metafarce

In my dream the present is like a snowplough pushing us all along atop an endless timeline. When you're alive, you're pushed along in front, rolling and tumbling in the giant pile. Then, when you die, you slip off the edge and the plough passes you by. It's a bad metaphor for time, like all metaphors in which time is a road. You think you're cutting a path for those who come behind you, but they actually end up beside you on the road. Then they proceed on without you, as you slough off to the side. No one prepares a way for those who come after on the road. We're all on the road together at the same time.

The story of Jack and the Beanstalk has many elements that betray the fact that it is not a true story. There's the beanstalk that grows so high and so quickly. There's the giant. There's the goose that lays the golden eggs. There's the idea of a castle in the clouds. This story is not dishonest because it doesn't try to seem true. This is the primary difference between storytelling and lying, the intent to seem true. Credulity tries to make truth out of stories, but ends up making lies of them. As for me, I give the benefit of the doubt. I don't do this by assuming stories are true, I do this by assuming lies are stories. There's more benefit in this, I think, than in a bag of magic beans.

Life is a riverbed. Time is the water. We stand together as long as we can against the current, sometimes strong and sometimes gentle. We're not moving upstream, we're just holding our ground. When we can hold on no longer, we float away. This metaphor doesn't satisfy us because we're nomads at heart. Living is moving. Staying in the same place is dying. We haven't learned yet that forward is not really a direction.

Hello, friends. I can't seem to say what I mean. Maybe you can say it.

Love.