I was awaken by silence this morning. I sleep with the telly on, a habit formed out of my own insecurities and on this day of remembrance I awoke at the exact time the first moment of silence to remember the lives lost at the World Trade Center, Washington DC and Pennsylvania two years ago. So much has happened to our collective psyche's in the past two years. My brother Brian returned home from Iraq last Friday evening and for my family we can now relax a wee bit and our only concern now is preserving what freedoms we have left as a family and as American's.
Yesterday, I finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake a brilliant little ditty about how through a glitch in the space-time continuum, we relive the past 10 years of our lives exactly the same as we lived it the prior 10 years. The only way out of the this perpetual hell is for free will to kick in. Ting A ling? Vonnegut reminds us that sometimes even the best laid plans can dwindle to shit in a handbasket to be flung at your doorstep disguised in a flaming brown paperbag full of that very shit we made all on our own. In the book Vonnegut talks of people who hate life and despise it's cruelty and despair of survival ( I must ) and of how ultimately this hatred for life will kill you and or making you victim to a Timequake until you practice free will again.
When I awoke from my little Timequake, I wouldn't say I was overwhelmed with a great love of life, remember I awoke on 9-11-2001, the horror of watching the second plane hit the tower, then the pentagon, then in a field in Pennsylvania. The tears and rage in me, I was scared and most importantly, I woke the fuck up. Yeah I tried to hold on to old practices and failed miserably. I'm a different person now, then I was before the events of 9-11, hell, we all are different people, nice to meet ya.
I didn't ask to be born into world filled with hate, but alas, I'm here. Life is a cruel bitch and that bitch is completely out of my control and the only thing within my abilities to survive life's bitchslap would be that I can rely on is my free will. Making better choices, educating my feeble and fogged mind, loving and embracing the one chance that I have here on this planet.
I was meant to read this book now, I'm sure of it....it conincides with all and everything I am, now and before. Two of my most favorite quotes I spew frequently can be found in the books pages:
"All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts"
- William Shakespeare
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle
of true art and true science
--Albert Einstein--
Wake up and just 'be' and embrace the wonders and horrors of life and learn, seems simple enough so why the struggles? I couldn't tell ya, but what I do know now that I didn't know 12 years ago is that even though I didn't ask to be born, but by golly I'm damn thrilled I was.
