{"id":8386,"date":"2017-09-01T10:51:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T17:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8386"},"modified":"2018-01-20T07:25:30","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T15:25:30","slug":"about-dying-a-thousand-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=8386","title":{"rendered":"About Dying a Thousand Deaths…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of: ‘Terror…’ by Benito Valles – Flickr
http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y9ge8jmn
<\/p><\/div>\n

I used to have a kind of ‘spacephobia<\/em>‘ as a small child, particularly around sleep and nightmares. Scary things lurking in a dark and silent not-knowing… leave the nightlight on and the door ajar… a wakefulness to cling to at the edge of an abyss of dread… of dreams of things that would end me… a breathless void…<\/p>\n

Then one night, I faced the fear in a dream… confronted the snarling teeth and red angry eyes materializing from the formlessness. I stood my living ground and challenged it… and then, a fearful, snarling certain death slowly receded into the blackness never to return…<\/p>\n

I let go of the fear of the dark, that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdeficient emptiness<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and merged with it… I became the space I was terrified of… eventually I understood that space as my capacity to know… the essence of me, not the images and things filling it that I constantly and habitually identified with. I was more than all my stories, more than what I thought of myself\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

My friend Ken seems to have faced that fear in time\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 moment to fleeting moment\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 <\/p>\n

AMUSEMENT
\n\tBy Ken McKeon<\/p>\n

I think of death and the blue sky,
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d scoop out a grave right there,
\nDaytime, sun lit, warm,<\/p>\n

But nighttime all within
\n The circulating realms of starlit fabrications,
\n The orderly reeling of explosive life,
\n Dazzlement darlings,<\/p>\n

The get-a-longs that bring about the whole array,<\/p>\n

All of us in the service of its imagined gods,<\/p>\n

Why not rest among them,
\n Bones of ivory openly buried
\n In the shifting timelessness of the whole shebang,<\/p>\n

Trippy huh?<\/p>\n

And just why not?<\/p>\n

I have a child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treasure here in my worn out wallet,
\nAn e-ticket from Disneyland 1957,
\nIt might be still good on a major Tomorrowland ride,<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d take it once again,
\nI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d blast off from Anaheim,
\nI wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to pack,
\nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s come as you are,
\nAnd once up, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d simply slip out a hatch,
\nFind an open furrow in the starry fields,
\nDig in and plant a radiant flag,
\nThen enter this final slot and chill,
\n Dream on into a breathlessness
\n That lifts the last feel and thought
\n Of all that is up in a chalice, a sip,
\n Then formlessness at last,
\n The empty open givenness,
\n A mirror without a hint of breath,
\n A unseeded seedless presence,
\n A nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to have a kind of ‘spacephobia‘ as a small child, particularly around sleep and nightmares. Scary things lurking in a dark and silent not-knowing… leave the nightlight on and the door ajar… a wakefulness to cling to at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,40,70,80],"tags":[169,40,70,80],"class_list":["post-8386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-general-tsk-discussions","category-poetry","category-space","category-zeroless","tag-higher-knowing","tag-poetry","tag-space","tag-zeroless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}