121228 04:02 magic
I believe and have faith in magic, or should I say miracles, since I am still alive after countless awakenings wondering why.
By nature I am a musician infused with the genius of a Peruvian shepard alone, atop a mountain, playing nose flute . . . leaping into the grace of Mozart and Bach to say nothing of the mindless humming that goes on inspired by Beethoven. And then I remember the most hilarious performance of my life. Over which my father laughed uncontrollably from beginning to end.
Both parents were suffused with music in the sense that most musicians are; in love with following the railroad tracks of others laid down by genius to a reasonable or unreasonable terminus; predictable. As a child, which in a sincere sense of wonder, I still remain. I was given a harmonica during one of the rare but memorable excursions with my father to New York City on his weekly business trips to . . . . Wow! I never really understood why he did it; his goals and intentions. In retrospect it seems now that all he wanted was fame and fortune. Illusions drummed into my sense of what was appropriate and good, for which I have taken years to understand differently; to out grow his sense and periodicity and find my own.
The circumstance was never mentioned until the closing days of our relationship. I was vastly impressed with The Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé, latter amplified by Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome. And once required to do a “show and tell” in the Old Greenwich (Connecticut -- USA) Elementary School . . . Laughter -- Lots of laughter. I cannot remember how it came to be but my father was a witness. I stood before my assembled peers noodling up and down chromatic scales on my recently acquired harmonica, blithely unaware of just making noise. Yet. With Respighi and Grofé singing in my head.
It is well to remember, dad wanted a Mozart for his son, and compelled me to attempt the piano at four years of age. I remember falling off the assembled telephone directories of St. Louis and dictionaries better than the noise I made then.
It follows that given any topic I can ad lib. The difference now is that I will admit my ignorance. Since I no longer seek acceptance, compliance or conformity from anyone save what I perceive and know as God.
Now. For me. All the stars are notes singing the score of love. And the cycles of lunar passage are annotated by the reflected sun upon the midnight floors of my shelter.
Looking up the correct spelling of the composers: Grofé and Respighi. I discovered C. S. Lewis’
“If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.” . . . default settings on my version of Google’s Chrome. Resolving two, currently, important issues.
The horror of insanity manifest daily but in particular in Newtown Connecticut and the abiding sense of capitalism as peering up my urethrae measuring the contents of my psyche. The rectum of the world owns us all. Merely because they have made it “legal.” . . . and because they can. Don’t lose your library card. The mice who run the world will soon make the Internet, as they did television, a commercial sewer.
"Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man."
"It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference — inference either intuitive or deliberate." - Arthur Stanley Eddington, Sir
“Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.”
- Jean Giraudoux
“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”
- George Bernard Shaw
The previous quotes are discoveries made between the beginning of this post and now.
I argue with myself, the truth of my intuition, or folly, of my sense being serendipitously lead. Amongst those thoughts are coincident facts of recent conversations with the members of my group at water aerobics; I being the dummy in the bunch.
Lacking a formal education, I am aways avid to learn and unwilling to attend that which merely affirms my conclusions or conceits. However I am equally able and willing to engage in debate, if not with my antagonist/protagonist, at least with myself.
I am deeply concerned with the human psyche and curious about good and evil, the origins and motivations of choice in both behavior and speech. The dominate voice is expressed by people of advanced education, masters and doctoral, who’s responses are given in the context of my query. More often than not I find myself handed perceptions and perspectives unwelcome for they could, would or might, blow my conclusions off the map. However with reflection, I come to integrate new information into my general sense that what we espouse, live and die by are truths from ages prior to the general sense of time defined by Jesus: birth, life and death.
Yet simple ethics and morality have grown from the commonwealth of experience predating the time of Jesus by several thousands of years.
The nature of my recent inquiry has been based on what is generally called “evil.” Based upon my sense of the “Population Stress Syndrome” of which I have been aware for decades. Overcrowding and the demise of privacy. Shattering what were once thought to be definitive and absolute values, popular with those of us who seek to be lead instead of leading ourselves into a personal sense free from stress and fear; the very mechanism exploited by our “leaders.” Whose basic premise seems to be that we are herd animals. See the obscene amount of money spent to manipulate our choices regarding democracy.
Regardless of science nothing of what we discuss will, as yet, define or explain love. Or what I sense is and of the origin of my inspiration to keep on keeping on. . . . To do to others as I would have them do to me. In conclusion I experience religion and science, in the their simplest sense, as needing one another. Collaborative; not mutually exclusive.
I believe in people and their inherent value, to fight for their right of free will is important, and for which I will continue the effort.
Be well and be yourself . . . that is, of course, doing no harm. . . .To yourself or others.
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved
