I found a new way to relax, even feel more creative and awake, when hearing the word ‘perfect’. My mind started chewing on it after two encounters with someone steeped in fashion philosophies: In the first, he announced that painful difficulties reflected the perfection of the moment; in the second, he said he wasn’t perfect. […]
Resolution Means Flow
December 28, 2014 by
Fierce determination, popular while January 1 approaches, feels opposite to going with the flow. Yet they can be the same, considered in a certain light. Traditions of beginning again personally on January 1, when the outer calendar begins again, offer rituals for backward reflection and forward vision. If the ritual is superficial – a Procrustean chopping and […]
Merit in the Marketplace
May 6, 2013 by
A phenomenal new wordal popped out of the dictionary this morning: the mer root within merit. Turns out it started as sale value, leading to the Latin meretrix (prostitute) and the English meretricious (attractive in a vulgar way). This surprise led to contemplation of merit badges, merit scholars, meritocracies, certificates of merit, earning merit in religious […]
Mythic Reconception
January 1, 2013 by
My laughter at the cartoon turned heads in the store: a solar system with a red arrow pointing toward Earth saying “You Are Here … If That Helps Any.” The “here” lasts only for a sub-instant, since we are spinning at unimaginable speeds through unrepeatable space. Locating “You” in a chaotic universe (in ancient myths, a […]
Bliss, Fulfillment, Happiness, Passion
March 13, 2012 by
Fun to wonder if the apparent convergence of blogs and videos about “find your passion” (links provided below) has been statistically true – or is just a mirror of my own focus. Multiple notes and links led to discussions of this staple of the “consciousness movement” in a compressed time span. Impatient with so many […]
Flicker and Peep
February 29, 2012 by
These are the words – flicker and peep – for the play of light and shadow, for the sound of sound, in the felt senses. Waking early, in the cold and dark, I notice flames dancing and crackling in the fireplace now. Outside, coyotes yip-whoop in starlight. Time collapses between aboriginal and modern. The resonance […]
Adaptation: Not Always Second-Hand
January 15, 2012 by
Once again, a word-origin is revealing a hidden coherence: ap, which becomes apt, adapt, aptitude, adept and inept. It’s about fittedness, fastening two phenomena, one or both of them in motion. Like dancing: the fittedness being between the music and the body, or between two or more bodies, in spontaneous or rehearsed choreography (on a […]
First Wordals
August 11, 2011 by
Wordals – as word-portals – evolved in my writing practice as mind-unlocking gateways into higher/deeper states of awareness. Unlocking the traps of words frees the mind into a more vast experience of being alive. All around us now is talk of potential new universal languages, decryption of recently discovered ancient languages, possibly extraterrestrial symbolic and […]
The Opening
August 10, 2011 by
Hilariously, I “open” this website – all about being original, alive, and aware, in the moment – with one of the oldest conventions of public speakers, from elementary school onward: the etymology of the title. Turns out it works pretty well. “Open” is from upo, meaning under, up from under, or over, which aren’t contradictory at […]