Something to Say

“Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise, walk sprightly like a pigeon and sleep like a dog.” These were the words of advice Li gave to Wu Pei-fu, the warlord, who took Li into his house to learn the secret of extremely long life.

Li maintained that inward calm and peace of mind were the secrets to incredible longevity. His diet after all, was mainly based on rice and wine.

And ice cold vodka.
-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

Life is caught in the tension between order and chaos. If there is too much order, everything becomes the same and there is no room for creativity or anything new. Everything must fit the one pattern. If there is too much chaos nothing can last long enough to create anything useful; everything is just a jumble that destroys everything before it can get started. Between order and chaos is found the Edge of Chaos, the point where there is enough chaos for novelty and creativity, but also enough order for consistency and patterns to endure. This point is a magic point, where new and unimagined properties can emerge.


“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishing.”
- Anais Nin

Friday, June 12, 2009

A few days ago I had a very disturbing dream, and I want to document it for posterity.

Tuesday afternoon I had read a few pages of “Mind of Clear Light” by the Dalai Lama, in which he says we should be careful not to waste a moment of this precious human life. Also, I have been thinking about the fact that I will be 61 in July, and one year from then I will be eligible to collect Social Security, which I am fairly certailn I will, barring any unforseen windfall of U.S. dollars.

In the dream I was sentenced to 13 months on a work-release program for the crime of having wasted 60 years of Precious Human Life. I did not deny my guilt, I embraced it. My work-release job was to be delivering mail in the city, which appeared to be Leominster, a suburb of a large city. I went out to deliver the mail and was completely lost. Just like my real experience with delivering mail, I felt like I didn’t know where to go, and that I was going to run out of time to complete the route.

A kindly gentleman finally came to me and counselled me as to what I should really be doing for my work release job. I was to be a “medical technician”, something to do with surgical instruments. Donna was there briefly, and dispassionately said I was suited for that kind of work. All the while the crime I had committed, wasting my 60 years of human life, told more and more heavily upon me, and I cried loudly, like a baby with a rash, and woke up crying, fully believing I had, indeed, wasted my life.