A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums.
Hunter S. Thompson

It was late, I don’t know how late exactly but it must have been close to first light. The sky had that luminous haze to it that marks the pre-dawn, and the streets by the canals were blanketed by still quietness, only occasionally broken by the clatter of a passing fiets (push bike) or wild howling of an amphetamine freak trying to come to grips with the psychosis descending on him. It was a beautiful sight really.

But I was lost and I was wired, and my mind wasn’t working properly. I knew that I too had a bike around somewhere, but I was buggered if I knew the right direction to go get it. I looked up and down a bunch of canal ways and this terrible realisation came upon me that if I chose the wrong one, I’d be fucked. The beer haze wasn’t helping either. I know better than to trust beer judgement; that little voice inside your head that says everything will be fine if you just listen to him. Oh no, that little bastard decieved me too many times before for us to be on speaking terms, so I ignored the ranting in my head as best I was able.

I looked around the streets in hope that I would find someone I could ask for directions. That was a dicey proposition at best. The only people up at this hour were probably in worse shape than I was, and if they weren’t, one look into my eyes would have them running away in sheer panic.

What to do?

End of Part 1. To be continued

Padwanna

When I was a kid I went through a period were I was fascinated by the movement of heavenly bodies and how they would majestically form up into these beautiful alignments that would for a short time bring a grand order to the universe, before they would shift again out on their own. Many many years later I got the chance to travel to Zambia and witness with my own eyes the devine power of a full solar eclispse. There are not words to describe seeing something like this to someone who has not been witness to such an event. I can only say it is like looking into the eye of God.

I have been thinking recently how our lives very much follow the same pattern of celestial alignment and realignment as we move through the days, weeks, months and years of our mortal existence. For much of the time we shift through an orderly pattern of life alongside other people, which is largely indistinguishable day to day. Yet occassionally there is an alignment of our life, with other peoples lives, and certain forces of existence that mark events of great importance or significance. They are often accompanied by times of great emotionality and perhaps deep introspection as our perspective shifts in accordance with the power of such a thing.

Until recently I used to view life changes brought on by these cosmic alignments as either “good” or “bad” depending on what followed, but now I am starting to see things differently. Life is not a static thing, all things change. This is something that I have learned during the course of study in my own framework of spiritual belief, and also simply through the act of living. When things change, some things in life have to be let go, but always there is the possibility for new things to be embraced. Our difficulty during a process of realignment is due to our reluctance to let go of those things that we hold on to at that time. I’m not going to start quoting Yoda or anything, but it is really the fear of letting go that leads us to a place where we feel constant hurt.

It’s human nature to feel loss at letting go, and also to want to hold on to that which we already have. The same as it’s human nature to love order and symmetry. Yet these are the things that shift when we arrive at a point of alignment/realignment. Sometimes it can be the very day to day nature of our lives that can be torn asunder, and yet it can also be as subtle as being close to someone, and then having to walk alone again for a time.

I have come to such a period of realignment.

That day I stood on the savanna plains of Zambia, and I watched as the moon slowly moved to it’s apex in front of the sun and the alignment of full totally occured, I felt infused with the power of universe, as if my very being was lifted to the heavens and I was a star in the cosmic ballet before me. It was not a bad thing, nor was it a good thing, it was simply, a glorious event that marked a shift in my life, and all the lives that were part of it.

I see now, that my current period of alignment, while not quite so grand as the day of the Zambia eclipse, is still significant, and not to be judged as good or bad, but simply as an event where my life shifts.

Time to gracefully let go of that which was embraced, and look to a set of possibilities that wait to be embraced.

Padwanna!