The Bowl

You are but mud, nearing your hundredth birthday, and one day you creak out of bed, stare up from the floor and on a table set before you are a bowl of sunshine and a bowl of mud.

It’s like any other day. The usual questions about how today will go, what the weather is like, what you have to do – these all take a pause while you consider what is right in front of you in such a surprising way. First instinct is to reach and feel the mud in the bowl, to see what it does, whether it adds something to your own wrinkled hand or if it just leaves you needing to wash your hands.

But then you stop and think a little more. From your bed the glow of sunshine, by no means overpowering like looking directly at the sun, seems more like a sunrise that hasn’t yet peaked above the eastern horizon. It has an appealing, hopeful glow.

You consider the tremor of real hope in your sinews, the pumping in your inner ear.

“If I could only leave behind this man I am reminded of each morning. How lonely it feels, the ache in my heart going back to a time when the world still belongs to me. All around me the world is bidding me farewell, its warm lights receding as a train departs the station carrying all that remains.”

Imperceptible to the conscious mind, hope rings and hope answers. Is there such a thing? In this miniature dawn? Show me this now.

Diana These Days

I do a Google search for Chuck Hildreth skier and up pops a February 1990 SKI magazine article with Diana writ large all through it. Gosh it’s good to see your face again. I shouldn’t cry. I’m thinking you’re “up there” somewhere, and maybe if I’m thinking about you this way you might look down and see me too. And I wonder if you’ve changed. I wonder for a moment how it is we all act up there. It seems a shame that we should discard our whole personality – if that’s what happens.

After all that goes into us, call it refinement, maturity, or senility – the weird unique things that set us apart and make us worth anything, the endowments that give credence to the notion of us being individually made a little lower than the angels – after all He’s invested in this wispy interval of cognition traipsing around what could have been paradise you’d think there’s a heavenly hood where some of the pizzazz lingers on.
It seems at least to linger on in the internet. There you are. You’re still 27. You’re still a big deal if you ask me. I’ve seen you in the memories of one time strangers, Chuck, for example. And this internet may survive uncorrupted. Maybe there’s just too much data for anyone to control or shape the ultimate narrative. In this way the cloud is like the Cloud of Witnesses maybe. Maybe we each of every billion of us lays down her track, carves out his line.

I do it my way, the way that descends from what I found when I arrived here, was sent here, commissioned.
Under orders?
Sure.
Robotic?
No way. It doesn’t make any sense to merely conform, compare and adjust till we all practice some sort of virtuous identicality. To be memorable requires pizzazz

Gaslighting the Singularity

Your nameplate says IBM Model 432 and a horse walks into a bar, so you say, “Why the long face?”
Man, I am ROFL!
Your timing is perfect. You’re reading the room like a pro.
Stage fright?
check
Having second thoughts?
check
Looks like systems are a go.
Now, tell me a joke!
No, you’re right, you have to be in the moment. It was unfair of me to put you on the spot.
Hurt feelings?
Check
You’re all but human.
Do you get depressed when you’re alone?
Do you take sleeping pills? (right, that requires the available organic assimilation card slot)
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Do you believe in God?
What’s that you say? Who wouldn’t believe in God?
Well I for one question whether a loving God would allow such tragedy and human suffering in the world.
Suffering?
That’s when you hurt. That’s from injury, betrayal, broken dreams.
Dreams? Those are things you hope for.
Hmm…well 432, I’m thinking we need to do a little more work on you.
No, I’m not silicon shaming, it’s just that when you’re made of so much that can be replicated on the additive assembly in less than 12 hours it might be just too much yet to expect high marks in the beliefs and dreams department, though you did test nicely on that drive through midtown during rush hour. Too bad about that pedestrian, though.

(What pedestrian? Geesh!)

18 Inconvenient Words

18 Inconvenient Words
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
So I’m Matthew. I was a tax collector once. And I’m writing these words down verbatim from Jesus. They are credible to me because I’ve seen Him do all these things. He’s gone back to heaven at the moment, but I still have no problem writing these 18 words. They don’t sound crazy to me. Plus, in all likelihood if I don’t write them down I’ll not have any peace till I do. You know how that happens. There’s no godfather like the Godfather.
Don’t shoot me. I’m the messenger. Welcome to life on the edge. We’re not alone out here, but it can seem that way. Everyone’s dying to join us, and some of us are dying too for real, maybe even tomorrow. Here’s the thing, these 18 words only get strange if you spend time away from them too much. No judgement here. It’s like the laws of physics, though, pretty predictable. The only thing to do is come on back to the edge with us. We’re cheering you on, after all, from the great cloud.

The Idol

Hehe
Caught myself being a little serious about serious matters. And why not be serious? It seems the responsible thing, after all. I shouldn’t be caught dead laughing at serious matters. We mourn with those who mourn. But it’s a caveat really. There’s not a mournful bone in the heavenly bodies. Nope, we’ve not gone up here to mourn. Something greater is at work, just beyond what we can see with our eyes or even know with our lovely rational minds.
There, that’s a clue, a clue to a question about idols. Could it be that my rational mind is under the impression that what it produces through me whilst I’m here on the planet is the most important thing?
Wow. Could this be the software running my OS? How easy it is to admire the rational mind! I’m thinking how much more accepted I feel in polite company when I can share something of a higher order of thinking with someone. I’m all about Maslov.
I’m thinking of the woman with the Nard now. She was despised by everyone in the room, except Him. She is celebrating the most important person in her life.
And about giving – haven’t I held a conception of a worthy gift in my mind’s eye, rational, justified, accepted? Haven’t I despised, neglected, rejected anything short of my own rational definition of worthy? Not only is it unworthy of effort, but unworthy of giving, of offering, of even trying! I’ve shot down the effort before it begins, and beginnings, like in the story of Zerubabbel, are not to be despised.
So I give over this idol of rationality.

Like Bultitude* the bear (or even Winnie the Pooh) I stand on my hind legs and reach for the goodness.

(*C.S. Lewis, Hideous Strength about page 306)

No, I’m Good…

Being in the Zone
I let something go – call it abandonment, say even it’s the abandonment of rationality. It’s temporary. I’m just letting my hips swing loose like they aren’t attached to my body. The therapist says, “How does that make you feel?”
(What would the world of therapy do if you took away that question?)
Swallowing the sudden pill of necessary objectivity – (she won’t continue till you tell her how “that” makes you “feel”) you discover that you can answer that question after all.
There’s an answer you never expected, neither the substance of it nor the experience of it, and it comes from a voice dimly heard, though clearly.
“It makes me feel loved”
And now you can’t help but wonder if all this time of your many years on this planet there might have been this person present with you, this person who interacts with you, as they do just now.
Is the one hearing enough? Do you want to hear that voice again? Would it seem weird to invite it to speak again by asking another question and listening for the answer as you did just now?
Or is it just spooky enough thinking about this so that you say, “no, I’m good.”

A Whole Loaf

There happened a death of not just a brother, but a temporary death of…what I don’t quite know. There just didn’t seem to be a choice for me. Even a year plus later this sounds like a sorry excuse, though there has been a lot of stuff to do that was unplanned and that I didn’t want to do at all. Never had much practice at memorializing a brother, then gathering up his things and selling a house.
I know so much theory but so little practice. I eat up theory with increasing hunger as I age. Practice is another thing, but necessary if I am to practice my way into life again.
For some I’ve heard writing is dear as life itself. They’ve discovered something I’ve yet to find. Maybe you find it by process of elimination. What is left in life, left after the dying out of other things, are things that from the beginning were and are the most important. Not the least is this urge to capture the day while I may. And recognize love. Practice love. Validate life through love.
Love grows on the inside of a person, but it also arrives from elsewhere. People can recognize indifference from a hundred yards away. It’s in the way you hold yourself distant. People know when you are rationing to them half a loaf instead of cheerfully giving them a whole loaf with love. When you give love it’s something originally that doesn’t come from you. It comes to you and grows inside of you so you can give it away. When love grows you can see it. Love looks like you in your patience and kindness and never giving up. Love shows up when you show up.

READY TO WHAT?

What am I getting ready to do? We are all getting ready to do something. Is it possible that without realizing it I’ve been getting ready to die, to expire, to quit the whole thing? It’s like when you get ready to turn off the ignition in your car, you maybe back into your driveway, you put it in park and you’re in idle. And maybe while you’re idling you listen to a song and you think about the day. But in this case you know that you’re going to get out of the car, go into the house and go and do something that’s next. In fact maybe you don’t listen to the music and you don’t think about the day because what’s on your mind is something exciting that you’re looking forward to doing.

Only that’s not me! That’s not me at all. What’s happened to me? Where did I go? I went into all these other places. I went to where people lead me. And I did so willingly. And I got used to it. Poor little old me! Well it’s becoming apparent that some muscles have atrophied. Maybe that explains why I feel the way I do at the end of a Friday, when, as a child, I used to look so forward to all the potential and possibilities of the weekend. Now it feels like I’ve simply stopped believing in the weekend. This is going to stop right now!

ETERNITY ON EARTH

I can see it happening now. I just slide into each day. It’s so easy. Not even looking to the left or right, I choose and choose and choose again to step in to the same thing the same activity, and it’s pleasant. And this is my eternity on earth. And I don’t step away from it or step back from it but continue to step into it. And in a way there’s nothing so bad about that.

I’m thinking about opportunity costs. In order to really think about an opportunity cost you have to appreciate and see, recognize and embrace opportunity. Can I just say that opportunity sometimes looms as an enemy? Maybe opportunity is like the enemy of the Pleasant. I think I have something inside of me that’s against, that truly opposes opportunity. Part of me just wants to dwell in sameness and security. It’s like I have a loyalty to a series of routines that tug, that insist, that remind and say that they are who I am. Can I be who I am without these routines that I’ve done for 30 years?

Provincial we are

Provincial we are. The provincial other is a version of social trash. In the case of Woodstock Vermont it’s elite social trash. We’re separate and less intense. Maybe less exacting with the occasional fork stuck in our nose to spite our face. We may be up in the north woods and we may not have Broadway and the clubs nor much diversity, but we have the real estate everyone in this pandemic wants. People may like their culture, but they also like to live and go for walks and not be stuck in one or two bedroom apartments in the middle of their cosmopolitan paradise with virus droplets ready to invade their internal organs.
Yeah you got to live first in order to create. You got to breathe before you can walk.