Discipline
June 1, 2021 9:47am
Many journalists have now admitted that Covid may have escaped from the Wuhan lab and that the previous efforts to dismiss that possibility as a “conspiracy theory” were themselves propaganda fostered by another competing conspiracy.
In this age of instant and omnipresent communication for all, one is easily overwhelmed by the myriads of competing narratives – all purporting to be the “real” truth and all vying for notice in a population with the attention span of a gnat. It is little wonder that we can’t focus on the real problems that may soon become critical to the lives of millions. Profligate government spending and its handmaiden – inflation, will soon be on every tongue, regardless of political persuasion.
If we want order in our house, we must start with spending….. prioritizing every need and DISPENSING with all “wants.” Next is to return to discipline – both civil and personal. No polity can persist among a people who have no discipline. We have forgotten this simple truth in our efforts to “nurture” everyone. Everything has a “sweet spot”, that optimal position at which returns come nearest to balancing efforts and we have missed that mark for decades. I hope we can return to common sense and reason without suffering the fate of all who tempt the Gods with excess.
Carlyle
June 4, 2021 12:00pm
I’m sitting at a Doctor office awaiting completion of a colonoscopy for a family member. Earlier, I sat in the car reading Sartor Resartus in the pleasant late spring weather. The car was parked under a shade tree and a gentle breeze blew through the open windows.
I see why Carlyle is considered a difficult read; much of it is like Sterne or the King James Bible. Like me, Carlyle could not quite break the bonds that bound him to tradition. I read more about his life and accomplishments and know that anything I can do in the remaining time is limited….very limited. I will not achieve anything I had hoped for and I accept that. We are finite creatures and our time here is like a spark of flint on steel….sometimes not igniting anything at all.
Carlyle IS a difficult read but like Proust, you get used to it. I’m impressed by his thoughts regarding time and space. We ate at Denny’s after the procedure and the black waitress is especially gracious wishing us a “blessed” day as we leave. Blessed be us all. Blessed by a God we cannot see or know. Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Lyrics by Fanny Crosby
Blessed be Your name When I’m found in the desert place Though I walk through the wilderness Blessed be Your name. Lyrics by Matt and Beth Redman.
Yes indeed a “desert vast without a bound”…..Wm. Blake
Blessed be your glorious name. Yeah. Maybe I expected too much. The dead still lie in repose and the universe is still expanding and the ancient seas have shifted and some mountains eroded and others rose and proton decay still holds the best hand at the end of the game.
And all the while, families still visit Holiday World and lovers still cling and the cash registers ring and everything rushes toward its denouement….only to begin again.
Carlyle says we’re specters in the long sweep of eternity. This sentiment fills my own thoughts but in a more secular manner. Carlyle, so far, references the Devine in the teleology of creation- not considering the possibility that all that he sees and attributes to God is instead just matter obeying the laws of physics for all of eternity.
“Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin” – “From eternity, onward to eternity” – Carlyle. This motto, his banner.
Aliens on D-Day
June 6, 2021 9:02am
D-Day! Everything has been said. I think it impossible to consider anything outside this plane. We do not see the extra-dimensional beings and existence that we are not able to apprehend with our limited senses.
Chaos Theory?
June 8, 2021 9:11am
I have this constant sense of impending chaos these days. The level of violence in the country is scary…and everything is relatively calm; what happens when we experience more civil unrest?
It seems that our supposed leaders ignore the seismic problems that threaten to swallow us whole, while diverting attention to superficial issues designed to distract us. We need to focus our attention on a handful of concerns that would provide the best return on investment. Those might be: (1) Real Education (2) Spend only what you earn (3) Enforce the laws – impartially
Deer
June 11, 2021 11:28pm
It has rained a lot and the garden is very wet. It will need to be tilled before we leave for Chicago on Thursday. Still reading Sartor Resartus….a slow, difficult read but moving up the list of best books. I watched a youtube video on the relative sizes of planets, stars, galaxies, and black holes. There is no way for a human to grasp the scale of the universe.
I have cut the ridge behind the house. There has been a nervous doe around for days. She has been feasting on the mulberries which are very abundant and juicy this year. I figured she had a baby hidden somewhere but still, I almost ran over the two-day-old fawn while mowing even though I kept a sharp eye out for it…..scanning the next swath with each circuit. They just will not move from their hiding place. The tractor wheel was within two feet of it when it bolted into the trees apparently unharmed.
I’m on this Allis-Chalmers tractor forum since I have a 1961 D-15 and the guys on there were complaining about the same thing…..if your first cutting is late, you’re right in the middle of the “fawning” season. Some of them said they have actually baled the young deer. If you know anything about how balers work you know this is not a good death.
Purpose
June 13, 2021 9:56pm
I still dwell on the changes that occurred in my thinking in 2018 around the time of my retirement. Changes that led me to question – everything. What happened? I lived all my life thinking I had plan and purpose and then, over the course of a few weeks, I understood that all the ‘plans” and “purpose” were only created by me – for me, and were only designed to continue my useful illusions about myself and the rest of creation. I was the center of the universe, everything revolved around me and had been created by a God who was shepherding me through a labyrinth of experience to a grand fate that would culminate in a final communion with the creator, revelation of the plan, and complete understanding of all – space, time, matter, spirit. I would understand it all.
And then, in an instant, seemingly, I saw what I now believe to be the truth….and it is a grim reality with no God, no purpose – just a species that cannot see itself. We see only the Doppelgangers we have conjured and we believe these fictions to be ourselves. We give them attributes and characteristics that we wish them to project to the other Doppelgangers with whom we interact. And this illusion of interactions between these creations of our minds is what we call “life”. Be assured that monstrous as this sounds, you do not want to give up your illusions and come face-to-face with the horrors underlying it all. The desolation of understanding is unbearable.
Azimuth
June 21, 2021 10:17am
Last night, June 20 at about 11:42PM (local), the sun reached its northern-most position and now faces the six month trek to the south. The days will begin to shorten but we will not perceive this change for weeks because it is so slight in the beginning.
Changes of many kinds are difficult to see in the beginning. I read about my country and I do not recognize it now, The people that appear to be in charge push agendas that seem to be part of the dream that was the United States yet they militantly advocate for an extra measure of justice, rights, and even of truth. It all seems to be on the verge of collapse and I feel the same collapse myself. Everything is too complicated; I long for simplicity – for nothingness. The true peace of nothingness.
Eternal Mystery
June 21, 2021 1:07pm
I think about the billions of people (some estimates put the number at over 100 billion!) who have lived and died already and how they struggled with the same questions as we and now are no more. Soon, I will be among their number and others taking my place will wonder how I confronted the eternal mystery. A never-ending cycle of ignorance or anxiety followed by release into the void. There are no reasons. We think there must be but they are all only illusions we create for our own comfort. The universe – the physical laws, provide for the possibility of consciousness and so it happens. Is there anything possible beyond this consciousness? We don’t know what we don’t know. Perhaps all of creation will be swept away in the next nanosecond for reasons we can’t understand or anticipate.
Thinking
June 24, 2021 11:51pm
What do you think about and why? What you think about is the sole determinant of who you will become and who you are. You ARE your thoughts. So, choose carefully those things to which you devote your thoughts – they will become you. This life is nothing but a great illusion with no substance at all underlying it….moments that enter our consciousness and are gone. What do you want……never to have existed.
Itchykoo Park
June 26, 2021 12:17am
End of the World….doesn’t matter – nothing changes. I listen to Itchykoo Park while matter disintegrates….and I am content – because, you know, it’s all too beautiful. My Goodness, this takes me back to a simpler time.
The Cup that Never Fills
June 28, 2021 8:31am
I went to the Cherokee Writers event at Allen Dale farm in Shelbyville and read some of my poetry. It was a beautiful afternoon. Puffy white clouds hovered above the treetops and a pair of hawks soared overhead against a vivid blue sky….their piercing calls clearly heard over the drone of the readers.
Mystery attends the life of the pathological Romantic. If ever you (the Romantic) had a vision of the ideal, you may never escape that cage you created for yourself. Every aspect of life will be compared to your dream and will fall short. Nothing can measure up to your impossible imagination and happiness will ever elude you since it is determined by the cup you thought would overflow but which holds a few bitter drops and these you reluctantly drink when you finally recognize you are in an arid and barren land.
The divide in the country is wide and seems almost permanent and unbridgeable. If there is any common ground – how do we find it? Last night, I spoke with one on the other side who is rational so I should be able to find some agreement but the conversation quickly leads to the old worn paths and we soon reach the inevitable? impasse beyond which there is no brotherhood, no communal sentiment. So, the country suffers. This same friction slowing progress in every area of our national lives. What to do? What is the solution?
Crow’s-meat of the Military Industrial Complex
June 29, 2021 2:09pm
Here is a quote from Sartor Resartus:
“Have not I myself known 500 living soldiers sabered into crow’s-meat for a piece of glazed cotton they called their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?” – Thomas Carlyle
Our ideology is the correct one and our enemy is wrong so it is right for us to fight for our beliefs and to defeat those of our opponent, right? This is how it works? Buckle up, we’ll soon see if the leaders of the United States, will stand aside while China takes our place as world hegemon. I fear we will be the jackals hovering on the periphery as the lion takes his fill and then yawning, lazily relinquishes the remains to his pesky competitors. We chose this role long ago and it is now inevitable.
We are living among the ruins of illusions decaying in the soft, encompassing vegetation and choking vines of a former age.