Thoughts or something similar

If I were a writer, oh what would I write?  I suspect it would be epic when it formed in my soul, truncated considerably as it resolved to words, and utterly pedestrian when it made it to the screen.  But let’s see if I could give it a try.

I start with a cow.  A purple cow, not unlike that old song, save that this cow has both eyes, both horns, and does not fly.  Does it eat people?  Not so far.  Can’t promise that won’t happen.  If it happens to you, then you will die with the satisfying knowledge that you are the first known human consumed by a cow.  A purple one.  Purple, like the robes of a Disney movie monarch.  This cow is no king, however.  She hasn’t the requisite body extensions to fall into that sex classification, though she could certainly be “genderfied” in any direction her patrons/matrons choose to direct her.

Does she have free will?  Is a cow intellectual enough to care?  And who first presumed that intellectualism was somehow a prerequisite for free will?  Plenty of the intellectually challenged have free will, they just don’t know how to utilize it.  Or if they do, they don’t know when to do so.

The animals of the world, minus us humans, don’t intellectualize death.  They aren’t sitting on the plains or the meadows or up in the trees feeling sorry for themselves because they’re aging.  A zebra with hindquarters half-ripped from hip bone still feeds with the others of the herd.  It doesn’t require ten years of therapy to understand why the lion attempted to eat it, or to come to terms with the fact that its mother didn’t explicitly explain that this could happen, or prozac to deal with the reality that its leg will never look/work the same.  The zebra doesn’t reach middle age and suddenly realize it had an awful cubhood. 

We, the intellectuals, are the ones that do that.  And usually not in the interest of getting better – but simply to have someone to blame for the fact we just don’t take the reins of our own lives.  So why am I contemplating the purple cow?  Because I’m attempting to untangle the neurons in this soupy gray mass that operates my fingers, beats my heart, forms specious arguments that come back to haunt me when I’m feeling smug.  I use the cow to grab at all the threads, pull them to center, introduce them to one another, then cold-cock the sonofabitch that let them get so messy to begin with.  The cow is an anomaly, and therefore so off-putting that I stand back and let it go crazy, feng shuing my cobwebs, replacing the insufferably loud voice of late that tells me I am going ever so mad.  But hey, at least I recognize a purple cow is not at all a normal cow.

And now it’s tap-dancing in my mind.  Tap dancing purple cow, which may or may not eat a human in the future (and lucky you if it picks your tender flesh – you’ll be in the news!) and swings on my gray matter neurons like a trapeze artist in a vintage photograph.  Now the cow has a handlebar mustache, which should certainly surprise the next bull that sees her from the front.

Is this how it looks when the mind untangles?  Somebody take a selfie in front of me.

Psychosomatic psychosis

There’s something to be said for neurosis.  Well, there probably is.  I think I’ve discovered the way to get the most tedious of tasks done here at home: make time to do some writing.  Once I have the time and opportunity to sit and write… I find that energy to do the dishes, clean the tub, arrange the boxes in the closet… etc.  If none of these things need doing, then my body simply becomes so fatigued I have to lay down. 

How does someone get a fear of the keyboard?  Where does it come from?  Perhaps I’ve associated writing with “The Noise,” a project from my past that I associate with negative feelings now.  All of my writing endeavors, for years, were devoted to this publication.

So am I so simplistic a creature that I would disassociate myself from writing for such a silly reason?  Does writing only emerge from me in return for a financial reward?

I feel, even now as I type this, that my author voice is stunted and I dislike the prose I’m laying down here.

But with it all laid bare above, it’s very silly to continue being inhibited for these reasons.  I read them and know they’re silly.  Expression is essential, dishonest if prompted by the potential of money alone.  The cacophony of voices on the internet might not be begging for another contribution… but if I were meant to be silent, my fingers would be up my nose and not tapping at the keyboard.

Drove a bit

Circled through Sedona, Flagstaff, Route 66 to Williams and Ash Fork, then back to Prescott.  Aside from fuel, total cost $11.  With the saved cash, I could get a better cell phone cam.

Persona non-gratis

Have been swept up in tides of change in recent weeks.  Nothing of great import worth mentioning here; suffice to say, it's an attempt to go from 8-bit to 128-bit or better.  Steps aren't entirely clear yet, but the slope is certainly an upward one.  No coasting for a while.  And that's just fine.

Moving and shaking

The plan was made some time back... move.

The reality is this... routine is being shaken.

The logistics of it are becoming clear... the budget is nearly set... the destination is 80% certain.

But what will I have to do, workwise?  Do I have a choice at this point, considering the state of my resume?

Of course.  There's always control, if you haven't taken on the psychology of lack.

I have great abundance in my life.  That is no reason, however, to close yourself off to more.  There is no end to what you can receive if you are able to give.  I believe I can give more... or be a channel for those peaceful ideas I cannot express in words.  Not as a plea for rewards, but for the simple fact a world of takers alone is not self-sustaining.  We have to be generous and serve others for it to flourish.

I'm open to a better life, and it's on the way.  Just as much as I'm hoping to enhance a few lives.

Must be summer

This lovely creature was ambling across the Sedona Medical Center parking lot.  Even stopped to pose.  Back in younger days, I would have possibly run screaming.  Now we have a mutual respect for one another.  I suppose I can call that progress.

Hopeful signs

Outside, in light too dim for photographs, a bumble bee digs in contentedly to an echinacea flower.  I'm happy to see there's at least one bee left in the world.

I sometimes forget to disconnect from the tediously competitive human world and pay attention to the remainder of nature - the bees, the slugs, the maple trees, the pollen, the microbes, the pine needles... all the other universes around me.  I get caught up in notions of status and material wealth, and the tired old notions of us-vs.-them, the us being humans and the them being nature.  The silly interpretation of our position as "conqueror."  Clearly we need to coexist, and I am not being entirely realistic if I imply that mankind is somehow separate from nature.  We emerged from it.  We evolved with it.  Why do we now want to conquer it?  Co-existing in harmony seems more beneficial to both.

As our brains "evolved" however, we started to think a little too much.  I don't have to think to enjoy watching a bee at its work.  The bee doesn't complain, doesn't compare how much pollen it dispersed at the end of the day to its fellow bees.  The battles in nature are not out of vanity, merely evolutionary necessity - survival of the fittest, as Darwin never said.  At the end of the day, bees would never broadcast a show where each competed for cash prizes and fifteen minutes of fame/shame.  They just do what they do.

Do we have an advantage because we can ponder "higher concepts"?  I don't know, suppose I should meditate on that... for now, though, I'm just going to watch the snails outside the back door.  They have just as good an answer as I ever will.

Quiet

Silence is the voice of god, the almighty, source, yahweh, beatrice, or whatever it is you call the unifying intelligence of existence.  In those silent moments we commune in our highest capacity.

So why am I talking?  Good question.  I'll meditate on it.

I don't suppose it's way outside of reason to view the cacophony of noise that surrounds us (from advertisements at the gas pump to the unnecessary muzak at the dollar store to the talking/unthinking heads on the nightly "news") as the most sinister form of anti-deifying schlock we could have ever dreamed up. 

I've learned more from sitting silently on mountaintops than I have from nearly forty years of television.  I've accepted my godliness not through the class-based, arrogance-fueled American Dream, but through rising above border and tribal lines.  Anytime I compromise, it's through a desire for peace, not material gain.  In silence, I feel at peace.  Like Paul said, let it be.

Again, why am I talking?  I suppose my great hope is to use my mouth-hole-noise to bring peaceful thoughts.  To be, as San Francesco wished, a channel for peace, as well.

I shut my face

I killed off the fb for a bit.  Needed a respite.

As a social network, it's got volume and little else.  It fosters a "convenience socialization" ideal.  Click 'like' after 'like'.  I get multiple likes and the occasional "yummm" if I post a picture of dinner.  I get multiple 'likes' on some pictures I'm fortunate enough to capture.  "We love your work," they say, but only to the extent that you place it conveniently on the newsfeed.  Even if there's 517 photos on flickr, just a click away, it doesn't exist unless each photo is on the fb feed.  Or perhaps there's a link to something mind-expanding, something that expounds a point that the person just 'liked' minutes before... no dice.  It's outside of the feed.  This is something I've noticed over the past several months... what you present here is worth checking out, so long as the reader doesn't have to go anywhere else to look at it.  Surely the purpose of a social network is to not just "shoot the breeze" with pictures of our dinner or thoughts on the weather or inspirational messages superimposed on images of unicorns and rainbows.  One would hope a network like fb - with more users on it than anywhere else - would be able to foster a meaningful dialogue among people.  Instead it's a repository for seven-second soundbites and the uneducated/unevolved political harum-scarum of the paranoid masses.  Just imagine what it could be, though. 

This is not to say I don't have some good dialogues there, or that I need constant "likes" or acknowledgment to feel popular on the site.  It's not expected everyone will see everything and must click to acknowledge everything before I believe anyone's reading.  That would be silly and desperate.  It's just disappointing sometimes to see, of 100+ people, the implied opinion that "we like what you had for dinner; we're going to skip your creative work; oh, and we enjoy this picture of a cute cat dangling from a branch saying 'Hang in There'."  When you realize this is happening virtually every time, it's not unreasonable to ask yourself whether or not you're just a "'like' of convenience" to most as well.

I have many brilliant folks on my list (many who are far more productive and intelligent than myself) but I think even they are becoming jaded.  Such potential for the site, but "the lunatics have taken over the asylum."  So I need a break from it.  I'm curious to see who I hear from outside of its walls.

Creating your own light

Something very simple was taught to me recently, though to be honest, "taught" isn't quite the right word.  Indeed, it was something I already knew, but had continued to fail to do.  So, it was taught in the sense that I learned to pay attention to it.

It's no big secret: the vocabulary you use to describe yourself and/or your situation.  It's easy to disregard the significance of self-talk.  We feel it's perfectly natural to talk to ourselves with phrases like "you dumbass" or "what the hell's your problem" or "you're too fat" or whatever.  "I am... " is a wording that creates identity.  "Why am I so fat?" prompts the mind to find an answer: "Because you're lazy and you eat too damn much."  It is just as easy to ask "How can I lose this weight" and it doesn't tie you to the fat; it keeps it as a separate entity, one you can detach from without losing identity.  You're "a person with weight to lose" - that's someone who's independent of the weight.  A "fat person" is someone who remains so because their identity is tied to that description.

I use the "fat person" example because that was something I've devoted a lot of years to being... and now my vocabulary has to change.  My identity depends on it.  What is it to be "a man" or "a diabetic" or "an introvert" or "a writer" or "unsociable"?  All of these words may describe, but if they're tied to identity, they become prison bars.  If I use them to describe myself, I am compelled to live up to them, since the mind strives to keep us in line with our notion of identity.  However, if I opt to describe myself as "I am" and nothing more, I don't have to live up to any of these things.  Or I can simply choose better words or questions.

So, "I am ______."  Once you realize you will live up to what you put in the blank... you start getting more and more careful about what you say to yourself.  You become what you think about all day long.  You manifest your reality.  I have been reminded of this a lot recently, from a variety of sources.  And it teaches me, there is one thing I most definitely am: I am grateful.  ;)