…to the pavement, the whistle of machines blasting through the corridors. Behind glass, the operators remain outside my field of view. It’s as if the vehicles themselves are alive. The few people who are visible have little time to engage with me, so the mood is contained, or maybe the absence of contact creates the feeling, a subtle quiet that depends on being autonomously observed – as if I’m a statue. Inside my stony entrails, an animal burrows through garbage. My eyes refuse to focus. The crowd demands that I release control, restrict the data flow to blocks of light and sound, an amalgam of voices and engine noises, the sluggish churn of my heart. I enter the bus mechanically, searching the aisle in such a way that none return my gaze. In the seat I absorb the dull throb of the engine, the tonal qualities emanating from the crowd, unfiltered, nearly every channel full of light and warmth. I quickly realize the bus can’t carry so much weight, and so lumber back into the solar haze.
Time is abject, the warm concrete full of waiting. A train approaches ― a hot slug screaming in slow-motion, bells ringing, metal on metal ― from the wrong direction. Hours rolling to an unknown place between the soft dark that spreads in static waves and somewhere I’ve never seen. The light trails from broken glass and sequins, the machines throb, cascading endlessly. We are not visible here. On the sidewalk, peaceful brainwaves, the world streams past middle-aged, worn. They hurry by with tiny dogs and bags full of hair-care products: families, Christians. Impounded iron, swirling smokestack flume in the distance where a beautiful young woman glides past on a bicycle. In these small and desperate times, the microcosm of life we call modern, there’s a greater need to establish parameters, to set up shop quickly, instinctively, to resume emanating, signaling. This is node 5213295.. The bus is late, but I’m at peace. My time on the bench is long enough that I begin to meditate. How is it blissful by nature, the field of mind? To be immersed in the flow is to reconstruct your environment from an elemental level, from hot points and dangerous boundaries to a plasmic, dynamic whole that writhes and beats in synchronous patterns the form and shape of mind, its living element. It appears that all things burst from a singular source that ceaselessly blasts the impetus of life, the innate thing that turns a leaf toward the light, which causes all things to grow. To bathe whole in the creation field is to simultaneously cease to exist, and to exist fully. Wonderful thing of light and beauty, is it so difficult to perceive? It eludes us, nearly all of us remain in a fierce jungle of our own design. Watts. The full biosphere morphs into urban black. A mother enters with two children whom she controls very strongly, to protect them. They’re very happy. A burst of female energy, animated stories of their circles, who said what, fragments of their lives, keeping order from a perceived chaos. The hand that strives to protect, to defend, simultaneously damning ― yet the miraculous functioning loves, and loves. The car explodes in youthful energy, a game of dice. The press forward, its urgency evidence of the nature of its source, its powerful emanations blast through the filaments; rays of light, the glowing core. What is this?