silent thunder

though I still contend, if you can prove you've done a service to society, not only should you not be prosecuted, there should be some sort of stipend available...

repeated tragedy will garner you a perspective that cannot be easily shaken by the influences of money, petty sucking up/pandering or hollow compliments/insults.... this guy has been through the ringer.

for me, it's not horseflies... it's an endless stream of people in their cars with seemingly no regard for anyone else around them...

I had a similar event triggered associated with a very intense emotional moment in my teens.

I get a reset when I watch the waves bounce off the shoreline. Natural, rhythmic, cyclical process that has abided the present epoch. F.U. Descartes

or... do they just keep resonating outward and inward in cyclical reflections... hmm...

truth!

truth.

all your tao are belong to us...

I recall a storm that had driven snowbanks up the side of my friend's house once. The snow banked up the windward side of their house, and ended up lining up perfectly with my buddy's second floor bedroom window.... so... Our folks were all out for the day, we got bundled up, got our sleds, and proceeded to launch ourselves out his bedroom window all morning after knocking out the screen... Didn't really think of the ramifications of the sloppy boots tracking up the stairs across his bed... His folks were so cool and laid back though, his Dad just suggested we climb the bank up to the roof and stay out of the house. It was so great though to grab the window frame and launch like bobsledders...

That was my childhood! Minnesota... Canada's boot eh! Love it...

thanks for this... it nudges me back the other direction and reminds me of an epiphany I had when sitting in my car after a near collision... it dawned on me, "man, for all the moments in life where something troubling or bad happens, there must me a million to one times that everything goes well, or 'normal'."

Some very clear, concise discussion. Thanks.

These were two of my favorite methods... Good stuff, thanks for sharing

I agree whole-heartedly about the thorns in the garden. I guess another way to put it is: I don't have a sense that human nature/experience has changed much in the last few thousand years good or bad.

True enough.... the power of refrigeration and a bath... poor desert dwellers. Still don't get the logic behind not mixing your clothing fibers though... edit: or selling your daughters into slavery, or blood sacrifices... or the rest...

thank you: just ordered my copy

I just drove by the Crazy Horse monument on my drive home to Cali from Michigan. That area resonates so powerfully.

I go back and forth on this. But I lean more toward the side that the amount of bullshit happening in the same, it's just that in our current state, we hear about it almost instantaneously and hear about much more of it when it does occur than in the past. Used to be a city got sacked and some folks wouldn't hear about it until years later when the trade ships brought the news. These days it's all available in real time, so we're flooded with it. That and folks are damn near obsessed/addicted to it and go lookin for it when it's no where near them.

All paths lead to Source...

I had one conversation with an Uncle, who was CIA retired. He'd been living in seclusion in Europe since before I was born and I met him when I was 17 and he'd just come back to America for the first time since his dept was disbanded. I asked him about his thoughts on the military, which was roughly this: "...anyone who has ever been conscripted, handed a weapon and sent to a foreign land to murder people he/she's never met, knows that society is not their friend.... anyone, in my opinion, who willingly signs up for a weapon, and goes to a foreign land to murder people he/she's never met, was given their big brain by mistake... " that said, it's a bastardized version of a quote by Einstein, but the sentiment is pretty much truth for me, aside from the fact that sometimes, we need to stand up and put down rabid animals that are forces of rampant destruction. in the end, there can be no yang without yin, unless somewhere in the universe there is an ocean with waves that have crests and no troughs...

mmmm Bjork... she's such a pixie! Just heard yesterday at work from a friend who went to Iceland, that heating in Reykjavik is free as they pump the natural water from the hot springs through the homes. He discovered this as he was sitting in a house that had all the windows open in winter and inquired why...

I have a stack of business cards from Aussies who sat at my bar for an afternoon or evening when I tended in NYC. Each said, "if ye ever get out our way mate, look me up and you'll have a place to stay." And having grown up in Canada's boot... Minnesota. I have nothing but love for our Northern neighbors. High class people all around!

My Dad's place in Michigan got a couple inches in early June... just ridiculous this year!

reminds me of the old saying: I'd rather be lucky than good...