PittsburghThoughts

What's in a name?

 

From the irony department,

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Another Sunday and we're entering the bleak season. I had half the leaves picked up and, before the rain yesterday, I ran over the new and remaining leaves with my big 16 horse power machine turning them into organic confetti. Now there's a mulchy mess outside that clings to soles and heels and smuggles itself into the house.

 

I was counting on a one day reprieve, one day in between the confetti stage and the rain to blow the confetti away, blow it somewhere where it could decompose peacefully, not on my floors and rugs.

 

Nature cooperates at her pleasure. We like to think that things operate within some comprehensible set of rules and laws, science verifies this to a point as long as the parameters aren't too broad. When we get to the really big or really small, strange things happen. Universal forces routinely run contrary to our expectations and theories and they must be constantly revised. Suddenly, out pops a new particle or a new multidimensional way to explain the previously unexplainable.

 

Are we constantly deluding ourselves to think we are discovering order in a chaotic world, when, at best, all we've found is a trace of order, a thread to a larger garment that we are incapable of seeing in its entirety?

 

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Lisa has a very cool dream story on her blog Unglued: Snake of My Dreams. Seldom are my dreams as cohesive as this one and her telling of it is fascinating in itself.

 

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The holidays are upon us and the merchants are nervous about Christmas sales. I don't feel much optimism or empathy for them, but I do for us. Our consumer mentality is being put to the test. How will we fair? I think we may come out of this a little leaner and meaner. I hope so. Fuck Madison Avenue and its "you can have it all" fairy tale. You can't have it all. You shouldn't have it all either. Who the fuck are we to think we deserve every good thing when the average world income is $7,000 per year, that's $583.33 per month and $134.66 per week. Try living on that.

 

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I don't begrudge the American people living well, hell that's why people came to America, to improve their lives and their children's lives. But now to cry "whoa is me" because reality has caught up with us is disingenuous at best. I'm not talking about poor Americans or the ones snagged by a system that held out a shiny promise only to be left with a handful of lies and debt. I'm talking about the well-to-do, even the upper middle classes that never met a greenback that they couldn't spend capriciously on or at their own pleasure.

 

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This damn living thing isn't easy to get a handle on and just when we think we might be getting somewhere we grow old and die. How many billions have passed through this veil of tears? Their journey wasn't faithfully concluded, it ended in disarray and confusion, sickness and despair. It's the sum of our lives, the wholeness that matters. We can't gloss over anything, everything matters. What a quandary for our intellect, but at the same time, capable of being resolved in the living of them.   Gene