CCLXXVI
It is not necessarily the good who die young, perhaps it is the lucky.
Scarcely any consequences for all the who-knows-what-where-when tomfoolery
They managed to get away with before getting plucked off the stage.
Think about all the things they will not have to bother about,
All the sickness, injury, aging and whatever.
Talk about painless good fortune.
* * * *
King Midas learned his lesson, will we?
* * * *
History is a never-ending maze.
* * * *
Assumptions about anything have a tendency to make for many a wrong turn.
* * * *
Where is the hunger? Where is the thirst? Is it yours, or the body’s?
What is this sensory theater that draws you in so convincingly?
* * * *
Excluding all imaginary notions,
Have you really ever had any valid perception
That anybody was seeing you the ways and means you do?
* * * *
We may all be playing on the same stage, but we are all wandering different universes.
* * * *
When it comes to agape, proof is in the pudding.
* * * *
It has always been you and only you,
From the very beginning, whenever that was,
If there was such a thing as time, that is.
* * * *
Nature, the forces of earth and wind and water and fire,
Will teach you everything you really truly need to know.
* * * *
Consciousness is fluid in a molten sort of way.
* * * *
Not everyone is inspired by dittohead froth.
* * * *
Peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Good luck with that.
* * * *
Mastery, if there is such a thing, is discerning how nuances graph into infinity.
* * * *
Is seeking your hunger?
* * * *
So nothing left.
* * * *
The quantum existential morass
The quantum existential morass
Yearning for some peace and quiet
In its little slice of the grand oblivion.
* * * *
To be part is to be whole; to be whole is to be part.
* * * *
You play out whatever seems to work for you.
Be the first on your block to break your own rules.
* * * *
For some, learning is all, the raison d'être.
For others, it is merely entertainment they pursue.
But, then again, maybe that is all any of it ultimately really is.
That which is awareness watching its Self distract its Self, so to speak.
* * * *
Nobody really wants to listen to your whining all the time,
So best find a variety of occasional, random targets,
Or, better yet, keep at least most of it to yourself.
* * * *
The face that launched a thousand endorphins.
* * * *
The one with fire in the belly,
The one who can waylay his innermost fears,
Is he who will play the great game no-holds-barred hard ball.
* * * *
Everyone a legend in their own mind.
* * * *
Looking for meaning and purpose? For a raison d'être?
Well, good luck conjuring that for long, or even at all.
* * * *
Perception is all.
* * * *
No cheerleaders in this camp.
* * * *
We are all the same monkey, with but imaginary notions of being different flavors.
* * * *
We can kill and maim and destroy all we please.
There is nothing that really matters on the ultimate scale.
But, but, but, but, but …
Would it not be kind of a pleasant change of pace
If we could really truly put aside all our differences, and … perchance get along?
Do a little more healing, a little more creating, a little more preserving.
We can squander away this magical garden as we like.
Mother Nature does not care one iota
Whether this planet is layered with human beings,
Or dinosaurs or insects or vegetation … or by complete and utter desolation.
That is The Way, and we as a species can either figure it out,
Or continue driving on madly toward extinction.
* * * *
Anonymity, within and without, is a quiet, blissful existence.
Who really for long craves a paparazzi-driven fan base?
* * * *
If you intend to attend the funeral someday,
Then at least see the person a few times before they die.
Nothing like a crowd who never visited the corpse.
* * * *
Morals, ethics, principals, political correctness,
Is a full belly and too much time on your hands.
* * * *
Another predictable example of human inanity.
* * * *
Drift into Nadaville as often as you please; it is, after all, your life.
* * * *
Pride doeth tip the balance.
* * * *
Unconsciousness abounds, and then gets all wacko when it wakes up.
* * * *
Pass.
* * * *
You alien, you.
* * * *
Nothing is calling you.
* * * *
Yes, yes, insane beyond comprehension; deal with it, get over it, as best you can.
* * * *
The infinite mystery of eternity creates time and space,
And the thunder-perfect mind witnesses its creation.
* * * *
If you are interested in confabulations, delusions, and myriad other storybook fantasies,
Then put down this whodunit autopsy immediately, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go.
* * * *
The synergy of imagination creates every possibility.
* * * *
Yet another example of the other end of the egg.
* * * *
How quickly judgment casts its pall.
* * * *
Where does all this come from? Just a state of mind.
* * * *
Succumb, detach, observe.
* * * *
Easy come, easy go.
* * * *
No brag, just fact.
* * * *
Slumming again, eh?
* * * *
Achieve whatever calls you, however you please, however you are allowed.
* * * *
Where did you park, anyway?
* * * *
The difference between black and white,
Good and evil, right or left, up or down, this or that,
Is, without doubt, unfailingly, irrevocably, absolutely, arbitrary.
* * * *
Of course it is all ultimately meaningless.
All the more reason to thoroughly deceive ourselves
That it is divinely shaped by some very huge and powerful entity
That, for whatever reason, cares, perchance even loves us.
When it is not condemning and destroying us, that is.
* * * *
What good is a watch without the swath of eternity.
* * * *
Questions of a thousand dreams.
* * * *
Whatever the mystery is, you are, too.
* * * *
Contentment, the greatest challenge.
* * * *
You want Joy? No doubt she’s around here somewhere.
* * * *
Doors open, doors close, c’est la vie.
* * * *
The horror, the horror.
The absurdity, the absurdity.
The inevitability, the inevitability.
* * * *
Sheep certainly are drawn to wolves.
* * * *
A strong sense of inevitability
Streams through these mortal bones.
Hardcore realism, if ever such a state can be.
* * * *
Nationalism, patriotism, xenophobia,
Are merely humankind’s genetic predisposition
Towards the egocentric group dynamic,
As parochially large as it is small.
* * * *
What is the point in killing, hating, or desecrating others
Simply because they do not look the same,
Act the same, believe the same,
Or speak the same.
* * * *
Ironic, which rhymes with sardonic, moronic,
And any other -onics you might come up with,
If you care to get the drift.
* * * *
Scientists, psychologists, anthropologists,
Philosophers, mystics, and the like,
Are the paparazzi of the mind.
* * * *
All seen through a self-absorption that may eventually discern Self-absorption.
* * * *
Wander out of context.
* * * *
Tactics without clear strategy, strategy without clear tactics,
Tend to make for uncoordinated, even catastrophic statecraft.
* * * *
In the end, nothing much will matter,
As it did not before the beginning.
And actually between, as well.
* * * *
The mind is a river of time,
And for those whose discernment
Achieves the indivisibly of absoluteness,
The same mind merges into the eternal infinity.
* * * *
How many stories do you need to hear to figure it out for your Self?
* * * *
To remember as you forget is the challenge.
* * * *
Where would humankind be but for the countless anonymous players in the band?
* * * *
Be the Self that Self really is.
* * * *
Gaia disrupted.
* * * *
To care, or not to care what others think of you, that is the question.
* * * *
What unrelenting tyranny the other so often instigates.
* * * *
Why would any deity need to send a flood or plague or any other disaster?
We are creating plenty of havoc without any help from on high.
Oh very young, what will you leave us this time?
* * * *
If you are paying any attention at all,
You just sort of get an overall feel for things at some point.
An intuitive sense of how things work, how the universe about you is playing out.
Wisdom is the distillation of experience.
* * * *
All fates have the same origin.
All play out to the same conclusion.
Only the dreams between seem different.
* * * *
One experience after another.
Filling in the time with this or that,
For as long as the mind-body endures.
* * * *
Discern the vast difference between self-absorption and Self-absorption.
* * * *
Fat just got fatter; ugly just got uglier.
* * * *
True or not, it sounds good.
* * * *
The imagined promise of hope; the lie to which so many cling.
* * * *
Simplicity is profound, the profound is simple.
* * * *
The relativity of hedonism is a far-flung wander.
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The personal and impersonal intertwined in mind.
* * * *
Analogies, metaphors, parables, symbols; do not take them literally
* * * *
Lordy, but believers sure do so often give their belief systems a bad name.
* * * *
Systems being what they are.
* * * *
Not quite down on the knees, but well on the way.
* * * *
Toy with boundaries until they dissolve.
* * * *
Time is ever that timeless now.
* * * *
How large, how small, this whatsit called singularity.
* * * *
With the right state of mind, this could be the first time.
* * * *
The arbitrary personality you play out is an evolving creation of imagination.
* * * *
And from a wandering state of time, these many thoughts have come to mind.
* * * *
Any given life is likely full of regrets about which little or nothing can really be done.
Except, perhaps, deeply forgiving your Self, and knowing it would not happen again.
* * * *
Embrace the aloneness, embrace the sovereignty, embrace the infinity.
* * * *
Everything is forgotten in one sooner or later or another.
* * * *
Generation after generation must learn anew who they can and cannot trust.
* * * *
The best solution to either wealth or poverty is a richness of spirit.
* * * *
Absurdity from dawn to dusk, and all the dark hours before and after.
* * * *
To meet your fate with a full breath inspires the greatest courage.
* * * *
To break with history, with the chains of time, is the only true freedom.
* * * *
How long can virtue withstand the winds of fierce and bitter consciousness?
* * * *
Discontent is best remedied by regular, sustained breathing.
* * * *
The struggle of existence is ceaseless from first breath to last.
* * * *
Consciousness does not easily relinquish its imaginary universe.
* * * *
Being trapped in the body-mind can often be very trying.
* * * *
As if all your opinions mean diddly-squat.
* * * *
Another footnote.
* * * *
Only the dead have seen the end of absurdity.
* * * *
And that died too.
* * * *
Always so much more to everything than meets the eye of any given mind.
* * * *
Why waste time over things over which you have absolutely no control?
* * * *
Your ignorance is bliss.
* * * *
What some call negativity, pessimism, skepticism, doubt, cynicism,
To the rational mind of the critical thinker, is merely the way it is.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved