For reasons previously stated, I have declared a week-long
during which time I will neither read nor visit ANY political blogs or news sites, nor will I post anything here on any subject whatsoever. A week from today I will report on what (if any) changes I observe over the next seven days and where I will go from here.
Blessings and good luck to you all, and have a great week!
[For more background, please read this. The fast will end or undergo re-phasing between noon and midnight, Wednesday, July 25, 2007.]
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Sounds like a sane move. I’d join you except I don’t read political blogs. But taking a break from blogging altogether, or at least putting oneself on a diet, does sound appetizing.
[Edited & expanded, 8:08 p.m. MDT] Well, I AM pissed. Mainly at myself, though. That came out in a long sprint and there you have it. There could be mitigating language — unconscious fraud, for example, a dream within a dream — but this is personal expression. I intend no soul no pain. I’m in pain & frustration, like a lot of people have to be. I just had to be honest and get it out there. The only reason to make an announcement is that I’m a damn rooster sometimes, but it helps me get out the door.
As for the fast, this is something I’m doing for myself. It didn’t come up orignally as anything heavy at all, and my reaction was, “What a concept! Could I do it?” But we are talking about addiction here. And when I thought about it a little more, I knew I wanted to try it. (BTW, I won’t be commenting here beyond this once. That would defeat the whole purpose.)
I can hardly stand it already, but on the other hand, there’s more space.
We your readers need your thoughts, o Farr-sighted one. Come back to us, after your blogless sojourn, with news of wherever you’ve been. Read a good book at the metaphorical beach and forget about politics (but tell us about the book). Whatever made you do this thing (start a blog) in the first place is bound to bring you back to it after your little siesta. I for one look Farr-ward into the Farr-distant future and see wit and wisdom stretching as Farr as the eye can see.
John:
Well – You have come to your senses, at least temporarily! The next step is to say to yourself, “I will only worry about those things I can do something about.”!
Cynicism is good. I should know, for it is my full-time occupation.Have a great week, Joseph.
John: I will miss your lyrical musings, as I read your blog with my coffee every morning….you strike so many chords that resonate within my being….may you find the peace you require in the coming week…there will be an empty spot in my morning until you return.
Checking out John’s blog in his absence makes me feel like a mouse scuttling across a dark and deserted ballroom floor. Anyone in here? Hellooooooooo. If someone said something really clever or really infuriating, maybe John would break his fast.
Maybe we should try talking amongst ourselves until John returns from his hiatus.
Here’s my shot at a Farr-type daily report (and small moral at the end)….
I’m a guy not much given to home improvements. Long as the roof don’t leak, I’m happy. Yet today I got off my rear-end – with some urging from my better half – and did a job I’ve been postponing for 25 years. Details aren’t important. Involved lots of going up and down a wobbly ladder, removal of filth-encrusted storm windows, scraping off old paint and crumbly stuff, applying putty to window-panes, painting. High-tech solutions of the highest order were called for. I solved at least a dozen problems of such intricacy it made me think I should have a go at fixing up the middle east. (It always helps to be drinking beer when you’re seriously at work, of course. Could I have a brew while I was drawing boundaries and designing constitutions?)
The meaning of all this? (John would want to find a meaning.) No, there’s no meaning. Just a day in the life and a bit of whimsy. Well, if pressed, I’d say that a feeling of wholeness comes from doing a simple job and letting the mind play while one does it. Horrors descend when the job is undoable and the mind, as a consequence, grows troubled, dark and hard.
While John is away these few days we will miss lack the benefit of his daily viewpoints, his zip for life itself the recounting of his experiences, both old and new. . But we do have FOTOFEED to feast upon. The 7-22-07 photo of the tall trees near the 10,000 foot level on Gallegos Peak is a real masterpiece; it is both eerie and unsettling in its beauty. It does appear to be in 3D which of course it isn’t.
The long drought here in Georgia seems to have turned into a monsoon and has thus forced me to curtail the daily forays into the woods behind my home. The upside is that the rest allows my tired and twisted back to relax and release for longer periods of time.
It’s time for summer reading anyway. Between now and Christmas I’m going to try rereading:
Benjamin Franklin– a biography by Edmund S. Morgan
A Walk Across America–by Peter Jenkins
Thriving (on men’s health)– by Dr. Robert Ivker and Edward
Zorensky
The Science of Mind (a metaphyscial teaching)–by Ernest
Holmes
The Wild Muir–published by the Yosemite Association
The Four Agreements–by Don Miguel Ruiz
Jimmy Buffet, a Pirate Looks at Fifty-autobiography
The Demon-Haunted World–by Carl Sagan
Up Country-a novel by Nelson DeMille
The Green Mile–by Stephen King
The Final Frontiersman–by James Campbell
Our Endangered Values–by Jimmy Carter
Epictetus, The Golden Sayings Of
Iron John–by Robert Bly
Some interesting choices there, Byron. The Epictetus was what most surprised me. I know nothing of those writings apart from the excerpts quoted by Tom Wolfe in “A Man if Full”. If you had to say in a few sentences what the essence of the thought is, what would you say? I know Epictetus was a stoic and a slave in the Roman Empire. I have a notion – maybe from Wolfe – that he enjoins us to seek a truth inside ourselves which frees us from the ordinary demands of human life – the golden thread. It all sounds a bit like the inner light the Baptists talk of, minus the divine aspect.
John, in case the fast doesn’t extent to reading, perhaps you might enjoy Alan Weisman’s, “The World Without Us”.
Of course you would.
I like artMonster’s idea of selecting reading material for John while he’s on his sabbatical. My choices would be “Far(r) From the Madding Crowd” (for obvious reasons) and “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, because of the oracular quality we will look for from John when he returns to us from his blogless sojourn in the wilderness.
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