For the opening of yesterday’s Pearl, I used the old reality technique, where I just spoke of what was actually happening at the moment… sort of like this…. This technique, of course, is one I use when I have no urge to purge, or to write anything new and fresh, beyond what is floating around at the forefront of my mind, most of which is not generally very creative, as it mostly deals with recent entries into RAM, not leaks from the part of me that does that sort of thing…. I know, this is getting to be a bit confusing, trying to pinpoint various pieces of my mind long enough to explain them, a futile task in a mind which is fractured already…. Maybe we should alter our direction…

How’s this? We’ll try a fictional opening…

The strangest thing about Mervin’s testicle didn’t come out at the trial, though it had everything to do with why he broke into the clinic. It seems he didn’t even tell his lawyer the underlying reason he was there, caught red-handed by the local constabulary as he was attempting a self-administered castration…. I TOLD him to let the doctors do it, but, since he found out about his Mum and Dad, he’s been a bit sticky between the ears, y’know? Too bad about his sister, too…. They tell me she will probably recover, but, none of the soccer team will be allowed back into the country without first being sterilized….. Of course, they all have to complete the course of the transgender drug regime, but, they’ll get over that….

Okay, I’m bored with Mervin and his sister…. Plus, I think I was almost at a point where it would have required some rather violent, or at least heated, contortions to bring it back near reality, close enough to at least resemble some sort of issue, and I hate that sort of last-minute editing…. No doubt, it could have been a bit more logical, or at least had SOME connection to something someone might want to read…. But, it did get me this far down the page, without having to actually think about much, just throwing words together, as one does with vegetables in a salad…. That must be where the docs got that phrase “word salad”, to describe one of the symptoms of schizophrenia, undifferentiated type…..

Having thus walked up to the edge of insanity, but refrained from jumping off the edge, we will take what we’ve got, with a thankful nod of appreciation, and get on with the rest of this Pearl, such as it may be….. I don’t think it would be a good idea to try to keep this going much longer…. Between the growing numbness and pain in my fingers, wrist, and joints at large, and my foggy brain, it’s becoming a bit of an ordeal…. Who knew, that to be a blogger, one must needs cultivate the same sort of stamina, and ability to ignore pain, that is required on the football field, or the martial arts studio mats?….

But, since I AM being tough, carrying on in spite of the obstacles my body throws up in front of itself, we’ll make a hasty exit from this intro, which is now threatening to get completely out of hand…. In fact, it’s now become prudent for me to exercise emergency technique #4 again, just to get us out of this mess…. Hang on….

Shall we Pearl?…..

“If you want to know all about the sea, you go and ask a sailor, or a marine biologist, or an oceanographer, and they can tell you a lot about the sea. But if you go and ask the sea itself, what does it say? Grumble, grumble, swish swish. It is too busy being itself to know anything about itself.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

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On most days, this section would contain a rant, or, at minimum, links to an article or two that would stimulate a rant…. But, yesterday’s outburst of fun got to me, and I don’t feel much like ranting this morning…. Hell, it’s all I can do to feel curmudgeonly today; I seem to have stumbled into some sort of alternate universe, where I feel GOOD in the mornings, rather than awakening to a screaming nervous system, that wants only to consume massive quantities of strong drugs until achieving oblivion, or, at least, a euphoric distance from the elements of pain that are inflamed….. I gotta say, it sure is NICE to feel relatively okay….

I also have to say, NICE is a pretty weak word for what it feels like, but, my vocabulary fails me just now…. But, that’s okay, because the way I feel means we’re going old-school here today, and the hell with angst, or anger, or any of the BRC or Corporate Snakes…. I am stuck in the “gotta have fun” mode, and I’m enjoying it. so everyone will just have to deal…. Here, then, are a number of pearls to start the day with a smile….

“If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” — Will Rogers (1879-1935)

“186,282 miles per second: It isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law.” — Smart Bee

“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.” — Thomas Jefferson

“A bird in the hand makes blowing your nose difficult.” — Solomon Short

“Bad cop.  No donut!  Bad cop.  No donut!” — Portland Protest Chant

“Do you call yourself free?  I want to hear your ruling idea, and not that you  have escaped from a yoke.” — Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”

“You may be capable of great things, But life consists of small things.” — Deng Ming-Dao

There are times when Smart Bee gets too smart for its own good…. I KNOW there is a message in this pearl; I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell it is…. If y’all have any ideas, let me know, okay? Otherwise, I’ll just mark it down in the “too obscure for common usage, but fun” column…. For now, we’ll go on, just as if it had been normal…

Wait, what was I thinking? Normal? Never mind…. we’ll just go on, without comment…

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From December of 2011…

“That which leads us to the performance of duty by offering pleasure as its reward, is not virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue.” — Cicero (B.C. 106-43)
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Ffolkes,

Just so it’s clear…..I’m not an atheist, per se, at least, not in the classical sense of the word.  I do hold beliefs regarding the subject of divinity and spirituality, but they bear no great resemblance to those espoused by any organized faith, and I don’t discuss them with anyone. It just causes arguments.  I am not a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Unitarian, or a Buddhist, or any other of the virtually countless ‘isms’ people have come up with to try to understand those parts of the universe they do not comprehend.

I’ve read the holy books of most of the major faiths; Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, the Bibles of several different Christian sects , the Tao Teh Ching, the I Ching, and any other related material I could find. Not that I made a complete heavy study of each, but I learned enough to be able to draw comparisons, and judge the validity of each (which I admit, is purely subjective. But then, isn’t any religious belief purely subjective? Why yes, I do believe it is…..).

It occurred to me, just now, that, maybe, for all these centuries we (that’s the human “we”…. meaning all of us as a group….) have sought to explain what we do not understand, we have been looking at things from the wrong perspective, at least in terms of intelligence, with its defined value being such that man considers himself greater than “lower” forms of life. The attitude that we are the pinnacle of creation is a given in almost every approach taken by philosophers and scientists in any explanation of why things are as they are.

Since we have not the ability to create worlds (yet), or stars (yet), or universes (yet?), we attribute the state of things as we know them to creatures of vast wisdom and power, as “far above us as we are above bacteria or amoeba.” How often have you heard the last part? Isn’t that part of any definition of a god, or even God, by whatever name one calls him/her/them/it?

But what if the amoeba IS God? Amoeba are the most ancient form of life we know of, utilizing the simplest means of reproduction available (as far as WE know anyway…), and are an essential step in the formation of other life. Perhaps the entire bacterial level is God’s nervous system, and the amoeba are the thoughts of God. And as other forms of life evolved, maybe each entered another part of the symbiotic whole that is life, non-life, energy, matter, and non-matter, all of which must be present in order for our universe to manifest itself.

All of which makes our viewpoint completely backwards; we are the bottom of creation, not the top. Every other part of the universe, and almost every animal and creature on our planet we know of, except ourselves and our vaunted intelligence, are functioning, and functioning well, according to their place in Nature because they have no need to do anything else.  Our intelligence is generally accepted to be that which makes us ‘better’ than the rest of creation, a convenient word to describe something that may not have been created at all, but might just happen to be the way it is, because it wants to be….. At least, most of it does…. So far we haven’t done too well at learning how to be at one with the rest of creation; quite the opposite, as a general rule…..

Hmm…. Well, I guess that’s one way to look at it…… At least with this credo, there’s no guilt, no shame, no incentives, and no rewards….. other than self-respect……

— How many amoebas does it take to change a light bulb?  One. No, 2. No, 4. No, 8. No, 16. No, 32……. — Smart Bee

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I awoke today with great hopes for this Pearl; those hopes, of course, were dashed within moments of arising…. as usual. However, given my state of mind today (perilously unstable….) and the state of the universe, (just plain perilous), I think I’d be disinclined to make any changes to what came out, to be safe…. Safer for y’all, too, as changes at this late date can throw this vehicle into a tailspin in a heartbeat….

All that said, I’m done, & outta here…. See ya tomorrow, ffolkes, and may the Bluebird of Happiness refrain from pooping on your hat…. No, I have no idea where that came from…. I don’t think I want to know, either, and neither do you….