Star Wars

My wife and I drove to see the new Star Wars movie on sunday. I had spent the better part of the previous night and most of that morning trying to get trackbacks to work on this blog but to no avail. I also managed to somehow break my epson 1280 whilst cleaning it with non-branded solvents and printing w. non-branded flourescent ink, thus voiding the warranty.

I was stalking all over the house in a pique of frustration, with words at the tip of my tongue I could not express. So many things I want to accomplish but only so much energy and so many hours in the day. And I STILL haven’t gotten around to wrapping the asbestos in our garage. I had that skin-crawly feeling of too much coffee and no suitable outlets for all the mental churning and burning and itchiness I feel. Urgh.

We hopped in the car and my wife started blasting music way too loud on the stereo, singing along. For me that was fun, taking my mind off of things. She has this odd kind of earthy energy that I find very grounding sometimes - off to adventures.

Strange thoughts ran through my head. The big bang produced entropy, which produced life, which is regulated by natural selection and genetic variation. So genetic fitness is determined by ability to reproduce. But there are higher values than mere ability to reproduce, aren’t there? I think about all of the civilizations which have disappeared utterly from the face of the earth, leaving no trace - generally these have the reputation of being spiritually advanced in some way…

A song comes on the radio as we are pulling over the crest of the hill, which opens up into this marvelous vista of cliffs and the ocean. The sky is dark, cloudy and low, its cold and windy outside, but still…

It’s a smashing pumpkins song. I’ve never been particularly into them, but I recognize the guys voice. The lyrics run something like this:

We’ll crucify the insincere tonight
We’ll make things right, we’ll feel it all tonight
We’ll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight

For some reason I start bawling uncontrollably behind my sun glasses. It suddenly strikes me, the thought that what is really being crucified is the censor, the judge. That part of yourself that always sits in the wings and whispers, ready to hover down and act as a shield or obstacle to block you from experiencing the raw energy of life, the pure beauty of that moment in space and time when the significance of being alive and having the opportunity to experience Being strikes to the core of your soul and you feel the heart of the world.

FOr whatever reason, I was somehow able to evade the censor and experience that moment just for a second, and I felt all of my frsitrations unravelling and burning up as I put my self aside for the moment and put it to the torch. How weird. And my wife was smiling, and the car kept rolling over the hills and I thought about the fact that even though I don’t think about Jesus very much or very often and even as someone who doesn’t believe that He was crucified, that symbol still has an incredible amount of emotional power and resonance for me. And the idea of being crucified, or self-crucified, and casting off stasis and frozen patterns so as to be able to allow the flow of imagination and laughter and grace or even just energy in is really where its at.

And so the song ended, and some Jim Morrison song came on the raidio. “Love me two times bay-bee….” And i started laughing, thinking about how Jim Morrison knew where it was at too, and so did my wife, and the car kept rolling, over the hills, and a line from a Georges Batille essay came to mind all of a sudden - something like

“…I was no longer able to doubt that the lot and the infinite tumult of human life were open to those who could no longer exist as empty eye sockets, but as seers swept away by an overwhelming dream they could not own.”

UPDATE: see also St. Neot margin

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