Daniel Christopher June to the Students of Life:
Greetings!
As I've said, my current work as a Peer Support Specialist for Our Place mental health terminates as of February 16th on account of funding changes. I have the opportunity to seek employment elsewhere. I dunno what, but maybe I will choose a different profession. The future is wide open. I can always go back to freelance writing. This would afford me time to pursue an established publisher for my books.
I've written fewer Allays this week -- just a handful -- so perhaps my muse for these is winding down?
The children are well: school is well. Sherry is busy with her job, overwhelmed with her job, as has been her wont these last five years.
Take care, Caretakers!
* 901 *
For those eager to "deconstruct" a binary, let us not hastily binarize ourselves against the binary, nor prate our time with deconstructed versus constructed. There are many forms of binary, often going on all at once. What should our model of opposition be? Central verses peripheral? Inner versus outer? Original versus derivative? Kenneth Burke metaphorized opposition as object and ground. If being is the ultimate term, the only further term we can conjecture is nonbeing. The Yin Yang imagined a happy marriage as the model of opposition, more of an apposition, a complementary giving.
For those religions eager to valorize "light" and demonize "darkness," continuing the "blessed versus damned" rhetoric to the point of damning goats because they are not sheep, we might just as well state that "both are necessary," and, "whatever is necessary is also good."
Oppositions may be complementary, mutually supportive, or dependent one upon the other in one way and not in another way. A term may have opposites in different directions depending on how you want to define it at the moment. Guilt is the opposite of pride, in one sense, but the opposite of shame, in another sense, and the opposite of innocence, in another – all at the same time, since definitions are eternal. Deconstruction is one move in the game, yet Ama is Life.
* 902 *
"As without, so within," Hermes so hopefully told us. Lest we be lulled by mere symmetries, let's ask what pragmatic difference it makes if there is some correspondence between inner and outer. "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," another proverb helpfully warns. So as we build our crea, our differentiated energy, we often swell with a unique mode of motivation ripe for exactly one sort of situation. When we brush up against that situation, like a stray nail to a bag of oats, that bag bursts. Applying our motive to other situations might pass awkward.
We might have the energy to gestate another child, perhaps not one right after the other the way some women do, but after a solid three years; or we can switch from this job to that, but not to a third just yet; or with love, we can seriously date this person, and then that person, but if even that doesn't work, out we need some time to develop that inner resource of motivation, of crea, to champion the new cause. For while falling in love may seem easy and natural, we must be ready for it, and thankfully our situation and system guard us from premature demands on our motivation. When love isn't there, love isn't called.
* 903 *
Just as a diabetic person must be conscious of his blood sugar in a way most people need not be, so I must be conscious of my motivation. I must husband my resources carefully – the feast or famine scheme tempts me.
Our diet of friends, the types of conversations we have, the various invigorations we get from our jobs – the checks and debits – the various moralizations we get from acting in accordance with a given moral system, the pluses and bonuses we get from others, or what we give ourselves when we foster virtues, and their necessary support upon and energetic exchange within what popularly might be called vices, shape us for our daily doings as well as the monthly and yearly attitudes and temperaments that make up our overall motivation. Mood is motive. Goals make growth.
* 904 *
We absorb down to our soul's deep storag -- that cultural bric-a-brac that rolls out our Hellenistic and Christian inheritance -- so that, when properly alone, perhaps right after death, perhaps right before, we are stunned to discover, with what hits us with the full force of a revelation, some ancient myth or symbol., some form that seems completely to come out of us. And perhaps it does carry some original light of our own mixed in. Yet, be not deceived by any given form. Forms differ from East to West, and from age to age. What seems deepest and most necessary to us would not work universally – nor need it. Hold to your own. Stand on your own two feet. Remember, we all begin within Mother.
-- R ᴤ88s Я --
Perfection Is Easy
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