Today on the bus ride to work I was reading a philosophy book. It was written in the early 1900s and was reviewing the life of Socrates and the prose made me smile. When it came time to disembark, the driver opened the rear doors and I readied myself to step out onto the sidewalk. But before I stepped, I noticed that squarely in my path lay the most exquisite array of vomit. I wondered, is this what the Universe has to say about what I was just reading?
I stepped over it, chuckling to myself, and as I passed the open front door of the bus I called out to the bus driver; ‘There’s puke right there in front of the back door!” and he said, ‘I know, I saw that.’
Which seemed innocent enough, except that, if he saw it, why didn’t he pull the bus forward a bit? Oh well, maybe he felt that was too dangerous. Maybe he was passive aggressive to the riders. Who knows, in any case, it made me reflect on all that life gives us.
All that life gives us is a continuous and prosaic and poetic labyrinth of clues, all pointing us back in the same direction, ourselves. We can follow myriad intellectual corridors to most certain dead ends, then return to try another path that leads to a different place, but still, another dead end.
All those journeys are futile, but none-the-less necessary. For all those journeys bring us closer to the solution within ourselves. So the fact that each corridor leads to a dead end is not the overarching lesson of these journeys. The overarching lesson of these journeys is that they bring us closer and closer to the Truth within ourselves.
That is the ultimate destination. Meaning. Who are we? And why are we here? [Oh that old saw! Cutting the same piece of wood, back and forth and back again!]
Entropy. Humpty Dumpty. Schrodinger's Cat! Heisenberg! Certainly uncertain, that is a stone cold fact!
We're jam on toast! Because, how can the jam ever define itself? How can the jam know the berry, or the beet? How can the jam know the heat of its amalgamation? The genesis of its gel? The glue of its pectin?
I guess I digress because nonsense has ensued.
Typical of this puzzle.
And now, I smile remembering the frozen radial spires extending outward from a small fleshy mound with symmetry only physics can define! The puke on the sidewalk, and its flower-like, mandala radiance, winks at me and my folly--but warmly, not mockingly, just to keep me aware that I may never really see, as I'm spread on the toast, and tasted and enjoyed, the true measure of my being or purpose.
And, hopefully, I'm not puked up!
Although, even if I were, maybe I can still be enjoyed--a frozen mosaic of half digested toast on the sidewalk, jolting someone out of their mundane morning commute.
