A hang bent over the bank of the river, a coconut-tree; Siddhartha leaned against its trunk with his shoulder, embraced the trunk with one arm, and looked down into the green water, which ran and ran under him, looked down and found himself to be entirely filled with the wish to let go and to drown in these waters. A frightening emptiness was reflected back at him by the water, answering to the terrible emptiness in his soul. Yes, he had reached the end. There was nothing left for him, except to annihilate himself, except to smash the failure into which he had shaped his life, to throw it away, before the feet of mockingly laughing gods. This was the great vomiting he had longed for: death, the smashing to bits of the form he hated! Let him be food for fishes, this dog Siddhartha, this lunatic, this depraved and rotten body, this weakened and abused soul! Let him be food for fishes and crocodiles, let him be chopped to bits by the daemons!

With a distorted face, he stared into the water, saw the reflection of his face and spit at it. In deep tiredness, he took his arm away from the trunk of the tree and turned a bit, in order to let himself fall straight down, in order to finally drown. With his eyes closed, he slipped towards death.

Then, out of remote areas of his soul, out of past times of his now weary life, a sound stirred up. It was a word, a syllable, which he, without thinking, with a slurred voice, spoke to himself, the old word which is the beginning and the end of all prayers of the Brahmans, the holy "Om", which roughly means "that what is perfect" or "the completion". And in the moment when the sound of "Om" touched Siddhartha's ear, his dormant spirit suddenly woke up and realized the foolishness of his actions.

Siddhartha was deeply shocked. So this was how things were with him, so doomed was he, so much he had lost his way and was forsaken by all knowledge, that he had been able to seek death, that this wish, this wish of a child, had been ale to grow in him: to find rest by annihilating his body! What all agony of these recent times, all sobering realizations, all desperation had not brought about, this was brought on by this moment, when the Om entered his consciousness: he became aware of himself in his misery and in his error. Om! he spoke to himself: Om! and again he knew about Brahman, knew about the indestructibility of life, knew about all that is divine, which he had forgotten.

But this was only a moment, flash. By the foot of the coconut-tree, Siddhartha collapsed, struck down by tiredness, mumbling Om, placed his head on the root of the tree and fell into a deep sleep.

Deep was his sleep and without dreams, for a long time he had not known such a sleep any more. When he woke up after many hours, he felt as if ten years had passed, he heard the water quietly flowing, did not know where he was and who had brought him here, opened his eyes, saw with astonishment that there were trees and the sky above him, and he remembered where he was and how he got here. But it took him a long while for this, and the past seemed to him as if it had been covered by a veil, infinitely distant, infinitely far away, infinitely meaningless. He only knew that his previous life (in the first moment when he thought about it, this past life seemed to him like a very old, previous incarnation, like an early pre-birth of his present self)--that his previous life had been abandoned by him, that, full of disgust and wretchedness, he had even intended to throw his life away, but that by a river, under a coconut-tree, he has come to his senses, the holy word Om on his lips, that then he had fallen asleep and had now woken up and was looking at the world as a new man. Quietly, he spoke the word Om to himself, speaking which he had fallen asleep, and it seemed to him as if his entire long sleep had been nothing but a long meditative recitation of Om, a thinking of Om, a submergence and complete entering into Om, into the nameless, the perfected.

What a wonderful sleep had this been! Never before by sleep, he had been thus refreshed, thus renewed, thus rejuvenated! Perhaps, he had really died, had drowned and was reborn in a new body? But no, he knew himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the place where he lay, knew this self in his chest, this Siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird one, but this Siddhartha was nevertheless transformed, was renewed, was strangely well rested, strangely awake, joyful and curious.

Consider me a loss
I've come undone
It's left me broken
Bring this to end
Throw away your words unspoken.

vasudeva: People like to glorify madness and treat it like mysterious inspiration from some edge-of-the-world dark-horse muse, but there's nothing romantic about it. It's ugly, scary, and confusing.

I give madness an F minus minus minus, definitely would not buy from again.

LORDKAHUNA:

Dude, I totally agree with all you said, I've tussled with madness and lost (and like you, I was pretty much absent from life's roll call for the better part of a year). I can't really put my finger on what stopped my spiral, I just remember all my shit clicking into place one day.

As for music that gets me throught the day, I learned to love my guitar again, I play endless sets for an audience of me.

azron123: ^^ Sorry. God said "NO" ^^

NOFX
"Idiots Are Taking Over"

it's not the right time to be sober
now the idiots have taken over
spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

Mensa membership conceding
tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
Watson, it's really elementary
the industrial revolution
has flipped the bitch on evolution
the benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer
the world keeps getting dumber
insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

darwin's rollin over in his coffin
the fittest are surviving much less often
now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
someone plopped a steamer in the gene pool
now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
and im startin to feel a lot like charlton heston
stranded on a primate planet
apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
with generals and the armies that obeyed them
followers following fables
philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

what are we left with?
a nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
pass on traditions
how to get ahead religions
And prosperity via simpleton culture

the idiots are takin over [x8]

sahlgoode: All of which wrote about psychotic episodes.

Of course "The Talking Heads" Psycho Killer was very influential. As was "The Avalanches" Frontier Psychiatrist.

When I finally chew through the restraints, I may ask the members of the swarm if they see a pattern here.

In the words of Wille Nelson " I'm crazy over you"

vasudeva:
It means you're crazy in the coconut.