The Year in Blog, 2024 - reflections and observations

Well hello there, 2024.  Sorry we're so late to the event, but we are here now, curious and wading in the murky waters.  

Photograph by tod gorman

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The Year in Blog, 2023 - reflections and observations

Well, 2023.  This was something? 

Absent by default, not by design.  Life has a way of happening without negotiation.  

I'll be returning to biab sometime in mid 2024.  

I look forward to picking back up on some series of old, as well as new contributions.  

See you there.  

Photograph by tod gorman

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War and Weakness - reflections and observations

How have we not evolved beyond a society in which the littlest of people make the biggest of decisions, the weakest of us bear the greatest power?  This innate tendency within our systems to feed and advance sociopathy, egocentrism and arrested development.  We would be well concerned if our children, whom lack developed frontal lobes, made decisions so void of empathy and basic consideration.  Yet, people not only tolerate such underdeveloped behavior from our institutional and national leaders, they tend to reward and follow it.  The repetition of the horror in real time magnifies the absurdity, often lost in history books and tilted stories.  War is the weakest whimsy of the worst of us, condemning collective crisis on all of us, with sense that begs madness. 

The Year in Blog, Welcome 2022 - reflections and observations

Welcome 2022.  This could go a lot of different ways. 

The level of apathy or action will be the determining variables.  Let's see what we can do about that... 

Photograph by tod gorman

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The Year in Blog, 2020 - reflections and observations

Dear 2020, no words.  Just, no words.  Too much.  

Been busy watching the wind.  Be back sometime in 2021.

Photograph by tod gorman

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A New Year - reflections and observations

Farewell 2018!  It's been weird... and stressful... and heavy... and a little creepy.

My wish for 2019:  We open ourselves to brighter, slower days filled with something new and real - with our eyes open, minds alive, actions forward, and resistant as necessary.  With love is not without action, and so we move on with hope, but not without realism, ration and experience to direct us.

Surrender and the Rhythm - reflections and observations

I pulled a nice, neatly packed cigarette out of the hip, eco-friendly box to smoke, and, meanwhile, another cig dropped from my pack and onto the ground.  I asked myself, "do i trust my hand more than that of the rhythm of the universe - or even gravity and an accidental hand-tilt, for that matter?" I put the nice clean cigarette from my hand back in the pack, bent over and picked up the cig from the dirt-laden ground and put it in my mouth.  A little grit in my teeth til i spit, but good smoke and stunningly beautiful moon.  Sometimes dirty cigarettes are better.

Fame - reflections and observations

"No fame" is preferable to 15 minutes.
- but awfully perceptive "foresight" on Andy's behalf.

Mortem - reflections and observations

Nothing forgives our mistakes like death.

The Human Condition - reflections and observations

It seems, at times, a state of perpetual tilting tears...

Simple - reflections and observations

Watched two buddhist monks in full traditional garb lightly tread ground as they walked to the back of a multicolored Thai Food Cart in South Austin with their friend, the spitfire owner, a small but tough (and funny as hell) older lady of Thai descent - all smiling. It reminded me to reopen some buddhist literature and philosophy of younger days. Albert Camus, thoughts on absurdism, and my recent rereading of The Stranger linger in my head as well. Readings and thoughts and ration that have long been familiar to me, available to me, read and reread, and yet seem newly found once again.
As to the inherent meaning of life that humanity is endlessly in longing for (you know, the one that doesn't exist yet has spawned infinite philosophical theory, formal organization and alignment, academia and absolutism of all sorts, religions, more religions, etc.)
The whole point, the purpose itself, is to escape pain (inherent in humanity and life) and to find Happiness - this IS the meaning in itself (or at least the only one feasibly available to human capacity) - the discovery OF meaning for oneself. That's it. It is most definitely a subjective experience that must be had as such, but oddly there is a communal consistency throughout humankind and history OF that experience.
Hmmm? It seems so simple.
How do i keep forgetting? Not simple.

Arizona Gun Control? - Image of Interest... reflections and observations

People shoot their guns at a shooting range near the Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 15. - image by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Curious thoughts jangle through my head - thoughts of reason and ration and basic human comprehension and simple civil deduction and sympathy and heartache and bewilderment and the horridly painful, hopelessly burdensome desire for us to be just a little bit better, a little bit smarter, as the human race, as a community, as a collective of communities, as a species... And this image, in conjunction with its location, transforms into a landscape of absurdity - and my head hurts.
I'll leave you to your own deductions and considerations...

Links:
NPR - Obama Pushed To Address Gun Control
The Atlantic - The Geography of Gun Deaths (this article provides some intriguing, and disturbing, regional statistics and charts)

Today and the Continuum - reflections and observations

So concerned with the implications of the present on the future, and the demarcation of that future, we lose our days one by one to a concept, that by all rational logic, does not exist.

- Obviously, i am not intending to dismiss the very rational assumption that a "future" does exist, or that preparations/aspirations are futile. However, the daily tasks and experience of life harness autonomous joy that is too often forgotten or neglected. Smile for today, don't expect tomorrow, but be prepared to continue the journey if it comes.

Existential Woes - reflections and observations

Keep nailing the ground to the earth,

but it won't stay down.

Duality is the Premise - reflections and observations

EVERYTHING is a duality.

Enigmatic "Justice" - reflections and observations

Justice is an abstract concept (perhaps due to it's intangible universality juxtaposed with the necessity to impart it under subjective consideration) - and, hence, one that is poorly integrated into our social, judicial, and economic paradigms.

Note: reference Plato's "forms"

The Sadness - reflections and observations

The collected sadness of any individual's life - if compressed into one moment - would be potent enough to destroy anything.