I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic, a feeling that comes and goes for me, but rarely has a place in my daily activities. I really don’t like nostalgia that much; it seems to be a dissociation from the real pains of the present, pains that have been there all along and need addressing. And the stories we tell ourselves, trying to find some reason, some cause for why we are the way we are, are just stories. Of course they serve a definite psychological purpose. Working on making them more objective enhances our memory and psychological health. But most of my time is spent trying to grow in knowledge of objective reality, outside, and I often neglect my own past.
But today I’m feeling in the mood for a nostalgic meditation, so I’d like to indulge myself a little bit.
When I was young my father worked for both the CIA and the Mossad. It was strange, because whenever I did something really well he would usually say “son, that was a really inside job.”
Ok so I’m obviously assuming that you enjoy dry humor, and I’m not sure many do. But I’m indulging myself here, so moving on.
The individual has no chance to exercise his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication; this leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the best of] conditions…Once personal judgment and critical faculties have disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when propaganda is suppressed…years of intellectual and spiritual education would be needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the agony of finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion.
The above, ultimately, is the story of my life.
Spiritual. It’s the word that, though invited, stands at the corner of a party trying to make sense of what’s going on, watching the ridiculous fanfare carry on while being pushed farther and farther away. Someone uttered its name, invited it into the conversation because they heard it was in town, but it won’t stay long. No one knows why it’s there because they just don’t have anything in common any more. It will depart until the party is over. Why should it be bothered to waste its time?
Analogies limp. A teacher I greatly respect told me that. In this case, the analogy crawls. If, as a culture, we embraced spirituality, if enough of us could find the bravery to be honest with ourselves and find our vitality, imagine the great potential that would await us in science, in our ethics, in our society. Rather than staring down at our feet, kicking the dust waiting for protons to jump up and explain away the world, we would be exploring the stars with one another, enjoying the rise and fall of ecstasy and true grief over our great distance from Home.
I have always greatly missed that Home. I have yearned for a world of true love, where we could give everything to one another knowing that the other would do the same in return. I wanted to have children in that world; I always assumed that it was just my home, my school, my neighborhood, that was dysfunctional, and that once I escaped those places I would someday find…it, whatever it was . And now I can see that it is dead. That place is dead. It has been murdered along with every single innocent person who has ever been thrown in the trash bin of history by psychopathic predators that have never spilled a drop of blood for anything other than their own monstrous appetite for gore.
I cannot take my children there. Instead I am given Disney World. I cannot take my mother there to rest until she departs from this world. Instead she is given the home. I cannot visit that place to recharge my bones from a world that has eaten me. Instead I am asked to offer up another rib.
The years of rehabilitation from this world of death, for me, have all been about following the question that I most needed answered. And now I can see that one of the greatest questions I have had I can offer up to others. That is, what do I really want? True, Human life is what I want. That is what I want.
The Koonie Boonies 