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Notes To Self

Just be yourself. What does that mean? How do we just be ourselves? At which age are we closest to the self that is the self?

Today’s results in San Francisco—the public defender win. Chesa Boudin won the mayoral race for SF in California. This is a fellow who stood up against the Democratic machine and all of their endorsements to win. This could bode well for a message that really does need to be heard. Democrats, liberals, progressives, all are quite sick of the slick, the machine, the corporate in any dress that does not truly represent the people.

And the Packers won on Sunday, though a bit of a sloppy win, still a win. We’ve a bi-week coming up so this Sunday’s a freebee. We’re now 8 and 2. Not bad at all moving forward. Especially when we thought we’d have to wait for 3 years while the new team got put together. That’s the normal when the olds are replaced by the new players.

British novelist Julian Barnes was right when he wrote in his book “A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” that “Irony may be defined as what people miss.” And mostly people misuse irony when they mean poetic justice. That’s when people get their just deserts for how they have acted or lived their lives. That or another misuse, that of Karma, when it isn’t Karma at all. Likely it’s the “what goes around comes around” thinking.

Some quotes are just lovely of themselves, tho we might never find a good use for them. Consider:

“Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.” ~ The Butterfly


Posted by Tao and Zen

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Ohio Today

Here we are today, with the sun and chill, hanging out in all the finery of life.

Rob Blair  
A touch of winter met with some rich autumn colors late this morning at Munroe Falls Metro Park.

Sometimes when beauty hits the eye it’s too difficult to list the trials of dealing. Just emerse. Just breathe.

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Sun Tzu & Art & War

From thoughts within a life where unlikely connections and rumminations occur, and odd readings mark sleepless nights. Why not thoughts of war? Why not Sun Tzu?

With my reread of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I was struck by the connection to the war in Viet Nam, and of how it was likely we lost because of it. In the book, Sun Tzu instructs the army which is forced to defend—as the other, more powerful army, is stronger. And that instruction is clear: go deep underground. And that’s what the Viet Cong did. American soldiers complained loudly about the tunnels the Cong built, hiding, running, attacking, all of it a surprise for which there was no possible preparation. Our enemy was too deeply entrenched in an underground network.

Also, we did not stand much of a chance as we were the enemy who “did not know the Tao.” I say this as a translation, considering the references to the Tao as more symbolic than literal today. We can know the Tao if we live our lives as a moral beings, following Truth. Certainly our path of destruction with the murder of whole villages, women and children, bloodied the earth and our hands in the destruction of the Tao, hence we did not “know the Tao.” We were doomed, on this plane and on the other.

Perhaps then, the enemy read the Art of War, while the U.S. Generals, thinking themselves far superior, read the journals of modern warfare. Again, in a warning from Sun Tzu, we did not know our enemy. If we had, might it have come to a different end? Of course we cannot know. We can only speculate.

But I do know that—if I were the leader of an army—I would read the Art of War attributed to Sun Tzu.

posted by Nature of Nature

When wars are a matter of survival, who will win?

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Sometimes The Way Forward Is Backwards

With what’s happening these days it’s difficult to encircle or plot a steady course ahead. Sometimes it’s just plain too much to read the same things, to hear the same things, the news, the critiques, the comedy, the very essence of our world. Sometimes it’s just too much to bear when football and reading and films only allow momentary escapes. Sometimes reality pushes us in other directions, other retreats, other vistas for hope, and the desire for the Spirit.

So. I used to have and now just bought some Runes and a set of Tarot Cards and book. I found the same book and set for the runes, but couldn’t find the right book for the tarot. I did get the Rider Waite set, but the book is a revision. As with all revisions, it’s not quite the same. Of course I went about trying to find my originals, to no avail. I doubt that I would have thrown them out but you never know. I do have my other persona who is quite unforgiving and strict, who tosses to cleanse as well as remove the unnecessary. *Humph* And then there are those pesky unpacked boxes yet remaining in the garage. Anyway, I—the more nostalgic or wanting-to-believe me, am left with what remains. Or doesn’t remain. Hence the new purchases.

And then, the synchronicity whispers itself in as I am in a more amenable place. This today:

Posted by Psyche’s Call with Donna May

Ah yes, the yearning for secret knowledge, the sacred connection. Not Religion, not a faith born of dogma or those lost Saints, but something else. Something from the past that knew without question, that took breath from the wind and made a euphony through the trees. Something unnamed and unnameable.

At my son’s funeral I left the velvet bag of his runes in his hands, and spilled out from that, the Odin Rune. That rune symbolizes The Unknowable, The Divine, the All-Father.

Blank is the end, blank the beginning.

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Joy Harjo: Crazy Brave

I’ve just newly discovered Joy Harjo. This is about her and worth the read, even if just a skim through to the heart that will grab you.