Adam & Eve

And after all that, after such a week, even after three nights not having to work, and lots of sleep, and lots of nutritional intake, finally, at about 5 AM, on the eve going back to the bar in twelve hours to start all over again, I have some time to capture a few thoughts and dream-like profundities.  Poetic thoughts that make no sense in the lens of studied rational opinion.

I've edited a bit, flapped some paint on a canvas earlier, but there is stuff to do.  I dreamed of the woods I grew up by, upstream from the old house.  I remember the paths of deer up the sides of hills through brush.  I had other dreams I barely remember.  I began to slowly feel better, sometimes resting like a curled up infant, as if recalling the original sphere we come from, tiny legs curled up beneath us, hands near our mouths, thinking, listening, planning, absorbing the changes of growing, of suddenly being alive, having consciousness...

I've gone to bed after watching Ancient Aliens, letting the earliest of crafts sink in...  Cave paintings, the sacredness of geology, the earth's energy, the inherent ability of the human being.

Sex scandals...  imbalance of power.  Male and female are created equal, aboriginally, in the image of the creator.  Harassment speaks of abuse, of inequality, of power imposed upon those with less power, of the strong male over the weak female...  How did it all happen?  How did some achieve the power such that they could and would wield it over the less powerful?  What was introduced into human society that allowed for such things?  What happened that came on top of the traditional attribution of wisdom, skill, intelligence, respect for age, work, each to one's own ability that allowed the original fairness of society, such that there was fairness, no sexual harassment....

That Eve exercises free will, as much, or more so, than Adam, in her estimation of the tree in the garden and its fruit, gives us an interesting lesson of equality, often overlooked in the reading of the story as a tale of good and evil, temptation, odd behavior that leads to unhappy self-consciousness, sudden guilt...  The self-consciousness of sin is somehow tied to the equality of male and female aspects of the human being.  Does the shame come from Adam finding himself more important, more the subject of God's disapproval than his counterpart...

And what does one feel, naturally, with regard for the other sex?  Naturally?  Naturally, I would think, or at least entertain the thought thereof, that the main main main thing to strive for is that fundamental organic equality.  An emotional equality to the investment...  an equality of vulnerability, that beautiful quality of the human being that God gives to that original couple in the garden, who trade back and forth vulnerability and strength, confidence and doubt, calmness and guilt..  That is the male and female coupling, that interplay, that teasing, that back and forth, that exchange of happy things and sad things, the atomic coupling of positive and negative essential to the human reality.

And even then, even when you find that, even then, even with the achievement of that perfect balance, that which makes a deep smile come upon one's heart, even then, in this world, in this real world effected by so many things shoveled on top of the natural conditions of the aboriginal human being, male and female, things can go very badly, circumstances from the outside ripping through that garden.

And now, one really has to wonder, do the circumstances of this world allow for the equal couple to find a life together...

This time I write with, it's been hard to find, hard to support, not easy to find, not easy to pay for, not easy to have confidence in...  But on the other side of that equation, there is faith.  And faith is the center of the relationship, male and female  To express one's thoughts, one's desires, one's observations, one's recipes for happiness and fullness, that is what one is supposed to do in this world, whatever the reward might be directly....


"Everybody feels yucky this time of year," my mom says, as I call her, checking in, as we go through presents, travel, work, snow in the north, coordination the many elements of holiday complication.  And I feel it, the shortness of days, the cold spell that has made things a bit extra hard for those of us who do not have cars.  I feel it when the kid bugs me after I've busted my butt through four very hard shifts to pick up his Saturday night.  Got things to do.

A bug got into my old MacBook Pro, causing strange pop-up ads for antivirus protection, to make on-line shopping difficult.  I resorted to shopping online through my iPhone, and finally made enough headway to feel a bit of calm about such responsibilities.

I get a bike ride in, late, indoors.  The night before, I cook, slightly overcooked, a small rack of lamb. I go out to grocery shop, but get out too late for the little market, Glen's.  The day before, a flu shot.   Several of us are not putting up Christmas Trees in this year of Trump or whatever it is that is making misery.  I bring an order of Chinese back to the lair, a bottle of inexpensive Beaujolais.

Soon the truck will rumble westward over the hollows of the street below, and above, the planes will lift off, reverse 9/11 speed up into the sky, loud enough to disturb one falling off to sleep...

Bushcraft Build-Off eases the nerves...  The anxiety of scheduled time...

The difficulty of living, of housekeeping alone, of ease and eating, all that goes back to the original garden, along with that hanging of time, that fear of something other, so worthily expressed by primitive humanity by that garden myth...  The fear of being expelled by the higher power...  (That very lmyth that slowed up the works when I was trying to be a good college student...)  And still, like the babe in the womb, we are living in that original garden myth, and we too must resort to poetry, to the hymns that go in accordance with that myth...

All around the world we will always feel that, real estate versus or rather inclusive of, and a facilitation of, that original instinct to pitch a tent in which to put all our hunter gatherer stuff...

Who is guilty, who is innocent, in this original myth that is set down at the bedrock of the mythology of the aboriginal taken to the gift of written language...  What myth better addresses our everyday existence, our fear of having to leave what is home to go to work, to places fraught with conditions of unpredictability, such as allow for economic viability, the exchange of services...