No archipelago

I was invited to ponder the influence of a certain period of life on my life. I admit that I struggled somewhat in responding. My answer portrayed every act, incident, thought, etc. as a separate island in an archipelago of events. Furthering the geographical metaphor, we would propose that the girth and depth of each landmass represents its influence, its power. Although appealing, this is a spurious conceptualization. Why?

This is important: Everything is connected. Everything. Acts are not islands, nor are humans*. I have found metaphors to be misleading; no simple pictorial, verbal, or quantifiable function is capable of describing the interconnectedness. A continuous function is approximate, but visual Euclidean geometry unsatisfactory. O, the interminable dimensions! Life is an ocean of intermingled particles and organisms, all mixing, twirling, crashing, seeking to control by personal propulsion, but subject to the omnipotent tide and current. Humans ebb and flow with the rest.

Personal development is continuous. It is progressive and digressive. An influential incident, pattern, or period of life on life causes notable progression or retrogression. Change is inevitable; (reverting to the Euclidean plane example) no human being is a constant function. It is also typically gradual. There are, however, principle periods of flux, the most obviously accelerated one being youth (generally portrayed as developmental). This is the time when we process personal experience into personal knowledge. To the very young, everything is surprising. As we age, we ossify; we choose and invest and define ourselves, we settle into a comfortable reality. We come to know the world or we come to think that we know the world or we come to accept a certain interpretation of the world (Clearly, for this exposition, knowledge = belief). Surprise to common phenomena fades. Only the radical manifestations of nature (including human nature) surprise us.

Surprise is a function of ignorance and close-mindedness. The world as it is is ours and it is comprehensible. Unnatural is a misnomer. Unnatural does not exist. Unnatural is a societal allegation. All that occurs and is capable of occurring is natural; it belongs to our world. What else could it be?

Personal progression, for me, is the development of comprehension of the one world and, necessarily, the position, purpose, and nature of one's self in the world. This is a step beyond the above-proposed accumulation of knowledge/belief. It is the development of what is often called wisdom: Precise knowledge and keen discernment of what is and what "what is" means to oneself and the human species. It is that which leads us to a wise state of being which is personally and progressively influential.

*Remember John Dunne: No man is an island, entire of itself... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.

For Abdoms

I posted this poem on the wall of a friend. It is reproduced here replete with minimal aesthetic changes. Sooohaaa, diversity (of posts) be the goal of such a one as this.

Another nick-nombre monster to stalk me, hooray,

An elegant ether revolver to anesthetize me, wippee,

A cyclical-rhythm-emitting hollow box to hypnotize me, bash!

An alchemy for satisfaction and companions for collusion, wooooooozah,

Tangential approximations abound and essence evades, so what?

Reject non-sense, embrace similitude, and smile, yaaahaaa,

Reality is around but my sunglasses are tinted, harumph!

But, damn, the vision intrigues and distractions proliferate, yes, yes.

Sup of the soup to discover the formula, whaaa?

The melody of flavors that satisfies YOU, ahahahaha!!