Vishuddha — Communication and all it entails.
Vishuddha (Sanskrit: विशुद्ध, IAST: Viśuddha, English: “especially pure”), or Vishuddhi (Sanskrit: विशुद्धी), or throat chakra is the fifth primary chakra according to the Hindu tradition of tantra. It represents communication: truth-speaking, self-expression, embodying the back and forth of messages, information, ideas, experience, and more that language and listening brings.
Vishuddha, the forthcoming first book of poetry by Ian Cook, is available for pre-order through Anam Cara Press LLC, and releases in June 2024 — https://anamcara-press.com/product/vishuddha/
Last year at the start of 2023 I set a few intentions after lighting a candle, sitting and thinking, pulling tarot cards to glean what waited to be seen. One of those intentions was finally finishing a book of poetry I had been sitting on for the past few years, it was essentially complete but needed a final run through of edits, then a publisher (no small feat!). I wanted to get it done, to move on from it, work more on the present material that surrounds my life.
And so I started looking, wanting to find the poets, reconnect with my town, getting back into the writer community from which I withdrew years ago, for a number of reasons (depression, anxiety, alcoholism, what else?). Two weeks after I set those intentions, I attended a poetry reading celebrating the birthday of Kansas poet William Stafford. I read his poem ‘Traveling through the Dark’, and two of my own, expressed a desire to commune, and met my people. Here I am about a year later, and just received the first physical copy of Vishuddha earlier in January. Almost a year after I first set that intention to finish it up. Intentions become manifest. Recently I’ve been learning the magick of things, but those are things we’ll discuss more in time.
I first started writing in my early teens, my sister introduced it to me, along with grunge music, the beat generation, Kerouac and Ginsberg. Without a fixed process, its always been a spontaneous thing, writing. A gentle channeling, words and phrases popping in my head, whole ideas passing through the corridors of the mind. I was an antennae and the message flowed through my body.
Poetry was the daily toil, “the work”. It was a diligent cataloguing of messages received during times in the flow, disembodied being, altered states of consciousness. It was processing and getting through the depression and anxiety that I’d experienced since high school. It was how I could express myself in an honest way, dialoguing with myself. Outward communication was something that had always been difficult for me, really expressing my interior was a struggle. Poetry became that language I could filter my thoughts and emotions through into the outside of “me”, make sense of them on a page, and free myself from their weight.
I began writing the poems in this collection around 2010, my sophomore year at The University of Kansas, while working on a Creative Writing degree (poetry focus). English was always my strongest subject. It was just natural; language, symbols, sounds. The word has always been the most sacred thing to me, the way that I could make my own meaning, truly express how I felt. Communication itself the transference of memory and understanding.
I would write in an unfocused way, just whatever came to me. Late nights, sleepless and high, often allowed words to be pulled from the ether. Inspirations and ideas from friends and the writers around me at KU in those days; a group I met through classes with the kind Professor Megan Kaminski and the immense spirit that was Ken Irby (rest in peace). Whatever caught my attention.
My poems consisted of: collected lines in school notebooks, words to songs, streams of consciousness, blocks of words upon a page, carrying rhythm and space, written in a scrawling half-cursive, and then digitized and later edited. The poems would have a chance to sit, be sounded out, to get the consonance and line breaks right — the pauses.
One of my main concerns as a writer at the time was the sound of words. Tangible sounds enunciated, feeling it spill out the mouth, letting the vibrations carry their meaning through space to be received, and understood as truth. Consonance, assonance, like-sounding words, slant rhymes, the tricks of words. I could hear the lines so clearly in my head. Reading them out-loud was a kind of lilting song.
The common theme of communication among these poems wasn’t clear until I was able to look back on those years of writing, now in my 30’s. Being able to view a period of my life as a chapter that took place through college and into wild early adult-hood, meeting my girlfriend (now wife) Maddie, being thrust into the world — the free wheeling years. My mid-twenties were chaotic. Around that time I would mostly stop writing, some sparse poems would pop out here and there. My brain and heart were being drowned. Substance abuse; poor coping with the same anxiety and depression that I had lived with since my teens.
My creativity suffered and one by one my habits dropped, or were only so seldom, spontaneous in their happening. Art and Music and Writing were mercurial things, coming and going with my moods. Creativity became a thing I could no longer command or will myself to do. A lonely time.
It was a slow sloping down to some sort of ocean floor. A deep and heavy depth grown accustomed-to, but still crushing. We consumed so much, we were gluttonous, in our endless thirst. At some point Maddie had had enough and asked for change. We saw we were drowning. Recovery was necessary. My wife knew it would kill us in the end; change or perish. Poor coping indeed. So we got sober, immeasurably difficult but easier together. I’m so grateful for Maddie. She really was the catalyst for this change. I credit a large part of our success to having each other, and doing it together, truly partners in it all.
A few years passed, and with them came full recovery, regular therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, basic meds, the structure, and support needed. Holy things. A system for me to operate in solidified, a foundation to build up my own structure and support. I gathered tools to take care of myself and find my own healing through the work and the daily toil. Several years of hard work supported me when I had my first (and only) bipolar episode almost three years ago.
Structure and care were there for me when I needed it most. My partner, my wife Maddie, graciously and lovingly took care of me. I got better, although it took time and endless energy, I found balance. It was several months of regulation, equalizing my ups and downs into a manageable wave. Mania turned into depression, depression turned into equilibrium. I settled down.
My bipolar episode was caused by my sister Fiona’s most recent schizophrenic episode — a bad one — that may still be ongoing three years later. She had decided to stop taking her medications because she was convinced they were causing damage to her body, nerves, and gave her a limp. She has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder because she was abused by a malevolent person with psychedelics, not given support or structure. No care. No love. And it changed her irrevocably. The bright path she was walking in life completely dismantled, no footholds to carry her. In her paranoia she no longer trusted her family, and so fled. From coast to coast she traveled, popping up here and there every few months. Still in contact with us even if they were mostly messages of delusion: court cases pending against us, paranoia, senators and top brass working with her. She isolated and went out slowly like a quiet candle’s flame. Its been a long time since I’ve heard from her.
“I have to do something in the meantime,” I thought.
If I couldn’t help her directly, I had to work on the peripheral. At the time I worked in sales and marketing in telecommunications, and LinkedIn was a part of our marketing strategy so I learned to navigate naturally. I began reaching out to folks in the psychedelic space: professionals, and organizations and over the course of three years I found community. I came across groups around the country working towards a future where healing can be found, in the self, its work, and the medicines that can help facilitate that process. I’d found those that have a better understanding of my sister’s situation, what caused it, so that some day when she’s ready to come home, we’ll have that support and structure she needs.
And so the past few years have been restorative. It was the space I needed. I was able to turn from the outward to the inward. A refocusing on myself.
It gave me a chance to rest and recuperate, after years of output and pouring my cup, of change and growth. The lens widened, then narrows, micro becomes macro and then small again, and I can see things with a birds eye view but the pattern is familiar. I see those years of drinking and smoking and late nights and sleepless dreaming states in a new context: who I was at the time. I was blessed to understand it and analyze it as only the past can be analyzed, and look at it as a “period of time”, that can be seen as a part of a narrative. And most narratives have a lesson attached.
The journey through my 20’s are catalogued in this book. What I’ve become now in my 30’s is built upon the foundation that time laid. I get to be who I am now, complete and present, because of lessons learned and knowledge gained working through those years. It is a divine gift to close that chapter of my life, in order to fully embody the new stories that are constantly unfolding before me, to continue the path of a communicator, author, recorder, reciter, reader, speaker, all the ways that “I” communicate. Vibrating sound into the space which carries my meaning, my experience.
I set intentions and then manifest them.
As I think, so I feel, so I act.
Poet’s Introduction:
At his core, Ian Cook is a mutt. An amalgamation of many things — differing origins, Swedish/German patronage, Chinese-Indonesian matronage, raised internationally. An in-between, a hybrid being; flowing, swimming, a life in and out of water, amphibious. He is a collection of multitudes, many selves, many-masks, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, sleeplessness, and dreams that don’t end. He receives waves, whispers, and frequencies from The Beyond and translates them into Art, Music, and Poetry.
Ian Cook is the author of Vishuddha, a collection of poetry that deals with communication, what it is, and how the individual does it: by speaking, singing, screaming, writing, drawing, expressing, playing, by communing with All. He has had work featured in online and print journals such as Snarl Journal, KU’s Kiosk Magazine, Avatar Review, and others. Ian lives, writes, draws, sings, and plays in Lawrence, Kansas, with his partner Maddie, pups Mildred, and Cordelia, and rats Remy, Grandpa, and Alfie.
For the past few years, Ian has been involved in mental health communities and the psychedelic-assisted therapy space. He educates about safety, harm reduction, creativity, and self-expression, as well as the importance of preparation and integration practices. He teaches creative writing, advocates for the veteran non-profit Heroic Hearts Project, and forms community through the Lawrence Psychedelic Society.
In an intimate collection of poems, Ian Cook chronicles the journey of one isolated in their thoughts and feelings, and unable to communicate, to a self-expanded — through developing the throat chakra, exploring what it means to use language, words, sounds, symbols, to transfer information and understanding. Can we use our oldest technologies to express our individual experience of reality? How can words express the authentic self, a complex of context and circumstances that over years formed “You”? This collection of poems spans years of growth, self-work, and exploring new ways to express through many mediums.
From navigating the maze of mental health, depression, and bipolar disorder, came a way for the author to process and understand the self through internal dialogues, streams of consciousness, and translating thoughts and emotions through the filter of the self. Communicating is making sounds, drawing shapes, creating symbols, meaning, singing songs, or plucking strings, each expression holding its own meaning and power.
For the author, poetry became a tool for them to translate the amorphous thoughts and feelings into tangible vibrations, frequencies that seek to resonate with the reader. Through sound — rhyming, consonance, assonance, like-sounds — the author explores words and language flow. By playing with line and structure, single ideas stand on their own, lines can read as individual thoughts, or shift in meaning alongside different contexts.
As the methods of communication develop over years of practice and accumulated understanding, Vishuddha is the 16 flowering petals unfolding, the shade of cool blue smoke, which elicit pure cosmic sound, visions of the three periods: past, present and future; freedom from ailment and old age, destruction of dangers, and the ability to move the three worlds.
Vishuddha, the forthcoming first book of poetry by Ian Cook, is available for pre-order through Anam Cara Press LLC, and releases in June 2024 — https://anamcara-press.com/product/vishuddha/
