In The Hall

The stuff you do, the stuff that happens, all of that so often doesn't make sense. So many of us, I have heard this, say, "I must be here for a reason." It's an article of faith. I am not so sure that there's a reason, like some one thing I must do nobody else can do. I don't know if I can make it make sense there's a distinction, but I do think I have a destiny, a tendency to end up in a certain shape so I head out of here in the right direction. It's not what I do specifically that matters but the style, I guess, with which I do things. Character is destiny, some say. I take it even deeper.

That's sort of the view you can get from astrology too. No one comes in a blank slate. We are bent this way and that from the gate. This is my Mom aghast because she really disliked my real father and so much of my character was like him that she had to kind of like him anyway because she really loved me. He wasn't around much my whole life and still I was like him. The genes.

Destiny is like that only instead of a push from behind like inheritance it is a pull from ahead. This is a really old concept. Aristotle made this kind of pull one of the principal causes, a logical category. Science doubts this kind of reversal of time's arrow, or the presence of eternity nearby, either being the source of the pull. I am science enough to understand the argument, but poet enough to know better. What am I here for? Why did I come back? It's a matter of destiny. It is not a reason. That is simply bad science. I am not here for a reason, some specific thing I am to do.

How do we see the unseen? In Zen, they sometimes whack you. You go sit in the hall, the meditation hall and that's what you get. Sometimes. Not often.

In The Hall

You are all of that
and you tell me I am too,
flea bites and the rest.

You strike me, bamboo
slaps across my bruised up back
to drive this closer
to my aching head
while I wonder what I'm here
for, why I came back.

April 2, 2009 12:44 PM