Chapter 124 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


CXXIV

Each day cuts the pie of your life
Into thinner and thinner portions,
All passing more and more quickly
In the most momentary eternal sense.

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What is the body, truly, but a fleeting bag of protoplasm
Playing in the time and space born of consciousness?

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Discern within the union of know and unknown.

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You are in a no-deposit, no-return reality.
Spend it all in whatever way you will.

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You are going to die anyway,
So why be afraid of letting go now?

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See the relativity of your measure.

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Organized religion is an oxymoron.

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Another one-man revolution.

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Notoriety in another’s head is meaningless
But for imagination’s insatiable craving
To override its eternal aloneness.

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What a fool be the fool
Who pens these thoughts.
Where do they appear from?
To what end do they travel,
These words declaring
The silliness of time?

* * * *
By not succumbing to fear of loss,
You gain control of desire passionate flame
From which all action springs eternal.

* * * *
You must learn in order to remember to know.

* * * *
Is inner vision left or right eye dominant?

* * * *
Who writes these thoughts but the most real you?

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How much of anything do you remember
Of what you supposedly learned?
What do you really know
About anything?

* * * *
There is nothing more.
This moment is all you ever get
No matter who, what, where, why, when
Or how you may  be.

* * * *
Patterns can be plundered.

* * * *
How many still remember how to plant a seed
And grow a successful, healthy garden?
Don’t forget, in the final analysis,
A computer can’t feed you.

* * * *
No bubble can avoid the burst.

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Follow the babbling bubbles of thought
Until their source becomes all-consuming.

* * * *
Walk the fog.

* * * *
Life is short and getting shorter.

* * * *
You are your own moral accounting.

* * * *
Do you live your life for what others think.

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If it makes money, it’s good.
If not, well, it gets its own category.

* * * *
Positive and negative intertwine
Like snakes consuming each other.

* * * *
The ultimate weaning.

* * * *
Nothing to pray for.
It’s already a done deal.

* * * *
Don’t live your life for a mirage.

* * * *
Environmentalists, despite all their good intentions,
Are like dogs barking at the moon.

* * * *
Some will not be confined
By the narrowness
To which others subscribe.

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What battles will you wage with the windmills today, Don Quixote?

* * * *
There is an unmatchable contentment
In the integration of mind, body and heart.

* * * *
Every pleasure eventually collects its asking price.

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It is arduous to let go of everything all the time,
One of those unnecessary tasks to most.
Why would you but for your own amusement?

* * * *
Discern eternity
And feel the striving
Of vain personal ambition
Exit your bones.

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We each have our brief little time.
Each unique, each very much the same.

* * * *
You would probably laugh if an amoeba
Claimed an aristocratic bloodline.

* * * *
Spiritual middlemen
Are the anachronisms
Of geographic attachment.

* * * *
The vampires delude themselves and the masses,
But the seers only laugh at their vain foolishness.

* * * *
The unwitnessed tree falling in the forest
Knows well the sound of its crashing.
Every life form is its own witness.

* * * *
As to death’s knock,
Sooner or later, despite
All your vain mortal appeals
Something will catch up to you.
Each of us is very much a equal part
Of the statistical nature of all measurement.

* * * *
Remember, it’s a sum-zero theater.

* * * *
We are not really human beings.
We only think we are.

* * * *
Purpose seems to have a great relativity about it,
Largely powered more than a pinch of vanity.
Does anyone stay the same for more
Than a few moments of time?

* * * *
Exclusivity is an act of insecurity.

* * * *
Amazing what neuron trails can accomplish.
And to think that the entire human drama
Is founded entirely upon their relativity.

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Time’s origin is in consciousness.
The absolute is not burdened
By the clock on the wall.

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Surrender unconditionally.

* * * *
Humble your Self.

* * * *
Another no-brainer.

* * * *
So many perceptions melding
Into the emptiness of none.

* * * *
So many always trying to be
Somewhere or something else.

* * * *
If you only see what others tell you to see,
Your awareness will remain very finite.

* * * *
Don’t pay attention to the scribe.
Just let the magic of the words
Work their subtle purpose.

* * * *
What frightening forms flesh can take.

* * * *
Only conceit makes you think you are so unique.

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You will feel complete only when totally present.

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Don’t be lonely, be alone.

* * * *
It often seems that any given face and body
Takes on the attributes of its personality-soul.

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To survive a man’s brawn,
What could women do
But grow in wile?

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Your breath is the only continuity there is.

* * * *
How difficult to lead wisely.

* * * *
May have thought I was saying something else.

* * * *
Who will notice those who offer them nothing?

* * * *
Power, fame or fortune is no match for death.

* * * *
Fool-at-large journeying through eternity in time.

* * * *
You believed, you hoped, you prayed
That someday you would have it all,
And now you’re dead is as dead does.
What happened to all those dreams?

* * * *
Harsh and soft are not really all that different.

* * * *
Chances are you do not see me the way I do you.

* * * *
Words have so little stamina without vanity’s support.

* * * *
How you dread the effort sometimes.

* * * *
Another flat, firm, healthy pelvis,
Breeding ground for the next generation.

* * * *
As if any other could give you this contentment.

* * * *
You play along as if you belong in this world,
Breaking as often as you can remember
To remember what you really are.

* * * *
Why would anyone want to sit in judgment of another?

* * * *
Eternal infinity, with all its parts,
Washes clean of any taint, despite
All appearances to the contrary.

* * * *
Funny how practically anything can be misinterpreted.

* * * *
Even education can only accomplish so much
Against the relentless tide of human ignorance.
What can you expect from two-legged animals
With only two thumbs, a marginal frontal lobe,
And the remnants of a lizard’s disposition?

* * * *
So many memories to carry
And someday forget.

* * * *
How fortunate those who are spared
The true horrors of mortal existence.

* * * *
Even the so-called enlightened
Must play out the theater real,
And perhaps often wish it were.

* * * *
The wash of time cleans us all.

* * * *
How formidable life can be.
So much endurance required.

* * * *
Step out, take many chances.
Settle only when you’re ready.
Dance till your grave is filled in.

* * * *
No reason to grow up, Wendy.
This world needs more children.

* * * *
With each breath, gather in, then surrender.
See the mind-identity, allow its dissolution.

* * * *
Ignore the senses and the mind opens to the eternal way
Beyond the chattering forest of words and meanings.

* * * *
You suffer to the level of your attachment.

* * * *
It is so incredible how we box ourselves in.

* * * *
Concept and experience are eternally intertwined.

* * * *
You can only communicate the concepts you know.

* * * *
We done fucked up big-time,
And our unenviable progeny
Are going to pay a heavy price.

* * * *
The slaves who work harder get rewarded.

* * * *
Why are we so afraid of this world?

* * * *
What emotional creatures women are.

* * * *
We are all the dance watching itself happening.

* * * *
We are the froth at the edges of the ocean’s middle.

* * * *
Oh frail, mortal body,
What torturous adventures
Do you yet have in time’s store?

* * * *
The masses are so easily swayed
By the heady winds of persuasion.

* * * *
No wind can sustain its passion forever.

* * * *
Fluids encircle solids.
The inflexible surrender to flexibility.
Victory comes to those most capable of disguising
The intentions of their many maneuvers.

* * * *
Emptiness becomes desirable
When you’re stuffed to groaning.

* * * *
Will cannot stem the tide of time.

* * * *
How fitting that we are the initiators of our own demise.

* * * *
How absurd a flagpole looks standing near a tree.

* * * *
You deserve eternal joy if you are
Clear enough to realize its source.

* * * *
It is not you who sits, stands, walks or runs.
It is not you who sleeps or wakes.
It is only your imagination.

* * * *
The city, with all its human dramas,
Draws us into a web of gluttonous confusion.
In contrast, nature is so simple and orderly
That most can no longer endure it long.

* * * *
No use envying what doesn’t come out of you.

* * * *
Unscripted, yet very precise.

* * * *
We idealize Mother Nature
As we consume her heart.


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The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved