Transported, Transcendent, Truth

Rather a mouthful, that title... Maybe too much of a burden of words for the singularly evanescent feeling I'm trying to describe.

I had a thought about 'work'. Sitting near my window with the breeze blowing onto me and my music turned up as loud as it will go (loud enough to wake the whole world), I suddenly had a memory: In was in Goa for New Year's Eve a couple of years ago. My friends and I planned to go to what I very economically told my parents was a 'party'. Bless them, they didn't press the issue, but 'party' was about 1000 times too tame a word. Well, they needn't have worried. My asceticism - and what I learnt there - would do them proud if I told them about it. This is what it was like:
Hundreds of people, a large number of them stoned out of their minds, or drunk. All my friends were with me. The press of people everywhere. Pulsating, wordless music so loud you could feel your insides shaking. Dark starlit sky above, deep deep sea below. Only Goa can be like it was that night. And yet, in the middle of that press of people who one could argue were as debauched as it is possible to be: drunk, stoned, sexed up, on the prowl, a small ray of innocence and beauty - I found out what it is to really dance. Not a single cigarette touched my lips, or a drop of alcohol, or drugs of any kind. My only beverage was mineral water. People tried to dance with me - they soon gave up, I wouldn't open my eyes to acknowledge their presence. Someone came up behind me and put his arms around my waist. He soon gave up too. You can't dance with a girl who is simply not there, 'at' the party. And yet, I heard every single sound around me, underneath the music. People's feet. The sound of my friends voices. For one incredible second, even the sound of a cigarette flickering to life and the click of the lighter that ignited it. My friends bought me a bottle of water and I drank some of it mid-dance. I didn't stop once. I danced. Flew on the wings of that music, tirelessly, without a single thought, all night. Sometimes as fast as my body would move, sometimes standing perfectly still with my eyes shut, but still somehow caught up in movement. At one point I felt like bursting into tears, but didn't. I never once wanted to stop from either tiredness or boredom.

Complete. Total. Absolute. Unthinking. Release.

The purity of those 10 hours has stayed with me since - I only have to remember it to feel it's grace. I want the long hours I want to spend on this PhD to feel like that.

02:37 - 24/April/2007

I'm not really working flat out, but I'd rather be here than anywhere else, and I'm wide awake. Better to be working intermittently and slowly than not at all, eh?

Observations at 2:37 -
People returning from International Night. Can hear assorted languages, in assorted volumes. But mostly laughter, the stray drunken shriek or howl. A group of girls shouting goodnight and 'I LOVE you' across the grass to each other. Probably pissed out of their minds :) Music from people's apartments.
The lights in Colchester.
Halogen lamps on campus, shining like soft globes of gold in amongst the trees. I always imagine that they'll fall off their posts and bounce softly onto the ground. Dead silence in the department. Am I the only person here?
My boyfriend online. He says a cat has gotten in to his house tonight. I wish I was that cat. Or rather, that a cat would get into the office and curl up on my lap. I have a picture of Pasha (my ginger tabby, away back in India) on my desk. I can't take my eyes off him, he's so gorgeous. Even in a little 4 x4 picture frame.
Would never stop reading, or working, just so it could lie there undisturbed. My little ivy plant on my desk is probably asleep. (Does light disturb plants sleeping?)
I want to be here until sunrise and watch those golden lights outside turn off one by one. Or maybe they all fall asleep together.
Funny I'm not hungry. Must be all the smokes. I bought a chicken dinner before I got here. It'll have to be breakfast.

2:45.
Am here until 5, and I'm off just as the birds start to wake.

Lonely Owls. I should start a club called Lonely Owls.

Rust and Stardust indeed!

A question I often ask myself - as does everyone interested in environmental issues does, I think - is: To what extent is degradation an inevitable process of the ongoing experiment with civilisation? Or to put it another way: did we get to the state we are in (both the glories of it as well as the darkness) unconsciously? And so, how on earth are we going to begin learning our way out of it?
A related issue is: What difference can I make? Or 1000 people like me. Or a million. Can we really do anything at all? Of course, I have often heard that the answer lies somewhere between yes and no. No, we might never change anything. Yes, we already have. No, we might never change anything. But Yes, it is important to keep trying. And keep trying we will. Some of us will give up, some of us will not, and some of us will give up and then resume.

On a deeper note, though, I can't help but think of all those who talk about the essential illusion of reality. By that I don't mean the absence of circumstance or cause and effect. These are Are, of course. But underneath them, there is this thought, repeated endlessly through the ages, but particularly well put by H.P. Blavatsky:
"The Universe is the periodical manifestation of (an) unknown Absolute Essence."
So, at the deepest levels, we do not know what turns the cosmic wheel. And, as Stephen Hawking put it, to know why it turns at all would be "to know the mind of God".
And yet, we all know that: "Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself" (another one by Blavatsky).

Is this enough of an imperative for continued action? That the universe is real enough? That is an open question and to some extent irrelevant in the everyday workings of environmentalism.
Yet, in opening the deepest basis of action itself to scrutiny, it paradoxically opens a path towards remarkable balance and perspective: The Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it - which as unreal as itself. What are the tiny things that keep us from the 'deepest driving desires' which the Upanishads say form our true essence? And if the preservation of nature (read: beauty, wholeness, truth, whatever words you want to insert) is, as many have felt, a deep 'driving desire', perhaps the rest is really just rust and stardust.

Incoherent or simplistic as this may be as a justification for continued blood, sweat and tears, it is a thought that has shone one small white shaft of light into the dark place inside me that is filled with doubt.
And for that, I am grateful.

(On a slightly irrelevant note, and just to dispel some of the existential confusion the thought of not actually existing might have engendered (I do flatter my own post, I know), look at the talk page on Wikipedia's article on the Upanishads. It seems that these people could do well with reiterating to themselves the basic philosophy of the writings they so hotly debate: the rest is rust and stardust!! The 'divine hand' that prompted the scripture in the first place must be laughing its sides out.)

The Rest is Rust and Stardust

and the rest is rust and stardust.
something painfully simple, honest and clear written by Nabokov - in Lolita, I think. and as a follow on to my thoughts through the day on embracing silence, i think this is the perfect way to come to terms with silence, solitude - and even start to like them again. (i say again because they were once my best friends. growing up tends to make you forget how to handle them, i think.)
so: at the end of this day of quite a bit of academic as well as personal thinking (and some thoughts that merged the two!), here is what i have discovered re. my 'solitude crisis'.
this is a PhD programme - in most respects, i am a university student, working to deadlines (not very efficiently, as you can see. most of my time is spent in staring!) and having set goals (supposedly). but. when i first came here, what was it i wanted to do? not necessarily gain the 'Dr' title (i still can't believe i might gain that!), but instead, find a creative answer to a unique question. find some meaning in an apparently unconnected series of information-points. find the pattern that connects. how can that come if i am - as i am at home - constantly surrounded by a gaggle of giggling friends (bless them, i miss them like a wound). yes, conversations help clarify insights. but before those insights come, the rest is rust and stardust.
now, Zareen, to work. think. for God's sake, forget everything else and do what you're here to. think. so every time i forget, the magic words to remind me are: the rest is rust and stardust.

Embracing Silence

Orientation week for research postgraduates should have had a compulsory module entitled Embracing Silence.
Eager-beaver PhD hopefuls should have been tested on their ability to sit long hours without saying a word, tested on their ability to remain sane under pressure without the comfortable social pillow of rants with classmates about upcoming deadlines. After all, there are no classmates in a research programme. Especially if you do not work in a lab, are not affiliated to an existing programme of research and are basically the only one who seems to know what on earth you are researching (and even this is not always so clear). Those lucky enough to have started during the autumn term have it easier: offices are warm, no one wants to be outside. There are no barbecue smells wafting in from the lakeside. There are no sounds of: giggling, birdsong, wind in the trees, impromptu football, ice cream fights, bumblebees, music, bicycles whizzing along sun warmed stone, friends gossiping. Life.
For those of us (read: me) who started during the spring term, the office is a space of silence, the outside is a cosmos of sounds reflecting a fast awakening summer. For those of us (read: me) who started during the spring term, there is the twin hurdle of overcoming the seemingly instinctive magnetism towards sunshine and the apparently insurmountable urge to share it with friends. Looking at the sunshine dappling everything with green and gold outside does not compensate. Having friends at a distance (read, over the Internet, away back home) does not compensate.
Embracing silence.
Yes. If I ever get this dratted PhD, and am ever talking to 'new' students, this is what I will tell them is the hardest thing to do.
For now, its a couple of hours of reading and writing before I succumb to the sunshine.

Where I am now

The pattern that connects? That's a laugh. That was such a mouthful to think out, it kept me away from writing for half a year. Slowly, though, it is beginning to come back. As I take my first baby steps along the long path to my PhD.
I plan to use this space to talk about the patterns I find as I go on this journey.

For a background:
I'm here at the University of Essex's Department of Biological Sciences, in the Centre for Environment and Society. My supervisors are Prof. Jules Pretty and Dr. David Smith.
After my Masters here, I decided to stay on and continue with the same research as I began for my dissertation: researching people's participation in sustainable development (an even bigger mouthful than 'The Pattern That Connects'. I am a glutton for difficulty, it seems.)

Anyway here I am, and here are my stories. Some of them small pictures, some of them questions and some, just vague feelings that PhDs seem to bring.
Here are my patterns.
Here I am.

A message from Tolkien

Everyone who knows me, knows how much I love Tolkien. I read him as more than just a wonderful vision of a lost world (lost, not invented). Sometimes, I read him as metaphor. I'm surprised I didn't think of putting this passage up before; now that I think of it, it's a perfect 'snapshot' as it were, of a sort of universal pattern-that-connects. An experience we've all had, at least once, that drives us forward. Who doesn't gain some sense of peace and strength from the experience of sudden, ravishing beauty? I don't know a single person who is immune to that. If there is something that we all have in common, surely this is one such thing?

Here's just one of the ways Tolkien described the experience.


"Sam struggled with this own weariness, and he tool Frodo's hand; and there he sat silent until deep night fell. Then at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the hiding-place and looked out. The land seemed full of creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no sound of voice or of foot. Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wreck above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been a defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master's, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo's side, and putting away all fear cast himself into a deep and untroubled sleep."

I am not for a moment suggesting that the sight of a star can solve all our problems - either those of the soul or those of the world-at-large. What I am pointing to is simply this: sometimes we don't need to find the ultimate solution. We just need some peace until the time is right for the solution to arrive, on it's own.

And who here doesn't just want a little peace.

A Letter to Myself

With a post-cigarette-inward eye, drenched in sunshine and complete solitude, I began, on impulse, writing a letter to myself. (no, am not advocating smoking as a path to introspection, really, am not.)

Why am I putting it up here, where it could so easily be torn to shreds by doubt, disbelief, cynicism or patronizing nods? (Patronizing nods. God. Those would probably be deadliest of all to the tiny little wings I am trying to explain here.) (Note to you, reader: If you nod, make sure you mean it, otherwise - well - don't.) The only reason I can think of is this: The thing won't tear, because it's stronger than doubt and disbelief. And why is that? Well - that's simple. It's all true.

Without further ado, then.

Dear Zareen;
You spoke about butterfly effects, and about how tiny things can lead to big things, how big things are actually sometimes just tiny nudges into new directions. You used to speak about how everything is connected and how distance and time mean nothing at all. Once, you believed in what you wrote and now, it lies in a purple-silk-bound notebook somewhere underneath your bed somewhere across the world.
Do you believe it still?

(I don't know, I whisper back, reading my own letter even as I write it. I don't know, but somewhere I feel it still.)

Do you need to be reminded that in the chaos of everyday there is still a pattern that connects?
Zareen: Open your eyes and look around your day. Not yesterday, not the day before, not tomorrow: Look around THIS day. And tell me where you see the tiny seams and the careful stiches that are holding things strong.

(I don't want to have to look, I whisper back, I'm tired. The sun is too bright to open my eyes, I have work to do, I cannot be reading this letter, I cannot be typing this letter, I cannot be looking. I have work to do.)

Just LOOK for a MOMENT, Zareen. Come on. Where are the little things that are telling you that there is more to this little picture than you can at first see?

Reluctantly, I open my eyes. The letter I wrote to myself falls onto the grass, and this is what I see:

I see that two days ago, a tiny butterfly, an orange little streak of flame, sat on my fingertip. A tiny thing, awake way past its bedtime to talk to me, in the middle of a deserted path near a railway crossing. I listened to what it said, and I didn't forget. Today, when I spoke
to my mother, she told me that two days ago, somewhere halfway across the world from me, she saw a tiny little butterfly printed bag, orange, thought of me, and bought it. It's flying across the world to me - or will be, soon.

I told her there are moths in my room - the vestiges of summer, perhaps, coming in to find the last traces of warmth before autumn. Except, the windows are closed most of the time and when they arrive, they sit on my thumb sometimes, so that when I type itlookslikethis, or on the edges of my dinner plate. My mother says she has been dreaming of my grandmother. Who loved and delighted, beyond anything else, in watching butterflies, reading about butterflies, planting garden palaces and hosting what she told me were "butterfly parties".

Gosh maybe there's too much coffee inside me, and maybe I am just so tired that I want something magical.
But maybe, just maybe, there is something else.

Could it possibly be, Zareen, (I picked up the letter again, looking for an explanation), that your mother and you are somehow - someway, - part of something together?
What is the colour of that stitch? It is the colour of butterfly wings, and delicate as the flight of moths. It is an intricate little design, finely wrought and as evanescent as breeze. You could so easily have missed it, had you not decided to write this letter, and had I not obliged you.
You are still not seeing the whole thing, Zareen, but keep looking. Somewhere behind your mother's dreams, beyond her sighting of a tiny little bag underneath a whole pile of discounted silk and below the wings of those creatures suddenly haunting you, there is a steel-strong, silver-and-star cable that is holding you close to something other than what you can see.

Have a nice rest of the day. And oh - try and keep the windows open, they'll find it easier to fly in that way.
Over and out,
Zareen.

What's this all about?

What's this all about then?

This is about trying to find some way to find a spark somewhere. To find the place where truth and beauty and freedom begin drift up out of the core of everything and into the orbit of everything. Where they leak into the air and animate existence. No, no matter what you say, I know they are there - and I know they run the show. Inside the senselessness there is surely butterfly light. Inside the violence there is surely a heart somewhere, smooth. Inside the darkness that is fast descending, there is surely one white star, shining.

Everyday I look for it: The emergent beauty, the deeper meaning.

And every time I find it, up here it will go.

(Best of luck, I hear you say, and I almost see your cynical smile - almost, but not quite; because even there I hear the faintest back-note of that universal tune. Smile away, shake your head. Out of darkness, light. Out of chaos, meaning. Out of light, back again into darkness, and in the darkness, star-rise.)
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