Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down… I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine.

I picked this book up because it has an interesting title, was small, and was on David Bowie’s booklist that was published soon after his death.

This is a book about coming to terms with living a kind of freeform and incorporeal life.

And I couldn’t care less about it.

I won’t rate it, because it might be good and might connect with others, but since I am not part of that audience, I couldn’t get much out of it, and it doesn’t make any sense for me to try to make any kind of assessing sense of it.

Instead, I will tell a story.

One time I went to a meditation meeting. I am already skeptical about yoga, and I have to tell you I am skeptical and resistant to stretching. I don’t mean that this is a good thing or anything I would defend or support. It actively works against me. But really what it comes down to is that I hate feeling vulnerable. Yoga makes me feel so, and man does the idea of meditating.

So I went to this meeting on a date. Cool. And it was presented as a non-judgmental space, a space of relaxed meeting and breathing and clearing one’s mind.

And then I got scolded for placing the “chant” on the ground. And I don’t mean like a sacred document, but like a printout.

I grew up in an oppressive religion, have no faith, and so a religion professor from a local university scolding me for placing a printout of a chant on the ground turned me off. And so, at the end of this book about not having a head, I just said to myself. Yes I do.

(Photo: http://wernererhardfoundation.org/douglasharding.html)