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Barbara Green I suppose. But there are moments of stillness, too, at the top of the arc and the bottom, before a new rise or fall. Sometimes we rush through those too fast.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · Yesterday at 14:51
Stan Burfield Your description is as beautiful as Bob Dylan's, Barb. I agree, life is what it is, it goes how it goes. How it is, is how it should be. But Dylan's little generalization, as gross as it is, is a nice guage we can use to help us decide if we are simply stagnating in our comforts. It may be time to push onward.
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Barbara Green You haven't been spending much time in your comfort zone lately. How was Couplets?
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Stan Burfield I guess it was okay, except that I missed three quarters of it. I left home at 5:30 and got back at 12:30. But I only got in the last 20 minutes of Couplets because I took the short cut bus there, which goes through residential areas, and got off at the wrong stop, having taken the route once before with the driver's instructions and thinking therefore that I wouldn't need to ask again. And having gotten off at the wrong stop, I walked what should have been only four blocks from there to Chapters but in the wrong direction, then totally lost my sense of direction, so that by the time I looked at the sun for help I was so far off that it took me three-quarters of an hour of walking to get those four blocks! Lost in a small city!!. Can you believe it? https://youtu.be/xZbKHDPPrrc
Barbara Green Stan Burfield Completely. Story of my life. Do you remember this poem? It's still one of my favourites, simple little thing that it is. Dreamscape
In this dream
the wind is strong
but warm
and I am lost
as usual.
I am lost so often
it’s become another kind of home,
someplace to rest
while the wind pushes
the landscape past.
Like · Reply · 21 hrs
Stan Burfield It is beautiful. But sad. But also it is somehow a solution. No, I've never seen it that I remember. Am I putting something of me into it, or is the wind that pushes the landscape past a result of the person moving quickly through it?
Like · Reply · 20 hrs · Edited
Barbara Green Stan Burfield Interesting -- I've had the "sad" reaction to that poem before, but it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels maybe a little melancholy but in that lovely rich melancholy you get when alone and aimless but aware and okay in the world. I guess there's a bit of "Waiting for Godot" to it, but to me it feels accepting and calm, not resigned.
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Stan Burfield Right. Me too. You could even get from it that lost is a good thing. That the landscape is composed of those who are not lost. They don't feel the warm wind.
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Barbara Green Stan Burfield It's actually more about that pause in the arc of the thrown ball described way up above ... about taking a moment to stop striving, stop trying to reach a destination, accepting being lost and then realizing that the wind is pushing the landscape past anyway, that everything is still in motion around you.
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Stan Burfield Right. That's it. May as well relax.
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Stan Burfield That's a very good one for me. I need a lot of that.
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Stan Burfield Who wrote it, by the way.
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Barbara Green Stan Burfield I think I learned that backpacking around Europe in my 30s. The 20somethings were racing around ticking off sites in their guide books. Because I get lost so easily, I could possibly get to one place a day -- say, the Uffizzi in Florence -- and I expected to get lost on the way, and made time for it, and often got to see interesting stuff along the way, too -- maybe not stuff in the guide books, but that's seldom the stuff you tell stories about later anyway.
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Stan Burfield When I was in Florence, one day Linda wanted to rest in the hotel so I went out by myself, moving along the streets as in a dream where you float never becoming tired, soaking in the city, an incredible amount of the real city, versus the insides of old museums. That was my best memory from our month in Italy.
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Barbara Green Zackly. Except that while floating I would also be taking notes on street names and the direction I turned on each so I could find my way back! NO visual memory of where I've been!
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Stan Burfield Oh, yes. I would build a map in my mind, and look backwards often like I used to in the wilderness in case I had to retrace my steps.
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