Flow, Not Fix

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
That call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they
Tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai guru de va om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

 -- Across the Universe, Lennon/McCartney

TAB, girls and Wookie

Change, like shit, happens. Always and forever. I’m, doubtless, missing some deep, meaningful zen subtlety in their lyrics though. That'd be a shocker, eh?

If only, if only we could defy inevitable, inescapable change and stay in our happiest moments forever. Are any of us consistently present in our present tenses? I struggle with Be Here Now daily.

Right now, this very minute, I’m living in a moment from Saturday up in Hoosick Falls. I was sitting on the big floppy living room couch -- Helen’s daughters, Madison and Julianna were climbing on me, pulling at me while their cats Raven and Mister Grey prowled around my shoulders. Their big Wookie dog Juda kept nudging my hand -- Dog Sign Language for ‘please skritch under my ears. You know, just like five minutes ago.’

Pure happiness.

From my man Heraclitus:

Everything flows, nothing stands still.

Nothing endures but change.

And the Master of Awesomeness, Thomas Wolfe. From 'You Can’t Go Home Again:'

“The essence of belief is doubt, the essence of reality is questioning. The essence of Time is Flow, not Fix. The essence of faith is the knowledge that all flows and that everything must change. The growing man is Man Alive, and his "philosophy" must grow, must flow, with him. . . . the man too fixed today, unfixed tomorrow - and his body of beliefs is nothing but a series of fixations.”

_______________

“Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”
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"Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.

The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright air--these things will never change.

The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.

All things belonging to the earth will never change--the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.

The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time, under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth again, forever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April.”

And finally, from Mister David Bowie:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence