Friday, March 2, 2012

Holy Smoly!

Smoly?  Just feeling playful, that's all.  Not a usual inclination for me.  Playful. Hmm.  I feel a wellspring of playfulness starting to burble, gurgle. Quite a change of pace and tone from my more morbid musings. It probably has a lot to do with the Spring that is beginning to emerge.  Titmice, chickadees and cardinals regularly singing now.  It's only March 2 but the air is already alive with the sweet scent of rebirth.  Crocsues (Croci?), daffodils, and tulips are poking there brave heads out of newly thawed turf. Holy smoly indeed.
Black-Capped Chickadee

I saw a chickadee sitting on top of one of the birdhouses I put up last Fall singing it's Spring mating song.  Their plaintive, sweet song is similar to another favorite bird song of mine, the white throated sparrow. (The video link for the wt sparrow is spectacular.  It says more than I will ever be able to write here)

This Winter has been incredibly mild with very little snow.  I feel we don't deserve Spring.  We haven't suffered enough yet.  Why is it so difficult to expect and accept good fortune?  Maybe we'll have a monster snow storm in March to make me feel more comfortable.

To hell with old, nasty, negative thinking.   Here's to Spring springing!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Putting your money where your thoughts are

Lying in bed this morning, waiting to get inspired to make my entrance onto terra firma, I was rethinking the thoughts expressed in yesterday's blog.  What was it about the Nietzsche reading that got me so jazzed up?  I've been stewing for months.  Feeling adrift, at sea, rudderless, etc. Not depressed necessarily, but unexcited, unmotivated, blah.  And here comes a guy who says, "A man never rises higher than when he does not know whither his path can still lead him." And, to ice the cake, this prestigious German philosopher backs up this assertion with a rather convincing line of reasoning.

Holy shit!   I'm not down I'm up!  I'm not lost, I'm found.  Friedrich, you da man.

Why should I feel validated and energized by the words of a 19th century philosopher who according to the short bio preceding the Sun magazine article...


"at the age of thirty-four..retired from is post as a professor...and for the next ten years led a nomadic existence, living in cheap boarding houses...all the while suffering poor health, experiencing nearly constant pain, and having limited human contact - conditions he saw as necessary to his work. (emphasis added) In 1889 he suffered a mental collapse in the streets of Turin, Italy, reputedly upon seeing a horse being whipped.  He never recovered, spending the last eleven years of his life in a semiconscious state.  He died in 1900. "

I think there may be more than validation going on here. It's nice to have someone suggest that my somewhat tortured quest for post retirement truth and meaning is an honorable, noble? pursuit.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that this warm and fuzzy afterglow of affirmation may soon be superseded by an uncomfortable call to principled action.  A dealers demand to ante up, to put my money where my thoughts are.

 Nietzsche's words earlier in the same essay provides an uncomfortable foreshadowing of the difficulty of making this translation. "...men are even lazier than they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences with which unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them."

His own tragic life showed that the burden could go far beyond inconvenience.

I know I'm not ready to be unconditionally honest.  I used to try to make that my modus operandi but found it ultimately to be too self-serving at the expense of others. Nakedness is certainly out of the question at this late date  but a little more exposure could be a good thing.

In summary I feel Mr. Nietzsche gave me a pat on the back and somehow this is boosting my courage and energy to continue down the path even though I have no idea "wither (this) path can still lead." 

 Life can be so wonderful and fascinating at times.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

"When death finds you may it find you alive"



The following quotes are from excerpts from Untimely Meditations by Fredrich Nietzche that appeared in the Sun magazine's November 2011 edition.

"There exists in the world a single path along which no one can go except you.  Whither does it lead? Do not ask, go along it. Who was it who said, "A man never rises higher than when he does not know whither his path can still lead him."


"But how can we find ourselves again? How can man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled.."


"This is the means by which an inquiry into the most important aspect can be initiated; let the youthful soul look back on life with the question "What have you truly loved up to now; what has drawn your soul aloft; what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it?"  Set up these revered objects before you, and perhaps their nature and their sequence will give you a law, the fundamental law of your own true self.  Compare these objects one with another; see how one completes, expands , surpasses, transfigures another, how they constitute a stepladder upon which you have clambered up to yourself as you are now; for your true nature lies not concealed deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at  at least above that which you usually take yourself to be."

In the same edition of the Sun there is an extended interview with Michael Meade entitled "Your Own Damn Life" which also focuses on the importance of knowing yourself.."finding ourselves again."

He quotes an African proverb "When death finds you, may it find you alive"  and writes "Alive means living you own damn life, not the life that you parents wanted, or the life some cultural group or political party wanted, but the life that your own soul wants to live."

As the regular reader(s) of this blog know(s) this goes to the heart of my post retirement angst...what is "the life my own soul wants to live"?. Since retiring in May of last year I've been struggling trying to figure this out.  I, unfortunately, feel like I've made very little progress.   I was, however, energized and encouraged by both of these Sun articles, especially the sentiment expressed in the line...


"A man never rises higher than when he does not know whither his path can still lead him."


I'm not quite sure what that means but it inspired me enough to write this blog entry.  The first one in months.  That's something. 


I think in my next blog entry I'll try the exercise suggested by Nietzxche...


"What have you truly loved up to now; what has drawn you soul aloft; what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it?"  Set up these revered objects before you, and perhaps their nature and their sequence will give you a law, the fundamental law of your own true self. "


Stay tuned!

Post Script - I just reread some of my earlier blogs and came across one from 2010 which  I quote extensively from East Coker, one of the Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. If the ideas above interest you at all I think you'll find Mr. Eliot's poetry worth reading.  Here's the link. to the blog.