More Thoughts

What a strange day yesterday was. Woke up in R's gorgeous house. Being in R's house was so comfortable, it felt like home. More home than the place I inhabit in Hollywood. Packed up and headed to San Mateo for breakfast date. "I was an asshole the last time we met here." I've forgotten those times. I've acquired the ability to drop/ignore/neutralize the negativity of past interactions - to remember only the abstract affection.

Then I was on my old commute freeways, driving it LA style - the way I always drove. "Tires kissing several highways". Threading the needle. Remembering 10 years of driving these roads, looking at how things had changed - and yet stayed the same. (So cliche for a reason.)

Cell phone talking speeding across the San Mateo bridge. Three full lanes both ways. So many nights I took this home. Engraved neural pathways, body never forgets. I allowed myself to go on an old autopilot in an upgraded plane.

Then the central valley and brainstorming with Chicken John. He was headed back to SF, while I was going the opposite direction. Fate caused a pause in our travels for a cup of conversation in Santa Nella. We talked about shows, tours, communities, sortition, technology. He talked about exit strategies and death, I told him of my stair stepped bell-curve, a way to trick "death"; he pointed out the larger fractal picture. Death, ending, exit strategy is always there. That reminded me of the Void to Full (and vice versa) polarity. Something can not become full without first being emptied. We walked dammit in the parking lot. And then he went north, while I went south.

I hit the bad traffic and pulled out of the mainstream - took a side road. But a quick stop caused another surprise. I ran into Uwe and Ji - old colleagues from iAmaze/AOL days. They were on their way to LA. I tipped them about my secret route and told them to call me when they got to Hollywood. Then I was in the desolate lands. 33. Through orchards and oil wells. Remembering the last time I took this road. I was taking Lady Knight to LA. It was my first big solo motorcycle trip. In August, it was a hot dusty quasi-desert - desolate is not a word to describe what the landscape was.

All this way I am listening to Jim Collin's Good to Great. 10 hours of instruction, revelation, understanding.

It's almost too much to take in. Data swirling into the tornado from different areas: Open Space Technology. The Shocking News. Jim Collins. Chicken John. My Obsessions. Possibilities. Revelations.

I am exhausted. I sit at the center with my tea set. White linen tablecloth. Tea pot, milk, sugar on hand-crocheted doilies. The winds of possibilities build the tornado stronger and stronger, my calm in the center, calmer and calmer.

I was distracted. I was knocked off course. I lost faith. I questioned myself. But I have returned. You can not know order, without getting swept into the chaos. You can not create, without tasting the destruction. You can not know your own strength, without doubting it. You can not move through fear, without being intimate with it. You can not do the impossible, without questioning whether it is possible.

The mortar between the bricks. // The glue that dries clear.
I have plowed the sea.
That scene in one of the Sargasso Bronte romance.
An eternal golden braid.
yes, and...
  "In the process i hope i become irrelevant"
Leave no trace.
The journey is the destination.

It's not about the messed up ball of yarn at the beginning; or the perfectly coiled yarn at the end. It's in the unwinding. And then in what you make of the yarn. In that, the yarn is unchanged.

"The geese in the sky have no desire to leave a shadow across the lake. The lake has no desire to receive it."
- A Zen Koan

Comments

[uwe]

Thanks for the secret route. It was interesting, the oil wells looked really cool :-).