That opening sentence already offers a problem worth pulling apart, I started with an idea, jumped in and straight away found a quite reverberate dissonance between addiction and favourite... how I get anything done alludes me, but, and this is me and how I work, let it go, leave it for some other future unraveling.
Though what is interesting is that I could be more proficient in my use of words, know them better, but I don't so I grabbed quickly what was to hand, that which easily sufficed, and therein by doing that but at the same time wondering why those words might do the job I have uncovered another sense of myself in the world worth investigating, and in my usual laconic style, let go now whatever time that might be need , choose it's own gap of relevance later, find itself as opposed to me pushing the issue. Therein to if I was more proficient this lack might not have arrived, too confident to question... keep it away!
So these two places (favourites) that interest me are facebook and spiritualforums and what interests me is that they are almost worlds apart. Each though has a kind of stated, though possibly more unstated, sense of itself and what it is, and these two against each other are almost poles apart. One a place for lazy relaxing and the other for concerted seriousness, one a wide but shallow pool, or even puddle, and the other a deep shaft filled with water though it might better regard itself as a lake.
Me, then, I've picked two almost opposing ways of being, both as a projection of self and as a sponge to define self, and so can I act in SF (spiritual forms) as if I'm on FB (facebook) and vice versa, or even more pertinently, can I just be me honestly exactly the way I am in both places without regard to the set, but unstated, natural foliage of each environment?
And this too raises other questions alike what is the real me? Is there even such a thing as a solid centre under the chocolate coating which meets the world, or is that too actually an opposite whereby often the hard candy surface is the outside and the inner thing, the deeper us, isn't solid but soft and malleable alike chocolate?
I don't know? But I love that not knowing... I am the idiot boy floundering about having learned all these jerky non-syncopated movements are actually my own naive dance in life... That's a recent realisation too, that there are no answers, there are no solutions, and it's absolutely all about questions, that perception, as in how we look and see, isn't a fixed thing at all, that our perception is our playground.
And thats it really. Giving ourselves room to move. Find spaces and move in them. Not too wide though, have edges... edges are feedback.
Okay, back to square one, SF and FB.
FB seems this place where we go to relax, and either take ourselves out of the world we've engulfed ourselves within to throw amusing anecdotes about as if we were fairies throwing the fairy dust of happiness about, or it is this very serious place where the tools we might wield if we were Helen Clark or Donald Trump, those weapons of shift that make worlds move, we can put the worlds to right by telling everyone how it should be. This I find interesting. That its both a place of rest and a place of action... but each in negative somehow.
Whereas SF is an entirely different creature, yet it is somehow the same too. SF, as so many places where learning is the stated commitment, seems to revolve around a caste system, that it's where the experts are and if you want to learn this particular learnedness then be a learner and know your place. In that regard too then there seems far more jostling for position than there is a set of principles about what passing on knowledge is all about.
Now for some reason I got handed a memory. And this serves quite nicely to explain somewhat how I work. I focus in on something, this writing, and I just follow it as if it's a prey I need to catch, circling around it getting closer, but then I break away, as if I completely forget what is uppermost and concentrated and just shoot off empty headed... I did that. I think it's years of meditation and being able to quiet the mind, let go all relevance and just empty my head... and how that, over time, builds up a sense of trust, a kind of vitalised calm almost, that no matter how determined one might be to own something, to have crafted it into use in the world... you can just let it go, it doesn't matter.
And it's total irony because having let something go it sort of does it's own work, becomes almost individualised and finds it's way home having lived life, even as a succession of empty moments, as a competent being... words fail me so much. (Excuse me, as in words fail me so much, it's my sense of how and what I am are mostly intuitive and this writing thing is a squidgy bloggy mass I'm not fighting with but wondering at as I troll this space between new tool, writing, and old task, being.)
Anyway, this memory is from my mid twenties and myself and my group of friends had turned up at an absolutely huge bonfire on the foreshore of Mangere bridge for an evening of amusements. It was massive, or at least it had been as it was now dying down but the massiveness was still there as it was about 10 metres, at least, from side to side.
At this time, way back then, we were all fans of drinking beer and smoking dope, and I don't know how many others did this but our thing was to drink about 3-5 bottles of beer, be warmed up as it were, and then smoke a few joints together.
In this way, a bit of drinking first, we still had quite good control of our bodies but they were looser, more apt to sway easily, and then when we added the dope, a jolt almost the other way, our brains kinda joined in with this really neat fun weirdness appreciation... So here we are facing this huge burning mass, having just reached that enjoyable and subservient call to play, and me and this one other rascal suddenly decided to go fire running... whatever that is.
I think I went first, but I do know that me and other rascal boy had made this completely stupid pact of idiocy. so completely out of the blue, as there was quite a crowd gathered and this in and of itself was somehow an important factor, and without out any reconnaissance to even see if it was doable, I went running through this fire, jumping from cold spot to cold spot closely followed by my friend... And we made it... we didn't fucking die.
The thing was, and I can almost know this now, except even now it scares me a little, is that we knew somewhere in ourselves that luck was a real thing, that if you swayed your perceptions just so that on the edges of that your senses could pick up possibilities of enactment which were existent, in a real and tangible way, if you didn't think and just did. It was intuitiveness taken to the levels of dangerous and thrilling... and it was a very heady mixture,
But then again, what we also did a lot of, and never did alcohol during, was ride motorcycles as quickly as possible as much as possible under the influence of dope, not a lot, but just enough to focus and somehow get into a zone where time and space slowed down and one could weave through what now became ponderous.
Me and this fellow did our run, our brains somehow detected at a pace our thinking mind couldn't keep up with that this wasn't a difficult thing at all but just balance and a jump from rock to rock, as if these rocks were within ponds of water, and that within that that it was fire made it seem spectacular... it would be impressive and we would be admired!
But then, and it was admired, because others had a go at it. Oh no, oh fuck! reality came biting and gnawing as others far less fleet of foot and further along in drunkeness suddenly saw a way to be counted as brave too.
Suddenly and without remorse our actions were setting a very dangerous precedent as idiots who should know better sought to follow in our foot steps.
Luckily no one fell. It was quite simple but even as it was simple it was also very dangerous and as I look back at it now it was as if a group think took over. Me and my friend had decided somehow to push this group think by being irresponsible and that twanging of a deeper sense brought forth a responsibility in the group to dampen that irresponsibility... but in the jarring of reality, the willingness to stretch boundaries, even in my semi inebriated state I got a real sense of what responsibility might really be.
And that was no matter how capable I might be that it was far less about proving that and far more about realising others capabilities in a relationship with my own... that's to me what being responsible is... at least in regard to capability and talent.
Ah, and now I know why that memory bubbled up from the silts of my life.
It is that I could conform, reasonably accommodate what I think I am, to preset definitions of being on both FB and SF, except I question my conformities between these chosen poles, and that this then leads quite nicely into one of my favourite quotes.
- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw: Man and Superman (1903) 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
- Basically then the reasonable embrace becoming heroes and set the stage whereby their capabilities are shown for applause... except that's easy, that's what everyone does. I am impressive therefore I am.
- Whereas me I look at FB and wonder why it seems so readily to conform to a way of being, a way of use that is merely a perception shared around and agreed on. Who is it says it should be a certain way? And SF too seems to somehow skirt the issue of pupils becoming teachers and most often be about teachers defining what great teachers they are simply by hanging out with the highest knowledge... stupid.
- Well, maybe not stupid, but certainly boring because I really don't see progress as a thing driven by exclusivity in the sense that great athletes being hero's is to me more about being allowed to sit on a couch and watch from the sidelines whereas inclusivity, which spellcheck tells me isn't a word yet, is far more about how a great athlete might be ignored and shifting couches about become an exercise regime.
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