Today, I could not resist digging back into my handy-dandy brain-expansion kit, the Just Because Club:
From this text, I have plucked many experiments. Today, the one I plucked suggested that I take a walk downtown, and whenever I approach an intersection, to roll a 6-sided-die. (you know, the square ones?)
1 or 6= go straight
2= take a right
3= go back the way you came
4=take a left
5=enter a nearby shop, and spend about 5 minutes there before continuing the walk.
So I went downtown and did the experiment for an hour.
The exercise demanded a clearing of certain forms of human thought pattern. I noticed myself thinking about what other people would think about me rolling dice on the sidewalk, and when I got threes a few times in a row, wandering back and forth, back and forth, and then moving on.
Of course, no one really seemed to care about my wanderings, but it was fascinating to notice that my mind was programmed to worry about what other people might think if they caught me doing something other than shopping, walking my dog, or otherwise engaging the town landscape in appropriate prescribed ways.
After a dozen or so dicerolls, and 3 shops later, I started noticing the beauty of all the patterns around me. The self-obsessed thoughts dropped away into a direct awareness of my body and surroundings. Over here, a honeycomb-looking piece of cement work in front of a three story box. Over there, whoa! Shit! that is the biggest Datura plant I have ever seen!
It’s giant yellow trumpet flowers were bigger than my head! Oh my, how sweet each of them smelled. What’s that? Up close, I found a furry yellow and white striped caterpillar crawling on a morning glory vine that had woven its way through the huge woody branches of the Jimsonweed.
Each time I take a walk in the bardos, while in public at the same time, Datura dances into my awareness. I took note of two more smaller daturas in the same area before following the dice rolls across a lagoon and into the next town north.
At that moment, an hour had elapsed, and a Rebirth Station came crashing down hard by way of my mobile phone. In and out of Indra’s net.
I could dilate for pages and pages about this experience, but I will let you take the challenge and do the experiment yourself. I plan on repeating this one as often as my life allows, perhaps with friends next time….(She?)…
What I will say, is that this, and many of the exercises in the Just Because Club, and elsewhere on this blog, have a way of sneaking under your awareness. You might read about them and think that they are nothing too special or amazing. Until you remember that life itself is pretty special and amazing, at which point, you realize you have been tricked into believing in concepts such as “normality” and “ordinaryness,” in which case, these exercises will refresh you like a cool breeze through a drought-ridden Texas town.
Don’t take my word for it, try them yourself, and leave me some comments. If you get really into it, I will interview you or have you over for a guest post. Link away, dear friends.
Oh yeah, when I told little j (from Now Here Love), he mentioned something called Diceman Chronicles. I looked into it a little deeper, and found these fascinating links:
1. The Dice Man Wikipedia Entry: A good jumping off point for this particular memetic experiment.
2. A UK-based TV-show, on the Discovery Channel that uses the concept for a wild travel show.
3. Excerpts from the book by Luke Rhinehart.
Whoa, http://heretical.com has a lot of material that I have never seen before. Do not visit there unless you are prepared to read some things that you might find VERY DISTURBING. Notice, any links that appear in this, or any other post, or anywhere on this site, ARE NOT ENDORSEMENTS, unless explicitly posted on the sidebars under my links sections. The links mentioned in these posts are simply links that I have stumbled upon that startle, fascinate, awaken, or otherwise grab my attention. I absolve myself of all sins and of all responsibility for what you find when clicking links from these posts.
Remember, combinations of words, while startling, are nothing more than combinations of combinations of letters, which are nothing more than little shapes. Don’t be afraid.
Now, for a little less disturbing, and perhaps more overwhelming site I have seen lately:
http://soulfood.net
Oh yeah, and I wanted to give a shout out to Claude Needham, the man behind the Just Because Club book, so click his name to go to his twitter site and tell him GTD sent you.
For more from Claude, check out:
Ok, that’s all for now. Drop me a comment and share the love if you decide to take the dice out for a walk. Enjoy.
Love, Wildness, Chaos, Joy….
-GTD
