Equilibrium1

 What is a person to society and vice versa? 

"That 'when we walk, we know that we are walking, when we stand we know that we are standing.' It is that consciousness that permits a form of progress.'

 I have been hanging out with a beautiful man who seems to have a hard time understanding himself as a contributor to society, or as a good person for that matter because he thinks himself entirely self-centred. Doing everything to serve himself.
Because he is too busy trying to make the best of who he is to be distracted with the greater good.
Isn't that, often, the best thing you can do for the greater good?
But you still need to feel momentum and fire---
and humans as closed systems, or isolated individuals
are not not the best fostered creatures for themselves or the rest.
It is an exhausting practice.

I read an old journal of mine recently where I wrote (in grade nine):
Life goal:
Be a net gain for The Universe.

I think sometimes we often get stuck like this. Either wary that we need to do more more more outside of ourselves that we forget to work on what we like about ourselves.
Or we grow wary that focusing on greater goods will erase us or misdirect what we really want and therefore isolate ourselves from feeling real satisfaction.

 But I still strive for Greatness.
 I just never want to get lost in it. To miss out because I focus on gaining.
But without it, we often don't really know our own direction or cannot be really motivated to claim it. We cannot feel purpose in such a pronounced way, we seek personal perfection instead of knowing what is good enough to help the world and ourselves is often good enough to fuel us for a long long time.

"The problem seems to be that our talents and characteristics drive us more than we drive them. We encourage or develop them or deny and frustrate them. Either way, we are serving what exists within us-- a form of personal reality or personal certainty..."


And to me, being a good person in incredibly self-centred and self serving. Is it not? I mean, if you focus on empty ends and never get affirming feedback you can never actually wholly capitalize on your own life or plug into you offer the world and vice versa

"...There is nothing odd or strange about this; nothing wrong. As I've said, we need these certainties. They are our primary reality. And society needs these contributions from us. It is good to be a successful salesman or writer. the wings need to hold firm on the planes we build for others to fly in. We need to be sung to."

I more or less said this to him:
"Any sense of power or powerlessness we have revolves around whether we believe we have the qualities with which we can have some effect on our destinies and on that of our society--no one great life-directing quality, but a whole range of them, all of equal importance, each with different roles. these permit us to change ourselves from passive beings to humans."

I think it is mildly demeaning that you say you are motivated solely by self-interests. Especially since you could not exist without society. Humans are born dependent on such things, on greater society otherwise(like other mammals) we would be born stronger, more mobile and independent. Also, that insulting thought is the root of many things socially painful-- the assumption that those ads, that consuming that being self-centred, all-consuming soulless gluttons is some sort of answer. How you typify your own wants, might be different, but your seeking without any thought of higher purpose or grander purpose than yourself is just as vacant in its destination as what a mach3 razor presents itself as offering your destiny unless you tap into all that you are giving... and recognizing yourself as a giver, or part of that which surrounds yee and made you you.pretending as though it appears as a closed system, though I am fairly certain you rationally think otherwise, is a foreign tale to me.

How can you follow through on your logic this way?
You have Aidos and Dike my dear, otherwise you would not survive. Know that you use them, and use them knowingly! Or at least feel not that you are a fraud, or fooling. Because it is but you yourself who is made a fool by habituating such a practice. You are more than just skill and self. You are quality and virtue. You are the quite lovable, nurturing, contributing you.

 So plug in!

Something talked about in Equilibrium is Plato's idea of Zeus telling Hermes to give human kind Aidos and Dike.
I want to talk about that more next time.

------------------------------- 

So, for a long time people had told me I was quoting John Raulston Saul and I would retort "I have never read JRS" and that would be the end of that. I am mid-read of Equilibrium, my first book in a long long while, and I am perpetually surprised by how much it echoes my mind. Now I am wary to keep reading, because in the future I may be quoting JRS when I mean to be just being myself. Dang.

This entry was heavily quoting and referencing the first pages of On Equilibrium 

The reason this post is titled "Equilibrium1" is because I assume I shall touch back on what reading has done to my mind.

---------------------------------------------

Plan: Bee

Once, a man named Brian Riley got some friends together

because he wanted to make something beautiful

    

Then we got together and started thinkin' a lil about what could beeeeee

We agreed it should be a process, an experience involving the audience

Mind, Heart and Body

Lecture, Song & Dace

And that it should be about bees.

And their everyday magic.

And how that relates to the Human experience.

Then we took over The Bus Stop Theatre, c/o Clare & Keelin

(who's kindness and creativity shall never be forgotten)

and covered it in glitter glue.

Then we prepared to arm our audience with Kazoos, fluff balls (pollen) and wings, drum beats and tonnes of honey

 

And we didn't know really what we were doing but we just did it!

We got to see it all for the first time with the audience. which culminated in singing "Don't Worry Bee Happy" and a giant dance party/drum circle.

One of the most magical and memorable experiences of my life.

 

It is lovely when all things just come together.

Photos care of Corizon Richardson and Eli Gordon

Frequent visitor

This man is often at my house and is greatly loved. He enters the video much in the same way he enters our home and therefore I am heartwarmed perpetually.

Plan Be

 

 Sweet illustrious New Year

I am absurdly privileged.

I am excited to do right by the world

And I have a good feeling

About this one

"
Get this in mind early: We never grow up.
"
 

Some call the way the world works

"The Goldilocks Paradigm."

Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.

Not too big, not too small. Just right.

A precise balance
(I think this ignores that she did steal porridge
but at least she knew what she wanted, I suppose)

"
Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them.
"

Sometimes I gravitate towards goodness 

and live in its extremes
So I seek problems so I might solve them
My pathology and my disposition encourage such a thing.
I seek to balance it all out

I love arguments and hearing I am wrong the morbidly beautiful, mortality, the ugly, the gross
the surly, because these are the ways I can feel my growing and know that I am knowing

Somewhat similarly in love,

I don't like fellas too hot

(so that I might imagine them deluded about who I am)

so I seek a caring coldness
Because I think it a better teacher

But really, I do want to live a lovely balance

Because otherwise I cannot give all I can give

And I cannot feel my rhythms which animate me
Cannot be properly called out
and called on my shenanigans
It is no good making out the problems others have with you as their problems
even if they are?
everyone's reality is of consequence


"
Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.
"

I feel (and perhaps sometimes I pretend) everything is a mirror, and inherently a part of myself

But sometimes I forget to check for who I am
and recognize my own choices

In the Circle Game

I want to break

these bones, your prisoning rhythms

            (winter,

            summer)

all the glass cases,

erase all maps,

crack the protecting

eggshell of your turning

singing children:

I want the circle

broken.

Methinks, we all tell ourselves stories of our lives

because we all see things differently, and it is hard to deny everyone's reality is of consequence

Certainly to themselves. and if they are actors in the world then they are of consequence to us all

but it is all our own fiction we are telling ourselves and the world

and sometimes we forget to own our own fiction

That we are our writers

(Who do I want to be? Ultimately, how would I desire to be? Did that just happen?)

and for a wee while there not only did I not own my own fiction

I did not see the difference between me and the mirror

felt trapped, that something wrote me

rather than honoring my ability to respond

and did not even like the story I was telling myself








 "
Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
"

It is a beautiful freeing thing

when you remember to choose life.

Right now I am obsessed with Bees.

 

It is so so interesting that the creatures only have one method of defense

and it rips their guts out

so they are not in any way defending themselves, 

they are defending the hive.

When I was a kid I always used bees dancing as proof of the divine.

I have been thinking
About being a conduit
About what it means to feel the divine
and yourself
and other people
always.
And how to best do it without being known as crazy
and without stopping hearing the wind
or negating the value of my dreams


(Polar Dip 2011)


And how to write a story
that is the best story
The one I have inside me
a balanced story
sensible enough that
the moral might be easily applied and internalized for those who read it
and I might still be bettered for it
and feel blessed and satisfied in watching its ripples
and all facets of what might be
from who I have been

And still telling whole truth.
that I might tell
.

My first dream of the New Year that I can remember is
sailing with David Crosby

by little islands
outside of Venezeula
"Sometimes the music is strong enough... it pulls out of us a better self" -David Crosby

I feel so free.
So aware of illusions
and happy for their existence
and their meaningful meaninglessness



"
I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?

"


Abosolutely.

 I am going to go see the river man.