Leftovers
Birth is the beginning of any given story; death, its end.
History books are but subjective, loquacious snapshots.
* * * *
Those who control the narrative shape history’s perception
Down whatever future-past its tenuous nature can lay claim.
The routine of tradition is a strong force in the human psyche,
So there is a loyal penchant to cling to whatever story is provided.
How many cultures have played out in humanity’s relatively brief epoch,
Is but one of the beyond-countless things that can never be more than speculated.
* * * *
Truth, as far as the day-to-day world goes, depends on to which fake news you subscribe.
History shows that truth tends to favor the agenda of whoever is doing the investigating.
* * * *
Any language evolves from its history,
Any history is imbedded in its language,
For as long as the given culture abides.
* * * *
Jesus was more than likely not your rendering of Jesus, nor was Buddha,
Nor were any other graven mirages history has in imagination ever devised.
* * * *
You are not your mind.
You are not your body.
You are not your mask.
You are not your nature.
You are not your nurture.
You are not your imagination.
You are not your perceptions.
You are not your memories.
You are not your vanities.
You are not your dreams.
You are not your hopes.
You are not your values.
You are not your history.
You are not your language.
You are not your identity.
You are not your name.
You are not your ethnicity.
You are not your gender.
You are not your family.
You are not your tribe.
You are not your caste.
You are not your culture.
You are not your country.
You are not your religion.
You are not your work.
You are not your talents.
You are not your hobbies.
You are not your things.
You are not your successes.
You are not your failures.
You are not your desires.
You are not your fears.
You are not your ecstasies.
You are not your agonies.
You are not your time.
You are not your space.
You are not your world.
You are not your universe.
You are not your dimension.
You are not anything; you are not everything.
You are not … You are not … You are not … You are not …
But the awareness, the indivisibility, the mystery, permeating all … and none.
* * * *
Before the advent of humankind, this garden pearl was akin to a finely-tuned clock.
As eternally precise as its Darwinian nature could be.
And then man learned of fire,
And history streamed into absurdity beyond all pales.
* * * *
Very likely history will not shine a bright light on the United States of Amerika.
Assuming, of course, humankind manages to survive its absurdities
Long enough to contemplate the how-we-got-here thing.
* * * *
You did not choose your birth.
You did not choose your body.
You did not choose your mind.
You did not choose your family.
You did not choose your gender.
You did not choose your culture.
You did not choose your tradition.
You did not choose your language.
You did not choose your geography.
You did not choose your education.
You did not choose your ethnicity.
You did not choose your customs.
You did not choose your politics.
You did not choose your history.
You did not choose your mores.
You did not choose your creed.
You did not choose your status.
You did not choose your caste.
You did not choose your time.
You did not choose your space.
Have you ever really had any choice
In your long and winding journey to destiny?
* * * *
Groupthink has often proven to be a two-way street.
History is chock-full of followers who have pressured those they follow
To do and say things they otherwise would not do or say, were they left to their own device.
The road less traveled may well best be wandered in solitary fashion,
As anonymously as time and circumstances allow.
* * * *
So many ways to view history:
First that come to mind: politics, economics,
Science, culture, language, art, music, architecture, war …
But one onscreen academic source has come up with twelve branches:
Military history, history of religion, social history, cultural history, diplomatic history,
Economic history, environmental history, world history, universal history,
Intellectual history, gender history and public history.
* * * *
If timeless awareness is all that is, and is not,
Then how can it hold on to anything, or anything hold on to it?
How would reincarnation, heavens or hells or purgatories, or any other afterlives,
Be even remotely possible as anything more than imaginary, illusory, fictional, make-believe identities,
As unreal as all to which humankind has so steadfastly clung through all its history?
* * * *
Tradition inevitably binds a culture to such a degree
That it becomes terminally inflexible to the ever-changing moment.
The world is strewn with the carcasses of peoples and civilizations come and gone
Because they could not discard the history, the mindset, that bore them.
They could not surrender to the changes required for survival.
* * * *
No matter the migratory path across the globe,
The human paradigm is about stories in all their many different forms.
Call them whatever you will: histories, accounts, chronicles, parables, narratives, folklores, legends,
Myths, sagas, fables, fairytales, tall tales, fish stories, jokes, puns, yarns, anecdotes, witticisms,
Memoirs, journals, diaries, records, annuls, aphorisms, descriptions, maxims, proverbs.
Whether fictional or non-fictional, whether prose, poetry, drama, or some hybrid.
No matter the genre: literary fiction, historical, mystery, magical realism,
Thriller, fantasy, horror, romance, science fiction, bildungsroman,
Dystopian, western, speculative fiction, or realist literature,
Or some other slice and dice of the mind-built pie,
The storytellers sculpt our world, our epoch,
Into whatever form imagination allows.
* * * *
All the histories, all the sciences, all the mathematics,
All the liberal studies, all the arts, all the music, all the whatever,
Are naught but the living-dying of imagination imagining.
Awareness is the unborn-undying witness to all.
* * * *
Religion is a shell game
In which truth is veiled from the masses,
Who are mindlessly satisfied with titillating make-believe.
The endlessly absurd bunk of all their deities and dogmas and superstitions,
And were it possible, be chucked into the trash heap of history, and forever more disregarded.
* * * *
Something may seem strange or wrong now, but obviously did not in whatever when.
What point judging history and all the numberless values the times of mind do ordain?
* * * *
It is really quite astounding to contemplate
How all the sounds we daily use to communicate
Slowly evolved from across all human history.
And English, the most dogged mutt to date.
Soundbites
The end of history … is the end of his story, her story, our story, their story, my story, all stories.
* * * *
What is history but stories rippling through minds in ways the storytellers can never imagine.
* * * *
The truth of history is never what you think.
* * * *
the lack of a historian, another inglorious moment left un-scribed.
* * * *
History is not a reliable source, history is not a reliable judge.
* * * *
History is replete with characters who take the human story down many a rabbit hole.
* * * *
Your Jesus is a fabrication of your imagination, as is any historical characterization.
* * * *
Who will be the last historian? The last scientist? The last mathematician? The last anything?
* * * *
The future-past of human history is the culmination of all destinies.
* * * *
History is only as real as it is remembered.
* * * *
History is only as real as it is given attention.
* * * *
What is history but the play of patterns.
* * * *
Recording history accurately is an endless, somewhat futile quest.
* * * *
What book or journal or movie or memory can ever catch any historical event accurately?
* * * *
Attached to self, to tribe, to geography, to history? Why?
* * * *
History is awash in every conceivable variety of imaginary notion.
* * * *
What is history but an imaginary context that orchestrates a future.
* * * *
History is an indifferent taskmaster.
* * * *
History toys with all who believe.
* * * *
Who is not at many times both best friend and worst enemy.
* * * *
The final vanity is believing you are enlightened.
* * * *
What we endure just to see another day.
* * * *
If you have tasted something once, you have tasted it a thousand times.
* * * *
Good attitude, bad attitude, your choice.
* * * *
Pure laziness.
* * * *
How challenging to perceive a bubble before it bursts.
* * * *
Death is an equal-opportunity reaper.
* * * *
Keeping up with it all, what a chore.
* * * *
Old age is about enduring fellow withereds always complaining about their declining health.
* * * *
Sometimes so huge, sometimes so small.
* * * *
What were you thinking!?
* * * *
The entire human drama is nothing more than mental illness born of genetic engineering.
* * * *
The greatest story ever told? Nah, maybe the greatest scam.
* * * *
No one wants to hear it.
* * * *
All are comrades in quantum.
* * * *
Count your limitations, they are many and not far between.
* * * *
How you end your window of time is the final pattern.
* * * *
Count your blessings, they will end.
* * * *
Nothing you need see, nothing you need do, nothing you need be, oblivion beckons.
* * * *
Who is today’s king of the mountain?
* * * *
The Difference Between Black and White is a state of mind.
* * * *
Only the dead know the end of all things imaginary.
* * * *
Yet another example of absurdity infinitum.
* * * *
Imagination frolics willy-nilly in the forebrain theater.
* * * *
Dead is dead, how is for the living to bother about.
Breadcrumbs
Very likely history will not shine a bright light on the United States of Amerika.
Assuming, of course, humankind manages to survive its absurdities
Long enough to contemplate the how-we-got-here thing.
* * * *
No grand Nietzsche-esque treatise to be usurped in this body of work.
Hopefully, history will either use these many thoughts to rational ends, or ignore me entirely.
If not, at least hopefully it will not seize them for abominable purpose,
As it has the writings of so many other seers.
You Are Not
You are not your mind.
You are not your body.
You are not your mask.
You are not your nature.
You are not your nurture.
You are not your imagination.
You are not your perceptions.
You are not your memories.
You are not your vanities.
You are not your dreams.
You are not your hopes.
You are not your values.
You are not your history.
You are not your language.
You are not your identity.
You are not your name.
You are not your ethnicity.
You are not your gender.
You are not your family.
You are not your tribe.
You are not your caste.
You are not your culture.
You are not your country.
You are not your religion.
You are not your work.
You are not your talents.
You are not your hobbies.
You are not your things.
You are not your successes.
You are not your failures.
You are not your desires.
You are not your fears.
You are not your ecstasies.
You are not your agonies.
You are not your time.
You are not your space.
You are not your world.
You are not your universe.
You are not your dimension.
You are not anything; you are not everything.
You are not … You are not … You are not … You are not …
But the awareness, the indivisibility, the mystery, permeating all … and none.