obstacles along life's way

When I was in first grade I got this message : don't use stick figures, don't copy, use your imagination to make things you know are there but can't see-- I was reminded of that this morning. I'm sure it's helped through the years - giving me a counterweight to the (what I had then when I was small) intense drive to mimic and fit in. Now of course I mimic to parody and fit in (if at all) with a sense of dis-ease - that is, I don't fit in, even when playing by the rules. At some point, I figure everything out - I just do, which usually irritates the people in charge of the rules.
There's a parable in the synoptics, which speaks of the pharisees (the people in charge of the rules) as standing in the way: they don't go in themselves and are obstacles to others who want to go in. I think of it as people who get in the passing lane but don't go any faster - with some sense that perhaps they're enforcing the speed limit for everyone else.
When possible, go where you're going, dispensing with the gatekeepers when possible. The law always is at the service of gatekeepers ; grace, not so much.

halloween musing

and just like that we're almost to Halloween : this year I'm a skeleton covered with an arrangement of carbon-based compounds forming organs out of cells - circulating blood and evacuating waste, consuming oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. Though composed of carbon like a vein of coal or a decaying tree trunk, I am animated - almost like one of those speaking stones the Gospels refer to (or those dancing rocks on Galaxy Quest). Walking past me, you may be startled as if a granite obelisk or field of flowers spoke to you. What horror is humanity, you might gasp - we emerge from inside our females, and, after a while, burrow our way into the ground - as if all a magical prank.

image : lapsidasical