hold skinny wolves at bay

today has been a strange one, draining i think. i haven't been so drained that i can't write something here. and it was a nice day outside, warmer than the last ten at least - i need to remember that. i cleaned my room, talked about important things with important people in my life. i spoke with my mother, brother, niece, friends - life could only be better if those conversations were not mediated by technology. i like some things that technology has done for me, allowing me to correspond and express myself and learn things, but i really do think that while these activities are better than nothing, they are not as good as the real thing. reading a book is not as good as having a conversation, and reading something online - whether it is news or academic - doesn't approach actually experiencing that thing. writing in a blog doesn't allow some things that i like, things that writing in my notebook or drawing on a pad can do - but i can write faster here, and i can capture my thoughts in an easier way. and there really is something therapeutic about writing (though if i could just write with a pen and paper in a faster way, i'd choose that). more than anything, sending an email or calling someone on the telephone doesn't approach remotely the experience of interacting with someone in a real way. one could say that this is real, just different. i would respond that this is not as real as a conversation with someone. and i don't think it would be easy to convince me otherwise.

it has occurred to me that reading about buddhism isn't like experiencing it, and i am not sure that it is important for me to know about buddhism in an academic sense - i'd rather live it. more than that, i'd rather live my life in some way that i might call buddhism, i might call reflective and contemplative, i'd probably call true experience. i can enjoy thinking about the merits of buddhism as compared to other religions, especially other religions in dogmatic practice, but i don't think that i am really getting it if that's what i think about. so what does this mean? i think it means for me, right now, that i need some time in a wild area - by myself or with my close others (brothers, parents, friends). i need a few different kinds of vacations right now. i think the most important one is some time alone in the two rivers - twenty four hours of reflection and existence - with a sleeping bag. i feel like that would give me something i need. i also want to have some relaxation time in the black hills at my cabin, a place where i unwind and don't get things done, but i'm also not really in touch with anything like i am in the two rivers. i also wouldn't mind a little bit of a break where i could play poker, soccer, swim, hug trees - experience a different game from the one i am entrenched in right now.

where am i right now? i'm confused. i am quite all right with that, but i am confused. there are a lot of good people experiencing confusion - unsatisfactoriness, suffering, pain, lacking - i'm fine with that. but i'm not - i want to promise a better world for my niece, for my children if i have any ever, for my friends, for my self. i want to live a life of reason, of compromise. and i hate that life of reason, of compromise, of multiple use plans and impact assessments. i don't want there to be any more target stores, walmarts, kmarts, malls, suburbs, houses, cars, roads. i don't want to cut down trees, but that would mean i don't want to live in a house. i don't want to hurt other organisms, but that would mean i don't want to eat. i don't want to hurt anyone, but that means i wouldn't have relationships.

it's amazing to me that an interesting metaphor for human life is drama. kenneth burke bases his whole theory of rhetoric on the dramatic pentad; steven fesmire bases his ethical theory on dramatic rehearsal as the way we use moral imagination to figure out how we should act. drama is based on real life, and now we understand real life based on drama. it gives us a way to imagine and understand counterfactual information, a way to structure our experience, a way to mediate our experience without mediating it in a bad way. people who play sports think about sports in terms of life and life in terms of sports. it seems to me that this is max black's interaction theory of metaphor exemplified in the most obvious way. (when someone says richard is a lion or man is a wolf, one isn't just comparing or understanding richard in terms of a lion or a man in terms of a wolf, but also a wolf in terms of a man and a lion in terms of richard) we understand life through drama or sports and drama and sports through life. so what? i think it's important, and i won't tell you how now. i promise to tell you in a short while if you promise to think about it until that time. more importantly, i want you to think of the games and stories that structure your life - mark johnson and george lakoff do a great job of identifying a few metaphors that structure people's experiences and underlie how they life, but they base these on resources and money. i choose to go a different direction. follow me for a little ways at least. i promise to tell you how i think of life, through games, stories, and journeys. we'll see how this works itself out.



this is an important song from my past, present, and future - gold day by sparklehorse. this song has changed my life, multiple times. i hope that natalie portman listens to it sometime. i hope that you listen to it sometime.

good morning my child
stay with me a while
you've not got any place to be
won't you sit a spell with me

you've got diamonds for eyes
it's time for you to rise
and evaporate in the sun
sometimes it can weigh a ton

keep all your crows away
hold skinny wolves at bay
in silver piles of smiles
may all your days be gold my child

a necklace of leaves
spirits in the trees
and drown all the clocks 'til there's none
little ambient in the sun

keep all your crows away
hold skinny wolves at bay
in silver piles of smiles
may all your days be gold my child

good morning my child
stay with me a while
and evaporate in the sun
sometimes it can weigh a ton

keep all your crows away
hold skinny wolves at bay
in silver piles of smiles
may all your days be gold my child
may all your days be gold my child
may all your days be gold my child
may all your days be gold my child