Chop wood, Carry water….

Chop wood, Carry water….

Non-lineal life. Object oriented programming or the feared endless do loop. The carpenters say measure twice and cut once. For the non-builders, a measured double check will result in a properly cut piece of wood. The converse either being scrap, or used later for a smaller piece. This concept of the double check. This concept of being efficient and safe.

This concept of trusting ourselves. We know therefore it is. Don’t jump to conclusions when the emotional mind reacts based on a neural programmed self defense mechanism based on previously experienced input. Not much different from Pavlov’s dog. And live in the moment. It seems like a contradiction doesn’t it? To see the same from the same story, and forget it means something. On purpose.

Don’t second guess – go with the gut. To live is the opposite of to react. To design is to create, to live is to do. To make promises bigger than you believe – is to stretch. To play safe is to crawl in a hole and do the ostrich dance - and trust the world will still remember you are part of it.

To swing an axe at a piece of wood – knots, grain, muddle, bark, and feel. See. Hear as an immoveable object takes the blow. To not give. To watch a child swing the axe and leave a scratch, with the log still proud and un-assailable.

To sit in a lawn chair, hold an ice tea in one hand and work the hydraulic lever with the other is not chopping wood. There is no relationship with the tree. To sit in a chair and watch, is to not be in life.

The act of creation - or destruction, can one be without the other? To bring forth something from whence there was nothing. To write from a clean slate, without note cards or reference. To chart a path then follow it, or to follow the path set for us.

Or just take a left – we are all warned to stay on the path.

Why follow. Create and design the road, the only rules of which to apply are those that we decide are such, unless others decide for us.

Slave over the machine for a 30-cent raise every year for 30 years and take the shit. And my child's milk goes up 60. When the friend will annihilate you to gain favor or cover or for no reason. Eat shit and be a slave to the machine, it will tear out your arm - rip out your heart - bury your soul - so you no longer feel. Be loyal to the furnace of human consumption.

To see the grain, read the pulse of the log – that lived for a hundred years, with one swing of the axe produce two pieces where once there was one – is to be one with the grandfather. That tree saw wind and rain, listened to wars and conquests, grew from where once was a field, listened to canoes ply the streams – long before the steam whistle in the distance – broke the stillness of the dew bathed morning.

To not think, but to swing, and worship the tree that stood longer than any man – and harness the force while paying respect. As the embers rise to the stars from the campfire.

To teach a child that to consume without respect is to waste. To teach a child to see what others don’t - know what others won’t - hear what others will never listen to given the chance or not. Teach children to believe in themselves, respect everything that breathes – learn from everything that offers – give everything back and trust selectively.

We need far less than we have, the child is born with everything it will ever need.

Live in the wonder.

To split wood with a hand tool. A chainsaw will reduce an 100-year-old Oak to nothing in moments. To be warm and be sheltered in a cold world is a noble sacrifice for an old tree – but. Are we still primitive? Did the loss of the tree make a difference to the carbon dioxide or to the oxygen that will never be – did Gods carbon scrubbing artwork serve the noblest purpose – is there balance. Where will the owl live? If we were efficient would we clean windfall and have enough, while also managing the healthy Oak. Do we all need an aspen, do the aspen need the Oak? Are we cold?

The worms need the leaves.

Perhaps it’s about training, training the mind to not deceive us – training ourselves to live with our mind? Training our being to listen to our mind – are their 3 forces at work? I can still remember my Father teaching that our bodies are nothing more than a vehicle for our something else. He didn’t specify what else – he didn’t need to and he sure hit the nail on the head. Consciousness or the spirit of the being of human being isn’t flesh, bone and blood? And every fiber of every cell hears and feels every vibration of every other – wherever it is in whom or what everywhere. Is it the life force, the bio-chemical electric? Is it the neural electric circuits and force roaming the minds computer – the marvel of the self-programming computer that our mind is?

Time slows as the speed increases, beings on a space craft traveling at great speed will age slower than we on Earth – likely so on a 747 but tougher to measure.

Light from distant suns bend as it hurtles past stars and planets on the way to our viewing portal.

An electric current moving electron by electron will arrive at the far end of the wire but likely the sign waves pound along a perpendicular path as they bound lengthway down the wire.

Perhaps we / our human minds conceived the notion of lineal time.

Martin Heidegger was on the chase with Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), thousands of years of summary in one work. Why have we forgotten so much?

Perhaps linear is not a concept that occurs in nature at all, we needed to invent the notion to account for time – from our view. Perhaps our view is blind. Gravity bends light - perhaps our view is also bent. Perhaps we feel straightforward - but see askew.

Perhaps our view, is what limits us from knowing – as though there is more to see feel touch experience, understand, perceive, contemplate, grasp.

I think in circles – no straight line ever took me home. The destination planned is a trap to ensure our comfort. Our comfort is a trap to prevent our seeing something yet unseen. To see what all else see is to repeat the mistakes of others.

The physics teacher who instructs that water conducts electricity needs to know. He needs to learn something beyond what he was taught. As long as his radio doesn’t fall in his tub.

Perhaps the human spirit is to create rather than re-model. Why rebuild that which fell?

Shall we all go fishing in Pinedale Wyoming?

I am the child - again - still - forever. Luckily I remained so thru it all - I can still see what others seem to swallow - fight the future before we become one of the machines - or the machine becomes us.

Listening to: PS: A Toad Retrospective, Toad The Wet Sprocket