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November 17, 2005
Flights and Perches
Categories: Personal
All we have, all we are, are moments of conversation, of connection, interspersed with down times of habit, of blindness, where we fall into the rhythmic lull of the everyday grind. We come and go, ebb and flow, but the real moments of memory are when that stops, when we're jolted out of the rhythm of the everyday.
Flights and perches, James says.
Rhythm and the consummatory, says Dewey.
Our lives are these moments, held in connection. Touchstones of memory that define who we are, were, and want to be.
How do we find these moments? Can we make them? Can we create space for them to happen, to take us unawares?
We choose and hope. Stand and wait. Move and rest.
Flow like a river. Stand like a statue.
Zen and The Stranger. Buddha and Camus.
Finding moments. Making memories. Authentic perches. Life's unreachable accident.
It's harder to make or find those moments as we get older, I think. we get tired, used to a routine, comfortable. I'm not knocking it, because God knows I want comfort more times than not. And you can't have one without the other. No flights, no perches. No consummatory experience without the ordinary ebb and flow.
Growth comes easier for the young, perhaps as it should.
Posted by Nakia at November 17, 2005 11:09 AM