Speak like a Scientist

Never been good at science.  I guess that's stopping me.  For all the time I spent outside of school, I feel like my mind is drifting into a gripping stubbornness.  I can literally feel myself growing dumb.  I mean, I never really expanded my horizons studying the language I was born with.  I'm trying to read a lot, ya know, smart stuff.  Today I read a little of Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin.  This paleontologist expounded on his expedition to Greenland to dig up the 375 million year old missing like between humans and the fish.  The fossil looked like a small alligator but with fins.  The Inuit gave it the now scientific name Tiktaalik.


I'm looking at going to Stony Brook, for marine sciences or applied ecology.  They would never take me, that's the problem.  In high school, Mister Roland made a deal to give me 50% on the DNA project if I just gave him back all the pieces.  I can do something great for the environment if I'm studying the effect of aerosols on estuaries and research acid erosion on reefs in the ocean.  But to do that, I need to become very scientific,  I'm afraid that ain't my forte.  Never was.  I could never write a publication, real professional-like, present my findings.

I just want to do something good with my breath rather than just survive with a comfortable job which most of the population has down pat.  Just sucks I have no skills, I have no experience, and I definitely don't have the money.  I guess it really counts when you're born into it.  I'm gonna try real hard to be like a scientist, then maybe I can do something real for this place.

God vs. The Human Physical Body

The human physical body is a magnificent thing.  Every second, without our permission, let alone knowledge, it goes on processing thousands of chemical reactions to keep us alive.  It is like a magician, turning oxygen into carbon dioxide, food into nutrients.  And it never asks for a thank you and usually never gets one.  God gets all the thanks, while the physical, what is here, is ignored.  God may lie to us.  Mostly because its an idea, a million religions, a million ideas of god.  You can ask every person to describe God and no one will give you the same answer.  The body doesn't lie to us, because its not an idea, its not a belief.  If your body is in pain, it is not playing a game with you.  It needs your attention, your kindness.  Instead our attention goes to God.  "God why do you cause me this pain, why do I hurt?"  Prayers go unanswered, and we feel forgotten, unloved.  We cry, we pray more.  All the while the body continues pumping our blood, letting us breathe, healing our wounds, keeping us alive without asking for prayers or anything.  If that isn't unconditional love, I guess we need to pray more.

Everything is Cyclical

It feels like I'm moving in circles.  But the circles keep changing, I'm hopping from one cycle of habits to the next.  And with each jump, it feels like I've entered a new era in my life, but really, I'm just repeating my past.  Everything is cyclical.  It moves, happens, I play a role in it, then something takes its place.  Cycles wait for me to adjust to the circumstances and then I make decisions.  Nature moves in cycles.  Trees shed their beautiful leaves and wait patiently for winter.  When spring comes, they grow the leaves and start again.  They don't sit around writing blogs saying, "Why am I doing this?  Winter's going to come back for me, and I'll have do this all over again."  Maybe that's the curse of consciousness.  We are able to see our lives at a glance.  With each day, we can see if our feet land in exactly the same place.  Then we can decide if we are happy and if we aren't, then we will move towards a state of happiness.  That's very predictable.  It's no wonder psychics can predict futures.  The human mind is very predictable, it is a machine that works in patterns like seasons of nature.  I mean, it comes from the same universe that gave us the cycle of day and night, sun and moon.  It's our nature.

The one unfixable thing

It has come to my attention that we all have one unfixable thing prevalent throughout our lives.  No matter what we do, there's an itch we can't scratch, a hunger we can't feed, a patch of grass that can't be cut.  And this unfixable thing is not static.  No, that would be too easy.  It changes form.  Just when one giant hurdle is leaped, another cliff appears no more than ten feet away.  For me it's a submerged relationship with my parents.  It's been taking water for sometime and no matter what I do, it seems the hole can't be plugged.  Everyone's got this issue.  It could be a dream of becoming a dancer that never transpired, or a becoming a legendary composer that your stupid kids stole from you.  Maybe you're shy and can never get over it.  Maybe you have a foot fetish that just can't be quenched.

This makes me think we're all living the same experience.  That consciousness has all these tricks up it's sleeve to make us believe we're all very different people and each person has their own set of unique problems.  Remember, this is the same mind that, while you're sleeping, makes you believe you are breathing underwater, trying to beat Penelope Cruz in a strongman competition.  I mean, you believe the whole thing because the unconscious mind tells the story so fluidly.  The only thing separating that from waking life is the word "conscious".  To believe that our personal experience is wholly organic and unique and is totally unconnected to any other life form on the planet in any way may just seem a little mad.

So, pretend my unfounded ranting is right, and we all have one unfixable issue that follows us around our entire life.  What do we do about it?

I think we've reached a point where we're gonna have to face that unfixable point, whatever it is and transform it so we become honest human beings.  In a dream, everyone you talk to, every character, every situation is...you guessed it...YOU!  So, if even the slightest bit of these unfixable problems in our waking state are a reflection of inner turmoil, things we keep suppressed in the back of our heads, then it will have to be sorted at some point or another.  The only alternative is madness.

Free will ain't nothing but a hound dog

All beauty in the world stems from imperfection.  That's because it's honest and has nothing to hide.  Everyone's racing around, trying to be perfect.  Anne Lamott said it really nice, "perfectionism is based on the belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.  The truth is that you will die anyway."  We all want the perfect job, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect car, the perfect house....It goes on and on in cycles trying to get everything perfect, then you die.  What if it's not all perfect?  What if we live an uncomfortable life?  Does that make us any less human, any less real, any less purposeful to the universe? 

There's still this stigma that people without money are less important.  And if it doesn't pay good money, it's not worth our time.  We're stuck in a time-loop of want, of needing to live as comfortably as we can.  And that's all we can do.  We really have no control over our lives.  I mean, if nature wants to knock a tree down on top of you, who's gonna stop it?  My girlfriend told me this story about a mother and father who had just picked up their daughter from a sleepover she was gonna have.  She didn't feel and and didn't want to spend the night, so they got her to drive home.  At a stoplight, then heard a thunderous crash behind them.  A massive birch tree had split and fallen onto their car, killing their daughter instantly.  The mother and father remained untouched, as if some shaman had put a protection spell around them. 

It reminds me of the climax of the movie 127 hours where a nature hiker got trapped, literally, between a rock and a hard place.  While I didn't particularly enjoy staring up James Franco's crusty nostrils for two hours, the motif he was thinking about got me thinking too.  The hiker,Aaron, said something like,"I chose this.  My whole life led me to this situation.  This rock from a meteor spent millions of years waiting for this one moment.  I wanted to be alone from everyone, I chose this." 

We call it free will but it's not as free as we think it is.  The idea of will and movement is free only as far as the mind will let us be.  Circumstances happen and then we make choices.  We could have made those choices years ago, depending on our conditioning, how we grew up, what personality we developed.  And where we grew up happened from our parents' lives, and so on down the family tree.  The truth is we have no control, and free will is just comfort food.  The only choice we have to be comfortable or imperfect.  If we are imperfect, we become honest with nothing to hide.  And that is the most natural state we can live with.