disassembly of the mechanisms is tantamount to murder

*

And I am a killing machine.




***


What astounds me is that anyone can believe anything at all about what goes on around beyond the range of our sensory apparatus. Or not that they can believe what goes on, but they can believe one of the many explanations for what lies out there, unseen and unknowable.

Sure, I feel, I believe, that there is more out there than we can apprehend. More than meets the eye. Granted.

But how do you take one of the many explanations and say, well, that's right. That's what I believe.


I don't possess the machinery of belief, I suppose.


*

Plus, I am convinced that doubt is essential.


At least, I think it is.



*

We are trapped in the small box of consciousness, which is a tiny, tiny box floating around on top of the vast sea of our unconscious mind, which is itself locked in the miniscule bone vault of our tiny skulls. Three pounds of meat in a bone bowl that wanders around in tiny circles for sixty or eighty or twenty-four years, usually in one or a small handful of cities in one country of one continent on one hemisphere of an insignificant blue world in the tall weeds at the edge of a middling small galaxy in a endlessly vast sea of billions and billions of bigger and more centrally located and better connected galaxies.

Try to convince my small box of consciousness that it's insignificant, though, and see where that gets you.


I mean, what could be more important than me?


*


That's what I thought.


*



Despite it all, I persist in my struggles. I throw myself headlong into love and expect it to catch me rather than fling me off into the abyss. I chase the dream of perfection. I abandon it again.

I drink too much.

I work too much.

I goof off too much.

I judge others.

I judge myself.

I compare.

I long for.

I disdain.

I compromise.

I refuse to budge.

I am stingy.

Profligate.

***

There is a reason I have a human body. I mean to explore it. I mean to wear it out. I mean to get my moneys worth. I'm going to die of something by God.


*


Here's to you, friend. Have a cold one on me.



Namaste.





***