Just as a character in Pynchon’s Against the Day advocated that the world ended in 1914, I too, had an equivalent epiphany. On December 5, 1971, sitting on a hill outside of Boulder, my perceptions and mind-set ‘aided’ by substances not then legitimized in Colorawdough, I not so much ‘saw’, but felt/intuited the “end,” right then. The faithful, the gross-one-thousand transcendent souls were transported to whatever adjoining but safe realm, and the remainder of us left to forage, continue, dream/night-mare on in a collective illusion.

Sometimes, like today, I almost wake up. Driving to work, as I have done 4.5 times a week for the past 5+ years, I turned left and saw a rock outcrop above the river, superimposed on a checkerboard of alternating cliff-faces and passages in between. It clicked. The mental photograph stuck with me, much as the subsequent hillside of rock mounds and gullies yielded strong evidence (to me) of a not-impossible mathematical solution. It didn’t last long.

A few miles later I considered that myself, as an excuse for a human soul — the same stuff as everybody — might choose not to enmesh with the underlying all-knowing oneness of the fundamental cosmic unity, but continue on in sansara. The whirled of illusion. Pursuing what to the cosmic are petty dalliances, but for the individual, what we may, in our ignorance, conceive to be worthwhile pursuits.

Betty models the Stone (w)Ring of Doom.  The (w)Ring can suck in dog heads, and other semi-animate objects.

Later during the commute, my mind shut down entirely. I couldn’t even listen to the blather on the radio. I thought about beer, girlfriends and wives and lovers I’d have in future lifetimes, with only occasional forays into what could I do to advance and promote … happiness for everybody.

“Fuck that!”

(No, I don’t really believe that. I hope … )

So, when the still sea conspires an armor …

& her sullen&aborted currents breed tiny monsters,

♪ TRUE SAILING IS DEAD !

awkward instant, and the 1st animal is jettisoned, legs furiously pumping, their stiff green gallop,

and heads bob up, poise, delicate, pause, consent.

In mute nostril agony, and sealed over !!

(with apologeez to GymMorrisun)

Poor equines.  But if you want to buy vintage blue jeans …

Yeah, it only took me 3 (more?) years to finish Against the Day (by T. Pynchon).  Heck, remember, it only took FIFTY years for me to become, if not the “Big” man in the Locker Room, well — a Medium-sized one.  (Hint:  read BMITLR).  It has taken umpteen lifetimes to get to whatever point i am in the yooniversal mobius strip.  Reminds me … a former friend made a real nice mobius strip, painted, stiff construction paper, a gift to me, of the two polarity-opposite-extreme sayings i once envisioned on one of those ‘quests’:  HANG ON, & LET GO.  Steve Boker.  He’s some sort of quasi-mystic whacko-psychology professor at the U of Virginia.  He (and enslaved grad students) has written learned? treatises on, among other things, how and why people dance to whatever it is they dance to.  I suppose I too, get paid for what may seem like esoteric pursuits…

THAT ROck is a weeurd one, eh? like overlaying gloves cumulatively of many many fingers — of course there is a geologic explanation. It’s a heavy sucker, otherwise we’d-a probably loaded it into the truck, and

Rosco’s “totem animal(s)”. Seems they’re often close, watching me. Many’s the times I’m on a run or bike workout and the shadows sweep overhead, across my path.

Betty adopted Georgia (“JaJa”) in late February. We CAN’T be just a one-dog family!