good tidings
I am at peace today. Quiet joy pushes up the edges of my mouth and illustrates small blisses in normal patterns, without aggrandizing. Like how the handle of my matte kettle glows. And I see anew the intricacy of my own thumb. Its grooves cradle history. Piano keys pulse in the background as I begin my morning. A prelude named "Ballerina." I picture her, the little dancer. Petite, but not weak. Each fiber of muscle toned and graceful - in complete control - exuding magnificence. Lengthened silk blowing across the stage. She has sacrificed her body for this gentleness. The soft requires the rough to become itself. On moves the pulsing, the next prelude...
Prelude. Pre "before" Luder "play." Preludes in form serve as an introduction, the rolling out of carpet before an allegedly greater music appears. It is all equal in necessity. The central piece will not be experienced as central without the introduction. Prelude instruments state-change.. It transforms listener into receiver, priming the senses. The very structure of the word mirrors the language of passion, of intercourse. Fore-play, bringing the self to the senses and the senses to arousal, small flame, without disturbing either's nature. Gradually, elevation manifests and the servant of sense and muse is brought out of mind back into experience. The pulse heightens. Swaying to a hidden rhythm that has always been true. It is obvious now. And this is the mystery of music, of man and woman, that its structure is intrinsic yet unnecessary. At once it is in symmetry with everything - and at that exact point becomes simple. Specificity holds the keys to the universal. Simplicity costs everything. At that point, God becomes clear. Inherent intelligibility; the truest things are simple in experience, but unapproachable without prelude. Why is the structure symbolic of our own mind? Of what use is it to experience music? How has the mathematical and magnetic perfectness of the octave come to be - and come to be in a way that is perfectly representable in our senses in such fashion as generates meaning, emotion, and ruin? This is not randomness. Woe to you who paganize the pulse, who cut off the hands of the artist.
A Black-Headed Grosbeak is making its way across my yard. Pompous, it conquers each rock, stilling itself and raising eyes to the sky before hopping to the next stone. Its movement reveals its clumsiness. Unnatural wobbling discloses the Grosbeak is no rock creature. Oh but how it addresses the sky. Wind as womb and sky as sonnet. The clumsy creature becomes a god.
Gratitude absorbs me. It is not I that channel it, but it that channels me. Each affordance in our precious world declares it's own thanks. Moment by moment, new dishes brought to the celebration table. It is not I who live but χριστός in me. The anointed one, the set apart manifestation. Gratitude made carnal in my morning utterances - resetting the salience landscape, loosing the opaqueness of my filtering... Humbled and resolute, I lay my flesh by my side, as companion not as centrality.
It is all a mystery to me. I understand the want for answers and the filling of the hole with foreign soil. We do not understand the planet we are on. We have guesses and theories. Man made solutions with utterances and winks from a greater way. These things are hidden since the foundation of the world. It is the glory of kings to search them out.
I move onto my daily tasks now. Addressing them beforehand through prioritization and thought. The thoughtless life is of much waste. The intellect is the fore-most sense of the human. Other senses fall in support of its coordinative projections. I do not mean just the frontal lobe or the conscious centers of thought. I mean our ability to ingest and relate everything to everything. As we move, our cellular to orbital intelligence becomes a microcosm of the macrocosm. If we apply wisdom to our filterings, this cosm becomes truer and truer, increasing in purity. As acid reveals function and artist reveals perspective, each person is a shocking and new revelation of the way it is. Of the way he is. Of the way itself. Make love, melody, and war! Only the face stained in blood and tears will inhabit the natural flow... They are peaceful stains.
Today I give advice to a new startup, lead a team to see the use of their websites, direct a set of strategies to tell a story at an event, discuss the future of data centers with peers, sign two advisory contracts with infrastructure companies, share dinner with a retired forest service ranger who is now a Christian missionary in the hazardous places of the world, then partake in a Bible study with his daughter that he is attempting to set me up with (I find this precious and without potential). Afterward I stretch, read, pray, and walk in a mountainous wonderland.
How beautiful is my life. I cannot be more honored.