"So it goes." - Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five
It has been a full year since my last post. It has flown the flight of a hawk's feathers over a warm air current.
"What has happened?" One might ask.
Life happened, and it has been glorious.
I have had a change of jobs, and while it has seemed it is for the better, it has become a bit stagnant. The mire that all humans trudge through, a world that never quite meets expectation. A life where what you want, is not what you think you want. I am a Key Badge (renewed for another two years), a manager and yet still mostly a budtender. Managing a shop on my own is truly what I love. However, it does not come with the responsibilities I love, such as; understanding and manipulating stock orders, making prices, setting sales, general marketing. It does still include those I thought I was above; cleaning toliets, cleaning up after other people (physically and regarding stock). But, I am never above anything, a brother of the Middle Way. So it goes.
My relationship has blossomed into a beautifully fragrant flower. A lingering scent of progress and affection in the truest variety that fills me with the warmth of a thousand summers. Eep and I have moved in with each other. I was unsure I would ever be able to muster the courage to do more in honor of this love, but I have grown into the role quickly while still allotting time to refresh and reinvigorate myself. Our schedules are a bit awkward though. She, a night nurse, gets home at in the morning at eight thirty. I leave for work at nine. This is a truly short period of time. If you have ever been in love, you know the feeling. I am drawn away from the campfire in the dead of night for watch. I am left wishing with all my heart that there was more. Even given that, it is the best twenty minutes of my day. So it goes.
My life is still full of philosophy. My life-blood, producing something within me that is thought provoking and creative. The use of several different points of view, to paint the vivacity of living. A Wittgenstein-esque logic forming a picture of the world. A picture that is sadly always just moments outdated, and getting older. Still we move on, using these pictures as tools for a future, as reflections of our selves past. I spoke with my father, as I frequently do, regarding the Stoicism of Ancient Greece and Rome. A propensity towards the theory that we share. The Stoic's Truth, a pinball in the great machine of life. Bouncing off experience and event, solace only to be found in one's own mind. Calm and aloof one can see the deterministic world for what it is, unflinchingly out of our control. The skill is explained in many ways; The "Heart of Stone", Yoda, the Buddha's Four Truths, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, Zen Masters Koans, Jesus of Nazareth's Parables. The theme spans cultures, societies, and time. If you are in control of your mind, the world is beautiful and terrible, and that has never changed, but you can conjure a level head to see past it. It is something I think we lose in modernity. The fast pace reflections of interactions arriving instantly through handheld screens. Prestige syphoned down into a readable number surrounded in red. You will see more images today than your elders saw in a lifetime, and you will only crave for more. So it goes.
