The Word of The Day Is If...
Several times I have been at the edge of physical death whether it was a heart attack, two bouts of paralysis cancer or simply being frozen alive and I have have never had an issue with facing death but I have had an issue with life. I was watching some forgettable program about some marginal subject when an advertisement soliciting funds for children with cancer came on. Their innocence, courage and maturity struck me like someone had thrown ice water in my face to roust me from a stupor. Their situation was an encapsulation of a gestalt that revealed in me contradictory emotions of anger, depression empathy and worst of all a sense of deep injustice of not knowing much more than when I began this journey.
This background tension of something being off kilter has followed me all my life and while others have found rest in whatever they found or accepted, all this, as they say, has kept me on my toes in a sort of vigilance, perhaps it’s neurotic, or some sort of undiagnosed malaise
I also had the sense that this something was hiding in plain sight and for lack of a better way to describe this something would be a simple answer attached to a purpose for the suffering of others. What I had found in all my reading was that the answer is not on page 24 of a book and that most of it while marvelously well intentioned, appeared upon close examination to be in reality, elaborate rationalizations of the human situation as being one between stations, a proverbial ghost concreted in a sort of hopeful amber of misplaced rationality applied to an unknown, a profound X factoring.
In all this architecture as wonderfully wrought as human beliefs can be is what Arthur Lee wrote in his "Listen To My Song".."All it was was just a question in my mind, all it was was just a portion of my time.."
And the operand word is If.
Hence off into the shadows into the liminal the transience of what is only fleetingly observed, the frayed rips of consensus, looking for patterns, clues, hints and inference. The more the contingent patterns emerged the larger the questions became only they were simpler in their formulation. Why do I bother to write about this journey?
In all this architecture as wonderfully wrought as human beliefs can be is what Arthur Lee wrote in his "Listen To My Song".."All it was was just a question in my mind, all it was was just a portion of my time.."
And the operand word is If.
Hence off into the shadows into the liminal the transience of what is only fleetingly observed, the frayed rips of consensus, looking for patterns, clues, hints and inference. The more the contingent patterns emerged the larger the questions became only they were simpler in their formulation. Why do I bother to write about this journey?
Because I suspect I am not alone in this. The bravery of every one of my fellow creatures is a silent reminder placed against irrevocable loss and hardship. This is one tough neighborhood in more ways than one.
I keep having the same dream over and over and over in about as many variations as you care to imagine. I am trying to get home and don’t have the faintest clues where home is. I get lost and caught up in elaborate detours and adventures, What am I doing? Looking for some kind of balm for this?
No.
Its a contradiction unlike any other. It’s lodged for the paranormalist between having a massive enough ego as an assumption we can figure this out and, on the other hand, acknowledging we no nothing and are open for suggestions.
We press on out of a simple necessity a sort of compulsion to turn every stone over to see what is hiding underneath them.
I recently has an experience concerning a photograph of a very clearly delineated ghost taken by a family member. Through the assistance of a fellow writer, it was sent off for analysis by a well known expert on such things. He said it was either an apparition or a hoax. What was I expecting? This robed cloaked figure with a beard became a sort of fly in the ointment for me. Whats the point of this and what exactly is the point of this apparitional figure?
This fly in my soup is that I will never know.
Does this call into question the possibility I am on a fool’s errand? It may but what are the other options? One writer called this the art of mountain climbing upon a euclidean cliff, whereas any perch is preferable to humanity, regardless of where it is located. Or as Gurdjieff wise cracked, "if you must sleep, sleep well."
We press on, camp and break down our camps like gypsies over some invisible horizon either toward home or over a cliff. Call this a public self examination, an exorcism of an undiagnosed malaise, knowing full well there just may be an answer perched under my nose or at least , a better set of clues...a something more workable. What exactly is it do we want?
We press on, camp and break down our camps like gypsies over some invisible horizon either toward home or over a cliff. Call this a public self examination, an exorcism of an undiagnosed malaise, knowing full well there just may be an answer perched under my nose or at least , a better set of clues...a something more workable. What exactly is it do we want?
I have a suspicion we don't have an answer for that question. Social movements of doctrine , edifices of political activism, religious heterodoxy,alchemy, physics, etc let alone the ambivalence of defining justice both in a existentialist and pragmatic framework all are dependent on who happens to be looking and the results are wrapped with sociology, more so the the penetration of fundamental issues regarding the context of transience. Perhaps it is surrealism that has captured our entrapment in our own tool making all of which revolves around procreation and death as Freud would say.
The latest trending is the critical assumption that the application of technology is a panacea whether it is the quest for immortality in a singularity wherein the metaphor of human beings as intelligent machines becomes encapsulated in plastic and wiring or robotic drones, the wings over the world as HG Wells prophesied, and yet no one or more accurately few see any contradiction in this obvious cross purpose. A tough and strange neighborhood full of more ghosts than living beings encased in a membrane of flesh..welcome to the neighborhood.
.
If I recall this correctly the scene from a particular film based on John Keel''s work was set in a Chicago library, and wary Alexander Leech turned to him and asked " ..some kind of trauma..And what happened to you Mr Kline?" The premise behind the question was a matter of sensitivities and in this revisionist film adaptation the moth in question was a matter of a natural ecology to which the vast majority was blind, meaning that death had as much purpose as life within a entanglement.
Reward and punishment have nothing to do with outcomes. Mr Kline and the loss of his wife drew him close to the vacuum of death as a gravitational attractor ,as Ouspensky put it, the Freudian mix becomes your mother's voice, or your wife's or significant other as a sort of perverse nurturing factor of Death which wears as many masks, the moth being vivified in darkness in a play upon light.
This is the seduction by the anomalous that pulls us from our errands, our self created universes prodding and provoking us perhaps toward the old hat trick of death meaning that for centuries humankind has sought the purpose of life in the possibility of immortality which strikes me as just another contradiction and this is simply fuel added to a silent conflagration of blood and sinew attached to a something we cannot name and yet we have ourselves probing beyond broken barricades and if caught, we become fodder for the agencies of some nameless and incommensurable process. Who goes there? Perhaps the night watchman, perhaps a deer flitting across the forest or perhaps something else we can scarce guess at as we seem to supply as many masks to this something as we can find in our wardrobes of the psyche.
Yes, he says to himself, truth and fictions. Fictions that have a kernel of truth and truths that have an equal share of fiction at their core.
I think at some point I noticed something and in turn that something noticed me. Whether it was loud raps awakening me at 2am, the strange voice garbled over a radio that had turned itself on, the strange voice of the answering machine warning me of "nafarious", etc etc and now this robed figure..I suppose it falls under the word provocation and if I applied duality to this, I would say I either provoked or invoked that something or vice versa..yet it may be a matter of entanglement, a sort of wrestling match that has nothing to do with winning or losing.
Odd is a good word to characterize this game.
I suppose I could seek shelter under the general umbrella of pronouncing everything to be an illusion and like my Buddhist friends work hard at keeping an arms length from any slings and arrows. Maybe take up golf to rid myself of secret sharers. Your guess is as good as my own from a viewpoint of agnosticism
Then the question may be what does this something want? That is to be determined. It may not be a matter of want, it may be need, it may be..... it simply "is". Or as one poet said sufficiently, it is 'the terrible beauty of the universes",
The common denominator of fiction and truth can perhaps be encapsulated in one simple word.
If
The latest trending is the critical assumption that the application of technology is a panacea whether it is the quest for immortality in a singularity wherein the metaphor of human beings as intelligent machines becomes encapsulated in plastic and wiring or robotic drones, the wings over the world as HG Wells prophesied, and yet no one or more accurately few see any contradiction in this obvious cross purpose. A tough and strange neighborhood full of more ghosts than living beings encased in a membrane of flesh..welcome to the neighborhood.
.
If I recall this correctly the scene from a particular film based on John Keel''s work was set in a Chicago library, and wary Alexander Leech turned to him and asked " ..some kind of trauma..And what happened to you Mr Kline?" The premise behind the question was a matter of sensitivities and in this revisionist film adaptation the moth in question was a matter of a natural ecology to which the vast majority was blind, meaning that death had as much purpose as life within a entanglement.
Reward and punishment have nothing to do with outcomes. Mr Kline and the loss of his wife drew him close to the vacuum of death as a gravitational attractor ,as Ouspensky put it, the Freudian mix becomes your mother's voice, or your wife's or significant other as a sort of perverse nurturing factor of Death which wears as many masks, the moth being vivified in darkness in a play upon light.
This is the seduction by the anomalous that pulls us from our errands, our self created universes prodding and provoking us perhaps toward the old hat trick of death meaning that for centuries humankind has sought the purpose of life in the possibility of immortality which strikes me as just another contradiction and this is simply fuel added to a silent conflagration of blood and sinew attached to a something we cannot name and yet we have ourselves probing beyond broken barricades and if caught, we become fodder for the agencies of some nameless and incommensurable process. Who goes there? Perhaps the night watchman, perhaps a deer flitting across the forest or perhaps something else we can scarce guess at as we seem to supply as many masks to this something as we can find in our wardrobes of the psyche.
Yes, he says to himself, truth and fictions. Fictions that have a kernel of truth and truths that have an equal share of fiction at their core.
I think at some point I noticed something and in turn that something noticed me. Whether it was loud raps awakening me at 2am, the strange voice garbled over a radio that had turned itself on, the strange voice of the answering machine warning me of "nafarious", etc etc and now this robed figure..I suppose it falls under the word provocation and if I applied duality to this, I would say I either provoked or invoked that something or vice versa..yet it may be a matter of entanglement, a sort of wrestling match that has nothing to do with winning or losing.
Odd is a good word to characterize this game.
I suppose I could seek shelter under the general umbrella of pronouncing everything to be an illusion and like my Buddhist friends work hard at keeping an arms length from any slings and arrows. Maybe take up golf to rid myself of secret sharers. Your guess is as good as my own from a viewpoint of agnosticism
Then the question may be what does this something want? That is to be determined. It may not be a matter of want, it may be need, it may be..... it simply "is". Or as one poet said sufficiently, it is 'the terrible beauty of the universes",
The common denominator of fiction and truth can perhaps be encapsulated in one simple word.
If
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