a brightness inside

chasing the tail

.. back to the source. we follow the river's bed back to where you sleep/walk deeper into the forest (we go) clutching bright petaled offerings and singing inside. i am full of your fire quetz coatl, running through your cliff-top meadows a-flame shouting at the skies.

day of the dead

teotihuacan; the raw and the cut.

i feel those piled up stones from all the way over here. we are camped outside the gates of the city but they whisper in my dreams all the same, catching the corner of my soul even with my eyes closed. i am avoiding your gaze but feel you all the same, pulling in the stars.

i watch the sun set over the contours of the mountains tracing the black lines of the horizon with the same fasination as the arched back of a lover and i wonder about the builders of these right angled wonders amongst such majesty. the builders of pyramids were not women i wager.




but all the same, i am in awe and i am standing at your heights looking out over the land and i am moving.. with something.feels like ive dreamed here before, seen your coloured flags blowing in the breeze and stared at the reflections of the stars in your pools. i have walked amongst these giants before but never stood here and i get a strange and indescribable sense that im am putting something straight; settling a score somehow.

down into the caves of your birth we go. into the holes of your making, crawling through the belly of the mother. alone in the black and the silence i am breathing fast and suspended from animation at the depth i am out of. heavy rock; crushing me into crystal formation. i am held. i am dry in my mouth and stone inside reaching all the way back to some distant dream of a star. then you dig me up, build me tall and stand on me to reach those stars. but we are all made of stars she whisper.

-}::amatlan::{-

these are pictures and journal entries from Amatlan, the birth place of the mayan god; quetzalcoatl. (about three hours south of mexico city) we stayed in a tipi village here high up in the mountains, the place was full of butterflies and hummingbirds and the whole time we were there i was struck by the unshakable feeling that i had been there before.

day 1: mexico city.

My first night in mexico city; i dream of running around the city streets. maybe not running but flying or gliding. i feel like i am taking in this place. being many places simultaniously. i am current. i am light trails of cars photographed at night. i am fast moving and frictionless.




first initiation; find the Zocalo, energetic centre of the city.

the image of the eagle eating a snake that is pictured on the mexican flag refers to the myth that built the city. the image symbolises the combination of earth and sky energies and is strongly associated with the mayan god, quetz coatl; the feathered serpant. The location of the city was decided when a shaman had this vision at the place that is today the busy square of the zocalo.

our first task is, amongst the noise and chaos of the mexico city day of the dead celebrations; to be still, to shut out the noise and listen to story of this place. follow the energy lines. find the zocalo.



At first, alone in the city, all my fears fill my head. i think of the british embassy's advice to travellers in mexico, i think of news reports of kidknappings and statistics that tell me more people go missing in mexico every year than in iraq. i can't speak spanish, i have a fairly weak sense of direction, i hate being on my own and a thousand other negativities poor through me. but then i stop. i remember to breath and as i look about me i realise; this is just a city, like any other. i shake off my interfering thoughts and start walking. throughout the day i find that when i chose a direction because i have seen a beautiful tree or butterfly or because i needed to find water; my steps take me ever closer to the zocalo. and when, as inevitably they do, my thoughts creep back in again telling me i should head this way or that; i find myself lost and confused.


from a few blocks away i can feel the pull of the zocalo like there is a string attatched to my belly that is being sucked down a plughole. i meander my way there smiling; i am coming, i am coming.

walking the liminal line

The root of the word shaman has many argued origins; one definition is "he who knows" another, from the native american tradition, is; "he who walks between two worlds". For my contextual enquirey project i would like to explore this "between" place, a place Victor Turner termed the liminal state.

my first thoughts lead me to two main areas of enquiry;

What, as a writer do i bring back from this liminal space?
What mirrors can be found between shamanic reality and the virtual?

To explore these ideas i i will travel to mexico to participate in a three week shamanic practitioner course in the san luis potosi desert. i will then spend some time traveling around the ancient cities of the maya. The mayan culture has long held great fascination for me; because of their shamanic worldview, because of their highly sophisticated language and calendar system and because of their apparent interest in the time we live in now.

i am currently in LA where i have been preparing for my journey to mexico and where i have been exploring the dream time of the city. what relevance does the liminal hold in the information age? how does the dreamtime manifest in contemporary culture? how does the media effect our dreamspace? what worlds do we walk between? nature/technology, dreaming/waking, real/simulation, abundance/decadance, democracy/surveillance. these are some of the conflicts that inform my work and inspire me to explore this context.

the documentation of this project will be in the form of my writings and feild recordings from mexico as well as photographs and drawings of my journey. i have already begun a practice of recording my dreams and experimenting with automatic writing within the context of the city, specifically LA, which i shall also post here.

i have in mind that this project will evolve and take direction spontaneously. journeying is about letting go and following your imagination and i hope this is something that is reflected on all levels of this work. i am aware that this area of investigation has a huge literary history preceding it. my reading on this subject has been incredibly varied over the years and spans from William Burroughs to quantum physics to the Tibetan book of the dead! i will include a bibliography of sorts in the books section but i would like to also stress my attempts to not "overwrite" this experience.



"imperceptibility,indiscernibility, and impersonality- the three virtures. to reduce oneself to an abstract line, a trait, in order to find one's zone of indiscernibility with other traits, and in this way enter the haecceity and impersonality of the creator. one then is like grass: one has made the whole world into a becoming because one suppressed in oneself everything that prevents us from slipping between things"

-Deleuze quoted in "Out of this world, Deleuze and the philosophy of creation" Peter Hallward 2006



"the air inside the pot appears to take on the shape and volume of the pot"

-Sri Nisargadatta Mahara, from "i am that"



follows a collection of my dreams and automatic writings from LA..




1.
what comes out is birthed in void or in my cells or captured @ random from passing thought clouds outside myself. or myself is turned inside out and smeared on the walls or dragged through the streets as i fly above the tops of trees and buildings. simultaneously here. in green armchair sun streaming through the glass casts shadows across the page. iam pen iam paper i am written iam warm inside and glowing. full and empty. poured out, held within. i am all things. i am my limitations. i am cynical indifference and poorly referenced. i am everything i've ever read and everything i've ever dreamed. i am seeping out of my skin diffused in the empty spaces that write the proportions of things.

2.
writing writing writing here we are again with pen in hand. why is it we always write in straight lines? i'm sure my thoughts don't start out that way although they seem already ordered before they hit the page. how fast do they travel? faster than the speed of light? is it dark in my brain or when those flashes of illumination come are there really lights inside? the sun warm on my skin and i wonder if those rays come out the other side? do my insides feel the warm glow? i think so but when i think of myself in here i think of a cave, dark and hollow and safe. maybe i have just been hibernating and will come out some day.