“Something is wrong. I don’t mean with you or me or with any person. I mean in general." --Ragle Gumm

Monday, October 24, 2011

Personal Note Sixteen—In the Prison of Normalcy

The job was hell but good. At first I had so much of the other reality coursing through me that I could hardly answer the telephone. Everyday before work, I practiced meditations that further immersed me in the place I needed to retreat from in order to eat, pay the rent, and speak intelligibly to others. Eventually I abandoned all forms of meditation in order to maintain my sanity. Insanity was a real issue. It took years to bring myself into the world but even then it felt only like a big toe testing out waters I would never learn to swim in. I did a fairly good job at work—eventually—but I was always struggling to maintain the world reality because no matter how much I managed to fit into what I was doing in the concrete world, that world always felt less real than the indefinable core of my being, which was increasing in its presence.

Eventually I found a woman whose life, although much different from mine, nevertheless had enough parallels with mine that we changed our lives so that we lived together. We helped each other restore a modicum of balance and now live together engaged in the maintenance of life on flat ground, which she occupies more firmly, while I integrate into daily life that place from which nothing can move me. After seven and a half years working, I retired with her to a house on the coast of Washington. I continue living that cosmic reality while keeping at least one foot on the ground. I live in relationship, write blogs and tweets, watch movies, cook, read bizarre novels, and look at death as the other side of the coin that was tossed in the air years ago.


End of biographical posts.

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