⚡ March 24, 2014
Learning the Language of the Moloch 🚦
Just a few hours until the radio show, and here come the jitters. There is a Zen riddle asking you how you should feel if you’re hanging off a cliff edge to a sheer drop to your death below and there’s a hungry tiger just over your head trying to eat your face off if you put so much as even a finger near to his hungry mouth. You are in a dilemma.
That much is certain. A total freak-out might be a rational reaction, I would think. But the proverb continues:
You’re hanging there smelling the rancid breath of a meat-eater when suddenly, right within reach, you see the juiciest most perfect berry ever and there are no bees in sight. Bliss? There is supposed to be a little burst of happiness if all your cylinders are firing correctly, because … forget about death, you have a berry!
If you believe in movie-magic – and who doesn’t, really – then you hope that little appreciation of the moment will give you some extra secret power so that you can fly over the head of the tiger, giving him the finger as you go, of course, because it’s the movies and the movies are made by and for children.
In real life, just like in Tetris, you’ve only got a moment or two, and that’s all there is to this particular scene. We only have moments, places to decide and reflect upon our decisions. Oh so nice a game, and yet … while I’m picking up the pieces of my past as Bill brings them down the steps from the packed car … I begin to think about the past when these clothes were new and yesterday’s technology had no idea about iPads devouring the piles of moldering magazines that are still in storage as we speak.
You might be able to stretch time a little if you have a flask in your pocket or if the berry is hallucinogenic, but basically …
And that, folks, is the whole point of life. 🐔