Welcome once again to Personal Papers, my intermittent newsletter! The ongoing cascade of influences floods the sensorium. I look again, fresh mind, restarted, with a cleared cache. Can this really be true? All this light and form and taste and sound and colour and perfume and texture, here now and always, matching itself to me as I perceive it!
Well whaddaya know. I had exactly the same experience driving around the area to run errands a week or so ago. Hadn’t been out of the house for maybe a week and even then there was probably a week before that since I had ventured out....but I was driving on Circle Drive, listening to the radio, enjoying the music, when I suddenly experienced everything as a confluence ( reminded me of Pir Vilayat’s comparison of life to an orchestra) of apparently separate events that overlap and cause interference patterns with each other...all of the engineers who designed the roadway, the parks department that planted the grass, the teacher who taught me how to read so I could interpret road signs, the people who taught me to drive and what the rules were, the people who designed and built and marketed my car, the meteorologist who predicted today would be a good day to drive on the roads, the pharmacy companies and doctors and drugstores that provide the medications that help to keep me in one piece, the people who created road rules, who pumped my gas, who staffed the recycle place, etc. etc. etc. You know exactly what I am talking about. The music on the radio and the (perhaps forced) joviality of the DJ on the radio plus the smooth confluence of forces and events and entities that all manage to stay in tune with each other just overwhelmed me and I saw it for what it was. It was a beautiful,mintoxicating, compelling interplay of energy designed to keep me in this time and place, and it also had another undertone - like a matrix of forces designed to keep me entertained and thinking along the lines everybody else thinks too. Probably to carry us along in entertainment and keep ourselves from realizing the imminence and unavoidability of death. (Ref. Book by Becker, “Denial of Death”). Sort of like the pied piper. But it was really fun while I was able to see it in that fresh sort of way.
Carol.....I resonate with your deep inquiry into things, your sensory explorations. I also felt a kinship with your piece on Relationship...My focus currently is on remembering to be here and bringing my love along with me. Hope I get to know you better on Substack.
What a rush......awww.......awe.............rich awarenesses. We've been letting our roots tickle downwards, in this new/old part of the world, Vancouver Island. It's magical here. And groups of deer visit the green space by our living room windows. Thanks Carol
Well whaddaya know. I had exactly the same experience driving around the area to run errands a week or so ago. Hadn’t been out of the house for maybe a week and even then there was probably a week before that since I had ventured out....but I was driving on Circle Drive, listening to the radio, enjoying the music, when I suddenly experienced everything as a confluence ( reminded me of Pir Vilayat’s comparison of life to an orchestra) of apparently separate events that overlap and cause interference patterns with each other...all of the engineers who designed the roadway, the parks department that planted the grass, the teacher who taught me how to read so I could interpret road signs, the people who taught me to drive and what the rules were, the people who designed and built and marketed my car, the meteorologist who predicted today would be a good day to drive on the roads, the pharmacy companies and doctors and drugstores that provide the medications that help to keep me in one piece, the people who created road rules, who pumped my gas, who staffed the recycle place, etc. etc. etc. You know exactly what I am talking about. The music on the radio and the (perhaps forced) joviality of the DJ on the radio plus the smooth confluence of forces and events and entities that all manage to stay in tune with each other just overwhelmed me and I saw it for what it was. It was a beautiful,mintoxicating, compelling interplay of energy designed to keep me in this time and place, and it also had another undertone - like a matrix of forces designed to keep me entertained and thinking along the lines everybody else thinks too. Probably to carry us along in entertainment and keep ourselves from realizing the imminence and unavoidability of death. (Ref. Book by Becker, “Denial of Death”). Sort of like the pied piper. But it was really fun while I was able to see it in that fresh sort of way.
Carol.....I resonate with your deep inquiry into things, your sensory explorations. I also felt a kinship with your piece on Relationship...My focus currently is on remembering to be here and bringing my love along with me. Hope I get to know you better on Substack.
What a rush......awww.......awe.............rich awarenesses. We've been letting our roots tickle downwards, in this new/old part of the world, Vancouver Island. It's magical here. And groups of deer visit the green space by our living room windows. Thanks Carol