The Room in the Sea by Andrew Sweeny

The Room in the Sea

Prologue
For 40 days and 40 nights I stayed in a room watching a white wall… I wrote in a free manner and I let my mind go where it may… I tried above all to listen to the intelligence of the heart and not be be swayed from that…

I was given ritual, a bed and many companions on my voyage, but the rule was not to speak or console. We spend the time sitting walking and lying down. After some time the mind became vast and unconcerned the heart soft and sensitive and stripped of its hard membrane. Time began to disappear and space began to loose its boundary.

Hunger

It is my first day here and I wander in a fantastic, primeval, reptile early dawn - a carnage of creation. There are with testicle eating locusts, rhinos, hyaenas and demented gorillas. It is a foul smelling battle field of sulfurous riot. Strange beings walk in circles on the grass and pop songs wail in the distance….

The Dictator
I am the dictator here - the worst person on earth. I dream of dominion of the cosmos, master of the Cosmos. My ego is like Charlie Chaplain, in all kinds of positions, sexual and otherwise… My heart is a block of ice the size of Greenland. Not even human love could melt this cold cold heart… God has been sending me handmaidens, canoes and rowboats, wedding rings and condoms, machine guns, businessmen and elephants… My mind is in a bipolar state of lust and hunger, I dream of sea monsters and Brigette Bardot. 30 more day of listening to the toilet sewer, and distant men shoveling….

Birth and Dogma

My morning hard on never fails me here, though most of the women have beards. But how many times did I fail to rise to the occasion, when the occasion was ripe… (You know what I mean). This is the cause of my suffering the beginning of a spiritual question… this great hard on, like a question mark.

I don’t exist technically speaking, and yet I AM. There is something that strongly wants to express it self (morning hard on proves the point) When I try to explain this, the mirror mocks me. ‘Don’t explain’ says the master, don’t explain yourself…. ‘Show me’.

I am like a man who has asked for a meal, and been given only the menu to eat. I have been given sand and rocks to eat and a plate of of fortune cookies and some cocktails that are pink and green.

Names and Forms

I have travelled around this and other worlds, but I never really got down to noticing the walls of this prison - at least not like this. The way the light slants in the afternoon, and the wind suddenly comes up, and there is an overwhelming feeling that this “nutshell” is sufficient. All the things out there are merely mirage like, insubstantial. In the void so many patterns, shapes, colors appear… There is not ugliness, no stickiness, nothing stuck to anything. The color red is just an symbol for what I am seeing, something that engages all the senses, deep, vast, ocean like… Names and forms become transparent, empty, soupy, distant, abstracted.

Bagdad of the mind

Between depression, sleep, frustration, boredom, loneliness, there is a force gathering, taking shape. Between billboards, advertising insurance and plastic surgery, the bombed out bagdad, the mind with its holes - there is a mighty river growing in force. Still there are corpses grinning at me from the bottom of the river. My heart tries to break out of this rib cage, like a nuclear flower. Agonizing.

The Question

Here in the Room there are only the bare naked walls, and the shadow play. There is no television sending messages of horror and eternal life, no hypnotic hum of appliances, no cuckoo alarm clocks, no portrait galleries of sinister ancestors, no pet robots, no automatic toilet flush, just the bare naked wall. But the shadows play on this floor like winged black birds - this entertainment surpasses - mere television.

The Afterlife
So few have really seen The Room. We shuffle from room to room on automatic treadmills, never seeing the walls. Some have throw themselves from the rails, but most of us are sort of stuck here in the room. We can decorate the room, but then we are just padding ourselves with more illusions, and dying stillborn in our cocoons. Some have found God and sing hymns to the afterlife, because, effectively they have become corpses in this life. But what about me? Do I really want to know the answer. What would happen if I found it…

The Cat and the Mouse
I am being watched. The room is one big eye, a kind of cosmic surveyor camera, invisible, but in the air. The judge and jury of the under-conscious, looking for the crime - inventing the crime. The eye says YES, NO, RIGHT. The disembodied self, watches the embodied one. The parent stands like a shadow over the bad child. The only thing to do would be to put a stake in his heart, this cosmic parent. My rage and tantrums only make him larger, so now I sit like a cat in front of a mouse hole, waiting quietly, but intensely…

Gratitude
A desert spans out in front of me. Day after day the same routine. I wake, I act, I evacuate, I rest. There is not much holiness anywhere, not much separation, between me and the fundamental acts of eating and being eaten. The script runs itself without me operating it with such a heavy hand.

The Sea and the Script
As a child during summer I loved the atlantic sea in Nova Scotia - it was so dangerous and beautiful. I would jump off the cliff in the wind and into the sand dunes and for a second, I seem to be suspended flying. And in that moment, I tasted freedom.

If I could just let go of the program, it would be like that. I would not have to divide the moments, I would not have to explain everything. I could simply telepathically exist, in that moment, between waking and dreaming, like a electric current in the air. All of the rest is just the story, the script. It just just this grandmothers finger, pointing to the moon. Pointing, pointing. Hallucinating in my beard.

The Sucking question
The answer to the question is already given, but I have have to reword the question. It must be done again, this time with less technique and automatism, and with more essential feeling. I know that the sky is blue, I know it already. But I know also that there are cataracts in my eyes. And that all of the technique are just more plastic roses. I am fasting the senses, so that I can find out, again, how to swim… For my limbs and my brain have been too programed. I need to learn to swim again, to be a fish. No use to be a philosopher, the poison has already entered the bloodstream, how to remove it.

I became efficient at the game but the joy of playing became dead in me. Now I see that the sparks are coming back to animate this corpse, this scarecrow. The room has become less of a prison cell and more of a Crib. Strange to think that I landed back in a Crib again, sucking this plastic Tit.

Perhaps I have stopped going forward, and am now in a period of decent. Back I go towards that great vagina HOLE in the center of the universe. There you can stop Knowing and start Being. However, it is premature to say this. For the moment its only SUCK SUCK SUCK.

Forest, Factory, Complex
Let me explain the simple geography of the complex, the place where I am for 40 days. Across the road is a factory, a blue building which makes cosmetics, fake eyelashes and pimple cream - different masks to cover up the inevitable decomposition of the human face…. You can hear the hum of the machines. And then beyond is a kind of forest with some tired trees, that look like the grew up after a nuclear holocaust. Nevertheless, the forest is my favorite place to be and in the evening the Program allows me to take a walk. There I can feel that whatever queer vegetation that grows here the ground under my feet is solid and reliable…. `

Sometimes the animals, sensing my stillness and awe, approach - when I have no fear they can be quite friendly… There are some big monolithic houses that line the forest(if you can call this movie set a forest) and in each house there is some kind of vicious dog barking. I should qualify that by saying that the dogs are not inherently vicious, they have just taken on the traits of their owners

So there it is: Forest, factory, Complex. Nothing special. Sometimes you can hear a woman cry out in pleasure, sometime you can hear a baby deer being shot by a hunter. They universe is balanced precariously between pleasure and pain. I am OK, you are OK etc. So what’s wrong. What is the missing link. Is it ME. Is there something wrong with ME…

Rainstorm Orgasm
The program calls for more rain. And we sit here washing the windows as if it could make the sun any brighter or the clouds disappear. The the rainstorm comes: a woman’s orgasm. A big sort of black haired raven girl, the juices coming down her legs crying more more more then I cry yes yes yes. This one of the hollow beings. They are cosmic pin up girls like this that are hollow, empty and radiant - they communicate telepathically over vast spaces in the blink of an eye. They are blissfully pleasurable creatures that fuck with all parts of their bodies. Sometimes I can see these beings, and it makes our world seem like a very poor place. Do they exist? Do we? But perhaps I have said to much.

Thumbnail
I sat for another day looking at my thumbnail. So many rivers and valleys, my thumbnail universe. Can this monkey hand, this weird contraption of skin and bone really be me. The universe makers have giving me meat puppet called a body to contemplate. But it keeps getting blinder and blinder…In the end you are shriveled up searcher, in the same fetal state as you were when you came. And in a blink something happened in between.

Early memory: I am 5 years old Crawling on the floor, in a dark room, just like this one. Dark starry - but I seemed to see beyond the sky. The sky was not filled with God, I was not protected by some cosmic parent. I was suddenly seize by the terror of mortality, the question of death. I thought: where does it end? where did it begin? And then - it cannot end and- it cannot begin. I cannot end - I cannot begin. Life cannot be understood and everybody will die.

But I wanted to go on and on, further and further, beyond the sky. Even if I was not protected by God - I was alone, naked - in the dark, in this room. But outside the room there was something that could not be grasped or even conceived of. And now, I am alone in this crib asking this barren question:
Who? and Why?

Others in the room
You might think that I am alone - but there are others. Although we do not communicate verbally, we are strangely intimate with each other. Each person is occupied with a questions, and drifts in and out of focus on this question. There is no interpretation or intrusion of gross speech, and so the script can be watched with out interference. Again you might think that this is a solitary journey - which is true in one sense but not in another. There is constant flow and communication between us, and the deeper the question the deeper the empathy and flow. We are really like a school of brightly colored fist, all swimming together, the ocean becoming wider and wider.

If we separate into obsessive self concern, the ocean becomes a fish-tank, the water becomes concrete. But boundaries are also necessary, just to point to the infinity of the water, the depth of the water. There is a circle and then a line through the circle, which means infinite and plenitude.

Iceberg Heart
The iceberg begins to melt. My heart seems to go out, beyond the door. I see mothers and daughters, fathers and sons… I see life, being torn at the roots. I feel sad, and I want to help. But I need a father, I need to feel a father… otherwise I feel to be a half person, at mercy to all that is feminine, fluid and unpredictable. Father, you tore me from the roots. I have tried all the healing arts, I have tried methods of self improvement. But then I am in a paradox. Is the cure, the end of the search for the cure. I am also the perpetrator. The good guy never really wins. This is not a contest. This is a predicament.

Love letter to myself
I am writing you this letter, because, despite everything, I love you - and there is so much that could not be expressed. Today there was more thunder, and there is something in that thunder which makes me think on you. Although my words are impossibly awkward, they are are just my gesture, at reconciliation, and a way of showing my sincere respect. In this room I have gone beyond language, and I shudder at all these paragraphs which don’t even say a part of it. Sometimes, I am brutal and violent, and always I am doing things backwards, but there is still some dynamite left in me. Today I felt all of those buried childhood feelings. So much has been lost. When did we loose it, when did we fall from Grace and become so deformed. I do not say that we were pure, but life was very vivid. I do not idealize you and I do not want to go back to you. But today I cried because so much Has been lost. Yes, things die and fade away, it is all natural, but how could I have abused the gift as I have done. I remember, for instance, putting a fish hook through a frogs neck. I remember his fragile soft and beautiful white neck, and the black blood that came out, and how he struggled for his life.

Part 2 Jesus the fisherman
Like Jesus, full of grace, I would wake up every morning on that golden lake. There was a time, I caught the granddaddy fish, but my heart grew tender when I saw his big fighting eyes. And even though he was also a killer, I had pity on him. When I returned to my family, with a fish story I was mocked and ridiculed, and became enraged. I would never be weak again - I would not be a softhearted Jesus - I would learn to kill like all the rest. As a young adult I worked on a fishing boat and I killed and disemboweled hundreds, without remorse, and found that killing was easy. The Captain of the boat told me that Jesus saves, but I didn’t listen to him. I was withdrawn and dark, unable to speak or defend my identity, and a rage grew inside me that could not be expressed. The captain though I was just a sinner who would go to hell and it was true. But I wanted to go there, to be with all the other ones who were just like me.

In the mines, in the mines
I have met so many women, and found to my surprise that the “secret” doesn’t reside in them. This flower is not on a Himalayan hill top either. But it is down here in the mines.

That is what The Face told me in a dream. He was being drunk and cantankerous and he looked at me with a cantankerous smile. I asked him, dear Face, am I completely lost. He said: you need to go to the mines. I didn’t have to ask him where, I knew exactly where that was… It was the place I feared and loathed and avoided with all my guts. I would have to to got that place.

So now I am here, Mining this black pit of myself, looking for streaks of gold. I have know all along that it was there, but I took the long and way of irregular steps to get here. My pen is my shovel.

The daughters of Mara

The soul lives somewhere else than the body, and wanders in a humid forest. I tear at the roots for support, but they come up in my hands. I cannot scream for I am mute. I shout intensely without making a sound wake up. If I could only stay awake, but there velvet sweetness that puts me back into this amnesia. The daughters of Mara are all here with their silver ankle bracelets. They do a dance and I fall into a trance… and then I am back in the horror and dissociation. The beautiful maiden pulls out her eyeball and hands it to me: “Do you think I am beautiful now?”

I strain to say awake. I do not want to descend again into the terrors. But in the strain, in the effort, I begin to shut down. The script becomes mess verbal, but more melodic and visionary - I fall back into this beauty, sound and vision. I follow the drama, the crescendo, the poetic paradoxes, and I play there for awhile, like the eyeless fiddle player standing on the street playing.

Void bannana
Once I had a realization while eating a banana. I realized that the banana was space, that the bannana was void. I ran around to tell everyone but they didn’t have a face - they were all preoccupied with the script. Then it began to rain ink. I was caught in this terror - an Ink-storm - the world was completely plasified, stained, irredeemable. But at the same time it was void. There was simply nothing, no substance to it. It was all like a diagram on a bubble, it was all a trick…

Then the face appeared. A tiny Japanese man with clear eyes, and wrinkles at the corner from laughing. Suddenly, I went beyond this scene, which just was happening on a soap bubble. And in that face I saw rivers within rivers, mountains within mountains, clear eyes, clear dreams, a vision of a women in a high mountain valley carrying water.

Infinite Periphery
Here in the room that past is all around. The past of my own life and maybe others… details so fine, a symphony note for note, loves scented sheets. Outside the room, in the actual world, my mind was shrinking. This is why I came here - to find infinity in a raindrop. I could perhaps remember everything that ever happened to me, if I just stated here in the room. And then I would remember every dream I had every had. Finally, I could remember others lives, others dreams, collective memories. Here in the room I begin to grasp infinity.

How small is this self vision, what a tiny dimension do I perceive. I am just a point here, going over this sea of light. Do I dare speak of this… My childhood question - where do I begin, and where do I end. When I look outward I can only see reflections, waves, ripples… Nothing disturbs this light void, depth without depth, not here, nor there. And yet we try to capture this experience, to give it some realism. The more realistic the photography, the more surreal it becomes. And if we could freeze the moment, and put all of it in a bottle and say, this is my life. And yet one thing is sure. The bottle will break.

The moons of Jupiter
My throat is on fire so I sing. This dark mysterious knot begins to unwind. I have tried to stop the script to make my thinking zero, and I have tried alI forms of excess. I have fasted and experienced orgies of pleasure. I have filled my mind with thoughts of great saints. But nothing has really stopped the continuious flow of this script - its convulsive forward movement. If I tried to stop now, I would just get sick and have fevers and my head would spin. If I don’t let this voice be, I begin to darken. I continue like a mad man for if I let go of this pen, I may again loose the tread and have to search for eternities in a haystack for the needle.

No top no bottom
I have become relatively satisfied in this dream, weaving my tapestry. My fear is not to go hungry, but to lose this pen and paper, this ink is my sword, this paper my freedom. If I lost that then I might loose the only thing I have left: this expression of self. No matter how much I try to go beyond the outer rim, the thicker of the rings of solidity become. And here there is no use to try to touch the bottom, there is no bottom.

When this vertigo subsides, there is a blissful glow to the world. I am still here in this Room, nothing has been moved. I have been on a voyage and seen the moons of jupituer, I have perceived the minutest form of atomic life… but now I am back in my frustraion, with this slight ache that is everywhere in the body. In fact the ache seems to be the body, nothing else, by body is spot, a barely percieved shadow… (I am trying to suggest the pure subjectivity of this, without using any traditional mystic language, which could be just another description, created by the script)

Dissapointment
It was dissapointment that brought me here. Somehow the elephants and the dancing girls where not sufficient… The remote control devices, the chewing gum, the edible women, the laughing gas, the rosaries, all the this music, streaming from telephones, it made me numb. Everywhere messages, everywhere promises and keywords. A sensual paradise, a hot body, without soul. The great mother whispered in my ear. I was smothered in the nipple of the world. There were meetings, circle talks, endless herbal remedies, green armies and campaigns to save this and that species, all very well. But it seem that the same program that created the Ill At Ease was the one that provided the remedy… In this gulag of materialism, now gentle automated streams of messages, for Stalin and Alexandre the Great, and Chairman Mao are no longer necessary. There are billboards of gigantic powerful women everywhere, their nakedness, the most powerful weapon to subdue the masses. There is a man and a women embracing in the meadow. For awhile they have escaped the program, or so it seems. But the escape is just another part of the script. One can only be glad for them to find this patch of happiness - this all too human love.

The Tour Eiffel
The world opens up its arms to us and just for a second there is no fear or doubt. There is only a fountain things happening all at once - love and desire pure unstained. I haved a hard on like the eiffel tour and she is a fountain that never stopped coming… But this kind of pleasure has not extricated itself from pain. The dark side of the one moon is less pleasant: cold and barren and filled with holes - more painful than can be imagined. But everyone endures this open heart surgery - without anesthetic. There is no other way. Great pleasure followed by devastating loss.

The Opera of The Fly
We have had a glimpse of that freedom, here in a White Room. Those poor suckers outside caught in a sentimental operal, where every pop songs screams, love me love me love me let me love you - a fetal whine, unreal to the core. Here we have seen something dignified and real, my love. Look at the beauty of a fly as she crosses the floor in search of a scrap of bread. Does not her delicacy, her beauty, her industriousness, make you want to weep. Is not the fly and the white wall, not a great composition. Can you hear a Japanese flute… and the whole movement of an opera. The opera of the fly.

Smoking Gun and Spiral
Images speed up and multitply until there is only a singing sphere and spiral of infinity. The sleepwalkers like big grey birds descend with tooth and nail. There must be no Gap in the program, or the whole edifice will collapse. But in my resistance I create have a great passion, overtaking me in every cell - the need to sleep. I would like to be safe and warm, infant like, away from all the terrors of the mind. I weep at our utter fragility - the heroic will of a miniscule insect which crosses this white page. He puts so much effort just to get to the other side of the page. But all the comforters in my say, sleep, sleep. But I no longer wish to be with the dead, but would like to be with the living.

Canaries and Lust
I dream I am in some northern mine, shuffling in a crowd of blackened faces… There is some strange tropical vegitation and a bunch of canaries, and bright lights in that terrifying darkness.

When I write down the dream it is hard not to interpret - there is always a slight lie in any kind of interpretatoin. I superimose and mutiply the canaries. I wantsomething beautiful to embellish the room. My mind is always slipping, skating, going back and forth, never steady, never true - like a lover who always betrays you, but you cannot help going back to her again and again.

Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jattewith
I am happy. The world is just like that famous picture of Seurat Georges Seurat, a lot of points, transparent in the light. Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jattewith, . - We lie on the green grass, trying to find the point of comfort, the point of view. But there is no point, that is the whole picture, while each point is necessary and reflects the whole. A beautiful day like today has no point because there is just the day, and nothing superimposed on it. It is not the picture but the light behind the picture that is tangible happines. The rest is just the necessary props for the theater… I had been paying to much attention to the props, focusing on the elements instead of what was panoramic, because of the flowers and cataracts in my eyes… (Dogen)

So What
Yesterday, I weeped for most of the day, and now I feel a big ‘So What.’ Yesterday, a symphonie fantastique in my mind, an emotional bloodletting - my open heart surgery. But now the whole world is a big So What. The birds are singing So What. The dogs barking in the distance. So what? Drinking tea. So what? Amputation. So what? A performance on the stage of life. One is diligent and contentious, another is coy and grinning, another, angry and passionate etc. There are dark horses, white narcissuses, dragonflies, all types of humanity could be found here, studied and given and name and a label. In fact I think that most of these characters I could find in myself.

A intrusion from the apparent outer world. The loundess in my thoughts created a scism and broke the circle… I cried out PUT it all down. The master says, there are no guarantees. I took this mission instead of lesser ones, and I could fall here… But I longed for the severity of this occasion - and so I cannot not bullshit myself.

I wake up with the question vibrating in my chest. It takes more life now, expands larger and larger… although I am in the room only and I haven’t moved an inch, my though travel through all the world. There is nothing to be achieved, there is only this hovering, who and what and that. It moves in and out like waves. The memories have less binding power, they move faster, more like a dream. I have less need of rest or symbols. It is not that there is less feeling, but less association and binding power to that feeling. In and out the door they go. The substance that I am made of is also the floor, the ceiling the wall.

My Grandmother
I heard the voice of my grandma, just before she died of lung cancer. She lived long and did not regret much. Her later life was a sort of endless monologe, an endless stream of recollection. I remember passing her on a walk, on a beautiful golden day, by the river that ran through my town. She had no interest in me, anymore than a dead leaf, and passed me on by… But I remember her best, in that moment when she was in communion with the autumn landscape ace and there was no self between us.

Room
Every day, the rows of faces, each day more flesh falls off of our face - but we are beginning to shine a little. The nature of the question has changed a little. It has become a little more serious and less of a game. The room has become larger and the ritual less invasive. I would do anything to avoid the physical or mental pain, but now I welcome it because it keeps me focused on the question. The bordom itself makes pain a kind of pleasure. Sometimes there is a lot of pain and then spontaneously arising body pleasure moments, almost like orgasm. They body cries out ‘yes yes’ but it doesn’t make a sound.

The Apple has no core
I will go and eat an apple now - the pleasure of this is great, and at the same time I feel like weeping. The poignant beauty of the apple itself, and my pathetic desperate love of this apple, which has no permanence and finally, no core.

The rings of Saturn
There are rings to the self, like a tree. The outer ring is thoughts of pleausure pain, divided self thoughts, thoughts between worlds. On a deeper ring there is wordless emotion. Feelings that do not need the akward vehicle of words and are finer spun. Deeper still is a cosmic darkness and at the center of seed of light whoose energy is inexausable warmth. This aparent room is just a plane, a flat surface covering a depth. A chair, seems hard, but it radiates a certain warmth - that is different from the table. The table and the chair communicate with each other and all the other elements in the room including the bed. In stillness the furnuture dances to its own mute frequency.

Fishing for Thoughts
I am fishing for thoughts. In the morning the lake of ideas is jumping with fish. In the afternoon they lie in the deeper and are harder to access. In the evening, the are hungry but nervous, unpredictable (this is the time when the dragon flies come out). At night there are only strange fish, half reptile, wandering about. This is the time of rest… The day goes like that, and morning is the best.
DONT CHECK YOURSELF say the master
A fish cannot eat an idea and ideas make the world. But how can you know what an apple is without the idea of an apple.
EAT THE APPLE says the master

The Grand canyon
Periods of eleaton, followed by patches of depression, where I feel doomed and misterable. Great eleation, then the low valleyed dullness and nausea… I just have been hypnotized for so long, whithout even know that I am here, hanging by my teeth. In my dream I walk over the grand canyon. There is this incredible vertigo, then fearlessness - I could let myself drop. It would be so easy.

Conversation with the holy Ghost
In my dream I asked the son of God: “God why must I die”. He said to me “Courage, my darling, death is not the end”. But I cried with out in my bones, “But, I am afraid” and “If you are the son of God, why must you die. This death is unacceptable”. And there was no answer to my question, just the cold starry night as when I was a child crawling in the darkness on the floor. I was, as I was then, unprotected, naked. But I wanted to go on and on, despite my fear. On and on to that place beyond the sky. But I had stopped asking and now I know that if you ask the Son of God, he won’t answer. But he will leave a question and paradox and branded on your chest: “nothing can be known.”

Gratitude
Prayer:
Wouldn’t it be good if one mosquito were truly happy.
Wouldn’t it be good if friends and lovers who suffer in the dark were truly happy
And wouldn’t it be good if my enemies were really and fully happy, those bastards.
And wouldn’t it be good if the master were among us.

The wind gathers in the trees.
” But you are DEAD” I say.
” No, I am this very blue sky. Think of my simply and I am with you.”
“But”, I say, “it is too good to be true. I have never met you. ”
“Father and son are one in the realm of thought”, he replies.
“But I need to embrace you”, I cry.
“I am embracing you now” - he told me.
“I am sentimental, I weep too much.” I cried.
“It is not indulgent. You are weeping for true love and not for lesser loves and that is good. Do not seek to bind others to you. But bind to me, because I am the wisdom of your heart.”
And so you can sleep without fear.

“I went to my lover today. And still my heart is sad.”
A Chinese poem : “I went to my lover today. And still my heart is sad.” If I were intelligent, then I would throw my pen away forever after reading this line. Because it says everything that needs to be said. Belief and hope, this is food for the evil one…

Fuck you God
God, whoever she is, has given me this head ache… He has shown me the mirror and I have seen the ‘evil one’ grinning back. I grinned back to, and to express my gratitude I declared, “fuck you God”. Shinran, the buddhist saint, declared upon awakening “I am the evil one, the bald headed fool”… The point: If we see the ‘evil one’ then not only is the birth of a sense of humor possible, but our wish for liberation will certainly be fulfilled.

No holiness
What else is there but THIS. The wind blows in the trees, and the season begins to change. How I love the wind, when there is a rupture of routine, when the static is broken. And even more, how I love the thunder, because there I can hear the masters voice. And rain, buckets of beautiful rain pouring onto the earth, making, who knows what grow… this convulsive beauty, this purifying and maddening force - let this world change and wash over me. Give me anything but “holiness”… Let there be wildness of the wind that crying in the night, let there be beauty and ugliness, let there be traumatic evolution, let there be signs and displays. For He will not be fooled by holiness - He will always be full. But sometimes He will bring a big wave to remind us that we haven’t loved enough, that we have been self centered and small at heart, that we have been gazing at a pond, afraid of greatness, delt away our cards.

The Room and the Sea
The room has gone all the way to the sea, where there are a million waves, all surface and no core. And in the subway and the forest as well, just a surface, a micro film on the deep. On the beach there are round pebbles, made by a billion years of waves, and each wave now gone, and each wave you can think of as a though, never to be understood captured bound. And what are we but waves, except unlike the waves we are not caught in the illusion of time. What black magician has created this spell, this amnesia, this complex, dense forest of thoughts and solid flesh. How did we come to conceive of ourselves as separate from the wave, us with wings but a reptile brain. Matbe there never was a fall, nor a resurrection… maybe conception is just the finger-painting of a child. Why did we need to be dual and multiple, when did we need to believe in something… It is not enough to know, we must learn to be unknown…

Dilema
I stay in a room, watching flickering shadows… a lampshade over my ears. You think I am mad but I assure you. The only way to survive is to go fully mad, to be extreme. This is an unacceptable situation. The dilemma is always there. I am lying here, drifting from planet to planet, from past to present to future, from one badly conceived escape plant to the next. Yet there must be goodness, or else there is no reason to be here. For instance sound: oceans of sound. Steal string guitars and mahogany… a body tense and desirous. The wind gathering in the trees - something unleashed, undone, unburdened… The still moonlight, reflecting so any bowls of pure moon water… Yet we prefer almost any substitute , stimulation, masturbation… Anything but the beloved. But this cannot be spoken in public, outside the room. For it will not be understood.

What is behind the smile of Mona Lisa?
Who can paint the original face. What is the source of Mona Lisa’s smile. The room we live in is just a box on top of our heads. We scratch ourselves, we shift and rotate, we eye each other nervously, we smell each other, we undress each other secretly in thought. Not only are our mouths hungry, but also our eyes, ears, noses, eyeing listening, smelling - all the time. Could we ever be still and know God? Here in this room. K imagined himself to be a big insect, everyone will imagine themselves to be XYZ.

I am sick of dreaming
I am sick of dreaming, dreaming, dreaming all the time. Writing is uncomforatable, but it stops my dreaming - and anything is better than sitting in a room dreaming. A constant illusion of future happiness.. tomorrow, freedom. The mind made utopia, wears itself thin… It will be the same tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow. The tapestry of life is to fine - there are no holes or anything missing at all. The microscope becomes useless, analysis and theory just speculation, nobody, not the greatest scientist, philosopher, mathematician knows the meaning of zero. Nobody knows.

The beautiful One and the Evil one
In my dream I see a beautiful face - in that face, decay and horror. What I desire the most - that beautiful possession - will destroy me in the end. On the golden rocks, the blue sea, the sirens call in that strange and terrifying cry… Corpses washed up on the beach. All because of the beautiful one and the evil one.

Listen to me- you who are in love, these words come from experience. The more you put a fence around the one you love, the more you will suffer the bitter awful torture. Let her wander in green fields at will, like a happy cow, let her taste forbidden fruit, if that is what she needs. But don’t try to keep her and she will be yours, and so will all of the other treasures. But, you who are in love, I know you cannot listen, because you are wounded in love. One way or other you will end up here, with me, in the Room.

Naked
The shocking nakedness of everyones face. All the self created tyrants, seducers, goddesses, demons with many arms legs and sexes. But even they are here to help us purify our senses and take of our minds clothing.

I am not a body only
I sit in the dark and breath. There is nothing but that. I scratch myself like a dog. Under no circumstances will I do anything - even though I know that this is the perfect time for action. It is infuriating to be a physical thing.

The Girl on the Grass
I am in love with the girl who sit on the grass. We have never spoken and will never speak. At the moment she is filing her nails and probably unaware that I am watching her. But it doesn’t matter - this is unrequited love, the most fruitful kind - love with a future. Could I every seduce her? I am sure she is aware of my eyes that sometimes glance at her bosom, and this is why she moves away so quickly. Look - she is gone.

It is not only her dark eyed, slavic beauty, her body of an antelope that get me: it is her earnestness. She is always being useful, helping, helping, helping - with a pure and unrelenting wish to do good. I wish for her happiness and fulfillment more than anything in the world. And because of her goodness, the world is a little less mean.

Please take off your cloths
I dreamt of a women and she was asking me. “Do you love me?”
“Of course I love you. But of course I do, but please take off your cloths”
The return of the Grey Fox
I saw a fox today in the forest - like a old friend . We stood staring at each other for more than a minute. And then she left me and like a miracle I she returned for a second time. I had long forgotten the meaning of foxes until now - but I know there is special significance in this fox. She is the one that comes and goes and cannot be found by the search. She may be a dirty scavenger, but I am graced and blessed by her our meeting.

Almost Home
The Room is almost home. The walls are no longer walls, they are just another sky without bounds. I don’t look at the walls they show themselves to me. And the sky too is a servant or helper, pointing to this or that boundless truth. They trees themselves are more friendly than before, when I feared them. It is as if I can observe them growing - they are no longer just trees, from a facade or movie set, they have come alive just as I have. The dogs still bark at night, but what do I care. Let them bark and lie around, met whatever is be. I won’t pretend to care, or put on airs. I could be the dogs friends as much as anybodies. If am a dog, let me bark, if I am fish, met me swim, if I am human let love you…

We are not so very different
When its time to cry I often laugh, and in gaiety I often feel like weeping. I always feel the necessity of inappropriate action. How could I do otherwise, in this atmosphere of insane gravity. When earnestness fails, humor is the last frontier. When the wound becomes so obvious and large, what can you do but laugh. I am weary of tears… my scar tissue is healing. Let me be the evil one with the evil laugh. You may protest, but look deep at yourself and your deeds - we are not so very different.

Doves
The man with the doves intrigues me. He moves so slowly and seems unnaturally close to the birds. What messages is he sending, and to whom? Perhaps he has given up on humans and would prefer to be with the birds. There is some heavy melancholy in his soul - perhaps he is sending messages to God to save him.

We are all hanging from at tree, even if we are sitting in a chair. But lets not be philosophical. There are snares and traps everywhere, and fast food restaurants. When the light turns red it means Go quickly.

Day 29
I have been in the room for 29 days now. The end is in sight - but why do I continue to put this down on paper. It is painful to give birth to a voice, painful to tell the truth. But is is also a shear pleasure to see that I have touched something with no top and no bottom. There is nothing heroic - I have no choice. I am just a vessel - not responsible and yet somehow fully responsible..

Dead of a father
A man was murdered for no discernible reason. He was a father - thats what touched and horrified me. The mother of the accused stood outside the courtroom crying ‘that is my daughter’. The only response are dark eyes in the courtroom. The callousness of humanity never ceases to amaze me. The question, Why Why Why, hungs in the air. The green grass is no solace - death is utterly unacceptable. And yet The great Zen master Seun Seun on his death bed, declared: ‘Everything no problem’ How mad is this statement from our point of view - but from his?

I am hanging from a tree. Something must be done, something must be said. It is so difficult, it is so easy. I must do the difficult thing instead of the easy one this time. I must swallow the blue pill instead of the white one.

Ah but my heart is sad, the summer waves, a cold wind shakes the trees - what will become of us?

The moon is closer now because of many tears
The moon is closer to me now because of many tears. I no longer look away from her brightness. I have no greater plans that to be with her tonight - now that she is so full and bright. When I was a younger man I ached with desire and I asked ‘Why are you so far away’? I made my eyes blind from searching because what I saw was not her - but veils and distances. I resolved to travel, to go to the ends of the earth to find her. But all my travels never brought us any closer. And weary from the effort, exhausted from failing, profoundly futile and frustrated was I when, at that moment of surrender, she appeared to me naked, in her brightest, most majestic form.
Car accident. `
5 children die in a car accident the mother says ‘It is the will of God.’ Since then, I I have been spitting in God’s eye - I have been a proud enemy of the wrathful and terrible parental creator. As a young man I declared myself an enemy of “his will” - this mind made mommy and daddy God and of his false sunsets. But now I see I was the enemy of the mind made made God and that the real one has appeared to me on the face of the moon to say, look - I am here, I love you.

Fiberglass heart
A thin piece of fiberglass touches the finest point in my heart. I want to moan in pleasure and pain. There is a rock in my stomach, like the gorgons knot. What to do with “The heretics and bandits of hope and fear.” I am terrified to fall into unpleasant eons of primeval darkness. When will I wake from this mirage, this sleep, this swamp, this morass, this gluey sticky rotting carcass.

Fucked cosmically
In moments of grace, bliss ecstasy, the body is fucked by the cosmos… This extreme joy followed by its shadow pain of absence.

I look in the mirror and see my hair some grey, and I am outgrowing this THING. Who is he anyway, a composite of habits and prejudices, a very limited point of view, a man obsessively watching his shadow.

The samurai and the whale
I am the samurai who is afraid of his sword, the musician who is afraid of his instrument. I am a big whale stranded on an iceberg waiting for it to melt so that I can fall back into this icy water home. I am a wandering troubadour. I will sings not for the masses but for the king - not for loose change but for gold. And if the animals and a few friends are my only audience - so be it. My currency is not in dollars, but in song.

Pain in my heart
There are so many places to explore, so many surfaces - so few people have seen how superficial is the surface and how deep is the ocean. But it is hard, too hard here in the room. This solitude will break a man. I am coiled around this human, his wants, needs, desires. There is a pain the the right side of the heart. What a frightened vulnerable creature lies at the bottom of the right side of the heart. A young boy, fragile and awkward, - though still in a state of innocence. Why does he fight blindly, like an untrained horse. Why does he sit there in the dark, deaf dumb and blind.

September and the poison tree
It is now September and the harvest is ripe. I must soon leave this room. I have looked so far inward, but the cold weather wakes me want to move. I have made a fiction of this time - I have been a lier, a buffoon, a charlatan. The reason I write is to shed light on the poison rooms of the poison tree. Sometimes I can water them with love, other times I have to violently uproot the past. The peacock has come to eat the poison tree. I offer all my sins to the peacock, I offer him this poison tree.

The king of my heart
Let me leave this house and “go forth”… I have seen him. The King of my Heart. He sits in eternal splendor, in royal robes. His body radiates infinite rich golden light. I think he comes from the North, from Arthurian times… He is almost sad, you could say compassionately sad. His work is done, he just sits there, radiating ancient light, my esoteric king… He belongs to no tradition that is know in the present time

A new morning
There is no escape from the room until the room becomes a sea. Pictures of the sea are unnecessary - the room music must be emptied of all artifacts. Just a bed and a table is enough, and a pen to write with. A single flower and a bowl of water could be nice. A sea shell, a hollow sound - promise. Just a sea shell, instead of a box of memories. Lets take the box and all the memories and incinerate them.

The room is just a room and the sea is just the sea (filled with ganddharvas and rakshavas and other deep sea monsters) In 2 days I will leave the room. Strange I have become satisfied here, it is no longer necessary to leave. This is the paradox, when the room is to comfortable - its time to leave. There is no time for the illusion of a home or a fixed address. But it is so hard to be free, Out There in the world of sorrows.

The last supper
This is my final full day, and on the 40th day I will depart. I am not saved. Those in the Arc will not be saved either. They still hanging onto some dream of pairs, a watery dream, fighting for their lives. The paired animals will still have sharp teeth and will multiply and consume. Those who have drowned will rise again, in some other dream. There is no end to this, no Armageddon. There is no garden of innocence either: THIS IS IT. The never-ending change and forms filled with different degrees of light. People moving in and out of room. Not one room, or one church or one law, in this perfectly inconceivable vast ocean.

The master says,
NOTHING CAN BE KNOWN
THE GATE OF THIS WORLD IS OPEN WHY DONT YOU COME IN

And now I leave the room, like a bright faced baby into the gut shock of the city. I leave both happy and broken hearted. There is so much to do, so much that needs mending. But much has been repaired here, as I sat, watching over the howling void. I see only a surface but know the ocean is so deep and filled with luminous melodies. There are so many shining toys on the face of the deep, and so many monsters below. What can I do with doubts and dreams. Just let them dissolve into this bright light which bombs the room in nuclear whiteness….

SHOW ME YOUR FACE!
SHOW ME YOUR FACE!
SHOW ME YOUR FACE!

Re: The Room in the Sea by Andrew Sweeny

Powerful, evocative and haunting.  Bravo!