“Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.”

26 August 2009

 
“It's better to send in the Peace Corps than the Marine Corps.”  - Edward Kennedy

  
the sun never really rose today despite a dim blue sky it only got darker and more humid.  a familiar mewling alerted me to the arrival of kittens again on the sleeping bag in T's bedroom.  lots.  of course the two already picked from the litter, they have the faces of losing pugilists.  a spotted one, of all things, and one with just this face, this broad wide face.  the niece wanted a black so ill give her the one from the last litter.  but lets keep this fertile myrtle home til we can get her fixed.  funny last night i spoke of the birth smell and here i am today in the half light head in a sleeping bag smelling of the ocean.  kittens.  
  
 the new formatting.  im not going to fight it.  it wants the photos this way, fine.  it wants me to write centered, fine.  the datura energy is remarkable.  resonant.  it reaches out along its psychic ley lines and binds the focus.  weekly castrations are called for but one is certainly enough for this lightworker.  a presence in the garden diametrically opposed to the sunflowers.  balance.  the sunflowers give and give and give even after they are gone.  this datura tempts.  ensnares.  takes and takes along.  it is what the datura wants, not anything we could impose upon it.  it is literally a fascinating plant.  the stick broke before it, the smell is rather indescribable.  it smells like time.
  
made bread, brownies, sauce.  got an email from sdg asking "WHAT IS TRUTH?"  i offer for your consideration my knee-jerk responses composed while attempting to not eat the entire pan of brownies, the smell of new kittens still in my nose:

is it subjective or objective?    i once broke up with a boyfriend on christmas eve and sent him out into the snow because he believed in human objective truth.  objective truth in math, maybe.  not with people.  an infinite set of variables i believe makes human objective truth impossible.             

is it the opposite of anything?  does anyone remember big daddy from cat on a hot tin roof and his mendacity bit?  this is a difficult question.  didnt kant say anything by virtue of existing is truth, the yes?  what is not true?  i think when you lie about how you feel thats a lie.  the truth is a constant but lying is something we superimpose on the truth like lipstick on a pig.  the lipstick is a lie.  but its fleeting and does not change the nature of the truth in any way.  but the truth does not need us.  it exists independently.  lies need us to exist.  in the absence of human mendacity everything is true.  and i said that.

if you tell a lie but no one catches you, does that make it the truth?  no.  thats lipstick on a pig.  no one catching you just makes you a makeup artist. 

is it an absolute, ever? i believe that there are some absolute truths within the boundaries of our consciousness.  the mechanics of the solar system, gravity, friction, thermodynamics, hydromechanics.  i think we call them constants.  theyre pretty unassailable.  entropy in carbon based life forms.  thats a big one.  thats the closest you get to human objective truth.

can it change?  if it did it would not be a system we would recognize and it would alter all other aspect of that system and make our present consciousness obsolete.  this makes me rethink the idea of the solar system, say, as absolute.  introduce some random chaotic event.  an asteroid or whatever hitting one of the planets, setting all the orbits askew, cosmic bumpercars, all hell would break loose and the way life had gone on for millennia would be out the window.  i dont think were intelligent enough to notice subtle changes that are probably altering our consciousness over an enormous period of time.  like all the nuclear detonations weve made.  those must be mutating our very cells in a subtle way, not so subtle if you consider all the cancer now.  we dont have universal perspective.  this is leading me into a train of thought about karma, but were not talking karma.  truth can change.  yes.  we see it now, climate change.  theres not one kind of truth.  theres the truth i live with , live by, then theres physical, chemical, biological truth, etc.  what is true about me might not change over the blink of a lifetime.  in spanish theres the i am truth -- i am a girl.  i am a brunette.  then theres the transient truth about me -- i am hungry i am cold.  again, i think, the lipstick could be true but it will never be as true as the pig.   these are infinitely fascinating questions.

If it changes does the thing that was previously true become a lie?  or just not true?  it is still true.  when you look at a photograph of yourself in a diaper covered in chocolate cake that is true.  whether or not that photo was taken twenty years ago or last night.  insofar as every moment is the present and there is no future no past just the infinite now the truth we can really only hold on to for right now.  now.  now.  and some truths, the solar system pig truths, maybe take longer to disintegrate than the weather lipstick truths.  the lipstick lies are like building a model with pingpong balls and wire and calling yourself master of the universe.  lies are absolutely toxic and deadly and i think the greeks had some sort of harpies that ate the livers of liars.   lies are fear and the universe is love and lies fizzle in their own shit and i believe eventually get washed up on shore like beach glass, scoured beautiful from the wreck of the model solar system at sea.  boy, i can really go on.  

is there a difference between a lie and not true?  a lie is intentional.  not true simply is.  it is not true that brad pitt and i are secret lovers.  but if i tell you brad pitt and i are secret lovers, that is a lie.  brad and i not lovers = pig.  i am brads secret lover = lipstick. and i realized i confused the lipstick thing by making it sometimes a lie and sometimes a transient truth.  i am an incoherent philospher.  but for a fleeting instant that dichotomy addresses the question of transient truth vs. no longer true.  

how about between not true and no longer true?  this might be the same question as "If it changes does the thing that was previously true become a lie?"  is this a trick question?
 
41 of 365:

1.  new kittens.
2.  steve earle.
3.  my garden.
4.  typhoo tea.
5.  my resurrected love affair with dictionaries.
6.  dim cool weather.
7.  my compost piles.
8.  the good kitchen smells.
9.  mary oliver.
10.my ceramic mug.

2 comments:

  1. Suzie DeGrasse26 August, 2009

    The datura flower photo is mesmerizing. Thank you for keeping the plant. To me it smells like a benign evil. Or a live beignet. (ok, I added an et to get that). It smells nothing like a beignet, and now I'm hungry. I think I will find you the most amazing mug ever created and give it to you because you have mentioned ceramic mugs more than once in your 365s.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Suzie DeGrasse26 August, 2009

    "For example, Datura have the interesting property of being able to change size of plant, size of leaf, and size of flowers, all depending on location."
    Just like the best of us.

    ReplyDelete

Blessed Be.

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"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

For many the egg yolk prevails." -L.M.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough." -E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W.

"At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -D.T.
"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat."
-John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)