Everything's gone quiet now

Everything's gone quiet now.
Quiet now.
I'm hardly here at all.


Fatigue.

I've been reflecting on how I feel fatigue. Obligations pulling, not at my sleeves but on my arms and legs and head -- pulling hard: the force of a thick Pete Townsend windmill chord blasting me back. Melancholy is the tone and timbre of what I hear inside of me, melancholy reverberating in the air I'm moving through. This experience is new and it is familiar at the same time. Both aspects have my interest, and my interest is different from the past. Seeing, just seeing this, has something importantly new about it.

What does it mean when you promise someone
That no matter how hard or whatever may come?

Pulling me. Pulling me out, rip tide. How is it to be pulled out... I've wondered since I first was warned, to be helpless, past the point of no return, but you can see the shore and the family and friends on the beach, and that distance is too far to hear your cries and will they see your waving hands, and the water wall pulls you along, flotsam, as it recedes from the life you know? I've had brushes, I've been rescued. I know the flavor but not the conclusion.

Nature doesn't know if you are a child or an executive with a billion dollar multinational, it just takes you where it is going, you're just more stuff.

So, yeah. This is my question. The Finn Brothers got it, or had it, or, God bless them, are there. What does it mean when you promise someone that no matter how hard or whatever may come? What does that mean?

What does it mean when you belong to someone
When you're born with a name, when you carry it on?
To be, or... eh ... What are my options again?

I've faced the most blistering, hardcore, blunt tragedy of my life so far. I had no choice it seemed. I stepped on, one day at a time. What I didn't see is that each day is the accumulation of all the days. What happened with Kim was a climax of all the tragedies, and all the loves, of my life. And all the loves of my life are here still, even Kim. I am here. And everyone I love is here, too.

It means that I won't give in, won't give in, won't give in.
Neil and Tim know about this. Was it because of their Aunt who threw herself into the hole in the river? Was it a friend, was it Paul, or a lover, or everyone they love? They know this fatigue. But more, they know more.

A chance is made, a chance is lost, I carry myself to the edge of the earth.
I've been faced again with the chaos, eye to eye. A friend has gone over the edge, some edge, I'm not a doctor, I can't say. But there it was again, in front of me, in my office as I swiveled my chair around. The eyes going googly, the slurred and incoherent speech, the consciousness receding deep within some internal rip tide.

All the feelings rushed through me, all of the memories: my father, my mother, my friends, my self, my wife, my son, my sister, my life. The memories were direct-injected hormone messages to every muscle. The little girl in Poltergeist, "...no more...", spoke for me, for us.

'Cause everyone I love is here
All at once.
And so this message's content is fatigue. All the obligations, all the doubts about making someone else unhappy, all the stress of giving them what they want while ignoring the others, all the devils in my mind. Pulling me down. It is not obligation, it is always a choice. I've chosen to give myself away each time. I've let the talk go on too long, I've ignored my long-term health for your short-term attention. If I could be here for you, if I could hear the question right and give the right turn to the wheel, we could be free, I could be me. What a fool, how foolish it is to be passing through samsara!

Yet, the most important message of this fatigue: I cannot leave this world. My fatigue is the message of my nature crying out at the conflict. I must stop making myself through what I imagine of you. I cannot slip away, too, snuf it out and think that is freedom. See? Everyone I love -- ever -- is here, now, always has been and will always be only here. I must not go, must not let it go.

The defeat of the soul is an illusion of the self. The person we are is never defeated in nature, we go on. This is adult education: the only reason for human beings is for human beings to learn just this. It is all good, but it is not all comfortable.

Whatever we mean when we say "God, please help us all."

It means that I won't give in, won't give in, won't give in
'Cause everyone I love is here
Say it once, just say it, and disappear.
Oh! There's nothing wrong with you, at all. You are perfect. You are one of my Khanti teachers, you're here to help me cross over the stream. Don't let me be so arrogant and impatient and callous and insensitive. Oh, oh, this is about Khanti, isn't it? If it's just "Well, I'll put up with it", then I'm just making myself into an old, supercilious grump. A patronizing old grump who puts up with things.

...Then the real Khanti is to go to that point in the mind, accepting, "I feel upset, I feel hurt, it feels like this, I feel disappointed, I feel this." And going to that point, to the very tip of that point, of not wanting the unpleasant, the disagreeable, disappointing, the humiliating, the degrading, the unlovely.

And then, What are you here for? You're here for crossing over, not for avoiding and not for accumulating. And then the mind, instead of the movement to wriggle out, the mind throws itself open. The mind becomes very expansive and its only characteristic is a sense of space.

And then you can actually look into that, explore that sense of the mind when the volition relaxes. You can explore that sphere, there can be the feeling out and the dwelling in that sphere of cessation. Recognizing the way one should respect the noble tyrant, the implacable foe. The way one should respect the hungry mosquito. The way one should respect the exasperating situation.

Thank you. When I fulfill my paramitas, you, out of gratitude, I will carry you across.

This is the paramata of it, when one attends to that sphere of anattā, of no-self.

My friendships will change now. I cannot go back. I cannot be more than I am. I cannot jump over myself. This is love, not attachment. This is so hard, like giving it all up, like giving you up. But attachment is not love, it is self as if through you. Love is what is, always, just this, beneath and above and around and throughout.

'Cause everyone I love is here
Say it once, just say it, and disappear.

For Peter's sake, tell me where we would be without you!?! Even if time is just a flicker of light, and we all have to die alone, I won't give in. You see, I love you.



All the trash and the treasure,
All the pain and the pleasure.
Everything's gone quiet now.
Quiet now.
I'm hardly here at all.

Finn Brothers, featuring Paul Hester