Just Another Story

Tripping in Amed, my ipod froze as it was making its way through the shuffle – otherwise known as DJ God. The light remained on and the track showing was Just Another Story, The Return of the Space Cowboy. Now, on mushrooms, the phrase, ‘can I have some toast?’ can be thought of as a profound truth. So I understand if you are picturing a couple of stoners with a glazed look in their eyes marvelling at tiny miracles. If you can let that go, come with me onto the ledge of the bathroom where the following truth was revealed…

I sat with Cat on the ledge, not a cloud in the sky, looking at more stars than could be imagined. To one side of us were the hills whose lights appeared as more stars. The other side was the ocean. As we sat there and attempted to take it all in we could hear our minds chattering. ‘I’ve seen this before’ they would say. ‘That’s the stars, that’s the ocean, that’s a hill, this is a ledge’ as if nothing remarkable was occurring in those moments. As we moved from our categorising minds into our hearts and solar plexuses we could stare with child-like innocence at the sheer magnificence of it all. But even the thought, 'this is magnificent' is a judgement which makes the opposite also true.

It goes on forever this chatter – the mushrooms just helped us to see it from a different perspective away from ordinary consciousness. For a moment we are participants in an unravelling play to which we are neither the playwright nor the director. We are just playing a game in which the rules are unclear, but it’s fun and spontaneous and full of life. Then the mind draws you back to the attic and it becomes You and Me. It is Guilt and Blame. It is Success and Failure. The right side of the brain always arguing against the left side into eternity.

Just another story. One on top of the other on top of the other. Characters intertwining into the roles of good guy and bad guy, mother and father, ally and enemy. Time getting distorted into past becoming future becoming past again. The endless loops of mind-centered madness and all the while we are missing the unknowable truth.

I write about this trip because it continues to teach me today as I think back. And the irony of it all is it has become just another story. Trying to hold onto truth such as this is, as Jnaneshwar puts it, like trying to pick up a wave. All you will pick up is water. So I share it with my blog audience, whoever you may be, because it seems selfish to confine it to a bathroom ledge on the east coast of Bali in the still of a night of nothingness.