RANDOM RANTS & 911 SOOTH

The bridge between generations is often suspended from the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The fact that we assume which generation asked which is the crux of the flux. The tragicomically ironic basis for the question is that the elders, if that’s who you assumed was the inquirer, really would like to be given a better idea than the choice they haven’t veered from since back when they first answered that very question.

There is a reason for the term “student protest” deeper than the fact that academia, along with prisons, are the prime incubators of heresy, albeit or because they lie within the most stalwart walls of dogma since religion taught us how to shut — or forever free — once open minds of yet uncommitted youth. It is that very uncommittedness combined with the natural naiveté of inexperience that broadens the horizons of youthful curiosity egged on by the almost reckless flexibility of uncowed imaginings of a better way to live and motivates their footsteps toward the possibilities. Once an official commitment (vow made to loved ones, employers, loan sharks or anyone else who will hold you to it) to a life choice (marriage, ownership, parenthood, career employment) is made it grows defenses against the vicissitudes lurking in the carefree path of temptation. Rather than go as far into the wilderness as a tank of gas will take their toy they’d prefer polishing their candy apple paint job in the driveway. Rather than continue the adventurous life they both led when they fell in love, new parents become baby-talking wimps fashioning extremely conservative, heavily insured lifestyles for the good of the child now deprived of any kind of role model.

And their parents wonder why children aren’t more grateful for everything they are given¿?¿

••••

During a discussion of the Democratic debates Thursday night a commentator was noting that when one candidate wins over voters they come at the loss of support for their opponents. Here we see the short-sighted tautology of “politics as usual” that also explains why civilization cannot cure itself without heretics to cause cracks in the walls of the halls letting new light into the moldy chambers full of failed tradition. The reason candidates believe they must win over the voters of their opponent is because the real silent majority of eligible voters, who have yet to choose the evil of choosing between the two lying evils always offered, represents a no man’s land where there be dragons and ships fall off the edge of political correctness for the facile fast track facades headed for privileged places of power. What heretical messiah could evoke this silent mountain of independent anarchists to make the needed changes to our system of “representative government” so that it actually is of, for and by the people rather than the milking mechanism employed by the rich to siphon the citizens’ sweat into the tanks of tanks creating and refining the rubble of the global victims of their war profiteering acquisition. Whoever it is must do more than expose the emperor's nakedness, he must dismantle the loom of his tailor.

••••

Like my having witnessed two different sightings of ufos with two different groups of people while living in a culture that regards such reports as fringe lunacy, my awareness of the obviousness of the planned implosion of the three world trade buildings more than five years ago while living among a citizenry afraid of their government keeps itching to be aired every time the Bush regime is further exposed at every turn for the murderous mendacity required for such an act . The one barrier most folks have to actually questioning the official report, which itself was staffed with administration cronies and formed only after the outrage from victim’s families demanded answers, is fear of imagining that their fount of plenty, their loving, protective government could do such a thing … to its own people. Noam Chomsky, who has been tracking government mendacity since well before 911, doesn’t see any reason to pursue the issue because, compared to the other, much worse covert crimes of the US government, it is a distraction.

First, I’d like to mention a few things that do not require investigation of more than the video footage, available from every conceivable angle of the collapse of buildings number 1, 2 and 7. Foremost is the free-fall speed and symmetry with which all three fall virtually in their own footprints, impossible without calculated implosion of all support. Next is the tons of powdered, pulverized, exploded bodies, office furnishings and structural concrete blown out over a radius halfway across the Hudson River all too hastily shoveled into landfills. Third are two refutations of the rush-to-exonerate-the-administration report: Assuming the possibility of their pancake theory that each floor was broken loose from the formidable central core by the accumulating stack of floors falling from above, the theory also requires that the next floor to be broken loose is standing stock still at the time it is struck by the falling mass, requiring its inertia, its static momentum, to be overcome at each floor, 110 times — much slower than free-fall. And again, when this pancake theory reached the ground the results would be a 200 foot high stack of floors around the still intact 1100 foot central core like quoits around a peg instead of the twisted lengths of metal and powder spread all over lower Manhattan.

Second, I’d like to mention the ridiculous lengths to which fear of seriously entertaining the possibilities contained in the above paragraph will drive the Bush faithful. One favorite claim is that anything so elaborate requires too many accomplices to keep it a secret, forgetting the fact that they are backing a theory that 19 terrorists with box cutters pulled it off – with lessons from Oswald’s single bullet I suppose. Pyramidal organization models demonstrate the ability of one man to control the fate of an entire nation, with each member in the hierarchy contributing willingly, albeit unwittingly, to their own enslavement. Look around you.

Bush’s hiring an oil man to revise scientific reports on global warming before presenting them to the public demonstrates his tactic of subverting truth to his own secret agenda. Inventing the name, Al-Qaeda, to give the appearance of a unified enemy to un-allied terrorist groups against which the US may declare war demonstrates his subversion of intelligence to fit his own secret agenda. Firing justice department employees who won’t agree to stand on his side of the scales demonstrates his arrogant avoidance of judgment. All these gnats buzzing around the dung heap occupying the White House are finally gagging a public who willingly, gratefully swallowed the camel that was the 911 Commission Report's version of what happened six years ago.

May you live in interesting times … indeed!

DARE TO BE HAPPY!

Back last August my friend, Ichiban Kaboom, observed that, “your final point gets back to the same point your last blog got me on: the possibility for the individual to engineer significant and lasting social change, and the relationship between that and personal growth." He was the first and only person to even hint that I have a primary subject to explore or that every post is an attempt to get to the essence of a truth that seems self-evident to me. Just as sensitivity to environmental health begins at home with personal low impact living, a healthy social life is made of individuals who are concerned with learning and being happy with who they have always been since before conformity set in.

I’ve gone back to that post to explain why I bring a comment from a regular visitor, Troutsky, that furthers the point I intended two posts ago. He said, "… opens a million more questions. Such as: Can the idea of 'blundering' really then exist? It seems contradictory to the project of exposing the facade of an observer/observed duality. Perhaps you disturbing the web was as much a perfect expression of being as the spiders making it? In which case how do we judge right action or right speech?”

My answer was, The only blunder I intended to express was my willful ignorance of the threshold altogether through the blinders of my purpose. The propriety of other’s personal choices made within this threshold of the golden rule conscienseness is not my business — I just don't want it to be treated like a metal detector … to be got around. That consideration of the effect of our actions in a broader scope than our own purpose is my only concern and reason for the post. As to the spider web, it was back up, bigger and better the next day. The only blunder was to my purpose because of the expediency of my purpose.

Like all human faculties we are free to misuse them in this great experiment life is. Memory seems to be one of the least understood of such faculties as evidenced by the extremes to which it has been exploited in perversion of its evolutionary advantage. Memory of our living experience is one half of the metaphor completed by our genetic memory, we may be guided by recognizing patterns woven by comparing the timeless way of all against the way of the momentary observation. The best English word I have heard used to refer to that natural connectedness of the observed moment to internal eternity is wisdom. In direct opposition to such an idea I find the monkey wrench of education shouting down these more subtle signals, insisting on inspecting the efficacy of its cultural indoctrinations in the snotty voice of authority evoking memory to purge chunks of arbitrary answers on cue to qualify for existence in mixed company, while genetic memory quietly reminds us of other wrong paths taken, but never quite this far, believing we own all we survey.

With minds honed to fine lines between question and answer, action gallops along side with spurts of energy, occasionally bursting ahead of thought altogether… damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, and all that. The perception of observer/observed duality is the birthing ground of questions more specific and purposeful than the amazing wordless wonder oneness with the universe seems to be.

Born of dualistic perception, purpose needs a foe to be avoided, converted or slain, — yin-yang becomes trikaya. We are presented with the question, “… how do we judge right action or right speech?” Should we be silent, lest we be misunderstood and attacked for our well intended contribution? Should we persuade the world to change so we can be happy in it? Should we kill that which makes us not want to live? Between the rightness of our intentions and the rightness of the results of our actions lies a large enough ocean of golden rule contemplation to grind this mindlessly insatiable imperialism of western culture’s frenzied, acquisitive expedience to a molasses creep in midwinter.

Of course, that’ll never happen, but any individual finding value in a threshold wherein pure thought undergoes inspection by the light of the golden rule before stepping onto the shore of action brings a gift to the world by being happy in it — and that’s gotta relax things a bit. At least locally. Maybe.

JABBERWOOKIES

To paraphrase Roy Zimmerman’s metaphor, abstinence-only politics is like duck-and-cover atomic readiness. Gotta wax political every once in a while since it seems, like it or not, we’re all on this space ship together … or not.

Our corrupt leadership seems to be carpet bombing us with distractions in yet another maneuver to remain world saviors in their tiny neocon minds while pushing buttons, pulling strings and erasing emails in the imperial war bunker like three year olds full of sugar. When glimpses behind the curtain begin adding up to blown cover they throw out a scapegoat. They’ve been doing it on such a regular basis for so long that a good barometer for proximity to totally outing their mendacious duplicity is how rare the meat on the scapegoat is. Is it already slathered in bar-dis-closure sauce while smokin’ fer days in a preparation chamber —mere minions, collateral damage, — or is it still alive enough to lead to the farmer? Let’s see, Rummy, Scooter and Gonzo … Department of Defense lying to play war, a Dick shield and Attorney General lying to play toady … well, Dribblya, do you really think Dick would cast himself on his sword before shooting off your facade? Anyone remember Spiro Agnew. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.

Once Saint George
Rescues fair maiden
From the Dragon,
Who
Rescues fair maiden
From Saint George?

Where are the watchdogs
We picked to keep the rapists away?
They're offering up to him a chance for
Twenty-five thousand more murders
As an acceptable price for their schedule.
Another year and a half of George’s vorpal sword
Bargined for his limp withdrawal.
O frabjous day! Callooh, callay.
He won't be galumphing back.

Forty-seven lives will end
Every day of their modest proposal.
Saint George shrugs it off like a fly,
John Wayne with bigger fish to fry,
A newly hatched dragon from his incubator,
Or just another lie.

US & THEM?

I call it a humming bug, anybody got anything more official?

While floating about the jungle I call my yard this early misty morn, chuckling all the way at the absolute beauty in each blade of grass, burgeoning loquat fruit, dew dripping papyrus leaf, I noticed a spider web glistening in the foggy rising sun rays suspended over the pond in a perfect pattern a meter in diameter. Thinking to capture it in pixels, I rounded the pond to find an angle to the sun that would reflect its entire expanse in strong enough contrast to the background for the camera to pick up. Half way round I looked back and realized another example of a lifetime of fuck ups in the threshold between thought and action — I had severed three of the long strands that once suspended the spiral and now the web hung like a sheet wafting in the light stir of air from Sol sizzling the surface of the water.

Werner Heisenburg knew the threshold well as his principle of uncertainty is based on the extreme possibility that the mere process of inquiry entails a question that rules out irrelevancies by the nature of its having a purpose. In my experience this morning, the moment the gossamer grid work evoked a desire to record it, to communicate it to a time and place less fleeting than the present inspiration, I had left the preverbal well of happily groking here now and began formulating words to nail it down, if only for myself. And, had I actually thought about making a wider circuit of the pond to avoid cutting the suspension lines on the web to find the perfect image to snap up, the event might still be only with myself, to myself. But the blunder seemed to make it worthy of sharing with anyone who cares about such things, is aware of such things.

Before I hatched a plan to capture the moment, there was no observer separate from the observed. There was only the universe being joyously aware of itself from its tiniest aspects to its solar immensity and timelessness that with a hiccup of my reality seemed to grow a skin and a plan that felt much like the cinematic effect of panning in on the web center while zooming out to its limits. Considering ourselves as separate from what we observe is the initial motivation to communicate with the idea of “other” to maintain the oneness intuited in preverbal thought.

POLL THIS!

In passing curiosity, the title of an online poll, Politics & Society, caused me to investigate what kind of questions such a poll could ask, whether I could detect the usually thinly veiled agenda of the pollster. Not only was it obviously out to test the influence of religion, in particular, Christianity, on the political opinions of potential voters, they really opened themselves up at the end with a blank text block under the question, “What do you think of this poll?” With a blinking, winking, beckoning cursor tucked shyly in the upper left corner.

Like I had to be encouraged to outrage against the mechanistic, ever accelerating expedience of experience in Western culture …… so I told ‘em, “If you really want to learn what people think, you need many more choices or fill in the blanks, but like all the expedience of western society, you don't seem to have time to hear alternatives to the variables in your prepared formulas nor the desire for coloring outside your lines to upset the objective in your supposedly subjective polls. Too bad, your loss — and anyone else so weak-minded or afraid of political correctness as rely on polls to have an opinion at all, as if agreement meant righteousness somehow instead of the conformity it is.”

Just now, rereading the last paragraph to get back in the mood of the thing it occurred to me that polls are not out to learn people’s opinions or a true slice of life, they are giving politician’s spin doctors grist for the mill come next election. Polls not only make a simple for/against duality out of extremely complex issues, if they are issues at all, which not only informs candidates of buzzwords for campaign speeches but it sets it in the minds of the poll takers and readers as a simple check off so they don’t have to consider new information. I have fantasized about an “OFFICE OF U.S. CONTROL,” wherein the function is to collect every poll, grind the numbers into two part issue tickets which are then bid on by and split between the two advertising firms hired to do a remake on the personality of the two candidates so they are always on different sides of the allowed questions, like wrestlers being assigned their roles, yet never so heinous that a landslide for the guy in white gives voters the idea the ballot can actually change anything that matters.

As if all that pre-election polling weren’t conditioning enough, polls come to their influential pinnacle election day as their reports of trends sweep up the remaining doubtful, fearful, fence-sitting riffraff whose only political consciousness is to be able to say they picked the winner, like this weeks football game or the American Idol.

I was kinda piddling around on this subject until I caught Noam Chomsky in a speech at MIT on Democracy Now, and his comparison to what voting and public involvement means to the Bolivians next to the majority of US citizens who have never seen a choice that mattered to their lives in their lifetime. I am one of ‘em. Real democracy, as discovered by the indigenous Bolivians frightens the hell out of the US elite who have always disopened it wherever it showed up without their meddling aid.

MY GENERATION -by the WHO's too old?

Oh Yeeeeaaaah.

REDUCING THE POPULATION HUMANELY

Scientists say they've identified a genetic variation that helps make small dogs small, instead of big like great danes. It's a string of doggy DNA that regulates a growth hormone--called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1)--that mammals from mice to humans make. Knowledge News

Can you guess where I am going with this?

If we take a 6 foot tall person to be the great dane, then fostering the growth of the IGF1 hormone would produce toy-humans that would consume less food to eat, fuel to transport and room to live. If the goal of rescuing the planet from the cancerously prolific population humans represent is to ever to be accomplished against the sludge of humanity's unwillingness to change its ways, reducing the size of the individuals involved would buy us some time to work out a better behavior solution. Maybe

I hope the ridiculousness of this proposal to accomplish a lower impact of humanity on the health of the planet emphasizes the sanity and moral obligation for all of us to translate our observation of civilization's negative influence on the environment into personal behavior modifications such as found here and here.

I HAVE ALWAYS RELIED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS…

Where to begin? Once begun, were to stop? I have been tagged, which until now has indicated that a fellow blogger has requested insightful answers to an entire range of questions, ostensibly to reveal hitherto hidden personality of the tagged. But this tag is different — it is an honorific deemed deserved by a fellow blogger.

Troutsky, author of “Thoughtstreaming”, has given me the Thinking Blogger Award with this presentation, “…I hope people will visit Gregrandgar's site It Must Be the Vapors. He comes from the "physician, heal thyself" school of social change and finds his Truth in Do Unto Others and in his beautiful N Texas garden. He writes inspiring poetry and asks really good questions.”

It comes with the following rules:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

My first inclination is to tag a blog by Pisces Iscariot called The Far Queue because he does so much more than make me think (as if I could be made to do something I don’t seem capable of stopping in the first place). His use of language draws me into the realm of pure thought where language has yet to slice, dice or codify, just as the twinkle in a daddy’s eye cannot be bounced upon a future granny’s knee. Reading his poetry and prose is a delightful respite from the plethora of political pedantry posted out there, yet expresses the essence of politics, if that is the trend of my thinking at the time of my reading him.

Next I would cite Bobby Lightfoot and the Orchestra of Sweet Regret, whose words, like barbs and stings must be understood to be the exterior of something of value to be penetrated like a male porcupine looking for a good fuck. The humor within reveals a very happy man, which is always a delight to find and goes a long way to explain why he chose music as his means of communication.

Third, but by no means less than the others is 22 over 7, by Mr. Damon whose multifaceted curiosity integrates hard edged physical science with the mystical development of cultural ideology. An amazing and catalyzing accomplishment, to say the least. Just his title, the crudest form of the so far infinitely unresolvable number, ∏.

For now, I gotta stop my list, not because there are no more I appreciate, but because in my short blogging experience I have yet to witness more blogs deserving such an honor that have not already received it. I will get to the two remaining as they occur to me.

I find that this particular meme serves an extremely valuable service to intellectual exploration of the human capacity to express our universal oneness through the myriad variations we each are on that theme. By backtracking through the links this tag requires I see the genius behind its originator, though I have yet to go far enough to find out who that may be, but it is not the end I seek, but the journey I enjoy.

——————————————————

I have found a fourth worthy recipient of this award in Karoline in the Morning whose photos and poetry about, sense of and love for her family and the timelessness of nature evoke a kinship beyond her words. She proves the native americans right, photos do capture souls, its just not a bad thing. Thank you dear Karoline.

KURT VONNEGUT 1923-2007

Kurt Vonnegut may be learning answers to all the questions he taught several generations of humanity to ask of authority for most of his eighty-four years. For me, his death proves the ultimate example of reincarnation being the endurance of his spirit to remain in the hearts and minds of anyone who knew of him. Rest in the peace of your indefatigable humor and wisdom, dear friend.

Added 4/14/07: I have been mightily impressed by the fact that all my favorite blogs have posted tributes to this transcended heretic. A commenter on one of them said, "OK, that's it. I've never read any of his stuff, my excuse being he wasn't all that well known in England. Now I have to but perhaps I'll wait until the hype dies down a while.." not realizing the difference between hype (advertising sensationalism) and real, pure enthusiasm for one taken to our hearts as deeply as any beloved mate.

THOUGHTOLOGICAL TAUTOLOGY

Somewhere in my past posts I asked the rhetorical question, “Now that you have learned a language, can you still think without it?” Yesterday, at lunch with a friend, he made the boldfaced statement that science has proven humans cannot think without language! My initial reply was, “What a giant load of bullshit.”

Since then I have ruminated upon the implications in his statement, both for him and for anyone else that swallows such horse twaddle. Could such ideas actually cut believers off from thinking anything outside the tautology of their cultural communication medium just because they can no longer recognize ideas lacking the hard edged definitions of language? Does free, creative thinking cease to exist for them? It would seem that anyone who would espouse such notions must surely have abdicated their ability to think outside the box to allow blind faith in anything the new religion of science farts to take absolute authority over all speculative ideation.

The shortsightedness of claiming language’s total responsibility for the birth and life of thoughts combined with his impossible, tautological challenge to prove that I can think without words has him convinced of his righteousness, despite my multiple examples of painters, improvisational musicians, preverbal babies and everyone’s occasional inability to express themselves to the contrary. The threshold between thought and action (in this case verbalization) of which I have previously posted has been totally ignored in this case resulting only in dialogue uttered around a permanently inserted foot in ones mouth. Confusion of thinking with its mode of communication seems able to induce a sort of schizophrenia whereby one may treat ones own creative thinking as xenophobically alien as a foreign-tongued stranger with whom one has yet to converse. Ah, well — folks sell their better self out in the desire to conform every day - as the music of naturally serendipitous brownian movement characteristic of human thought begins to assume the rote drum beat sound of boot camp platoons marching on the parade ground at graduation day.

Ignoring the existence of preverbal thought is like not noticing human beings until they graduate from a military academy. Maybe.

GLOBAL SWARMING

I just heard a spokesman for the UN’s task force on the environment, a Mr. Puchauri, make an oxymoronic appeal on behalf of the poor of the world on the basis of the fact that they are “least equipped to adapt to global warming” while ignoring the obvious fact that those most equipped to adapt are equipped with the very devices that heat up the environment already while the well adapted cool their little heels in their private isolation chambers at home, on the gas-guzzling road and on the job. What is this adapt shit anyway? Is the UN capitulating to the inevitability of a possibility just to avoid ruffling the feathers of the internationally profiteering corporations whose greed insistently, consistently, persistently overshadows their responsibility for causing it. I don’t deny global warming is occurring, but to act as if there were no other behavior but to adapt (more air conditioners, faster warming) to an inevitability (that mankind is beyond the tipping point of planetary warming) is an awfully short-sighted, craven avoidance of correcting the spoiled lifestyle of the rich nature-conquering and famous western civilization, just because it has all the money and adapting equipment. That money can only cause more problems by enabling mankind to keep on fucking with that which we’ve yet to understand, but believe we own anyway. Nature is much more healthy than we understand, else why would its immune system be trying to flush us away as long as we insist on being an oncological ideology. It makes one consider becoming a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose motto is "May we live long and die out," not that I want more progeny anyway. I also like the metaphor they use, “believing the act of sex is a response to the instinct to procreate is like believing that eating is in response to a need to defecate.”

BOARDED ROOM BOREDOM

As personal as the phenomenon known as boredom is, there is one thing that all versions have in common: sufferers have ceased being interesting to themselves and thus feel betrayed by whatever source of distraction they’ve chosen for no longer entertaining them. The harsh truth is that only boring people can be bored or resort to blaming externals for their condition. Certainly everyone has experienced the tedium of meaningless repetition to be found in the industrial products of modern civilization’s assembly lines, but to continue to rely on such for a sense of involvement in the mystery of life can only be a case of ignoring ones own curiosity about the natural world within and without ones skin. Epitomes of the encroachment of such vicarious living are the “entertainment industry” and “spectator sports” encouraging sedentary abandonment of ones curiosity, imagination and creativity for the formulaic bath in other's thrills.

I discovered this act of selling oneself short, or out in the extreme case, when I found I could not remain inside when experiencing the effects of psychotropic substances. The enhanced irritation of observing manufactured objects for all their endlessly unsatisfying, mundane explainability drives me to the out-of-doors to see trees and animals and weather whose mysteries are barely explained or contained by the most succinct, yet always open ended theories. Don Juan showed this to his student as Casteneda explained away the possibility of a winged deer to be a branch with trembling leaves. The ultimate statement of the impotence required for boredom is, "There is nothing new under the sun."

I suppose the phenomenon of “cabin fever” experienced by latter day Neanderthals who insist on dwelling in the land of long winter snows is the most general example of the inadequacy of plans and routine to fill in for spontaneity. I know that my recent bout with bronchial breakdown, leaving me weak and mentally pretty puny, has emphasized this feeling of boredom as I remain indoors with little or no will to jeopardize my health further in this extended Texas winter and a sputtering creative imagination that has resorted to purchasing movies and TV shows from iTunes as a distraction from my irritation with my relatively impotent condition. This period is the worst of such times so far in my life, but I have a feeling that sunshine and more clement weather will restore me to my former health with a relish impossible ‘til now. I may even find that I've forgotten to tune in Democracy Now to keep my nose in the business of others by once again fully grokking the business of blooming peppers, tomatoes and squash in my garden.

(2 hours later) I would also like to note that boredom often takes on the aspect of an empty schedule for one who is dedicated to always have something going on if only to have an answer when asked, not out of any kind of creativity but to avoid facing the present where creativity or the lack of it is dealt with. As oral traditions are recorded by translators and digitized by programmers, access to entire cultures may be had and ignored by cherry picking theoreticians seeking only proof of their foregone conclusions. In this same way, the vast value of the present is ignored while serving only as a stepping stone on the way to a foregone future.

CHICKEN HAWKS

I have got to make an exception to my abstinence from politics for dissemination of this by Roy Zimmerman…
I have now watched 11 videos by this guy and, although Chickenhawks is still my favorite, there is not one that doesn't rival the best satire out there, from Swift to Bill Hicks. My favorite line is, "abstinence-only sex education is like just-hold-it potty training." What a load of cathartic, bittersweet belly laughs this guy evokes.

DOWN HERE ON THE GROUND

As a kid growing up I recall my parents noting that my sister, Susan, had eyes whose color changed with the weather; gray on cloudy days and sky blue when it was sunny. Here, many years later, I have finally accumulated enough evidence of catching “summer colds” with the extreme example described in my last post serving to, like the stubborn mule, knock me in the head to get my attention to the fact that my lungs reflect the weather as fittingly as “Thithter Thusie”’s eyes. The fairly consistent overcast conditions inherent in March winds and April showers seem to have been matched by the congested condition of my breathing apparati whose relief has always been sunny days of summer to bake away the mold.

As I sat in my garden shed this morning as the sun barely peeked through the congested clouds the universal metaphor, “As above, so below,” came to me for the zillionth time in its most powerful expression yet. The closest approach to religion in my life is as, like my father, a deist along with the decidedly non-religious Buddhist precept of being one with everything. So long as the sun can burn away clouds I will find a way to breathe freely.

THRESHOLD

Sometimes words all take on the character of inert desert sand, good only for pouring through the neck of an hourglass, no coherence of meaning’s attraction bridging even the narrowest of gaps to coagulate a fertile field of food for thought where ideas sprout in gardens off the track of time. So often I approach this keyboard with THE key to expressing the essence of my grandest ideas and most loving of visions in mind only to feel the drain of vitality begin as I approach the threshold between thought and action. In trying to make that crossing in composing this post I lost the magnetic metaphor, that living backbone standing for the message contained by the chord within, and so the crumble of form back to dessiccated sand. But my insistence on writing on a regular basis, if I am to be a writer worthy of my best ideas, persisted with this attempt to describe even those times when words go on strike — and I found the metaphor again, or one like it, it doesn’t matter. It is about that threshold I see between thought and action.

Thought is like swimming in the ocean delighting in the varieties and schools of ideas within which one treads with no particular elsewhere or otherwhen to be. If I stay in the liquid too long I become gray, pruney pudding like my brain while my bones loose their will to support me, so I must regularly climb aboard my boat, “Home Port,” to maintain the health of my body while remaining on open water, the realm of thought.

Action is like dancing on land where I may step on plants, ants and people’s tender toes. The slightest gesture is as liable to slam into immovable objections as find kindred hoofers.

The threshold between the two worlds is contemplation of the golden rule represented by the rope I use to tie up to whatever dock I choose. Conscious consideration of my intent upon landing and understanding the possible results of the dance from experience of the harbor is like going through my own personal customs where entry is denied if it’s purpose is found to be less beneficial than benign.

Between finishing the last line and the posting of it I had an extreme experience of the instant karma involved in taking the threshold too lightly for purposes of ego preservation. While knowing that my life long, chronic bronchitis had reached its congestion limit I still justified a chilly two mile, rain soaked treck to the nearest cat food supplier to maintain my self-image as good provider. As the earth covered the sun that evening I began having panicky, asthma-like breathing which lasted until my visiting friend, and now guardian angel, Erica, arranged for me to get an inhaler by noon the next day. The attack has left me quite puny without strength, energy or stamina. While I am recovering slowly, I have realized that I have revoked my own visa to cross from thought to action, and am held in thrall by the threshold I ill considered when deciding to risk my health for the momentary appetite and imagined appreciation of my cats. When considering action now, not only the morality of the act but the energy requirements become of prime importance as I languish in the customs detention of threshold limbo. It was the worst, scariest night of my life but chocked full of lessons I will be learning for a long time to come. The threshold is real and ignorance or exploitation of it leaves one with no choice but to react to results of our ill considered blunders upon shore.