Philosophical rambles

[cantdog]

petroglyphs

A young Maliseet woman, whom I worked with at the bookstore, had heard me talking, consoling a fellow worker who had lost his child in a senseless accident. We took, he and I, a rather longer break than was usual to bring our conversation to a place where we could leave it, and Helen approached me soon after to ask if I'd ever had any mystical experiences.

I told her, briefly, about my first one. I had been in the woods the best part of a week, left the camp and climbed a ridge. Seated there, I was staring at a tree and feeling the breeze when, for however long, I could never say about the duration of it, I "became" the tree.

I had felt as a tree, perceived as a tree, beheld the ridge about me from that place and in a way was making a gesture outwards from my roots my whole life... as soon as I realized it was happening, it stopped, cut off immediately. I dismissed it as a daydream, but the memory was so vividand persistent that later, having another experience of the kind, I re-evaluated and decided it was something else.

I asked her what she wanted to know for. Had she had any? Instead of replying she had me go to the Maine Atlas with her, where she gave me directions to a petroglyph site on the coast of Washington county, at a place where the old travellers by canoe had portaged across a point at its neck to avoid a long, exposed journey around it. She recommended I see it. It was not publicized so that it would not be ruined by the curious and the disrespectful.

I did that, about a month later, and had a devil of a time finding anything but woods, bushes, and rocks. Remembering the use of the place, though, I searched, finally, for the carrying place, the portage trail. Where would they have pulled the canoes from the bay?

They were old and very faint. An overhang had protected some of the rock face from the sun and rain, and only in its shadow were the traces really visible. It was involving to the imagination, but I refrained from touching them because they seemed paradoxically fragile, despite at least a couple of hundred years of preservation.

cantdog

 

[matriarch]

Hey, it's Sunday. I'm allowed to be odd.

Forgive my boldness Charley....but I thought you were that way naturally

Mat

 

[cantdog]

I grooved entirely on Charley's post, and dug it most extremely. Where are we if not here?

 

[CharleyH]

Forgive my boldness Charley....but I thought you were that way naturally

Mat

LOL - you're right, Mat. It's a natural state that has gone on for far too many years, and is bound to occur for many to come. Alas, it adds to my presumptuous charm.

Carl, I pondered those same questions when 15. Unfortunately, I pondered them in my English class journal and was aptly told not to ask questions that did not have answers. My next journal entry in response to the absurdity of this statement, granted me a trip to the guidence counsellor, and a specially called-in psychoanalyst. LOL. Fortunately, I was found to be sane. It seems I pulled a fast one on them

 

[matriarch]

LOL - you're right, Mat. It's a natural state that has gone on for far too many years, and is bound to occur for many to come. Alas, it adds to my presumptuous charm.

Presumptuous charm?
Believe me, Charely, there is nothing presumptuous about your charm.

 

[CharleyH]

Mat.

This reminds me that you haven't YET added a Sunday morning description thread to the board. I enjoyed reading your previous weekend adventures.

Edit to add: Hey Cantdog! Can't make up your mind about the AV today? LOL. I think I've seen three changes already.

 

[matriarch]

Mat.

This reminds me that you haven't YET added a Sunday morning description thread to the board. I enjoyed reading your previous weekend adventures.

Oh, this is going to be embarrassing.
There is a postscript to yesterdays, but rather than hijack Abs' philosophical rambles, I will move over to my thread, and take up the story from there.

Mat

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Have to bump this cause I love the responses.

 

[shereads]

Do you ever wonder about the meaning of life, and what comes after death? In all seriousness, I do. I wonder if I'll get to see my father again, or am aware that I've died.

I wonder if this plain of existence is merely a stepping stone to other great events in our souls history. I wonder if the dead can see the living, and where they eventually go to in their after life.

I feel sorry that these questions can't be answered, because if they could and we found that there truly is an afterlife, death wouldn't have such a grip on us. I realize that this might be a little too deep for some, but I'm a curious kind of guy.

I wonder if we have a form after death, or can communicate with other lives that have crossed over. There can be no answers to these enquiries, but it's interesting to speculate. I'm like ABS, in that I'd like to leave something behind to be remembered by.

Carl

You can try, Mr. Ozymandius, but even the Pyramids won't be here forever. You, on the other hand, are made of longer-lasting stuff than limestone: the ability to touch other souls in countless small ways.

 

[shereads]

Near where I live is a Roman fort. That isn't surprising in the UK.

Sometimes I go there late at night because it is a good place to watch celestial phenomena such as comets. There is less light pollution.

Some people think it is a scary place at night. They have heard a baby screaming. A few years ago archaeologists found a crushed baby's skeleton under a foundation. The accounts of hearing the screaming baby have been recorded from time to time over the last 100 years.

I stand on the walls and think what it must have been like to be a sentry at night in the cold and rain. I think the sentry might have come from Spain or Africa (there is archaelogical evidence for both) and what he would of thought of the English weather. To the sentry, England must have seemed like the end of the world, the pits, the worst place to be. Perhaps he heard the screaming baby too and shivered.

Og














PS. I'm not surprised about the screaming baby. Yes, I've heard it several times. Just over the hill from the fort is a long established holiday caravan park. In the middle of a quiet might a hungry baby's yell carries a long way. But I still hear it in deep winter when the caravan park is shut...

(¥) (¥) <-------------- my eyeballs in response to this post.

 

[shereads]

I love the Temple of Dendur! I want to see Egypt also, I love anything to do with Egypt.
What an incredible civilization in was in the past.

I would make it my foyer if I was rich.

If I'm not mistaken, Dendur means "foyer."

 

[ABSTRUSE]

If I'm not mistaken, Dendur means "foyer."

Damn, I'm smarter than I thought!

 

[shereads]

Damn, I'm smarter than I thought!

Time to see a hypnotist for past-life regression.

I wouldn't want to do that. I might turn out to be the first person ever to remember a dull and meaningless past life, possibly as a burned-out copywriter for Egypt's 297th-larget ad agency.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Time to see a hypnotist for past-life regression.

I wouldn't want to do that. I might turn out to be the first person ever to remember a dull and meaningless past life, possibly as a burned-out copywriter for Egypt's 297th-larget ad agency.

I'm just gonna call Shirley Maclaine and see if she can do it over the phone.

I was probably the royal shit shoveler in the Pharoahs stables.

 

[Prospector 101]

Hope you don't mind a newcomer adding a pennyworth.
As an expat Brit marooned in the Sonoran desert, I was trawling the site for familiar landmarks and came across this thread.
Thought Shelley's poem below might be an interesting addition to the discussion:

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --

(Apparently Ozymandias is Ramses II)

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Hope you don't mind a newcomer adding a pennyworth.
As an expat Brit marooned in the Sonoran desert, I was trawling the site for familiar landmarks and came across this thread.
Thought Shelley's poem below might be an interesting addition to the discussion:

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --

(Apparently Ozymandias is Ramses II)

I'm swooning.

Thank you Prospector.

 

[Lisa Denton]

Hope you don't mind a newcomer adding a pennyworth.
As an expat Brit marooned in the Sonoran desert, I was trawling the site for familiar landmarks and came across this thread.
Thought Shelley's poem below might be an interesting addition to the discussion:

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --

(Apparently Ozymandias is Ramses II)

Abs swoons when I look at her and lick my lips but I liked it too.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

A moment, then it's gone...

I may have posted this before, if I have then just ignore it.

Several years ago I was offshore sailboat racing off the coast of Maine. I was at the wheel at about two in the morning and I was the only one on deck.

A major storm front had moved thru that evening but once it passed the sky cleared up completly. I remember sitting there and looking up and the stars and being completly amazed at how many I could see. I grew up in the country but even that was nothing compared to this. With no land in site, no cities, no towns and almost no moon, it was incredible, 360 degrees, all around. Millions of stars, bright and clear.

In all my life, before and after, I have never seen anything like it. I sat there looking up trying to comprehend how huge the universe really was. I have never been so in awe and felt so small in my entire life.

 

[cantdog]

Clear air and real dark. Our "savage" ancestors must have had it every night, deev.

 

[shereads]

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!

What's beautiful about this is you can read it two ways: Is it ironic? Or is it enough that his inscription can still be read in the ruin?

I see your Percy B. and raise you a Yeats (They got to travel to exotic places and be poets! It's not fair.)

From "Sailing To Byzantium."

Some verses I don't care about,
a stanza or two I don't remember and then
"...and be the singing masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away -
- sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal,
It knows not what it is -
And fasten me to the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature, I shall never take my form
From any natural thing
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake
Or set upon a golden bough
To sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."

~ Willy B. Yeats

 

[ABSTRUSE]

bumping for aesthetics sake.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I seem to be going through muse abuse, she is no longer on speaking terms with me I imagine, but she does crank call now and then.
She sets a small action in motion and then runs off maniacally laughing at my inept attempts at creativity.

I've tried reading to stimulate my mind, watching films that evoke emotion, I even had the hope that music could soothe her ( my muse) propensity to tease me into uncreative submission.

I am cleary unfocused and at the mercy of her machinations to leech the last vestiges of life from my creative soul.

I explained to a friend, that there are too many trains and not enough track to support my thoughts.

I plea impunity for I am at a loss to rise above the laxity of my unintended ambivilence to my craft.

Anyone else feeling this way these days? You know, that all that was accomplished before is evanescent, or surreal?

Just a ramble of unconstructed thoughts.

~A~

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I just had a wonderful conversation about semiotics.
I discovered I don't know enough about my world.

Thanks sweets. I'm on a new quest for knowledge.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

You can try, Mr. Ozymandius, but even the Pyramids won't be here forever. You, on the other hand, are made of longer-lasting stuff than limestone: the ability to touch other souls in countless small ways.

sher, that was incredibly beautiful.

 

[Prospector 101]

God, this is so exciting. Lit discourse accompanied by pictures of naked ladies. Now if I could just get this machine to download a pint I'd be all set.
Anyway, my guess is our Percy was of the opinion Oz was a bit shortsighted on the immortality front.
As Mr. Bill said in his own eloquent way a few years before Percy's time: "Life's a but a walking shadow ... "