The Big Picture

_ I thought up a new word today...

_ Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. 

_ ... Perplexion - the glow emanating from the face of one who is clueless. What do you think?

_ I heard a scratching noise coming from outside of my window today as i was watering my cactus. I found it to be a lost leaf.

_ Am I glowing? Is my face emanating a strange heretofore undefined light?... Call me old school, but I didn’t know that leaves got lost.

_ Leaf... peeper... child... thought; there is no difference, no separation, only illusion; only ignorance. We are all mindlessly searching for home. We scratch on many doors, yet all we find, at best, is temporary shelter from the storm ongoing. No matter how fast the joining, all things must pass. No matter how intense the coupling, all things must pass. No matter how deep the certainty, all things must pass. All of our attachments are as a drop to the sea - one and the same, but not, for though the drop becomes the sea, the sea is not limited by the drop. Within each drop, within each attachment are behemoths. How vast the drop... yet it knows not the sea.

 _ What sea are we talking about? I’m ready to get unsteady upon my feet.

_ The entirety of the ocean of life. Metaphors, similes, allegories... Is the subtlety of life lost on you? Know the drop as being ocean... Did you grow up in a closet? I’m talking about the whole fucking schmear! The entire ocean, the impossibility of life... all participating in a vast unknowability. What the hell is wrong with you? What do you want to talk about? The price of fucking gas? The Sam Eness Show? What sea are we talking about? I feel that now I am glowing with the newly minted cast of perplexion. Lace up your deep sea booties, my very good friend...

_ What sea?

_ Well... certainly not the one we gaze at from any shore, for even the  most proud of the seven seas is but a drop when as compared to the one that rips our clawing, bloodied fingers from the rocks to which we hold in an attempt to spare ourselves from our own end. The sea that pulls us under; that is the one I am talking about. Who are we to turn a deaf ear to a lost leaf? Who are we to turn our backs to one of our own scratching upon the door? The very door, mind you, that we all scratch at; the very door that leads to the vibrant silence, which houses all of infinite space. My goodness, man!... We had better get some sawdust on the floor for the jismo is running out of my ears, like a thin porridge down the face of the aged.

_ Remember ‘The Giant Behemoth’? That was a classic in the annals of filmdom.

_ Your attempts at dismantling my passionate elucidations do not go unnoticed; yet as long as I am in the boat, on the surface of said sea, I will continue rowing. And though I row in circles, the sea remains vast and uncharted.

_ ‘The Giant Behemoth’... What a movie!

_ Most of us view behemoths as huge creatures. We can readily picture one, though we’ve never seen. We see them as being capable of ruling vast swatches of earth, sea and sky. Child’s play, my boy, for the true b’himah spans all worlds, and is not limited by size, nor by condition. Knowing this, can we understand, somewhat, the power and sway of our attachment to the things of this miniscule world? Though we form them of an instant, they - our attachments - are b’himah, inhabiting the measureless sea of time, and sky of mind, both of which dwarf the sea and sky upon which we gaze. The sea of which I speak is so vast, and hosts such an infinitude of life, that the world of thought, though it be the b’himah of b’himah’s, circles aimlessly in its uncharted waters.

_ I’m taking my ‘You Are Here’ sign and enjoying whatever it is I choose to enjoy al fresco.

_ Tell Al I said hello.

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     ... The trees are leafing out so beautifully; and after such a harsh winter. The wonders we consider as being small are anything but; if, in fact, we consider wonder at all. We have all seen pictures of an embryo floating around in a sac of embryonic fluid. The appendages - legs, arms, etc. - push out and the sac expands accordingly - it being very elastic. That is us in this world; that is us as we move, nourished by the Mother, every day of our lives; very elastic love. 

     ... The toughest of men, the meanest cat in the alley, turns into less than a bowl of goo when they go sleepy-night. Upon awakening, after some initial confusion, the toughness and meanness return... From where?


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