I've always considered myself to be a "spiritual" person. What exactly I mean by that, I am not sure. I guess I mean, it seems to me I have a "spirit" and I am aware of it. But, I never really entertained the idea that my spirit connected to anything, except nature, and the odd woman.
I mean there were times earlier in my life, when I would meet a woman and it was as if a door opened in my soul. Kind of like those dreams you have where you're walking through your house, and you find rooms you didn't know were there. That's what it would be like. I'd meet a woman and I would find other rooms, more ornately adorned and frangrant places inside myself.
And when I would make love to a woman who opened these new rooms, I would feel as if she reached in to them and helped to decorate them with herself. I wasn't clear about it, though. It seemed as if, maybe, these new rooms in my soul were her rooms. Maybe they weren't rooms in my soul at all. Maybe they were the private, but infinite, amphitheatres of her heart.
Certainly, some women inspired in me a feeling of openess, within myself, which was larger than the spaces I had previously known myself to encompass. I feel as if I, Screaming Memes, live in a small room with a window to an infinite view, a study, within which, one can read many books which look out into the sky. So, I have an infinite feeling within me, but I feel confined personally, if that makes sense.
When I say "infinite amphitheatre" for instance, I remember, literally, with one woman, of whom I was particularly fond, I felt as if I had enlarged exponentially. One time I was with her and it felt like I was dancing with her on the peak of a hill with a valley below, a 360 view of valleys and green hills and mountains.
Now, it could have just been the marijuana, but that was the image I got. Truth is, we were just talking, alone in a room, and I was holding her close.
I'm trying to be honest with myself here. I remember a time, when I was younger, when I felt these moments of profound peace. I called them "spiritual" experiences then, but I didn't give any thought to where they came from. These experiences I have had here in Maui the past few days have inspired a calmness and a contemplation which I find difficult to achieve in the frenetic environment of the city, as I'm sure you can tell.
I haven't felt like this for a long time. I really don't know what to think.
But, I feel as if I'm coming to some sort of clearing, like stepping out of a thick forest into, well, I don't know.
I can say this. There was a feeling of destiny or foreordination about the experiences I have had. But, here's the really strange thing. There was also a feeling of deja vu, like I had experienced all of this before. No, not even just experienced, but that I had participated in creation in some way. I don't know how to explain this.
Certainly, I know that the beach, and the mountains of Maui, are beyond my scope to imagine, let alone create. That is laughable. I am, absolutely, awed by their beauty, but I feel as if I have sat, somewhere, with someone, before, and had it all explained to me. That's what I mean by foreordination. I feel as if this beauty is written in me.
Now, I know I'm not being specific about anything here. I'm talking about the essence of my experience. I'm being abstract.
Truthfully, emotonally, it's hard for me to say that, when I was out walking with Ngude the other day, I was moved, almost to tears, just by looking at one large, veined, impossibly green leaf, which hung down from a tree, at a delicate and, somehow perfect angle, right in my path. It's hard to explain how it seemed so right to me. So excellent, and deserving of a loving, almost sexual adoration. But it's true. I looked at the web of it's veins. The liquid sheen of it, belying it's more sublte textures; it's fingerprint. A leaf I would have just thought to be in my way, on another day, if say, I were walking in Central Park.
Or, how do I say that the constant roar of a waterfall, we found hidden in a little cove, gave off a massive sense of stillness? How do I explain that I felt pinned, or rather struck immovable, by silence, while all raged furiously around me? And yet I was still fully under control of my will. I looked at the waterfall, and moved my hand up in front of my face, just to see if I could move. I could, but it was as if the stillness was a living being, born inside me, and once again, the deja vu.
These are very disjointed thoughts, perhaps. I'm sorry if I'm not making any sense to you. I'm trying to make these things make sense to me.
