Wednesday, November 08, 2006

karma of empire, and our own (unrelated?) paths

Celebrity dance shows with glitter and rouge, serious-looking scientists talking about the eminent collapse of most of the world's fish stocks, and advertisements smearing and blaming political candidates fill the screens of three adjacent TVs at my gym. The images alight there like butterflies for me, curious and almost beautiful because of their sadness. I watch them while listening to music or the sound of my own heartbeat, as I'm not plugged in to the audio system that goes with them. Frivolity beyond the pale, an impending cultural and ecological crash, and chatter at a volume so negative it is hard to hear or even think about clearly. I guess you could call them choices of what to watch while you're exercising - I'm not sure what I would call them.

Some days I really feel like we're missing the point. I don't know quite what the point is, but my blind hands groping through life tell me that for the most part, we haven't found it yet. Sometimes, with my cold hands in the warm pits under a dog's legs, outside on a rainy November day, I can make out faint contours on the map that can lead us to joy and satisfaction. Often that's the best I can do, the best I have to offer. Moments, slices, cross-sections, whispers and smells, peripheral visions, a pointalist life of nuances and fleeting moments...

What do you see when the talking heads fade away? What do you want on a highway with no billboards? What do you eat in a farmer's market full of fresh foods? How do you travel to get beyond here and there? How do you live life without waiting for joy to come to you, while cultivating infinite patience?

Thanks for reading all my wonderings-out-loud. A few new folks recently said they've enjoyed reading my thoughts and that's always nice to hear. I'll keep on ruminating like a cow moving that grass down inside and back up again, and scribbling it on this electronic paper like an already fading jetstream in the sky.

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