#325 - Where the wind blows

We all stand in the slipstream of time. At each moment we are fingers placed in the waterfall of events. Our consciousness, our observations of things, create them for what they are.

I had this list of things I could write about - each of them chapters, novels, volumes in their own right. My library of possibilities, there sitting silent and unopened in my mind... I see them as I walk these silent corridors of dimly lit, unopened, never opened books. Books I will never read because I never wrote them. What a shame.

One section of the library is dedicated to Atlantis - a whole section. Atlantis, with a subsection for Lemuria. Another section for Magical Objects, like the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the Four Treasures of Ireland, the Prophets and Sybils of  Michelangelo. Yet another section tells you everything about the Elementals, there is a section for children here. In this library you can also find out about the Mythical Origins of Birds. Definitely Mermaids and their Kind. The Different Types of Eden. Finally, an entire corner just for the Tarot and its symbolism. And here I think, this is not enough, but say if I were to get on with writing one of these books in one of these sections, that will be enough to occupy me for the rest of my life. So, I no longer have to worry that I 'only have one book in me'. I know that I have dozens - dozens and dozens. I also think Strange People - like Irish Saints and the Desert Fathers, Holy Places like Holy Wells and Henges, would have a place somewhere. They may not be entire sections, but it would be at least two books, right?

I also think these things are not QUITE fiction, but they are also not QUITE real life. They exist in between. I find fiction disconcerting to write. I find it a bit self indulgent. It is cute, it is true, but why fiction when all of existence, I know all of existence personally, is something which is strange than it. Why go through the trouble of making something up when you can looking into a dark mirror or peer through the strings of the real and come up with something far weirder? It has always been my eternal tussle. Finding my genre and finding the voice. 

However, I made something of a start yesterday, writing about Cooey. It struck the right note, between what is there and what was. And what is possible. The imagined place.

That's the thing though. I could stretch out my hand now and about just anything I see. The skies, the trees, this cup here... I could just write. I would have something to say and say it pretty decently. I would have something to say directly to it. I would have something to say.

So in many ways now I have the opposite problem - I have too much to write about and don't know where to begin. Hmmm... perhaps I could begin at the beginning. The Gardens of Eden.

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There is little doubt now that we, all of creation, received its start in the cosmos. We are not the feeble, struggling earth bound, clayfooted things we believed we once were. Instead, we are scintillating atoms, electrons, quarks, protons, etc... which are, by some miracle of coincidence (or not) are able to manifest ourselves on this collective, agreed very real illusion called The Earth. How this is done, we are uncertain still... or we are trying our very best to figure it out. However a few thousand years ago, the Hindus and then Buddhists following in their wake were able to describe it. They called it the Net of Indra. Here is Francis H Cook describing it:

"Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring."

Apparently, we are no further from this description of reality and existence. What once was thought of is a fanciful exotic conceit by the naive 'native peoples' and their 'delightful' ideas of the cosmos like standing on tortoises or the lightning being a giant bird, it turns out that Indra's Net is actually the best description we have of reality. This wonderful net has not only been taken up by serious physicists, but serious atheist Buddhists because it explains existence without a God... specifically any kind of God, not just the Judeo-Christian one, something which neither Buddha nor the other gurus before him ever advocated, but that is a different rambling. 

THIS RAMBLING is about the beginning of the world.

It is difficult to know when this took place, but at some point, our ancestors decided that, like all superheroes, we needed origin stories. And this is the one thing we know about human beings - we are very good at stories. It appears to have been hardwired into us. It is our wheelbarrow. To quote McLuhan, Our medium is the message. We tell stories. Jungian scholars will look for the archetype in these stories - linking Tricksters across the myths, the Mother Goddes, the Forbidding Father, etc however, it is the most essential thing of us all - we love telling stories. We love listening to them. And it is stories which get us through the day. Words are spells. A single one can build or destroy. 

But all stories must have beginnings - even if it is to be spoken by an eternal being. Made by one. And right at the beginning of many of these stories is paradise.

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Why paradise? Think of the perfect existence and you think of being cared for, looked after entirely, your every need seen to and met even before you uttered it. Is this not paradise? Contentment and bliss. The child in the womb, floating... I know that some children do not have the privilege of being gestated by perfect mothers, but on some level, the floating and the caressing by the amniotic fluids of life, the pulsing roar of the heart, the gurgling digestive juices, the sound of the mother's voice and the muffled sound from afar of music and other people speaking... surely that on the most basic level must bring comfort.

This is paradise. This is the paradise we have come from and long to return to evermore. To recreate it by talking walks by the sea to relive the tremendous sound of the heartbeat as the waves crash to shore, to lie in a warm bath, soaking with dimly lit candles all round, even the dark interior of the cathedral with its ethereal ghostly music, it all brings us back to the months before birth. 

Then we are born and we then enter paradise. The Earth is a beautiful place. Everything is good. For a while, everything is good, we live in the Garden of Eden. There is wonder and there is magic. It is not so bad this Earth malarkey. We are able to gather memories. Christmas, parents, grandparents... we find the smallest things fascinating. The dancing light in a pool of water, mud, splashing about, bathtime, a story re and reread at bedtime, cookies freshly baked, dancing to music... forever, it is paradise... until it is not. And this is the realisation, possibly for the first time, hmmm... maybe I made a mistake. The mistake was to have been born. 

There is no returning to the garden of paradise, nor to the time before. So everything is a facsimile. And we just get on with life. We just get on with it. 

But this Garden of Paradise. At the centre of the world, at the beginning, at the very beginning. It has been called many things. Eden, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Jade Palace. This is the place of our origin story. It is where it began.