Car Dreams

I’ve talked to other dogs, at the park, sidewalk strolls, car to car, waiting in parking lots. I suppose most people think, when we’ve got our heads out the car window, we’re just breathing in fresh air or carbon monoxide. Stop looking for the guy with an antenna on his head from outer space. We’re the real thing. We're here to check you out -  that’s when our tongues are hanging, lapping the air. On the other hand, head out, tongue in, mouth shut means we’re having a car dream.  Dreams of when we were free, galloping with the horses untethered by human demands. Cars jumping lanes on freeways are dull reminders of what it was really like to race with a herd of horses across a stormy plateau.  

A Block of Time

I was going to say that I've got a free block of time, but "block" indicates boundaries, whereas time really isn't bound. We have no idea where time begins or where it ends. Of course, somebody on a lunch break could smartly tell me how time works. But that isn't time. That's the organization of time. That's what bothers most people like me. We don't particularly like organization, unless it's within the context of what we're trying to create. I imagine that most writers or artists, in their work, are trying to escape time. Maybe that's part of wanting to be an "artist," the need or desire to escape time, which, in fact, in its corollary, is the will to escape death. Death is the shadow of time. It makes fools of all of us, unless we recognize it, not as the end of time, but as the beginning of timelessness, the antithesis of time. So we are really hand in hand with both consorts. And, if this timelessness is a part of our continuum, then it inhabits us even during the illusion of our life-death experience. We are infinite beings, as it were, eternal in some realm of conception. No one is excepted, not the murderer, the psychopath, the wanderer, tyrant, factory worker, office worker or saint. That, indeed, is what binds us,  makes us equal, contributes to our humanity and to our eternal nature. What men are doing when they're slaughtering each other is dividing life into time and using time as a reason and excuse for desecrating the holiness of the other, as if that would affect their timelessness.

Sharia law

Endlessly, the shrill right wing of the Republican party has accused President Obama of turning our country into an Islamic state. How ironic that the conservative branch of the Supreme Court, beholden to Republican presidents, has opened the doors for Sharia law.

Freedom of speech

It is not enough to have freedom of speech if we are not brave enough to speak what our heart feels and our mind knows. Politicians stand in front of the door of free speech, with all their puffery and false bravado, but they know they are  protecting a vacuum of ideas. They don't have the courage to make sense of events. They are the ambitious class vice-presidents and presidents we voted for in high school, whose mindsets and acuity have never progressed beyond that scope of understanding.  They understand freedom of speech. They just don't understand that freedom of speech is meaningless without the courage to speak.

The evanescence of a smile

The evanescence of a smile

Nothing lasts forever, although we know, as well, that nothing disappears; energy is simply transformed, recreated in new and different forms. So it happens with people. Of course, our progeny is part of that energy and, as it goes on, infinitum, nothing in death is destroyed. But there is more. There is the energy that brings a smile to our faces. It happens in a sunset, a concert recital, the flight of a hundred voyaging birds. It happens because something within us recognizes that we are witnessing an event, a phenomenen, that awakens the spirit deep within us. So it is with a smile that brings us hope, that brings our own smile to celebrate the enigmatic but enormous possibilities. And then that smile disappears, as if it were washed from the window of our perception. We turn away distraught. Time passes. And, then, walking down a street, sipping a cup of coffee or tea, reading the mail,  the smile comes back, it rises within us, it is there after all, nourishing us, adding just a little more light to our eyes. Nothing is destroyed. Thank you, Scott J Foster

The Habitable Zone

"Astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone,” confirming that Earth-size planets exist in the habitable zones of other stars and signaling a significant step closer to finding a world similar to Earth. Using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star..."

Which raises the age-old question: Why are we so eager to find another habitable planet populated by beings like us or not? If these beings are like us, how disappointing to see the same fools trying to make a go of it, clashing in innumerable wars, hoisting intolerance, mediocrity and enmity to positions of leadership and disregarding the voices of reason and enlightenment.

If the beings on these habitable planets are more frightening than us, more incompetent, less trustworthy, more volatile, threatening and vicious, who needs them as a neighbor? Why not just pass on a house of horrors?

And, if by chance, the lucky residents of habitable planet is more enlightened than us,  why should we assume within degree of certainty that we would listen to their voices of spiritual wisdom anymore than we listen to those similar voices on our own habitable planet? Just because they may wear togas?  And seeing the intractable mess we keep making of earth, who's to say they would want to earnestly try to work with us? You know the old saying, "We gave them everything and look what they did..."

"Look what we did..." echoes through the universe, and "Look what I did.." echoes through each heart from the beginning of time.

The Virtual World

I'm skipping happily between two worlds, the world of virtual reality and the world with my footprints. Of course the virtual world only becomes relevant when we live for long periods of time on the ground. Without the ground there is no virtual world, unless we think of meditation or hallucinatory drugs as virtual fields of transcendence. There is something exciting about going to a different world, seeing who's there, seeing what they're saying and finding a voice, perhaps even our own voice. There are no parents to bother us, no teachers or cops. Well, there are virtual cops checking our data, patrolling. I suppose that's better than a guy following us as we pull out of the driveway and checking off the stores we go to, the clothes we buy, the places we eat.  And there are teachers in virtual reality, but, unlike school, we choose those teachers that are most appealing to us. Unfortunately, there is no fresh air in the virtual world, no breeze blowing through, stirring up the dead leaves, knocking off old branches, blowing empty cans down the highway. The virtual world feeds our private self, unencumbered by another voice, another critical mind. If we want to hate something, a country, a political or social platform,  an ethnic group, we can find websites and chat rooms that will encourage, validate and support our private view. There is no light in the virtual world. We can sit alone in the darkness of our habitat and stream the darkness of minds equally unenlightened. The virtual world buzzes; it just doesn't sing.