 The E Train hums at 36 Hz while in motion. It idles in the station at 25 Hz. Wager I was the only one aware.
Times Square was beyond its usual throb under the added pressure of holiday shoppers stretching their necks to the resonant beat of what was Black Friday. Ugh. Warm out. 52 degrees at a ten past seven with rain at the nipple amid the hum of NYC. Marcus Aurelius wrote: "No random actions, none not based on underlying principles." A call to action? Or, a truth?
In order to get rid of the undesirable results of our actions, we have to take a good hard look at the kind of thinking that lead to the actions in the first place. What causes a person to fear or hate what is different or not understood. What dilludes a nation into believing it's ok to overcome another? What drives men to kill? Putting a band-aid on the cut doesn't work. Doesn't last. You've got to stop inflicting the wound. You've got to stop wanting to pull the trigger. Have never really known how to respond when someone asks me where I'm from. Steps me back. Usually just itch my head and say whatever town or state I happen to be living in at the time. Never gave it much thought. Always been that way. Didn't matter. Didn't care. Never stayed in one place long enough to feel like a native of a specific region, culture, or tribe.
People are people. There is good and bad, beauty and ugliness every where you go. When you identify yourself as being an american, spaniard, german, african, jew, christian, islamist, republican, or socialist etc., you draw a line of division. Trace anyone's roots back to the source and you'll find that we are, in the end and from the beginning, one people. About what happened in Paris, the Dalai Lama said: "We need a systematic approach to foster humanistic values, of oneness and harmony. If we start doing it now, there is hope that this century will be different from the previous one. It is in everybody's interest. So let us work for peace within our families and society, and not expect help from God, Buddha or the governments." Thoughts come and go. When I touch them I experience the feelings I associate with them. When I allow them to come and go without touching them, I remain unaffected by them. I possess sole ownership of the choice to touch or to just observe. This understanding has become essential to sanity.
Why is silence considered awkward in the midst of conversation? It is worth contemplating. Speak less. Listen more. Get comfortable floating.
 A lifetime of walking walls and chasing windows leads to an inexhaustible flow of big ideas. Habitual obsession on realizing these ideas becomes problematic after several decades especially when confronted by what must come naturally as one ages, the increasing weight of sloth and torpor, sloth and torpor. Sloth and torpor, as one hones his skill in napping and when the practice of which begins to increase in frequency.
All that I am certain of is that I am here and it is now. I am currently only human. The senses that I possess are limited. My eyes are unable to perceive the full spectrum of light and color vibrations. My ears cannot detect the full range of sound vibrations. All other sense abilities are likewise limited. What could all of these things be? How do they interact with and affect the limited perceptions I AM aware of? I can never, ever, ever, ever know. I can be certain of nothing. The mystery is bliss. The endless adventure feeds curiosity, which voids all potential boredom. And who wants to live forever, anyway?
"A man who discovers a truth has to smash to atoms almost everything he has learned, and arrive at the new truth with hands bloodstained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes."
- J. Ortega y Gassett |
from and for Michael Dickes
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