Emotions are fleeting. I'm in a good mood but I don't trust it. Because I don't know why I'm in a good mood when yesterday I was in a bad one. I could make up reasons and fool myself into believing them, I guess, but I'm not really in the mood. But I could be tomorrow. How obnoxious.
Slap the Eternity Syndrome onto that sucker, and you've got yourself a paradox my friend. I think. Ow owww! (to be pronounced in the high frequency range where flirtation becomes so obvious that it comes to symbolize the exact opposite, and does an arrogant little jig)
Anyways, some train of thought so irrational that to put it to words would be unsettling, got me thinking of pirates this morning. When I realized I was thinking about pirates, I naturally envisioned a ship full of Johnny Depps battling scurvy, applying eyeliner, and searching for treasure-- after all, what else is a gal to think about pirates in this day and age? While the prototype for the contemporary hypothetical pirate is clear, the contents of that buried chest are far more blurry-- at least in "my" brain.
**Sidenote: The reason I put quotation marks around "my" there, is because the phrase "my brain" implies that there is something independent of the brain that not only makes up who I am, but has enough freaking seniority to claim dominion over the twists and turns of the cerebral cortex! I'm not sure I'm in a position to make that assumption, especially about my own self. Yikes just got lost for a second thinking about the layers of what that doozy would entail**
But back to treasure. My inclination initially was to ramble on about how true treasure would be the sincere realization of all things as gifts, without feeling compelled to labor over some complex rendering of a giver that necessarily imprisoned the infinite within the trappings of "our" minds. Or coming to the genuine understanding that treasure is buried nowhere other than beneath the layers of our selves, and that to unearth it one need turn only inward. And yes, I guess theoretically I do think that would be just dandy. But the dumb current obnoxious fleeting reality is that I am SO far away from that place that pretending to go there, or going there intellectually but leaving all else behind, or hypothesizing about what it might be like to go there, is just annoying- even painful. And kind of irrelevant to my daily life. Kind of. It's a nice lighthouse to orient towards, but it's skipping FAR too many steps from where I'm at.
Because we all know, or know someone who knows, or know someone who knows that we know even though we don't think we do, what it is to feel that emptiness. That hollow ache that assures us there is no secret map with which to navigate this void. And that if X marks the spot, then every other letter of the alphabet is festering inside of us. Twenty-five clashes of sound and shape and symbols of anything other than treasure. Words like trappings, then, cannot be applied to the abstract in any way other than being trapped, enslaved even, to an inability to experience meaning. And you're the one, not the treasure, that's buried. **cue response that they're one and the same, a person and their treasure-- maybe, but I can't say it in a way that means anything really because I'm too far away from actually knowing it on any type of sustained experiential level. And, even more so, it can't mean anything (in an immediate, practical sense) to someone experiencing what I just described. And so effectively it's useless. Some treasure.
And so, for now, I'm paradigm-shifting my view of what's in the treasure chest from the distant abstract ideal to the practical, to the building of a bridge over that vastness-- to the baby steps that will slowly orient our passage through time toward ("to" seems really overly ambitious, at least for me) such liberating lofty realizations. To the things that feel like treasure in the moment, in that reality, to the infusion of taste into that ridonkulous slice of "time and space pie." And I'm doing it hoping that I will always allow that conscious paradigm to continue its natural shift into alignment with what feels balanced for where I'm at. I think that if/when I don't, then when that inevitable shift does come it is all the more abrupt, and so all the more painful and not-fun.
And so the fantastical treasure chest that I pursue (but as a ship full of Johnny Depps, you know like that weird thing that happens when you're dreaming sometimes) is at least for now in a state of perpetual dynamism. Rather than hold within it a realization that is lightyears away from my current orbit, or perhaps in a different metaphor what I am orbiting around, the treasure in the chest is fluid and it's also a guide. It's what you do in just this moment to experience happiness, and in doing so move closer toward that ultimate bliss. So I guess you're kind of filling the chest in the exact instant that you open it and find the treasure. Rather than render the pursuit pointless, this can, I think, transform all of life into the search. But not a quest toward a good that will someday come, that will someday validate and justify all of life thus far. In this paradigm of treasure hunting, the treasure is being found and changed and found again in every instant of growth. Way more gratifying, no? But more so it's real and it's practical and things are not for the good that lies ahead, but rather they are the good. They are the treasure.
...Did this make sense? I'm pretty sure I know what I mean. I apologize if it wasn't articulated so clearly, the paradigm shift thing kind of happened only as I typed it out. So I guess I owe you another thank you... :) And on that note I'm also throwing out there the hope that I wasn't the only one that got something out of this blog, please just have your way with it-- do whatever so that it means something to you please. I think that would be really great.
PS the lead singer of a band I saw tonight must have been in her mid-to-late-60s. The little place was packed, and she wore a vest and a turtleneck and had grey hair and sang her heart out and it was so beautiful and I was literally flushed with emotion. Her name was Joanne and her band was called the Joannimals! I think that lady might know something I'd love to know someday.
Slap the Eternity Syndrome onto that sucker, and you've got yourself a paradox my friend. I think. Ow owww! (to be pronounced in the high frequency range where flirtation becomes so obvious that it comes to symbolize the exact opposite, and does an arrogant little jig)
Anyways, some train of thought so irrational that to put it to words would be unsettling, got me thinking of pirates this morning. When I realized I was thinking about pirates, I naturally envisioned a ship full of Johnny Depps battling scurvy, applying eyeliner, and searching for treasure-- after all, what else is a gal to think about pirates in this day and age? While the prototype for the contemporary hypothetical pirate is clear, the contents of that buried chest are far more blurry-- at least in "my" brain.
**Sidenote: The reason I put quotation marks around "my" there, is because the phrase "my brain" implies that there is something independent of the brain that not only makes up who I am, but has enough freaking seniority to claim dominion over the twists and turns of the cerebral cortex! I'm not sure I'm in a position to make that assumption, especially about my own self. Yikes just got lost for a second thinking about the layers of what that doozy would entail**
But back to treasure. My inclination initially was to ramble on about how true treasure would be the sincere realization of all things as gifts, without feeling compelled to labor over some complex rendering of a giver that necessarily imprisoned the infinite within the trappings of "our" minds. Or coming to the genuine understanding that treasure is buried nowhere other than beneath the layers of our selves, and that to unearth it one need turn only inward. And yes, I guess theoretically I do think that would be just dandy. But the dumb current obnoxious fleeting reality is that I am SO far away from that place that pretending to go there, or going there intellectually but leaving all else behind, or hypothesizing about what it might be like to go there, is just annoying- even painful. And kind of irrelevant to my daily life. Kind of. It's a nice lighthouse to orient towards, but it's skipping FAR too many steps from where I'm at.
Because we all know, or know someone who knows, or know someone who knows that we know even though we don't think we do, what it is to feel that emptiness. That hollow ache that assures us there is no secret map with which to navigate this void. And that if X marks the spot, then every other letter of the alphabet is festering inside of us. Twenty-five clashes of sound and shape and symbols of anything other than treasure. Words like trappings, then, cannot be applied to the abstract in any way other than being trapped, enslaved even, to an inability to experience meaning. And you're the one, not the treasure, that's buried. **cue response that they're one and the same, a person and their treasure-- maybe, but I can't say it in a way that means anything really because I'm too far away from actually knowing it on any type of sustained experiential level. And, even more so, it can't mean anything (in an immediate, practical sense) to someone experiencing what I just described. And so effectively it's useless. Some treasure.
And so, for now, I'm paradigm-shifting my view of what's in the treasure chest from the distant abstract ideal to the practical, to the building of a bridge over that vastness-- to the baby steps that will slowly orient our passage through time toward ("to" seems really overly ambitious, at least for me) such liberating lofty realizations. To the things that feel like treasure in the moment, in that reality, to the infusion of taste into that ridonkulous slice of "time and space pie." And I'm doing it hoping that I will always allow that conscious paradigm to continue its natural shift into alignment with what feels balanced for where I'm at. I think that if/when I don't, then when that inevitable shift does come it is all the more abrupt, and so all the more painful and not-fun.
And so the fantastical treasure chest that I pursue (but as a ship full of Johnny Depps, you know like that weird thing that happens when you're dreaming sometimes) is at least for now in a state of perpetual dynamism. Rather than hold within it a realization that is lightyears away from my current orbit, or perhaps in a different metaphor what I am orbiting around, the treasure in the chest is fluid and it's also a guide. It's what you do in just this moment to experience happiness, and in doing so move closer toward that ultimate bliss. So I guess you're kind of filling the chest in the exact instant that you open it and find the treasure. Rather than render the pursuit pointless, this can, I think, transform all of life into the search. But not a quest toward a good that will someday come, that will someday validate and justify all of life thus far. In this paradigm of treasure hunting, the treasure is being found and changed and found again in every instant of growth. Way more gratifying, no? But more so it's real and it's practical and things are not for the good that lies ahead, but rather they are the good. They are the treasure.
...Did this make sense? I'm pretty sure I know what I mean. I apologize if it wasn't articulated so clearly, the paradigm shift thing kind of happened only as I typed it out. So I guess I owe you another thank you... :) And on that note I'm also throwing out there the hope that I wasn't the only one that got something out of this blog, please just have your way with it-- do whatever so that it means something to you please. I think that would be really great.
PS the lead singer of a band I saw tonight must have been in her mid-to-late-60s. The little place was packed, and she wore a vest and a turtleneck and had grey hair and sang her heart out and it was so beautiful and I was literally flushed with emotion. Her name was Joanne and her band was called the Joannimals! I think that lady might know something I'd love to know someday.
Ei I love you. :)
ReplyDeleteBurning man?
http://blog.burningman.com/tales-from-the-playa/synchronicity/
ReplyDeleteContinual opening to/of treasure... I read this blog right after yours. One of the things that I got from your entry set me on this train and they correspond (for me).
ReplyDeleteI just think... you might really like it.
wow this is great reading sister. Jason just reconnected me to the blog. I think there's an important mode of being thankful for the void- even though it's the source of potential for evil it's also the source of potential for (wide open, it could really happen) choice. Silence at a house of mourning can be the deepest connective mode- we all feel those letters thrashing inside, and paradoxically we are strengthened when we acknowledge our helplessness. A ray of the inevitable can lift us from our reverie and raise us to that awesome place where we just (forgive me!) "do the right thing" beyond any understanding of it, because we ARE what we are doing, as our power of choice (void) becomes one somehow with the inevitable (G-d) and underneath it all, impossibly, in a crazy drunken way (Purim), it was always so. Blessings- Leibish
ReplyDelete4 for sterotypes:
ReplyDeleteeye patch - parrot - hook hand
roll again.
how ironic that the X that marks the spot also is the sign of canceling something out altogether. and thus the destination becomes the journey. or is it the other way around. or both.