The moral of the story is...

He's down, one more and he's out...

...if you’re a lonesome cowboy just come to town beware strange women bearing gifts, particularly beautiful women bearing intoxicating gifts.  You’ll lose a lot more than your spurs.

The subject of the year is happiness, and happiness is a decidedly slippery subject to set into words.  Why?  Because where there are several words that name various levels and degrees of happiness there really are not many, if any, word symbols dedicated to defining the dynamic internal relationships which produce the perception of such states of being. 

On reflection I’ve realized this isn’t the first time I’ve bounced off this subject.  In the story “Pilgrim” my heroine SQ engages with this thought at a pivotal point in her quest of self realization.

For two days she floated and did little, the mid point of the voyage passed into the wake.  The mate had been right, a sedative was called for.  The narcotic had broken the tension she’d been building for days with her thoughts.  Things became distant, academic.  What was left to explore?  Her answer came at dinner, overheard between the purser and the mate, a discussion of philosophy and languages of the world.  The purser was holding forth that no language of the world contained as many words to describe happiness as it did shades of the opposite, the mate was trying to prove him wrong using the language of the Polynesian peoples for an example.  He might have been correct, but he couldn’t prove it.

Sundown was drifting with their debate, and taking her own tack with it.  It was quite a thought, really.  Words represent the things known to the people who speak them, the subtleties of their use the structures of thought.  If the purser was correct, as she was prone to suspect, then most of mankind truly labored against a curse of monumental proportions: the very language that set him apart from the animals biased his existence to the darkness.  On the other hand the mate was a good man, she’d seen that in the few minutes she’d suffered that he handle her giving relief from herself, there was no reason to doubt what he said, either.  He’d traveled the world and she suspected him of wisdom beyond what showed day to day.  The people of the south seas were rumored to have a happiness uncorrupted by what most called civilization, which allowed the curse was not native to all of mankind, it could be broken.

Happiness, joy, ecstasy, the English language assumes all of these things are primal beyond any precise or specific definition, states of life that might be experienced but never really understood.  In other words, essentially accidents or gifts of fate.  But if accidents they be then how is it that what is undefined and indefinable has generated multiple names but no understanding of the differences between them by which to pick the most appropriate name to describe such a moment?

No, the fact that there exists more than one word naming a consummately positive state of being is ample evidence for me to assume there must be some degree of understanding at some level or another of the human condition.  Were it not so then one name would suffice.  A path to understanding the things these words name is likely hidden between these words, and it is that path I propose to follow as an initial exploration to build a set of range markers and references. 

Just what is the difference between happiness and joy and ecstasy?  Catch you later world, I’ve got some serious thinking to do.

The other side of Star Trek...

I've always found the Star Trek universe to be a true treasure trove of sarcastic wit and wisdom... entire races built around some quirk of human nature. Gene Roddenberry, old Hollywood vice cop that he was, did such a magnificent job of showing us ourselves as we might be seen by others.

For example?  A Ferengi banker is arguably one of the most dangerous creatures portrayed.  A successful Ferengi banker will always have at least one mummified head displayed on his desk, the final remains of  a defaulted borrower, but never more than three such totems.  Why?  More than three makes it look as if he's an easily deceived fool, and that?  That, you know, that's a bad for business.  Ferengi, go figure.  But gentle reader, I ask you this... are the Ferengi's elephant ears a coincidence?  Hmmmm....

A Song for the Singin'... not the Livin'

This one a bit out of character, the words are someone else's and the image one of mine.  Hadn't posted anything in a bit, figured I'd toss this out there just by way of saying "hi, and no, I'm not dead and I'm not in jail (yet)."

Life, Liberty, and the...

I've written a lot about the unhappy things in the world, written a lot, and thought even more, about how to disable and dismiss those unhappy things into the void of history, memories rare to never visited.  Let me rule the world for three months and I’m confident I could make some changes that would work serious improvements in a couple of key areas, set in motion some things that would over the decades evolve into a truly serious defense of what is decent and desirable.  Yea, if I ruled the world.  But, thank you God, I don’t. 

Still though, all of that thinking on the negatives has shown up above and beyond everything else one key and critical thought that desperately needs mapping.  Just as peace is not the same thing as the absence of war happiness is not the same thing as the absence of misery.  An army cannot make peace, neither shaman nor shrink can truly make happiness.  Needed functions, all of them, but to my thought far to often misapplied by reason of failure to understand the fact presented above.  They can establish an environment able to support the higher state of life, an environment free of active impediments to the desired outcome, but cannot in and of themselves actually accomplish the work desired.  Why? Because they no more understand what is actually involved with establishing such a higher state of being than anyone else does.

Boss said...

Yea, the boss said put something on the sign.  So I did, sort of.  It’s a new year, there should be something on the sign to mark the departure of 2014 and the arrival of 2015.  

What’s to say about the year just passed?  Well, it passed.  Slid off into the abyss of history while other operations, internal operations, were underway.  For me 2014 stands  as evidence in support of the assertion that when one sets about extricating and evicting the consequences of some major unhappiness from your life there’s a lot of prep work to be done before you call the guys with the dynamite and bulldozers.  Before you get to the stage of the game where the six horse hitch of D6 start taking tension on the chains waiting for someone to scream “fire in the hole!!!” you have to have made preparations to support what’s going to be left hanging over the hole when the whatever it was is gone. 

That’s what 2014 was for me, a year of carefully excavating around the edges of what 2013 revealed, a year of measuring and assessing and designing the scaffoldings, a year of experimenting with various quick set mixtures and building the forms to pour permanent columns beneath the load, working up the plans for how to fill the space between the columns with things of satisfaction and delight rather than fear and loathing clothed in lethal rage. 

For a year I’ve given thought to those in my life who’s lives are entangled with mine, those whose lives will be impacted, doing my best to set them gently on their feet well clear of the blast zone well before things get interesting.  Amazing, how the chains of causality twist around when you start really looking at things, amazing how much responsibility we all carry for the lives closest to our own.  Their lives have been influenced by mine over the years, they’ll have things hanging over that hole as well, it isn’t fair to pull without making as sure as possible nothing of theirs falls in either.  I wish I could do more, but then again it is their life, not mine, and they’ve had as much warning as I did.

What will 2015 turn into?  Not a clue. For all I know by the end of year I may be a homeless snowbird touring the land looking for someplace to settle, looking for someplace, someone, that truly feels like home.  If so?  So be it.  The what was is nothing but a glide slope to a grave, no reason to stay here  (cue up the song Wanderin’ Star from the movie “Paint Your Wagon”… yea, me and Ben Rumson…).  This town is way to contaminated for me to ever trust it, never again.  So, what’s left to say about 2014 going on 2015?  Not much, just four words:

!!!FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!