What to do

Sitting here thinking of my prospects, they seem rather grim indeed. Firstly, I see no way in which I can make a living in this modern world. For all that are useful are laborers that are squeezed into boxed warehouses, opening up boxes and taping them up again like some Sisyphus exercise. Or some second rate babysitter at schools, being reminded how poorly I perform those functions. Misery, absolute misery everywhere. The only way to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is through drugs. And if you can't take them, then you are forced to bear the misery. Or perhaps its better to simply die. I don't get why we have to work, not only so hard, but at tasks that make our existence more miserable than what they are. It would be better if the upper classes would simply exterminate us so that we needn't continue with it all. Just really tired and see no other way out. But I will continue on, yet I know that the only way out is through death.

Science

I am so tired of hearing everyone talk about Science. This behemoth of knowledge, skill, intelligence and wonder, what is it? Is it the magic wand that with the flick of a wrist will wipe away all of our sorrows and produce everything we could desire? Is it some mystery that uncovered answers all of our questions, including the ones that wake us up in the middle of the night wondering why we exist and what will become of us? When anything questions its methods, it is immediately dismissed as unintelligent, uneducated and plain stupid. But like the suspect in the old Agatha Christie novels, if it were on a solid foundation, why act so defensive and suspicious about it? Why react so violently towards any criticism of it? I begin to wonder if it is a belief system or what I had always thought it was, a system of understanding the natural world through inductive reasoning, testability and empirical measurements. I guess I would like to know that if it is the only reliable means of knowing anything, why we don't rely on it to answer questions that mean the most to us; like about Love, about Art and Beauty and what logic?

Wonder

I wonder sometimes what is the meaning of things. It seems that within the past few years I have been weighed down with depression and grief. I think it has to do with my children and the struggles they go through. But even more than this, it has to do with their uncertain future. I suppose the future is the one thing I fear the most. And in fact the fear of it paradoxically hastens it even more. I want to see the wonder and the awe that Joey sees. I want to feel the excitement that Sammy feels. These elude me and I am left wondering where they are. But am I to suppose that they don't exist at all? Am I to just throw up my hands at the whole matter and agnostically deny all that seems reasonable? It is the true the senses are missing something and there are only two options, or two alternatives: One, it is just the way our brains function or two, there is something missing that we are aware of that exists but is not visible to the senses? If it is the former, then it would seem that our brain relaying information to us and creating information for us would be indistinguishable. Looking at the brain as some organ we can analyze seems contradictory from the perspective that we are using our brains to know our brains. And so, it would seem to me that embracing metaphysics, the soul, the spirit and God is far more rational. But, then again I still wonder how it will all turn out. I just want to hide in my mind and be embraced by God, by a Tom Bombadil.

Debating

I have grown rather tired of debating with people. I find that most I engage in discussions either use too many ad hominems or I find myself defending myself or my views as opposed as attacking them. I don't know it just really depresses me when I think about it. It makes me sad as well. And I think it has something to do with the fact that I look down on myself so much in an attempt at avoiding criticism. I just can't take it when it comes to a personal criticism. I already feel like pond scum most of the time. I am a financial mess, I hate to work-not because I am lazy but social anxiety and my views on capitalism cause a great deal of tension-and so many other reasons...by my fay I cannot reason right now and just wish to be left alone...like forever...

The song, "A Thousand Miles", means a great deal to me. Let me explain what it means. The point of this lyric is to emphasize the illusory nature of the senses and highlight the inner world of experience and how it trumps the former. For, just as St. Peter had expressed right before he was crucified upside, he explained that the world was upside down. Obviously not the physical globe that floats about in space, but rather all that is captured by the senses. It's as if the epistemic faculties of Man were flipped, and all that is right is wrong, all that is good is evil, all that is up is down and all that is to the right is to the left. Our understanding of Space, Physics, Science is all moot; nay is certainly inadequate to capture all that there is to experience; one may as well try to scoop up the entire ocean with a serving bowl. And so, the action of falling into the sky is nothing more than falling into our graves, where the heavens are the ground and the greater outer space is nothing more than the dirt and soil of reality.

Sidewalks

They are the running boards of our lives where we come and go to places of short distance. They are the children’s canvas where the earliest works of art are sketched with chalk. They are cracked and split with time, but remain for longer than our lifetime. They are the trains of princes and kings and queens, yet the least of our pets do their business on them: So simple in design, but displaying the most intricate of patterns in their ‘grainy’ texture. Both the state and the citizen own them, and neither can claim the whole of them. They are sidewalks, those cemented floors which lay between house and road; between where we are and where we wish to go. It is upon these urban paradoxes I find myself perplexedly musing, or rather, walking and bike riding on a daily basis. And the inhabitants of my neighborhood are most content with whatever their occupation is as they are scattered alongside it. They are watering their lawns, jogging by me, playing at the park that sits down from it and all other sorts of things. But I wonder if they look down at it and think to themselves, “where does this go and where does it come from?” For as much as we know about them, none of us can account for their geography, etymology or even eschatology. And while I suspect that the most imaginative of our children may fancy some pit of monsters or stormy abyss at the end of them and the beginning a place where rainbows shoot from, our own answers couldn’t be any better. After all, we take their existence for granted while investing so much time on and around them. And it’s not like we couldn’t do without out them. But, like Robert Frost’s explanation as to why settlers called maize corn, they ‘seem to comforts us.’ According to the children’s author Shel Silverstein, in his poem Where the Sidewalk Ends Silverstein gives a rather vivid account of this location. As such, it is where “the street begins,” where “the grass grows soft and white,” where “the sun burns crimson bright” and where “the moon-bird rests from his flight.” So, this could be any rural area where sidewalks merely do not reside. But this says nothing to where they end. Not to mention where they begin: For where they are and where they are not must meet somewhere in the intermediary cosmos of villa to village. Is it the yawning void of Nordic Mythology where Ymir the giant gave birth to the nine worlds? Is it that purgatory in Dante’s Inferno: Or some Stygian realm at the foot of Elysium? Now while this is all magnificently spectacular speculating, I think I know where all sidewalks come from and where they end up: Where we are all coming from and going to. They begin when we begin and end when we end. They are that part of us that we see so little of even when thinking deeply and analyzing our own self-identity. They are the first and last of our steps. Like Aristotle’s definition of time, they are the before and after, but not of motion but of motivation. They are that general and abstract expression of why we do the things we do. And perhaps this is why we overlook them so. For, like us, there is infinitely more to them than meets the eye.

The Tear Drop by Algernon Gedgrave
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"The Tear Drop" one of Amazon's HOT new releases in the genre of Fantasy. I can't guarantee you will be entertained by reading it as much as I CAN guarantee that a part of you will change after reading it.

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