Happy Friday, folks!
Got a weird one for you today. I don’t even know what it is, but such is the importance of Free Speech, so thoughts can be articulated, and we can all move towards something resembling the truth. (And for the opportunity for Dope Slaps to exist. “What are you talking about, Josh?”)
I got a funny feeling looking west the other day. Wait…I’ve heard that before.
There’s a feeling I get, when I look to the West…
Great, Zeppelin will be in my head all day. (I guess it could be worse.)
It’s as if the Distance was calling. What?! I gazed towards the mountains, from a mountain perch myself, and there it was. I’ve heard it before. Now, should I heed the call, and drive to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and hike up the summit...it would look a lot like the mountain I was currently puzzling on. There must be something more.
Data Points
Let’s take a hard look at the structure of this. As far as I can tell, this is how we interface with the world:
We receive data (input from the world)
We either a.) disregard it, b.) regard it unconsciously (to possibly emerge later), or c.) we regard it consciously.
This data can contain the following:
No (consequential) information: A random red car observed on the road.
Unknown information: A random red car in our driveway that’s not ours.
Known information: A red car in our driveway that is ours.
Combined information: Our friend’s red car in our driveway who has arrived to visit. We know the car, we know the person, but they will bring us unknown news, etc.
To be intellectually rigorous, anything is really option #4. The proverbially known “back of my hand” contains biological, chemical, and quantum properties that are both unknown, and in some cases, unknowable. But let’s back it up just a bit and take things at face value.
The Distance
Once, I did a whole series of podcasts with no point. They were terrible. But only slightly more so than some of mine with a point. There’s something I can’t quite articulate, but a story with a pre-determined, simplistic moral as it’s only point seems so shallow, and even condescending. Is the teller of the tale stooping to our level and saying in a singsong voice “therefore, boys and girls, always ask before you get a cookie”?
Perhaps a truly good story brings a variety of lessons and interpretations with it. The Bible and Beethoven would both possess this multi-dimensionality. Our dim awareness of the points don’t stop them from being there, just as my ignorance of chemical bonds and thermodynamics doesn’t stop me from cooking the eggs for lunch. (I wish they’d hurry up, already.)
It is, however, important to heed the call.
I don’t know why the distant mountains call to me. I don’t know why I’m captivated by seeing the wind dance in the meadow, or wonder where the stream is so busily hurrying to as it babbles through the culvert. There is something there, though. Some unarticulated (and perhaps unknowable) information contained in the sound of the distance train whistle as it works it’s way further on up the line. Maybe you’ve heard the call as you gazed down a road at sunset, or studied an old paper map.
What I am gradually realizing is not the why, but the what - the action step that it commands: it’s a reminder to continue to move into the Unknown (both the inner and outer worlds, that is.) As to why, I haven’t a clue. I’d bet money the answer isn’t on the summit of the next mountain. I suspect it’s in the movement towards it, though.
To quote Zeppelin a second time…But now it’s time for me to go - the Autumn Moon lights my way.
I think the eggs are cooked. I know my brain is. As I go off to lunch (not out, mind you), it seems like Rilke should have the last word today. Have a great weekend, folks!
…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.