prepare for the moment of death, with the aim of maintaining awareness throughout the dying process. When a great master, or even an accomplished practitioner dies, many signs are demonstrated which fly in the face of Western medical reasoning. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa achieved parinirvana in November, 1981 at a cancer treatment center in Zion, IL, and there are tales scattered across the internet of the many signs he demonstrated, seemingly returning even after clinical death, in the presence of hospital staff. On October 5, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche had suffered a stroke, and after it was determined that there was nothing that doctors could do for him, he was brought back to his room at Karme Ling monastery, where he passed away the next morning. His body was left undisturbed and he remained in samadhi, a state of meditative repose. After three days, the area around his heart is said to have remained warm, and he was again left to continue his meditation.

One of the most astonishing features of Tibetan Buddhism is the demonstration of the rainbow body. After seven days in samadhi, Rinpoche’s body is reported to have begun shrinking in size. At the same time, multiple rainbows were observed around the grounds at Karme Ling. Were he not to have been cremated, it’s possible that eventually there would have been nothing left but hair and nails, as this material is already dead to begin with. Rinpoche’s kudung, or body relic, was wrapped in ceremonial brocade and displayed in the shrine room for several days at Karme Ling prior to the cremation. I was able to make it into the shrine room briefly, before the pujas began, and witness this relic for myself.

Karme Ling is a closed retreat center, where retreatants participate in the traditional Tibetan three year retreat. There is no time off, and there are no visitors. It’s a spacious enough center for the few dozen lamas who are attending or administering the retreat, beautifully nestled in the Catskills, but on this weekend it was a bustling hubbub of activity, crowded with hundreds of visitors from around the world coming to pay their respects. Our party of three was gathered near the columbarium where the puja was to occur when we heard that we were allowed to visit the shrine room. We made our way to the Lama’s House, ridiculously crowded, and as we entered one of the lamas told us to proceed upstairs, even as visitors were streaming down the stairs. I fought my way upstream, losing track of my companions, past some tables where breakfast had been set out, and into the small shrine room where Khenpo Karthar had been seated upon a throne, shrouded in brocade. Lama Karma was already requesting that everyone leave the shrine room, so that the lamas could prepare Khenpo’s body relic for the procession, but I made my way as close as I could to the throne, offering prostrations along the way. I hoped that I might be able to offer a khata, a ceremonial silk scarf, but as I got nearer another lama swooped in and gathered all the khatas. I simply stood there for a moment, trying to take in the entire scene.

Here I feel compelled to pause, and explain a bit about what I do for a living. I’ve been a carpenter for probably more than twenty years now. I got involved with television in 2013, building the sets that allow the actors to inhabit their world of make believe, and allow you to believe it. I’ve been involved with theater even longer than that. I understand stagecraft. I know how the magician makes it appear that the lady gets cut in half. (Spoiler alert: It’s just cabinetry) Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche was a tough guy, a muscular dude even at 96 years old. He was not tiny, but if somebody had asked me to build a palanquin with a false bottom so they could wrap his body in silk and brocade and make it appear as though he were the size of a child, I could figure out how to make that happen. None of that is at all relevant.

As I stood in the shrine room, staring directly at Khenpo’s body relic, I couldn’t at all get my mind around what was directly in front of me. There was no clear boundary between where his body ended and the room began. It was if the space surrounding us had itself cracked open, and I felt as if my own being were dissolving into that space. My shoulders fell backwards, distinctions between big and small became meaningless, my head exploded and nothing at all happened, all the in the same instant. The room was emptying quickly, still a scene of commotion, and I didn’t want to linger where I wasn’t wanted. I gathered my khata and turned around, completely bewildered by what I had experienced, but also feeling grounded in that moment of groundlessness, a sense of connection at last.

It’s pointless to try and summarize what went on that day. It’s the winner take all in the category of “you had to be there”. I can sit here in my apartment in Chicago, a cold morning in early November, typing out words on a laptop, deleting, revising, coming up with better words, but the words are all going to fall short. The truth is they’re only getting in my own way. In some ways that experience is gone, never to be repeated, but the ability to tap in is ever present. I’ve had smaller experiences since that day, whispers of an understanding that is bigger than my day to day reality. They’re fleeting and elusive, and when they occur my instinct is to grab on to them, to try and hold on and define them, and that’s when they vanish, only to be replaced with the block of concrete that passes for my comprehension. It’s a very subtle practice, but I have faith that it can be developed, bit by bit. Small moments, repeated. To do anything else at this point seems futile.

Some notes from the abyss..

I have this weird job where it’s technically part-time but it could easily run 100 hours a week. The most I’ve ever logged is maybe 96. I’m not really sure but I try not to let it exceed sixty. Forget all the reasons why I’ve decided to put up with this compromise and for now let’s just focus on the middle of the shit storm that I’m enduring currently. Smashed through the point of absolute fatigue some while ago and since then it’s been mostly a black out state. Kind of weird to live through but such is life.

I did have this incredible experience where I got to see Mingyur Rinpoche speak in Evanston, IL  a few weeks ago now. Funny enough I was barely into this current jag but already well exhausted, and I had a difficult time staying awake through his teaching. Quite fortunate then that he gave a guided instruction on sleeping meditation. I’m not together enough to detail the full instruction here, but with his guidance I was able to remain in awareness and observe my mind during the transition from sleepiness through that in-between liminal state and then full on into sleep. Almost as soon as I became fully asleep I jolted myself back awake, but it was a valuable experience. I have had similar experiences before while on the acupuncture table or elsewhere, but they have been infrequent, and I credit the instruction (and his presence) with getting me to that state.

Since that lesson I have been trying to use fatigue as the object of my meditation. There’s no point in attempting anything else, really. I’m physically in too much pain to even attempt the ngöndro, and any attempts at visualization practices would be foolish as I can’t keep my mind focused on anything for more than a moment. Incidentally this is the working state in which most of my Union operates all of the time, and probably has at least something to do with the rate at which Death Notifications pop up in my inbox. I don’t judge my coworkers for their coping mechanisms, but I know that cocaine and norcos are ultimately not going to do anything for me, so I’ll just rely on the guru’s blessing and hope for the best.

It’s been an interesting few weeks. For a while I stopped dreaming entirely, then I had to take a few Wednesdays off just to catch up on sleep. Finally at the point where I am beginning to have scattered dreams again, none of them lucid but with hints embedded that could get me there, if I were able to pay enough attention within the dream. Physically it’s been quite a mess. I’ve already endured in just the last year something like six months out of work due to a work/comp injury, and have gotten very sophisticated at detailing my pain journal and so forth. Combined with my somatic and meditative training, I suppose my awareness is somewhat keen, but lately it’s like soup. Constellations of a dull sort of aching and shapeless pain that explodes in random locations and then fades back away, but not much of it rising above the horizon of awareness, more just sort of dimly there like it could be happening to someone else. Which may be a useful analogy. I have pondered where the ego resides in this fog and haven’t found anything there. All of my irritation, my pet peeves, the sliced fingers and band aids, everything bothersome about going on four hours of sleep each night for weeks on end, even that seems fleeting and ephemeral. I imagine the bardo state to be something terrifying and jolting, but what if it’s a narcotic sort of sleepiness that you can’t get your senses around, but too unsettling to actually rest in. All mind states are workable, and for the time being at least, and probably the next several weeks, this is what I have to work with. I guess it’s as good a practice as anything.

Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the dharma

Grant your blessings so that dharma may progress along the path

Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion

Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom

The Four Dharmas of Gampopa

 

Breaking the Rules

There are a lot of dos and don’ts when it comes to composting, and if you’re running an urban compost pile, the list of rules to follow gets even lengthier. The basic premise is simple enough, though — keep a good balance of “green” and “brown” material, and turn the pile frequently. City dwellers are advised to keep various materials out of their compost piles so as not to attract rodents, but many of those materials are in fact great for making compost. I’m not trying to brag here, but my urban compost pile smells like it came straight from the farm, so I figure I must be doing something right. I thought I’d take a few moments to share a little about my haphazard route to success.

First a few words about those few words, “green” and “brown”. What we’re getting at is the ratios of carbon and nitrogen you want in your pile. Materials that are high in nitrogen are considered “green” materials, and materials that are high in carbon are considered “brown”. Not all greens are green, though. Coffee grounds are a great source of nitrogen in your pile, and while their color is brown they are considered a “green” material as far as your compost. Human or pet hair is also high in nitrogen, and is considered a “green” source no matter the color of your or Fido’s locks.

The biggest problem with most urban piles is not enough brown material. Some overlooked sources include shredded fall leaves, if you can get them, or shredded newspaper, office paper, or cardboard. No glossies, though. Most paper plates are coated in some sort of petroleum product, but plates marketed as compostable are becoming more available. They are heavier than typical paper plates and sort of resemble cardboard. Make sure to shred all of these materials well or turning your pile will become a chore. The smaller you can shred up these materials, the quicker your pile will break down. The ideal size for all materials, green and brown, is nothing larger than half an inch. Although I do trim all material with a hand pruners before it goes into my pile, I’m not that fastidious, and find that pieces up to a few inches or so in length compost adequately.

Now, what about the materials you aren’t supposed to compost? Meat and dairy products especially are notorious for attracting rodents to compost piles. Maybe it’s the prevalence of coyotes in my urban neighborhood, but I have been composting limited amounts of meat and dairy products in my compost pile with no sign of unwanted critters. I use two of those black plastic “Darth Vader helmets” for a two bin system in my backyard composting operation. I’m not a big fan of these units for ergonomic reasons, but they are fairly critter proof and present a tidy appearance if that is a concern. I have on occasion seen rats in my neighborhood and even inside my building (eek!), but never in or near my compost pile. After twenty years of urban gardening, I’m well familiarized with rats and their behaviors, and I speak with confidence when I say that they just haven’t been a problem with my current setup. Keeping those lids tight is your best line of defense against unwanted visitors.

I’ve heard that you can compost an entire cow, bones and all, in a well tended compost pile in just seven days. I would not advise trying this in one of those Darth Vader helmets, but I have thrown in a few steak and chicken bones as well as plenty of spoiled milk or yogurt. These are prime ingredients for getting real biology into your compost pile. Recently I made a few gallons of stock, roasting beef and chicken bones and boiling them overnight with plenty of herbs and root vegetables. That success should be another blog post entirely, but after straining out that spent material, I added the veggies and sludge to my compost pile (the beef bones went to the neighbor’s dog). This is exactly the sort of thing you are advised not to do with an urban pile, and I think it’s one of the prime reasons my urban compost smells like the best fresh manure.

The smell test is always your best test when it comes to judging your compost. The nose knows, as they say. Forty-thousand years of human biology are working to your advantage here. A good compost pile should smell like a forest floor, a rich earthy smell, not at all sour. If your pile reeks of ammonia when you turn it, you have too much green material. Add more brown and turn it in well. If it smells like sewer muck, your pile has gone anaerobic. Probably it has gotten too wet or has not been turned enough, and all of the oxygen has been used up. Giving the pile a good turn and adding plenty of fresh material will give the pile a kick start and you can still get usable compost.

There could be some concerns about bacteria or other pathogens when adding meat or dairy products into your compost system. My pile runs hot! hot! hot! and anything in there is definitely getting cooked. Again, watch your ratios and turn the pile frequently. I’ll throw weeds that have gone to seed in the pile without worry. You can also keep in mind the intended use for your finished compost. I’m not using my compost for veggie production, it’s mostly feeding perennials or filling in bare spots of lawn. I’ve thrown in expired pharmaceuticals and some other materials I might be leery of adding to my veggie plots, but it’s of no concern where I’m growing prairie plants. Since I have a house rabbit, I have plenty of manure to add to my veggie production beds, and I use the compost bins to generate soil for the rest of the yard (where it’s badly lacking).

Maybe I’m relying on experience, but I don’t think too much about my composting. I just make a habit of checking the pile at least weekly, burying any new material well in the compost pile and giving it a good turn when I can. I’ll adjust the ratios as I go. My “two bin system” is as follows – one bin is the active compost bin, and the other is pretty much for storing brown material until I need to add it to the hot pile. The brown bin might get some green material mixed into it, again I’m not fastidious, but the ratio is overwhelmingly toward brown and it won’t compost on its own.

Free as a bird..

There’s nothing here that’s not been said before

But I put it down now to solidify my own views

And I’ll be glad if it helps anyone else out too.

Adam Yauch

The thing about advice is sometimes you just need to hear it, in order to recognize what you already know. Good advice makes sense because the truth in it is so obvious, and you know bad advice the same way you know bad tofu — every part of your being is shouting “that’s wrong!” Sometimes the truth hurts because it’s too close to the bone, and sometimes you get the same pat and hollow answers no matter the question posed. It’s up to each of us to apply our human intelligence to our lived experience and hash out our own truths. Getting advice is part of the smell test.

I’ve been handed plenty of good and bad advice over the years, but one thing I’ve had to figure out is that a poor teacher doesn’t invalidate the teachings. If the advice is too far off the mark I might be left to figure out my own answers, but really that’s what I was going to do anyway so why not get down to it? This month marks the Lunar New Year and I’ve been dropping in on a number of Buddhist communities lately, in part to join in the celebration, and partly because I like to know what other people do all day. I had a brief conversation with an interesting fellow who told me he was once a monk. Now he lives nearby. I asked him curiously “So where do you practice?” and his reply was the best advice I’ve received all year. “I just practice.”

June update 2017

Still under a time crunch but feel I should get a few thoughts down before they vanish entirely. Spending a lot of time lately thinking about how to get the Fischer Farm started, and spending even more time lately working in the motion picture industry building all sorts of crazy pipe dreams. Can’t talk about that so much on account of all the NDAs I don’t remember signing, so I’ll have to reserve this space for farm dreams, which is kind of what the blog title was supposed to suggest.

Farming is real hard work and I’ve never had any illusions to the contrary. The Fischer Farm isn’t hardly ready for growing anything yet but sometimes you have to charge ahead just to get the momentum to do what you want to do. If it were up to me I would sow three acres in clover and let it sit two years while we figured out the rest of the plan, but right now we’re going 1/4 acre in pumpkins. Maybe. The seeds aren’t in the ground yet and I don’t know when I’ll have time to get around to it. I’ve got a farmer in charge of that 1/4 acre but he’s a little tied up with his own life these days. I won’t get into the particular setbacks that we’ve run into but there have been at least a few, and a lost day here or there is a big deal when you’re dependent upon the weather cooperating with a very limited schedule. There are bigger and longer term plans in the works, but I don’t want to spoil those details until they’re at least a little more fleshed out.

I decided to skip the Permaculture Design Certification course I was planning on taking this summer. I also bailed on a recent trip to KTD in Woodstock that I had been looking forward to since Winter. Both decisions were financially dictated. It’s feast or famine in the film biz, and while I’ve been working like a hurt dog lately, there were too many months in a row with no money coming in. Now I have to make up for lost time, and skipping town for two weeks just isn’t viable, even if it is in the interest of furthering other projects. Lama Karma was in town the other weekend, and while I was still too busy to even attend his teaching, I did at least get him to bestow a long life blessing upon My Bunniness. I opted to spend a small portion of the money that I won’t be spending attending the PDC and went in on an order of cover crop seed and two flats of goldenrod for the Fischer Farm. Thank you Johnny’s Seeds and Prairie Moon Nursery. Scored discounts on both orders. Somewhere in those two weeks I would have been gone I hope to find a day to get those plants and seeds in the ground.

My plot in East Garfield Park is looking all right even if the kitties and the workload haven’t been helping things along. I did get some more starts in the ground today, and the first Prairie Moon order I received is mostly thriving. The Liatris mostly got scorched but one or two are looking strong. Comfrey is thriving all over the yard and I have a few different strains of nettles growing. The chamomile is even coming back around now that I’ve got soaker hoses installed. Bought a new daisy, a Becky, and the seller told me she was pretty sure it was from Elite Growers. I keep track of that sort of thing on account of my years in the industry and watching which plants have thrived and which have fizzled in my urban gardens. I’m looking to cultivate several strong daisies after last winter killed off most of those I’ve had growing anywhere.

Tomorrow I’m heading to the Farm to build a bonfire that I’m going to light off on Friday night for Family Camp. Had a real successful work day at the Fischer Farm over Memorial Day weekend and camped over with a few of my friends. Decided after that weekend that it’s important to get to know all of the folks who have a connection to that place, and while I probably don’t have time to camp out again this weekend I can play Fire Marshall for a few hours one evening. Hoping I don’t get too much time off anytime soon on account of all those bills I still haven’t paid, but I have made some solid additions to my library lately and I’m looking forward to working my way through those texts eventually. Will be fun to report back.

That’s all I’ve got tonight. Haven’t really gotten down with adding photos to the blog lately so here’s a video. Not my work..