1000 Words

[tiredofvampires]

Cap!! Long time no see, I'm glad you're back to catch up and reconnect! Thank you so much for your very encouraging and kind words, and for visiting my journal again. It's always so good to see you.

 

 

I love this video...it's not saying new things, and the exhortation could be considered cliched, but the way he's presented it, it's so impassioned, it's fresh to me. It's a poem. It certainly is the soil I grow on.

 

I especially love the part where he says that "the dream" had Martin Luther King.

 

There is so much more to say on this...but the older I get, the more I believe that there is nothing more paradoxical than the notion (and it seems on deep inspection, a fact) that we have both full agency over our lives...and none at all. Sometimes simultaneously!

 

Did any genius, any creative person, any mountain-mover or change-agent accomplish and leave behind what they did because of what they chose? Or because they fully cooperated with something that was flowing through them, that they accessed as human capacitors, and seized and harnessed in a fierce way? How much of that seizing was also part of their endowment, that they had it in them to do so?

 

It seems to me that to the extent we can focus on life as a gift -- something we were given, to care for and handle as such -- rather than a project that we drive and contrive (even though there are elements of both), we might be more in line to actualize our potential, in a seeming irony.

 

We can't lose the forest through the trees.

 

Some humbling questions and ideas to ponder and write about further.

 

 

 

[video=youtube;JZ2xhBQ8eGA] ]

[tiredofvampires]

This is one of those posts that spurs me on to the idea of a 100% health-related blog, in a continuation of the "Toxic Nation" theme, but for now, this is the arena for it.

 

This is for anyone, really. But especially those living in the U.S. I suspected this much all along, what with the gluten-free movement at a fever pitch.

 

 

 

Gotta love all that "the bottom line" does to our health.

[Silverbirch]

There have been issues in region where I live with not only Glycophosphate, but many other herbicides applied through aerial spraying in the forestry industries. It's weird how do few people know about it. I came across a group by chance called Hancock Watch. It's pretty scarey.

[tiredofvampires]

SB, that is very disturbing that they are using these agents in the forestry industries as well. I wonder why they feel they need these when it's not about food crops? The damage to these ecosystems is irreparable, and I'm really just gobsmacked that it's gotten this far and yet they keep going as though there will be no repercussions. Is your country also regularly using glycophosphate on commercial food and grain crops? I'm only aware of a small few European countries that have banned it.

 

 

On another note. I thought this week might be entertaining. Whew, did I overestimate my stomach. We're only one day in and I feel like I've been hit by a stomach bug.

 

Uneducated. Arrogant. Living in a bubble. Stupid. I mean, STUPID. It takes so much for me to use that word, but here, it's imperative. As in, either not many IQ points and brain convolutions, or large amounts of IQ points and a willingness to shoot them up with a noxious fear toxin to kill them.

 

Small-minded. Small-worlded. Puny-hearted. Stunted in soul. Short-sighted. Greedy. Self-righteous. Sentimentally obsequious. Easily led. Happily mislead. Gullible. Undiscerning. Uncritical. Trigger-happy. Ego-driven. False idol-worshipping. Sensationalist, tabloid-living, loving...sheep.

 

I hope you don't get what you deserve.

[Silverbirch]

TOV, it's a mess. Hancocks are an American company -(part of John Hancock Life Insurance). I haven't been following it for a few months. As far as I know or last I heard, Hancocks put up for the forests for sale. I know for certain that some of the herbicides were much more toxic and stay in the ground longer than glycophohaye. There has been a small band of "old hippies aka mostly professional middle-class people, protesting more than 30 years. Sounds like there have possibly been local govt handshakes or SOMETHING.

[Silverbirch]

It's SO weird that most people here don't even know there is a huge pine plantation up the road. I've only been here 2 years and I seemed to find out, partly by chance. At the same time, I found out some weird stuff about our eater supply - used to come from underground spring beside the pine plantation, but now comes from water supplier about 40kms away. Frankly, I don't want to be supplied with that spring water because of its proximity to Hancocks. I know a man who tried to get answers for years, but given up now.

[tiredofvampires]

Ugh, SB. UGH. It really sickens me. I haven't heard of the Hancocks' role in this, but it seems they have their international investments nailed down. I'm sure I'll hear about it just as soon as this conversation passes -- it always happens.

 

So where will you get your water now?

 

Not surprising the company is American. And that answers will continue to elude the askers.

 

Plants are sacred to me...they feel like my dear friends. I have some kind of deep reverence for their protection of us and this planet that feels personally violated by this, let alone the public health issues that are front and center of my cause, and are at stake here.

[tiredofvampires]

Adding UNSCRUPULOUS.

 

PAWNS.

[Silverbirch]

I will see if I can find a link TOV. From what I can make out, they own a huge amount of forests in Australia. There has been a wide range of implications for native flora and fauna. It's all tied in for profit-making for shareholders of John Hancock and subsidiary companies. Such a mess. To make things more complicated, the govt departments and structures at a national level which oversee forestry change every few years.

[Silverbirch]

So much information on this site TOV. when I tried to actually find out WHO Hancock WAtCh Are, that's quite impossible, but it looks to me as though insiders, likely scientists are involved.

 

 

[tiredofvampires]

Thank you for that link, SB, I will check it out.

 

There is so much work to be done, when I am having my darkest days, I tell myself...but there is so much work to be done.

 

And I DO have to tell myself that at times.

 

I have days where I think...I'm over this. I've done my bit. I'm tired. I'm just incredibly weary, these days -- my personal battles have used up what's left for what's out there.

 

And then I think...you don't have enough years if you had 8 more lifetimes to do what is needed, what you COULD do, what you have the appetite for.

 

So, not retiring in this lifetime.

[Silverbirch]

Oh snd TOV, I think something which is politically relevant in the entire region I live in as well as many others is that THE Green Party and activists are not generally popular because of their possible influence on agriculture. This has actually happened with cattle-grazing no longer permitted in a region now designated as national park.

[tiredofvampires]

The beauty of it is, SB, that in the end, it's not and won't be about politics.

 

In the end, the Earth is going to have the final say. It's not going to be about who's winning, who's in which party, who is more concerned about business and investment, and the human drama that unfolds with that tug-of-war. This is a different world than the one I grew up in as a child, where people registering an outcry were little more than a marginalized vestige of the Flower Power movement.

 

Today, it's about the imperative of science, as it becomes critical. It can't be waved away anymore as a personality type. It's about what we find in our food supply and then bodies, and the inevitabilities of what will happen, and soon -- to EVERYONE, without exception.

 

So in the end, these shenanigans will end. They will have to. This is not a matter of "agree to disagree" or opinion differences.

 

In the end, everyone is going to have to listen to, and answer to, the same mistress.

[Silverbirch]

Thank you for that link, SB, I will check it out.

 

There is so much work to be done, when I am having my darkest days, I tell myself...but there is so much work to be done.

 

And I DO have to tell myself that at times.

 

I have days where I think...I'm over this. I've done my bit. I'm tired. I'm just incredibly weary, these days -- my personal battles have used up what's left for what's out there.

 

And then I think...you don't have enough years if you had 8 more lifetimes to do what is needed, what you COULD do, what you have the appetite for.

 

So, not retiring in this lifetime.

 

I know how you feel, but you are much braver than I am. I'm tired and my energies are focused a deal on survival right now. Your recent entries reminded me of a book I have only read excerpts of - I am not sure if i could cope with the entire book - at least not all at once. He was a brilliant thinker and writer - Henry Miller "Black Spring" (1936). If you scroll down this link,you will see how much of what he wrote back then still holds true. It's not just about environmentalism and our food supply, but about humanity.

 

/

[itsallgrand]

I'm glad you aren't retiring. I need you to help keep me sane. 😉 I need people like you to give me hope.

 

I was at my first Sundance yesterday. I'm still processing it. By invite only, take this road, it's hidden away in the bush. You aren't allowed to bring cameras or phones. There are certain protocol. It was interesting and I learned a lot. I'm not going to give an analysis of it but it did have a certain impact on me. It felt good. It felt normal.

 

Driving back home, I passed the usual construction and clearing of entire areas, the whole earth churned up and river stopped up , for new condos and bypasses and 'planned communities'( an investor maximizing profits with shoddy houses jammed right up to each other, selling at what most here could never afford). I got so angry.

 

We see these things every day. Who's crazy? Is it crazy to feel it? A lot of people will try and frame it that way. People adapt to anything. People can justify anything.

 

Those crops? I've heard plenty about how it's the only way to feed the world now. I live in farm country. It doesn't occur to them there might be a solution different to continuing the same way. To question why and if it's a good idea to do this- that's crazy, Not feasible.

But continuing this population growth and rape of the world- feasible?! Ok then.

[tiredofvampires]

I'm glad you aren't retiring. I need you to help keep me sane. 😉 I need people like you to give me hope.

 

Terribly belatedly, IAG...this touched me so much. Shored something up. Thank you.

 

But you will always be one of the sanest souls I know. And the deepest well of hope that draws from itself.

 

I was at my first Sundance yesterday. I'm still processing it. By invite only, take this road, it's hidden away in the bush. You aren't allowed to bring cameras or phones. There are certain protocol. It was interesting and I learned a lot. I'm not going to give an analysis of it but it did have a certain impact on me. It felt good. It felt normal.

 

I do hope to experience one someday myself. I almost feel as though I would belong, in some way.

 

Especially now, with the Sioux Nation's protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, my heart feels strongly aligned with these people, and their stand for what's left of this earth.

 

Driving back home, I passed the usual construction and clearing of entire areas, the whole earth churned up and river stopped up , for new condos and bypasses and 'planned communities'( an investor maximizing profits with shoddy houses jammed right up to each other, selling at what most here could never afford). I got so angry.

 

We see these things every day. Who's crazy? Is it crazy to feel it? A lot of people will try and frame it that way. People adapt to anything. People can justify anything.

 

Those crops? I've heard plenty about how it's the only way to feed the world now. I live in farm country. It doesn't occur to them there might be a solution different to continuing the same way. To question why and if it's a good idea to do this- that's crazy, Not feasible.

But continuing this population growth and rape of the world- feasible?! Ok then.

 

Yes...yes, it's all so upside-down isn't it?

 

We don't have "answers" because the forces in power don't want us to have them. I'll tell you what's crazy -- it's crazy that we are careening headlong into disaster, and they are as oblivious as toddlers running out into the road without looking both ways. This is not a hippie, "tree-huggy" call anymore. Those days of fair warning started by marginalized, fringe visionaries are long over. That luxury to scoff is gone. If the news broke that an asteroid was right on target to hit us in 20 years, one big enough to destroy the planet completely and all that lives here, and we were at the last few seconds to think of a way to avert it, how would people be responding?

 

But it's not an asteroid -- something of Hollywood appeal and sensationalism. It's "just" an implosion, coming from within. Mercifully, it has given us the very time we have squandered to right things, invisibly giving us a chance that we've lost...and that passes right through the brain. It's not real to those people, precisely because it's given us such a long fuse. It's AWEFUL. And, ha, those who wave their cherished books the highest in the air, the books that talk about the end times, are the first ones to want to continue to populate, deregulate, and basically, ransack the world. Dominion! It's a footnote to them, this collision course.

 

We truly have to be swallowed up, ALL of us, before they will concede it's time to start screaming, too.

 

At my angriest, I take a perverse solace in knowing their day IS coming, just as surely as everyone else's.

[tiredofvampires]

It's been a long time....but the muse has opened its eyes.

 

 

 

There is a thick, sticky fog

today

a tar in the air

a gum in the bones

The rumble of a tsunami unborn

not set into motion yet, pure force

unawakened

by the coming quake

 

Trembling in the pause

of an uncertain hurricane

 

This heartmachine

has recycled blood

again and again,

a conversion plant for stains.

Old blood composted, this is

what it does.

Ticking, ticking with corpuscles

Congested and choked,

then cleansed to sterile white

Do not make me

birth new blood,

bust the clots with your solvent --

Do not make me yearn again

Leave my arteries be,

keep your distance from the matches

I've learned the way

of shooting arrows

with arrows

I've taken them all out of

my skies as an art

laser-striking upwards to them,

drone-striking downwards upon them,

hailing at them in all directions,

blinding them squarely,

at perfectly level eye-to-eye,

bursting them to nothing!

my arrows carry the fuel of

all determination

 

My skies do not refract light --

they glitter with the crystal ray

of emptiness.

Do not fill my vessels with

motion

do not,

do not

revive my tastebuds

 

Do not make me want

to taste again

I do not want to be able

to sense again,

sweat that is not mine, on my lips

hair that is not mine, that scent

where I would press my face

I am fixed,

while the world pirouettes

in the umbra of my locked voice

Do not bring me

to singing again,

sighing against that

place you would let me lie

These eyes see without blinking

So do not bring back

my tears

Do not make my skin

rise to the occasion of the gaze you might

cast upon me,

my field of feathers standing on end,

ready to fly into your

touch

 

My palms are my own and free at last

Do not fill them with yours

Do not break the membrane between me

and this impossible want

Do not fill my breath

with your soul

Leaving me to

Feel all over again.

[tiredofvampires]

[video=youtube;z0PvZGVPiJU] ]

 

 

 

I'm such a fool.

[tiredofvampires]

I saw this today. Nothing speaks to me more than this.

 

As Maimonides wrote in his Physician’s Oath and Prayer: “Preserve the strength of my body and of my soul that they ever be ready to cheerfully help and support rich and poor, good and bad, enemy as well as friend. In the sufferer let me see only the human being” (12th Century)

[itsallgrand]

That was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten. Thank you, TOV.

 

The bf and I are going for a day or two to the protest. I can offer some food on your behalf of you like?!

[tiredofvampires]

That was one of the best compliments I've ever gotten. Thank you, TOV.

 

The bf and I are going for a day or two to the protest. I can offer some food on your behalf of you like?!

 

Oh no, I just saw this today!

 

When are you going, or did you go already? I would love for you to offer anything on my behalf, IAG, as I am there with you in spirit! I hope I haven't caught you too late!

 

Thank you so much for thinking of it, and me!

 

Does your boyfriend have Native American blood?

[itsallgrand]

We go tomorrow. Got post poned due to my having a bout of food poisoning. But I'm almost back to myself now! 😀

 

Should be really interesting.

 

And yes, he does.

[tiredofvampires]

Uch! I'm sorry you had food poisoning, that's nasty...but glad that you're rebounding and might make an offering on my behalf (and again, thank you for that!) I feel so far away from action I feel so much solidarity with.

 

I'd love to hear anything you wish to share...

 

I hope it will be an inspiring experience for you.

[tiredofvampires]

It feels like it's been a really long time. A REALLY long time.

 

So much has happened since I last scribbled about the turnings of my life. And so much turning has happened, that I'm not quite sure how to begin. Or rather, continue.

 

Perhaps I'll begin by saying that I feel compelled, as it's New Year's, to register something. This is always such a time of reflection for me. It's both a celebration and a parting; at once a bittersweet farewell and a deep breath taken in both anticipation and apprehension about what will be etched on the blank slate, what colors will dapple the canvas in the minutes, hours, days, and months ahead. There is relief in letting go what is past and behind me...and yet a feeling of trepidation, and the sense that there must be somewhere this ending is already known, but I'm just the poor fool opening the door. Haha...suddenly, Shrodinger's Cat comes to mind.

 

It's almost impossible to think of the beginning without thinking of another ending, isn't it?

 

Such is the impermanence of life, which seems to be a shadowy companion that follows me around everywhere, whom I'm keenly aware of at every turn. In the Buddhist teachings, they say that "The Marks of Existence" -- which is to say, the primary and axiomatic descriptors of reality -- are that we experience impermanence in all things; that there is no concrete "self" and so we (and all things) are void of some unifying, cohesive identity; and that we experience "unsatisfactoriness" (usually translated as "suffering", though that can be interpreted in many ways and be quite subtle). And I have also heard it said that we each may have a tendency to pivot more towards one of these than the others...kind of as a recurring theme, in our lives. I can't really say that I haven't done hard time with all of them...but impermanence, that seems to be arising with a stronger beat all the time.

 

I get that when I travel, a lot. A sense of impermanence. And since I just recently got back from a fairly long stint (2 months) of being away from home, with all my stops and mini sojourns feeling like so many chapters of a book...every time I was preparing to leave a place, or on the plane leaving it, I was piercingly aware of how fleeting these moments all were. It's not a feeling I'd say I like, even though I feel that this awareness takes me out of a reactive and fretful mind. I don't know, maybe it's a way of coping...it's a meditation, but it's also a remoteness that my mind naturally has taken to, perhaps in an effort to divest myself of a sense of dire urgency about everything. Which is a place I alternately swing to.

 

There are many things on my horizon that feel dire, now. And urgent. And no, it's not just me catastrophizing, it's me looking unblinkingly at the realities before me. And feeling very trapped on many levels by finity. The finity of my options, the finity of my physical body, the finity of all those around me and everything in the brass tacks of my situation.

 

FINITY. I just feel on some level that I'm fighting this on some grand scale. And I guess that comes down to mortality, ultimately.

 

From a purely practical standpoint, even though I have had my brushes with survival and harrowing phases over the last 7-8 years, nothing quite rivals what I feel is happening and about to happen, in terms of seeing the world I know, and have relied on, dissolve before my eyes, and along with it, any semblance of security and ground under my feet.

 

I was in the best place...well, one of the best places in the world...when this dark spiral was precipitated. The night of November 8, 2016 is going to be one of those nights I'll look back on and remember exactly how I felt and where I was in time and space.

 

I was at a BnB in a West Coast city I had dreamed of seeing, and it was just as magical as I'd hoped. I was actually supposed to be out that night, because a man who I'd connected with from a dating site months before and I were out on the second of two meetings I had with him. He was the gentlest soul...a soft-spoken, gentlemanly, clearly fiercely socially engaged Native American man, with whom I'd felt a strong rapport with after the first encounter we had. On this "date", he told me he wanted to take me out of the city and to the lookouts where I could see rivers and great waterfalls. After that, we had a full agenda planned for the evening -- him showing me around the "artsy" part of the city and us catching a movie that was out. I don't recall the title. He had texted me 2 nights before (post our first meeting), saying that he wanted to see as much of me as possible, and was savoring the ginger ale drink I'd convinced him to buy, promising that he would find it superior to any he'd ever had to that point. His message was full of warmth and excitement about our next get-together.

 

In the intervening day, I met with another prospective "suitor" (how odd this all sounds, as if something out of the 19th century), and we had a pretty unconventionally fun and interesting time together, but that is another whole story.

 

So on Tuesday, November 8, I was on the road with this man who seemed to want to show me everything I wanted in just a few short days, but out of the blue, as we were leaving one of the grand waterfall lookouts, he told me abruptly that he had to cut things short because he was feeling ill to his stomach. I was aware that just before I'd gotten there, he had had some some sort of...bug...or maldigestion problem, caused by I have no idea what, as he wasn't specific. At our first meal together, a Lebanese lunch, he ordered less than he usually does, he said. So I knew that he was recovering from something requiring a tea-and-crackers diet, but he seemed to be really refreshed throughout that day as it wore on. And then saying he wanted to see "as much of me as possible" lead me to believe he was out of the woods with the tummy issues. Now, though, he said that the strong black coffee and perhaps the gale we'd braved up there had stirred up his insides again in a really bad way, and that he just needed to go home and lie down.

 

I admit I was dispirited about this, because I didn't want to idle through most of the rest of the evening, with no plans, and I was also sorry to see him feeling ill again. But at least, I thought, I'll have a good huddle up with some pizza leftovers and get online to watch the election unfold, going to sleep knowing that a flaming meteor headed toward the White House had been knocked out of its trajectory and we could all go on with life and give thanks.

 

Not to be had.

 

I won't go into the details here, except to say that as the evening wore on, and I felt more and more wretched, anything to eat started to feel more and more unthinkable.

 

So that was the official domino, I'd say, and from there, it seems that everything has been conspiring with this event, adding more layers.

 

As I wrote in a friend's journal here: I feel strangely that all that's been familiar to me is fading. And that in some ways, I'm just watching it go. It's a sad feeling.

 

This is what I mean by not knowing how to even begin fleshing in these details, but as I review what all this means for my life, and the chances I have to somehow clutch at hopes and dreams...I've been feeling like someone being marched to the gallows. A lot is either coming apart or remaking itself. It's seismic, cataclysmic, whatever it's going to be. Not just for my small world of personal hurdles and relationships, but for the terrain that I inhabit as a person in this country, a vulnerable droplet of consciousness on this planet.

 

I feel an almost child-like sense of needing for someone to tell me it's going to all be okay. I need to run to someone's bed and for them to say, "It was just a bad dream, sweetie. You had a bad dream, is all." And then I'd replay it a few times and it would get more and more faint, until I was convinced that I was back inside me. You know, that me that is okay? And that is here and alive and well, and will wake up tomorrow to laugh at some things and hear some music or see some lady dressed funny, and it'll all be just regular life as I know it, you know, how it has a way of just continuing on and being there...and that bad dream, wow, that was a bad dream. But that was last night and it's all getting quite obscure, with the comforting light of the day. Thank god it was just a dream.

 

But I've been waking up out of sleep these days shaking, heart pounding in my throat, knowing that the dreams I've just had portend to things I'm actually facing that won't be wiped away after I get up out of bed. This election, and the next events in my life that await me, both directly and indirectly related to it, are not imagined shifts that will dramatically impact my life. They're real.

 

I've been waking up with the strange feeling -- the very disconcerting, scary feeling -- that I've completed my final dream, and that my whole life is over. I'm just taking a final lucid inventory of how it all went down. Of course, this is the dreamtime playing tricks on me, just as when I was a child having a nightmare. Except that impermanence and mortality stalking me are not nightmares. They are among the Three Marks of Existence. So I am waking up to vivid truths, as they shake me awake. I can't remember the last good dream I had.

 

I know I've left a lot of flesh off these bones. But it's sort of the state of things.

 

But bless the heart and soul of comedians, you know? Despite all this, I went last night to see Bill Maher perform live in our city, which was his 6th annual New Year's Eve show here. I got there ridiculously early, on the advice of the friend that gifted me my ticket as a Christmas present, though it wasn't bad to wait an hour at all. I get a load of the people-watching there. I like to watch couples go by, especially...the slinky-legged, champagne-carrying girlie-girls tottering on their stilettos, hanging on the arms of astonishingly plain/bald/short/fat dudes in dress shoes ...right next to the understatedly dashing, distinguished-boned men in Bernie t-shirts and worn jeans, arm-in-arm with the homeliest of women in tennis shoes and unfeminine, style-discordant haircuts to match. I feel almost as though my singleness makes me this invisible fly, all the better to hold up the foyer wall.

 

God bless Bill Maher, though, he gets a lot of love from us folks, so I suppose this is the perfect holiday wrap-up gig for him. We're special, ha! I love hearing him announce it as early as July on Real Time. Well, he's something of a life raft for me, with his swagger and his way of splitting my sides. And he really carries himself so well onstage -- we always get a few heckles, and he dances with them seamlessly. He came out onstage with the most casual of attire, not slickly coiffed as he is on HBO, and just felt like he was bantering one-on-one with the audience. He opened the show saying, "Well, I love seeing you all, and I love coming here, but sadly this is my last show, because this is our last year EXISTING! Seize the day, right?" Hahaha, good ol' Bill. He was on fire. And he was indeed hot, ha. One of the few people in the world I give a pass to smoke as much weed as he does.

 

So yes. New Year's Eve. It was full of laughter, the only antidote to every single ill, even the most grotesque ones. There is no sickness of mind, body, or spirit that humor can't effectively medicate.

 

And I did come home feeling...different. I watched the fireworks lighting up the sky outside my window, and ate slowly. I thought to myself, when you don't have much to lose, that's freedom, right? That's what Joplin said. It's going to be an adventure...so why not think of it that way? Going out into the wilderness of 2017, I'm packing my wits and my vision, and a few remaining belongings, but beyond that, I know that it's going to be minimalistic, what I have to work with. I'll have to make fires with sticks, and find ways of cheating fate along the way.

 

Oh, that date...my date, with the stomach ache. I texted him the next day, saying if he felt better, I still had two more days, and to let me know how he was feeling, if he was up for anything. He answered that he was hunkered down in the covers, with tea and crackers again. On the last day, I texted one last pitch, "I hope you're feeling better...I had a wonderful time meeting you, and feel a connection...so if you're inclined, I hope we'll continue to get to know each other when I get home." That was the last communication. I never heard back from him, even after I sent out an email saying I was sending my prayers about Standing Rock. This is someone who had been solicitous, gracious, and almost reverent in small ways from the word go.

 

It's just amazing how you have "something" and then you don't. You are looking back and going, did I dream that? That's what I mean by the vagaries. Like, the line between dreamworlds and reality are being smudged. Everything's just been feeling like that.

 

And it's like God announced that the bar is closing, and even those who stayed on and stayed on to this late hour are taking their things and shuffling out. Everybody leaves eventually.

 

I'm just looking for one thing that might not slip from my fingers. This sense of transitoriness is heavy upon me.

[tiredofvampires]

So, I keep coming back to this guy, and his incredible wisdom, which I discovered in my 20's.

 

If I had to name one public speaker I'd like to be like, it would be him. He's the consummate scientist, but also weaves poetry and such deep feeling, with such eloquence, into his talks -- the trifecta combination for me.

 

I was very, VERY lucky to "discover" his work in my mid-20's, and his seminal book "Full Catastrophe Living" -- a title which just jumped out at me and plucked me from the jaws of my own mind, at that time. Without a hint of preaching, it's clear that his contributions are too many to list, as a change-maker in this world. The guy who introduces him in this video says a lot...but it's all worth hearing.

 

This -- and he -- started me on a whole life journey, with many great teachers. Which as he points out is not something you embark on and then shake off lightly. "It's a tricky business." Sort of a path of no return, as it has been for me.

 

And no matter how many times I've seen this video, I keep coming back to it as the bedrock. There isn't a video of him not worth watching...but this is sort of the groundwork of it all.

 

It's clear from his comment near the beginning about his flip phone that this is slightly dated...but it's still recent enough to feel incredibly fresh. And he also misattributes one of my favorite quotes, "The unexamined life is not worth living" to Aristotle, when it was Socrates. But no biggie, when the rest is something unparalleled, to me.

 

There is no better way to start the New Year than to come back to this. It's timeless and universal. No one deserves a seat at the head of my table, or in my journal, quite like he does.

 

 

 

[video=youtube;qvXFxi2ZXT0] ]