(5/11/07) The following is a thank you letter to Peter Markman a professor of comparative literature, co-author (with Roberta Markman) of The Flayed God and Masks of the Spirit, a brilliant teacher, who invited Tree Cline and I to come and speak to his literature class at the University of California at Long Beach.

 

Peter!

I'm drifting. I have to write right now otherwise I will just continue to drift on in a stunned state of sweetness - the kindness and love you showed towards Tree and I had a profound effect on us as if somehow you have increased the sacredness of our cause or by recognition, you have opened new depths of YES in us. Prior to coming, Tree and I were verging on giving up on the world, reclusing further into our Self, but you (and your class) have truly renewed our hival humanity. (I am still attempting to grok the mechanics of this [grok: to drink the knowing of a thing - to merg like water with the essence of a thing. {I love this concept. Definition; incase you didn't read Stranger in a Strange Land - back in the day}]).
Your class is amazing - how willing they are to Know. (I suppose it is very west coast?) But I must repeat what I wrote in my comments on KafkaOTS before even having met them:
"That your students have somehow arrived in your class - through the accumulation of a billion choices - then it (that they are close to pure Ocean) is probably true for them too."
This observation is even truer now. In Zen-Advaita (the atheistic quasi-religion of the Perennial Philosophy) it is understood that we think that we are bringing on consciousness when we act towards realizing our Self, but in truth it is consciousness moving it's Self through us. In other words; it is time - and those students are ready or they would not be in your class. Even those with the (supposed) hardest mind-stuff have been seeded with Truth, (knowing the irresistible hydraulic power of roots to crack open old rocks).
In this light the students in your class may think that they choose your class when in truth it is consciousness arising within them that did the choosing, because Peter, you are a door of light. You are a translucent welcome to the effulgent dark, and Tree and I adore you, as do your students. And now I know you can never leave that Function of Athena/Mentor - you have become it. As you said - that afternoon with Jessie - you have become that role and that is your art form like Blacky Barlow or Softdoor's Noman. You have the compassion to make the unworthy realize they are worthy that thereby makes them worthy.

And all the good de-romanticizing you did about Joseph Campbell has helped to make him … me. I can't explain this feeling except to say that I am Joseph Campbell, or that he is no longer outside me, he is (a) familiar, a close voice, a persona of Lower Utopia. I don't know what it is, but when the world denies the Truth - as the academic community does with Joseph Campbell - it reassures me that I am aimed rightly (by some reverse barometer), like; no prophet is ever accepted in their own home. I think there must be some inverse laws of purity in which once a truth is accepted by the larger world it immediately begins its slide down into the mud of usage, but prior to that it can blow open your heart.

If you ever get around to reading I AM THAT (of course I have seen how mad-busy you are) I think you will find that Nisargadatta wields the Perennial Philosophy like a surgeons blade - in the old style - one to one - in conversation as did Socrates. You can not come away from hearing his voice without realizing that you have witnessed the Perennial Philosophy its Self speaking with a human voice. I feel this is true for Eckhart Tolle as well (but he is not so much a blade as a kindly push off a cliff). Joseph Campbell (thankfully) talks about the Buddha as a human experience whereas these people are the Buddha speaking. (It is not so far away). Egoless non-personalities who speak without thinking without desire without fear - rare, but not impossible. ("Ye shall know them by their fruit.") But tasting the fruits can be oh-so sticky and tricky. It should be: ye shall know them by the Nothing that they want from you. Hi-ho.

Thank you for allowing Tree and I to feel momentarily what it is to be artist in a sane world where value is measured by the heart of The Work. Peter you are of Lower Utopia - you are from the place where the heart forms a human hand to guide the mind inward, kindly.
We are lucky to have met you. Just look at how bright are the souls drawn to you. Steph!

With Love
And Admiration
Your friends in Lower Utopia
Toc and Tree

 

(5/1/07) The following are comments to my friend Peter on the profound Novel by Haruki Murakami titled Kafka On The Shore -

 

Post PS - Well now I am shied. That you might think of showing this to your students is yikes. (You know my drawings - when you read my thoughts - so you will think, "Well at least he can draw"). My only excuse for my plodding thoughts, thick language and oafish grammar is that words are my second language - I think in images and feelings and must haggle for translations to speak - the pencil is my only clear voice…if any. In Kafka on the Shore I identify most with Nakata - no humor intended - my field of verbal perception is getting smaller by the day - soon very soon all signs of personality will finally burn off me and I will begin to prefaces everything I say with; "Forgive me Toc is pretty dumb."

Peter!

Just because you don't have to read this doesn't mean I don't have to write it. Ho-ho! On my second reading of KafkaOTS, it is so much more wonderful the second time - so much more to see.

Thoughts

A shadow by definition is of something blocking the light.
Mr. Otsuka (the first cat) tells Nakata that he has only half a shadow. Nakata is half permeated by the light. Light has always been a metaphor for Awareness.
The mind obscures Awareness as if it blocks the light like a shadow. The mind is a finite cloud of ideas in the form of desires and their fears that we name identity.

Mr. Otsuka tells Nakata that his shadow (mind) doesn't like being half of what it should be. (Animals never lie. Nakata is only half realized without half his shadow integrated - half his potential. Nakata is a willing Percival who can't think The Question.)

Crow spreads his wings for Kafka (Kafka meaning crow, crow spreads his wings for crow). This is very like my heroine River at the end of V6 No2 is finally and literally in the River - the River in the River. Crow spreads his wings for Kafka to find the words he needs to express. Crow begins things for Kafka. (He is a literal definition of Inspiration - spread wings) But Crow is black as a shadow. A crow is "dauntless," says Kafka. Crow, when called on in the presence of Miss Saeki, does not appear because crow is only a candle to her bonfire. The beloved is the greatest of all inspirations.

The following is an important question to me.
Sukura said, "Why don't you just go ahead and imagine what you want? You don't need my permission. How can I know what's in your head?"
Kafka thinks, "But she got it wrong. What I imagine is perhaps very important. For the entire world." (Who's world, the world of the story or the story of our world that the book reflects and … what is the difference ["The world is because I AM"]. I hear Murakami, the writer, speaking through Kafka when he says "What I imagine is perhaps very important. For the entire world." True. What Kafka imagines is our perception - Murakami is responsible (in our experience) for the world he creates - so Murakami has Nakata kills an "idea" of violence who is embodied by Johnnie Walker instead of a gratuitous reality. Johnnie Walker says that only a man like Nakata can kill him, only a man with no ideas can kill him. Johnnie Walker is an "Idea" (as Colonel Sanders tells us he is not a person he is an "Abbreviating Sensory Processing of Continuous Information" = "an abstract concept" = "a metaphysical conceptual object" = an idea [given enough Attention any Idea can become a God]). Johnnie Walker is an embodiment of the voracious daily world - killing and eating life - he makes a very telling comparative moral joke about the cat's heart tasting like eel, eel which is Nakata's favorite food (why is a ell acceptable for killing and a cat not).
Murakami no longer needs to skin a man alive or beat another to death with a baseball bat as in Wind-up Bird, in Kafka he has found a way around the necessity of initiating violence (as a purgative), a way to introduce into the story (the experience of) the pervasive reality of suffering in the act of killing and eating (killing and eating in all its mired forms). In Kafka, Murakami presents this pervasive reality of suffering and death without continuing to propagate it into the world, without having to write it as directly as in Wind-up Bird, (And in Wind-up Bird it was mostly the byproduct of the larger scale National desire to kill and eat - Japan eating China.) So the question of responsibility in: "What I imagine is perhaps very important. For the entire world," seems rare and wonderful to me. I am, for lack of a better term, a Zen Buddhist -if you cancel all of its organized religiosity and its Buddha (or maybe I am a Non-dual Animist of Spiritual Proletarianism carefully unorganized), to me creating art that is responsible to love is the whole thing - and the way into the Other (World/Reality/Self/Void/Navana/Samahi/Unified Field). And so the question is; can a strong story relevant to our time live without propagating violence?
"I don't feel my Self any more," says Nakata (falling from his primal state of grace) before he kills Johnnie Walker. Johnnie Walker rants on about this, seconds before his death, he says; to kill requires that you can no longer feel your Self (no longer in touch with your Self). This is the summing of the living Johnnie Walker idea - that of the spiritual dichotomy of killing (any) self ...kills your sense of Self. Johnnie Walker - killing and eating life - is not evil unless all the world is evil, Johnnie Walker is the common place world taken to its seeming logical absurdity. Johnnie Walker does to cats what we as a society do to cows and other animals every day, what we as Americans do to other countries. And yet if we dressed what we do up in a clownish fashion and perform it humorously it would look horrendous and evil also. So can Johnnie Walker only be accused of "bad taste" or is Johnnie Walker "participating (too) joyfully in the sorrows of the world?"

The flute Johnnie Walker is making measures out art from suffering.
Anything worthy is difficult say Rilke.

Funny but I didn't realize from my own first reading that the pronunciation of Miss Saeki's name sounds exactly like the word Psyche. Hi-ho, and dah!

"But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive." (Oshima the angel).
This parasite is the mind itself - narrow, limited, and intolerant are its true nature. These are not evil or wrong, these attributes have their uses, to some degree they are necessary in order to perform action.
Imagination is the transcendent wind sweeping through a mind (momentarily) surrendered. And this happens everywhere all the time - lucky that.

"Do you think Miss Saeki knew what all the lyrics mean?"
Oshima looks up, listening to the thunder as if calculating how far away it is. He turns to me and shakes his head. "Not necessarily. Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose."
"So you're saying Miss Saeki maybe found those words in some other space-like in dreams?"
The Other Space! Yes! Trust in the Other logic to do the choosing. Effortless surrender allows the body logic of all-space, (of which we are each like insular nodes, like pin-pricks through a two dimensional reality) to permeate our everything. Hurray!
Meaning comes after - (if ever). And when meaning suddenly does come to the mind, free of the minds endless permeable possibilities, the mind spins down to stillness until one small voice, chosen by the entire cloud, says with soft amazement, "i didn't do that!"
And the chorus of the cloud in exaltation shouts "we didn't do that!"
And there art is.

Oshima is an Angel. We recognized that blood in the story is a sign of transition, marking the entrance to a new state, to a change. But the problem with Angels is that they can't change. Every word from Oshima's mouth is Truth. If Oshima could change it would call into question the immovability of his words thus Oshima is a hemophiliac, Oshima can not bleed or he dies. Oshima can not change.
Angels are nebulas sexless creatures.
Angels guard the book (or books) of life in which are recorded the sins and glories of humanity. (They sound like librarians, don't they?) Angels are the guardians of heaven (heaven is very like the cabin in the woods). Deep heaven is where Kafka finally goes beyond the entrance of heaven (the cabin), beyond his own mortality, there he meets the two fierce door guardian (the Soldiers), and because Kafka is fearless the soldiers test the strength of his endurance, the next step beyond fearless. Wonderful!

I love this book.
Thank you

Can a strong story live relevant to our time without propagating violence?
(Violence sayth Ox-Eng-Dic, is the exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property; action or conduct characterized by this; treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom). What delineates violence from change is freedom of choice.
"Nakata was dead for three weeks once," (said Nakata). Pain and suffering (which are a death, death of the immortality projected by the ego) have always been essential for Realizing your Self, and to grow into new states of awareness. For the new state to be, the former state must die (Shivahaum!). Death is not violence when it is freely chosen through self-sacrifice.
Suffering is the best teacher.

"Miss Saeki also has half a shadow. Both were damaged or left incomplete by their experiences on what Murakami generally calls 'the other side,'"
Or she is simply no longer of this world - Tree and I crossed over (felt the totality of the Other) and did not return whole from There because some original part of the heart, which belongs There, does not returns from There and longs from There. Longs for you to be home. Where the heart lives is home. "The Other side" is the greater part of the Self. Greater, as if I were a pitcher of water bobbing on the Ocean. The pitcher is made of hardened mind stuff like ...my name is Joe. But I am the freedom and totality of the Ocean trapped in a pitcher remembering THAT totality - in seems cruel. But the cruelty is the impetus to find a way to return to being Ocean. Tree and I hold too much Tree and Toc to say we are just Ocean but it would be a greater lie to say we are not.

That your students have somehow arrived in your class - through the accumulation of a billion choices - then it is probably true for them too.

"This stone's temporarily there in the form of a stone. Moving it isn't going to change anything."
"AlI right, but what's so special about this stone? It doesn't look like much of anything."
"The stone itself is meaningless. The situation calls for something, and at this point in time it just happens to be this stone. Anton Chekhov put it best when he said, 'If a pistol appears in a story, eventually it's got to be fired.' Do you know what he means?"
This is a great!
Again Nisargadatta's words: "The world is because I AM." Attention is everything. Attention on attention is how awareness grows fully into its Self. There is an old saying by the Rishi's - What you put your attention on grows.
Attention grow intention through time/mind/action. Through the intention of attention things put on meaning. Remove the attention and the meaning is gone. Meaning is what you bring to things but things have no meaning.

"At a certain point I should have stopped living, but didn't. I knew life was pointless, but I couldn't give up on it." -Miss Saeki
Pointless as in having no meaning - life is pointless - life comes before meaning, life just is. Miss Psyche's Is-ness is (of course) stronger than meaning.

 

"All of a sudden I was wondering-what am I, anyway? What is Nakata?"

"It's not just that I'm dumb. Nakata's empty inside. I finally understand that. Nakata's like a library without a single book. It wasn't always like that. I used to have books inside me. For a long time I couldn't remember, but now I can. I used to be normal, just like everybody else. But something happened and I ended up like a container with nothing inside."
Nakata is no longer empty when he realizes he is empty. He now has emptiness in his library.
This emptiness is the state of mind from which art comes - Tree and I become nothing so that nothing is in the way of the visual feeling of the image coming into life. Personality stands in the way of perception. Personality is the past-and-future, it is time, ego, mind, thoughts, concepts, precepts, ideas, the body, Gods, mother, father, friends, fucking, and the entire universe, all are obstructions to pure seeing. (There is nothing sadder then an inane monologue of opinions in the full presence of beauty.)
"An image takes hold of me, faces me, feeds me, walks me, talks me, dreams me, wakes me. I say "I'm losing it," (It being me).
And She says: "Get the hell out of the Way!"
Once Tricia and I are contacted by the Image, (the guest), we begin a slow and excruciating process of detailing its truth by way of our best language. Saying; "Is Yes? Is Yes? Is Yes?"
So, to be a library (the true temples of civilization), an empty library - a holy space - without a single obstructing form of thought in the way - is The Work.
"To be in a desirable mental condition is the work." -Agnes Martin

"If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. But I wasn't normal, so that's why I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be a normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning."
I've yet to meet an artist who wont at some point confess that they Dream of living a simple mundane life - screwing spark plugs on an assembly line in Akron Ohio, 9 to 5 and barbeques on the weekend, or anything but the constant shadow of not belonging - forever outside - always poor - fearing cops - flim-flaming for food - in a self imposed perpetually state of failure - living without future - without a foothold in the world - never really knowing how to do what you do, only the knowing that you must do.
As if to be normal is to be free.
But that is just one voice among the many to which the standard reply is always; "Get thee behind me."

And below: the emptiness of the "normal."

Listening to Fournier's flowing, dignified cello, Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird. . . People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me-and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?

Empty is the only constant.

I feel like I'm exactly where I belong. When I'm with Mr. Nakata I can't be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' apostles felt the same way. When I'm with the Buddha, I always feel I'm where I belong something like that. Forget about culture, truth, all that junk. That kind of inspiration's what it's all about.
When I was little, Grandpa told me stories about Buddha's disciples. One of them was named Myoga. The guy was a complete moron and couldn't memorize even the simplest sutra. The other disciples always teased him. One day the Buddha said to him, "Myoga, you're not very bright, so you don't have to learn any sutras. Instead, I'd like you to sit at the entrance and polish everybody's shoes." Myoga was an obedient guy, so he didn't tell his master to go screw himself. So for ten years, twenty years, he diligently polished everybody's shoes. Then one day he achieved enlightenment and became one of the greatest of all the Buddha's followers. That's a story Hoshino always remembered, because he'd thought that had to be the crappiest kind of life, polishing shoes for decades. You gotta be kidding, he thought. But when he considered it now, the story started to take on a different undertone. Life's crappy, no matter how you cut it. He just hadn't understood that when he was little.
These thoughts occupied him till the music, which was helping him meditate, stopped playing.
Mr. Hoshino is a creature of Feeling. This is also the story of Totaka - disciple of Sankara. The Advaita traditions have many stories of this path, whose characters achieve Realization by abandoning their intellect (ego) through simple service, devotion, and self-sacrifice to the Other in anOther or Others. These stories are to remind us that there are as many ways as there are lives, and that love can solve anything.

He nods. "Which is why I'm taking you to the mountains."
"But what should I do once I get there?"
"Just listen to the wind," he says. "That's what I always do."
I mull this over.
He gently lays a hand over mine. "There are a lot of things that aren't your fault. Or mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. Not the fault of Structuralism or the Third Industrial Revolution. We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn't have form. It's just a movement of air. You should listen carefully, and then you'll understand the metaphor."
I squeeze his hand back. It's soft and warm. His smooth, sexless, delicately graceful hand. "So you think it's better for me to be away from Miss Saeki, for the time being?"
"I do, Kafka. It's the best thing right now. We should let her be by herself.. She's bright, and tough. She's managed to put up with a terrible kind of loneliness for a long time, a lot of painful memories. She can make whatever decisions she needs to make alone."
In the end even The Beloved is an obstacle.
(Not to mention God).

"I had a kind of revelation last night. Taking crazy things seriously is-a serious waste of time."
"A very wise conclusion. There's that saying, 'Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.' "
"I like that."
"Very suggestive, don't you think?"
"Have you heard the saying 'Sheepish butlers' surgical bottle battles'?"
"What on earth is that supposed to mean?"
"It's a tongue-twister. I made it up."
"Your point being?"
"No point, really. I just felt like saying it."
"Can the stupid comments, all right? I don't have much patience with inanity. You'll drive me nuts if you keep it up."
"Sorry," Hoshino said.
This makes me laugh out loud every time I read it.

 

"There's something I wanted to ask you."
"Yes?"
"The other day we lifted up that stone and opened the entrance, right?"
"Yes, you and I opened up the entrance. After that Nakata fell sound asleep."
"What I want to know is-did something take place because the entrance opened up?".
Nakata gave a nod. "Yes. It did."
"But you still don't know what that is."
Nakata gave a decisive shake of his head. "No, Nakata doesn't know yet."
"So maybe it's happening someplace else, right this minute?"
"Yes, I think that's true. As you said, it's happening. And I'm waiting for it to finish happening."
"And once whatever it is finishes taking place, everything will work itself out?"
Another definitive shake of the head. "That Nakata doesn't know. I'm doing what I'm doing because I must. But I have no idea what will happen because of what I do. I'm not so bright, so it's too hard for me to figure out. I don't know what's going to happen."
"Because I must" To feel this deep in the rich dark, below the bright open sky where words madly swoop and mate, and thoughts screw you blind, where Desire connives with Fear to steal arriving oceans. Imagine running the vital functions of your own body for even a minute or trust your Self to breath.

"Listen up-there's no war that will end all wars," Crow tells me. "War breeds war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that."

"You have to overcome the fear and anger inside you," the boy named Crow says. "Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That's what being tough is all about. Do that and you really will be the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet.

Straight!

"Somebody gave you these jobs?"
She looks fixedly at me but doesn't answer. It's like my question's taken a wrong turn and been sucked into some nameless space.
"What's your name?" I ask, trying a different tack.
She shakes her head slightly. "I don't have a name. We don't have names here."
"But if you don't have a name, how can I call you?"
"There's no need to call me," she says. "If you need me, I'll be here."
"I guess I don't need my name here, either."
She nods. "You're you, you see, and nobody else. You are you, right?"
"I guess so," I say. Though I'm not so sure. Am I really me?
All the while she's steadily gazing at me.
"Do you remember the library?" I come right out and ask her.
"The library?" She shakes her head.
"No. . . . There's a library far away, but not here."
"There's a library?"
"Yes, but there aren't any books in it."
"If there aren't any books; then what is there?"
She tilts her head but doesn't respond. Again my question's taken a wrong turn and vanished.
"Have you ever been there?"
"A long time ago," she says.
"But it's not for reading books?"
She nods. "There aren't any books there."
I eat in silence for a time. The stew, the salad, the bread. She doesn't say anything either, just observes me with that serious look. "How was the food?" she asks after I finish eating.
"It was really good."
"Even without any meat or fish?"
I point to the empty plate. "Well, I didn't leave anything, right?"
"I made it."
"It was really good," I repeat. It's the truth.
Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one. The pain is an anchor, mooring me here. The girl stands up to boil some water and make tea. While I'm sitting at the table drinking it, she carries the dirty dishes out to the kitchen and starts washing them. I watch her do all this. I want to say something, but when I'm with her words no longer function as they're supposed to. Or maybe the meaning that ties them together has vanished? I stare at my hands and think of the dogwood outside the window, glinting in the moonlight. That's where the blade that's stabbing me in the heart is.
"Will I see you again?" I ask.
"Of course," the girl replies. "Like I said before, if you need me, I'll be here."
"You're not going to suddenly disappear?"
She doesn't say anything, just gazes at me with a strange look on her face, like Where-do-you-think-I'd-go? "I've met you before," I venture. "In another land, in another library."
"If you say so," she says, touching her hair to check that it's still pinned back. Her voice is expressionless, like she's trying to let me know the topic doesn't interest her. "I think I've come here to meet you one more time. You, and one
other woman." She looks up and nods seriously. "Going through the deep woods
to get here."
"That's right. I had to see you and that other woman again." "And you've met me."
I nod.
"It's like I told you," she says. "If you need me, I'll be here."

If you read this as if the girl is the fully realized Self of Kafka - the Sadguru - then her answers, and the reality from which they come, makes perfect sense. She is THAT "nameless space" without attribute - she is his Other-ness. She is always there in his perception - and between them there are no names to separate them with individuated abstractions. But of course Kafka doubts - he is doubt; "Am I really me?"
Her gaze is "steady" - immoveable. To Her there is no time there is only the Now. There is no need to hold on to memories - memories keep you from experiencing the present moment - from being fully in the present moment.
The library is a perfect metaphor for the allure of the beautiful within time - the library holds the summation of the past, and the hopes of the future - all that civilization has to offer is embodied there. The girl remembers the Library but to Her it is empty, and thereby unlimited. She is the fruition of all thought because she exists and speaks from the origin of thought, from THAT live emptiness prior to thought. She is the answer to all question because she is the goal of all strivings. The Self.
"If there aren't any books; then what is there?"
No-thing - the live Nothing out of which everything arises - the perking of virtual photon out of the darkness of Nothing.
Kafka experiences his separation from Her (the Other) as a "frozen knife stuck in my chest" that he is "thankful for" because the "pain and my very existence are one." (Pow!)
This metaphor of the library is very telling to me because in the end all words however beautiful - however true to the human striving for art - all words in the end stand between you and your Self. All words are finally suspect. And all thoughts must be discredited to free your self from there limitations, to empty the library. "When I'm with her words no longer function."

"I stare at my hands and think of the dogwood outside the window, glinting in the moonlight. That's where the blade that's stabbing me in the heart is.
This is such a potent line! The fear of loosing the personal link to your Self by be-coming the Self, like the chosen's fear of becoming the chooser. The fear when you truly realize that art is not what art is for.

As I gaze at the vacant, birdless scene outside, I suddenly want to read a book-any book. As long as it's shaped like a book and has printing, it's fine by me. I just want to hold a book in my hands, turn the pages, scan the words with my eyes. Only one problem-there isn't a book in sight. In fact, it's like printing hasn't been invented here. I quickly look around the room, and sure enough, there's nothing at all with any writing on it.
The rebellion of the mind from silence. I have actually witnessed, on a couple of occasions, where silence has driven the mind of a person into a violent madness.

"Folks here often go a whole day without eating, no problem. They actually forget to eat, sometimes for days at a time."
"I'm not used to things here yet, so I have to eat."
"I suppose so," she says. "That's why I'm cooking for you."
I look in her face. "How long will it take for me to get used to this place?"
"How long?" she parrots, and slowly shakes her head. "I have no idea. It's not a question of time. When that time comes, you'll already be used to it."
We're sitting across from each other, her hands neatly lined up on the table, palms down. Her ten little resolute fingers are there, real objects before me. Directly across from her, I catch each tiny flutter of her eyelashes, count each blink of her eyes, watch the strands of hair swaying over her forehead. I can't take my eyes off her.
"That time?" I say.
"It isn't like you'll cut something out of yourself and throw it away," she says. "We don't throw it away-we accept it, inside us."
"And I'll accept this inside of me?"
"That's right."
"And then?" I ask. "After I accept it, then what happens?"
She inclines her head slightly as she thinks, an utterly natural gesture. The strands of hair sway again. "Then you'll become completely yourself," she says.
"So you mean up till now I haven't been completely me?"
"You are totally yourself even now," she says, then thinks it over. "What I mean is a little different. But I can't explain it well."
"You can't understand until it actually happens?"
She nods.
When it gets too painful to watch her anymore, I close my eyes.
Then I open them right away, to make sure she's still there. "Is it sort of a communal lifestyle here?"
She considers this. "Everyone does live together, and share certain things. Like the shower rooms, the electrical station, the market. There are certain simple, unspoken agreements in place, but nothing complicated. Nothing you need to think about, or even put into words. So there isn't anything I need to teach you about how things are done. The most important thing about life here is that people let themselves be absorbed into things. As long as you do that, there won't be any
Problems."
"What do you mean by absorbed?"
"It's like when you're in the forest, you become a seamless part of it.
When you're in the rain, you're a part of the rain. When you're in the morning, you're a seamless part of the morning. When you're with me, you become a part of me."
"When you're with me, then, you're a seamless part of me?" '
"That's true."
"What does it feel like? To be yourself and part of me at the same time?"
She looks straight at me and touches her hairpin. "It's very natural.
Once you're used to it, it's quite simple. Like flying."
"You can fly?"
"Just an example," she says, and smiles. It's a smile without any deep or hidden meaning, a smile for the sake of smiling. "You can't know what flying feels like until you actually do it. It's the same."
"So it's a natural thing you don't even have to think about?"
She nods. "Yes, it's quite natural, calm, quiet, something you don't have to think about. It's seamless."
"Am I asking too many questions?"
"Not at all," she replies. "I only wish I could explain things better."
"Do you have memories?"
Again she shakes her head and rests her hands on the table, this time with the palms face up. She glances at them expressionlessly.
"No, I don't. In a place where time isn't important, neither is memory. Of course I remember last night, coming here and making vegetable stew. And you ate it all, didn't you? The day before that I remember a bit of. But anything before that, I don't know. Time has been absorbed inside me, and I can't distinguish between one object and whatever's beside it."
"So memory isn't so important here?"
She beams. "That's right. Memory isn't so important here. The library handles memories."
After the girl leaves, I sit by the window holding my hand out in the morning sun, its shadow falling on the windowsill, a distinct five-finger outline. The bee stops buzzing around and quietly lands above the windowpane. It seems to have some serious thinking to do. And so do I
When you see it as Kafka talking to his Self - that she is the fully realized him - then the conversations are almost funny. She knows who She is but he does not, thus his question and Her double entendres.
Effortless, simple, natural, opening, letting-go, accepting, surrendering, absorbing, seamless, oneness, unity, and so on, a shopping list of words just to get close to hinting at The Way In.
"The library handles memories." (She beamed). The empty library will handle all memories! Ho-ho! This is so wonderful! Here is his VerySelf telling him that that-place beyond all thought will provide what is needed! Trust, She says.

She sits down at the dining table in the same chair the girl had just been sitting in. "It feels like we're back in the library, doesn't it?" she says.
"Sure does," I agree. "Except for no coffee, and no Oshima."
"And not a book in sight," she says.
Peter, you know how much Tree and are adore the metaphor of the chair, the seat of authority. (Shankara's four thrones of the four Maths). The four stable legs of the animal world holding up the form of Realization. Miss Psyche sits in the same chair as the girl with the same authority but with a personal slant on the same truths.

Her trademark smile plays around her lips. "There's something I have to tell you." Her smile's nearly identical to the young girl's, though with a bit more depth, a slight nuance that moves me.
She wraps her hands around the teacup. I'm gazing at the tiny pearl piercings in her ears. She's thinking, and it's taking her longer than usual. "I burned up all my memories," she says, deliberately choosing her words. "They went up in smoke and disappeared into the air. So I won't be able to remember things for very long. All sorts of things- including my time with you. That's why I wanted to see you and talk with you as soon as I could. While I can still remember.
"I crane my neck and look up at the bee above the window, its little black shadow a single dot on the sill.
"The most important thing," she says quietly, "is you've got to get out of here. As fast as you can. Leave here, go through the woods, and back to the life you left. The entrance is going to close soon. Promise me you will."
I shake my head. "You don't understand this, Miss Saeki, but I don't have any world to go back to. No one's ever really loved me, or wanted me, my entire life. I don't know who to count on other than myself. For me, the idea of a life I left is meaningless."
Life is meaningless without Love.
By breaking the great human taboos (sexual taboos) Kafka has stepped beyond the human realm of right and wrong onto the left hand path of the hero (Jai Joseph Campbell). And it was only there that Kafka learned to love. Miss Psyche being Kafka's soul, and Kafka, having known Miss Psyche, then it is Kafka who has no more use for her Memories - only for the love that is Present. Kafka is really quite heroic in his letting go. Like what Crow told him before "Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That's what being tough is all about."

Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence.
A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?"
"It depends," she replies, and lightly closes her eyes. "In some cases they're the most important thing there is."
"Yet you burned yours up."
"I had no use for them anymore."

I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair. I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. Nearby, someone is painting a picture of me. And beside him sits a young girl in a short-sleeved light blue dress, gazing in my direction. She has straight hair, a straw hat with a white ribbon, and she's scooping up the sand. Steady, long fingers-the fingers of a pianist. Her smooth-as-porcelain arms glisten in the sunlight. A natural looking smile plays at her lips. I'm in love with her. And she's in love with me.
That's the memory.
"I want you to have that painting with you forever," Miss Saeki says. She stands up, goes to the window, and looks outside. The sun's still high in the sky. The bee's still asleep. Miss Saeki holds up a hand to shield her eyes and looks at something far off, then turns to face me. "You have to go," she says.
The only thing of real importance in this world is Love, without it - life is meaningless, as Kafka says. The memory of love is only felt in the Now - love is always felt in the Present. Love is an experience (not an idea) it is a doorway into the Present, into the very Now - where lives the Self - as you.
Love calls the Self - and it is the Self. One of the great statements of the Upanishads is "All love is directed to the Self by the Self." Love is The Way and The Work, it is effortless, simple, natural, it opens, it lets-go, it accepts, it surrenders, it is absorbing, it is seamless, it is oneness, it is unity, and it is none of these because they are only words and it is an experience, a feeling (that can not be taught).
The painting of Kafka on the Shore is "the memory" of love. Once you realize that you are the very source of all love ("The world is because I AM"). You can then see that it is Kafka who abandoned himself when his mother left him, and it was Kafka who punished himself by living without love as Miss Psyche did. Miss Psyche is Kafka's soul (the personalized version of The Self). Is the Soul your mother? Of course. Is your soul your lover? Of course. If you have an idea about what your soul is, your soul will act it out for you until you realize that that limitation is not it, and so-on infinitum, no matter the suffering. Until you get-it, that -what you want- is not a thing in this world.
Miss Psyche is the personalized version of The Self while the girl is closer to the impersonal reality.

"Are you my mother?" I'm finally able to ask.
"You already know the answer to that," Miss Saeki says.
She's right-I do know the answer. But neither one of us can put it into words. Putting it into words will destroy any meaning. "A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn't have," she says. "Someone I loved more than anything else. (I was afraid someday I'd lose this person. So I had to let go myself. If he was going to be stolen away from me, or I as going to lose him by accident, I decided it was better to discard him myself. Of course I felt anger that didn't fade, that was part of it. But the whole thing was a huge mistake. It was someone I should never have abandoned."
I listen in silence.
"You were discarded by the one person who never should have done that," Miss Saeki says. "Kafka -,do you forgive me?"
"Do I have the right to?"
She looks at my shoulder and nods several times. "As long as anger and fear don't prevent you." "Miss Saeki, if I really do have the right to, then yes - I do forgive you," I tell her.
Mother, you say. I forgive you. And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles.
Silently, she lets go of me. She takes the hairpin out of her hair and without a moment's hesitation stabs the sharp tip into the inner flesh of her left arm, hard. With her right hand she presses down tightly on a vein, and blood begins to seep out. The first drop plops audibly to the floor. Without a word she holds her arm out toward me. Another drop of blood falls to the floor.
I bend over and put my lips on the small wound, lick her blood with my tongue, close my eyes, and savor the taste. I hold the blood in my mouth and slowly swallow it. Her blood goes down, deep in my throat. It's quietly absorbed by the dry outer layer of my heart. Only now do I understand how much I've wanted that blood. My mind is someplace far away, though my body is still right here - just like a living spirit. I feel like sucking down every last drop of blood from her, but I can't. I take my lips off her arm and look into her face.
"Farewell, Kafka Tamura," Miss Saeki says. "Go back to where you belong, and live."

I so believe in blood (our most ancient teacher). Blood marks the transition. Blood and life are one. Blood initiates, you pay in blood to enter the new state of being. Letting blood -for men- mimics what women naturally go through monthly.
Blood will have Her say, (but it must be your own blood for Her to speak). V6.2.9

When the Chance comes again
her hands and feet betray her
and tell the listening-world that she is ready to be re-membered.
It is Blood that always tells this part of the story.
Your Life asks for an offering, and will take Nothing else.
After Blood has had its say, the clock begins.
And the world begins to give her back
the things she quit as a kid.
She remembers a fragment of raw Self
steeped in soft electricity (a must-have),
and a well-lit zero (as a good compass),
a prayer of random chuckles (for the painy-pain-pain),
some diobologion stew with fresh carnelians (for the eyesight),
a song with a perfect wound (for the ahhh, and Yes),
a poem in the key of why (every word forked…and eaten),
a little raft of fondness (down the river of grief),
and animals without end amen (a heart full of).
These are things the Chance has held for her,
and I, Holybean, her true friend, tell her:
"Present in the Now lives your Very-Self
and you must surrender all
to sing open each sudden flower."

 

Big-big thanks for all this, brother.

With love and admiration

Toc