how slow can you go?

maybe not slow enough yet. not slow enough to see, to hear, to learn.
still rushing through life as though it were a race to some triumphant finish line
or just not paying attention to what it is that i'm actually doing in the moment.
mindlessly going. doing. keep busy. do it quickly. go. go. go.
in the past few days i've injured myself in several small ways: cuts, bangs, bruises and scrapes
all from not paying attention to what i was doing because i was moving too quickly. not noticing.
is it naive or wise to believe that everything in life can be seen as a lesson?
and when did i stop learning lessons from life?

speed can keep you from the lion's jaws

for me, there are no lions. no jaws or sharp claws.

why so fast? what haste? what urgency?

this time in my life is a gift.

it is time for me to look, listen, and learn. go slow. even slower. slower. ever so slow.

the other

there's a cloud creeping up on me about to surround me, envelope and become me.

i realized some things about my life today. one: that i live somewhat isolated from a whole other order and working of life, of people and processes. and i believe myself to be a man of the people, that i care for all people, the poor and destitute, the working class - because I have worked to serve others who are in need. but i am not who i believe myself to be. yes, i have in my work life done much for community development and serving the people but i have always lived separate and in my own time rarely engaged that realm. I have for the most part only had friends who are just like myself: college educated, from well-to-do middle class families and with decent paying jobs. I spend my time in hip bars and cafes and dimly lit restaurants – occasionally venturing into the cheap ethnic establishments to take advantage of the low price and "authenticity" – doing all this with people who are just like me. But that's about the limit of my engagement: tourism.

What am i getting at here? Am i classist because i've been blind to my own class - just going along with what I know, what's just like myself? And why am I like this? Is the determinate factor economic or genetic? What separates people into these different but parallel worlds?

I want to know the other. I want to walk into that world that to me seems so outré and mysterious and get lost in it and feel it run it's way through my pores into the core of my being and stir and shake and mix.

I want to deeply feel life again. I want to connect.

the end of the road

how many times can it be said: it's all coming to an end

say it every day, see it every day

it's all coming to an end, it must come to an end

how many times can it be said before it ends?

ending is a process

the beginning of the end is where we stand

what can be accomplished at the end of empire that doesn't end with empire?

what, if anything, will remain?

certainty has been shattered

the paved road that stretches out before me is deteriorating into the horizon

the road does not continue, does not get better

it ends in a time and place without roads and where roads cannot go

our patch of the universe is transforming into something yet unknowable

all I can see is the end of what I know – nothing beyond

all I can say is that it's all coming to an end