Reading Ideas

Inside your mind. That's where the misery is...it's in the perception.

That twisted pain I felt last night when I slammed my groin into the pole at work, all my adrenaline from listening to the music of Bjork and Dave Aude, just made it disappear, and I was thinking of: Bri. Maya Tiwari's story of a man who lay on the operating table without anesthesia, because the operation on his abdomen was too risky...while he asked the sexy Irish nurse attending to him to sing Danny Boy. All of the surgical staff eventually joined in, and it was like monks singing plainchant. Everyone was so deeply enraptured by the sound that the operation went smoothly, and the man on the operating table felt relatively no pain.

It's not about being a 'pollyanna', or sticking your head in the sand...it's about acknowledging the misery, like a spoiled child who wants to cry, and then saying: "Hush now...it's over. There, there...don't cry."

You cry for a little while, and then let it go...or each new misery that comes will pile on top of the other and you'll drag it around like the little black bag of pain that the poet Robert Bly talks of... that black bag of pain that most of us don't even know we are carrying, and we project onto others of us...the Eriks of the world.

One of my favorite musicals besides: Cats, is:

The Phantom of the Opera

The original book, by Leroux Gaston, is an incredible story. I would have loved to have seen it at the Paris Opera house. I've seen it twice in my lifetime, but not there. I feel so sorry for Erik, and his shattered dreams for the world. The man never knew what love really was until Christine explained it to him. She handled things better than most would.

Is this how one should handle those who try to take our lives into their hands, either metaphorically or literally? I suppose we should respond with the compassion and caring of Christine, rather than with fear or anger. The world might be a safer place, even though the Eriks of the world will still not have the one they want and didn't get. They would at least be able, again, to learn what love is in reality.

Love sometimes means letting go, doesn't it? I've had this idea...for some time now. What if we all just let go of one source of misery in our lives? What then? How quickly would the other sources of misery get left behind? And if 'one' person does it, how soon before everyone does? It's rhetorical, but also fun to debate. I've left my white rose...on the steps.

If mountain goats like living at high elevations, why do none live in high rise apartment buildings?