Tuesday, July 10, 2012

It strikes me as addictive behavior, and I see it in myself.  Wake up.  First thing, check my iPhone.  Did I get any emails (that aren't junk)?  I get up, make my green tea.   My consciousness wanders, finds the blankness of morning and waking a little curious.  So what do you do?  You fire up the internet, you look at the headlines, you turn on the telly and see what the Weather Channel and its radar map has to say.  And of course, just doing so you've already caught, or been subjected to, a commercial, someone brightly telling you that now you can see that your (latch-key) children have arrived safely home through the monitor on your laptop screen from the remoteness of your office, "aren't you clever."

In contrast to just sitting down and facing your own thoughts, such as they have accumulated with you not being able to sit down and sort them out, which has made you cranky, wondering what you've done with life and your own intelligence.

What was I thinking, back before, as Dylan Thomas put it, 'the English and the motorcar,' back before being sucked in by all the hype that must inevitably come with viewing the sporting event, back before the inbox threw all it could at my consciousness just through its quick little suggestions about good wine values and super sales, and my own conscience worried about keeping up with powers of wealth trying to buy the Presidential election for the pro tax cuts for the rich and down with regulation Republicans (they have so much at stake as far as personal monetary concerns, of course they are trying to buy the election), what was I thinking?  What was my brain trying to fire as far as a clear idea or an understanding, something to hold on to, something I was trying to grasp?

Like observing the simple difference between the two sides of the current political battle boiling down to a basic difference of religion, of spiritual understanding, of a simple difference as far as how basic worldly reality is viewed.  One side, generally Republican, besides this hokum about 'job creators' and 'trickle down economics,' is simply about utter selfishness.  Opportunity, they might call it.  Smaller government, they might call it.  But what it means is pretty basic, a free run at what they want to do, at what they feel they have an innate right to, which can often equate to trampling on something, like cutting down a forest that took the Universe, oh, about four billion years to create in the space of an afternoon.  Of course, all of this is done, they claim, to fuel the economy and create jobs.  And I suppose they have a point.  The economy is their God.

On the other side, you tend to find a little more circumspection.  Like, hmm, maybe we shouldn't just chop that old growth forest that took four billion years to create all down, as maybe there is something in it that has a curious long term benefit for our general well being as designed by the great plan of nature like the little plankton in the sea that make oxygen doing what they do so that we can breath.  And people treated the same way, with some innate respect, not as numbers, stats, blank units to be outsourced.  In the religion of the Democrat, and we see this thoughtfulness and consideration for the greater reality quite well in President Obama, there is a greater picture to keep in mind, as if there were in fact meaning to existence, meaning to the Big Bang and the little tiny particle and all the atoms that were created, a whole periodic table, and then life emerging through little cells cooperating with each other with some inner ticking wisdom worth whispering about to children and people less jaded than our own world weary selves (education, basically.)

But, I am not a job creator as I sit here with my tea and my thoughts trying to hold off my own addictions to that which intrudes upon the great consciousness we share.  I am not a factor in the great Republican 'how are we going to charge people for something so that we can mark it up enough to make money' plans.  Indeed, I barely exist.  I bought a few bicycles over the years (which don't pollute and which are simple to fix), I bought a few guitars over the years, enough clothes, basically functional,  I suppose, a decent backpack to go hiking.  I work in a service sector job not far away from entry level. To the Republican, I know, I am a madman, a dropout, and even, I'm sure, a disappointment for not cultivating my talents through entering the marketplace (a chicken shit thing to do) and giving it a fair go.  Yup, that's me.  I'm sorry.

I look up the stars though.  I find a benefit in yoga and the exercise and healthy living that I can manage, as basic rank and file people have done for hundreds of thousands of years.  I leave things be.  I try to read a book, I guess, from time to time, like Journey of the Universe, by Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, though I'm unhappily not much of a scholar, not too big a book, but a book with ideas, that provokes good thinking, like thoughts about who we are, how we're all deeply connected and also vulnerable, and all that rot.

And tonight I will go in to work, the economy having made my choices for me, put on my clown suit theatricals and perform the wine tasting ritual, eventually succumbing to another kind of addictive behavior perhaps.  Hopefully, a Buddha wisdom will be there to guard me and all others against Mara and all the tempting devils.

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