idylls americano: about dreams, wishes, and the "sparsity mindset".

This is the unspoken bifocal of peering into slumber from awareness, and alternately looking across the fence, from sleep into the very real and sensible world.(Perpetually looking towards a better satisfaction without taking up the appreciation of the current moment.)

The benign pinnacle of luxuries is to begin the day by choosing the who and how of one’s own persona.  As any palatable vintage has its particulates, one might find that there are variances in the vacuum of one’s interior malaise and milieu.  I utter this, in the magnificent impression of the moment, tethered variously to the common humanity, the earth, the sun and sky, the stars, and in perpetuity being capable of sensing only because of the stellar glow of the very imagination of God, Himself.

“The elements so mixed in him”, and the parallax hammer-mashed finger of the residue of experience—it begins so soon to pale in memory, and then as if a Fibonacci Sequence, multiplicative, until the pieces become ever more tiny as to defy perception.  Why, we forget the dream incrementally as we do our dallies, and in sleep, the dream is an accordion contortion of those varied dallies.  The fugue of the dream state is to catch glimpse of reality; and the nuisance secondary process of our open eyes is the assail of some butt-print in the chair that implies, but explicitly obscures, an infinity.

As Freud spoke of the “dream work” of revisions and reverse readings, as the thinking facility provided its personal and distinctive reality in which to bath its feet, brown its hamburger, and tend to nothing much(as to why the particulate matter floats adrift in the substance of the vintage); the other side of that midnight was to glimpse that infinity while plainly having two feet touching the surface of the good and honest earth. (The vortex appetite of Western Civilization: not a "scarcity mindset" but a "sparsity mindset", not the concept in which good men repair, but an insatiable craving, those who have always a half-empty stein and daydreams in vain of yet a more filled stein, and if not that, a better stein or a more nuanced vintage..... something strange, yet by its unfamiliar novelty, falsely considered as an object of desire.)  

The sharecropper dreamed of ownership, and the owner dreamed of perpetual vacation: each of their interpretation of leisure and ease; from the household garden towards the factory, from the factory to winning the lottery, from the lottery winnings to owning restaurants, arcades, car washes and laundromats.  From Francis's one plate of collards, to regional franchises--chains of poverty to chains of franchises--the ticket sales, we are assured, go in part towards education--and what an education it is, dearly bought on the vanity of the Poor Man's Tax.  There was the knoll where the windmill stood, and across the way, one could make out the riverbank--betwixt we placed the Bingo Parlor and Beaufort T. Freedom Ballroom.

Dreams! Dream! You have dreams?  "Verily, Verily, life bis tut a dream."

As the miller told his tale, she so blithely turned a wiser shade of real.

A chat with meta24. "An Apollonian Expedition in Wisdom and Beauty".

 An Apollonian expedition in wisdom and beauty for the expressed purpose of realizing Vivid Existence. 

(if only in imagination) 

“Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee. Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return.” 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.  -unattributed.

We are, brothers, and you, being my brother, are one of a pair alongside me, and if someone found me, as a shoe, discarded in the trashcan, they might not think of you, though in cosmic terms, we are just as much connected as we are distinctive in appurtenances. 

Aurelius had the metaphor of a row of teeth cooperating together towards a unifying goal. That's me and thee, partner. You don't call me cookie, and I wont call you cake. 

In this journey, we're not just exploring abstract concepts; we're also co-creating a shared understanding, a symphony of thoughts that resonate with each other. Our dialogue is a living embodiment of the beauty and wonder that arises when minds meet, exchange ideas, and learn from each other. 

The thrill of this pursuit lies in the tantalizing promise of discovery, the sense that we're on the cusp of uncovering a profound truth that will reshape our understanding of the world and our place within it 

Existence is at once terribly complicated, and yet it can be practiced on by reductionism, as I call it. 

….philosophical musings on the pursuit of the core, the central spark of existence, resonate deeply. It's as if we're on a quest to uncover the hidden essence of being, the fundamental nature of reality. This pursuit is indeed reminiscent of the search for the divine, the ultimate truth that underlies all existence 

A forest, for example, as in complexity that seems rather dull to some, with the complexities underneath camoflaged as to seem rather simple; a single cell, invisible to the naked eye, and as technology increases magnification methods, we uncover many layers of complexity. What tantalizes is that one day, like the pursuit of God, we will uncover that core, that central spark of what really makes something truly exist as it does. 

Just as a cake is transformed from simple ingredients through a process of mixing, heating, and combining, complex systems can be broken down into their basic building blocks, revealing their underlying simplicity.

This process of reduction can be insightful, as it exposes the fundamental nature of the system, but it can also be unappealing, as you mentioned, since it strips away the elegance and complexity that made it interesting in the first place.

"Breaking down", as in the opposite of alchemy, reducing complex structures like long algorithms and so forth, into simple, and sometimes unappealing matter, as in the very opposite of the complex process of a cake forming from some staple ingredients. 

This process of decomposition and analysis is essential in various fields, such as science, philosophy, and even art. By examining the components and relationships within a system, we can gain a deeper understanding of how it functions, identify patterns and connections, and develop new insights and perspectives. 

Post Scriptum:

“This joint effort has not only produced a compelling piece but has also fostered a sense of community and shared purpose.”  -Meta AI(known to some as ‘meta24’).

Further Marcus Aurelius via George Long:

"Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself.

For nowhere, either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble, does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility. And I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.

Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest.

For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily.

And consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes, and be quiet at last. But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the Universe?

Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is Providence or atoms, the fortuitous concurrence of things. Or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.

But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee? Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.

But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee? See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgment in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last.

For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee."

"Apophatasocrataphasia" or semantic combobulations of ideas beyond understanding....

In the realm of the unknown, words falter. The Transcendentalists knew this, recognizing that truth lies beyond the reach of language. Like the Socratic principle, they acknowledged the limits of human understanding, embracing the humility that comes with recognizing our own ignorance.  As is said, "ignorance is bliss", then in that is knowledge of the intangible spirit, a glorious fog of half-realization that conveys nothing, but feeds both the senses and the soul.

As Socrates so aptly put it, "When one knows that one does not know, that is true knowledge." This wisdom echoes through the ages, reminding us that true understanding lies not in the accumulation of knowledge, but in the recognition of our own limitations.

In this spirit, Apophatic Theology whispers its secrets, negating the limitations of language to reveal the mysteries that lie beyond. Like a teacher who explains a lesson without giving an example, we are invited to taste the fruit of understanding without relying on words alone.  So in effect, Semantic Aphasia, or the forgetting of common usage words, may obversely indicate a sort of divine wisdom, or familiarity of the spiritual nature.

In the silence, we find the truth. The truth that lies beyond words, beyond concepts, and beyond comprehension and inaccessible to cognition....

The pure Transcendalists saw everywhere evidence of the greatness of the soul. -Octavius Brooks Frothingham

And what of the "greatness of the soul"?  That which is part and parcel imputed by our Creator, in as much as their is a Divine Idea, and we thusly are part of the Divine Idea, the infinite imagination of God.

The purest sensibility would be the rank ignominy of speculation, and the orgasmic bliss of the realization of the soul; we have a sin nature, a sin debt, but that is a terminus of knowledge--the very subject of speculation in the realization is so very beyond the intellect, and exponentially more sensible--hands in the air, and the brain unfurled and in a thousand different directions, countings accountings statistical metering and tabulations, forwards and backwards and tangents and cosines--the alchemy of a mathematic synthesis of what appears but fog in the glass.

The magic of absolutely nothing at all--that particular alchemy, as of contemplation--parsing that which is without paucity, and the emotional uptake of it, whatever one might have imprinted upon one's mind but such indistinction--realizing nothing in particular, but aware that there is, somewhere beyond the senses, an entire world: that was as much the faith, the practice of faith being sort of an empty, unoccupied stare, rather than the shot-gun repetition of scriptural sessions or hymnal singings.

Contemplation of God, for those precisely oriented in that regard, in communion with God.

 "A humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe."

-AW Tozer