It's a hard world for little things.

Sometimes it's a hard world for big things too. Like bookends, with a lumpy train silhouette in between. Life is hard but worth the bother for the most part.

As I wrote that sentence above I went to Youtube and started the Bookends album by Simon and Garfunkel. As I listened to it I thought back on the first times I listened to it with Greg-Jim and Danny in 1968. I'm listening to it now and I cannot break away from it. I can't tell if it's that good or if it was so fundamental to my understanding of music and life that I am no longer in a position to judge it. I've decided it's the latter.

I remember some of the dreams that I had last night. Pete was in a couple of them. I was seeing meeting him at a bar and he said nothing, but laughed while time I spoke. There were lots of people around and we had suits on. I think he was wearing a tuxedo. Go figure that one out.

I fired the tiles yesterday that Ashton and I had painted. All of hers turned out very good. Mine were hit and miss. There were dry patches on the ones that I had put the glaze on thicker. I think that's a good lesson. The thinner clear glaze that I used worked out just fine. Even thinner would be good. I just checked the attempts we made at mixing primary colors into secondary. Not so great. Most resulted in slightly lighter and darker versions of the primary colors.

Something was wrong with my computer and I rebooted it and now it's fine. It was only displaying parts of messages on the Outlook program and it was logy on other applications. Everything's alright now.

Since I began this about an hour ago, the thoughts have become more clear in my head. I meditated for 15 minutes in that interim period as well.

I checked the news and among the other portions, I saw a headline saying that there's a giant bulge of magma under Antarctica. Now this seems just another of those headlines meant to grab your attention and start clicking for additional related articles. It may be, but it made me think once again that it really is a hard world and a dangerous place and a miracle any of us even exist to wonder at our existence and still we spend our time as if we have all the time that we can imagine. That we have a right to exist in the universe and we are, each of us, in control of our existence.

As a matter of fact, we are suddenly shocked when something happens to shake our existence. Someone gets sick, someone is hit by a bus, a plane crashes, someone shoots up a church, and we say; what can we do to remove this risk from our environment so that we can get on with the business of ignoring the world and focusing on the little box we inhabit?

We look forward in our imagination and we imagine we can see a time when the independent variables have been removed and we are safe in our boxes and mankind in general lives in peaceful coexistence with the most dangerous forces on our planet; ourselves.

Maybe that part of our inherited imagination represents nothing more than some pleasant fairy-tale like Santa Claus or a Frank Capra movie. We see it on the screen or hear it told to us and therefore it is true and part of the shared dream of our kind.

We like to think we are in control. If only we switched to electric cars and loved our neighbor, then everything would turn the right direction. Maybe the truth is that we aren't in control and nothing we do can change the ultimate danger we are in. There is no life worth living except for the one that constantly staggers at the improbability of our existence and enjoys as much of it as we can. The ultimate good life then is one lived only for oneself and one's children. I'm assuming that everyone enjoys and loves their children as much as I do.

I realize that this is a depressing and dead-end kind of thinking. I'm sure that it will pass from me soon and I will re-subscribe to the pleasant Capra-esque view of the world, if for no other reason than, because it offers an optimistic view of a dangerous place. I'm sure that people told jokes to raise their spirits on the way to the Nazi gas chambers because they just didn't want to stop enjoying life one second sooner than they had too.

I'm stopping now because I might be right and I don't want to dwell on that any more than I have. I will now go find something light and fun to distract me while I wait for the gas to be applied.

More later,