Work unlimited

Some brands seem to forget that their customers are human beings. As humans, most of them aspire to one day being more fulfilled, relaxed and creative than seems possible for them now with their busy, schedule-constrained lives - largely lived inside boxes of one kind or another. They dream of working from a walled garden in the South of France, managing their investments on a laptop or sitting in the afternoon sun writing poems or screenplays, or doing deals on the phone while they stare at walls of climbing flowers and the heady smell of warm stone and ripening plums.

Everyone has a dream of creativity.

So who then does the new Dell tagline - Work Unlimited - appeal to? Are there beings out there who dream of white walls, suited executives and a life lived entirely in airport lounges? Are there people who long to be able to work constantly, all the time, without being able to escape? Maybe there are.

the wizard

My laptop, a high energy light portal into the dimension of communication and information. I picture a wizard opening his portal of light; watching him from a distance grappling and grinning, fingers spinning in the gate of light, his whole body involved; like a wind of light, a gale from the whateversphere blowing through his head; he can do it for a period of time. it is essential that he stay grounded. He is in the light world. His feet clamp the floor

My morning problem - can anyone help?

Each morning I wake up and try to figure out what 'I' want to do. I don't know, because I have nothing I have to particularly do - no time constraint, no job, no kids, a freelance, a creative. My time is my own. So each morning the problem is the same - trying to guess what I want, as if I were a difficult girlfriend with obscure needs. Do I want to get out of bed? Do I want to stay in bed? Do I want to put some music on and start dancing around? Do I want to go outside for a walk to wake myself up? It doesn't take much to see that the reason I don't know is because my mind is so busy trying to figure it out. The obvious answer is to stop it - How can I know what I want when I'm already occupied with thinking about it? But how? How can I stop thinking about what to do next? After all, I have to do something - don't I? There's a choice. Can I simply refuse to think about what I want? Doing nothing also counts as doing something. Or do I just observe this habit of my mind, see it, watch it, accept it. Watch its inane and constant guessing; be grateful for the moments when I do something from pure impulse. OR I could just do nothing. Do nothing. Nothing.

"If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing, Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love." - J. Krishnamurthy

Mano and the orange

At what point does an orange become an ex-orange? I asked Mano, pacing up and down the kitchen. it had been a hard day. for a variety of reasons I felt as if I were going mad. I stared at the orange peel in the compost bowl. This orange i said. It's peeled and almost all eaten, but is it dead? When could one say that the orange was killed? When it was picked, when it was sliced, or when its bits started to decompose in the compost bin? That would just be more life wouldn't it - life of a different variety? And how does that relate to us? Mano looked at my hands, as if I were holding a knife instead of just a segment of orange. You'd better go upstairs he said, and write all this down before you go nuts. Because I'm not about to have a conversation with you about a dead orange. So I wrote it down.

True romance?

I sit down for slightly longer than is comfortable. (No choice - I'm waiting for latihan and I'm stuck at the Amadeus centre - far away from my house - for nearly 2 hours). I've just spent 24 hours in Brighton with photographer and mystic Bjorn Vaughn, and now I'm... just don't know what I'm doing. Waiting. The body is restless. The body calms down; I find myself staring with blank eyes at the shape of trees. With my eyes open my thoughts get distracted. I can trick them into shutting up; harder when my eyes are closed; too much pressure. Better with the windows open...

So I sit there, and after a good ten or fifteen minutes, just slightly longer than I'm comfortable with - just after ignoring the itchy fidgety feeling in my arms and legs for long enough - I feel a laugh gathering in my belly, it gathers strength and then just comes out. I laugh with merriment. More laughing. For no reason at all. Then it stops. But I feel good, and justified in sitting there doing F-all while the rest of the world does purposeful and productive things. I keep saying to myself:

-- what do nothing? not even take a walk, do some exercise, go shopping?
-- We talked about this remember?
-- yeah, um.. ok

Ooof. It takes some discipline. But then that laugh comes out. And then... as if channeling some comedian from the underworld I suddenly conceive an entire stand-up sketch/joke and write it into my notebook. Blam! It comes out - just like that. No thinking or preparing. It writes itself. I have enough energy to do it. I can be bothered. Unlike almost everything else, it is not premeditated and I don't have to worry about it.

True motivation? true energy? the source I've been waiting for? Is it as simple as sitting still and doing nothing.

I think so.

Maybe it's the same for everything - career, love, holiday plans. Just sit and let em come

(Though then, 'course, I spent the rest of the evening fulminating because I couldn't sit still...)

let it roll

Maharshi

Make no effort either to work or to renounce. Your effort is the bondage; what is destined to happen will happen.

Energy surfing

I get to the British Library, after spending all day at home. I start to feel different - playful, talkative. The same happened in New York, though that was a vibration of its own, with its own challenges. As I get more tuned in I start to notice different energies. I realise it's not me, it's the surroundings, the people, maybe even the groundrock. I start to feel the atmosphere of each place in my own body.

I could spend my life surfing the different energies of different places. Just for fun.