Existential Ennui

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I Think Therefore I Suffer

26 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by Sherry in Humor, Life in the Foothills

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

crap I didn't learn, crap I learned, life in the foothills, lifestyle, musings

devolutionI find the human condition dizzyingly complex. I’m not sure we’ll ever get it sorted out. I’m reasonable sure that you have to be slightly off (if you get my drift) to study the human mind, and I’m very sure that prolonged study causes intense breaks with reality meaning that research results become suspect the minute they are conceived.

I mean, I am one of your more ordinary types of “scheduled” persons. I do a whole host of things as part of a routine that can become quite rigid. I walk the dog at 6 a.m. If the weather does not cooperate, but it’s sunny and lovely at 9 a.m., well too bad dog, that window has closed until tomorrow.

If you have ever read a story whose main character is one of those routinized humans who eats the same lunch for twenty-five years while sitting on the same park bench across the street from their work location which is a tiny cubicle in a corner from which said subject does some routine mundane same-old-same-old day in and day out for forty-three glorious years returning home at precisely 5:47 p.m. to one of five carefully arranged TV dinners and then two hours of knitting before climbing into bed at the stroke of 10 p.m. to awaken precisely at 6 a.m. to do it all over again, and equate me as one of those persons, well, you would be mistaken.

You would be deeply mistaken.

I revel in setting up systems of order, but true order is nothing but neurotic obsession. I like knowing that there is a time for every purpose under heaven, but find it serves me best by allowing me to ignore the chores I wish to ignore if fate delivers me some altered time line. You see, I use order for the gifts of avoidance as much a for the gift of organization.

I never met a routine that couldn’t be tweeked.

I never met one that didn’t need major revisions at least twice a year.

Because my desire for orderly organization runs smack into my desire for something new.

It is why I struggle to have “a” hobby, rather than eight or so.

It is why I struggle to add yet another great recipe rather the fine grouping that I already have of tested and true.

It is why I sit puzzling for sometimes day as to “what to read next” because there is so much to choose from.

It is why new thoughts intrigue me rather than bore or frustrate me. Dazzle me with your ideas for my brain loves the challenge.

Why am I not satisfied with a job well done, repetitively? Why am I on this unrelenting quest to master yet another THING?

Who knows.

It may be part of what makes us human, or at least most of us? More than some of us at least, for I live by the theory that I am only original in my sum rather than my parts.

We are driven to conquer new things, we humans. It is what has taken us to the moon, Mars and beyond, which powers us to the Mariana Trench and to the North Pole. From this thing inside, we decided we should be able to fly like birds, and go faster than horses at a full gallop. It propels us ever onward, never satisfied with what is but rather focused on what might be.

I am not Einstein, nor Picasso; no Sophocles am I, no Hypatia, Gertrude Stein, or Curie. The drive to do something new is not limited to only the brightest and most noteworthy inventor or sophist  but resides somewhere beside that reptilian remnant in each braincase.

There is percolates a constant insistent demand or remains dormant throughout most of its life, or somewhere in between. What awakens it, or dampens it, whatever the case may be, is unknown to me for sure. It just surely is in me a sometimes annoying nagging that never ceases.

So I go along in my routines sometimes happily for weeks, until it’s just not enough, and I scrounge around seeking some new challenge. To read the book I’ve long avoided because it was too hard, to attempt a new hobby or take an old one up a notch. To master something new, to add to my resumé offered with the last breath to the only possibly interested entity who common sense (let alone great theologically pondering) tells me has no such interest.

Yet I am so compelled as are countless others, to do SOMETHING, to create, categorize, expand the realm of knowledge, point out the failings of planetary systems be they political or religious. We are all compelled to DO, for no very good reason at all. After all, I am by thinking said Réne. What more needs be said or done?

This is not something morose and melancholy. Whatever you believe about God and death, it accommodates all. What is is, what will be will be, and not much I do changes any of that. But still I do.  Do that is. And with a happy and challenged heart for the doing excites and exhilarates, giving satisfaction beyond the completion of the thing itself.

I should much like to ask a chimpanzee if they experience this sort of thing at all. Is it better not to? I sense not, but I know not either. Perhaps there is a peacefulness that comes from life being sorted out ahead of you and only to be followed with death’s appearance earlier if you slip off the path into the gaping jaws of someone higher up the food chain.

Anyway, I’m busily re-organizing and it’s all so exciting and thrilling to have new challenges. For me it’s biking instead of walking and cooking in a new way driven by a body who has said “enough of that” now nourish me properly. It fills the days with a new expectation, new roads to travel, new discoveries.

The Contrarian views this all from his perch. His “drive” is significantly subdued. He chuckles a lot at my fever pitch, supportive but in his own comical way. He loves this new biking craze I’m starting. “Oh, my, but ANOTHER thing you will grow to hate to do every day!” But as he says, you may hate it but you can be damned determined to do it anyhow.

I am a closet full of discarded crafts away from being the most productive person I know.

So how weird am I?

Really, you can tell me.

heroic_death_dog_mug

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The Truth Is. . . .

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by Sherry in Crap I Didn't Learn, Crap I Learned, Inspirational, Life in the Foothills, New Mexico

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

being, Enlightenment, life, musings, non-duality

the-truth-is-revealed-when-we-allowI can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to know.

As a kid I remember trying to figure out how Santa could visit every house in our subdivision let alone the city, state, country, WORLD.

I puzzled over a child’s book about the moon and various theories about how we got it. My favorite was the one where it was like a giant pimple that got bigger and puffier, and then like taffy stretched until it tore loose.

On and on it went. The search for what was true.

I figure that search if taken seriously (most don’t of course, and live out their lives in normal day-to-day fluff until one day they cease breathing), it leads to one of two outcomes.

If it’s undertaken in some desperation and fear of annihilation, then I figure it leads to fundamentalism. Such folk breathe a sigh of relief, life is survivable!, and close up shop and live out the remaining time in normal day-to-day fluff until one day they cease breathing. Since the journey was taken in desperation, the conclusion that “I am saved, no more need be said or thought” becomes the black box of all black boxes, survivable by the onslaught of all  FACTS to the contrary. It thus becomes not a search for truth, but an easy fix to my anxiety issues.

The other outcome is never really an outcome at all for most, but entails a life spent in searching. Unwilling to accept the first “pretty” truth offered and thereafter to sit with the

See-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evilfundamentalist mentality, we accept what appears true, only to discard it as we learn more and realize that truth is but an appearance, and the search proceeds.

Ultimately we end up with a lot of possibilities but few sureties.

We leave a trail of discarded theories and books behind, encompassing the fields of philosophy, theology, particle physics, neuroscience,  and cosmological models. (Am I the only one who bemoaned the loss of a pet theory such as the “steady-state universe as the damnable “facts” insisted I must?)

We read about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Confucius, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zen, New Age, Old Age, Wiccan, and every conceivable “science” of the mind.

And it all comes down to partial answers and belief.

Every so-called guru has his/her answer, but as Jed McKenna asks, where do they roll out their “graduates”, i.e. fully enlightened beings, meaning people who KNOW?  Every teacher has those who claim he/she has “changed their lives forever” and an equal number who cry charlatan. And they are probably both right.

 

I’m told to seek what is true. What is unalterably, perfectly, demonstrably true. And I am asked to ask again and again, “who am I?” Those operating in delusional dreams will answer, wife, mother, seamstress, student and other rot. Those semi-conscious, like myself, will respond smartly with a great deal of egotistical holier-than-thou-ism, “a spiritual being having a human experience”. We are both equally wrong I suspect, or both right. I doesn’t matter.

We have no proof we are either. We only think. René’s famous quote “I think, therefore I am” or  cogito ergo sum to those who want to appear smarter than the average dog, is trite, and quite possibly wrong. For we must recall the Matrix and it’s consciousness in the circuit board which is merely an update on Plato’s cave.

We are left in the end, as I see it at least with nothing more than the statement that “a mind exists”. It may be mine, but that is just the beginning. There may be others, and perhaps one great one, or we may be all parts of one great one, or we may only be a created computer “mind” inhabiting a stage, playing out scripts or doing inprov at the behest of “a” mind.

I can only operate from this mind that I appear to have. The rest is all supposition and appearances.

That may be the only truth, this thinking thing,  and I might well be wrong in that too.

If you have ever had the experience of sitting in a group of people at any social occasion or otherwise, and felt suddenly “pulled back” and aloof from all going on around you, observing even yourself from a “corner” of the room, then you know what  I mean here. Is this reality or have we slipped in these moments into an open doorway we mostly fail to see? Do we glimpse the Matrix as it were, in such moments?

Are we like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, or like Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day? How can we tell?

We are told we must wake up! And we do this by asking questions and being relentless in stripping away the rot and retaining only the kernel of truth at the center.

Is there a center? Is there anything beyond the peelings?

I can reach the point that tells me that I am not what others think I am, nor even what I think I am. I am the product of what others have thought of what I have said, thought, and done, and how I have responded and molded myself to that. Where did I conform, retreat, stand my ground, or ignore what others said? How strong was my “self” or non-self as the truth seekers would say? When I peel away the layers of this false me is there a me at all in the end?

Does it matter?

Is it better to live in the illusion rather than be no-self?

It’s all about fuzzy concepts of non-duality in which mind and the universe are seen as the same. It’s a thoroughly Asian concept prominent in most Eastern religions, but finding purchase in the West among neo-Platonists. Mostly the West interprets it as a mind/body oneness.

Somehow this is seen as preferable, this non-dualism, but why that is so is not yet apparent to me. It’s also considered de rigueur to claim that the universe is a friendly place ready to do our bidding. Again, I’m not sure why.

truthSo, if you see me, and I seem to be gazing into the sky, and I seem to be standing there, doing nothing, well I’m not. Doing nothing that is. I’m thinking. That’s the only thing I know to do.

If I come up with something I’ll be sure to let you know. But I’ve been told that we each have our own row to hoe and the universe will deliver us what and who we need exactly as we are ready to receive it, and in that uniquely unique fashion, we are all in this on our own.

There is peace in the truth.

(PS. If all this sounded slightly black, then I definitely set the wrong tone. It’s quite E N L I G H T E N I N G. )

dance-of-joy

 

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Let’s Have Some Happy Presidental Day!

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Sherry in Brain Vacuuming, Humor, Life in the Foothills, New Mexico, Presidents, The Contrarian

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Just nothing but junk, life in the foothills, musings

not-every-baby-gets-to-play-peek-a-boo-with-the-presidentIt’s President’s Day!

I would have forgotten, being a retired person, and not being beholden to no calendar (we sometimes celebrate Christmas a few days late, because we are not aware of even what day of the week it is most of the time). Until I called the bank about a zillion times and couldn’t get a human being on the other end.

Since this task was assigned to me by the Contrarian, it’s safe to safe we both forgot.

There is a scam born nearly every minute I think. I get a e-mail every week telling me that the e-mail is in danger of being disconnected if I don’t return the e-mail with my username and password. It’s suitable addressed to “maintenance”.

I might bite, but for the bold statement across the top of my email that says: we will never ask you for your password.

Yesterday the Contrarian received an automated phone call, telling us that our debit card had been placed on a hold and that we should push “1” to go to the security division of the bank. No doubt they would want our account number and pin number to proceed. We didn’t fall for that one either. No doubt plenty do, which is why folks keep trying to figure ways around the law.

I’ve been receiving a zillion and one-third pop ups lately. No doubt from something I downloaded. I am a downloading freak. Anyway, it was getting so dang annoying so I went to Firefox help and said: “HELP“. They took me to options were I found that I already had the “block pop ups” checked. That made me exceedingly pissy since the pop ups are all Firefox windows.

I told the Contrarian. He found a site called www. computerhope.com You might want to write that down. I put in my question and was sent to a page that asked my type of browser, and then told me exactly what to do. It involved going to a scary place called “about.config”. I knew it was scary since the minute I got there, it said, “are you SURE you want to be here?” I checked the “I’ll be very very careful, I promise,” and proceeded to open and change something about privacy. So far so good.

Is anybody got an ad at the top of their “new post” page? (WordPressers only). I’m thinking of starting a national boycott of any ad that comes up on places where there shouldn’t be ads. I will decide of course where they shouldn’t be.

√

Rutherford B. Hayes is the least googled President of the United States. I have no idea why nobody googles him. But it’s a great conversation starter wouldn’t you say?

Did I tell you about the site, The Top 10 of Everything and Anything? If I did, well EXCUSE me, and if I didn’t, well, go over there. It is a total surprise every day. Today is The 10 most unique egg cooking fryers. That’s another good conversation starter don’t you think?

Since the Pope is stepping down, I wonder if anyhow has asked him where’s the first place he’s going now that he’s a free man. I wonder if he’s say, “I’m going to Disneyworld!” He might you know. Well, he might.

What’s the best book you ever read? The one that had the greatest impact on you? The one you thought about for days, weeks afterward? The one you maybe read again? Mine? Oh, I don’t know as I can answer. Tomorrow my answer would probably be different from it is today. My rudder is loose I guess. Sometimes it’s definitely The Naked and the Dead. Sometimes it’s Grapes of Wrath. Some times it’s Mila 18. And then on Saturday’s it’s usually Calvin and Hobbes Collected Works. No that’s usually Sunday. Saturday is usually Bloom County.

I really breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered that I only gave up the SECOND most obvious thing for Lent. What was that you ask? Oh. Chocolate. And I’ve never given it up before for Lent. I would have hated to have picked the most popular thing–Twitter. I’ve given up soda before. That is number four. Number three is swearing–that would be a waste of time. I’m addicted to certain words and phrases that just seem to say it right. Did you give up anything? Do tell.

If Monopoly is a game form of capitalism, then I guess what is happening today is pretty much to be expected. I mean isn’t the object of Monopoly to win all the money and own everything? Are you telling me that people like Murdock and Trump don’t aim for that? Capitalism, but it’s very nature has the seeds of its own destruction within it.

MSNBC is airing “Hubris: Selling the Iraq War” tonight. Based on the book by David Corn and Michael Isikoff. Should be worth seeing.

Why is it that Mountain time is never mentioned when they say, 8 Eastern, 7 Central, and 5 Pacific? I mean it’s like we live in this great void of no importance. I feel slighted and slightly like the stupid child in the family.

You know I been wondering. Sarah Palin built a studio set at her home in Wasilla to broadcast to Fox, when they were good buds. I wonder if she goes and sits in it sometimes and daydreams about the good ole days when she was somebody?

PUBLISHED by catsmob.comHey, well somebody has gotta do it don’t they?

New York demands a certain number of weirdos.

But I ask ya, if you saw this dude walking up the stoop of the brownstone next to you, after a hard day wiggling his ass, in them whitie-tighties, would you feel like maybe looking for a new place to live?

Live and let live as they say, but do it where I don’t have to see it.

He’s got some legs though. In a weird sort of way.

Do you wonder at the mind that one day said, “yeah, I’m going out to sing and play my guitar and I’m going to wear nothing but some white briefs. That is the ticket to success!”

I’d be checking to see if his Prozac needed a refill.

So…..I think I been daydreaming.

See ya!

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