I was oh.... 13 years ago. I've been sifting through a bunch of old letter I wrote to a certain someone over the course of the past 13 years. Same damn stuff, slightly different handwriting. The signature is somewhat the same.
It makes me ponder, all this talk (type) of thinking I'm somewhat different, or my "worldview" has changed... but basically I am the same person. Same person I was when I was 17. or 18. Did I get stuck in that place? Did I never become an adult? Have I been faking it all along with a financial planner and big corporate job (well not anymore thank god) and 401k and mortgage and fuck, I'm just barely 30. It's not time for my mid-life crisis.
I'm surprised at what I find I said - and still rings true. I could care less for politics. They just doesn't interest me. (I know someone will get all outraged about how I should care about the war and greased pockets of our government - but truth be told - the whole world is like that - not just in politics, but in business, in communities, in cultures and religions. It's not news to me, and it seem just like a waste of my time to get all caught up in it.) Because when I die, will I care who was president or not? No, I don't think so. Yeah, sure, what one president's policy may hasten my demise, but so may riding a motorcycle. Death is coming and it doesn't really matter when it does. What matters is being aware that death is coming and taking advantage of all the other times that death does not arrive. (Think Monty Python meaning of life here.)
So back to myself - my favorite topic. The egotistical Heather. No wait, the self-observing, reflecting Heather. (Which is just some marketing speak about egotistical Heather.)
But seriously, Heather, (because I write this blog for me, like anyone else cares to hear about my blathering on about meself) what's up with this? What happened to all that self-observation and reflection crap that you just typed and have been trying to live for the past 10 years. Well, Heather (in response) I have been doing exactly that - living and learning. As my life has unfolded I am in a constant learning environment to be enlightened. To have my awareness enhanced. And you know heather, according to all the castaneda blather you read and practice, isn't that what this is all about? Taking your lifeforce and enhancing the awareness so that there is more awareness when death does take you like the Dinofelis, sweet and dreamy with it's jaw. Well, um, yeah, but, I want to know what it's all about NOW. I want to know what the RIGHT thing to do is. (Great sentence structure there.) But heather, come on, you know this as much as I do, that there is NO RIGHT thing to do. It's to do something. It's to get out and LIVE - to enhance that awareness, whether you do it on a motorcycle or out chopping wood and carrying water. But, uh, *stomps foot* I want to make the best of my time here and cram in as much as I can, I don't have time for mistakes. Well, think about it this way, the universe doesn't make mistakes, and people don't either. But, wait, that can't be true. What kind of freaky shit are you smoking to be having a conversation and typing it all up on a PUBLIC WEBSITE. Well, you see heather, the thing is, all you've had this evening is a cup of coffee and before that you had a new york steak. Remember you fried it up in the cast iron pan downstairs. Oh yeah. It's kind of fun writing like this, it's like the comic Cerebus. Yeah, it is.
Is your awareness enhanced now? Well, I guess so. I feel a little better and some slight pressure removed from making a MISTAKE or doing something WRONG.
But seriously, I am somewhat ... perplexed, disappointed, sad that I haven't really changed. Then again, in Chatwin's book, which I finished this afternoon, he wrote... (page 244)
All species must "jump" eventually, but some jump more readily than others. Elizabeth Vrba showed me graphs on which she had plotted the lineage of two sister clades of antelopes, the Alcephalini and Aepycerotini, both of which shared a common ancestor in the Miocene.
The Alcephalini, the family to which the wildebeeste and hartebeest belong have "specialised" teeth and stomachs for feeding in arid conditions, and have thrown up about forty species over the past six and a half million years. The impala, a member of the Aepycerotini, being a generalist with a capacity to thrive in a variety of climates has remained the same to this day.
Evolutionary change, she said, was once hailed as the hallmark of success. We now know better: the successful are the ones that last.
Thanks Bruce. But I'm not sure how I feel or think about all that.
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