Upon the Plateau of the Raven: The Blessed Essence of Omni-nymity

 I feel myself swell and stretch, rarefy, become boundless...   August Strindberg

I am everywhere. Lucy

Flowing and flowering in the pungent woods of Pollok Country Park... the 'plant talisman' and natural antibiotic of wild garlic, originally a native of Central Asia.


This post could well be called The Satanic Act of Selling One's Name, or indeed The Deluded Act of Naming One's Self, yet to do so would be to focus in the wrong direction; instead, I prefer the mystical approach of a neologism that so far I have only found once in all the world wide web, that of 'Omni-nymity' (by a certain aesthetic and athletic Karin Spirn).

I once wrote a poem inspired by the dawning realization that, like Strindberg had realized in his painting excursions on the Stockholm archipelago, the 'I' was no longer confined to the small and closetted self that had been constructed and packaged since the day one was born. It was a momentous occasion on the Kilpatrick Plateau, up there above the city, one summer's day, amongst the wildflowers of Boglairoch and those far-reaching views northwards to the Highlands and Alps in the distance. There was a raven on the newly planted electricity pylon. It sat there, scoping out the landscape. I stood there similarly, and knew that 'Mike Roman' didn't actually exist. It was a 'momentous' feeling yet so subtle that it seemed like just another perfectly ordinary afternoon. Only later, upon reflections, with the momentum of that moment still gestating within, was I to understand what was happening to 'my' Mind that afternoon.

Something had been born. Or perhaps more acutely, something had been excreted.

I wrote a short poem which seemed, unlike some of the poems I write, to require no effort whatsoever, and no re-tinkering. It was a fluid waterfall of consciousness that poured rapidly from this new found self through my hand and through my pen onto paper. The revelation wasn't so much that Mike Roman no longer existed. It was the plain and now obvious fact that Mike Roman had never existed. Mike Roman had simply been a carefully crafted construct that was in fact an illusion that had been built upon (and tiered up) over the course of several decades. The name itself was, coincidentally, curious, as it implied a sort of micro-man (my surname is pronounced with the stress on the last syllable), a very small man in the midst of something very much greater, very much more macro. It's just one those coincidences I guess where the name may cause the question, and the question in turn may cause the revealing (of emptiness). All that now remained were the trace elements: rock, air, the silent call of the raven.... and space-time. Yet even the space-time dimension could not be said to exist, for I was, in the spirit of that momentousness, in the essence of that moment, extemporaneous and ex-spatial, and boundless. I now existed outwith space-time.... and I knew.... I was everywhere.

I continued to write poems with titles such as The 10,000 flowers, The Great Conversation, The Haptic Response, etc.... and put together over the course of the next year three emblem books (which of course, together, constituted one book) of poetry and photography called Contours, Contact and Conscience, with the emphasis firmly on the Con-, and that state of indelible withness that I had come to feel, oh so subtley, up there on the plateau of the raven. The self, although still slowly answering to the name of Mike Roman, was now bound up in a much wider domain, and re-ligioned to a much more healthy and sacred entity. Identity, I had realised some years prior to this in these self-same hills, was not what you put on, but emphatically, what you took off.

All this was omni-nymity (and equally ano-nymity) at work: the realization that, as the word suggests, 'I' was every name and no name simultaneously, and 'every creature-creation you can think of'.

This realizing is at complete odds with the topsy-turvy world that seeks to package the self, and brand one's name upon one's forehead (thereby marking it as the property of the marketplace). You need only look at the talentless mob in the film world to see this: people who by virtue of their name and little else, have made (and continue to make) obscene amounts of money, which they then continue to spend frivolously and vacuously. They readily self-promote, market, and finally sell their packaged selves as if they were just another commodity on the marketplace. And they are. This is what capitalism has done for us. It has commodified the self. It has fragmented and commodified everything. In this respect, the economic model most of us kneel before is worse than the most aggressive virus on earth, for it infects unprecedented numbers of minds in a very short time, minds that then go on to infect landscapes, animals, and 'every creature-creation you can think of'.

This 'speci-nymity', the anti-thesis of anonymity, - effectively 'The (Trade) Mark of Cain' - has cauterized the minds of so many fruitful young humans to the point where, by their late teens or early twenties, they have been so stigmatized that their packaged name is all they have got left. Their omninymous selves have (been) sunk to the bottom of their minds. They have been branded and marked, effectively enslaved, and are now set to be sold. The irony being that they are both slave and slavemaster, and the ones who will ultimately sell their own selves into bondage.

It is a deeply tragic situation, and I almost weep at the thought, but it is one that is not entirely irreversible and unfixable. It just requires a deep and long level of solitude and silence and a gradual admission, first and foremost, that the ways of selling the self that proliferate the marketplace are ultimately self-destructive, and a dis-ease (insofar as it reduces one's wholeness and thus health). Everyone can come to this realization by their own doing. It is there deep within all of us; in some just near the surface, in others deeper than the Marianas Trench. It just requires effort, effort that will not win them any friends or fame, but probably quite the opposite. It requires leaving the herd. There is no money in this self-imposed exile except for the wealth that will enter the heart and mind because of it. One's faith in 'God' begins with one's faith in one's self, one's faith (as openness) in every creature-creation there is. It is no coincidence that in all the faiths and religions of the world 'God' is multi-named (for 'God' like Walt Whitman, or any sensitive poet in the true sense, 'contains multitudes').

There are no gains to be had in this work on the self save for the gain of absolute one-ness, and a purity of vision. The sacrifice of one's self (one's small self) is necessary in order to accede to 'paradise'. It is, with all the hard work and 'suffering' involved, a sort of crucifixion. Yet, it will be worth it for the power of insight that will accompany this death. 'The seeing mind', as the Rig Veda proclaims, 'is at home in itself'.

All that has thus encumbered you will gradually fall off the sunken shipwrecked self, and slowly it will rise to the surface, titanically. Do not wait for the moment of your physical death to admit you to this realm.

The Wildflower Meadows of Boglairoch

[Mind and world arise together. Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind]

Fritillary and thistle
At this time of year
Their names are one
Like river-gull
Heather-hill
Moss-rock -
The longest name in the world
Is also the only name in the world…
Not so much scientific as con-scientific:
Every creature-creation you can think of -

The Plateau of the Raven.