"...my whole world is half-hearted..."
Lately, learning about physics and time and size I'm obsessed with the idea that we only have this tiny sliver of awareness. We see a tiny sliver of the light spectrum. We hear a tiny sliver of all the sounds. And our brains whittle down what little we do intake to less and less and less so it makes some kind of sense to us. And we only have a tiny sliver of the universe and only a tiny sliver of the earth and only a paper-thin whisper of the unrecorded amounts of time and even less of less and less and less.
Things aren't always good. Sometimes there's a little bit of kind of fucked up stuff going on and it's just natural to get kind of down about it. Sometimes, though, it starts to be like a greased pole you're trying to hold on to and it takes on its own momentum.
I don't want to overstate it. I am an unreliable narrator.
You've been warned.
It is the near-miss that makes life taste sweetest. Annie Dillard, strategic as she was, made that very clear.
But underlying that or overlying it maybe is the sickening feeling that everything, everything is built on a house of cards. One puff of breath and it all collapses. Pema Chodron says that we fear that feeling of groundlessness above all, and yet it is essential to our development and our happiness to come to terms with it. Not to asuage ourselves by letting the curtain to fall again and cover our eyes, but to see what is and to accept it.
We do live in a house of cards.
It is just a matter of time before someone jostles the table and we all fall down.
Death, death, death. Loss, loss, loss. Vanity and despair. Gnashing of teeth and ripping of clothe.
All I have to be grateful for, and still there is this. Bitter feeling and lost. Mad at everyone, myself especially. Self-pity. Self-loathing. Wrapped around my own axle. It is a shameful, pitiful thing.
But it persists.
I persist in it.
A copy of a copy of a copy.
At any rate. I am gnawing on the bone-end of my own dissatisfaction and like any dog I find it hard to quit the endeavor.
Things aren't always good. Sometimes there's a little bit of kind of fucked up stuff going on and it's just natural to get kind of down about it. Sometimes, though, it starts to be like a greased pole you're trying to hold on to and it takes on its own momentum.
I don't want to overstate it. I am an unreliable narrator.
You've been warned.
It is the near-miss that makes life taste sweetest. Annie Dillard, strategic as she was, made that very clear.
But underlying that or overlying it maybe is the sickening feeling that everything, everything is built on a house of cards. One puff of breath and it all collapses. Pema Chodron says that we fear that feeling of groundlessness above all, and yet it is essential to our development and our happiness to come to terms with it. Not to asuage ourselves by letting the curtain to fall again and cover our eyes, but to see what is and to accept it.
We do live in a house of cards.
It is just a matter of time before someone jostles the table and we all fall down.
Death, death, death. Loss, loss, loss. Vanity and despair. Gnashing of teeth and ripping of clothe.
All I have to be grateful for, and still there is this. Bitter feeling and lost. Mad at everyone, myself especially. Self-pity. Self-loathing. Wrapped around my own axle. It is a shameful, pitiful thing.
But it persists.
I persist in it.
A copy of a copy of a copy.
At any rate. I am gnawing on the bone-end of my own dissatisfaction and like any dog I find it hard to quit the endeavor.