the porous woman
she’s like a sponge
everything affects her
if she’s given approval she
lights up, elated, and whizzes
around the room like a let-go-of
balloon. if she gets criticized the balloon
deflates, instantly, and she floats down to her
depths in an instant. it’s as if there’s nothing inside
her that’s hers; all her content comes from whatever is
happening around her, from whoever is in her proximity
but she can’t hold on to anything, she can’t remember
names. she doesn’t know where she is - what
neighbourhood is this? - she has too ask
don’t speak to her about politics, that’s
too heavy. she doesn’t like things to
be heavy. she desperately wants
to express herself - that’s the
reason she became an artist
but there’s no self to
express. the art
could be about
anything. she’s
unable to talk about
it. just shrugs, “it’s something
of the moment” very zen, like a koan
she drifts in and out of herself, brushing
her hair from her face, absorbing moods and
then abruptly disrobing herself of them. most of all
she wants to be taken seriously but, paradoxically,
avoids at all costs being serious. just when you
think you’ve got a hold of her she becomes
someone else. the porous woman
she doesn’t have skin. she’s a
sponge. everything affects
her. she drifts in and out
of herself. of who she
thinks she is. who
she wants to
express.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:18 am
Begs the question: was Osho a porous woman, an egotistical guru or a prophet of enlightenment? When asked ‘who are you?’, he replied:
“Whomsoever you think, because it depends on you. If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. If you look at me with ideas, thsoe ideas will color me; if you come to me with a prejudice, then I will be different. I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. There is a saying that if a monkey looks into the mirror he will not find an apostle looking at him through the mirror. Only a monkey will be looking through the mirror.
So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I cannot impose on you who I am. I have nothing to impose. There is just a nothingnness, a mirror. Now you have complete freedom.
If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am. Then two mirros will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored. Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.”
September 1st, 2009 at 11:41 am
Maybe she’s been reading Gurdjieff? Maybe she has something to teach you?
“A mark of the perfected man is his ability to play to perfection any desired role in his external life while inwardly remaining free and not allowing himself to ‘blend’ with anything proceeding outside of himself.”
Perfected man equals porous woman?
September 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am
27
To be in any form, what is that?
(Round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
…
Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
~ from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself
September 1st, 2009 at 12:35 pm
“The part of me that exulted in performing seemed to make the part that was a poet shrivel up in disgust and become very difficult to find again. I saw it as a tiny sprouting shrub hidden somewhere at the centre, extremely critical of the other parts of me it had for companions. None of these must be allowed to develop too far or they might stifle it altogether. One had to be constantly on the watch, I wasn’t quite sure what against. Self-indulgence was an enemy, so were over-precision and dry mathematical exactness I thought. These stopped the mind floating when it might have floated somewhere unguessed at. I even tried not to learn the name of streets or useful buses, tried to keep everything in what I hoped was a fertile haze - reduced my brain to a sort of scrambled egg. - PJ Kavanaugh, The Perfect Stranger