We live in a day and age with many different opinions and in a time where people don’t know what live and let live means.
Some might say it is because we have surrendered too much of our self government to the governing powers.
The Project Vehicle.
Others would say it begs the question the idea that the government would not ‘enshrine our values’.
For people like me the poles of secular and religious nationalism express perfectly why I don’t consider myself having reached my country. My kingdom ‘is’ not of this world.
There is a belonging without violence.
There is a city without nationalism.
There is an inclusivity with open diversity.
There is identity with cosmically aligned individuality.
There is a post post modernism that progresses and doesn’t destroy all ancient values.
The apex we stand on like a spinning globe is the interrelation of movement that is fixed and chaotic.
The social architects of the world may be called ‘they’ by some but to cool headed non conspiracists who are not afraid of the mechanics of the worlds infrastructure we merely call it a project vehicle.
Imagine deep within your soul you want to give gifts to the world..but then life happens and you get tired.
Imagine having the passion of a Content Creator but not knowing how to put your thoughts into words.
What am I protecting? Is this modesty.. its own form of honesty?
In order to be a popular platform poster you need to “post every day” or at least a few times a week.
Ah
That might not work then.
Where is the passion I’m looking for? Where is the spirituality I once had or the zeal for living life as if this life is a rare commodity?
How do I take life for granted so much? How do I lounge in carefree boredom narcolepsy or not? Am I pregaming my midlife crises, getting ready for it, double fisting it?
Seems like a me thing to schedule such a thing rather than to be surprised by it.
Well why on earth am I surprised that there’s no element of surprise when I feel like I already know what the book of my life is about..like God and I deliberated and threw the book at me?
Sometimes I feel like I have some crystal ball or a blueprint to my life in my subconscious mind. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of watching my movie from the outside.
Life and the enjoyment of life seems rather to be that the eyes and the ears and the nose would hear, see and smell what is here or at least whatever senses we have available to us. So strange that even Spiritual Doctors have remarked on sense “All knowledge comes through the senses.” Good job St. Thomas Aquinas for being like the Doubting apostle in your search for faith. I feel that heartily.
So there is that darkness in the soul of understanding (nous) to wit my life gives reference that I keep remembering that I don’t know and I do know. Part of me know my spirit though living in my body and not separate has separate agencies, faculties and ‘abilities’. I find it hard to be a gnostic because I’m an earthen vessel and yet though trying not to be “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good” I find myself trapped between worlds, like a ghost with a preternatural stain on the ink blot tests of the collective unconscious of this age.
In my heart I watch kingdoms rise and fall revolutions turn and the sun set many a year. The ages of time acquiesce to an Apocalyptic dance that never seems to end. All of this is beautiful and is a verdict to my and the worlds mortality. I hope that I can learn lessons of this knowing that “the spirit gives life and the flesh is of no avail.” so that perhaps life can come to my dry bones again.
I’m nervous as all get out tonight and I don’t really know why but I can say for sure that part of it is exemplified in how long it has taken me to make another blog post.
Cohesive senses of identity are difficult for neurodivergents like myself who have goldfish level attention to the present unless the deepseated passion quota within is met.
As a father and a husband I find myself struggling between the pragmatic mercantilism of St. Francis of Assisis father and the universal trustful love of St. Francis as if there were no way to balance the two.
I’m torn; comparing myself to the subjective standard of success I see in others and my fear of not measuring up to the imaginary ‘standard’.. all the while fearing the giving up of better heavenly real estate, my truest goal because I could only ever justify being a capitalist in the kingdom of heaven because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work very well for human nature down here on planet earth.
And yet somewhere deep inside my conflict (deep conflict) is that I of assurety believe in balance and yet I desire for the extremes of childlike trust in God and radical trust in His free miraculous work through His creation like I knew in my youth.
What do I need to become not only who I used to be but the next chapter of me?
Am I perhaps meant to be both? Sometimes a turned page is merely the front and back of one turned page.
I’m convinced I’m too young for a midlife crises but perhaps I’m early! If I die before I’m old perhaps I’ll have the luxury to live before I’m dead.
As a guy I knew once said.. “I don’t know what I’m doing and so can you.”
Original clay and mixed digital media art by me: “Blood and Water”.
The usual trifle of a mastermind is their undoing but there is a mastermind of daunting courage, accidental lack of ego and yet an individualism that “seeks not its own.” yet “lacks nothing” and is “perfectly equipped for every good work.”
‘The usual trifle of the Mastermind is the ‘truffle’ of the Mastermind. Wishing to escape the watching eyes of commoners presumed swine that are in their common simplicity the sign and signat of that primeval connective singularity of all beings the mastermind alone presumes to be the all seeing eye..and yet..”the spiritual man judgeth all things and yet is judged by no one.”
This is Yin and Yang, Light and Dark, Batman and Robin.
Shadows have the tendency to reveal the truth.
Just as Sherlock Holmes might make a game of wits with a man of wits similar and the chess game that interweaves as we see consciousness show mysteries, that is the mystery of evil and the mystery of good.
How does one of similar temperament and comportment as another choose evil or good?
How many of us truly ever meet our archnemesis?
The arechtypical mastermind is not entirely evil and vile.
The Benevolent Ego of the good Mastermind absorbs into the all.
Whilst being an individual self he is at the service of all.
While being egoless he has become all.
While the evil mastermind secures his fortress the good mastermind makes a glass house.
Through accountability is wrot tranquility for accountability is “to be known” by another name.
The evil mastermind secures his own house. When the good leader rules he secures homes for all.
Two houses all and all and great the potential dirges for if either were to fall and yet one shares generosity with urgency the other clenches stones and gold alike.
Like a dark prince of shimmering, ethereal and uncreated light so is the rarity of this egoless gift to humanity.
He/she calls back the valor of the medieval knights of lore. He is victorious and powerful and has found the white stone with his name on it. His name will never be blotted out.
May we all strive for such egoless truth of existence.
It is easier than people think for you to have an opinion when people are listening; contrary to the modern proverb “You can’t even have an opinion anymore.”
I know this because I wanted to be heard for years.
I had been glossed over. I had been forgotten. I had been passed over.
For about 5 or so recent years though I was performing live very regular as performing artist/ musician and in what could be considered a pendulum between a new entertainment extroversion to never before experienced levels and on the flip side semi extreme hermitism.
Then in comes the pandemic and I assume the role of a stay at home dad, the multimillion dollar company that used to pump posts about the show I leaded was no longer boosting my content with consistent and gratuitous amounts of ad revenue and that even in cahoots with some of my personal accounts.
The connection of my activity to Facebook translated mysteriously into my person seemingly having value to said algorithm (even if I wasn’t by any means even close to making the type of money the company I worked for was). To all possible intellectualization I could make out however, that the algorithm believed I was famous whether I was much at all. I was noticed somewhat. I was heard. I wasn’t so passed over.
Let me give you one lesson though. Facebook is not censoring you because they do not like you. Facebook just isn’t ‘boosting you’ because you aren’t making them money. At that time I was but now the algorithm believes I am noone, caput, basically a nobody.
This is the sad value testimony of human value in our crapitalist society. Nothing is usually popular in the way it was in ancient Athens.. back when intellectual values, philosophy of ideas and metaphysics were valuable of their own accord and merely for the fact of having mused upon them and nursed them into schools of thought. Now even that value is worthless unless it’s ready to pay the piper. I wonder how much money Facebook wastes not investing in these ideas. But I guess every time a toilet flushes at Walmart a tax deduction angel gets its wings!
So I’m settling in to a more long lasting version of my hermitage but I would be lying if I said that my depression has been totally at bay.
And yet still I’m doing something that some in the medicine/ science only crowd might think muddies the waters into dangerous hippy sentimentalist territory. I’m taking alot of walks in nature, exercising, taking my cbd, eating better, avoiding excessive alcohol or cussing at puppies and of course writing my blog as one part of my weekly healing process.
And you know what .. it helps; because sometimes even after a good helping of protein rich organic peanut butter pancakes.. on a rainy day, when your mind is racing and the sleep disorder demons have clocked out, they need someone to pick up a shift and of course the depression demons are ready and rearing to go. Even so when I write it out it has been transmitted from the realm of thoughts to the realm of words and in my subjective pseudoscientific opinion it seems to help.
I always knew I was an ‘ideas person’. I was always desperate to be stuck in a college academia library studying theology, philosophy, science, physics, social theory (EVERYTHING)!
I have always been mad that whatever secret branch of the government that hires for think tanks hasn’t broke their silence and reached out to me yet. But patience is a virtue after all! Le-sigh.
Re-sign. That’s my miraculous auto predict shake out of writers block! And that’s precisely what I’m getting to now.
The first step to embracing and truly enjoying solitude is getting past the loneliness and just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely when it’s just me and my daughter during the day. Yes.. even with my daughter there I get lonely sometimes and that’s ok even if her just being there really really helps!
You see loneliness is no respecter of persons. And yet perhaps its more helpful and comfortable to be all St. Francis like and call her Sister Loneliness.
Loneliness is like engaging a Jericho wall and sometimes you just got to blast a trumpet in your heart and shake yourself up a little to get past the false barriers it suggests and remember somehow, right now, life is still being lived.
You also must be humble if your’e more the type to be desirous of the hermit lifestyle because whether Pentupium Introvert 5.0 or not you just have to face the music that people aren’t always terrible and in many ways many of them are much better than you… and that’s ok! After all you have your own strengths and weaknesses too!
Most saints probably don’t mantra on that word too much or at the least they think it means something different than most people think it means.
So also a healthy hermit has to be humble and it is as intriguingly intricate as this idiomatic tongue twister.
The healthy hermit is the balance of ones needs and “the Others” needs.. whichever other or Other that may be.
Healthy solitude is a gift for a heart that is healing. It is the opposite of the crusted bitterness of undealt with trauma. The deep irony for he, she or they that seek solitude is this.. one can only seek solitude well as they find a supporting cast.
(A little poem comment I wrote for y’all antimaskers. )
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the fear of the Lord isn’t an end in itself. Is it fear to avoid hell which is worthy to fear and then say to the sick..go now physician and heal thyself?
Jesus said preach and heal is thy task. Where many words are -sin will not be lacking..so why oh erudite soul wont you please wear a mask?
If the Lord is to fear and the punishments of hell and to heal and to preach is thy mission pray tell..can you not also protect another’s mortal shell?
You know it is written as has been duly known by the beautiful Jewish messiah bethroned that what’s done to the least of these is done to His own.
Therefore if you quibble at a small ethical task …can your master charge you in the big if you can’t wear a mask?
Wear a mask ,wear a mask is all that they ask during pandemic plagues do the wise “cancel’ that?
Elephants work for peanuts and GOPple them fast..if it could save some one you know WHO’d appreciate that…
Most kindly then till the coast clears .. for the least of these “that” will you do them a favor.. wont you please wear a mask?!
This message is approved by James Dillon Broxson. Thank you Kay Ivey for extending the mask mandate and listening to our public health officials. It means the world to us that you are trying your best to put people before politics on this issue. A good and ethical bipartisan and science following move. Legacy comes from doing the right thing over merely following a brand. We appreciate it.
UPDATE { I SPOKE TO FAST… SHE CHANGED THE MASK ORDER TO A CHOICE THING. GOOD GRIEF!!!}
P.S. I’m glad she did the right thing for a while but I guess politicking is an endless pressure. “Shaking my head. “
I find it important to never quit learning. I often like to imagine the future and to imagine becoming proficient in a skill not generally associated with my public persona.
One such imagining is that of becoming a scientist.
I could see myself pouring obsessively, lost musing over medical mysteries and biological quandaries as my mind often obsessively does.
I could see myself as a mathematician pouring over formulae as if they were nature’s immutable song, an indivisible unifier to inherent non-divisible truths.
As a long time musician I have often dreamt of being a classical composer, of sharpening the higher faculties of my mind with the beautiful truth of song, expressing mathematical facts through the medium of tangible felt beauty.
Sometimes I imagine being a lawyer, an advocate, a public defender..knowing the law well so as to subvert it’s misuse by evil people in high places eager to destroy others life for a buck. I imagine protecting the innocent against those who would use the law against ‘they’ who are innocently unknowing of their schemes and to condemn those falsely accused with unfair and unjust punishments. I often imagine saving people through diligent study and erudition.
Sometimes I wonder about these things because I am sure that vocation isn’t the full description of who I am and yet I can’t help but think these desires of my soul describe some ineffable inner truth about myself.
What are some things you’ve dreamed about your life?
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It probably wasn’t long ago for many of us that we were “making plans and holding hands.” as the late and great Daniel Johnston once said in one of my favorite songs of his, “I save Cigarette Butts”.
Or as it says in that great literary and spiritual Masterpiece the Bible;
“But as the day of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of man be.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.” Matt 24:37- 39 KJV
(Yes I’m Catholic but I have my respects for a lil KJV!)
For all practical appearances it would seem that the Son of Man has indeed come and with considerable shaking of things that seem unshakable. This is not to say all natural disasters are directly from God or something as much as that all natural disasters prove we ‘need’ nature’s God. That need is the ‘final judgement’.
Judgement is a trite title to linchpin culture with just as much as it backfires on those who judge it an effective resort for affairs of cultural exchange.
Personally I would know because I am better at judging most people ‘better’ than most people I know.. at least that’s ‘my judgement’ on the matter.
And so I sit here like a hermit on a hill. I always was one even in my most social of times but that should never be confused with malice or hatred of humanity.
Sure, to the man who is confounded and confused by society it also could be possible to become negatively personally affected. It is not because such an one sees nothing in society as much as sees too much promise wasted in society.
The idealist hermit sits on the hill top judging not because he hates but because he knows the art pieces potential and to the degree he judges in purity rather then in strife he gathers a glimmer of truth if only he would judge with a correct, loving and disaffected judgement.
Looking into the fire makes darkness for the eyes. It doesn’t matter if a fire burns bright. It is easier to see when escaping a fire. Its much easier to see a fire once one is away from it.
Hermits get a bad wrap for evading social responsibility and that is not entirely without rationale. Many hermit temperament people ‘do’ hate society and even for those who don’t the temptation lies at hand.
This is not a value judgement for such individuals. Introversion runs too thick to cheapen it with run of the mill stereotypes. Everyone has their cross to bear. Introverts can be good people but not all introverts are hermits. The hermit might seem related to introversion in many respects and that is a perfectly natural conclusion..
Yet a true hermit is not one because of introversion.
A true hermit is one because of people..for people.
Like a man with a mote in ones eye a man with judgments whether good and bad may just be a man with an artists eye.
The judgments hurt the man with an artists eye because an artists eye can also comprehend beauty in the ugliness just as he sees beauty and ugliness in himself. Thus when you judge the speck in spite of the mote you judge yourself in the process. Somehow miraculously even in spite of the sin grace interrupts. Thank God for interruptions!
The hermit is a benevolent soul if he decides to live his call. He is a leader by serving, though perhaps by a false sense of absence in immature consciousness, whether in himself or according to the perceptions of others.
A man who is trained by a more solitary life must not throw in the towel or merely relax or enjoy the affairs of his solitude.
If anyone would wish to be a hermit I guarantee the universe will crowd them with thoughts. Their silence will be interrupted whether internally or externally.
{The only ‘true’ reason that the hermit may be is because he sees something good in you and in me.}
Any donation one dollar or above and I will send you a music download from my personal website.
Music and blogging/ content creation are my passion and I am seeking to be full time at these endeavors! If you like my writing and other content please share or donate today. Any donation of 12$ or more
and your automatically enrolled if you wish and with no extra charge into my yearly premium subscription for a dollar a month which will give you immediate access to premium content including but not limited to previews of novel writing projects, comics, new song releases and much more! Premium subscription lasts for 1 calendar year and can be renewed annually.
Musings of a Picture Frame Conversationalist. 