Not to State the Obvious, but....

Ever been to that Meal where food is passed around, the tableware clinks and thuds punctuating the random comments about taste and who's been doing what lately, but the obvious is obviously not mentioned? It could be that the Thanksgivings I've eaten at are the exception and that elsewhere millions of people fall over each other professing gratitude for friends, family, and abundance. But, you're right. I share the same hunch. By the way, only 0.00273785... part of our year is spent officially considering thankfulness. If I calculate for Christmas and a birthday, the number increases (whoa!) to 0.00821355. But you're right. I thought the same thing. This year we went to my sister's place, as we have been doing for the past few years, and I went with a specific goal in mind: to state the obvious.

As you know, goals are tough, and that leading a disciplined life requires we yield to the initially seductive allure of controlling the order, purpose, efficacy of our lives. Problem is--yes, you're right, absolutely right. After arriving at my sister's place, it was obvious this would be a different kind of Thanksgiving. Her husband was in charge this time and the menu was, well, bacheloresque. Store-cooked turkey, garlic toasted wonder bread, iceberg salad, instant mashed potatoes with brownish gravy, and diet beer for the willing graced a table set with plastic cups and styro plates. Dessert was equally humble, a handful of peel-your-own hershey kisses. You might wonder what kind of people I hail from, so I will offer that among the 5 adults present almost 50 years of college education from uptown universities was represented, and that we were not dining at just any trailer park but in a neighborhood whose property values still have huge bunches of zeros supporting undisputed numbers. Dinner conversation was lively and rich, compliments went to the cook for saving us all from unnecessary calories, and one of the kids insisted on saying a blessing, stopping us midway through our second helpings, because "you guys forgot!"

Seems that the perspicuity of youth rendered moot one of my goals, which was to insist that we start with a blessing, and I forgot. I wanted to express my thanks to the Fates for small blessings. In this case, that my sister didn't get kicked in the head, as first thought, but in the leg when her horse, with nomme par erruer of Magic, spooked on a trail ride two days prior. Suffice to say that my sister is as stubborn as her horse is spooky, but nothing like a broken leg and attendant surgery to screw the mess back together to disconnect her from the exaltation of her daily schedule for some timely self-reflection. She's got three months ahead of her full of challenges, the best of which will be to reconnect with her son and husband. And it seemed that through the thick fog of pain meds, she agreed to let her husband use the kitchen.

A final thought. I observe that expressions of thankfulness are quite separate a thing than simply saying thank you. Thankfulness is not really a part of our social memory, thanks in part to our cultural mantra to spend, consume, and get. (See Andrie Codrescu's Deadly Stampede) We do say thank you often, or so it seems to me, but more as a punctuative comment during conversation than as any expression of sincere feeling. In the Arabic language, incidentally, there is the word for "thank you" but no words for "thank you very much." Their social understanding of thank you is according to the honor of your word, and it is accepted as a form of currency and valued as the only true measure of your personal integrity. If you need to add "very much" then your word has little value, not much honor, and you're a pond-scum, degenerative sycophant of the lowest order. It's tough to get your Thanksgiving tablemates to swith their focus, from the abundant table to the spiritual plate on which servings of gratitude and thankfulness are an obvious social, familial nutritional need that, if served up, can help us thrive in the coming year

From Whence to Wither...Why So Soon?

Procrastination. A useful tool to put off the doing that should be done. I've found it too useful a tool. To my detriment, I put off having to do or be. I'd much rather be back then or somewhere next week and procrastination amends that necessity to address the moment, or more specifically, to confront the shoice of what to do with this moment right now.

Punctual. Sigh. Rhymes with unctual and to the unctuous punctuality belongs because the unctuous manipulate choice driving the moment in their direction willfully oblivious to anyone else. No, I'm not given to punctuality. I prefer to think of deadlines as rubber, action items are intentions that pave the road to you-know-where, and the "appointed time" as an exaltation of obsessive behavior.

Physics. I'm comforted in knowing that my nature is in sync with the fundamentals of Physics in that I, too, prefer to conserve momentum at every opportunity. Nature conserves energy by selecting lower ionization levels, opting for the 120 polygon whenever solidifying, and never ever warming up, just colding down. It is not just a nice savings in energy, but a logical savings in time.

Time. Let's face it, time is an Earthling construct that oppresses everything in the universe , so unless you're asking the Big Question, "How did we get here?" there's no real reason to fuss about time. Besides if the biggest thing we know of--the universe--can exist regardless of our long it takes our little stone to travel around its star, then does it really matter if I wear a watch or not, or keep a dayminder, or write little notes on the kitchen calendar?

Languish. Granted, procrastination can get costly. The not doing what should be done exacts its toll in having to otherwise deal with its clutter, which is why the storage business will always fluorish. I wasn't thinking of avoiding choice, conserving energy, or affirming my lack of obsessive behaviors when I finally got around to unpacking a box of astronomy books someone had salvaged and handed off to me some years after my father's passing. That box languished in several storage sheds, in my sister's garage, our garage, and finally in my office before I thought to open it. I can't even tell you that I was curious about the box's contents. I wasn't. I did find it curious that an 1889 edition of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat was sandwiched between Hoyle and Stellafane. I tried to remember who Mr. Khayyam was. Didn't he write the Deteriorata? No, that was Tony Hendra. Oh right, maybe it was the Desiderata. Wrong again. That was Max Ehrmann in 1927. I knew that Jack Sparrow had something to do with the Deteriorata, or was it the Desiderata?

Mr Khayyam was born in 1047 CE in Khorassan, what is now northern Iran. The Rubaiyat is more properly a rubaiyat, the word referring to a poetic format instead of a descriptive title. He studied mathematics and astronomy and was employed as such for a long while before he tried his hand at poetry. I swept the dust off this little brown volume and carefully opened its pages. As atoms will do, in some shrodingerling way, the pages fluttered then settled open with the following verse in suspiciously plain view...

To the lip of this earthen bowl did I lean,
The secret of my life to learn
And lip to lip it murmured,
"While you live, drink and drink full,
For once dead you never shall return."

You might ask what this all means. I don't really know. I don't know what to think of a dusty volume opening in such a way as to imply that I better start living now. Kurt Vonnegut would speak of such events as random acts of deliberation that had nothing to do with luck or the divine. Far from being mere coincidence, energies intersected and in doing so balance things out. So the energy packing the box--the in-to--intersected with the energy I spent unpacking the box--the out-to? Does this mean that somehow the energies of the past finally connected me to the energies languishing right now, in the Self? Maybe I should just quit here while the deep is still shallow and simply welcome you to a place I hope will serve up some exploration and comment you may find amusing, perhaps interesting, provided I don't procrastinate.