Five Blades

A ceiling fan above me effortlessly spins, and I try to count the blades faster than my eyes can blink. Each revolution follows another revolution, each blade follows another blade, willingly serving no master but the cool breeze it generates. Beyond that I don't know anything about the fan or where it came from, who manufactured it, and what it's estimated operational life span is...the technical details are irrelevant to my observation. I do know, however, that the fan has exactly five blades because I had to turn the damn thing off to make sure. Trying to count the spinning blades proves to be an insanely daunting task. The fan has an existential quality. It is the Wheel of Samsara held fastly to my ceiling, representing the world of pain and sorrow. I have the will to ignore it or accept it and, thereby, in doing so I have acknowledged karma. The fruit of my karma is vipaka. And such moral consequences I pay for in this life. I may even take into the next. This is why I am unable to stop counting the spinning blades; realization quenches my thirst for self-knowledge as self-knowledge puts my ignorance to the test.

The timeless scene from a favorite movie of mine, Apocalypse Now, comes to mind. I am Willard, lying on a filthy mattress in a humid Saigon, staring at a ceiling fan as helicopters buzz back and forth across the backdrop of a stagnant mind. There are no moral obstacles for me to decipher. I don't have to sympathize with the snail crawling along the edge of a straight razor. I didn't pay errand boys to collect a bill for grocery clerks. I have no need to make friends with horror and moral terror. My only mission is to figure out how five blades on a ceiling fan has the ability to open doors to new questions in my psyche.






My pain resides in samsara, counting spinning blades in an empty room this afternoon. My pain can be found in what the blades represent. I am the rooster chasing the pig chasing the snake chasing the rooster. Yama, the Lord of Death, holds the Wheel of Life together tighter than a million Phillips screws or a gallon of crazy glue. It's unfathomable; logistically impossible to deconstruct in a mere paragraph.

I can only do one thing at this point. I get up and turn the goddamned fan off. It's easier to count the blades this way, making sense of it all.

Fan back on, blades spin again, and I am amazed by my juvenile anxieties which overtake my basic reasoning ability. I continue counting through the blur of the blades, questioning myself, again. Are there really four or five blades? I know there are only five blades but my eyes play tricks on me, and the subconscious joins in for a good laugh. I begin to do basic math, estimating that if there are actually five blades (I know this for sure because I turned the damn thing off and counted...twice) and the blades are spinning at an estimated...what?....300 revolutions per minute...or is it seconds?....then five blades spinning at 300 rpm would produce the visual effect of 1500 blades...although there really are only five fuckin' blades! At this point I begin to question my calculations, scanning the room for a calculator. Algebra I begins to creep into my complexingly idiotic fan-blade formula, and I wonder if, perhaps, I can express my obsession with the blades vis a vis simple monomial or binomial expressions. Unable to find the calculator, I surrrender to my mathematical dilemma. Disgusted with my foray into unfamiliar territory (i.e. science and math), I spontaneously decide that a grilled cheese sandwich may alleviate the migraine headache developing in my entire face.

Another set-back springs up like a Viet-cong booby trap when I open my refrigerator door, remembering that I forgot to buy bread, yesterday, and ran out of cheese. External forces are seriously working against me, but I don't care because I've got the radio turned up and Collie Buddz's "Blind To You" is blaring in the background:Wha me say... Fukin Haterz you know I'm blind to you haterz, Cya touch me war instigators, fuckin' haterz! It's a good song, I think, but it expresses a certain disenfranchisement with a world gone awry. I miss the classic songs of Mr. Bob Marley, when he sang of love and harmony. The closest match I can find in modern times at the moment is Matisyahu; spiritually uplifting reggae vibes...or Positive Vibrations as Mr. Marley would put it. Still, Buddz's Blind2U expresses my own angst from within. It's not the ceiling fan's fault, really.

BLIND TO YOU
lyrics-Collie Buddz
Wha me say... Fukin Haterz you know

[Chorus:]
I'm blind to you haterz,
Cya touch me war instigators,
Me say me busy love lately,
Ask you how the world ah run so.

Said I'm blind to you haterz,
Cya touch me room of creators,
Me say me busy love lately,
Ask you how the world ah run so.

[Verse 1:]
When tings doh(don't) pop off,
Dem a smile and dey laugh,
Dem would ah love to see you fall by the waste side.
Dem holla big up your past, spread for you down fall fast,
And trigger both bomb blasts, like dem nah no pride.

Let's give love to the yout(youth) dem,
When dem (brother murder ?), fe nothing no way
Send out me seeds to the yout dem,
Praise the all mighty don't go astray.

[Chorus]

[Verse 2:]
Unu dem dey a talk, that's true me white like chalk,
Likkle (little) pussy hole bwoy go play they realest card.
Dem holla aye p'wan me yard, that's true me modda(mother) work hard,
Hundred foot [?] cause she wan swim in ah the tide.

Let's give love to the yout dem,
Who Jah bless no man curse no way,
Send out me seeds to the yout dem,
Only faith cause tomorrow's another day.

[Chorus]

[Verse 3:]
Unu cya tell me nothing Mr. Envy,
(Lose it a lenghty advice for that ah send me ?)
Nuff people out there rotten, chattin and dem friend me,
But behind my back dem wan end me.
But me nah give a damn, buy house and a piece a land,
Me walk in ah me timberland, no tell me about no (simpleton ?)
Its true unu see me damn, only father feed me and,
you nah wan see me cross the line, unu better now.

[Chorus x2]

Im blind to you , unu better now
Said Im blind to you , unu better now