Pain Is Not Pain

Illusionary pain

Sometimes … at moments of the greatest focus … I reach for a piece of bread … and then the butter. It occurs to me … at these times … that I can feel the knife … cut through the butter. That ought to concern any thinking individual. Thinking is sometimes a pacifist idea … but not all the time. Peace … is something for former Roman emperors … who tamed a hostile environment of barbarians … and were tired of blood.

 

Tribal societies … inflict injuries to their bodies … and create a scar … that's displayed with pride. But there might be a greater use of that in the man's disposition. It helps … to regulate the feeling of care … in a forest filled with God's creations. It helps to stop our thoughts … before the lamb lies down with the lion. And while that used to be a profound statement of a man's nobility of care … it simply is not a reflection of reality.

 

I found at the most odd times … in my practices … the point at which care … spills over to angst … and sometimes … horror … at the slightest mention of injuries. I wonder about that … and inquire as to whether … I'm overdoing it. My ex-wife … used to display … scars on her hands … like the sleeves of a commodore in the navy … from handling boiling oil over the stove. It wasn't until recently … that I connected that with … simply another way of handling care attitudes.

 

When smoking hand rolled cigarettes … the burning tobacco sometimes falls off and onto the shirt. So I take my shirt off. Now it falls … on the body … and I have a virtual tattoo of tiny scars. In some way … its improved the way … I handle bad news … particularly … killings. We live with it … for what it is in our world experience … but it should not destroy our appreciation for the  continued sense of the world's union of purpose.

 

In my discourses with the lambs … I was trained on mustard … as a way of handling balance on the tissues and its produced some surprising extensions on its applications. I got a can of Colman's mustard … took a teaspoon in a bowl …  added some water … and let it … settle for the full flavor. Then I spread it in a three inch vertical line on the top part of my arm … where it joins the shoulder. The effect was to produce a slight conflagration of the tissues … and leave behind the semblance of a scar.

 

Its a subtle overall moderation on the tissues … and brings a great delicate nature … to the way we handle the issue. And then I was treated to a surprise. As it happens always … an achievement in managing the subtle energies … brings the intimation of eroticism to the body. And I found that … it caused the mind to diminish its ardor … in the way I jerked off … thereafter. He was still reeling … from the self inflicted injury … even as I was shaking the dog.

 

We used to practice the ' new pinch ' … as custom … whenever anyone … was wearing a new dress or clothes. I used to wonder … about the quaint nature of that … but never quite got around to linking it up with the big issues. Makes me wonder at this time … if that's what we learnt to do … by the intimations of body and mind … in the sub-conscious way … we always handled things great.

 

A potter working with clay … the entire day … everyday … may have found in his vocation … the aesthetic appeal … he brought to the shape and form of the objects he formed. That has probably more to do with the way he subjects himself to handling dirt … than he realizes. I had the same funny response when I found that the early Tamils named their new found language  Tolkappiyam  … or the preservation of the tissues of the body. What … on earth … I had thought … did language have to do with the body's complexion?

 

The stories of witches burnt at the stake … comes under review on these occasions … or the way a father sent the kids to their aunt's … shot the wife …  set the house on flames … and then shot himself. We find on such situations … violence on the rampage … when a little self management of the issues … on a daily basis … helps to bring the issues into an appreciation of life … and society. Its what we would like to do if we could.

 

In taking that a stage further … we find that thoughts are sometimes like snakes … that wind their way … to the c**t … of the woman. And then it engages in a strange ritual or going-in or not going-in … in an act of indecisiveness … thats grown into a classic of the times. You can't miss that … in virtually everything we do these days. And its aroused its own set of conventions … about the fun nature … of indecisiveness.

 

In retrospect … a man would say … ' It's the cause!' … or in a new application … ' Its the design!' In a preponderance of its application to our daily activities … we engage the leap … and the will … that hops like grasshoppers … into something … with both eyes shut. We have learnt to do that … and we have even learnt to acknowledge that … we have to. But try telling that … to the cutters … and the borderline paranoid. At times like these … I wonder about how ladies came to be named Gonorrhea … in the old days.

 

I meet the man of the great horns sometimes. Its like the experience of the Vikings … who blew their long horns … whenever their long ships … sailed forth or returned … the loud wail it caused throughout the fjords … and shook the walls of the mountains. Or the drug merchants … who live with blood and guns … everyday of their lives. Its like Mario Puzo's Godfather. Scratching his irritation … with his back hand … the man says … ' You don't come and have a cup of tea with me … you live in your safe houses … and when you are in trouble … you run to me.'