A Winter Mind's A-Wandering

I curse time’s non-existence.
That’s a helluva first thought, isn’t it?
It is, at once, challenging, thought-provoking and a statement that comes off like a question. That’s what I can do. That’s about the only thing I think I’m even slightly good at, but a well-constructed sentence, carrying heft and meaning, has very little place in our world any more.
It makes me want to cry. As I wander through my dealings with the English language on a daily basis, I encounter—as one would expect—egregious liberties being taken with it. That would probably be the most politically correct way I could say the thought in my head. However, that particular version would probably not be thought too much of in some circles of society, and it would be rendered otherwise—or at least this might be how it’s registered in the listener’s head: They’s some dumb muthafuckers out there. The reality is, as usual, sitting somewhere between the two extremes.
Personally, I am hyper-sensitive to language. When language is being used in a way other than that to which it ought (verb tenses and the like), my ears immediately perk up. What I’m not doing, by any stretch of the imagination, is making some kind of snap judgment about a person based on their relationship to language; however, what I am doing is becoming aware that there is something unique in the language of my interlocutor. It could be there for a variety of reasons. As you speak over periods of time, you can gather details about whether this is ignorance (having never been taught it), a learned behavior from some external stimuli, or if it is, in fact, stupidity.
It would probably be accurate to say that in all of my experiences with this sort of thing, stupidity has almost never been the root.
The failure is usually in the past. As a matter of fact, I hereby declare that every failure is in the past. Can you imagine a future failure? That’s exactly the point: you’d have to imagine it. The fact of failure is simply that it exists only in the past tense. So, here we encounter the fact that any present misuse of the language has its root in the past. Well, looky here, son: the key to the door of the past simultaneously unlocks the door of confusion—or, otherwise: reflection, refraction, and refucktion.
So, when I hear people flagrantly abusing their own language, as if it were nothing to them, I grin and bear it. It ain’t their fault. They’s jest doin’ what thur pappy taught ‘em.
But all that being said, I fear for the future of the United States of America.
When a county’s people are so comatose from all the drugs and sitcoms and booze that they can get their hands on, they can’t see spectrums of importance very clearly.
There I go, once again professing to have some kind of insight into the things of importance. In reality, the only things I know for sure are related to my experience and my understanding of certain concepts. My understanding.
I could say to you that sometimes one of the only things that higher education teaches you is that getting ahead in this world isn’t worth it—especially if you’re an earnest student of the arts.
I could say to you that money is imaginary and carries only the weight of metaphor—which I’ll grant you is pretty epic, but you’ll pull out a dollar and ask me why something that is constantly unstable can’t be real?
Which will make me think.
When was the last time anybody thought about how unstable the human person is? From the thoughts that occur to us at any given time to the dead skin that is constantly falling off our bodies to the emotions that rock us to the core one moment and leave us indifferent the next: nothing that is alive is ever stationary.
But, then that would mean that money is alive.
Consider the implications of that for just a moment.
What we might be approaching is something like the definition of what it means to be alive.
If something is alive, then it only follows that it should share at least one other characteristic of other things that are alive. It is possible to say that even rocks are alive—especially at a cellular level. What, then, could all living things possibly have in common?
It just might be that they are all constantly in involuntary activity. That’s the cellular structure. At the cellular level, everything is moving. You could even go farther and say that at the atomic level this idea is still applicable.
This definition might, at first, seem too broad, but what if it isn’t broad enough?
The universe is constantly in involuntary motion, isn’t it?
Is the universe alive?
If the universe is alive, what are the implications?
If history has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is that nothing that lives can’t die. All things that are alive will eventually die. Our sun, our earth, our solar system, our galaxy and, yes, even our universe will eventually stop being alive. All you have to do to understand this concept is think about the average lifespan of a housefly (or some such critter) and think about its concept of time. Comparatively, every single day in the life of a housefly is roughly equivalent to 2-3 years of a human life. One day = three years. One day = One thousand days (give or take). Apply this same concept to the idea of us, our solar system, etc, and you’ll begin to see how time ripples out over the cosmos—making the end of it something beyond comprehension but, realistically, well outside of the realm of possibility within the span of human existence (ALL of human existence).
This could possibly be interpreted as a negative situation. One might possibly pose the question: “where then is our importance?” Our importance in the place of the universe is that we have been given the precious opportunity to experience it. Therefore, it becomes our responsibility, our duty, and our obligation to explore it and experience it as much as is possible. The depths of the reality and un-reality of the human experience are the as-yet unplumbed depths of possibility.
“As-yet unplumbed? Are you kidding? Look at what we’ve accomplished!”
And the response is: “It is truly astounding. Indeed, it is one of the greatest marvels of human endeavor that this thing sits here before me, and I acknowledge that; however, I can’t help but think about how limited the things of this earth are. They work nowhere else.
Perhaps the soul is like that as well. Perhaps if we were to manage to travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and meet the people there, it wouldn’t matter how different we were, they would’ve by now come to the same conclusions that the soul offers: care genuinely about understanding and being understood, with patience and practice most things suddenly become possible, and that honesty, faithfulness and truthfulness are the keys to establishing and maintaining relationships. Or, as an alternate possibility, they’d annihilate us with their annihilat-a-ma-tron because we’re different and from somewhere else. Either is as likely it would seem.