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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 649
Understanding. I say chair, you say chair, we understand each other well enough.
But, I say chair and in my mind I am imagining, say an Eames Chair, shaped plywood with leather and footstool, and you, you are thinking of something different - an ornate wing-backed chair, or a vinyl covered chair tucked up to an Arborite table, well, then - we are not so close.
I could describe in greater and greater detail - the Eames Chair, perhaps you don't know the brand, and so I will tell you about it's curves, lines, place in contemporary-modern furniture, but this - perhaps - is going a little far. Even the color - unless it were important - is going a little far. How much embellishment does a chair need? What does it matter? It's a chair.
You see the possibilities for misunderstanding. For confusion. You and I - we could read exactly the same story or novel and understand it in completely different ways.
The chair - it's not important. But some of these things, well, maybe they are that important. If I talk about Love what will you be understanding?
We will see.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 303
He-she. You-Me. Of course I would not be so cruel as to take you all the way back, there is a great deal to be presumed and which I am sure you have considered. History, in any summing up, is infinite, theories only model upon what we can observe, and our observations are limited by our senses. So - there is much I will ignore. But look down and consider our history. What lies underfoot. Our history.
The city; any great city, is built and rebuilt upon countless predecessors.
The first few feet: cigarette butts, broken needles, plastic bags, aluminum cans, paper, cloth masks, filth, deeper into the broken china, clay pipes, the possibility of a lost coin or pocket watch. Dig deeper.
Underfoot. We stand blithely unaware upon the great abyss of history, treading it down, it lies, by and large, sealed from us beneath layers of cobbles, concrete, pavement, asphalt. Where it pokes up it's fingers, where we've thought to preserve it in such and such notable castle or cathedral or house, these are but the slenderest fractions of our history, splinters being eroded even as we consider them.
The asphalt, the concrete, the pavement and the cobbles, they protect, insulate us from this great collective unconscious.
Consider the dead. We trample their skeletons, they outnumber us a thousand to one - more, simply, the innumerable dead, they are legion, skeletons lying in cold graves, ashes scattered from pyres on the banks of the Ganges, flesh picked clean and gathered by vultures and rained in excrement across far Mountain Peaks, the crushed and pecked bones of American Indians fallen from trees, gnawed and chewed into soil, Pirates run through with cutlasses and left buried upon rotting chests, the evaporated outlines of countless drowned sailors adorn the bottoms of every ocean, Catacombs with their screaming dead, Egyptian Mummies dug from warrens of tombs, so numerous they powered steam trains, their cremains turned into soot and ground into pigment, a fine layer of progress and ash that blankets the Country, ancient Roman and Egyptian Sarcophagi, Chinese Emperors in subterranean cities guarded by terracotta soldiers and surrounded by mercury rivers, dig anywhere and you will find them. Dig, dig, through wells run dry and filled in with rubbish, crushed bottles and crockery, ancient lead pipes filled with poisoned water, through forgotten tunnels and underground temples, through abandoned mines, veins of gold, silver, lead, pickaxes and shovels left behind, through layers of knapped flint and arrowheads, past the bones of Sabre-Toothed tigers, Ice age rhinos and Giant Sloths and Wooly Mammoths, bones crushed to suck out the marrow. Dig into caves sealed by the ages filled with drawings of man; animals, hunts, symbols, that flicker to life by the light of your burning torch, The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown of fingers in handprints blown onto the walls, the exhale of breath breathing life into the images, the pecked paintings of buffalo and bison and great mammoths, the beginnings of symbolic thought. Neolithic, this, the very dawn of Magik, understanding - now - intuitive - that Will and Intention become reality - or is this still just memory? Merely the recording of a successful hunt? It's impossible to say.
It's not impossible at all.
We will dig again later. Together.
It's necessary, this underground, it's our foundation.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 624
In the beginning. Breathe in, this is life, breathe out - "OM". "I am".
This is the word.
Now - breathe in again - and, breathing out, begin the naming of things. Begin - the sky - the water - now fill them up - day, night, the sun, the moon, the land and sea and keep naming until you fill the world with every manner of inanimate thing.
In the naming - in your breath and outward speaking your voice bring them into creation, into being.
Is this enough?
Every breath whispers, speaks, shouts, cries and conjures into creation another thing, every word uttered like a spell that summons from the void not only what was spoken, but it's opposite - the sun gave us the moon, there was no need to speak it other than to name it - for everything contains it's opposite. And you must name them in order, for there can be no fish without the sea, there can be no trees without land, and so it will go on...
Given the length of the task it would be easier to sing. Or - perhaps, have a companion whom could assist you.
"He - She"
And this is it, then, this is the word, imagination, this is the primordial act of creation.
You needed to breath in to say it. The breath was life, the word was creation.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 305
The heart Sings.
Love is impenetrable. I can only describe it to you if you know it. And so, then, it's extraordinary this arrogance, that I should presume to tell you all about what you already know. Forgive me, but everyone wants to tell you about something, about Jesus or the Environment or about their Politics or Philosophy or their jobs , however trifling and mundane, or their relationships, their children, their sex life, their divorce, their ex, that new tv show, the weather, everyone wants to be heard. Everyone has a story.
Let me tell you about love.
Where to begin?
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Love
- Hits: 317
I have been writing this all my life. It has taken this long because I have had to learn many things.
This has been written again and again. The word count must top a million, several million, crumpled into wastebaskets, recycled, deleted, burned and stirred into the fire, stored away deep in my memory and distant lockers, lost on failed computers, always technology makes it easier to write, and yet always it gets increasingly difficult.
Words shoveled into the abyss.
Writing, now, has never been easier. Think back to when words had to be chiseled into stone, impressed into clay tablets, drawn onto papyrus scrolls. Now, open laptop and begin.
It has never been easier - or, at the same time, more difficult.
You see it in the trove of countless books, shop Amazon, more books published daily than you could read in a lifetime - none of which would you care to read. They need a distillation - days, weeks, years, decades, centuries even - the best - you can hope - will float to the top, will be judged or juried, appear on X or Y's bestseller's list, will be recommended by So & So or discussed on a favorite radio, tv show or podcast.
Now, time to add my voice to the choir, to bang my head on the wall, take the millions of words I have written, the hundreds of streams of thought I have written down, forgotten, destroyed or mislaid, written down again, and yet again forgotten, destroyed or mislaid, again to remember, chip away at it, give it shape, some substance or form, bring it to fruition.
Acknowledgements: The Vancouver & Nelson Public Libraries, which provided a quiet respite and place to concentrate.
And the rest? Well, you know who you are.