As you can see by the view out my window, we are still in the icy tight-fisted grip of winter. This morning we were in the single digits once again but we are promised a weekend when temps might reach 40 degrees. It hasn't been much warmer then that in central Florida where we will go in just 14 days.I have to drive two and a half hours each way for a 90 minute meeting today. It sure doesn't seem very energy and resource effecient. It will give me an opportunity to listen to some Greg Brown, Dean Martin, and Gavin Bryars as I drive on the thruway.
Sarah shared the news that the baby she is expecting in June is a boy. This will be our seventh grandchild and fourth grandson. Each of them is a gift and brings great joy to us. We are so fortunate to be able to be an integral part of their lives.
I am presently reading Odd Hours by Dean Koontz and these words on pages 150-151 have me thinking about "the given world" and "the man-made world".
The given world dazzles with wonder, poetry, and purpose.
The man-made world, on the other hand, is a perverse realm of ego and envy, where power-mad cynics make false idols of themselves and where the meek have no inheritance because they have gladly surrendered it to their idols in return not for lasting glory but for an occasional parade, not for bread but for the promise of bread.
A species that can blind itself to truth, that can plunge so enthusiastically along roads that lead nowhere but to tragedy, is sometimes amusing in its recklessness, as amusing as the great movie comedians like Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and the many others who knew that a foot stuck in a bucket is funny, that a head stuck in a bucket is funnier, and that trying stubbornly to move a grand piano up a set of stairs obviously too steep and narrow to allow success is the hilarious distillation of the human experience.
I laugh with humanity, not at it, because I am as big a fool as anyone, and bigger than most.
I think about all the times in my life that I've done the equivilent of pushing that baby grand up the too narrow stairs and I readily identify with that last sentence. Fool that I am. Click on the authors name above and hear his musings about February, poetry, and other matters.
2 comments:
It is that cold, and colder here in Florida, but we are to be getting a break for the weekend and next week is much better.
I don't agree with Koontz. I think people create worlds that are wonderful as well as evil, awesome as well as funny. Yes, we can.
And I think nature can be just as nasty as any human worlds. Sometimes nature is very nasty like Katrina and then people like Browny don't act to make a better man made world.
On your drive through the given world you'll find great pleasure in man made music, man made heat. You could just roll the windows down and enjoy the gifts of the given world. I dare you!
I also don't think poetry is contained in the given world, but is rather, by definition, a completely a man made response to the given world, a subjective reprocessing of the given elements. Poetry too can be full of wonder or terror.
I suppose seems logical that Koonz might stress the monstrous nature of the man-made world since he has enjoyed writing about such characters.
Nice to have you back posting, so I can give you a hard time.
I do agree that grandchildren are certainly part of the intersection of the given world with the man (and woman) made world that yields much delight for grandparents.
Thanks for your take on these two worlds. I am continuing to think alot about those terms.
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