Hours before my home caught fire and filled the Bay sky with smoke
I took a walk alone through the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
Walking alone, I've come to realize that this is what I'm meant to be... a ghost with a desire to live. A love-lust for women, a love-hate for the rest, and a love-awe for God. Floating through this life, I wish to dissolve the boundaries between my self and the rest. But the barriers are too thick and too deep, so my body and mind dissolve instead.
A certain numbness has taken hold, interrupted by occasional awe and more frequent plunges into despair. My home is burning, and I feel nothing. The Abyss approaches, and I feel nothing.
Not nothing, but a kind of quite and distant longing.
Enter Mountain View Cemetery
A window
allows the darkness inside to mingle with the light.
Flowers effortlessly emerge from the divine darkness of the Ground;
"Art which arises of its own accord." *
I don't know what I am anymore. I am faltering in my employment, faltering in my relationships, and all together failing to materialize. After I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and regain my footing I see that my interest in the world has been reduced to the impossible task of saving my own soul.
If I could just... be born again, brought into this world to share it with the rest. Look into the eyes across the void and take a deep breath. A piercing desire, an overwhelming impulse of the heart.
New light, new life
Where heaven crosses Earth.
“It's not the black side. It's not the white side. It's the interface"
-Terence McKenna
One of the many obelisks found in the cemetery
Nods to our beloved Osiris.
Rest...
Souls that have found a place to rest,
Small bodies to hold them while they contemplate their next move
(after the exhaustive process of reviewing all of their previous ones)
The journey upward is long and tiresome
A tranquil setting,
But too late in the day for a cup of coffee!
The light towards the end of the day
Makes way for the evening shadows to emerge
I still have a heart, and a body, so I must long for something not quite like life as I know it... longing for silence, shared. Listen carefully to the silence, listen for the subtle beat of life, for the rhythm and the pulse before they're eclipsed entirely by distraction.
A ray of light in shadow and stone.
There are many different senses, and even more obsessions.
Our minds face possession
Gripped by this, that
Or the great Abyss.
All photos shot by the poster using a
Rebel T2i 18 -135mm standard lens
Shot in raw with manual settings
Reference:
*The Penguins Dictionary of Symbols, 1962. 'Flower' entry.
-Kabba
I hope you didn't lose your entire house! I'm hoping lots of rain will come put out all of the fires in California and the western part of the USA. Also this was a very well done post!
Thank you, Violet. Wish I had a house! Sonoma County is home, but I don't own anything there except lots of memories. I'm glad you like the post! Happy to be in the 50s club :)
is this nonfiction?
Hi nomad, this is a journal entry I did after I visited the cemetery. I went to a taqueria, ordered some tacos, and started writing whatever was on my mind. I was feeling quite glum but decided to share anyway. Thanks for checking it out!