When my dad was just about my age now he told me that he hated being old. He had been living alone for five or six years since my mom passed and he wasn’t handling that well. I was living far away which compounded things. His friends were aging out and dying off and he wasn’t making any new ones. Grandchildren had grown up and moved on; not that they didn’t or don’t care but life has a way of overflowing all of the space available. It leaves little room for grandparents and he was lonely regardless. I couldn’t help with that but I took it as an omen, a cautionary reality-check; not unlike the reckless driver who passed me a few miles back and I catch up with them later, pulled over by the police and instinctively I think; Not good, don’t do that. So here I am, same age (85) but I don’t hate it. There are drawbacks but without the Yin-Yang and Karma factors I couldn’t appreciate good fortune when it treats me better than I deserve.
This is a story that was born in my preteen years. Sleeping outside on a hot summer night I woke up to a bright light and a voice coming down from the treetops. It said when I was being born I was delivered to the wrong planet and they were here to rescue me, to take me home where I belong. Then my mother’s voice called from her bedroom window. She told me to stop with the noise and go to sleep. In the still that followed, both the bright light and the voice had disappeared. It felt so real I couldn’t let it go, begging the question that has never been satisfied. I dream dreams, maybe not every night but often, still I don’t remember any of them. The one in our front yard when I was 10, I still remember it clear as a bell.
Not wanting to sound like a fool, still it’s is generally accepted that the subconscious mind (which is unavailable to the conscious one) can and does bridge that gap with thoughts and ideas (language) that we have no control over. A thought, out of the blue that just hits you between the ears; artists and writers in particular refer to this inspiring phenomenon as the ‘Muse’. If you treat it with denial (WTF) then what you see is what you get. I pay close attention when I get those little flashes of inspiration, afraid if I don’t it will give up on me and go away for good. I am patient but never closed to an insight that has otherwise eluded me.
Getting back to the hot night in the front yard, I still chew on that unresolved question. Certainly, across my lifetime I harbor reservations about being a human being. Sometimes, everything in my experience tells me that I don’t belong. I know,I know, I’m stuck here and nothing foreseeable to remedy that. Still this life has always given me a path where I could both learn from failure and try again, and again. I should be grateful and I am but it is in our nature to want more and better than what we have even when it comes at the expense of unfortunate others who are trapped in a working underclass. Here in the U.S.SA. we have the best government money can buy, where Liberty is confused with License and you get just as much Justice as you can afford. I certainly am grateful. If not for White-Male privilege it is extremely unlikely I would have ever seen the inside of a university library.
I made it my life’s work to know biology and evolution, to realize the power of applied math and data but in my culture it’s not something you want to take seriously. Our leadership is content to popularize conspiracy theories, cook the books and blame each other for the shortfall. This could unfold as a rant against political parties and religious deities but they have joined at the hip and you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.
If I have a bona fide hero it would be Astronomer Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996. He understood the frailty of life on this planet and the vast expanse of a universe that doesn’t care at all if we flourish for thousands of years in hunter-gatherer clans or perish in a civilized attempt to be the temporary Lords of an ordinary planet. For as long as I am remembered by anyone, for any reason, I don’t want to be lumped together with egomaniac narcissists who can’t see beyond the next election cycle, who profit from building walls to keep their base happy as they worship their own image in the mirror.
This is a story that was born in my preteen years. Sleeping outside on a hot summer night I woke up to a bright light and a voice coming down from the treetops. It said when I was being born I was delivered to the wrong planet and they were here to rescue me, to take me home where I belong. Then my mother’s voice called from her bedroom window. She told me to stop with the noise and go to sleep. In the still that followed, both the bright light and the voice had disappeared. It felt so real I couldn’t let it go, begging the question that has never been satisfied. I dream dreams, maybe not every night but often, still I don’t remember any of them. The one in our front yard when I was 10, I still remember it clear as a bell.
Not wanting to sound like a fool, still it’s is generally accepted that the subconscious mind (which is unavailable to the conscious one) can and does bridge that gap with thoughts and ideas (language) that we have no control over. A thought, out of the blue that just hits you between the ears; artists and writers in particular refer to this inspiring phenomenon as the ‘Muse’. If you treat it with denial (WTF) then what you see is what you get. I pay close attention when I get those little flashes of inspiration, afraid if I don’t it will give up on me and go away for good. I am patient but never closed to an insight that has otherwise eluded me.
Getting back to the hot night in the front yard, I still chew on that unresolved question. Certainly, across my lifetime I harbor reservations about being a human being. Sometimes, everything in my experience tells me that I don’t belong. I know,I know, I’m stuck here and nothing foreseeable to remedy that. Still this life has always given me a path where I could both learn from failure and try again, and again. I should be grateful and I am but it is in our nature to want more and better than what we have even when it comes at the expense of unfortunate others who are trapped in a working underclass. Here in the U.S.SA. we have the best government money can buy, where Liberty is confused with License and you get just as much Justice as you can afford. I certainly am grateful. If not for White-Male privilege it is extremely unlikely I would have ever seen the inside of a university library.
I made it my life’s work to know biology and evolution, to realize the power of applied math and data but in my culture it’s not something you want to take seriously. Our leadership is content to popularize conspiracy theories, cook the books and blame each other for the shortfall. This could unfold as a rant against political parties and religious deities but they have joined at the hip and you can’t tell where one stops and the other begins.
If I have a bona fide hero it would be Astronomer Carl Sagan, 1934 - 1996. He understood the frailty of life on this planet and the vast expanse of a universe that doesn’t care at all if we flourish for thousands of years in hunter-gatherer clans or perish in a civilized attempt to be the temporary Lords of an ordinary planet. For as long as I am remembered by anyone, for any reason, I don’t want to be lumped together with egomaniac narcissists who can’t see beyond the next election cycle, who profit from building walls to keep their base happy as they worship their own image in the mirror.
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