In time for the retirement of this blog, tomorrow. (As mentioned before here.)
D and my final meal. Lunch. Gud food, gud rainbows.
And, at the airport:
Cute airport. Empty. Beautiful sunny day.
And this was when my thoughts about suicide started, pretty much. There stood a random piano in the middle of the airport. A hired pianist came to play as I was sitting at the gate.
On the cute Oasis Notebook that I bought at Powell’s, the first entry reads:
5.13.2023. Saturday
PDX (Portland airport) 2:35 pm
나는 죽고 싶다. 나는 죽고 싶다. 나는 죽고 싶다.
Meaning simply, “I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.”
I sat there for a while, apparently having dropped my pen but not knowing. A gentleman came up to me and picked it up for me.
Then, on 5.18, I shaved my head–which was actually pretty fun; it wasn’t due to depressing thoughts, at all. I’m still glad I did it, and still mildly surprised that shaving did not cause as great a shock as I thought it would have caused. Or any shock.
I am guessing that even then, I was beginning to… I don’t know, sort of “give up” on the external world? Kinda? Like… what’s the point? Not in a “I want to die, what’s the point” way–at least when it comes to shaving. The “I want to die” existed separately from that. So, this “What’s the point” was more like… Hair that shows to the external world, who cares? And not in a “I know everyone is watching but I’m gonna pretend I don’t care anyway.” No.
My hair was gonna grow again. I knew it, and maybe I wanted to see that. Because, if your hair is already 60cm long, you can’t really notice it growing, day to day. But if you cut it down to 6mm, oh, does it grow! It grows!!! There is a force in me that makes hair grow automatically!!!
And now I am here.
I had taken pictures of the Oasis Notebooks. I bought 4 of them at Powell’s and I like them so much, I bought more. (Amazon sells them expensively. I got mine from a place called MisterArt.com; they charge for shipping, but if you’re going to buy multiple notebooks, paying for shipping makes more sense. MisterArt.com, based in Texas. Ah, what would I do without Texas.)
Anyway, I had taken pictures of the Oasis Notebooks, because the A6 size is ideal for holding in your hand as you attempt to write without a surface to lean on. As in, not at your desk, but when you’re sitting in front of a mirror, when you’re taking a break from meditation.
Taking notes during meditation is a bad idea (makes you think with head, not feel with body). But the feelings that were suppressed are so recurring and yet surprising, I want to keep a record of them, because my future self might not believe that they ever existed. Also, I started this line of inner work because of specific people and for a specific person for specific purposes. So I want a record for that person as well.
But, anyway again: I had taken pictures of the Oasis Notebooks, but then I was like… meh. And I had taken a picture of my new meditation bench, but then that was also like… meh.
Perhaps there will be an episode on inner work on Sponge, several months from now. Maybe I will upload the pictures there. But the methods are so simple in their essence, there is not much to talk about, for me. It would be more helpful for more experienced people with external proof to talk about the methods. Because only that way can one turn the eyes, looking outward, inward. It’s ironic, but inevitable. If you’re used to externals then you need external proof of the internal work. Without such proof, I would not have been interested in internal work, either, initially.
So, for me to keep talking about internal work (without somehow connecting it to reference works, the way I do on most episodes of Sponge) is kinda… pointless? Not useless, but sort of… Probably won’t make much of a difference? I don’t know. That’s how it seems to be, right now.