Damn the Word - Is it Enough?

Another long week. I'm away now – out here on our small compound, a half hour north of the fertile mid-sized berg that is Chico. I'm away and out of the loop. I try and keep track of the goings on there by reading the various newspapers and tuning into assorted social media sites. I see that the Chikoko fashion collectives' springtime Bizarre Bazaar will be taking place in the near future. Those ladies are pure, positive creative energy and fun – the collective is a perfect synergy of the high-minded affectations of the fashion world combined with local charm and welcoming. The Bizarre Bazaars attract like-minded vendors hawking some of the most clever and unique wares: clothing, dolls, whimsies, art, craft, etc. etc. - that you could ever hope to see in one place.

A Hundred Years Ago

The train is going by right now – it nicks the back corner of our parcel. In fact this piece of land used to belong to the Union Pacific Railroad. They turned it over to the city of Los Molinos almost a hundred years ago. There are long, tall berms of earth running through the property. Railroad tracks used to run along those berms. Now they are grown over with grass, and valley oaks dot the land. Walking along the old railroad beds affords a view of the surrounding areas.

Rome is Burning

The politicians in D.C. are squabbling about the budget now. It is a funny system we have set up – this idea of a Republic. It is a great system in relative good times – but I have my doubts about the ability of the system to act with enough haste when times really call for action. It is a system set up and administered primarily by attorneys. Attorneys are great at impeding progress – not so when it comes to fostering change. Anyway, that's the system we have – we will live and die by that sword, I suppose.

14 Million Years Old and Counting

Myself I have been wrestling with questions of love, faith, and meaning. Born under no particular God and raised with no religion, I have come to a point where I struggle to relate meaning to events. For so long I have leaned on the art, the writing, the music – tried to persuade myself that the work was enough, that the words had meaning, and that the collective communication fostered by arts and music would generate its own sort of faith. It hasn't held up. I'm thinking about giving up and giving into the concept of meaninglessness, randomness, chaos. I may end up becoming what the theists fear the most from the atheists – the godless, immoral, lost non-soul – adrift in this spinning cosmos of ancient stardust and dark matter. Here we are, hurtling through space, spinning around some unimaginably massive, dense, sucking hole in the sky. My nose is running, moles are sprouting hairs, ticks are crawling into my increasingly hairy ears. This is life – I am another particle of matter, a piece of a greater whole, or at least a larger whole. This separation I am feeling is false – simply a manifestation of a treacherous ego.

Like I said, it's been a long week.

madbob@madbob.com