ZZZ ... pardon me while I yawn

Is philosophy a bore? Talk to any philosopher, (one that’s not dead) and you may be simultaneously bored and offended. Who else can drone on so long about one idea? Who else can manage to link all ideas in a single sentence? – (a very long sentence..) What’s the point of all that thinking anyway? Wouldn’t it be better just to get on with life and stop thinking about it for heaven’s sake?

But if there were more philosophers in the world, wouldn’t it be a more reasonable place? Wouldn’t we be more likely to begin understanding a few things? (What’s with all the questions? – Ah ha! ...we’re being little philosophers ourselves..) Where philosophy thrives, so too do other expressions of thought. Like art. And music.

Think of it.. our modern philosophers are often our musicians. They sing their thoughts to us in poetic verse, shout it to us in prolonged raving, croon it, whisper it, scream or yodel it – and we get it. Sometimes.

Imagine. Imagine not being allowed to think. Ideas are as natural to human imagination as breathing. Any authority which disallows personal thought is in fact cutting off oxygen to human development. That’s tantamount to lobotomising humanity; trimming off all but one philosophy of life, and that dreamt up by a very small contingent of, (dare I think it), narrow-minded individuals.

We might as well all be asleep..

Unthinkable.

Exy

X.

Did you ever stop to consider how important X is?

It’s the universal unknown value.

And kisses, don’t let’s forget kisses.

And.. the X chromosome is part of every human’s DNA, named X for mystery.

That’s kind of cool really. We all have mystery in our make-up, and that very thing is what binds us together. It’s the X factor.

So if we all have this in common, how is it that we don’t know more about it? And wow, here’s another thought.. women have double the dose. Double the mystery? The dudes, they have the whY.

Somewhere in there is a bunch of answers... all we have to do is solve the equation!  X + Y = the solution to the riddle.

(X really does mark the spot.)

xxx

THERE'S A WHOLE...

Whole. There’s a concept for you!

WWW seems to suggest that, doesn’t it? Those little letters are a claim of total inclusion – the world wide web -  as though the whole planet were wrapped up nicely together in one mind, sharing knowledge and experience. But it’s not whole really, not the web nor the world. The silent masses get on with their lives, many of them oblivious to the frenetic workings of the internet, their voices not included in the ‘all’ of it all.

As for the planet, it grows further from whole the more humanity encroaches onto every last ice floe and ocean crevice. One has to wonder how much the system can take before some critical point of imbalance occurs to plunge us into an end game scenario. Wholeness is not on our agenda.

Personally though, despite the sad bad news of worldly woe, we can still be whole, right? We can find ourselves, satisfy ourselves, improve ourselves and please ourselves as long as we don’t hurt someone else. Or are we incomplete until we look outside of ourselves? They say everyone has a soul mate, someone who will complete them... two loves make a whole. That’s what they say, but in the end won’t we still have to leave the earth alone?

Perhaps what counts is the heart. Being whole-hearted is a wholeness anyone, even half-wits, can achieve.

  

  

V is for verbage

V is for verbage, and vitriol.. probably not the kind of thing you were hoping to read. If that’s all I can come up with when I get the opportunity to pay out my two cents worth, perhaps I should shut up? Talk is cheap, right?

 .. Well no, not anymore. Talk will cost you. Especially if you say the wrong thing, the wrong word, at the wrong time. No, you don’t get to spill your verbage in our progressive cities unless you want to back it up with your wallet and risk a criminal record. I’m sure we’ll soon be missing the days when anybody’s two cents worth was worth just that.. when anybody had the freedom to be an ass.

Welcome to the New Age, but it isn’t what they promised us. Comedians had better not be funny unless they stick to the script. If you’ve got an opinion, keep it to yourself unless it’s shiny and happy. You can see what’s going to happen, can’t you? All those bottled up opinions are going to pickle nicely for a while in the dark but eventually that lid has got to pop. We’re a society with a serious case of bloat.. the question is, will it come out quiet and sneaky or blast a hole in our proverbial pants? We’re humans for Pete’s sake! You can’t shut us up!

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m for the trolls. I’m for their rights. Yes they’re a pain in the ass, but the price of shutting them up is a gag for us all. I have my two cents and I want the right to spend it.

F...

Feelings.. those inclinations that have bypassed the brain and emerge like the weather, sometimes knocking us right off the horse. They say that thinking is where we get to engage the brain; feelings engage the heart. Are they at opposite ends of a scale? Or parallel channels on the mixer? Is it possible to operate both at the same time?

Perhaps that is a bit like rubbing your tummy while patting your head. It probably requires a good deal of concentration, and a split screen somewhere in the consciousness to monitor both simultaneously..are feelings just a different kind of thought?

I’ve done one of those personality type tests, and am told that I most often favour feeling over thinking. That’s well and good so long as I am sitting next to a feely type. If I end up sharing a bench with a thinkin person, I find myself using all kinds of hand gestures to try and weave my feelings into some kind of logical arrangement. It’s tricky. It’s practicality versus ascetics, physics versus fantasy.

It’s hard enough to put thoughts into words. Trying to jam the pillow-like forms of various feelings into little word boxes is exhausting! ...And this is why we are gifted with more than one method of communication! Body language for instance. Do they teach us to read that in school? They should! Even the extreme thinkers of this world often proclaim the way they are feeling  in posture and mannerism..

For those of us who rely on feelings, perhaps we should take up signing..it’s great for expressing oneself, since facial expressions also come into play..and it’s less noisy.

So how do I feel today? Pretty good, thank you.. well alright, a little frustrated. If communication is a science, I feel I’m still trying to fathom 101.  But here I am, still at it, pulling thoughts like loose threads from the fabric of my mind and stitching up little blog samplers...thinking it through.. but more often than not...just feeling my way.

A Love Poem

I wanted to write the most unromantic love poem I could;
Something gutsy and gory.
Why is it you feel so much in your gut? 
Shouldn’t feeling be in the heart? ..or the head maybe, since feelings are thoughts too. 
But no. It’s the tummy that twists with fear when you realize you missed the last bus. 
And your guts squirm with indescribable pangs when that one you love to be with leaves. 
You’d think love would make its home in a heart, 
but here we are losing our appetite and feeling weird in the pit of the stomach.
I wanted to write the most unromantic love poem I could, 
because sometimes love is ugly, spilling your innards all over the floor. 

©Julia Zed

Fleur de lis in France...