Escape Into Chris - Entry 18

Frank Caico

Jan 1, 2007 – Chicago, IL

Last night was a hell trip. But a good one, and I am glad it happened.

On New Years Eve in a bar in Naperville, you should have seen the looks that hung on the faces of both sexes. After twelve o’clock, everyone was thoroughly intoxicated and their eyes like burnt out candles, like empty shop windows and the nervy chaotic crowd aswirl elbows bumping elbows, the showy mirth, the condescending glances fell chopping up everyone. Me and my friends, they were drunk but I was not. We tried to have fun. We played crazy fools but I was self conscious as I always am. The empty vacant stares hurt me though very few really cared what I was doing. I swear I could feel the overall crippled spirit of that bar on New Years Eve. Constraint and shallow cupidity – no one loving, just angry lust feeding everywhere. Could I be guilty too? Of wanting “my share of fun?” Women like sirens with bare attractive thighs and indifferent eyes. Cold objects without souls. I drifted in this bar for an hour or so – the weight of people’s judgments on my mind, the weight of unhappiness or greed. Was this where I had chosen to spend my New Years Eve?

Later, my best friend and I driving home – escaping the hellish spectacle of that place – rejoiced. It was 4:30 am when we were on the highway but never had I such good manly company. Never before had I heard my best friend speak so plainly and so true. We talked about how lucky we were to have each other, to live in such a good place and to have jobs and friends and money – grateful. We arrived at our respectful homes and said a prayer for the coming new year.


.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 17

Jeff Luker

February 2006 – Normal, IL

A letter to my father on his 60th birthday

It is hard for me to believe that my father is 60 years old. Memories from when you used to take me to my soccer games, or sit with me in front of the computer helping me write my papers, or when we took the road trip to visit colleges – all of these memories have the quality of immediacy. They say that our capacity for memories is infinite, that once you begin digging into your past, there is no end to it. You are embedded in my past lives, through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. There was a golden age for our family and that was perhaps before my 10th birthday. I have fond memories of riding with you and mother in the back of the car. I don’t know exactly where we were driving to – perhaps out to dinner or to a movie. And as we were driving through the Midwest Club, I remember telling jokes to you and mom and making both of you laugh. I don’t know what I said that was so funny but mother would laugh hysterically. Our family was gay, cheerful, and young.

In my childhood and early adolescence, you instilled in me a rare gift which I am grateful for. I imagine that most parents, as they are raising their children, do not analyze the effect such and such a behavior will have on their children. Whatever you taught me at an early age, you taught to me by instinct. What you have given, that I cherish and employ to this day, is a freely-chosen self discipline. Without self-discipline, I doubt whether I could have stayed clean from drugs this long. Without self-discipline, I doubt I could pursue my literary ambitions. Without self-discipline, even staying in shape and quitting smoking would have been impossible. Now I have received many gifts from both you and mother but this is the gift that stands out to me as being directly from you.

The other gift, which is a close second, is a love and appreciation of literature. About a month ago we were reading Shakespeare together – how joyful was I to be in your company reading again. And what a stark contrast from my childhood years when I used to throw tantrums to escape the “reading hour.” But time and patience transform everything. Here I am today thanking you for what I felt you had imposed upon me as a child. The irony implicit in this life – the story speaks for itself.

Though for a good many years mostly when you made me read out loud to you – I imagined you as an overbearing tyrant which of course you were not. But a child sometimes sees his parents through a distorted lens. And as an adolescent, especially during my addition and during the divorce, I imagined you as a personification of evil. I might have made you into a voodoo doll if I had access to one. This of course is an exaggeration but I had a lot of resentment to you and many others during this period. What still baffles me to this day is not only the spiritual strength you must have had stored in you to protect yourself from me, but also the warmth you kept burning in your heart. Never did you grow cold, never did you reject me – but always loved me – and therefore this is the best model of unconditional love I have ever been shown. And it is this model of unconditional love that I emulate toward myself and others.

After the fog of my addiction cleared, after I began to mature into early adulthood and started taking care of my body and my health, you can imagine how my view of you began to change. In a way, I immortalized you – lifted you up from the ranks of man to the tier of godhood. You became a living hero to me and I sought to model my life after you. Indeed, I had transformed my life. I was living from what many would call a second birth and after years of abusing you, I must have wanted to pour a special salve on the relationship that would heal the wounds between us. But just as during my adolescence when I made you a voodoo doll, after my recovery, I was making you into my Buddha, my idol and I was near worshiping you. But neither of these images of you matched your true relation to me.

So today, on your 60th birthday, I ask the questions – What is your true relation to me? If you are not the man I blame or the man I praise, then who are you to me? And without being too philosophical, too entangled in speculation, I feel I can make the judgment that only now am I coming to see you as you are, and to love you for the man you are. For the first time, I am not inflating or deflating you – but really starting to get to know you. When I came over a couple weekends ago and we hung up pictures and organized your books, I saw a glimpse of who that man is who I call my father. No adjective will describe him. Not because he has no qualities – but because he is of a spirit that transcends qualities. He is an individual but not an ego. He reminds me of myself but overflows beyond myself.

Dad, I love you. A gratitude is present in me right now as I pen these final words. The mystery is so inconceivable – so infinite – it surrounds me like a dream. All I am thinking – this life is too short, too short, too short…

Escape Into Chris - Entry 16

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

July 30, 2006 – Normal, IL

I have a backyard
my neighbors have a garden
the air reverberates with
children’s voices.
Crickets chirping
the autumn stands one month ahead
looking back at the most placid day
in August – her feathered frock
gently ruffles.
My forehead is bathed in sunlight
my eyes are handsomely covered.
I sit on my patio like a spectator
wearing a disguise.
The twittering of the birds overlays
the chorus of children’s voices
from far and near.
Chortles and sing song laughter.
You must see the birds flying
over the rooftops
they glide and glide.
All the winged creatures slipping
through the transparent air.
My grass smiles to butterflies
central Illinois - one giant plain
summer’s last hurray – the heat
trickles down in beads of sweat
and the clipping, and twittering, cheeping
the fresh and innocent vision
Miranda calls it a “brave new world.”
There’s the butterfly
hear her flapping around
right over your head,
Splendid wings, gold shimmering
things like a flashing jewel
We practice our reunion
in our backyards-
we paint through our anxieties.
This is a new landscape. A new setting -
the frightfulness will disappear
the nervousness will go away
fill the cup and you will take care of your
thirst.
All the gifts were given to him
All at once from his dead mother -
mother, I am grateful
mother I am great.
the zigzag path of the butterfly
brings me out of my shade
says to me hello.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble saying.
In the beginning, there were words I had
trouble phrasing.
I am new here
new to a backyard.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 15

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

September 27, 2007 – Normal, IL

The personality comes and goes. My task is to stay aware – aware of my discomfort, my anxiety, my suffering. An insight – as I mature, I find that my path is not so much one of seeking perfection or discovering an ideal state or creating an ideal object of art, but surrendering to my limitations, my deepest imperfections. I don’t become a genius as I’ve always assumed but instead I let go of the ignorance, the fetters that delude me. This means accepting my greatest imperfections and loving the person I am now. Becoming does not resolve the human predicament. Being aware, however, can take me out of my personal drama and awaken me to my full capacity of love.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 13

Lethe Bashar's Novel of Life Las Vegas

Written by Chris Al-Aswad and illustrated by Gerrar Gonzalez

June 20, 2007 – Normal, IL

In my novel, the main character is riding a bus to Las Vegas when he has an epiphany – “I’m an eccentric genius,” he says to himself. He’s writing a novel, he realizes, a novel of life. He’s writing his “aesthetic existence” in the words of Foucault. To Lethe, the world is the stage for his art. He immerses himself in drama with other characters, and then, suddenly detaches himself to investigate the random experience. The other people he meets in Las Vegas are the supporting cast. Lethe provokes them to create drama, to create experiences that he can later contemplate and analyze or manipulate in story form. Lethe’s arch-type is the magician – he takes pleasure in play acting and playing with social realities. He has a personal mythology – he unconsciously weaves and develops in his interactions with others. Lethe is also a narcissist and perhaps his greatest shortcoming is that he assumes random people he meets are conforming to his imaginary epic. It appears as though these other characters are meeting him on the same stage and perhaps they are momentarily – but this is an illusion because in this novel every individual is immersed and blinded by a personal mythology of their own. Where they are the center of their life – epic and they seriously play the role they have known since their earliest memory. Everyone around them is the supporting cast. Therefore humans go about thinking they belong to a universal script in which everyone else naturally understands their role – when in fact – our epics and roles are as diverse as our environments, upbringings, and countless other factors. We have difficulty understanding others when we forget the role we are playing. The liberating part of this theory of life is that when you become conscious of the role you are playing, you no longer have to play it anymore.

Read scenes from Chris’ novel of life here on The Blog of Innocence.

Read Chris’ graphic novel at Escape Into Life.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 12

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

January 2008 – Normal, IL

We can learn by
living in reality
by dispelling illusions
And illusions are desires
forget desires -
Just be – live in the moment
of what you are doing
Otherwise we cheat ourselves
We trade in counterfeit
We never understand truth
We never understand goodness
We ourselves are false
We can only do one thing
to get out of this cycle
of birth and death
And that is to discern what is
true from what is untrue
Real from what is unreal
So for me, greatness
cannot be attained by simply
desiring it.
Awash in the dreamy world of
illusions and ideals
that does not get you to the
thing itself
that does not get you to
greatness
that does not get you to
love.
Greatness must desire you
Love must desire you
Only by renouncing these illusions
by refusing to perpetuate them
By living, in reality.
Reality has its own desires
Reality has its own will
its own push, its own momentum
We have to be aware of
the way things are
before we can transcend them
otherwise we will only have falseness
to adorn ourselves with.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 11

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

2007 – Meditation retreat with Dad

“All in all, today hasn’t been that bad and things are looking up for you already. And while the body is irritating and you always wish you were more comfortable, at least you are aware of your pettiness and discomfort. We do have a lot to complain about and for that reason, we shouldn’t complain. We should just patiently endure it. I can’t say things are not constantly aggravating because they’re not. You seem to fall into a rhythm sometimes and the ugliness and the irritation recedes from your awareness.
Desire is a funny thing- eventually you get all those things you wished for. But what about happiness, which has an elusive way of appearing and disappearing. Don’t go looking for it though. Because it’s harder to catch than a butterfly though desire also runs away. When you’re chasing things, they are bound to run from you. Even the thoughts in my head I chase like rabbits – never to hold them. They rapidly multiply into whole colonies of rabbits. Soon I’m chasing rabbits in three different directions. Whether it’s the mind or the body, you’re mad. And then maybe it’s the moment because things change you know. That’s what I love about reality – it’s totally unpredictable. In the moment, I write a poem saying the body is miserable and everything is wrong. Already conditions (in me and around) are beginning to rearrange themselves. So I write to probe a mood of misery and then find I’ve come to a place where those things I’ve said at the beginning of the poem belong to the perceptions of another person. My tone changes like the feeling over my body changes - And those things I once felt were the bane of my wretched life are now like twinkling lights in a fog bound street. You can’t pinpoint where they’re coming from, but you know they’re there…”

Escape Into Chris - Entry 10

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

March 2005 – Normal, IL

"How do I trust or learn to trust? How do I place faith in simply being myself and not strive so hard to be the world’s next great author? When if ever will I be able to not think about writing. My consciousness, dominated by a few ideas branching off from one main purpose – I must be a great writer. If I was only a writer, then I could take my time. But I’m constantly reminded of the clock. And it removes me from the experience of life itself. I would like to see my writing become something – I would like to let go also. My mind is obsessed. Can it become un-obsessed when I feed that obsession every day, nearly every minute. What is that vital fluid that circulates my veins like hot lava? Will I ever know that the same substance – in the end – will kill me? Like my mother whose spark was too intense, I see her – in me."

Escape Into Chris - Entry 9

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

April 2009 – Normal, IL

All is incomplete
Can you handle
being
a work in progress
Can you handle
incomplete
unfinished symphonies
novels
portraits

The moments of perfection
of completion
like finished work
that you set your gaze upon

When I stop to think about
the shuffle and
that John Lennon song
pops into my head
the one about the wheels
it occurs to me that all we have
and all we’ll ever have
is unfinished work

I guess the realization comes
when you realize you’re not headed
to some moment of perfect
but just another
moment of unfinished
incomplete work

It was a dream I had
before I went to bed
I said ‘Dad-
both of us were in the car
on a strip of the highway
Both of us stared into the
light on the road ahead

What – my dad answered
Is it always like this -
I mean do you ever get
to the end of the road

That’s when the desert appeared
in and out of the shadows-
and cacti made faces

Your work is never done
and the road never ends he said-
Then are we lost I wanted to know-
No, we’re not lost, we’re just driving

Escape Into Chris - Entry 8

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

March 2005 – Normal, IL

“…Greatness is not assumed, it is earned and I have not earned it yet. These are just my thoughts, they are not public displays of art. Why to write art you need a form, like a poem or a short story, or a novel. Those are the buildings. But a journal, a journal is not timeless, it is transitory, fleeting like butterfly wings. One flap, and they’re gone. We so want to assert our spirits upon this earth. My mother, why hers casts a light across the family, her artwork, a colorful mural once foregrounded, now subtle, behind us. Where will her son come out? There needs to be industry. What will I produce, just these 25 year old thoughts? Language must be handled deftly, it must be learned from masters. This is not a vacation here on earth. We are expected to leave legacies for our children and if our children were never born, those who we love instead, but build we must. We must express the unexpressed, the eternal must seep through the words. And silence must fill our ears with images so resolute that we shy aware from their gaze. Our discussion is only with ourselves, we are forever talking back into our womb until our mother hears us calling back into her. We must warn our families, tell them to stop before they begin. These creatures have spirits. these animals have real hearts. We’re alive and song pours out of us. We’re so much of life we cannot hide from our own enormousness, impossible faith, beyond beyond…”

Escape Into Chris - Entry 7

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

February 2007 – Normal, IL

“…My mind is a temple of illusion and I am a false god. True, there is something pure and positive in me but it is hidden so deep, under all the layers of illusion. I seem to know my soul exists but I am constantly running from that source. Instead, I obsess over personal problems and my mind resorts to fantasy – to lusts or material desires. The Buddhists are right about one thing – that we can’t trust the mind. The mind is not to be trusted. And yet I listen to the thoughts that run through my head and quickly, I get caught up in my old ways – nervousness, busyness, impatience – never resting in the moment, always rustling. I try to practice awareness but my awareness is not genuine because simultaneously I am giving in to the pleasures of the ego of lusting, of wanting, of fantasizing. I can not be aware without gravitation toward illusion and then my mind becomes more charged with anxiety because now I am self conscious.
The ego has a plan for me everyday. Will I follow it? I usually do – that plan leaves me with little satisfaction and more desire. My desires have many faces but the general urge is to have something else to change how I feel by possessing something.
What is wrong with how I feel? I feel like time is running out. I feel the need to perform. I feel the pressure to maintain an illusion.
My life is mostly an illusion with a grain of the truth. The paradox is that my illusions teach me to become wise. We cannot be led directly to the source, the source is too powerful. We must go by indirection – mistake after mistake we learn to take another route. Once I thought I knew what I wanted. Now I see that I want everything and none of it will help me change the way I feel.
I feel the burden of living. The flux, the rise and fall of hopes, the patience involved. Where am I moving toward? Not more illusion but less – I am moving toward the light. These illusions will not save me more. I am not who I thought I was - my talents, my security, my good sense is not what I thought it was. I must tell myself Chris, you are not so wise. Your life is little more than a petty day dream. Wake up. These illusions you drown yourself in – do not trust them – do not trust your mind.”

Escape Into Chris - Entry 6

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

Poems to my mother

We had fun didn’t we – on earth
We laughed, our laughing
released us from the pain
of circumstance.

We couldn’t adequately explain
or escape but like now
there are these nether worlds
right above or beyond – the
colliding particles of everyone else.

What I’m saying is that there’s
always a space to build a
sanctuary -

No space is too small -
your laughter filled those rooms
my laughter was the sky blue lining of yours -
enspiraled in one another.

hard to explain things now -
there has obviously been
a change

me here

you there

or here
i’m not able to give
the right word for every
designation

but i know this world is where
i’d rather be

opposed to the world on the other
side of this thin wall of
air? clouds? membrance of
something -

there are default worlds -
default worlds of pain – of
hunger – of void -

And i’d rather be in this
bright world of you -
of miracles dancing

I belong here. don’t i mother
with you. or not?

Are we really in two separate places?

i laugh when i think of all people i project my feelings onto -

when it’s so much better -
to relieve these minor deities

And talk to the source -

talk to the source – All these
bright stars – these individuals
web of stars – i’d talk to them
all – i’d memorize each one
of their stories – but

the door – the big door

is open. why make cold calls

to darkness – when angels

welcome you into light -

go ahead, fall back if you have to
Christopher

it’s only natural – gravity pulls
you down – everyone has to
deal with that -

Then go – let yourself go – Rise
like nothing – like everything
without weight -

this life it fades out -

watch with me
watch

i disappear

forever.

Escape Into Chris - Entry 5

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

March 2005, Normal IL

“…We exist outside our conversations, with ourselves and with others, we are part of the silent nature of things. When we are confined to our thoughts, we look remotely out from the lighthouse of consciousness to the silent order of things. We move deeper into the sea of the body, the tide of the senses. We begin to taste reality. The unconsciousness formless realm has no preexisting shape or destiny but erupts spontaneously in unpredictable manifestations that can hardly be expected. Control is an illusion. By my fear, I am trying to control the silent order of things. It is a reaction to feeling separate, divided from nature. As I learn to objectify my mind and not allow the mind authority over me, I move closer into the realm of the unconsciousness. The silent nature of the universe brings life and death. Life and death cannot be escaped. By retreating into the stories of the mind, I am not avoiding death and I am not controlling it. Death happens and it will happen in various unforeseen manifestations. The silence is enlightenment, the silence is awakening.”

Escape Into Chris - Entry 4

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

March 2005 – Normal, IL

"…After the meeting, I went to Chestnut, which is an adolescent facility for addicts and sometimes I go there to help out and be of service. Every time I go there I am reminded of all the institutions I was put in and locked in and remember how horribly I treated the staff members who were trying to help me –who was i back then, something of the devil – my idea of myself outgrew the person and I was acting out a tragic role, a villainous cantankerous youth — who was I, all I can think is that I was lost, lost and the only way to know I was real was to stand out and gather attention, to draw the light on me at all costs…

…As I listened to to the adolescents, there was peace in my heart. I felt a well of silence in me and no strong emotions were pulling me one way or another – I was aware and listening deeply to every adolescent who had something to share. They were confused. How could you forgive someone who is unwilling to forgive you? They struggled with this because although they understood that it was the right thing to do, they explained how hard it was and how they refused to do it. I could see these adolescents were unlike me when I was their age – they wanted to get better. And they understood things that I didn’t understand at their age – they spoke of consequences and the law of cause and effect. They understood that no act goes unpunished. I meditated upon what they had to say and when there was a moment when nobody spoke I offered to say a few words. First I talked about how I had treated the staff members at Northwestern Hospital – how I spit in the faces of people who were trying to help me and my father who was trying to help me the most, I spit in his face too – he was the epitome of evil, the supreme justification of my drug addiction, he was the reason for my failure and I told the adolescents how my life was like a Greek tragedy and I was the ultimate victim at the center of it, the wronged Hamlet — After the meeting one of the adolescents who was sitting next to me said he had a question for me, I could see that he was nervous. This youth had acne all over the sides of his face and you could see a heavy burden of anxiety and confusion mixed with fear on his brow. He said he’s been looking for a sponsor for three months and he hadn’t found one. He was wondering if I would sponsor him – this struck me – that for the first time in my recovery there was actually someone coming for my help, asking for my help – two human beings created with the possibility of helping one another. As if in God’s divine creation I could see the pieces fit, how two humans mutually benefited each other. It amazed me, someone asking for my guidance, a flood of joy was rising in me but I stayed calm and told him of course I would help."

Escape Into Chris - Entry 2

Understand Still by Nick Lepard

February 2007 – Normal, IL

“…What I’m a finding overall is that this image I have of myself in my mind should not be taken so seriously. Who I think I am is an illusion. Yes, I’ve devoted myself to writing but there is nothing remarkable, nothing truly genius about my writing now. The only thing that separates me from the average person when it comes to writing is my obsession with it. I am always focused on what I have to do to improve my writing. It doesn’t matter what I write and perhaps it never will matter what I write. It is the journey I crave, I crave a place to go inside myself and not the neurotic hall of mirrors I’m usually in, but the mysteries of the unconscious. I am an explorer – some travel to different places, I travel inward to different places. I am not content staying in this mental dimension. I wish to travel, to see other domains, to experience other realities. Perhaps that is why I am so attracted to cultivation. By cultivating myself I become something greater, something more than what I had seen.”

via Escape Into Life

Escape Into Chris - Entry 1

Gustave Courbet, self portrait

In tribute to the life and works of Chris Al-Aswad, we, his family, are honoring his memory by posting regular excerpts from his writings here at his website Escapeintolife.com

Summer 2006 - Normal, IL

“… I worry that I won’t have enough time, once work starts, to read and write. But I also know there is always enough time. We just don’t happen to see all the time that is available to us because we are clouded by a fear of death.

My urge to read and write is a defense against death and its anxiety. I feel that I am finite and by reading and writing and by leaving a living record of my self, I believe that I can transcend my own death. I participate in the life that so many people lead without even thinking about it. That is, working a regular job, having a family, or having a wife for me is a burden, because by leading what most would consider a normal life I am “giving up”, in a sense, I am surrendering to my own mortality. By retreating into this world I have created with words and books, I hope to transcend my own death. But I need to make sure I live. I will never be able to transcend death until I fully live.”

Escape Into Chris

The Musician by Fred Aris (1972)

A long, wintry six months has passed since EIL and Blog of Innocence's founder, Chris Al-Aswad, left life behind and stepped into the world of the Spirit. In addition to countless unforgettable memories, Chris also left us with dozens of journals brimming with his deepest thoughts and philosophical ponderings of existence on planet earth. Recently, my Father and I began exploring them in depth, discovering incredible, illuminated passages rife with prophetic, provocative insights and brutal honesty. While the quest to fill the space that Chris’ parting left in us will continue for our lifetimes, we’ve found solace and uplift in the notion of sharing these with the people Chris cared for most, his friends in the EIL community. Clearly, the spirit of Chris lives on in them, as well as in the eternal flow of the creative life-force, and so he would surely approve. We will start by posting one a week and are open and eager to hearing your feedback.