569.

Principles

Living


Alone


Living alone

the silence
can become

deafening.

568.

Principles

Systems, patterns and understanding

Timetables

There is no time
to retool, revamp or redo.

Forward is the only way,
broken parts and all.

The final story
has to be written..

567.  Past

Principles

Law of  contradiction.

Acceptance and reconciliation

In life, as one lives over time, one sees a law of contradiction seeming to take place.  Simply put, one has to learn to live with contradictions often without resolution.  This operates on many levels.  Thesis, anti-thesis, both exist within the realm of possibility.  The maker, purity of intent, both exist alongside sensual needs and pleasures.  Good and bad exist within the same person.

When younger one looks for a system, a paradigm that will include all things.  This always fails because we have no way of seeing the whole picture. Ideologies, “isms,” fall into this category.  In physics you have the poles, plus and minus, combining to make the whole.

In the realm of ideas, existence, theories and the spirit, the only antidote to contradiction is acceptance and reconciliation.  You just have to encompass both under a big umbrella.

566.

Observations


No place


As you get older
there is less of a place
for you on earth

as you see the selfishness
and the arrogance
beneath most behavior

and you find it hard
to align yourself
with any of it.

565.

Observations

Blind

I'm like a blind man
unable to see

the  light from God
or the help from man

and my own antenna
can't fully be trusted

just like a blind man
unable to see.

564.

My family

Dad

Sledding

My sister emailed me and said she saw dad looking out the window in his new double room in the rehab center near Houston St.  She sent a pic probably taken soon after he was staring out the window.  She said she wondered what he was thinking. Later that evening I called and he answered and told me it was cold and snowing in New York. 

When dad was growing up in the Bronx, on one street for a couple of blocks it was deeply slanted and he and some friends had all sorts of fun sledding down it. As a city boy such experiences stand out.  I heard about that a few times along with the fact that he drew some ships, which I never knew.

Another time in the last few years or so he was passing by a father and son and he helped the father hold the boy on top of a snow mound and guide him down. The father and son were thrilled with the experience and my father's know how and assistance.  He told me this story not that long ago.  Sledding  in the city was his country experience.

When I grew up in the city I had a couple of sleds.  I recall the name American Flyer but mine was from an older and better company. I dragged it around for a time where I lived. There weren't many hills, and the snow was inconsistent, and there was always homework, but I had a few rides. I think the promise of what could be done  remained in my imagination  more than actually what was done.

That night, at the beginning of our talk, with dad in a rehab facility for a high blood rate, and with myself in Florida, dad said "it was snowing and he wished he could go sledding."  So that's what he was thinking.  I wanted to fly up and buy a sled and have one last ride with him.  One more piece of fun for dad in this life.  This broke me.

563.  Past

Principles

Wisdom

Wisdom

At first life seems to be a cause and effect relationship.  You're hungry, you eat.  You jump, you fall.  You push something, it moves. There is action, then reaction.  In nature the rules are severe.  If you get caught, you get eaten.  Miss the prey and you weaken.  People follow these rules.   Work, get paid.  Play ball, try to win.  Compete at a career, go to the top.  The action and the person are one, and the effort and person are one.  As long as this relationship maintains itself, there is no need for deviation.  The stronger or smarter or just more fortunate you are, the longer this can persist.

The problem arises when something goes wrong with cause and effect.  Small discrepancies start to creep in, disrupting the 1 to 1 relationship of this paradigm.  Larger errors enter and the relationship begins to be questioned.  Illness, corruption, the environment and chance whither it away.  The 2nd law of thermodynamics causes erosion.  At 50, one is left at some point questioning what went wrong.  This question leads to introspection, awareness, looking into how everything works, or doesn't, the why, even the reason.  As time goes on, sometimes things work and sometimes they don't.  One has to live with failure, partial or full.  And sometimes there is just plain defeat with no answers.  The cause and effect relationship, the action reaction relationship, makes no sense and one is bewildered.  One wonders, theorizes, proposes reasons why, with some truer than others.  And sometimes one is forced to just be patient and wait. All this is leading to wisdom, an awareness of what is; observations of what occurs and their interrelationships. All this is shared with others at different stages.  Again, this is wisdom.

Wisdom will not replace the force and control one had when the cause and effect relationship was intact.  That was when a person was more powerful although less aware.  Wisdom is a defense, an effort to explain why something doesn't work.  At first everything was in control.  Wisdom wasn’t needed. Then everything wasn't.  The latter is closer to the reality of existence and wisdom acknowledges this. 

562.   Past


Principles

Memory

Onetime moment    

While the sun sparkled
late in the afternoon
journeys to the past appear
images never to be again
just once in a lifetime
just once forever
of my mom
of my sister
each in a onetime moment.