ROUND ONE
having a fetish for functionalist architecture finally pays off as I lay on my carpet sunbathing, thanks to the great bay window facing southeast. the days have become lazy and long, and while dividing my time between doing yoga and reading I fall more and more for julius.
“like shakti, who is absolutely free, the kaula is called svecchakari, which means “one who can do as he or she pleases.” because of this behavior, ordinary people may fear, shun, or condemn a kaula.
there is a significant difference between the two tantric paths, that of the right hand and that of the left hand (which are both under shiva's aegis). in the former, the adept always experiences “someone above him,” even at the highest level of realization. in the latter, “he becomes the ultimate sovereign” (cakravartin = world ruler). this means that the duality between the integrated person and the dimension of transcendence, or between the human and god, has been overcome.”
I realize that I was wrong a week ago when putting in serious writing a hint about buddhism possibly developing to fill a certain ideological need which hinduism lacked. sorry for that, dear readers in the academic sphere.
“the highest hindu ideal of liberation, moksha, is synonymous with the radical deconditioning of one's being, and thus it implies going beyond dharma and karma. on a social plane, hinduism did acknowledge one's right to leave dharma and to be excused from obligations to one's caste in order to pursue the absolute through asceticism and contemplative yoga. I find it necessary to emphasize the absolute nature of the ultimte goal, which somehow eludes most westerners. the goal consists in transcending and in subordinating to oneself every form of existence, whether divine, human, subhuman, material, or spiritual. it has been suggested that a divine nature is subject to conditionings like every other nature, in the same fashion that a human is bound, be it by gold or iron chain.”
ROUND TWO
the past winter made it clear for a handful of kids that the house dedicated for the sobering up of cabin crew had become the place where couches come to die. I had heard rumors about a guy living somewhere in the midst of the “central park” growing from our backyard, which in finnish reality translates to a central forest. so, in order to give one of the couches a new life we dragged the second most rotten couch to the rocks of the forest in question.
now, at ten am me and the most tattooed up air hostess I have ever seen sit on it, drinking red wine and whiskey. I am beginning to think we are too old for this kind of vacillation, especially when the reasons behind it stem from such a juvenile source.
“a kali yuga mayhem is spreading around us.”
“I know.”
“and like always, we are decades late from whatever is going on. this is f-land,
come visit to see this kali yuga tragedy performed by aryan douches, and a few mongoloids in the mix.”
I lean back as I face the sun that has already risen above the trees. I know nothing about kali yuga and maybe as a diversion my mind associates to a random quote by jerry rubin. I don't even know who the fuck he is, but
“young whites are dropping out of white society. we are getting our heads straight, creating new identities. we’re dropping out of middle-class institutions, leaving their schools, running away from their homes, and forming our own communities.
while the earth spins new perspectives for the sun's rays we become quite wasted as the sounds of traffic become louder and louder beyond a strip of trees. the conversations have been dealing with love and personal histories all day, so I guess it is no surprise to find myself rambling about bicycles.
“I was born and also tried to be raised in a suburb in vantaa which was built mainly in the eighties to serve as a bay for workers. nobody saw the early 1990s recession of f-land coming back then, I guess, because instead of having any idea about any bays my early childhood was colored by immigrants with rifles and other interesting phenomena. I am very grateful for it all, because it triggered the natural development of very useful skills for an escapist.
I remember being six or seven and teaching myself to estimate distances and draw an internal map accurate enough to provide an immediate feed on the best route to vanish in the case of menace. I guess I was motivated also by the fact that my caretakers were giving me an amount of responsibility corresponding to my level of independence, which I could easily reflect in my skills of always knowing where I was and how to deal myself out of all the trouble I got myself into on my own. I just wanted to spread my range.
nowadays I function according to the principle of being consistently able to find my way back to a place I have been in, be that place anywhere and be it reached through any possible method. or at least I have not run into a situation where that function wouldn't serve itself. except in ossi and in amsterdam but well, you know. if you give me a map in a strange place I just need to briefly look at it and my mind automatically makes a 3d estimation of how the route from a given a to b will approximately look and more importantly, feel, like.
I have done benchmarking in my life but never when orienting myself.
when I got my first bike my feet barely reached its pedals, but it didn't take me long to become completely one with that red kaunotar. I remember having my first, and only, experience of looking at myself from out of myself when driving it downhill with my hands by my sides like wings. every time I am in the process of growing to become one with something I experience the same thrill of reaching a balance which is extended from my body to the outer realm. that first bike taught me to be able to travel great distances, which was awesome because I knew I had to be set to gtfo.
it was two years ago, quite exactly, and I was standing a few blocks from our current flat in an inside courtyard resembling a garden, squeezed in between a house built in the twenties, a house built in the fourties and two houses built in the fifties. I guess the thirties were skipped due to us being an ally to the nazis which meant using our resources into having tweekers invade soviet union. anyway, my ex had been around the city when he had seen an abandoned bike which somehow said to him that it should be given to me. I stood there looking at the bike for some time before I realized the thing was it being red kaunotar. what thing, I do not know.”
“you know what I just realized? he fucking has my wizards and warriors.”
“what?”
“fucking wizards and warriors, I gave it to jonathan!”
“what! retrieve the games!”
ROUND THREE
a number of years ago I spent some time in a two room apartment owned by a swedish architect I had met only once in a club built into an old movie theater, both in žižkov. the architect had left for brno or plzeň, can't remember, but the days I had in his house in the company of tetris were amazing. still, I was to go to berlin for some reason, and after having delayed my departure for a while I finally reached friedrichshain.
we were living some weird age of electro and I ended up in a club built into an old metro station after wandering the streets for days. I realized something very important about music and math when I saw a kid stand alone in a corner behind his friends who were scattered on two couches, moving his hands right in front of him in weird rapid patterns, up and down. it didn't take me long to understand that his hands were counting. what, I don't know, but my hands have begun to do the same since.
randomly enough, among the kids sat a thirty something architecture student born and raised on the ddr side of berlin. we spent the night together with
pink dolphins in a huge studio of his cousin, waiting for the sun to rise. during a walk on an allee he shared his first name with, which in reality is named after marx, he did enough to make me comprehend what is stalin's baroque in order for us to show our respectful fingers to alexander platz by climbing 13 floors on some building's scaffolding to the unfinished roof.
“this is it, and this is fucking ten years ago, nineteen ninety-eight. take another ten and berlin won't be as it is today. the money will ruin it all.”
“are you against money?”
“no, I am not against money. I am against the sterile environment people with money wish to create for themselves when in the need for a sense of security, arising from having possessions. when we let people like that run our cities we loose the unlit parks, the graffiti and the weird motherfuckers roaming the streets everywhere. it was boring enough back in the day when everybody in the east just wanted to gtfo.”
the clashing of views on a roof lost in time eventually led to a wrestling match between us two, just in order to solve our differences in a manly manner. I had my final realization as my back got pressed against the bare concrete topped with broken glass while some fifty meters from us a construction worker was starting his day of work by the isover piles. he looked at us, smiled, and went about his business.
somewhere, lost in time, everything was ok for the fucked up free individuals.
