It Was Always Burnin' Since The World's Been Turnin'

[Stumbl...um, walking slowly home tonight from an evening out with Gary H. (Hi, Gary! Thanks for Googling me!) Epiphanies are like the best intoxicants in that they kick hard, then fade away.]

[The universe has been screaming at me the last couple of days, and despite my profound deafness, maybe, just maybe, I'm beginning to listen.]

[Part 1. Last night. Writer's studio. Violet gives her usual canned pop psych warmer-upper. Even when the subject has little visceral effect, I enjoy watching her being so competent, because I know she's struggling as much as I am the rest of the time. Last night, though, she gave us a bit by some Buddhist monk with a Vietnamese name (my better-read readership will supply it immediately) who has a book called Anger. The gist: An arsonist has set your house on fire. Do you go after the arsonist, or do you put out the fire?]

[The answer, of course, is you put out the fire. I could've told you that at four, no three years old. However, not only have I been chasing the arsonist, I've been believing that it was really, really important to get to the arsonist's motiviation, to let the arsonist know that I was on to him, as though that would stop the fire. Root causes and all that.]

[So, tonight, Part 2. Gary H. suggests the fire is all in my head. I made it up, and I continue to make it up. The arsonist may very well be an arsonist (or not; oh, no, I'm not really ready to accept that yet), but the fire isn't a real fire. I got to be a little pedagogic over pot stickers and Clos du Bois Chardonnay and explain "reification" to Gary, but of course he already understood the concept before I supplied the highfalutin' name. Attributing essential reality to something that has no outside existence apart from people's behavior.]

[So, there's this house. I perceive a bad, destructive, catastrophic fire. I have a feeling it was done to me, but am having doubts, and am having even more doubts about whether it really matters whodunit. All I know is there's this hellacious burning sensation. What now?]

Previously Next