Okay, as Vince said over his Vanilla Coke (after Mia returns from the Powder Room), yes, I think I have something to say.
But first a lil background music:
There are several texts from this journey from the common lands to the ends of middle-earth, from the collective to the regions of the psyche barely in touch with humanity which have long traveled with me--to which I will add one from Plotinus, and one from Tolkien, for which I have to thank @johnnyrogue
To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite,
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,
To defy power which seems omnipotent,
... Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:
This ... is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free,
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
--Shelley, Prometheus Unbound)
Ye ice falls! Ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain —
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! Silent cataracts!
-- Coleridge, Hymn before Sunrise, in the vale of Chamouni)
I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint.
-- Captain Scott's Last Journal)
“Think of the One as Mind or God, you think to narrowly. .. For This is utterly a self-existent, with no concomitant whatever. This self-sufficing is the essence of its unity. Something there must be supremely adequate, autonomous, all-transcending, most utterly without need.” Plotinus Enneads 6.9.6
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.
There are two paths, says the Katha Upanishad, that of comfort and that of knowledge; while each may occasionally cross with the other--don't fuckin' count on it, says I. In the end, as life is a sea of suffering and joy, of clarity and confusion, of solitude and companionship, knowing that there are deeper laws--not reading about them, not believing or imagining them, but truly seeing them within the impersonal light at one's core--that knowing provides us with a keel, a mast and a rudder by which we may yet navigate that sea of sam'sara, and whether we make landfall or not, such visions as we encounter will truly remain with us always. As one who lived rather a wild life (the 60s were indeed good for me) and who has also faced extraordinary health challenges (i'm close to quadriplegic), I regret little, and am above all grateful for the discovery of philosophy whose power, life, and light has remained unchanged through all else that has changed. I wish I could communicate something of what it is to me in these words and quotes... perhaps I have, perhaps not...
to the few--very few--who are likely to read this, thank you for taking time to do so, and fair sailing!
