Astral Projection

I astral projected last night. I flew around for a while. Sped up, slowed down. I heard the astral wind. Wooooo. It’s no big deal. You feel-make it happen. You just find the middle way after a few moments of going too fast and loosing control or going too slow and beginning to fall. Its a middle way that we unconsciously know well. In an act as simple as say, holding a glass, we excel in it. We don’t hold so hard that it breaks, nor so lightly that it slips from our hands. We hold it just right. And we don’t even think. And in that very act of holding is the secret of life. That middle ground in which power and control are in harmony. And its a funny thing really, when you think about it, that your hand lives the Tao better than you.

Waking Up

If you have an alarm clock on your wrist watch set it to beep every hour. The sort of thing those old Casios do. Then throughout the day when it happens ask yourself if you’re awake. Then turn it off before you sleep. With time the beeping will become such a habitual thing that your mind will begin to create it in your dreams. Like a door bell or a telephone ringing. Then when you ask yourself if you’re awake, Poof. You’ll become conscious of the fact that you’re dreaming. Then you can do anything. 

Fiorenza and Aruro

Fiorenza, the Byzantine love poet, was an overnight sensation. Within days of her first publication large numbers of the populous began to recite her verse before dinner and at celebrations of state. Streamers were often associated with her style, herring and fruit baskets were distributed when she spoke, and matrimonial vows quickly incorporated her verse. Within a year she had attained the stature of a global icon. At nineteen Fiorenza had become a legend. Emperors as far as Iceland sent for compositions and commissions. Paper extracted from the oldest oaks were provided for her manuscripts and precious octopus wrung for their ink. Great minds, cultural leaders, tycoons and spiritual men all fell to her charms. She was pulled from every side and revered to exhaustion.

“I no longer wish to live a lofty existence,” she said. “I want secular happiness, conventional riches and jewelry made by the less privileged. I want to feel happiness at the expense of others and know that I am a success because all around me I see only failure.” Fiorenza was beautiful when she spoke from dark places. Never was she more attractive than when she channeled the simplest dreams, her eyes sparkling when she forced her lofty values into the sludge of common thought. For her it was the greatest struggle. She was only happy when she pushed herself to her limits, when she exceeded them, when she was able to feel herself stretch. But she could go no higher, she had reached the summit of ethereal beauty. Her growth could only go backwards.
“I aspire to a commonplace philosophy. To live and breathe by the rules of a fool would be for me a grand achievement. If I can master the weakest thoughts, bend my mind to the most foolish reasoning, then I will have achieved the most difficult task. I have delusions of mediocrity. Genius has come to me too easily.”
In the winter of her 20th year, Fiorenza observed a man one evening in the drawing room of an acquaintance. He was attractive and charming but persisted only in making himself look ridiculous for the pleasure of those around him.
“How foolish,” Fiorenza said to her mentor who stood silently beside her. “He puts three profiteroles into his mouth and then star jumps. What next?”
Bruno puffed heroin from his cigarette holder. Billows of blue blazing smoke chunneled from out of his nostrils.
“They say he has begun a new renaissance in painting. That his formulas in astro physics are bringing time travel into the present. His Sistine Chapel is deemed even greater than Raphael’s. His name is Aruro.”
Fiorenza watched as he put his legs behind his head and drank soda though a straw in his nose. Bubbles emerged and he spluttered and laughed before falling onto the floor. Those around him clutched at their sides, bent double, and slapped their thighs.
“He makes a perfect spectacle of himself for the amusement of others. But who pleasures whom?”
Fiorenza’s mentor chewed at his lip and stared in Aruro’s direction.
“People call him a fraud, members of the historical community are up in arms. He often exposes himself in public. Some say he is wise,”
Fiorenza was difficult to impress. As she drained her glass, she walked past the crowd of spectators and left by way of the escalator. That evening in her bed she thought of Aruro and the smile on his face. She found it difficult to give in to him. Somewhere she felt less frustration in denying him his crowd pleasing acts than indulging them. His cow-towing is exasperating. Like a monkey, he does a monkey’s dance. Like the accordion, he is perfectly ridiculous.

The next time Fiorenza saw Aruro they were eating at separate tables in a restaurant on the beach. The sun had begun to set and the tide was slowly overtaking the land. As coffee was brought water began to flow between the legs of the tables and chairs. Several of the men removed their shoes. Trouser cuffs slowly began to moisten.
As a starter Aruro had ordered éclairs and a napoleon. Undecided about his main course he had interrogated the waitress at length, and had asked her questions about her childhood, sporting interests and musical tastes. They had agreed on two bottles of wine and a glass of gin with fish. Aruro had even stood up to thank her.
When his food arrived he had let out a belly laugh before excusing himself and removing his pants. He then examined his food thoroughly, mixing it irreverently, and throwing pieces into his mouth by way of high arching lobs. Twice he gagged and was forced to strike himself. When his digestif was brought he splashed it into his eyes and screamed hysterically before falling onto the floor.

Of all his traits, Fiorenza was particularly interested in his manner. He seemed never quite calm or at rest, he always raced and spun and squeaked. What is this condition that allows no poise, she wondered. He is desperate for stimulus. His boredom is at its apogee.
As the sun finally disappeared and the moon illuminated the water and crystal, Fiorenza stood to face the sea before departing. The waves were soft and respired slowly and deeply. She let her eyes follow the horizon all the way to the shoreline, lifting her dress and clenching her toes in the sand. Behind her there emerged a voice.
“Breadsticks! Breadsticks! Ragu! Humboldt! Vacherin! ”
Fiorenza turned to see Aruro, hand standing on a plastic deck chair, his thin, hairy legs flailing left and right. He sneezed, fell, and then saw her. He laughed with sand in his hair and his mouth pursed. He stood and shook himself like a dog, looking at her at intervals, blinking, and sneezing. Fiorenza stared at him impassively. He went to his table, took two glasses of wine and approached her.
“I’ve been watching you upside down.”
She looked at him without answering.
Aruro tilted his head like a puppy and furrowed his eyebrows.
“But you look better now.”
Fiorenza watched as he drank from both glasses.
“Swim with me,” he said, and they ran into the sea and shook off their clothes. The Mediterranean clasped them with water hands. They walked up to their necks and began strolling parallel to the beach in slow motion, their bodies under the water level, their heads above the surface. Like two eggs, they hovered eastwards, circling each other and gently swaying with the tide.

“We spoke of astrology at length and then Chile. We exchanged several recipes, a chicken parmigianno, and took turns swimming under each others legs. Then we found a manatee and named it.”
Fiorenza’s mentor nodded his head and reheated his light bulb, inhaling deeply on the brown, black smoke.
“How many lives has he lived?”
Fiorenza swung at the fumes and redirected them into the fire.
“I did not ask him outright, but I believe the number to be a double digit, and even. He has seen so much,” she continued. “Everything bores him. He is oppressed by a need to constantly stimulate himself. It is slowly becoming his only business.”

Aruro and Fiorenza continued to walk through the water, their bodies submerged and weightless. Aruro was excited as he spoke.
“Many people have died of boredom. Cases have been found in Syria, Israel, the Middle East, Miami. Think of witches, alchemists, radicals. They were bored shitless. The opportunities in any world will eventually prove finite. With enough time everything can be done. Then what?” Aruro lowered his mouth below the water level and blew bubbles onto the surface.

“He does not buy into the concept of struggle,” Fiorenza said to her mentor.
“His treatise on neo-morality denies the existence of nobility in struggle. He calls it a pumpkin-pie philosophy. One created by men whose hearts are made of lasagna.”

Aruro and Fiorenza walked out of the sea and onto dry land. The evening climate was warm and close. The air quickly dried their skin, and they began walking slowly home in their slips. They walked along the grass to one of the piers in front of them, their bare feet slapped the warm wood. The moon was now lowered, hovering large somewhere in the middle distance. Aruro whistled and sang and did cartwheels as they walked towards the gazebo at the far end of the gangway.
“You are incapable of remaining unsatisfied. You are constantly giving into your whims.
“You’re too kind to yourself. You’d do anything for you.”
Aruro climbed down from the roof of the gazebo.
“I love me. Who else will?”
“Someone else.”
“No one can love me like I do.”

In the morning, Fiorenza put the finishing touches on a poem written in cuneiform and mortar. As she washed the clay off her hands she counted the syllables diagonally and vertically, shaking the water from her fingers and wiping them on her shirt. She looked at the result that surprised and contradicted her intentions. Her mind had been elsewhere as she had been completing it. As a result of one final distracted stroke an entirely new expression had emerged. Jagged lines and complex motifs swirled and repeated themselves in visual fugues and cadenzas. Her calm, calculated intentions had come out flushed with a restricted exuberance.
She looked at the piece for a moment before walking onto the balcony to take in the morning sun. Her mentor reclined on one of the deckchairs under a parasol. In his hand he held a beaker of lysergic acid diethyl, which he casually sipped though a silly straw made of silver. Fiorenza picked up a pineapple segment squewered on the rim of the glass and placed it into her mouth.
“I made the compote with that,” her mentor said. “But I had to soak them first. If you swallow, you may not recover.”
Fiorenza ingested the segment with a gulp.
“What decision can be said to make a difference? The variables have become too great for even me to calculate. I cannot live my life like a hundred games of backgammon. I can no longer exist as an average. I submit to chance.”
As the drugs began to flow through her bloodstream Fiorenza lay down on her bear skin rug and removed her shoes and clothes. The soft, fine hair stroked and tickled her limbs. She undressed fully, stretching out her arms and legs and arching her back. Strange thoughts and subconscious impulses raced between her ears. Her legs curled and her hands clenched as she saw strange men, old and young, parade before her with swords in their arms and bomboloncini in their mouths. She drifted deeper and deeper into unconsciousness until even her dreams disappeared and she was fast asleep.

Many days past and Fiorenza slept and slept. A week past, then another and Fiorenza continued to sleep. Rumors began to spread that the great poet would never reawaken. A service was prepared and obituaries were outlined by all the major media outlets. People were interviewed and relatives sequestered, feature length presentations were produced and book deals optioned, until one day her eyes fluttered and finally opened. Faces frowned over her, a doctor removed a thermometer, and several nurses drew closer.
“You’ve been high for almost five months,” her mentor exclaimed. “You’ve been speaking in tongues and reciting verse fully formed. Your progress has been documented by a cardiologist and stenographer. Cameras were brought in thirty days ago. You have been channeling the word of God.”
Fiorenza’s eyelids opened and shut. She sat up and removed the tubes and wires from her body. Surrounding her bed there stood a small medical team, a selection of media officials and Bruno, her mentor. They watched her with attention.
“I need to be alone,” she said, and walked out of the hospital onto the beach. For several miles she walked until she came upon Aruro, sitting, looking out to sea.
“I want to experience depravity,” she said to him. “I want to know what it feels like to be lonely, unappreciated. I want to taste failure. I have yet to discover a single truth for myself.”
She looked down at Aruro.
“Would you love me?” She asked.
Aruro shrugged his shoulders.
“I am already in love,” he said.
“With who?” She asked.
“With someone else.”

When Fiorenza had first kissed Aruro, she had done it under a full moon. She had held him fast and had given herself to him as if she had been a rainbow and he a young boy. They had spent an entire year together before her sleep, and now, recovered, returned, she wondered how he could have forgotten her.
“You didn’t wait for me.” She said.
“Falling in love is so easy for me,” he replied. “I couldn’t help it.”
Fiorenza’s stomach flipped and her head began to spin. She felt motion sickness and vertigo all at once. She wondered why she had woken up at all. She looked down at her hands and at once found them ugly, her nails long and unpolished. She looked over her accomplishments and found little identification. Everything that she had ever done had come from somewhere else. She had only ever been the host. Could she honestly say that she had ever rationally calculated anything she had ever produced? Her inspiration effaced any credit that she could give herself. She felt mocked by a higher power.
“Where is your heart?” She asked angrily. “Your patience?”
Aruro shrugged his shoulders.
“You have none when you are dying.”
Fiorenza turned to him in shock.
“You are dying?”
Aruro nodded.
“We are all dying.”
Fiorenza laughed.
“Ah, but there you are wrong. We are immortal!”

When Fiorenza was 21 she died of a broken heart. This is her story.

Fiorenza, the Byzantine love poet, was an overnight sensation. Within days of her first publication large numbers of the populous began to recite her verse before dinner and at celebrations of state. Streamers were often associated with her style, herring and fruit baskets were distributed when she spoke, and matrimonial vows quickly incorporated her verse. Within a year she had attained the stature of a global icon. At nineteen Fiorenza had become a legend. Emperors as far as Iceland sent for compositions and commissions. Paper extracted from the oldest oaks were provided for her manuscripts and precious octopus wrung for their ink. Great minds, cultural leaders, tycoons and spiritual men all fell to her charms. She was pulled from every side and revered to exhaustion.
“I no longer wish to live a lofty existence,” she said. “I want secular happiness, conventional riches and jewelry made by the less privileged. I want to feel happiness at the expense of others and know that I am a success because all around me I see only failure,”
Fiorenza was beautiful when she spoke from dark places. Never was she more attractive than when she channeled the simplest dreams, her eyes sparkling when she forced her lofty values into the sludge of common thought. For her it was the greatest struggle. She was only happy when she pushed herself to her limits, when she exceeded them, when she was able to feel herself stretch. But she could go no higher, she had reached the summit of ethereal beauty. Her growth could only go backwards.
“I aspire to a commonplace philosophy. To live and breathe by the rules of a fool would be for me a grand achievement. If I can master the weakest thoughts, bend my mind to the most foolish reasoning, then I will have achieved the most difficult task. I have delusions of mediocrity. Genius has come to me too easily.”
In the winter of her 20th year, Fiorenza observed a man one evening in the drawing room of an acquaintance. He was attractive and charming but persisted only in making himself look ridiculous for the pleasure of those around him.
“How foolish,” Fiorenza said to her mentor who stood silently beside her. “He puts three profiteroles into his mouth and then star jumps. What next?”
Bruno puffed heroin from his cigarette holder. Billows of blue blazing smoke chunneled from out of his nostrils.
“They say he has begun a new renaissance in painting. That his formulas in astro physics are bringing time travel into the present. His Sistine Chapel is deemed even greater than Raphael’s. His name is Aruro.”
Fiorenza watched as he put his legs behind his head and drank soda though a straw in his nose. Bubbles emerged and he spluttered and laughed before falling onto the floor. Those around him clutched at their sides, bent double, and slapped their thighs.
“He makes a perfect spectacle of himself for the amusement of others. But who pleasures whom?”
Fiorenza’s mentor chewed at his lip and stared in Aruro’s direction.
“People call him a fraud, members of the historical community are up in arms. He often exposes himself in public. Some say he is wise,”
Fiorenza was difficult to impress. As she drained her glass, she walked past the crowd of spectators and left by way of the escalator. That evening in her bed she thought of Aruro and the smile on his face. She found it difficult to give in to him. Somewhere she felt less frustration in denying him his crowd pleasing acts than indulging them. His cow-towing is exasperating. Like a monkey, he does a monkey’s dance. Like the accordion, he is perfectly ridiculous.

The next time Fiorenza saw Aruro they were eating at separate tables in a restaurant on the beach. The sun had begun to set and the tide was slowly overtaking the land. As coffee was brought water began to flow between the legs of the tables and chairs. Several of the men removed their shoes. Trouser cuffs slowly began to moisten.
As a starter Aruro had ordered éclairs and a napoleon. Undecided about his main course he had interrogated the waitress at length, and had asked her questions about her childhood, sporting interests and musical tastes. They had agreed on two bottles of wine and a glass of gin with fish. Aruro had even stood up to thank her.
When his food arrived he had let out a belly laugh before excusing himself and removing his pants. He then examined his food thoroughly, mixing it irreverently, and throwing pieces into his mouth by way of high arching lobs. Twice he gagged and was forced to strike himself. When his digestif was brought he splashed it into his eyes and screamed hysterically before falling onto the floor.

Of all his traits, Fiorenza was particularly interested in his manner. He seemed never quite calm or at rest, he always raced and spun and squeaked. What is this condition that allows no poise, she wondered. He is desperate for stimulus. His boredom is at its apogee.
As the sun finally disappeared and the moon illuminated the water and crystal, Fiorenza stood to face the sea before departing. The waves were soft and respired slowly and deeply. She let her eyes follow the horizon all the way to the shoreline, lifting her dress and clenching her toes in the sand. Behind her there emerged a voice.
“Breadsticks! Breadsticks! Ragu! Humboldt! Vacherin! ”
Fiorenza turned to see Aruro, hand standing on a plastic deck chair, his thin, hairy legs flailing left and right. He sneezed, fell, and then saw her. He laughed with sand in his hair and his mouth pursed. He stood and shook himself like a dog, looking at her at intervals, blinking, and sneezing. Fiorenza stared at him impassively. He went to his table, took two glasses of wine and approached her.
“I’ve been watching you upside down.”
She looked at him without answering.
Aruro tilted his head like a puppy and furrowed his eyebrows.
“But you look better now.”
Fiorenza watched as he drank from both glasses.
“Swim with me,” he said, and they ran into the sea and shook off their clothes. The Mediterranean clasped them with water hands. They walked up to their necks and began strolling parallel to the beach in slow motion, their bodies under the water level, their heads above the surface. Like two eggs, they hovered eastwards, circling each other and gently swaying with the tide.

“We spoke of astrology at length and then Chile. We exchanged several recipes, a chicken parmigianno, and took turns swimming under each others legs. Then we found a manatee and named it.”
Fiorenza’s mentor nodded his head and reheated his light bulb, inhaling deeply on the brown, black smoke.
“How many lives has he lived?”
Fiorenza swung at the fumes and redirected them into the fire.
“I did not ask him outright, but I believe the number to be a double digit, and even. He has seen so much,” she continued. “Everything bores him. He is oppressed by a need to constantly stimulate himself. It is slowly becoming his only business.”

Aruro and Fiorenza continued to walk through the water, their bodies submerged and weightless. Aruro was excited as he spoke.
“Many people have died of boredom. Cases have been found in Syria, Israel, the Middle East, Miami. Think of witches, alchemists, radicals. They were bored shitless. The opportunities in any world will eventually prove finite. With enough time everything can be done. Then what?” Aruro lowered his mouth below the water level and blew bubbles onto the surface.

“He does not buy into the concept of struggle,” Fiorenza said to her mentor.
“His treatise on neo-morality denies the existence of nobility in struggle. He calls it a pumpkin-pie philosophy. One created by men whose hearts are made of lasagna.”

Aruro and Fiorenza walked out of the sea and onto dry land. The evening climate was warm and close. The air quickly dried their skin, and they began walking slowly home in their slips. They walked along the grass to one of the piers in front of them, their bare feet slapped the warm wood. The moon was now lowered, hovering large somewhere in the middle distance. Aruro whistled and sang and did cartwheels as they walked towards the gazebo at the far end of the gangway.
“You are incapable of remaining unsatisfied. You are constantly giving into your whims.
“You’re too kind to yourself. You’d do anything for you.”
Aruro climbed down from the roof of the gazebo.
“I love me. Who else will?”
“Someone else.”
“No one can love me like I do.”

In the morning, Fiorenza put the finishing touches on a poem written in cuneiform and mortar. As she washed the clay off her hands she counted the syllables diagonally and vertically, shaking the water from her fingers and wiping them on her shirt. She looked at the result that surprised and contradicted her intentions. Her mind had been elsewhere as she had been completing it. As a result of one final distracted stroke an entirely new expression had emerged. Jagged lines and complex motifs swirled and repeated themselves in visual fugues and cadenzas. Her calm, calculated intentions had come out flushed with a restricted exuberance.
She looked at the piece for a moment before walking onto the balcony to take in the morning sun. Her mentor reclined on one of the deckchairs under a parasol. In his hand he held a beaker of lysergic acid diethyl, which he casually sipped though a silly straw made of silver. Fiorenza picked up a pineapple segment squewered on the rim of the glass and placed it into her mouth.
“I made the compote with that,” her mentor said. “But I had to soak them first. If you swallow, you may not recover.”
Fiorenza ingested the segment with a gulp.
“What decision can be said to make a difference? The variables have become too great for even me to calculate. I cannot live my life like a hundred games of backgammon. I can no longer exist as an average. I submit to chance.”
As the drugs began to flow through her bloodstream Fiorenza lay down on her bear skin rug and removed her shoes and clothes. The soft, fine hair stroked and tickled her limbs. She undressed fully, stretching out her arms and legs and arching her back. Strange thoughts and subconscious impulses raced between her ears. Her legs curled and her hands clenched as she saw strange men, old and young, parade before her with swords in their arms and bomboloncini in their mouths. She drifted deeper and deeper into unconsciousness until even her dreams disappeared and she was fast asleep.

Many days past and Fiorenza slept and slept. A week past, then another and Fiorenza continued to sleep. Rumors began to spread that the great poet would never reawaken. A service was prepared and obituaries were outlined by all the major media outlets. People were interviewed and relatives sequestered, feature length presentations were produced and book deals optioned, until one day her eyes fluttered and finally opened. Faces frowned over her, a doctor removed a thermometer, and several nurses drew closer.
“You’ve been high for almost five months,” her mentor exclaimed. “You’ve been speaking in tongues and reciting verse fully formed. Your progress has been documented by a cardiologist and stenographer. Cameras were brought in thirty days ago. You have been channeling the word of God.”
Fiorenza’s eyelids opened and shut. She sat up and removed the tubes and wires from her body. Surrounding her bed there stood a small medical team, a selection of media officials and Bruno, her mentor. They watched her with attention.
“I need to be alone,” she said, and walked out of the hospital onto the beach. For several miles she walked until she came upon Aruro, sitting, looking out to sea.
“I want to experience depravity,” she said to him. “I want to know what it feels like to be lonely, unappreciated. I want to taste failure. I have yet to discover a single truth for myself.”
She looked down at Aruro.
“Would you love me?” She asked.
Aruro shrugged his shoulders.
“I am already in love,” he said.
“With who?” She asked.
“With someone else.”

When Fiorenza had first kissed Aruro, she had done it under a full moon. She had held him fast and had given herself to him as if she had been a rainbow and he a young boy. They had spent an entire year together before her sleep, and now, recovered, returned, she wondered how he could have forgotten her.
“You didn’t wait for me.” She said.
“Falling in love is so easy for me,” he replied. “I couldn’t help it.”
Fiorenza’s stomach flipped and her head began to spin. She felt motion sickness and vertigo all at once. She wondered why she had woken up at all. She looked down at her hands and at once found them ugly, her nails long and unpolished. She looked over her accomplishments and found little identification. Everything that she had ever done had come from somewhere else. She had only ever been the host. Could she honestly say that she had ever rationally calculated anything she had ever produced? Her inspiration effaced any credit that she could give herself. She felt mocked by a higher power.
“Where is your heart?” She asked angrily. “Your patience?”
Aruro shrugged his shoulders.
“You have none when you are dying.”
Fiorenza turned to him in shock.
“You are dying?”
Aruro nodded.
“We are all dying.”
Fiorenza laughed.
“Ah, but there you are wrong. We are immortal!”

When Fiorenza was 21 she died of a broken heart. This is her story.