Edg, this one's for you, written last night, but my battery ran out before I could send it then...
I know you're sensitive, and that possibly some part of you felt blown off by my "I'm bored with the subject" line. So I'm taking the time to explain what I mean by that and why it's not just a brush-off line. I live for two things -- writing and having really good conversations. For me, a good conversation is one in which the subject "flows" (in a Taoist sense) rather than sticks to the way that the subject started. I know that this is not everyone's idea of a good time, and I'm doing my best these days to remember that and respect that everyone is different. But what I get off on are the conversations in which someone says something "on the subject," and the other person takes that idea and uses it as a kind of springy diving board, bouncing on it a couple of times to get the feel of it, but then taking the original subject and turning it into a triple gainer with a full twist. That is to say, taking it "off the subject." But not really. The original subject sparked an idea in the other person, an idea that he or she could *relate* to something in his or her life. And so, rather than "stick to the subject," the other person takes it off in a slightly different direction. The river branches. Those around the table who prefer the original subject continue to follow it. But those who prefer the new tributary branch go off with it and follow it for a while. Needless to say, I almost always follow the tributaries. But interestingly, I find that they often lead right back to the original subject. Sorta the way this story is going to, no matter how many infuriating non- sequiturial asides I subject you to. :-) I also love to write. I mean, it's pathological. You know those computer programmers who code all day and then go home and relax by sitting in front of another computer and play games till the wee hours of the evening? That's me, with regard to writing. I'm in Paris this week, not Sitges. It's the last grueling week of a long software project, and it made more sense to be here at the center of the cyclone than far away. So all day today -- and this is deadline time, so "today" in this case means 11 hours straight, not breaking for lunch -- I've been sitting at my computer, writing. And so what do I do to relax? Before even going to dinner? I come to this cafe and write. Because I met someone tonight and had a neat conversation of sorts with him and I want to springboard from the subject we had been discussing here on FFL to the subject I discussed with him, and then back to the subject of Fairfield Life again, somehow trying to tie it all together. This is my idea of a fun thing to do on a Monday night in Paris. Go figure. So anyway, here goes... Tonight I met a hedgehog. Really. I'd never even seen one before, except in a zoo, but I walked out of the offices in Gentilly around 8:30 and there he was on the sidewalk. He was WAY cute. Only about six inches long, this tiny ball of slow-moving fur, staring out at the busy street in front of him and pondering a variant of the chicken-and-the-road koan -- "What is the sound of one hedgehog as slow-moving as I am being squished as I try to cross this road?" But it really looked as if he was going to try it anyway, so I spent some time trying to talk him out of it. He was very shy, and basically curled up in a ball at first. Hedgehogs are basically like tiny porcupines; they've very passive- agressive in their approach to survival. Like porucpines, hedgehogs are covered with pointy spines that make them basically inedible by most predators. So they just curl up and wait for the predator to go away. I didn't go away. I really *liked* the little guy, and I didn't want him to get squished. So I sat down on the side- walk there and talked to him -- or rather at him -- for a while, trying to get him to accept me a little. The talk didn't work. It took feeding him a few cracker crumbs from my backpack for him to loosen up and figure out that I wasn't going to try to eat him. After he did, and I'd tried a few experiments in picking him up by the spines and realized that *that* wasn't going to happen, what I settled on was taking my laptop out of the backpack and coaxing him to climb up on it. He did, I carried him across the street and set him down in the park he had been trying to get to, and we parted company. But as I was walking away an old Incredible String Band song (that Rick, if no one else here does, will recognize) popped into my head. And that made me laugh out loud. The words go something like: This funny little hedgehog Comes running up to me And it starts to sing me this song: "Oh, you know all the words And you've sung all the notes But you never once learned The songs you sung I can tell by the sadness in your eye That you never guite learned the song." At the end of forty-some years on the spiritual path, the things I write to Internet forums are my songs. And they're not just words and notes. Although it may be folly, at this point in my life I think I'm actually getting a handle on learning the songs. Some of the songs I've pondered for many, many years, like the one we discussed earlier about treating spiritual seekers not only as adults, but as adults who have inserted a whole shitload of timecards into the Incarnational Timeclock. Some Tibetan traditions believe that you have to have a good 10,000 incarnations under your belt before you can even *conceive* of pursuing the pathway to enlightenment. I tend to agree with them. We've been around the block. And I think it's good to remember that, and act accordingly. I've seen the benefits of spiritual teachers who treat their students as Multiincarnational Beings Who Have A Clue, But Who Have Momentarily Forgotten It. I think it works. And I've also seen it work in student-to-student relationships. But when I throw this idea out here or on other forums, it's just an idea. An opinion. A song, sung off-key because it's me and I can't carry a tune in a bucket, but my song nevertheless. I *understand* that not everyone will like the song, but something inspired me to sing it and there you jolly well are, aren't you. Another aside that really isn't one. Did you know that the Grateful Dead are the most-recorded musical group in human history? There is hardly a concert that they've ever given that hasn't been recorded and is freely avail- able for swapping on the Internet. That's because the Dead believed that the magic of the music was in the magic of the moment, and that after they'd sung the song, it was Public Domain. They didn't own it, they didn't have to try to repeat it, and they didn't have to defend it to critics -- it was just what it was, a tiny recorded fragment of a much longer Long Strange Trip and they were free to move on to new songs, or new ways of performing the same song. I just write opinions here, and then people are free to do with them what they want. I don't really get off on "defending" them against all comers. If someone replies to one of my opinions with a good question I might expand upon what I said and try to explain it a bit more from a different point of view or using slightly different language and metaphors. But if the discussion starts to turn into a demand for me to "defend my position," I just get bored. By then I'm thinking of a new song, and trying to find some way to sing it. So please don't take offense if you're still way into a subject and want to pursue it and I don't want to play. It's only that I've used the original subject as inspiration and am now off up some tributary that seems more interesting to me. And I'm probably up there without a paddle, but I'm having fun.
