I guess I'm neck deep in a moment of life-introspection. Feels good, I guess. Surreal but good.
Camus said -- or was it Sartre? -- that life was experienced in a spiral -- you're always circling the same shit, just at different levels of integration. Whoever it was, I'm sure he said it a little more gracefully than that.
It's all familiar and yet disconcertingly new -- because I'm in a different place than I've ever been before in terms of perspective, yet the landscape is the same.
I keep getting overwhelmed at all there is to do, as though if I can just get over the hump it will all be okay. The myth of the hump. There is no hump! More exactly, there is no OVER the hump, because life just continues to pile up in all the indiscriminate moments.
The older I get, the faster life moves. I remember being an undergraduate and NOT being able to understand why so many philosophers wrote about time and space. Come on, guys, I wanted to say, it's just time! Just space! They're just the background for our lives; they don't change. No matter how old you are, it's all just minutes and days and months and years. It's neighborhoods and cities and countries and one world. Now, though, I wonder why no one's written anything SATISFYING about space and time that explains what the hell is happening all of a sudden! Why don't MORE philosophers write about space and time? And write about it more pragmatically! I need HELP.
I was at the homage to the petroglyphs this weekend at the soon-to-be-terminated termination of Paseo del Norte as it transitions into the National Park that has been a sacred space for Native peoples for millenia, as evidenced by the layers upon layers of religious art and symbols. An elder spoke about this latest battle lost. He reminded us that the earth will go one no matter what we do to it. That the signs aren't good, and we'll soon see disasters piling up on themselves. It's time to plant and store our food for the coming storms.
But he also said this: Don't forget to enjoy your life. Live and be happy. No one of us, nor any one generation, can fight all the fights to be fought. Part of the battle is adding your personal joy to the balance of the world. Rilke said, "joyfully add yourself and cancel the count."
"And the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliot
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