lessons.

ah the patterns the patterns.

and yeah so there are actions and there are reactions and there are the things we do the things we say and there are things that say and do us, don't you know.

and there are so many patterns that repeat if you don?t get the lesson the first time it's going to come around again and bite you in the butt or maybe you'll just trip over it or maybe you'll just slide and slide on that ever present banana peel.

sometimes everything connects to the point that i go completely nuts and frighten myself into a bout of paranoia and do things like, oh, suddenly delete my blog, symbolically attempting to wipe my image right out of the mirror. and sometimes things connect in great cosmic lessons of significant import. and sometimes things connect in such as way as to be absurdly humorous and wonderful. this is all part of the joy of the crazy me. just read on and you too can watch these synapses playing accelerated ping-pong in a vacuum.

yesterday?s daily dharma:

"You exist as an idea in your mind."

~Shunryu Suzuki

which fits in perfectly with gongli's brilliant featured post regarding his life as a fictional creation created by the author himself.

then late last night, i turned on the tube as i was getting into bed, and there it was, my fave beautiful bittersweet woody allen flick, "the purple rose of cairo" in which a fictional character comes down from the screen, falls in love and runs loose in the "real" world. of course the actual actor turns out to be more false in reality than the true-blue fictional character from the film. probably one of the best pieces of writing in film existence, full of brilliant one-liners, philosophical humor, a twist on the nature of reality, a poke at our ideals of human relationships, expectations and the fallibility of human nature. and of course, Mia Farrow gives a most tender and heart-breaking performance as an unhappy woman who seeks refuge from her brutal marriage in the movie theatre, and whose love brings the character in the film to life.

well of course i love Mia Farrow. and i identify with her character in occasionally a too close for comfort way. and gongli's post made me laugh and cry. imagination is a powerful thing. some would say it is the driving force behind reality. even in the most scientific of investigations, the focus seems to be predetermined in advance by whatever it is that is sought, from the cure to cancer to the nature of the universe.

despite the food chain eat or be eaten struggling survival of the fittest brutality of the world in which we live, there is also a world of compassion and understanding, cooperation and teamwork and love and hope and heroes overcoming tremendous odds that is equally real.

and my imagination tends to drive me toward the ideal world because well . . because it?s also an equally important survival mechanism to pull your hand away from the fire, to wish for peace, to pursue happiness and to be free of suffering. don't we all want these things?

consciousness of ephemeral organic mortality and inevitable demise, combined with the knowledge of the nature of the reality of the suffering of existence, why not strive to be free of it? isn't this sort of imagination of the ideal the truly natural survival mechanism that makes life and love possible in a violent world?

and if i think therefore i am and i exist as an idea in my mind, then why not accept and acknowledge that i am my own fictional creation of my self? doesn't that make the ego so much less serious and threatening, and maybe, potentially, even a fiction itself, one to rewrite into a co-collaborator who assists in creating something of beauty out of suffering?

and if i am my own author of this identity, i am symbolic in nature and thus essentially free to create the meaning of my own existence. can't control the stuff that happens, the nature of an existence of suffering, but do get to decide how to adapt, what to make of it.

hmmm. lots of responsibility inherent in that notion. bit scarey. what ideas should i choose to exist as today?

well, first thing i'm going to have to do is get rid of that blasted banana peel.