SERIOUS GRAVITY (A SANITY PRIMER)

  On a well-traveled corridor of the East coast - where tourists drive northward every summer on a sleepy (and sometimes dated) old thoroughfare that meanders (roughly speaking) with the shoreline - there lies a coastal village renowned for its posh homes and proud inhabitants - and at the center of this village which boasts of a main street, a historic library and a stately boat landing, a garden shop can be found nestled among costly domiciles - just a stone's throw from the private academy and the gourmet ice cream shop. Set upon five acres of serene commercial flatland - the property houses multiple plants and trees and flowers - providing an oasis of greenery for anyone conjuring up daydreams of bucolic bliss. Set apart from the store - a no-frills wooden edifice - there were greenhouses,  rows of plants and flowers, larger trees in back and an old modest mansion of a house - still occupied by the family, Estabrook, which had owned the place going back three (3) generatio...

 A relentlessly political mind should encounter at least one instance in Life that leaves it confused and sputtering...

  Over in that parallel universe next door where plastic bags have disappeared and there is no road rage....Cats can be trained and wars end in a tie....the sunlight is not melting Greenland - or at least Miami is in no danger of sinking irretrievably like some forlorn Venice of the eastern Atlantic... People are moving in droves to the Dakotas - and short-wave radios are more popular than cell phones...Taxi drivers prefer classical music to anything written after 1953...Gambling still occurs but on camping trips - not in large casinos....Ice cream is still popular....Jeans are in fashion... And democracy or something like it exists - but without all the fanfare and media coverage...not as much hand-wringing and worries about impending malaise...I envision something in many respects similar to what we find here with some necessary adjustments - a still-functioning power grid, mom-and-pop convenience stores, verdant farm land, forests and reservoirs not-so-starved of water...But mor...

My mantra used to be... Pour the glass half empty... Hide under a rock... Curl up in a ball, counting backwards from 100... Let your limbs go slack... Sleep in until dusk... Walk toward the donut shop - never arriving... Stop at green lights... Pull over then and tell the officer a story... Failing to make eye contact... Stay in your room at night reading old Life magazines... Play solo tetherball to lose... Avoid avoid avoid the mindless crowds.... Go days without smiling - make your face like stone... Let each golden opportunity go by untouched... Let someone else steal the spotlight - this one is not for you... Hold at arms length the material snares... Avoid alcohol, tobacco, LSD, heroin, sedatives, amphetamines, aspirin, cold remedies, cough syrup... Shun the most basic of human encounters,  handshakes, hugs, cuddles, hand-holds, trysts,  flings, affairs, peccadilloes, relationships in general... Concoct a drug of your own making in the brain - this in itself will strap y...

We don't choose the age we live in...rather, the age chooses us...enveloping, dominating, shaping our destinies - the sheer immensity of it all, the overwhelming scope, the global reach, the unavoidable impact - like the air we breathe - like a horrifying weather event - no choice for most but to endure these "storms" of history - living through wars, pandemics, upheavals, famines, revolutions, economic downturns, malaise,  lost decades, years of austerity, autocracies, dictatorships, purges, reprisals,  repression,  pogroms, displacements, mass migrations, expulsions, coups, abdications, guerrilla wars, killings, genocides - these "dark clouds" that take up so much of history for so many...(think: Czarism, Bolshevism, Great War,  Fascism, Great Depression, Franco-ism,  Stalinism, Hitlerism, World War, Cold War, Peronism, Maoism....) and oppressive, unwanted, annoying tyrants, autocrats, generalissimos, monarchs, premiers, prime ministers, presidents, people...

  Growing up in the golden state, during that era of extended prosperity through the decades of the 60s and 70s - there, in our west coast bubble of relaxed, sunny contentment, I thought, for a time, at a very young age, that I had found real happiness on earth. Ca lifornia was growing by leaps and bounds then without feeling overcrowded; there was some traffic, to be sure, smoggy days through July and August, and yet a wealth of open spaces, new homes sprouting up everywhere,  the streetcars of Santa Monica having disappeared, replaced by freeways darting in all directions; even so, long stately old boulevards still stretched all the way from Pomona to Los Angeles; there were vineyards lining the backroads to Ontario airport and vast tracks of land still available in Orange county...Where we lived was a central location as my father liked to say... to the west the Pacific Ocean, to the east Palm Springs or the high desert, to the north, mountains, Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead,...

Words will carry us somehow toward the clear, cold, pure, untouched spring.... out of thick foliage stumbling...  arms thrashing, cursing, confused... panting for air... a conversation of sorts a kind of speech that follows upon chaos scratches, cuts and the ripping of socks... a confused running, a sprint... down the uninvited path each a dead end with paradise in view brown barks, Nature's fence... sharp and prickly, walls of green the creepers rising up at us,  harsh branches... savage vines to trip upon... a blazing sun, the mind-fogging heat... I want to say that words can save us... heralding togetherness and a plan of sorts... Diving in water,  exuberant,  the goal of hydration, rest, some much-needed healing relaxation... the time redeemed... Yet something else then and there at the moment of crisis.. yanks the mind into gear a gravity of necessity.... just some garble of unremembered toil...

 . .. thinking about the " collage effect " of media, the bombardment of images and their "immersive" quality, putting us into the crucible of the moment,  grabbing us with the choicest morsels - those stories that blot out or at least overshadow those other minor goings-on of the day,  kidnapping our attention with an urgent, burning, breathless,  aesthetic of now... Look at the headlines...a massive mushroom-cloud-like explosion in Beirut, Lebanon - followed by protests and rioting, most of the city in ruins, the entire government resigning...a fraudulent stolen election in Belarus , another corrupt autocrat still in power....more protests by night...a clamp-down in Hong Kong , an "Apple daily newspaper owner" arrested and later released on bail... another police shooting in the States... stores in Chicago  looted overnight.... Portland demonstrations...clashes with police...slap-dash executive orders, a relief bill still on hold....school re-openings go...

The uprising begins and the revolutionaries seize power...Their first step is to disband the existing police force,  dismantle the military apparatus, overthrow the suffocating media web of existing propaganda, commence a new network of social communications, declare the previous governmental structure as defunct, welcome the people at large to the new conditions of radical anarchistic post-statehood, sponsor rallies in the public square, encourage dancing, singing and loud clapping, outlaw large corporations, monopolies, conglomerates, tech giants, Amazon, Google,  Apple, etc., redistribute existing accumulations of wealth among the millions of essential workers, reconstitute the existing means of production spontaneous and perhaps haphazardly under a separate set of umbrella categories (to be owned by everyone, to be administered by everyone, on a system of rotation, each according to their needs), declare all essential industries open to all, first come, first serve, demoli...

It is an activity that demands speed, timing, quickness, strength, agility...one that requires running at top speed, jumping, gliding, pivoting, stopping on a dime, moving sideways and backwards, using hands, feet, legs, shoulders, core muscles, abdomen and back - allowing one to feel obscure tendons and joints - one that creates an ebb and flow of motion, generating a time-bending montage of sweat, soreness and fatigue happily obscured and subordinated to the greater task of mental focus and concentration...it is an activity that sends teams back and forth along a hardwood floor,  ninety feet at a time, shifting haphazardly between defense and offense, necessitating make-shift, ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment, decision-making and instantaneous moves in ever-changing configurations arising out of nowhere and dissolving into other combinations of players....it is a game of rudiments and fundamentals - building-blocks and skill-sets, including but not limited to: dribbling, passing, shoot...

There is a way to talk and think about God that should not make anyone feel uncomfortable....a philosophical method that encourages open discussion... There is a way to ask questions (hypothetical inquiries) about the divine attributes and the divine nature, to investigate our "ideas" of God and what we are in fact saying when we posit "God's existence" ... One can delve into such matters without feeling obliged to arrive at hastily-conceived answers to specific questions...There is affirm possibilities and probabilities without landing upon anything definite....There is a way to recognize, problems, puzzles, contradictions involving God...There is a way to admit ignorance and uncertainty about the ultimate reality without anyone turning into a dogmatic atheist....There is a way to avoid false claims and misconceptions about God...Attacking such misconceptions does not make one an atheist - but rather helps to defeat superstition and idolatry (two of the misshap...

Me - I guess, for starters, I should begin with this word "faith" which is our focus and the meaning it has for you....  I'm going to assume that as a "person of faith" - this faith of yours gives you something that sets you apart in some dramatic way from those who lack faith... Him - Well, yes... Me - Well...granted I'm grappling for a starting point to this conversation - so please feel free to correct me - but what I mean is that faith must provide you with some inner feeling of confidence, security, re-assurance, peace of mind - the knowledge that your life is on track - that you are in a good path... The implication being that those with faith are in possession of something that makes them uniquely advantaged...while non-believers are viewed as inadequate because of their reluctance to believe... Him - Well - I suppose you could frame it that way but then you almost make it sound like an ego-driven competition... Me - But don't the faithful...

We cannot go on chasing ghosts...shadows...metaphysical abstractions...It must start with something tangible...empirical...able-to-be-verified, yet also tied to consciousness...

The simplest explanation is usually best...Don't go looking for remote and obscure causes...

"We are still almost certain we know what other people think or what their true character is. We are convinced that certain people have all the bad qualities we do not know in ourselves or that they live all those vices which could, of course, never be our own. We must still be exceedingly careful in order not to project our own shadows too shamelessly; we are still swamped with projected illusions. If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw these projections, all and sundry, then you get an individual conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong and they must be fought against. He lives in the "house of self-collection." Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow then he has done something real for the world. He has ...