World Peace

I attended a guided meditation where the theme was World Peace, and it was a very pleasant experience, as these things are. Afterwards I told my older son about it, and I asked him "Do you think there could ever really be world peace?"

He shrugged. "Depends on if there's people in the world."

It's The Destination

It's the journey ... not the destination.

Not for me, it isn't. There are two main ways that I journey, airplane and car; I hate them both for the same as well as different reasons. I can never wait for the dreary journey to be over so that I can begin enjoying my beloved, beloved destination.

For a Reason

I read this clever spoof of a "positive-thinking" affirmation:

"Everything happens for a reason I make up."

I actually think this is true. I think a bunch of stuff just happens, and it is our ability to constellate and mythologize and read meanings into the endless jib-jab that's our saving grace.

Brains in Vats

What if we don't really exist? What if it turns out we're just brains in vats, imagining our lives?

It's a popular sci-fi premise. That one, and the one where brains-in-vats are betting quatloos on you.

But a brain in a vat still constitutes a form. What if we're just a thought, bereft of even brain and vat? Or what if our bodies themselves are just good-looking brain vats?

How To Be Perfect

When I started my first office job they put me to work typing up address labels, working from a long mailing list and using a typewriter. This was very tedious, and due to the hassle involved in retyping or correcting errors, I was somewhat cavalier in letting certain mistakes slide, arguing to myself that "it'll get there."

When the finished labels were proofread by my co-worker Joylyn she returned them to me with cheery approval. "You did a good job," she said. "But it has to be perfect."

She then duly pointed out every single one of my "it'll get there" labels, which I retyped, and from then on I did perfect work.

The Bride Unites Us

I witnessed a beautiful thing at the rehearsal dinner for my sister's wedding. The group was the usual mixture of figures from various eras in the lives of the bride and groom - folks from childhood, college, work - with many of us complete strangers to each other. At the very first "clink-clink-clink" of the glasses that called for the couple to kiss, my sister instead turned to her Maid of Honor, held out her arms, said "Dottie!" and gave her a kiss. She then moved to the Best Man, said "Tony!" and gave him a kiss. She proceeded around the entire room, calling every one of us by name, hugging us and giving us each a kiss in turn, until she completed the circuit and made it back to her groom.

It was so mesmerizing to watch her manner of taking a random assortment of people, and magically turning it into an us.

Heart of the Miracle

Time will disappear
Love and logic keep us clear
Reason is on our side, love. ---Bono

Many of the spiritual books will tell you that reason and logic must be overthrown to get to the heart of the miracle. But it's all about poise, not overthrow. Overthrow, and a vital part of you lives as an outcast.

Hylas & The Nymphs

"Water!" cried thirsty Argonauts,
So Hylas went to find it;
It's true his boss had killed his dad,
But no one seemed to mind it.

Duty was duty way back then,
It didn't pay to think;
If Hercules was thirsty,
Then you went and found a drink.

A band of nymphs was bathing there
When Hylas found the stream;
The sight of them touched sense of self
He'd only known in dream

What's more, the nymphs regarded him
With loving eyes so plain
Their conquest was assured
And he was never seen again.

Did Hylas meet his doom among
The nymphs, as many say?
Or would Hylas never venture out
No matter what you'd pay?

The Bottle Cap Hunters

Some years back the kids in my neighborhood formed a “community” with an economy based on bottle caps. Each kid adopted a “job” of their own choosing, and for a good while playing “community” was all the rage. At some point, though, the interest died out, and after some time had passed I asked my younger son what happened with the community.

My son explained that one of the neighbor girls had gone to visit her grandmother, and while there discovered a huge supply of bottle caps, and so returned to the community as a “rich” girl. At that point the entire focus of all the community members turned toward finding more bottle caps. My son said that interest in playing community began to wane, and eventually died out, as nobody was doing their selected job anymore, but instead everyone was giving all of their effort to “looking for bottle caps upon the ground!”

His very words.

The way that this neighborhood community played out struck me as a microcosm for the current state of the world. Instead of doing our jobs, many of us have become completely absorbed in looking for bottle caps upon the ground. Indeed, any time I see magazines with titles like MONEY or FORTUNE I read those titles as, in substance, BOTTLE CAP HUNTER.

Hope's Own Wreck

To hope, till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates....

I have always loved this line from the closing stanza of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, but when I shared it with my younger son he took quite a different view of it:

"Well yeah, in a way hope is really great. But in another way, hope is nothing! If I hope that I become a rock star, it won't ever happen. But if I expect the life of a rock star to come to me - then it will."

Prometheus Unbound concerns itself with overcoming disaster, and hope is a useful tool for overcoming disaster - but expectation is a means of averting it altogether.

Mr. Dirt

When I was growing up there was a rather colorful figure going about my town, a social outcast who wore a poncho and had a big beard, and who appeared to sleep in the woods. He was known locally as "Mr. Dirt," and now and then one of my friends would ask me "Have you ever seen that guy, Mr. Dirt?"

Mr. Dirt was my cousin Billy. He was born when my mother, the youngest in her family, was only nine years old.

It's quite a testament to the enduring love of a little girl for her baby nephew that, although somewhere along the line things obviously went wrong and Billy fell out of step with society, he was always welcome at my house. Many times I saw him sitting at the kitchen table, talking with my mother. Her manner toward him was one of unselfconscious and sincere respect. She never made any suggestion that he should shape up, get his act together, or change in any way. She hadn't lost sight of the beloved little boy he had been, and she totally accepted him now as the big-bearded poncho guy who slept in the woods.

Memorable Dreams

Two of my most unforgettable dream images are not even from my own dreams.

One is from a dream reported to me by my older son. Walking on water had become commonplace, and he was trying to get the hang of it and having some trouble with it. An encouraging friend assured him that if he just kept at it he'd have it soon. "But check this out!" the guy added - and he proceeded to DIVE right into the pavement!

The other one is from a friend who dreamed that, due to a change in gravitational pull, the moon had drawn much closer to the earth and now took up three-quarters of the sky. In the dream everybody was standing outside gazing at this phenomenon and thinking "This is how it's going to be now."

Just Facts

What is clean, sure, beautiful and true

Is you.


What is scared, mean, decrepit and distraught

Is not.

A Nancy Drew Life

I've just finished reading Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak, and I read it with the identical page-turning eagerness with which I read the original Nancy Drews. As the author of the book states, we don't really remember the plots and how they twist, but we certainly do remember Nancy. Nancy is free. She doesn't go to school, has no chores, doesn't work; she devotes all of her time and effort to the solving of mysteries. Having no other commitments, she's always available to make things right. And she does.

Now, it's a typical thing to stop as an adult and revisit the imaginary worlds one knew as a child, and to note with bitterness and disappointment the immense schism that exists between the world one expected and the world one got. How happy for me, then, that I actually DID grow up to be Nancy Drew!

Muse's Lament

In times of old there was no doubt
What versifying was about:
To hit perfection, or exceed it,
Write to Her, and know she'd read it.

That was when Love's faith was strong
To move the pen and raise the song;
Perhaps it took two thousand years,
But every love song reached her ears.

Then Freud and Darwin changed the tune
And holy Man was sick baboon
Bad enough, that they conceived it;
Catastrophic, folks believed it.

Since this grim neurosis started
Splendid She's been disregarded;
Endless volumes do appear,
But nothing that she'd want to hear.

What does it mean to lovely Muse
When all her powers have no use?
When modern works yield no enjoyment?
A century of unemployment.

The Truth About You

Rock star Bono gave me my Judgment Day. This would have been sometime in 1992 or 1993 - the date is not memorable because it took me years to understand that it had been my Judgment Day. A U2 disc was playing, and I heard Bono sing:

"Oh, but I know ... the truth ... about YOU!"

When I heard that I burst into tears of joy, stammering over and over again "You do? You do? Oh thank God! Thank God, thank God! You know the truth about me!"

It was awhile before I realized that, in the context of the song, he had likely meant "I know the truth about you" in some type of negative way, but by then it was of course too late - I'd heard what I heard.

Years later I perceived that Judgment Day is the moment you realize that the truth about you is known.

Splendid Secret

From prison, Oscar Wilde writes "I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops."

I have always yearned for the day when what I have done in the secret chamber is being cried aloud on the house-tops. Everything I did in the secret chamber was done with the expectation of a house-tops phase to follow. Not every secret is a guilty one. Not every private activity is private because it reeks of shame and immorality. Some secrets are splendid. Some hidden things are treasures.

Astrophil & Stella

When I read the sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney I understand that it is distance from the Lover that raises the love song. If he really had her in his arms he'd be writing sonnets all right, but nothing we could read.

But I also find it very sad that he didn't get the girl in the end, because he obviously wrote these sonnets to express his love and secure hers - and instead he got immortal fame.