July 2024 — JD Rudometkin

5 Doors is a monthly online magazine/gallery featuring new music, cinema, art, and writing from artist JD RUDOMETKIN and guest artists. It is also a communal space where rituals are curated. This gallery is best experienced on a desktop/laptop computer.

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ENLIGHTENMENT 2.5

There have been 2.5 occasions where I have sensed what might be called enlightenment. The sum of each experience totals about the same amount of time in seconds. The first occurred when I was living at the edge of China Town in Los Angeles. I had been pursuing the nightmarish dream of becoming an actor. And while acting itself can be fascinating, spending hours if not days working out the character nuances for a mouthwash or whopper ad when one is a Jordorowsky fan, is—to put it mildly, harmful. So, I decided to leave LA. Upon announcing this to my roommates, one of them gave me a book called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I began reading the book and it resonated immediately. The ideas therein made absolute sense. While reading the book during my last month as a former chewing gum commercial character actor, I developed a ritual. I would clear the entire room of nearly everything. I even placed the bed up against the wall and draped it with a cloth. Only the book case was visible, sitting there in front of me on the maroon carpet. About a week or so into the book I sat there on the floor reading one morning and as I looked up toward the bookshelf and for reasons I cannot explain my mind went—what might be called—blank, and the absurdity of any existential dread or vain ambitions I had had throughout my life seemed like the perfect punchline for an off colored joke.

*Untitled I, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

I laughed out loud.

In that moment I felt completely free.

That moment has stayed with me for nearly 2 decades. But, I almost immediately returned to my part time job as an existential woe and vain ambition prodigy within a day or two. But once a freak moment like that hits, life never completely returns to what it was prior to the event.

The next moment of brief awareness occurred about 4-5 years after leaving LA, while I was living in Northern California, just outside Sacramento. While there, I used to go to this quiet little sandy beach cove that was cradled at a bend in the American River, just past a grove of cottonwood trees. One afternoon I was sitting there on the warm sand. I had been taking dips in the cool water from time to time and was journaling off and on while starring at a swirling eddy that curled up near the shore. It was a private oasis for the most part, other than the occasional group of rafters floating by like errant thoughts. I remember sitting there minding my own business when suddenly out of nowhere an illuminating sensation came over me. This time it was an experience of utter peace and contentment. Time seemed to stand still. Or perhaps it looped back in on itself. Whatever happened, in that moment, I felt a profound sense of freedom.

*Untitled II, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

Its really hard to explain things like this without destroying them. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience and you, more or less, know what I mean. If you haven’t, I hope you drop into one someday (without the drugs).
My last encounter with enlightenment or whatever occurred just a few days ago in the woods. Lately I have been feeling lost. I have been going through a rough patch in the desert where I now live. Not entirely rough, because I am also pleased to have recently purchased a large plot of land on which I hope to build something beautiful. But thats another story for another time. For now, lets return to the rough patch. An entity from the Felidae family and I were seeing one another for about 5-6 months and the creature and I parted ways.. This severance occurred after the lover’s athletic German Shepherd/Pit bull severed the tendon on my right hand with its long tooth—at the midway point of our courtly endeavor. Doctor Lee aptly reattached my tendon. I’ve had post surgery rehab and all that and my hand still feels nervy and fibrous.

*Untitled III, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

The desert is an amazing place. It attracts all kinds of people. The open spaces are exceptionally liberating. Its a good place to go and look in the mirror. And some of the people who move to the desert, do so to heal broken hearts or old wounds that are still festering. But that is also another story for another time. In short, feeling lost as I have been, I decided to pack my camper and head to the Lost Coast. What could be better?

Its a long stretch of road between the Lost Coast and Yucca Valley, zig zagging northward. A lot of time to think and not think. Upon arrival. I saw more than enough humans. Some of them had driven their vehicles out onto the beach. So it seemed logical that I should drive mine out onto the sand. This would have been logical if I did not own a 1997 F-150 loaded down with a camper weighing nearly twice the recommended payload. Needless to say, I became stuck—up to the frame—on the starboard side of my Shadow Cruiser. Thats the name of my camper. La Tortuga is the name of my Ford. Anyhow, feeling more lost than ever on the Lost Coast, I wondered around until I found a group of people who looked like they were the type of folk who know how to put a s’more together and were likely to have wenches on their trucks. Because I drive an old Ford truck with a worn in camper, I thought I might in some way resonate with them. But in fact, I did not. A tall red headed gradeschool teacher from Maryland pulled me out, instead. I thought about leaving the Lost Coast. And I did leave. But on the way out I found a small turnout in the road with an eternal view as the sun was setting. There was just enough room for other people from San Francisco and Bend Oregon—with 100K overland rigs they seldom use—to pass by. Well, I lucked out. This has been a prime spot. And I feel like I am finding some sense of myself out here among these ferns and redwoods and slow moving slugs who are leading daily sessions of yin yoga along the trail.

*Untitled IV, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

A few days ago I was on a longer hike in the woods and I had stopped to rest just off the trail. Earlier that day, I read the strange story Bobok by Dostoevsky. In that story the narrator hears dead people talking to one another while he sits in a cemetery. Russians are a strange breed. They seem to be drawn toward a melancholic root. I should know—I am one. Irish people are strange in different ways. They dig death too. Nothing like a good wake to stir Finnegan. Along with Fyodor, I have also been reading a book on Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue. I remember reading somewhere that O’Donohue died suddenly at age 52, in his sleep. I’m glad he stayed around long enough to give us Anam Cara. Anyway, there I was in the woods with Celtic Wisdom and Russian allegory spinning somewhere in the subterranean mind while starring at a collection of Red Alder and Sugar Pine, which do not exist in the Mojave Desert. And as I sat there on a dead log, I began to wonder what it would be like to forget the names of things. To see and smell and touch something without a placeholder. Is it possible? And in doing so, how would this effect my mind? And could I reinvent an entire species between my ears that evolves outside science and theology or November elections—or the names for fog and rain? And as I looked out into the woods I could feel my mind slipping into that space of enlightenment I had experienced in LA and at that bend in the American river. But this time, I was consciously leading it there. And because I was leading it there and I knew I was leading it there, this feeling of tender blank slated primetime slipped away after about .5 seconds. Everything slurred. The fabric glitched and tore and was sewn back together just as fast. But rather than feeling disappointed, I felt eager. Eager to know if I could somehow maneuver my destiny into a place where a moment of enlightened freedom could occur almost at will. And if this could happen again and again, could I chain them together in a seamless process of tiny stone buddha dolls?

*Untitled V, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

Most teachers have some sort of answer for us. I suppose they feel they must have an answer since we pay good money to buy their books. But I am not your teacher. And I don’t really have an answer for you. And since this is donation based writing via my website, you get to choose how you feel about a person who is only making suggestions. Either way, I’ll take your money if you want to give me some and I will put it to good use building a sacred space on my (eventually our) piece of land. But thats another story for another time.

Here’s the deal: Try it.

While sitting at your kitchen table, look at the various artifacts in front of you, and deliberately forget their names. Butter becomes mind sludge and so does yellow. It all just falls off the non-plated essence of what would have been a peach in front of you. There is no word for salt now—only that thing there, almost disappearing. Can you do that? Or, when you are out walking your human-hand-biting pit bull, look at your hand as if it were no hand at all. No surgery attached and no history in love making or fist fights. Is it possible? Is it possible to create freedom in silence by peeling back language to some sort of tabula-rasa-nada?

*Untitled VI, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

Whoosh. Gone.

*Untitled VII, from the ALMOST OBLIVION Collection*

I know its possible because I have been doing it on the Lost Coast for several days. Sitting on a black metal folding chair, staring at what used to be the sun as it appears and disappears in the thicker so called fog where this crushing sound wave hits an unknown presence somewhere far below me over the edge of this…

I would like to hear back from you. Whether you try it or not. I want to know your thoughts or stories about enlightenment or any questions you might have. And if you do give this ritual a whirl, I would love to hear how it is going for you. Or, say after a week or two—or a month’s cycle of nameless episodes—how it went.

You can reply to these email newsletter/gallery offerings, directly. I’ll answer.

Good luck. And see you soon.

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