man, i just don't know...being alive is the deepest longest trip of all...and sometimes there are moments, you know them too, you're with someone cool and they are making you laugh from your roots up...but then others, some paperwork headache or bitching over dollars, or a sick loved one you cannot help, your words feel empty and fool...
and i look at trees shining and then the dead rabbit on my walk to work and think of people claiming the glory of symbols and deities...and i'm thinking, does anyone else know better? does anyone trouble over all this too? why is alone such an elusive thing that it comes and goes unbidden? and i near loved ones and skitter off too...how does a nuclear missile exist in the same world as a field of wild weeds?
somewhere someone is getting tortured, elsewhere someone is getting massaged...someone is giving a hate filled speech, another is working to make it possible all will sleep with a full belly...what the f*** is with this world? where do i go to find out? why do i think the wisest answer i could get is: dunno, keep looking like we all are...
anyone? eh?
Some Lakota Indians practice direct communication with the Great Spirit. In one of their ceremonies they play a "game" called "The Throwing of the Ball" The ball represents The Spirit. The game symbolizes the course of a man's life, which should be spent trying to catch the ball. Today people no longer try to catch the ball (see: The Sacred Pipe).
someone gets married, someone gets divorced
someone dies, someone is born
The list could go on forever. I don't like this place but I work with I get, try to anyway. Who makes up these fucking rules? I don't like them.
Well ,don` try to dull the pain,that only turns on you too.
The problem is us,Though it`s probably not really our fault. We derive from a system that`s based more on Dawin`s views, than Gandhis. At least how biological systems compete and survive on this..'planet'. Abert Swizter(poor spelling), an advanced human of my parents generation,refused (so they told me) to step on an ant. Enough PPl. doing that,and we`d be overrun by ants. We screw things up ourrselves, horribly so,but thats not my point in short form.
If we survive ourselves,and we also finally solve the inequitiy of have/have not, and so much more,by implication,we will reach a point where we will all get to be Abert Switzers.Simply, the ant population will kept in humanely attained balance ,at it`s healthiest. Much more for a start, than the dimly lit conciousness of a god in a stuper ,rubbing out what it considered a meaningless life.
Saints eating our cakes, on the path to Something Else.
But for the moment,we are something that has gotten out of hand,both able to see the evil,and dimly,through religion,through self devination, something far better, but so far off. But, in the future...
Sometimes I wonder if we are evolving, that whatever kicked off perception of the abstact,that for example,encompasses our love of music,has not stopped it`s 'changes.
I wonder if we are changing,the advances of the two past millinimia evidence of this,and do not percieve we are in transition?
Nope,won`t make ya read it twice.
Double posting will be done away with also,in the glorious future,after mankinds battles are won(hopfully.. w/luck..)
Albert Einstein once said that he could see that, "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
Those are stark questions, cenacle, ones none of us should stop asking. One of them is the "slaughter of the innocents"--what benign meaning can this universe/mutliverse have when the innocent die horribly every minute?
I guess my present take is one of trying to get at peace with an abiding mystery.
But I do feel we are flawed creatures in an unfinished world, where something of vast scope and meaning is unfolding. Perhaps it is this way simply because it must; perhaps life cannot emerge from matter in any other way: birth is messy and painful.
We have the ability to experience in some fashion, sometimes, briefly, the vast joy of becoming and being, and we hold onto those rare experiences to make the rest survivable.
Those aren't answers, either, just the thoughts your questions provoked. Love is one of the answers, though. Beauty is another. But they are not question-stilling answers...
it's all DNA
some of us ponder everytime we witness a miracle
and others take it as course
some never see a bright day in their lives - one spot of sunshine and they interpret it as mean
Karma believing folks can explain it all
but what's an explanation when the present moment is so heartrenderingly now.
i'm grateful for my emotions - when i'm not feeling, that's when i get to wandering the abyss.
i like my laughter fresh
I'm with ya Cen, what I don't understand is everything...........
Quote from: "judih"it's all DNA
some of us ponder everytime we witness a miracle
and others take it as course
i'm grateful for my emotions - when i'm not feeling, that's when i get to wandering the abyss.
i like my laughter fresh
=============================================== The abyss of an emotionless existence/// Wow. what a concept. and yet truly have I experienced just this very thing..... Great insight there sis======= senorsal
I have drifted in that emotionless place, too, senor: pain is better than that.
Judih's remark and your reply remind me of something that happened almost 40 years ago, something I haven't thought of since.
First a little Naptown (Indianapolis) history--bear with me:
The north side of Naptown was the rich side of town, mostly because rivers thereabouts flow North to South, carrying all the crap and pollution with them. Since the Ohio River basin drains East to West, and Naptown is built along White River, the far North and Northeast sides were much in demand: the southwest end of town, where I grew up, was surrounded by stockyards, pharmaceutical plants (thank you, Mr. Lilly), city dump, creosote plant, industrial plants, sewage plant, etc.: all those things were within a mile or two of my childhood home. The neighborhood was called The Bottoms, because it was: a flood plain for a White River tributary creek that flooded often, filling houses and yards with unprocessed sewage, rainbow swirls of solvents, yellow cakes of scum, giant mutated carp and catfish.
The near northeast side was once the center of privilege, but as African-Americans filled the center of the city during the great migration north for factory jobs, the white flight moved further north and east, and the grand old homes in the near north/northeast side were purchased by slum lords.
Holiday Park was within one of the most affluent areas to the far north. It was an enclave for the wealthy: though the nearly 100 acres along that relatively unspoiled stretch of White River were technically open to all, the local cops quickly rousted anyone who didn't fit the environs.
The centerpiece of the park was a facade that once graced a building in New York. Constructed of gorgeous, brilliant white Indiana limestone (see "Breaking Away"), the facade had been set up like a Greco-Roman ruin. The star piece was a trio of statues, representing "the three races of man": white, black, yellow.
Each figure, larger than life, had been incorporated into the portico pediment of the building, sculpted as heroic Neo-Classic figures, mounted on separate columns and holding up the lintel stone. Not surprisingly, the Caucasian statue bore his burden with only one arm above his head, with ease; the other two, one to each side, needed both arms and strained mightly to bear their share of the burden. It was a dramatic lesson.
The park included acres of formal floral beds, aboretum-quality groves of trees, miles of trails on the hillside winding down to the river. In the 60s the "counterculture" kids discovered that park, along with bikers, brothers, and other undesirables. The police responded with periodic skirmish line raids, clearing the park of drug-crazed hippies and upstart blacks. They weren't too gentle about it, got caught on film breaking heads, and an uneasy truce evolved. One weekend they charged through the park, busting bones; the next, after a week-long bout with bad publicity, they handed out free popsicles to the stoners, bikers, and Panthers.
On one particular Sunday morning, Jim and I visited the park to find Lucy, found her dressed in orange, and leapt into her arms. An hour or two later, sprawled beneath an ancient crabapple tree, unable to move, we breathed the sky in and out in unison with the tree, hearts beating along with the earth's, filled with the sheer organic joy of life, yet at the same time attuned to everything being said and done around us. You know.
Near us, seated on a low stone wall, were some guys a few years older, first wave hippies. They were swapping tunes on wooden recorders in a desultory fashion, not seeming all that into it, and occasionally remarking in a dismissive, world weary way on our state.
The guy who peddled the ice cream bicycle car pulled up. He was Egyptian. He did his business for a while, clearly listening to the talk and tunes of the recorder players. After the popsicle line died down, he stepped closer and asked them why they were so cynical about us, when we were clearly affirming life and doing no harm.
One of the recorder players answered: "Yeah, I used to do that stuff, too. A lot. I got to where that's all I wanted to do. Only cosmic stuff seemed important enough to deal with. I neglected my wife and couldn't keep a job. Now I don't do it, and I'm trying to want to get back with my wife, but I still have trouble thinking anything is important. It's like I burned out all my human emotions."
The Popsicle Man studied the Recorder Player for a moment. Then he said, "I learned to play the Egyptian style of that flute when I was a kid. I studied with a local village man who was something of a mystic, though we didn't have a name for what he believed or what he did. He taught us that the music was holy, a gift from another world, and that we could be completely in that world while we played or listened, but that the real challenge was to be in both worlds at once."
He paused and studied the guy again. He reached into the saddle bag of his bicycle cart, pulled out a small wooden whistle/flute, and said, "One of the tunes he taught us was handed down for thousands of years. It was the Procession of Cleopatra, the music the people would play to greet her when her barge drifted down the Nile. He said they played this tune because she was as beautiful as the other world, and while she listened and they played, they were in that world with her, despite her royal wealth and their humble lives. They did not resent her wealth because she was kind, and she shared her wealth and beauty with the people who loved her. Their music helped her stay in that world, too, and kept their bond alive."
He put the flute to his lips and started to play. I have never heard music so compelling, so rich and strange, so exotic yet so familiar, somehow as simple as bird song yet as sweeping as an orchestra, with unfamiliar rhythms that felt like home. I wept. Jim wept. The Recorder Player listened unemotionally for a few minutes; then he, too, began to weep.
When the song was finished, the Popsicle Man leaned over to the Recorder Player and whispered, "Your wife is Cleopatra."
The Recorder Play stared at him wide-eyed for a moment, jumped up, blurted, "I have to go home," and hurried away. The Popsicle Man handed me and Jim a cherry popsicle each, winked, and pedaled away.