Article: the bottlE

This bottle used to be sand, well mostly sand, but here it is now, a little medicine bottle with a screw off top and paper label. It fits our hand quite nicely and stands by itself for days and days without falling over -- which is more than you can say about us.

Liquid lives inside this bottle and sloshes around if you shake it up. Not a good idea though, for lots of reasons. It'd be easy to break this bottle in a fit of pique, or just for the hell of it, after all we're in charge here. Of course, we can also break ourselves in a fit of pique. We ARE breakable, after all, bottles and bodies, both very, very breakable.

What's the difference really, I wonder. Do bottles have souls, bottle bibles, or synagogues? Probably not. Well, what about talking to each other. Do they communicate and have political parties? Unlikely, but we have to be careful here. We can't go TOO far with what we think we know about bottles, because finally they are what they are INDEPENDENTLY of our whistling in the dark agendas. I can bounce this little bottle in my hand, squeeze it, open and close it's top, and then put it back on a table or shelf, but I've got a fistful of ISness here that doesn't belong to any of us.

So what's the deal? What kind of thread might we be pulling and what's unraveling? And what if the more we see this bottle "like it is", the more we see ourselves like WE are, but do we really want to do that? Probably not, but too late for second thoughts now, because that's just what we ARE going to do -- or at least go down that road and see what we see. So, let's go straight to the bottle and let it tell its own story:

us: Hey bottle, que passa!

BOTTLE: Huh?

us: Over here, up here, here's your chance of a lifetime (or bottle time) to say it like it is. What's the story with you? What ARE you?

BOTTLE: Huh?

us: hmmm.

BOTTLE: Wait a minute, wait a minute . . .

us: We're waiting.

BOTTLE: OK, OK, I get it. You want me to be your projections.

us: . . . no, no, we want to talk to YOU. We want you to communicate to US -- tell us about your world.

BOTTLE: You want a lot, don't you? Well, don't worry about it, but you better sit down, because you're not going to be ready for this.

us: Hey, we called YOU up, remember, don't worry about us.

BOTTLE: Spoken like the Sorcerer's Apprentice! Ok, you asked for it. First, I'm not a "thing". That too abstract for you? What you're looking at and fooling around with isn't an "it". There's nobody home here.

us: Uh, yeah, that's a little abstract. What do you mean you're not a thing?

BOTTLE: It means I'm not what you think I am. Say it that way. Whatever you think I am, I'm not. I can't even say I'm something else, because there isn't any "I" here either. You humans have this "I game" you play ad nauseam, but that's just YOUR game. It's wacko, it means absolutely, absolutely nothing, but because YOU take it seriously, you think everything else in life is similar, so you populate giveness with things, like what I'm supposed to be, which I'm not, since I'm not even an I. And neither are you, by the way, but I don't suppose you want to hear that. I told you wouldn't want to hear any of this.

us: Well . . . no, that's ok, we're hanging in there. Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. But if you're not a thing, what are you?

BOTTLE: Look, call me a bottle, maybe a particular bottle -- "this" bottle. Go ahead do it, you're not going to get sued, but there's no denotative meaning (hey, it's fun to use your words) that goes with those words. They're just words, pictures in your mind maybe, but not referring to any thing or object because, from the beginning there NEVER HAVE BEEN any things or objects. You aren't an I and I'm not a thing, because there aren't any you's or I's or things.

us: Who's saying this then?

BOTTLE: You tell me. Who's listening? You humans are so DRUNK with language! You think it's this great quantum jump (God, you've got all these neat phrases) in your life form history, but it's just a sound/idea tool you're allowing to run amuck. You can't even unzip your pants unless you think about it first. Surprise, surprise, the givenness of immediacy has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with all that talking to yourself inside your head which is the essence of what you call the human condition. The human condition is THOUGHT. It's just this anthill of everyone scratching each others thought backs.

us: Wow, you're really running with these images, you know. You ought to be on television.

BOTTLE: Thank you. Yeah I am sort of getting the hang of it, aren't I? In fact, your language/thought thing is really great -- it's just that it's not what you think it is.

us: Whaduyamean?

BOTTLE: I mean it keeps SEPARATING you from realness. The big thing you humans don't want to look at is that ultimate realness is where you ALREADY ARE. Thinking that you, or anything else, is separate from the maw of ISness is intelligence psychosis. NOTHING one up givenness -not your sciences, not your religions, not drugs, nothing, nothing, nothing! But thought is always telling you exactly the opposite! After all, if you can "think about" it, you must be separate from it, right? WRONG, and so long as you don't get that straight, once and for all, and all the way through, you're going to keep living in hell.

us: Uh . . .

BOTTLE: You can put me back on the shelf now.
**********************************************************************