10 meditations
1
earth, the planet where i live, used to seem solid and still. earth, the element, seemed identified with stillness, and i counted this stillness as one of four spiritual powers of the body of this planet. then, hiking in the sandia mountains, i watched a mountainside disappear under its own rising shadow. the lower the darkness reached down the faces of the gray stones, the more vividly the stones waved. in the reddening light of the sun the stones and dirt waved too. one wave was water, the other was earthquake and entropy. new mexico taught me that earth is not a stable element, it is only an element of opaque fabric. you can’t see it up close: you try to look, it eludes you. when you come to a high point on a ridge and look to the west and down on albuquerque... it’s very strange. the sun goes down and your body disappears into the dark body of the mountain. when the light disappears, so does the earth, so does the mountain: there are no mountains, there is only earth, a fabric that reflects the dark or the sunlight. you see this dark fabric as a frame: within the frame is the lighted city: the city looks like outer space. you reflect that you’d seen yourself as someone coming from the city into the mountains. you had in some sense identified yourself with the city. how strange this impression then seemed to me, an earthly animal, shapeless in the night, seeing the distant streetlights of an alien city. i looked at the city not knowing what it meant, feeling at peace in the natural dark.
2
the sky is primary: a nothingness where light proliferates and color washes over color; the earth is painted brusquely on the sky; the river pours up out of the heart of eternity, ecstatic and clear. the hills are gods: colossal animals, great half-beings bowing to the continuity of the river, clinging to the calm love of an unknown heartbeat, extending their paws to receive life. the hills are mystified by the river: they long to ask where the river flows from: the hills have lost their tongues. they open their mouths, their caves, to breathe animals into the world: the animals dream: the hills read the dreams, searching for clues: the humans dream and speak and write and the hills read their language for clues. language is a problem: we are like gods: we have forgotten our true tongues. the hills are sleeping, restful in their unknowing love for the river. we, too, are sleeping, but we are not at rest; we are tumbling in the sky, static, fixed between opposite destinies. sometimes one must go to the river: the heart needs to make contact with its mother, to remember where it flows from. the river gives answers only the heart can hear. the river is invisible: only the heart can track its motion. where the earthly lights touch the water, the water reflects their souls. i don’t know why i was brought into the world, or if there was a reason. i don’t know if i have a soul. but i have seen the souls of streetlights reflected in a river.
3
i’m going back—before the hills and ohio appeared from behind the trees that tower over dead man’s road, before the ice broke and i fell into the creek’s freezing water and my dad rushed to save me, before the perfect peace and safety of the bright green grass of my grandparents’ yard in the wooded hills—forgoing memory, the firmament of memory, going beyond... i don’t know where i’m going, but i know i’ve been there before, i’m there now—it is something i carry within me, it is something carrying the atom, the electron that is me, the cypher that is called luis neer... it is hard to focus in this hidden place, this non-place. my body is a soft machine haunted by sorrow. i am trying to let go of this sorrow, but it will not let go of me. i am feeling my heartbeat, wearing an old hunting coat to keep warm in the cold night of the desert.
4
earth: rubble. pewter. bulldozers groaning pulling down walls smearing dust on the air. gray sky and river. obsidian. distant stormclouds. what matters is stillness. still distant clouds. shaking hands. carpet. resting. inertia. being pulled toward a massive enormous heavy thing. emptiness. openness. coolness. daytime. nighttime. sidewalks.
5
air: birds. birds flying, soaring in no space, no time. there are no lines. lines are abstractions, distortions, fabrications. bliss. blur. inside my head is outside. shimmering. nothing shimmering. open mouth. light. light may be waves not particles. which makes sense. light doesn't settle as dust. light is not confusing. i don't know what lights light. air is neither light nor dark. air is invisible. air has no syntax. air is chaos and oblivion. speed. falling. lilting. leaf.
6
train caterpillar bulldozer river sidewalk sadness faces streetlight car building broken windows weeds refuse graffiti frogs dirt deer bones water science nature metaphysics plato parthenon sunrise ocean fish boat truck crane flamingo faucet pipe smoke pyramid dog
7
cacti are strange... they are the octopi of the desert. when i look at a cactus it seems to return my gaze... and seems to hallucinate me, seems to gaze on some strange beast, some indecipherable linguistic character that might as well be me. maybe the cactus sees a creature covered in spines, eyes made of fire, a mouth of white teeth... maybe it regards the human as an object of mystery and terror. not that i fear cacti: i don’t, and its spines don’t intimidate me. looking at a cactus… the essential sense is suspicion. a feeling that it is a sentient thing... that it is a person wearing a disguise. even its spines seem illusory; in the event someone touches its flesh, provisional “real” spines are deployed, supporting the illusion—they seem to appear slowly, magically. it has never totally fooled me. cactus may be an avatar for a general strangeness in nature, a creature cursed (like humans) with a codified skin, a forcefield of data that cannot be exchanged outside the body of its own antagonisms. humans and cacti both bare a peculiar and visible strangeness that reflects a general, invisible strangeness that circumscribes our reality.
8
trying to see what i don’t remember - eyes closed seeing shadow images passing like smoke - there are vague impressions of grass, my grandparents’ blue ford explorer, sound of windshield wipers - feeling, feeling of dearness, feeling of loss, fearing loss - soft sound, sound meaning rain, silent rain - mostly i remember darkness - what is dark - dark and soft swiping and scuffling, sound meaning silence, silence something that lives outside - questioning, waiting for light, waiting for faces, a birthday party - i don’t remember it, but it happened: it was in the yard of my parents’ house, a few blocks from the ohio river. the yard was split by a long concrete walkway. tables and chairs. i was under the sky, looking up at my mom and other grown people. they were shadowy, towering bodies emanating weariness and knowledge. my mom put her hand on the back of my head. i can almost feel that. i can almost trace my way to a feeling that isn’t there.
9
‘there’ is nowhere. this is just a fragile stage, a little space constructed for something to look at, a flat plan to traverse, yellow chairs, blurred objects, provisional simulacra. this version of my parents’ yard is a field engineered by a memory system inside my brain, a field to accommodate an investigation toward something that will not be discovered. when i look at the sky (when memory deploys its “i,” its camera) it is somewhere underground. when i look at the ground i know there is nothing beneath it, only darkness, swiping, a nothing -
10
there is no world: there are people, all of whom are suffering; there are objects, tools, mechanized extensions of people, prostheses whose phantom weight reflects and relieves the weight of our suffering—all weights being bound to the mass of the surface of things. we are animal spirits born in darkness—simultaneously finite bodies and endless flows of water—cold water extending into a matrix of hard matter, a vast machine void of temperature, an electronic and mechanistic system determined to perpetuate itself. there are cacti, juniper trees, porcupines, all suffering, all holding death and anarchy in the hollowness of their breath. they, too, are clinging to the extreme outer limit of earth; earth is a sentient concentration of gravel, an infinite focus, a focus that may release at the right moment; the moment of the end is unknown. nietzsche sensed the passionate nature of gravity: the cluster we call earth is held together by its sorrow. when all our sorrow—the emotional gravity of the world—has dissolved, everything will disappear.