Random Thoughts

Call me lifegiver, for I am your sustenance. I burn, and by my burning you live. I stand, and in standing supply your anchor. Space curls around, my blanket, and funnels down to mystery in my bowels. Time beats his scythe on my forge.

Living thing, does Entropy, my wicked Aunt, notice our joint conspiracy? Not yet, I think, for you are yet too small. Your puny struggle against her tide is a fluttering in a great wind. And she thinks I am still her ally.

Call me lifegiver, oh living thing, and weep. I burn endlessly and, burning, consume what cannot be re-placed. While you sip daintily at my torrent the font runs slowly out. When it empties other stars shall take my place, but oh not forever!
~David Brin, Sundiver

Sometimes I don't fully comprehend a source of writing but find the words strangely moving. The sing song quality of phrases touche me and invoke images. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse was such a book. Along with those images form emotions and questions that I never knew existed. It is this transformation of words into motion pictures rigth inside my head that fasinates me. A single book, read by each person, is a slightly different movie playing in their head. I am only limited by my imagination.

It unsettles me why it is usually something I don't fully understand which moves me so. Religion for one and suffering for another. Religion has always baffled me, yet I can't deny its comfort, this urge to believe in something without understanding. Some people call it faith, other call it foolishness. Regardless, the more I read on the topic, on each holy book from each religion, the less I know. What is certain is the force that is behind those words which forms love, hate, war, sacrifice, and redemption.

Suffering is something that I don't completely understand either. We as a species seems to treasure pain, the ability to give and to break ourselves. Greek has a love for tragedy. The struggle seems to be the important thing, the experience. Think back on the moments you hold dear, the times which you recall most clearly. It may be marked by triump or failure, yet I can safely say it is marked with pain.

We make fun of it. This suffering. Our jokes tend to have someone facing their humanity, the pain and defect which we can't overcome. It is which that makes us human. Tripping on a banana peel, funny? Having heavy object falling on someone, humorous? Those are crude and direct jokes, yet they serve as a good example. The jokes we laugh at are the limitions which we possess. Our stupidity, our mortaility, our way of life. That which we are powerless to change, we laugh. Maybe that is why humor is so important to us, it keeps us sane.

Of course, I don't understand females either, but it is safe to say they are strangely moving. The ability to appreciate what we don't understand might be what enables us to reach for the First Fire, while in awe of the dancing amber and flame.