One item per day was abandoned until living got hard. But like Diogenes -- who gave up his cup upon seeing a boy slurping from cupped palms -- eventually, it all was gone. Each item hand-weighed, its weight against is usefulness, and all were found expendable.
They told it slant, but not all the truth, and it rolled into the ears of the willing and into the minds of the faithful. And in those minds it was built into a swift machine, one of great power -- if little reality. But deaths never required reality of motive, only reality of matter. So, the wild stories became wild ideas that were the bane of us all.
“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible”
Henry david thoreau, Walden
Too many people wish that the world consisted of those who held the same views as they - who loved what they loved, who believed what they believed, who would do what they would do. I can't imagine a more boring world than that. If there aren't those with different: ideas, desires, beliefs, and values, then who will show me something new: something that -- for good or for ill -- will change my world and advance my understanding. If truth be told, I'd just as soon spend time among the crazy sages who -- having rejected all programming -- will not be made prisoner to a train schedule, let alone to a norm or convention or protocol. The madmen who shaman one out of all mental conventions. But such as they are hand forged, each vibrating at his or her own wavelength -- hard to see and not easily found.
The secret is... we're energy machines. This wild ride we're on is all about staying 98.6. The meaning of life might as well be 98.6. You work to make rent to be sheltered at 98.6. You go to the store for groceries to stoke the fires of 98.6. You put on your coat or slippers to keep yourself at 98.6. You go to the beach to warm to 98.6 & then sweat to drop back to 98.6. You take medicines when you're too far off the mark of 98.6. You turn on the AC to sleep at 98.6 & kick off the covers & drag the covers back & adjust the AC... all to sleep at 98.6. You may wish to be a flash fire of a million degrees, but life leaves you at 98.6. Some day you'll cool off and your career as Thermoregulatory Maintenance Specialist will be at an end & you'll be done with the trouble of staying 98.6.
Mad scientists are terrifying. Mad artists are reassuring (par for that particular course.) Mad mathematicians seem harmless enough, as long as he or she stays in his or her lane: the one with numbers and angles and sets. Mad Saints are the most hated & most beloved of lunatics. They serve as necessary examples -- not there to forcibly deprogram one, but to show that it's an option. One has the choice to be free, whether one has the will or desire to be - that's an open question. But those who sink the red pill must learn that in those waters thar be monsters. (If only those of one's own making -- i.e. Nietzsche's abyss staring back.) Voids can't gaze. Only that which one crams down its abyss-hole can do the gazing.
I am the soulless voyager cut loose from the dock in a rudderless craft Kicked this way and that by angry winds that greet all flat surfaces, and -- having met a surface -- pushes it away with maximum effort Where will my ghost ship take to land? After all, every voyage must end -- be it purposeless or purposeful A craft can only circle (having been caught in the currents) for so long before it's whipped off into sand or rock or some unlikely port That's the great mystery, the mystery by which life is made worthy of living one never knows whether one will be tossed to a port or a rocky shoal, a shoal whose rocks will rip open the ship, like a deer dressed by a poor hunter, being torn at jagged angles so as to be unworthy to be called a ship or boat or even "thing that floats," becoming a rusty structure, resting at an odd angle near the shore but maybe this ghost ship will be tossed roughly against the rubber bumpers of a dock, coming to rest such that what remains can be offloaded
As a boy, I remember reading about the horse latitudes. Those were the places in the ocean where - at times - the winds didn't blow for long periods at a time. Drifting in the middle of the Atlantic, sailors would cut loose anything that wouldn't keep them alive & which might weigh them down, that sometimes meant shoving horses overboard to tread water 'til they died from exhaustion. People used to live or die by the winds. Today, we only die by them. That's what occurred to me as we sit closer to nuclear annihilation than we've been since I was a teenager, and as I reflect upon the prevailing winds.
the vaulted corridor is lined with portals to places unknown and linked to other hallways in an infinite labyrinth one can go from "here" to anywhere, but there's no map yours will be a stochastic journey; one might prefer to systematically duck one's head into portals, getting a feel about whether a given route seems favorable -- but we all know that one must often travel through unfavorable territory to get where one wants to be and so it's like being thirsty in a life raft -- as per Coleridge's Mariner: "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink" in this case, it's a free ticket to anywhere, if you can only find your way, but what're the odds?
And in the end, the dead are still and the graveyard's quiet is not so bad. The monuments weather; in due time, letters become less crisp & dates become debatable. A clean read means there maybe someone left to mourn. And fresh flowers mean that someone has tracked their melancholy through the place, and the air feels heavier, and my mind feels heavier. And I read names: familiar & not, popular & not. I read names to distract me from thoughts of my own dead -- to avoid tracking my own melancholy through the place. For, you see, I've brought no flowers.
Journeys start with a cattle-prod jolt & a kick in the soul -- not at an airport, or a ferry dock, or a taxi stand, or at the curb. By the time you've gotten that far, you're already traveling. By the time you've "decided" to go, you're already traveling. Travel begins earlier, if in the dark, because travel is not a dream, & only dreams start in the middle of nonsense. Real life flows down a continuous and unbroken stream of nonsense, drifting at a rate slow enough for your brain to make a movie of rationalizations, so that your brain can tell you: that you're in control, that you know what's going on, that you know what will happen next, & assorted and sundry bullshit like that.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 