This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.
- Gregory Orr, "This is what was bequeathed us"
So much of the community that we aspire to and yearn for comes out of certain kinds of practises. We're all here for a certain amount of time doing something. So the question is, what are you doing with your time? How do you spend it, how do you fill up a day? What is the quality of that experience? When you take those units of experience and concentrate them over time in many people, what does it foster? A community is not an abstract set of principles; a community arises out of what people have to do - day in and day out - to take care of themselves and each other. The way they are together.
Why would you, in a time of supermarkets, go out there collecting individual clams, harvesting with your bare hands, drying out berries, walking around harvesting little bits of food - so much work for so few calories - why? What is the point? Because that's what you did with the day. Because theres a quality of experience that comes from looking so closely at the earth. You learn something. The way it absorbs your attention, the way you can spend hours in the berry bushes; it's not for the berries... they're just the effect. They're the berry on top. The meat of the matter is, “that's what I did today, that’s how I saw the world today, thats how quiet my mind was today, how many times I felt a spark of joy at "Oh, look, here's one. Oh, another one, and here's another one!" That's how precise my observation got today.
A revised quote by Eli Marienthal from "Back to Earth", speaking with Chris Ryan on Tangentially Speaking, episode 411.
So, how are we spending our time?
"Remember above all things, Lydia, that to create is not difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no time, that when you are sincere about it, that when you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult, not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth power, as if you were a creating machine with a store of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless, and rich. For it is true; this is so.
Do not forget it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm, drive it home...don't mind critics, they don't know what they're taking about, they're way off the track, they're cold; you're warm, you're red hot, you can create all day, you know what you know... remember that, Lydia, and when you feel as if you cannot draw or paint or sing or dance or make, as if it is no use, as if life is no good, read this over and realize that you can do a lot of good in this world by turning out truths like these, by spreading warmth, by trying to preach living for life's sake, not the intellectual way, but the warm way, the way of love, the way which says: Dear kin, I greet you with open arms, I accept your frailties, I offer you my frailties, let us gather and run the gamut of rich human existence. Remember, the ease, the grace, the glory, the greatness of your art; remember it, never forget. Remember passion. Do not forget, do not forsake, do not forget. It is there, the order and the purpose; there is chaos, but not in you, not way down deep in your heart, no chaos, only ease, grace, beauty, love, greatness... Do not forget it, do not forget it; please, please Lydia, do not forget yourself. Preserve yourself, and share yourself with the world. They need to hold what you are giving."
- A personal adaptation from a quote from Jack Kerouac to tell myself every day.
The feeling of love is just projected onto possibility. The feeling is manufactured from thoughts, and those thoughts aren't the person or the thing.
For example, if the thought of a certain person gives me butterflies, but when I see him next he somehow doesn't match my fantasy of him (my expectations of what love was going to look like or feel like), the gut sensations disappear. So the feelings weren't about him; he stayed the same. They were about the excitement of the potential of love, the projection of the feeling of love onto a human body. If they were about him, nothing he does could alter the love. That's what they must mean by "the object of my affection".
Can I have these love feelings - the butterflies, the giddy stomach and body jitters - for every thing in life that opens doors to opportunities and potential? can't everything, if seen as a gift of possibility, be completely loved? can I have those same body sensations with this awareness?
