Momentary lapse of reason

" I made him walk on a lead and he jumped for joy, the way creatures do, and children do and adults don't do, and spent their lives wondering where the leap went...

He had the kind of legs that go round in circles. He orbited me. He was a universe of play. Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same...

The light had the quality of water. I was moving through a conscious element. Time is a player. Time is part of today, not simply a measure of its passing. The dimensionality of time is not usually apparent. I felt it today in the light like water. I knew I was moving through something that had substance...

Something serious. Here was the dog, me, the sun, the sky, in a pattern, in a dance, and time was dancing with us, in the motes of light. The day was in the form of us and we were in the form of the day. Time would return it, as memory and as futurity; I looked at him, trusting, vulnerable, love without caution. He was a new beginning and every new beginning returns the world. In him, the rain forests were pristine and the sea had not been blunted. He was a map of clear outlines and unnamed hope. He was time before or time after. Time now had not spoilt him. In the space between chaos and shape, there was another chance."

Some snippets from the short story by Jeanette Winterson, the 24-hour dog. I really love the way she writes and you must wonder about the soul of the person - the things she sees and feels. I think if you can see real beauty in the world, you can see real darkness as well . They're both sides of the same coin. The closer you are to one, the closer you will be to the other. (Maybe that's why so many artists, poets and the like suffer for their art) Beauty is born and will pass away. Time is a great reversal of things. It's like everything you ever think, feel, and do are all there, like dust particles floating in time, a trail that you leave behind for your future.

To get really close to something is to realize the darkness when that something is no longer there, that everything is transient, momentary. Maybe that's why most people prefer to be in the middle, to be swept away by the superficiality of everything. It has become that easy to get lost with all that our consumer society can offer and promise us. Of course, they're empty promises. Maybe that's why we always need one more thing that we think will really make us happy.

True wisdom is to "go above and beyond cause and effect, to go above birth and beyond death - to go above happiness and beyond suffering". But we're "modern" people living in a "modern world" where there are always more important things... haha only life and the mess it brings can teach us...

;)
Catmasutra V
coming your way this December...