Unbalanced

There it is. A painting of Isaac Newton. He looks like he could have been a member of Kiss. He would have been chased out of the Bible Belt in the sixties, right?

According to Mr. Newton, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

What this has to do with figs, I have no idea.

But I find that this truth is remarkably untrue when it comes to emotional energy and the realities of everyday life. In particular, it doesn't apply to the arts. Using religious ideas to express it, it seems to me that Karma is not only not true, it is practically a joke. No offense intended to those who embrace the idea, but almost every aspect of life among humans demonstrates that there is no balance to the force. Everything is about as out of balance as you can get, and there aren't enough Darth Vaders in the universe to bring it into balance, no matter what anyone thinks about it.

And then there's God. The real One. Who doesn't seem all that interested in our sense of what is balanced and what isn't. He's got his own scale and we aren't allowed to touch it. So sad, too bad. But, the truth is, we'd only mess it up anyway because we simply don't know the true value of things.

Anyway.

How have you been?

I've been enveloped in the process of change. I'm changing in subtle but distinct ways, and it's making me a little nervous because I'm not really sure where it's all headed. I wonder if I'm going to end up being someone I don't care too much for, or will I be someone I could hope to be? I'm starting to feel the inevitable pull of "aging." And I'm not really what you could call old yet. Or at least I hope you don't.

Thing is, you'd think that if you put in a lot of effort, you could count on the results to some degree.  You'd think you'd end up with some control over what comes next. But, alas, that's just not the way it goes. At least not always. Then again, who knows?

Certainly not me.

And by the way...

I've been writing a lot of new songs after quite a long dry spell.

Why?

I have no idea.

I like it but it can be a bit unnerving how things come and go. And they do. Come and go, that is.

Turns out that some beasts require a lot of fodder to produce a few little morsels of meaningful something or other. And feeding those beasts can get very tiring.

If you don't believe me, just ask all of those artists with unfinished works.


Peace to you.




© LW Publishing 2014

String Theory

What is it with hair? Mine drives me crazy.

Consider:

Tiny little strings growing out of our heads. Sure, they grow in other places too, which is usually even more weird. But, these strings just squish out of our heads. Strings that, for many people, are wildly unpredictable. Who knows what they are doing at any given moment. How many times have you looked at an old photo of yourself and wondered what in the world was going on with those strings on your head?

And yet we use these strings to define ourselves in so many ways. We make jokes about people because they have odd strings or no strings or because of the color of their strings. So you get things like this Dolly Parton quote:

“I'm not offended by all the dumb-blonde jokes because I know that I'm not dumb. I also know I'm not blonde.”

My wife is a blonde, so I have very little room to work here. But what I do know is that when we have straight strings we want curly ones and when we have curly ones we want straight ones. People with dark strings dye them light and vice versa. People without head strings wish they had it and people with head strings shave it off because they don’t want to mess with it or they want to look like their favorite basketball player?

As I get older, these annoying little strings are spreading. They find new places to grow, like weeds. Even those people whose heads will not sprout the stuff find it cropping up in other odd places, not least of which: the nose and the ears.

I’m sorry but, for me, ear strings are just downright creepy. I don’t want ‘em. I worry sometimes that I’ll have a stroke and lay there for years with strings growing out of my ears.

Please God, no.

Who knows what to make of it all? It’s just another thing we want to control that we can’t. I do know that we spend a lot of valuable energy on these goofy strings. Perhaps, the dystopians of George Lucas’s THX 1138 had it right. Maybe the future needs bald heads.




Luke 12:6-7
Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010