Monday, February 16, 2009

Cancerous Logic


I'm in a consulting room with two doctors in their white coats. They tell me I have the rarest disease they have ever seen. No one else in the whole world has this disease. They show me maps of the world, I remember seeing turkey on one of those sepia-colored old timey maps. they show me x-rays. they say it's spreading, this disease.
I let myself cry, great big grateful sobs, partly out of sorrow, partly because finally someone has realized how special I am. And you say dreams don't have a sense of humor? Then the doctor, the one who looks like the professor at Cornell, leans in and tells me the disease is Logic.

I never really thought I was overburdened with Logic, to tell you the truth. But then, the other day I was vacuuming the Temple at the Integral Yoga Institute where I do work exchange for yoga classes, and I realized that I had to have some kind of linear order to make sure I covered every inch of the soft pigeon gray carpet, and the word Methodical came to mind. Which reminded me of what Murat had to say about an approach I suggested to sex recently. Which then made me think-- I'm pretty methodical, but some areas should not be approached like that. Like sex. Or writing. Or any creative activity really. Which makes sense cuz this is all the territory of Chakra numero dos, the Svadhistana.

Logic and Method are not the same thing, but they are similar. They imply linearity, an active approach that aims to solve a problem. There are no ambiguities, there is no room for negative capability of Keats-- which quote from the book I'm reading (the Golden Compass) goes like this:

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, except that she knew that if she fooled around for long enough, without fertting, or nagging herself, she'd find out. She remembered quoting keats to Lyra, and Lyra's understanding at once that that was her own state of mind when she read the alethiometer.

Which alethiometer is an awesomely cool machine, by the way. It's the titular instrument, but works more like the I-Ching in telling the truth.

This permission to FOOL AROUND is what I have been needing for a very very long time. When I went to Oberlin I was so happy. One of my clearest memories is simply laying on the grass under those great oak and sweetgum trees as their golden leaves floated down on me. Oh I was fooling around then. Just sweet daydreams, laziness, just rip van winkling the day away. And I was so happy. And I got good writing done too, I daresay.

Perhaps this fooling around is the antidote to my *very unique* disease of logic.