As this fossil watches America plunge ever deeper into Hell and his ailing carcass crawl inexorably to the junkyard hoping to be vaporized by lighting and cheat the torture machine$$$, I’m reminded of a song I sang to my daughters when they were innocent and I wondered how I was going to be able to hold it together.
Today
Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today
I'll be a dandy, and I'll be a rover
You'll know who I am by the songs that I sing
I'll feast at your table, I'll sleep in your clover
Who cares what the morrow shall bring
Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today
I can't be contented with yesterdays glory
I can't live on promises winter to spring
Today is my moment, now is my story
I'll laugh and Ill cry and I'll sing
Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today
Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today
Along somewhat divergent lines, this arrived in my email yesterday:
To Live on a Day to Day Basis Is Insufficient
Oliver Stacks
POETIC OUTLAWS
JUN 30, 2024To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient
for human beings; we need to transcend,
transport, escape; we need meaning,
understanding, and explanation;
we need to see over-all patterns
in our lives.
We need hope, the sense of a future.
And we need freedom (or, at least,
the illusion of freedom) to get beyond
ourselves, whether with telescopes
and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning
technology, or in states of mind
that allow us to travel to other worlds,
to rise above our immediate
surroundings.
We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions
that makes it easier to bond with each other,
or transports that make our consciousness
of time and mortality easier to bear.
We seek a holiday from our inner
and outer restrictions, a more intense
sense of the here and now, the beauty
and value of the world we live in.
You can find this passage in Oliver Sack’s great book — Hallucinations.Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter
In the Gospels, Jesus advised to take no thought for tomorrow, for each day has sufficient trouble of its own. That seems to have been Buddha’s approach, too, and the approach of the Christian saints and the Sufi mystics, and other people who had become in but not of this world. Easy to say, of course, not so easy to do, but I have yet to find any evidence that it is not as Jesus said it is, and he did encourage people to gather and share their experiences and worldly possessions, so that they all could get by. That’s how Peter’s community in Acts lived. Jesus also said not to hide your lamp under a bushel, and to let your light shine forth - even if it sometimes got you into deep doo doo :-)
Cynthia Come-Loupe
It's more simply known as learning to live in the moment. It's not rocket science and all the references to various religions are unnecessary. It simply takes practice but it's immensely freeing. One stops to be anxious about the immediate or imminent future and forgets to fret about the past, both of which are immutable or unknown anyway. Instead you learn to really savour the day you're having and discover a new appreciation for life's simple pleasures. Like any habit, it takes conscious practice at first - three weeks is how long it takes to form a habit they say - and the benefits are multifold. Often things have a way of working out for the better when you don't try to interfere or control, or they just fade away.
Sloan BashinskySloan’s Newsletter
Yes, simply living in the moment sums it up very well, as does chop wood carry water. It's important, I think, to do the best we can in whatever we do, in how we relate to what each day brings. And to be who we are, instead of what other people, including our parents and grandparents, want or wanted us to be.
I drew from different spiritual traditions, because they have promoted living day to day for a very long time, yet when I observe Christians, for example, I grew up among them, was one of them, I still deal with them all the time, they don’t seem, in the main, to have accepted what Jesus said about taking no thought for tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of its own.
I’m 81 and climbing. I’ve had maybe a dozen entirely different lives in one lifetime. I’m amazed that I’m still alive. I wonder every day why I’m still here? I have lots of aches and pains doctors can’t do anything about. I dread ending up in a facility and being so important to great industries that depend for their very survival on old people living and suffering as long as possible, which no beloved pet is allowed to do. But I keep waking up each morning, and I keep taking what the day brings and dealing with it, and that’s all I can do, and it’s all anyone can do.
Christianity made it so much more complicated. I tell Christians, if they lived in my skin a little while, they might wish there was no God. I have told Atheists that, too, and that if there was no God, the topic would never come up :-). I”m not stuck on the word, God. It’s what I was raised to call whatever started everything. Something did :-), and I’ve had many direct dealings with what is not of this world, but I’d be nuts if I believed I could prove it to anyone else :-)
From Poetic Outlaws today:
In Order to Create, I Destroyed MyselfBy: Fernando PessoaDown the steps of my dreams and my weariness, descend from your unreality, descend and be my substitute for the world.— PessoaEach of us is intoxicated by different things.There’s intoxication enough for me in just living. Drunk on feeling I drift but never stray. If it’s time to go back to work, I go to the office just like everyone else. If not, I go down to the river to stare at the waters, again just like everyone else. I’m just the same. But behind this sameness, I secretly scatter my personal firmament with stars and therein create my own infinity…
I live always in the present.
I know nothing of the future and no longer have a past. The former weighs me down with a thousand possibilities, the latter with the reality of nothingness. I have neither hopes for the future nor longings for what was…
My past is everything I never managed to become.
I created various personalities within myself. I create them constantly. Every dream, as soon as it is dreamed, is immediately embodied by another person who dreams it instead of me.
In order to create, I destroyed myself; I have externalized so much of my inner life that even inside I now exist only externally. I am the living stage across which various actors pass acting out different plays…
Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is in the spirit that it is experienced.
That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely, more widely, more tumultuously than others who have lived their lives purely externally.You can find this passage in Fernando Pessoa’s brilliant little book — The Book of Disquiet
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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