let’s get moving

a very dear friend of many years i recently had the pleasure of reconnecting with said to me, “i’m waiting for the moment when you’re going to stop being a victim and start being a man of action again.”

i like the sound of that.

a man of action. the first part is more or less beyond my control, but the second part – to be of action – that’s something very intriguing.

i really don’t know how i got so careful. i don’t think of caution as being part of my value system. i suppose i’ve been swimming against the stream of culture in this country, where action without thought is so lauded, with such disastrous results. the spending of the grocery money on liquor, cigarettes and video games, so to speak. spending our national future on war games now. i didn’t want to be that, i didn’t want to do that. but because i tried to go the other way – i got careful. and i didn’t want to be that either.

there’s nothing wrong with having a house and a family. i know a lot of people who wonder what that’s like. as wonderful as it is, it’s really nothing special. i guess the real red herring is all the wanting and trying to be special. really, nobody is special, and nothing is special. [it's why the "daily special" is one of my favorite oxymorons, and the Specials is one of the best ironic band names ever.]

the thing about life is – whether you live it in the domestic/employed fashion or on some kind of overtly “edge” existence [such as being an artist of the type that challenges the arbitrary boundaries created by society] – there are two ways it can be played: awake or asleep. alive or dead. in the interests of non-duality one may say that neither state is preferable, and often they are interchangeable, and striving for one state or the other is probably at the root of all suffering; but if one is true to one’s own nature, and is gentle and forgiving toward one’s own preferences, one may find that being alive is in many ways preferable to being dead. insofar as a third option is beyond the scope of this particular conversation.

it may be said to be preferable to build than to tear down, although both are necessary. it may be said to be preferable to be free than to be imprisoned, although such states are often circumstances beyond our control. the mind can be [and usually is] a prison, and the imprisoned body may still be free.

i’m currently seeking to return to a state in which i live with gentleness toward my own preferences, rather than continually sublimating them. that’s the kind of freedom i’m talking about. it’s a dangerous freedom, but there’s no other kind.

“where there’s no future, there cannot be sin/we’re the flowers in the dustbin/we’re the poison in the human machine/we’re the future – your future” – john lydon