‘You hit me back first.
My predictions always come true.
Don’t dare to invalidate my reality.’
Nuances of paranoia affect all of us.
We may be well-balanced and trusting
folks, but out bodies still hold the
fears and traumas our parents experienced,
and the generations before them.
When safety fears are triggered, we tend
to slide from anxiety to paranoia.
In today’s culture this has become a normal
disposition, a challenge to be alert and patient
with the love and hate conflicts inside us.
Yet when fear splits the heart from the head
our bodies go numb to feelings, and empathy.
the spiritual potential of our being is arrested, and
one’s world turns into a hostile and lonely place to be.
Collective paranoia spreads like a virus,
flowing into already anxious minds,
feeding on irrational fears of danger
and the need to blame somebody.
When public figures act out their paranoia,
they become super-spreaders of fear.
Does this virus have a remedy? Depth Analysis?
Listening to Bach? Wilderness retreats?
The occasional pinch of hemp oil, known
to free blocked wires in the brain that
channel superior cosmic insights?
Sadly, when magnified fear has eroded trust
in fellow humans and silenced the whispers
of affection from our hearts, truth is walled in,
and seeds of hope fall on barren ground.
While paranoia can carry a kernel of truth,
suspicious hunches are easily twisted and
inflated to surreal proportion. I grade my own
paranoia from anxious overload – to irrelevant –
to useful. The latter protects me from harm.
There is a Sufi saying …
Trust in God but tie your camel at night.
Night also holds the hidden content of our neglected
unconscious, where fears and desires entwine
as archetypal forces that can take us over when
entitlement and apathy have made us careless.
Clearly, our inner narrative needs witnessing with
constant re-adjustment, so we remain grounded and
balanced in human values – among them – integrity,
humility, friendship, humour, and reverence for life.
The morose question of whether to be or not to be has moved on to whether to appear or not to appear. Appearances can deceive according to context. Or as my spiritual friend, Fazal Inayat Khan used to say, ‘Form is a relic of eternal potential.’ Things that have lost their former function have joined the archive of icons, metaphors.
Those involved in research, students, scientist, and writes, know the challenges of filing and stacking information. My own filing mirrors the ad hoc workings of my brain. To find stuff again is a matter of focus, luck and intuition. While occasionally frustrating, I trust my larger self and the collective unconscious. It is my oracular method, circumventing any too strict measurements promoted as our new saviour, algorithms. I value rationality, just not when it discounts spontaneous human creativity, heart felt compassion, and the inspiring moods of nature.
I hesitated posting this, since a deep sadness resurfaced and took hold of me while pondering Soul and Spirit. What’s the point, why exist, to what end? I asked this as a child, having been shown horrendous images in the wake of the Second World War, meant as shock treatment in my German primary school during the 1950’s. A poem I wrote about this experience I still don’t feel confident to share. I turned iconoclast, explored philosophies, religions, myths, literature, searched for exceptional minds, and resisted prescribed beliefs in favour of direct experience.
Unfortunately this parent and school-supported project received no support from the Government. Still, at times I felt I was making beneficial contributions to society. Of late, no new question has arrived to kick off a renaissance in my poetic imagination, or shed light on the collective mood of futility, which seems to confirm the scientific view that reality is determined by numbers.
Writers and readers have their unique (often indirect) discernment of text and image; a fluid perception spots moods in the sky, or envisages what’might be happening behind doors. 
Numerous children, if not all, bring along an openness that allows them a peek through the chinks in the veils that cover ordinary reality. Sudden insights, call them special, spiritual, paranormal, transpersonal, mystical, timeless, ecstasy of oneness … dreams … experiences that make no sense to a rational adult and may evoke fear of the unconscious. Sooner or later children may learn that a vivid imagination, as it is often called, brings no rewards and is of no solid use in a world geared to material respectability and control.
As painters or sculptors do, I frequently step back from my writing projects, searching for the core, a half imagined essence to shine through and re-animate the creative flow. Skills alone don’t do it, techniques alone don’t do it, nor style. As long as the essence of what I try to express floats in the unconscious, my efforts will baffle and tease me.
Once upon a time, not far from now, a small planet was veiled in semi-darkness. Humans of a kind lived under a vast cupola strewn with tiny sparkling lights. Space had no dimension, and time was measured by sleep and dream-cycles. The stature of a man, woman or child was crouched and bent, like the shrubs covering the land. Diets were meagre, consisting of crushed insects, seedlings and roots. And for warmth everyone huddled close together in caves.
Let us relate an incident, told by a witness. One clear night, so it goes, a group of seekers arrived on a level rock above a deep pool of water to watch the round ghostly orb fill the night sky. To their surprise its perfect replica appeared in the still water of the rock pool, beautiful, beyond words. Those present gasped. One young woman, who resembled her ancestor Lila, the legendary ironwood huntress, exclaimed, ecstatic, ‘This is it!” and dived headlong from the rock’s ledge into the heart of the glowing reflection. The orb scattered into a mesh of glittering stars, forming circles upon circles across the pool. Friends stared open-mouthed as the silvery light slowly retracted to gather itself back into round brilliance. Night’s divinity had re-assembled and rested quivering on the water’s surface. There was no sign of the young woman.
No doubt the experience of a slowly developing image in the darkroom influenced my writing. A sketch to start with, suggesting a mood, a lightness of touch, and, with some stroke of luck, an emerging symbolic element, which black & white photography is particularly well suited for. In short, a feast for the imagination, inviting associations for … poems, stories, and even cosmologies.
Course of Mirrors 