Lions that Chew the Grass

Fragment of Chapter 1

First published as a Puja in the full Moon in Leo, February the 16th, 2022.
To my friend J. Written in 2004—2023

To read full text in PDF, to order the hard-cover book

’Your dead will live, Lord;

    their bodies will rise—

let those who dwell in the dust

    wake up and shout for joy—

your dew is like the dew of the morning;

    the earth will give birth to her dead.’

In court of God:

who used Lord’s name?

homeless addicted under Pont Neuf

those who screamed that the god is dead

who burned the women in His name

That’s why they screamed 

For when one uses tantra, shall know Sutra

remorse

You gave a promise

when time has come 

What did you say? 

Or did you drop the stone?

war 

volunteering 

spy 

a traitor

an actor from the Netflix Dark 

Or its script writer

Or an actress

Or her lover

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife 

white rose

sind frei Gedanken

And do you think I lie  

A model looking kid

Does it still hurt 

Or both

Are you afraid of women

Well can you even read it

Dark

hi from Berlin anyway

But not to you

Its better for today

From Berlin to TA

Like Vilannele, 

who’s passport bleeds

It bleeds so much 

So she saved lives

replacing them with 

tracks and tracks

Of life

The Dawn

wer kann 

the names?

I won’t 

‘I won't compromise

I won't live a life

On my knees

You think I am nothing

You've got something coming

Something coming

Because

I hear God's Whisper

Calling my name

It's in the wind

I am the saviour’

walk on the water

Like you do

you met a dawn

A mercy

a gods voice

It never asked to worship

never asked to kneel

It never asked to bleed

And when you asked for Chod

It was for tigers mother and her cub 

Not for mosquitos 

As Norbu said, rest, dearest Teacher

Do you remember? 

Where we’ve met last time?

Because we never met and never will

You’ve met a snow ball in the fire

That doesn’t melt

So much youve seen

a dom

who bleeds for homeless on the street

Not for the empty gorgeousness we mention

Not for superiority complex

For when the time had come

You did not see 

in eyes of stranger

Anything to share your mercy

Not therapist not priest not doctor

In church of life creation

By those who can create

A life.

Chapter 1

This is a universe of nouns.

Dawn’s sunlight softly touches the ship, floating in the silence and sparkling on the metal.

Now comes the sunrise.

Storms of the past, they are waves of changes. They remind me of who I think I am. A cell in the biological society. And I start up again: eat, sleep, breath, read, think, eat again.

"If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now…"

The tides of our ancestors pass by. We name our heroes by the names of our grandfathers, and we are floating through such words.

I am sailing through Scharff, Kernberg, and through the tea I sip meanwhile. Whether looking out to sea or into my cup, I drown in this emotional landscape.

Into the abyss others have also dunked their souls into, as they suffer similarly due to love. In its absence, there is violence, turning goodness into meaningless. And from within my core feelings arise, mixing into an abyss that looks up at me.

‘When the narcissistic personality falls in love, the idealization of the loved object may center on physical beauty as a source of admiration or on power, wealth, or fame as attributes to be admired and unconsciously incorporated as part of the self’

I closed Kernberg and ordered one more pot for a tea.

The center of my art research is a novel from the past. Here, the author’s “false self” uses psychoanalytics to replace the missing parts of herself, until she was able to release her “true self” better, like a peacock unfurling its tail.

I also borrow love from the past — trying on different constellations of emotions like I would try dresses. How about this one? Does it match my hair?

I went through the author’s notes — her conversations with friends. She was also an artist, who used lines and spots for her compositions. 

She took photos of women wearing fig earrings that made them look like a Mantegna painting. 

She wrote about the moonlight, how it was landing on white hortensia bushes in twilight. Paraiba tourmalines — and their sugar inclusions — go so well with the skin after the sun. Yellow diamonds and rubies suit blonde hair, like blood on snow, working through contrast.

I read,

‘We are prisoners of the abilities and limits of our neuron system. The edges touch the object which is being scaled. And we build our vision of the world based on that. 

We simplified and simplified, disregarding any spectra. How does it work?

Complex systems are not predictable, so we use reductions.’ 

Computations.Libraries.

Pure Lands

The obligatory emotional medicines that make one euphoric are taken by all but a few. Those few include children, bodhisattvas, scientists, and expeditors like me.

As an expeditor I work for a scents department.

Culture today is under the protection of the Federations Union. 

Here are the rules: an artist that creates art objects has the right not to take obligatory medications. Although many of my friends medicate and do incredible work. But expeditors like me refuse, as we want to allow art its natural evolution. 

Questions about art produced via medication appear in the news, and it is debated by three sides: the bodhisattvas, the Department of the Medicated, and the Department of Expeditors. 

So, as with many other aspects of our life, we finally have a government that brings no harm, and serves the people. Since there is no crime, it is a government of mercy. 

Art has a navigational function, same as emotions that we have partly lost: fear, anger, shame, and guilt. Art is the neuronal system of society. It holds onto memory. It is a map of us, who we are, and who we were. 

There are only two career options available to me: either to become a bodhisattva, or return to medication.

It prevents wars, and ecological catastrophe. It keeps humans happy without side effects. People can communicate better. We just had no other options, since we redescribed ourselves as psyhos. All of us. We stopped pretending and hoping we can do it better naturally. Because we can't.

The monetary system was abolished, leaving only time as a resource.

And this is the first paradox for an expeditor. Our lives are short. We take drugs, we live around 140 years, we die when we wish. We can be tired of life, of happiness, joy, and love. We return to the light. We die peacefully, gracefully — giving away the last breath of love consciously to others.
But as an expeditor, I am afraid of death. I am bearing the cross of these barbaric thoughts: what to eat, what to fix, what to work on, how to look. I am even considering falling in love one day.

And then there are the people that go missing in this blissful chaos. People migrate all over the Earth, learning the best of crafts from each other, sharing knowledge. And some go to the free territories, leaving all their connections behind. We do not attempt to trace their lives nor deaths. How do we know if they went by their own free will? Afterall, since we can’t forbid solitude, tracing them would deny fundamental rights. 

I wonder, was anyone ever kidnapped? There’s no proof of this — nothing bad was ever unearthed over decades. ...Can I believe that? Shall I take a trip to a free land to investigate? 

And then there is the Department of Ascensions. Set up for religious and post-religious proceedings, as more and more bodhisattvas today turn into rainbow bodies. 

…

Most Bodhisattvas start their career as expeditors. The city is a branch of government. Its inhabitants help to negotiate the rights and influence of expeditors. They work with Lea, a Spirit of Data. They do research and supervise the expeditors.

Most expeditors return to medication. The institution maintains the illusion that the old form of evolution is continuing. I say ‘illusion’ because I feel that our culture is already permeated with drugs. 

The level of physical pain that is necessary for surviving is regulated by the dosage. We keep memory in art so the pain from the past will not disappear from history. Like the cautious anarchism of Feyerabend, we keep it just in case someone will need it.

But sometimes I feel like I'm falling apart. As a container of the past, I am stuck between worlds. In a paradoxical space of simultaneous belief and non-belief. I am delusional, to keep the structure, instead of perceiving the actual beauty of eternity of being. I am in my mental prison,because someone must be, for the humans yet to come . 

People care for me, and at the same time I freak people out. I am a danger. I am stigmatized, a Lacanian nomad, a gap in the language. I am not allowed to talk to people, unless they insist. 

I am not the same as people from the past. The journey to pain is endless, deeper and deeper, until one is not a human anymore. One way or another. Hitler was a vegetarian. What do we know? We threw out that marketing positivistic bullshit, with all it brought. And we left hard work to give goodness some time and space, as long as we can, remembering how fragile our goodness is, what darkness can arise from any of us. 

We voted as a majority, after years of waiting for this apocalyptical vote day. We castrated humanity. And those who we left uncastrated, suffer most. 

Do we even have the same chemistry, you and me? Do I really help you? 

…

I feel my body as a volume. Raindrops land on clay pots in my backyard, onto the pumpkins and leaves around. I observe my body, not from top to bottom, but as a whole; not from the dot of a center, but from a whole volume. Senses mix into one multi-dimensional sensation; meaning mixes, states of mind. How many delicate states of mind can they be aware, distinguish? When I am a miner. I have one state of mind: I survive. I do my job. My job is to survive one more day. I keep the natural evolution of freedom alive.

If I suppress emotions, it becomes toxic. As an expeditor, I have my own diagnosis, which specifically permits me: “emotions, connected to the arts, involved in the creation process, and/or are associated with the production of art objects”.

Some of my perfumes will not be produced for years, so I am not even sure I will see them. The legalization of the components works its way through years of bureaucracy. And I am a Carcosa man of complicated ornaments with gaps, topologically speaking.

I think of the rhythm of spaceships. They are like rustless old trains. They are free from the smells of the past. There is no starting point, no rails. Space is looped. I feel everything is useless unless it leads to happiness for the human race. We could never create life. We couldn't print the organs. Each of us is a mystery, locked in happiness. This is the smallest price we could possibly pay. The suffering is only for those who choose it. There is no violence. Never again.  

We learned about ourselves more than we wanted. We made decisions. We stopped the pain. The first apocalypse has happened in the happiest, most peaceful way possible. 

I am not allowed to move without special documents, I do not have the same rights as everybody else. I am transferring alive information for those who make decisions from a point of blessing. I am unhappy. I am unhappy because of the past. Because we can't erase it. I am fucking unhappy, I never can be happy, I live in endless pain of compassion and mental pain of death.

The stage is the earth and the audience is space. My status is a prisoner of a colony of expeditors, with the special mark “artist”.

Chod

I make lines on the monitor with the Pen, creating a dark-green field. It is then filled with a gradient of shades. Then, by adding shadows with my fingers, I make a liquid hologram appear to shine. I will add a fish that swims. I will save it before we begin orbiting Mars. Art is my medication, and I constantly search for compositions, shapes, scents.

This dark green shimmering liquid contains deepwater weeds, moss, fresh water mud, leaves of clove, sweet rose pepper, plankton. Such things touch the heart of legal artists.

Eighty years ago my teacher of aromatics received the Nobel Prize for the Table of Aromatic Compounds. Twelve people were there that day. 

We take a walk together and speak about climate change and the extinction of animals, all the while keeping an eye out. These are dangerous topics, but we are excited to receive bad news for a change. 

We speak about plants that disappeared not long ago. What do we feel?

For the new perfume, we sought seaweed from deep waters, totalling one hundred twenty four new plants and organisms. To the scent of these night waters, where the sun never comes, I add a splash of fire within the bottle.

We show in the video a glass: if you warm up the bottle with your hands, the liquid on the sides turns blue, and the plankton shimmers, the bottle disappears and the water appears to hover in place, with small fish swimming through it.

The liquid of the scent of a real bottle also changes its color in response to human body temperature. This perfume brings out something from the deep. The logo features a blind deepwater fish - huge in size and resistant to high pressure. I named it “Es”, after Freud, or gravitation, or pain of the past.

…

People's faces are incredible. And they are changed when they meet me. I am a cause of compassion that comes in waves. I am not quite sure why, but I feel ashamed too, to be who I am. Is that a transference of contr-transference, that is not even there? Of those ghosts of the emotions of the past still follow humans, but only I can see them?

People know what we expeditors do and why. Somewhere in the deep of their minds, they know they need us, for we navigate the depths, we protect. Do we?

There are those who are illegally unmedicated. Let us mention those.

They always stay in one place; they live in families or alone, like cats or rats, invisible even though they create compassion amongst their fellows.

Some of them stopped taking medication out of curiosity, while others did so purely out of compassion. Sometimes they can come to this place just following a convincing conversation on the street. The relationship between expeditors and these unmedicated laypeople is heavily regulated.

I unexpectedly see images of war on a screen in the ship’s corridor. Waves of compassion run over me. I tear my eyes away to avoid reaching my emotional limits. I turn instead to the window. I feel anger. Couldn’t we destroy all memories of the wars? 

And then I feel guilt. I am egoistic. I can’t stand even a memory — how can I ignore the people who really lived through it?  I am just a miserable stone on the road.

People on earth could barely come up with an idea more cruel than the hugging of a stranger for fun. And the target of such cruelty will always be an expeditor for sure — someone as nervous as me.

Sometimes I wonder, am I afraid of happiness? Maybe I am afraid of becoming immortal, happy and almighty? I love her, my woman from the past. Through her I feel the war too. I just know what she would say. She would say: we know nothing. Everything you think you know is nothing. She would say nothing, just would look silently. But that would be a lot to understand. And someone, someone needs to translate it, or keep it. No. I just can't let her go. I want to share her suffering. That's all. When she said, it wasn't ever suffering in comparison to the war.

Like the Woman in the Dunes by Abe, who was afraid to step out of her prison with no walls. If I were there this melody would stay forever. These four minutes could be a universe of sounds and colors, a chemistry. And I am chilled by this horror of reality.

I feel worse now. Sweat appears on my forehead and I think of my bottle, a door to life, gateway — just four ampules would matriculate me to the expeditor’s pensioned paradise. 

I can stop time. My work day is finished, and I am still an expeditor. I pour my tea and sip. It sounded like pine branches in the wind.

…

Finally I am home. I make myself cozy in my working chair. The sound of new multi-level road construction reminds me of a giant Tibetan horn. So loud I can’t hear the bells in my window. I look at the plate full of scented pyramids ashes, and catch a note of Cannibale Serge Lutens on my wrist. Blue twilight turns into darkness. By the time they finish this monument road, a few expeditors will be hospitalized.

There is a hue like that of green eyes, mixed with that of a black tea, both delicate like spring air. My room falls asleep, drowning in awakened cello sounds. With my eyes closed I imagine the wind tracing through the road, mixing with that noisome horn, or whatever makes such horrible sounds.

And there’s this place — a true nowhere, same as those eyes tone. In a dream, I lost connection with the earth. I was in a forest on another planet. It felt so lost. But it was the right place. The center of art is carelessly fashionable and relaxed, with its laboratories, design bureaus, and endless construction sites. I live here in my numb apartment, that loves me like a faceless woman, who accepted her own amnesia, or an amnesia of the whole planet. 

I found a glass unicorn in storage, along with chess and Go sets, made of stone. In this apartment I inherited just a few plants and dusty windows. And, looking at the quartz rocks, I get the idea that before I might have lived here myself, before I forgot. Half-alive lemon tree, that gives one flower a year, like cicada.

Another new scent I work on is as transparent as a jellyfish, with multi-colour algae in the alcohol, sea salt in a tender purplish rose plume, electrical rhubarb overflow, and a secretive black flower from the laboratory. Its velvet leaves grow up to two meters high. These flowers look like giant campanulas, or pumpkin flowers, and are absolutely black. Sadly I can’t remember its new name, but it’s from our laboratory in New Zealand.  

Usually I do not go to laboratories, or orangeries. I receive flowers here, and I remember their smells better than their names. 

Am I tired?

Once again I go through the names of our lab flowers, looking for the name: Silene stenophylla, Brahmi, campanulas... but where was that black flower? The stopper is as soft as jellyfish, and then a cover fits atop the stopper. The ocean waves up its waves.