Sunday Stream (152) ~ untitled - 152.2.24.08

[mtmynd]

untitled
152.2.24.08

This 'new' life of non-excess is something I'm still trying to get my mind around. No alcohol to excess, i.e. a 2 drink maximum with meals, no mind altering smokes, no nicotine, a watchful diet and daily walks (6 days, thank you!) and what do I have to show for this? I'm still alive. I actually feel pretty damn good. I think I think a bit more clearly if not much more clearly... but I really can't explain to myself what that means... I have little to compare that with except a memory that diminishes daily to a certain degree. Now that! I do know what that means : too much value has been placed on our memory. So much so that it determines our mental condition as we grow older. Many older folks don't quite remember things from their past as clearly as they once did. But I've found that it's really not that important. So I can't remember the name of some joker that made me laugh twenty years ago. Should I really knock myself on the forehead because of that?? Or I don't remember the price I paid for tomatoes last week? Big friggin' deal.

Our minds are wonderful things. Why should we clutter them up with a bunch of useless knowledge that only gives our egos a rush? Not remembering most things from our distant past is actually a good sign - we don't continue holding on to the past. That is an indicator that we are more into the now than we were. Being aware of now doesn't allow us to drag all that past crap along with us... it' way too cumbersome. And that past... that interminable past is mostly best left there, in the past. Too many folks keep their past with them as if that past was ever misplaced or lost their whole life would be gone... bip! like a flash - life ended, mind dead. But that is so much bullshit.

I'm not talking about dis-ease here. I'm talking about healthy folks with normally healthy minds. Sure we must remember some things from the past. But most of what we remember is what we actually need to keep our head together. There's a slew of things that are pretty necessary for a normal existence and one that doesn't require outside assistance. You know which ones suit you.

But here and now... that's always fresh and new. Age doesn't come into it. Mind runs on instinct in the now. And when that happens ironically the memory of what transpired in 'that' now is still fresh in 'this' now, now being unchangeable in a changing climate.

Let life go. Don't struggle with it. Life's been around one hell of a lot longer than you, him or me. If you can't let life go on it's own, you gotta problem. A control issue. Fucked up. Anyone that attempts to control life is fighting a force much greater that themselves. They will lose. And perhaps they should... the sooner the better. The quicker they will see they truth in life - plug yourself into the natural flow and go... merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a stream. But you know that. So do they. And all of them. And me. We all know this. So why do we allow mind to think otherwise and get away with it? This is when humor has the ability to cure our dis-ease.



cecil
24 february 2008

talavera sink

photo: cecil b. lee

[stilltrucking]

Beautiful sink
I wish i had one
I would brush my teeth more often


my beautiful lawn chair collapsed
maybe it was the rust that weakened it
but I prefer to think it was because the meat
accumulates

thanks for the stream
helpful to one who is still living in excess

[Artguy]

I've always been a bit of a pack rat ...can't throw stuff out...my wife does that for me. I suppose it's the same with memories. I'm not one to grow old gracefully. I cling like sandwich wrap to the past...and to the future too, which I find far more problematic, expectations = disappointment. There are these projects and exhibits I keep chasing like a mule after a carrot. The sad part being is that I KNOW I won't catch it. I wrote in my journal recently that this will be my final year for chasing that carrot...and that after that I will just make my art and leave the rest up to the ether...ego, it's like the crow always playing tricks. I'm not one to fall for the deceptions of others...but I will always cave to my own...

Good health Cecil...

[stilltrucking]

good health to you both
I am not giving myself another year
I can't see down the road that far
I think I can see tomorrow
but I might be wrong.

I feel like the log truck driver in Gary Snyder's poem
"why do log truck drivers awake earlier than students of Zen"
I look back behind me and see thirty miles of dust.

I'll never fix that chair
it has to go
it was so comfortable
kind of a rocking motion

Let memories go? not sure that is under my control
like saying dont think of pink elephants

The Molecular Basis of Memory
a book I have managed to hang onto for thirty five years
weird for me to hang onto something that long.
three or four books that's all
and a small metal statue of two frogs sitting on a saw horse that my mother gave me years ago.
I am a pack rat too but every few years a divine wind blows through my life and I am freed of so many possessions that tie me down.

except for a few books and that little statue.

Sometimes when I move into a new place and I have nothing I would put the statue on something so that the light fixture would cast a shadow of those frogs onto a wall and I would not feel so lonely.

When I first came back to texas this last time all I had in my appartment was a card table, the yellow lawn chair and a bed. the frogs on the window sill so the street lamp cast the shadow across my bedroom wall.
Home sweet home.

Sorry for the ramble
I love when I forget trivia
but just when I think I have cleared up some memory space inside my skull
more keeps flooding in
conversations with people from years ago
an episode of the twilight zone
a woman 's eyes
a sound byte from a tv commercial
the sound of steam locamotive
fog horns in the night back in baltimore

insults and injuries
I would need to to drive a wooden stake thorugh my brain
to foreget
I rise above my resentments
the best I can'
with a little help from my friends.

[Artguy]

Lots of Snyder in your wisdoms of late..I am no stranger to Japhy Ryder myself...

[stilltrucking]

I have lashed out at cecil more than once
like trying to kill the buddha I suppose

[Arcadia]

I don´t have a theory about memory. Only some messy intuitions . There is a point when you just don´t need to remember certain things in the same way. And that not indicates at all that you have forgotten them. Maybe memory is a process somehow wiser than an old machine

I´m really happy to know that your health is improving, Cecil!!!!!!!

I love the mandalic-colorfull-sink!!!!!!! how beautiful!!!!!

thanks for the stream & saludos!!!

Arcadia

[mtmynd]

artguy : "Good health Cecil..."

Thx, Kurt. I need it if I'm to make it.

truck : "Sorry for the ramble"

one should never feel guilt about doing what they do best, amigo. stop that friggin' apologizing. it's unbecoming.

Arcadia : "I don´t have a theory about memory. Only some messy intuitions "

'messy intuitions'... that's muy comico, amiga. it's good to get messy when your being intuitive... a special joy to it, si?

The sink! It was for sale. I could only take home a picture. maybe someday... ??? quisas, quisas....