Means of Seeing what the eye brings

June 2, 2005

island time

Filed under: paperwords,philosophy — osteoderm @ 3:45 pm

Out west, there’s “Chilcotin Time”. Closer to home, “Cariboo Time”. ‘Course, down here, it’s “Island Time”. In the case of the former two, it’s an example of delayed action, a pause before the effort. Down here, it’s a case of some things never happening at all. i’m beginning to see that the latter has some justification, after living here for awhile.
There’s a passage from Herman Wouk’s “Don’t Stop The Carnival” that pretty much sums it up:

The West Indian is not exactly hostile to change, but he is not much inclined to believe in it. This comes from a piece of wisdom that his climate of eternal summer teaches him. It is that, under all the parade of human effort and noise, today is like yesterday, and tomorrow will be like today; that existance is a wheel of recurring patterns from which no one escapes; that all anybody does in this life is live for awhile then die for good, without finding out much; and that therefore the idea is to take things easy and enjoy the passing time under the sun.

Since i’ve been here, i’ve remained focussed, “eyes on the prize”, but i’ve also slowed down. The speed of life here is slow, yet inexorable, and there’s really nothing to be gained by trying to outpace it. Still, the “climate of eternal summer” is starting to get to me (and not just the heat!); my life up to now has been largely governed by the seasons. i marked my past and future by the passings of summers and winters. Now, my Canadian physiology is expecting a change of season, and naturally, after summer comes winter! Not so here… There is no milestone of climate, no abrupt passing of seasons. Lately, the most obvious difference is that most of the resident pelicans have been replaced by striking black-headed gulls, the splashing dives of the former replaced by the raucous Hollywood “jungle-monkey” calls of the latter.
Not that i’m eager for snow again, not quite yet…

October 23, 2004

relinquishment/nourishment

Filed under: friends,philosophy,positivity — hold fast @ 5:44 pm

I’ve been reading up on renunciation lately. In a couple days, I’ll be leaving behind all my friends, familiar places, routines, and rituals to start life anew in a totally different environment. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for months now, but as the time grows so close, I’m beginning to feel some apprehension. These past few nights, my dreams have been full of difficulties. I find myself struggling with something that should be so easy.
I found this quote by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes in Ascent Magazine:

    “I am beginning to discern the difference between the mind’s willful forcing of an outcome and the spirit’s ability to flourish in the dark and discomfiting soil of surrender. For years now, my mind has been trying to force something to happen that wasn’t ready. I have been trying to rush a process that knew, in an unseen way, its own time. I have been trying to achieve mastery through the will, not through relinquishment.”

In my own spiritual practice I often must find my way, slowly and laboriously, back to this point. Through no amount of self-confidence or apparent strength of character have I ever been able to force myself to feel happy, loved, enlightened, or successful.
It has been a tough lesson to learn, and unfortunately, one I cannot teach to others. To witness the struggles of others bothers me, but ultimately, they must learn the difference between surrendering and giving up on their own.

October 13, 2004

lost thoughts

Filed under: aspie,friends,philosophy,random,rants — osteoderm @ 4:54 am

So, okay, i just wrote this fabulous little essay, complete with a fine hook of an ending, and after hitting “publish post”, i watched it disappear into the ether. Crap.
I’m sure that it’s happened to you at some time or another as well. It gets me to thinking about all the lost thoughts out there. Do they end up with the odd socks and misplaced pens? What is the sum of the collective knowledge of all the accidentally-deleted and otherwise computer-victimized words of the world?
I’ve mourned for words i lost myself, and occasionally, for lost words written by others, never to be read. I suppose the same compulsion that leads me to investigate every corner, to read every word that i see, also leads me to try, vainly, to read the words that are just out of my grasp, out there.
If i might take this a little further… i was discussing logic and knowledge with Slacks, Serious, and Professica last week. i found myself trying to articulate an idea of mine regarding thinking about that which cannot be known, in much the same way as mathematicians deal in “unreal numbers”, which can be expressed in mathamatic terms, but never actually defined.
Then again, that might just be the Aspie in me speaking; a thought interrupted or lost, once i’ve begun to describe it, is seemingly lost to me. i find it extremely difficult to re-collect my thoughts and begin again, being bound to have to repeat myself verbatim.
But, ah, this post is starting to wander… time to try and recapture the lost thoughts of my previous essay attempt.

September 22, 2004

fetch ’round th’world

Filed under: friends,learning,philosophy,sailing,travel — osteoderm @ 3:05 am

We all have dreams, but at which point do they stop being dreams and start being plans and achievements? The furthest back that i can remember is when Hewitt invited Slacks and i up for New Year’s Eve, then later cancelled. Slacks and i had the time off work, and our road-trip vehicle prepared. We had to go somewhere.
We went to the city instead, where i met a person, who gave me a job, which introduced me to another person, who later introduced me to another person, which led to another job, where i met a sailor. This sailor indroduced me to another sailor, and to sea i went.

At that time i stepped away from dreams, and achieved one piece of me sailor-heart’s desire…

From there i met sailor upon sailor, and in the fullness of time (but not so long a time as all that) i met another sailor, a woman, who came to own me as no other had done before.
Now it’s hard to say, lads and lasses (tho’ i must confess, i dictate more to th’former than th’latter), when it was that we went wrong, tho’ if i was to guess, it came when we left the sea. Sea-legs were love-legs to we, and on th’hard we two did stagger. We were cast on land together, where things must have their appointed beginnings, and their appointed ends. In retrospect (always that the cunning teacher) my only real regret must be that i did not let her go th’sooner.

My sin it was to capture her; she is more wave than water, tho’ neither could i hold… She capsized me, as was wont to happen to a careless hand, setting a careless watch.

They say that in the Southern Ocean, the fetch does run th’world ’round, and in time, as wind and waves find their way eastwards, they have on occasion chance to run up upon themselves from behind; then there forms a wave so great, that none may stand before it.
There is no beginning at sea, says i, and no ending either. As creation calls it, first darkness, then water, and ever since, a wave ’round the world, before land or man or other fabulous animal. On land th’human animal is born and dies, but for th’sailors the sea.
Hewitt and Slacks have some idea of what beginning i claim, tho’ they cannot be my full heritage. But of my end, well… As this one wave does claim my heart, so it will be that the wind and sea claim my soul.
There is no better end for a sailor-song than that.

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