Helpless

Moments of pure undiluted bliss burst out after long periods of apathy and boredom.
Yesterday spent in bed, avoiding other people. Couldn't read, couldn't work, couldn't even watch TV. The thought of getting up and going into Stockholm cropped up several times but dispersed. Under my sheets it was warm and safe. I didn't need to think.

Then the sun went down and I came alive. The Doors on the radio, the yellow moon hanging over the lake. Insence filled the room. Something about that song, The Crystal Ship, made me decide to be alive again. I read somewhere that it represented the after life phase where you float as if in a dream. Whatever it was, I went outside.

It was pitch black, the garden full of shapes. I was not sure where I was going. But the cottage was lit up. It looked warm and comforting - other people were having conversations by candlelight, by the water. I was not alone. But I was alone and that was also comforting, to know that they were there, but also seperate.

And I sat, stupefied, like I always do when I make it down there in the dark. Too much. The silence, the water, the moon - yellow and partly obscured by clouds. There had always been this scene, and there always will be, and in the words of the 70s soft-rockers, Kansas, we are just dust in the wind

I remembered the last night of the meditation retreat. Me and the other guy in the room had accidentedly broken our vow of silence, and we had gone back to bed. Lying in the darkness, desperately bursting for more talk, more connection. Eventually we decided to be human and broke our silence. We went out - quietly, secretively, afraid of being found out. We went out to the balcony and we sat there for hours, talking against a backdrop of stars.

After not talking for such a long period of time I was overwhelmed. Like I had discovered god somehow - in a conversation, in another human's face.

But I have another memory of that balcony. This time I was alone. I had hit a wall in the day's meditation and had come head-on, face to face with my depression. No way round, no way to distract myself. What was the point of this struggle, this ridiculous, never-ending charade? I had never asked to be here. And yet I must continue running around, doing things, filling up time - why? How much better not to have been born, to have never become conscious in the first place. All the sadness, all the loneliness, all the broken things. Life was misery, the Buddhists had got it - life was suffering.

I had spent a day following this train of thought, and a day in a meditation retreat is like a month in the real world. So as you can imagine, I was not in a very good headspace. And to top it all, I wasn't able to sleep. So I went out to the balcony. And when I got out ------

I had to catch my breath. How can I describe how the sky looked that night? I had never seen stars like that before. Millions. Completely oblivious to my ego pettiness. I was silenced. I was face to face with god. Or so I thought. And then, as if in reply, a shooting star. I followed it across the sky and when it disappeared I collapsed down on the ground. I was nothing in the face of this beauty, this mystery. The veil had been lifted. There was only god. God simply was.

I remembered that again last night, as I sat down by the water. The yellow moon hung low and sent a trail of light across the water to where I sat. And I wanted to swim, to transcend this illusion, to swim across the water. But then what would it be like if I got to the other side? No. I realised it needed to be far away. Needed to seem just out of reach. Because here is where it counted. Here is where we could bring it back.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eye