Hey, if the market can induce Christmas before Thanksgiving than I can prolong Halloween....
When we transform a pumpkin into a jacolantern, we gut out its heart and leave nothing but a hollow inside strewn with orange veins – remnants of the self it used to be. We poke out its eyes, leaving two hollow holes – windows to a soul that is not there. And we gut out its nose - but it is better that way because now he cannot smell the stench of rotting pumpkin juice – the stench of his own inevitable death. And he cannot see his own wrinkly face caving in upon itself, his own wrinkles birthing more wrinkles that cannot bear the weight of heavy pumpkin flesh that has been punctured with cookie-cutter pumpkin eyes that do not shift to show insecurity or slant to show animosity or soften at the sight of love. He is strong and brave and emotionless and unsentimental. He bears all. He has a face- we have given him a face. But what is a pretty pumpkin face without a pretty pumpkin soul? We take his pumpkin seeds – the sperm of his existence and chew them up and spit them out. We feast on little would-be pumpkin embryos. We abort the possibilities for other young pumpkins, yet we also ensure that there will be a few less soulless jacolanterns. But who is to say that they are fated to be soulless jacolanterns? Who is to say that they will not grow to be blue-ribbon winning pumpkins on display at the county fair, pumpkins whose skin is so tough that it cannot be punctured into faces on which feeling cannot be read? We are ensuring that the world will never know the capacities of pumpkins that never got the chance to be gutted. No wonder they are always scowling.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Dolla Billz Y'all
"The best things in life are free,
But you can give them to the birds and bees,
I want MONEY!
That's what I want. "
Well, not really. To say that money is the root of all evil would be a huge overstatement because it does us some good. I can pinpoint at least 10 glaringly evident disadvantageous to not having the concept of money in our vocabulary:
1. I wouldn't be able to quote songs like the one above because there would be no insipiration for them.
2. We wouldn't have a source from which to replicate monopoly money and so stuffing those money-holder cards with fake dollars would be a lot less funny.
3. My obsession with manipulating dollar bills into oragami cranes would have to be replaced by an obsession with manipulating the bills of oragami cranes into doll hairs.
4. We couldn't tie money onto the ends of strings and laugh when people try and reach for them while we pull them away.
5. Terms like "put your money where your mouth is" would have to be replaced with "put your lemon-cursted salmon where your mouth is" because food (lemon crusted salmon specifically) would replace money making this adage significantly less funny because lemon crusted salmon does, in fact, belong in the mouth.
6. honey, bunny, funny, punny, runny, and sunny would be down a rhyme.
Isn't it funny how the more we worry about having money, the less money we have? This is because the very thought that we need money automatically creates need. We think need into being. I never worry about money and I never seem to have it, but when I need it it alsways seems to be there. Like this week, for instance. I was done to my last dollar, literally. That very same day my Dad emailed me and put a few bucks into my account. I guess I'm lucky becasue I get to commute for free which saves me a shitload of money, but still, I never seem to want it, desire it, or think too often about it and I always seem to have enough to get by, to eat, and to donate a few bucks to Yoga to the People and church. Not that I WANT to live meagerly forever, I just don't see a problem with it right now and I don't sacrifice what I love to do or worry about the monetary fortunes that I will or will not fall into in the future.
Lets talk about Tom (my mentally challenged Uncle) for a minute. Tom works at Almost Family presumably putting caps on bottles. He gets a paychek every few weeks for about 5 dollars. This excites him beyond measure. He is completely content with whatever he receives and we (family) always make a big deal out of it proclaiming things like "WOW TOM!!! FIVE DOLLARS?! NO WAY!!!" He also has a bowl of pennies that he counts every night. This act might seem to peg him as frugile, but it is really indicative of the fact that he values the little things in life. He is the essence of "being." We got him a Popeye shirt last Christmas that said "I Yam What I Yam." This describes him perfectly.
Anyway, there is a lot of good that can come of money, but people abuse it.
Combatting this obsession with money is easy; choose gratification over supplication.
$$$$
But you can give them to the birds and bees,
I want MONEY!
That's what I want. "
Well, not really. To say that money is the root of all evil would be a huge overstatement because it does us some good. I can pinpoint at least 10 glaringly evident disadvantageous to not having the concept of money in our vocabulary:
1. I wouldn't be able to quote songs like the one above because there would be no insipiration for them.
2. We wouldn't have a source from which to replicate monopoly money and so stuffing those money-holder cards with fake dollars would be a lot less funny.
3. My obsession with manipulating dollar bills into oragami cranes would have to be replaced by an obsession with manipulating the bills of oragami cranes into doll hairs.
4. We couldn't tie money onto the ends of strings and laugh when people try and reach for them while we pull them away.
5. Terms like "put your money where your mouth is" would have to be replaced with "put your lemon-cursted salmon where your mouth is" because food (lemon crusted salmon specifically) would replace money making this adage significantly less funny because lemon crusted salmon does, in fact, belong in the mouth.
6. honey, bunny, funny, punny, runny, and sunny would be down a rhyme.
Isn't it funny how the more we worry about having money, the less money we have? This is because the very thought that we need money automatically creates need. We think need into being. I never worry about money and I never seem to have it, but when I need it it alsways seems to be there. Like this week, for instance. I was done to my last dollar, literally. That very same day my Dad emailed me and put a few bucks into my account. I guess I'm lucky becasue I get to commute for free which saves me a shitload of money, but still, I never seem to want it, desire it, or think too often about it and I always seem to have enough to get by, to eat, and to donate a few bucks to Yoga to the People and church. Not that I WANT to live meagerly forever, I just don't see a problem with it right now and I don't sacrifice what I love to do or worry about the monetary fortunes that I will or will not fall into in the future.
Lets talk about Tom (my mentally challenged Uncle) for a minute. Tom works at Almost Family presumably putting caps on bottles. He gets a paychek every few weeks for about 5 dollars. This excites him beyond measure. He is completely content with whatever he receives and we (family) always make a big deal out of it proclaiming things like "WOW TOM!!! FIVE DOLLARS?! NO WAY!!!" He also has a bowl of pennies that he counts every night. This act might seem to peg him as frugile, but it is really indicative of the fact that he values the little things in life. He is the essence of "being." We got him a Popeye shirt last Christmas that said "I Yam What I Yam." This describes him perfectly.
Anyway, there is a lot of good that can come of money, but people abuse it.
Combatting this obsession with money is easy; choose gratification over supplication.
$$$$
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Insanity, your Honor!
Insanity is subjective.
There once was a king who was loved and respected by all the people he ruled for his fair and just principles. They adorned him with food, jewelry, and clothing. He ruled from within the gates of his own kingdom and had a private river from which he drank. His subjects drank from their own river. One day, the water that his subjects drank from became contamined and, after drinking it, they all went insane. The king, from his throne, had no idea. The people began to loath the King and they called him a tyrant and thought that he and his principles were insane. They stopped sending him gifts and began to rebel against his authority.
One day, the King decided to wander into the village where his people were. The walk down made him thirsty, so he dedcided to drink from one of their contaminated rivers. After drinking, he, too, became insane. He now saw things from the eyes of his people, and they accepted him again.
The insane rejected the sane until he became insane.
i think I did a good job of recounting this story. It's from The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and it proves that people are only insane out of context.
There once was a king who was loved and respected by all the people he ruled for his fair and just principles. They adorned him with food, jewelry, and clothing. He ruled from within the gates of his own kingdom and had a private river from which he drank. His subjects drank from their own river. One day, the water that his subjects drank from became contamined and, after drinking it, they all went insane. The king, from his throne, had no idea. The people began to loath the King and they called him a tyrant and thought that he and his principles were insane. They stopped sending him gifts and began to rebel against his authority.
One day, the King decided to wander into the village where his people were. The walk down made him thirsty, so he dedcided to drink from one of their contaminated rivers. After drinking, he, too, became insane. He now saw things from the eyes of his people, and they accepted him again.
The insane rejected the sane until he became insane.
i think I did a good job of recounting this story. It's from The Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and it proves that people are only insane out of context.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Say the Word
Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word, love.
- The Beatles
Love is a great word. It rolls off the tongue rather nicely. Try elongating the L. Try saying it really short and crisp. Try singing it. Try saying it while plugging your nose and standing on your head. You can't make it sound bad. But it doesn't mean anything if we don't know what it means, if we haven't experienced it. The word love communicates the experience of love. So without the experience the word would be meaningless. We place a lot of value on words. They get us through college, they get us jobs, they help us build relationships, and if you are in a Cyber relationship, then they form the foundation of your relationship. I remember a movie whose name currently escapes me in which the protagonist sold his soul to the devil after the latter told the man that all he had to do was give the devil his word. The devil made "wordS" sound trivial, but the theme of the movie was clearly that they are our most powerful tool. As a potential journalist, I ironically disagree.
Words are not necessary, they are only useful. They are luxuries. The only tools that are necessary are those that allow us to arrive at the truth of life, at the essence of life. I want to say that these are the mind, body, and soul, but they might not even include all of these. The soul allows us to conceive of the truth, the mind allwos us to ponder it, and the body allows us to experience it. In Conversations With God, the author categorized words as "mere utterances." He enlisted the argument that we all too often emphasize the "Word of God over the Experience of God." We think we know what he is all about, what he said and did because we have it documented on paper or have heard it via word of mouth, so when our experience introduces us to some phenomenon that isn't literally what we know as being the Word of God, we don't accept it. We think it is blasphemy.
Don't get me wrong, I love words. They are beautiful, profound, profane, and useful, but they are only one form of communicatiion because they are severely limited in that they can only attempt to convey a feeling or an experience.
"Say the word, Love," go ahead, but don't expect the conceptual idea of it that words offer us to act as a substitute for the experiential reality of it.
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, it's sunshine
It's the word, love.
- The Beatles
Love is a great word. It rolls off the tongue rather nicely. Try elongating the L. Try saying it really short and crisp. Try singing it. Try saying it while plugging your nose and standing on your head. You can't make it sound bad. But it doesn't mean anything if we don't know what it means, if we haven't experienced it. The word love communicates the experience of love. So without the experience the word would be meaningless. We place a lot of value on words. They get us through college, they get us jobs, they help us build relationships, and if you are in a Cyber relationship, then they form the foundation of your relationship. I remember a movie whose name currently escapes me in which the protagonist sold his soul to the devil after the latter told the man that all he had to do was give the devil his word. The devil made "wordS" sound trivial, but the theme of the movie was clearly that they are our most powerful tool. As a potential journalist, I ironically disagree.
Words are not necessary, they are only useful. They are luxuries. The only tools that are necessary are those that allow us to arrive at the truth of life, at the essence of life. I want to say that these are the mind, body, and soul, but they might not even include all of these. The soul allows us to conceive of the truth, the mind allwos us to ponder it, and the body allows us to experience it. In Conversations With God, the author categorized words as "mere utterances." He enlisted the argument that we all too often emphasize the "Word of God over the Experience of God." We think we know what he is all about, what he said and did because we have it documented on paper or have heard it via word of mouth, so when our experience introduces us to some phenomenon that isn't literally what we know as being the Word of God, we don't accept it. We think it is blasphemy.
Don't get me wrong, I love words. They are beautiful, profound, profane, and useful, but they are only one form of communicatiion because they are severely limited in that they can only attempt to convey a feeling or an experience.
"Say the word, Love," go ahead, but don't expect the conceptual idea of it that words offer us to act as a substitute for the experiential reality of it.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Godliness
I don't know why I was thinking about this. Probably because I'm completely immersed in Conversations With God. Or maybe because of yoga. Or maybe because I'm in love (which I usually am with some person, object, or endeavor). Or maybe because of all of them.
I haven't done this in a while and I usually have few opportunities that allow me the opportunity to do it, but I love going to church at night.
There is something more sacred, more holy, more trascendental, more enlightening (or...endarkening...[Colbert]), about being there alone at night with nothing but a few candles illuminating the icons. The Saints all seem holier. The pews, although empty, all seem more lively. The altar, that mysterious shrine beyond whose doors I'm forbidden to wander, is somehow more divine. And the collective experience, the private prayer, marveling, pondering, immersion of oneself into the all-encompassing realm of love, of Godliness, is so much more meditative and mystical when you are alone under the cover of darkness.
I'll write a blog about Conversations when I finish it, but here are a few relevant ideas:
1. Some people ask why God lets bad things happen. The answer is that he lets both bad AND good things happen BECAUSE he has given us the gift of free will and by NOT giving us the CHANCE to do good, which also allows us the chance to do the opposite, we wouldn't have free will. He loves us so much that he has enabled us the ability to choose and all he can do is sit back and watch us either make mistakes or not becuase to take away our ability to try and err would mean taking away the greatest gift that he has given us; our freedom.
2. All relationshiups that we have in life are opportunites. ALL RELATIONSHIPS...even the ones we have with inanimate objects. They are invitations, channels through which we can experience our own selves, mirrors out of which are reflected the image and likeness that we have chosen to experience THROUGH the person, object, or endeavor that we are in a relationship with.
THis is why we have to love e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y. I mean, I guess you don't HAVE to, but you should because each person or thing lets you exhibit your own highest version of yourself in a different way and therefore EVERY person and relationship is important. It makes me angry when people put "I hate back stabbers and fake people" in their profiles because these are the people who may arguably be the most essential in the creation of our highest selves because they allow us to invoke that self most consciously. It is easy to love someone who loves you. It is much harder to love someone who has hurt you, but doing so is a testament to just how big of a person you are, just how, in essence, godly you are.
Every moment is an opportunity for love and transformation.
3. Life is about creation, not discovery, though I think we can create discovery, or opportunities for discovery.
I love YOU.
I haven't done this in a while and I usually have few opportunities that allow me the opportunity to do it, but I love going to church at night.
There is something more sacred, more holy, more trascendental, more enlightening (or...endarkening...[Colbert]), about being there alone at night with nothing but a few candles illuminating the icons. The Saints all seem holier. The pews, although empty, all seem more lively. The altar, that mysterious shrine beyond whose doors I'm forbidden to wander, is somehow more divine. And the collective experience, the private prayer, marveling, pondering, immersion of oneself into the all-encompassing realm of love, of Godliness, is so much more meditative and mystical when you are alone under the cover of darkness.
I'll write a blog about Conversations when I finish it, but here are a few relevant ideas:
1. Some people ask why God lets bad things happen. The answer is that he lets both bad AND good things happen BECAUSE he has given us the gift of free will and by NOT giving us the CHANCE to do good, which also allows us the chance to do the opposite, we wouldn't have free will. He loves us so much that he has enabled us the ability to choose and all he can do is sit back and watch us either make mistakes or not becuase to take away our ability to try and err would mean taking away the greatest gift that he has given us; our freedom.
2. All relationshiups that we have in life are opportunites. ALL RELATIONSHIPS...even the ones we have with inanimate objects. They are invitations, channels through which we can experience our own selves, mirrors out of which are reflected the image and likeness that we have chosen to experience THROUGH the person, object, or endeavor that we are in a relationship with.
THis is why we have to love e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y. I mean, I guess you don't HAVE to, but you should because each person or thing lets you exhibit your own highest version of yourself in a different way and therefore EVERY person and relationship is important. It makes me angry when people put "I hate back stabbers and fake people" in their profiles because these are the people who may arguably be the most essential in the creation of our highest selves because they allow us to invoke that self most consciously. It is easy to love someone who loves you. It is much harder to love someone who has hurt you, but doing so is a testament to just how big of a person you are, just how, in essence, godly you are.
Every moment is an opportunity for love and transformation.
3. Life is about creation, not discovery, though I think we can create discovery, or opportunities for discovery.
I love YOU.
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