Author: Koshkin Dom
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries." - Thomas Mann
(hmmm - then what does this mean that I am 27 years sober, a recovering alcoholic, a full blown 1960s style hippie and dope dealer who went to West Point for a short time, spent time in a nut ward and in jail, but also have a self created college degree based largely on what I accomplished to that time in the world rather than on classwork and who holds a highly technical and modestly well paid job unrelated to the degree, who has been all the way round the world though over forty years ago and sort of on the lam? A mechanical designer musician poet philosopher who is devoted to God and loves quantum foam. WTF do we make of that??)
"Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Amen, Brother Emerson, Amen!)
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
An incident, a circumstance, a misdirection: I knocked the leather off the ball...not in this case a good thing. Sometimes questions are not for answering but for holding close and living through them. Do not answer the question, do not even ask it. Instead, make love to it. When you come, accept the joy.
This is what happens when you insist on asking demanding the answer, what happens to the answer, to you.
Swinging For The Bleachers
Your words fell, landed
on the floor, piled up between
us, an answer knocked
down by the question
I shouldn't have asked, swung like
a bat, swung roundly
by our circumstance,
your answer broken apart
by that swing, that cut.
August 28, 2009 1:10 PM
Really nicely constructed metaphor.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Karen. Good Morning.
ReplyDeleteLove this post, the quotations, and your interjections, your warning too. And now what? (Huh? Don't punch me in the arm so hard!)
ReplyDeleteHow is it that sometimes I feel I can see clearly and other times I can't see my toes?
This is a wonderful post, Christopher. Very punchy.
xo
erin
It really matters, Erin, what your body is like at the moment. This is a human thing. We all are having a human experience and the chemistry of the moment really matters. In fact, the chemistry of the moment is the first mind, the mind we share with bacteria and ants and mammals alike. It lies at the bottom of things, guided by sensory input both inside and outside the body. Sensory input is also chemistry. This first mind is slower than the electro-chemical mind of the brain but it is body wide. It still is a strong influence according to its own rules. You never really get to a state where you cannot see beyond your own toes, however you do get to a place where your priorities are very different from what you are used to because the first mind is deflecting things. It is this mind that figures in hypnosis after the brain mind subsides in hypnotic trance.
ReplyDeleteChristopher, that is you inside the parenthesis between the Mann and Emerson quotes!!
ReplyDeleteawesome thoughts, quotes AND poem!
and while this may seem random this post actual gave meaning to me the name of Los Angeles basketball team
Dirt, the whole thing takes place in parenthesis in between eruptions of meaningless factoids. I merely mirror stuff back to us. We gotta squeeze it in when we can. I already knew you know what I think I mean. In the meantime we shall do mean time. Sometimes we really actually do appear. Mostly it is less definite than that.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the chemistry of the moment is the first mind. This makes sense to me. Actually, lately I have been suspicious of the chemistry of the moment. I think this is a good thing. I am trying to see a little further into things. It's unsettling though in its way, to not trust your own reactions and instead to look at them as something to decipher.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this.
xo
erin