(a natural follow up to my future shock essay)
I remember a line from a book or movie, having no recollection of the source material itself, where someone asked this genius what he thought about most of the day. They were sitting outside, and the genius had this far off look of wonder on his face, staring out into the world. He answered his curious friend, who was sitting there, palpably concentrating, trying to “figure out” the workings of his mind,”Colors, mostly.”
“Colors?”
“Yeah, I like all the greens a lot.”
I really liked that line a lot. I loved the bafflement of the listner, who was so busy trying to figure out the answers to everything, he totally forgot how to live in “time.”
To be fully aware, you have to live in the now, the scents, the colors, the sounds, the tastes, right in your skin, and appreciate the full wonder of the moments that pass before you.
I’m acutely aware of time, I live in time more than space. History is cool and all, but the greatest of philosophies happened because the people living them wrote to their times unheeding of those before them, and only paying minor attention to the future.
Most people since then have been pondering in their shadows, with the weight of what has been said before them altering their perceptions of the now.
This very moment has never happened before, and will never happen again. Existence itself has cycles, and as this one is about to end, or morph wildly into something else we need to be alert and aware more than ever to the moment. For it is never in one moment that change comes, it is in series of smaller moments.
Never before have we been so globally aware as a species. A whales song may have crossed oceans for centuries, communicating vast distances to be repeated and new songs learned, but our species is just catching up. This is a Now like no other.
Every where around the World changes are happening in our time.
The shocks are coming, but the people are reacting in unexpected ways.
There is a red-headed woodpecker on my tree, I can see glimpses of it behind the lavender blooms of the hanging basket in the foreground. It means nothing, and everything. It is a reminder that the world outside my head exists totally without impact of my thoughts. It is a reminder to use those thoughts well, for the honor of getting to exist in this World means a responsibility to it. It is beautiful.
Unlike this media, which prolongs moments in that rereading is done back inside our brains, and is done more in a “space” (page) than in time (although the personal time in which the reading is done does effect it) time continues whipping by.
This is this media’s time though, a wondrous tool spreading ideas.
It does negate the 3 dimensional reality in a way. In my mind I see you all first as Writers, for it is by your writing you are defined. Then as political activists, or philosophers, or students of history. I don’t think of you the way you think of yourselves, and that limits reality.
Yet, with all the downfalls and limitations of this tool, I see it as our first whale songs….
It is a new time.
Perhaps it will be the dawn of new philosophies and ways of thinking that are truly global, and based entirely in the NOW.
The pod of humanity is awakening, and if you listen closely, you can hear the earth, reality itself vibrate a new sound of it.
What do I think about most of the time, other than the colors I see?
Other than the colors of my world, and the colors of revolution and the colors of the faces of my suffering relatives?
Heh. TMI. Well, we all have our vices, and I’m trying to break that one. Its a 12-step program. Yum.
You all knew I couldn’t be this serious without throwing in at least one grin. Part of the now is laughter at our own follies.