"I of my own knowledge…"

Here, dredged from my journals, a little perspective from our guys on the other side, a cheering message as we enter a new year.

Monday, May 2, 2011

8:15 AM. Okay guys, you’re up. I can’t remember where we were, but presumably you can.

You as ring-master of your far-flung community are in effect continually redefining reality.

What do we mean by that?

First, remember that in life there are no absolute divisions, only the appearance of absolute divisions. Everything ultimately connects to everything else, in different degrees of intensity and different degrees of separation. So, it is literally impossible for you to avoid affecting the universe by anything you do.

At the same time, there is no one center to things. There isn’t a main table in the center of the ballroom, and your table far away at the fringes. In effect, for you and for everyone, you are at the center of your world. All things that happen are measured by their importance relative to you. Despite what centralized media may lead you to believe, there are no unimportant players in the world – your world or anyone’s world. But there are so many [centers]!

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I wonder if anybody realizes that just because  I am willing to do a psychological strip-tease in public, it doesn’t mean I am necessarily always comfortable doing it. Nonetheless, I proceed, because I am persuaded that it is worth doing for what it may suggest to various people.

This from my journal, rediscovered as I proceeded to perform this version of a past-life review.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

7 AM. I guess it isn’t a matter of what I produce, so much as what I become. I know that, so why is it always a revelation? But any time I am able to make it real to me, it’s like the first time, each time.

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One of the joys of keeping a journal, however diligently or not one does it, is the occasional review, the look back at roads trodden. Naturally, year-end is a convenient time. Found this conversation with Papa Hemingway which was of interest.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

7 AM. So, Papa, talk to me about loneliness. For I got a clear sense, last night, of how lonely you got, and how often.

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Original article at http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/dec/18/exhibit-highlights-hemingway-prose/

Exhibit highlights Hemingway prose

BY BRIAN HICKS

bhicks@postandcourier.com

Sunday, December 18, 2011

In the spring of 1935, Ernest Hemingway was lamenting the placement of his home on a list of Key West tourist attractions.

His regular Esquire magazine column was devoted to his tongue-in-cheek protest that he had no desire to compete with the Turtle Crawls (No. 3 on the map), the open-air aquarium (No. 9) or the Sponge Lofts (No. 13).

“Yet there your correspondent is at number 18 between Johnson’s Tropical Grove (number 17) and the Lighthouse and Aviaries (number 19),” Hemingway wrote. “This is all very flattering to the easily bloated ego of your correspondent but very hard on production.”

The idea of Hemingway actually writing must have seemed a curious concept to readers of the day.

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This article interests me chiefly because it seems to correlate with what the guys upstairs have been telling me for some time now: We are not individuals so much as communities. That’s not what the authors of this study would say, of course, but it seems to me that their study indirectly supports what you’ll find in The Cosmic Internet, not to mention so many posts on this blog. Like so many articles of interest, this one came to my attention via the daily SchwartzReport.

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2011/12/amoeba_experiment_dicty_strassmann_queller.php

But you’ll have to go there to see the two graphics, which I was unable to paste in here.

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I have found an awful lot of wisdom over the years in the novels of Dion Fortune. As a “for instance,” this from The Winged Bull, pages 155-157. It reminds me of an old Sufi saying, “Words are prisons; God is free.”

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As we get toward the end of the year, I sometimes re-read my journals to see how I spend it. A major part of “how I spent it” for me is  less what I was doing than what I was thinking about — or what (or who) I was communicating with. This, from last January, proved to be of interest.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

7:30 AM. So, I am very aware that I went to the Florida Keys as an indirect result of some restlessness within me saying that my accustomed way of living had become unsatisfactory. I am equally aware that I am having to avoid temptations — a crossword puzzle, a Nero Wolfe, any of a number of possibilities — rather than slow down enough to do this. Commentary?

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