Things, as in all things and as in time itself, do seem to be speeding up. Everyone notices it, and finds it to be challenging to a greater or lesser extent. It’s like time is literally flying by us, and it all may look the same in the “real world”, but physical life knows it isn’t and there’s a bit of a push/pull, trying to make sense of things as they go past, of our feelings as they swirl and eddy. How to make sense of what we’re doing, make plans when everything is in such flux if not outright chaos. I’m watching people I know working through what needs to be done in their lives, making plans and decisions that change with dizzying and speedy regularity. Usually, I just listen. My own decisions are marching around on their own, practicing how to get themselves in order, and are thus unreachable for comment.
However, and, but. There do seem to be complementary tracks, even if we feel at times as though we’re following those tracks like dogs with their noses in the grass pursuing bugs. On the one hand, there’s a LOT of information floating around everywhere in this technological world. On the other hand? There seems to be an extraction of content from a fair amount of this information. Where does this leave you? In the continuing story of the pondering of business and other directions here in Yurt Central, it still seems to me that the inclusion of content and meaning is crucial. All the well meaning admonitions one receives about paragraph length in a newsletter (or heck! in a blog), and that those paragraphs should all be short so that people can pay attention…..combined with a conversation where someone was talking about what constitutes organic growing and pretty much misrepresenting the basics in order to make a sale, made me stop and wring my paws. My bias is toward inclusion. Obviously. And if we are to change the way things are, the way the world is, we are not going to accomplish that by becoming more stupid, more unconscious, more oriented to having all direction come from outside in specific patterns and sizes and lengths. We’re looking for INCLUSION, Gentle Reader, and dare we say it, expansion of awareness. Not contraction.
Combining all this with the (very) dismaying progress in Syria, as well as of politics here in the States, the deadlocked, diatribe ridden (but SHORT PARAGRAPHED!) and/or just downright limited and backward things happening, I come back to the same thing every time. You have to think for yourself: nobody else can do that for you. Thinking for yourself may be frowned upon in some places but it is still essential. ( Just as freedom is, could we but remember that. ) And after thinking, you can explain what you saw and understood to others. Then, those others can understand the same things, act on their own behalf (crucial in any sort of healing process), and create some dynamism, movement, and progress for everyone. So, really. We need those long paragraphs, Gentle Reader! We need calm, some room to think and develop. Some quiet and space. Knowledge, as opposed to propaganda- which is what, of course, advertising is and quite often even the “news”. We are not presented with the truth, but with an image of what someone else wants truth to look like. And what that someone else also wants YOU to accept, buy, do. This lemming- like hurtle toward what’s hot/what’s not and all the artificial constructs we accept as reality is not, ultimately, going to serve us well. In fact it is looking more and more like The Great Leap Backward. Especially for women. So, that was today’s epic think-through. It’s like those fractal rough spots- those spots reveal the shapes and beings of everything around them and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t fly. So, finally, a decision. We embrace long sentences and long paragraphs here. Happen what may. (Ahem.)(Scenes from Toiling In Obscurity?)
Meanwhile, for diversion nothing really surpasses the horses next door. They’re by themselves most of the time, and thus have whole routines and things they do just in the course of their days, since they think nobody’s watching and we are, at this point, largely part of their herd so they don’t worry about US. ( Except to alert us to their need for carrots.) For example, they’re in a sloping corral area. They’ll take turns walking, one of them, up to the top of the corral with the other staying down in the bottom. Then, they’ll “ignore” each other until one breaks down and begins to amble down to the other. The ear movement during all this is sensational: up, down, swivel, front, side, wiggle. Maybe a blow out the nose. After some short time passes during which length of corral/time/distance are measured in equine terms, inevitably the horse on the lower area of the corral makes a break for the top area, and a fair amount of astonishing head and mane shaking ensues. Then sometimes they chase each other around, or play tag with things they find on the ground. Sierra, the white horse, absolutely loves to roll in the mud. The other day she was doing just that, reveling in abandon, when she noticed The Partner walking past the fence. She gave him a quick, appraising glance and went right back to the mud. It’s a different story with the border collie, though. The dog was out playing the dozens with Copper, The Guy Horse, and the head movements and shakes, the lunges and snaps and hoof gesturing were all clearly saying:
DOG- nyah nyah nyah
HORSE- come over here and say that, right here!
DOG- lunge and miss
HORSE- keep it up. I can do this all day. WITH PLEASURE.
But the really great thing is we can always walk over there and get showered with horse kisses now. Which is the next plan, after, of course, we let the Conure Cabal out for their afternoon fly around. Continuing reinvention can wait a bit.
Boozilla: learning to fly one room at a time 