Looking Back and Wandering Forward

I dislike this title, but there it is.

On July 7, 2025, I wrote:

….and it’s probably as poor a title as I have ever had but it is pretty popular post here on Harrowings. I never know what will click. I’ve had a nice conversation this evening with Break Free With Me (Mac) and we’ll probably go live here at some point. I’ll likely be in his queue as well. We’ll see how it evolves.

I’m listening now to Terrence McKenna talking about gnosticism:

All of this noise that our species makes; all the signals that we attempt to use to make sense out of our being incarnate, here and now. It’s all, to my mind, the product of traumatized primates who are doing their best to survive in spite of all of our weaknesses. We are born helpless and don’t develop large canine teeth or strong claws to defend ourselves. As I write this I think of “Neurotica” by King Crimson:

Good morning, it’s 3a.m. in this great roaring
city full of garbage eaters ravaging parking
spots beneath my plaza window I see cheetah in their
tight skins and tired heels all-night hippo in
the diner crossing the street swarthy herds of young
impala flambastic gibbon even a struggling monza
and over there that brilliant head ornament on that
Japanese macaque but look closely at the hammerhead hand
in hand with the mandrill, it’s a sight you’re
unlikely to see anywhere else on the planet …
the stench and the noise, yes, yes, the howlers’
resonating repertoire is not too bad when mixed with
the more musical twern of the tropical warbler but the
impatient taxi blare the squawking elderly ibis and
the glass-eye snapper hawking papers I can certainly
live without also be cautious of the poisonous
boomslang laughter social droppings of the fruit bat
and purple queen fish and who’s that babbler conversing
with a magazine stand? evidently he’s getting a good
reply ...

arrive in neurotica
through neon heat disease
I swear at the swarming herds
I sweat the foul terrain
I rove the moving scenery
I have no fin
no wing no stinger
no claw no camouflage
I have no more to say ...

Say ...isn’t that an elephant fish on the corner over
there look at that bush baby mud puppy noolbenger
rhinoderma marmoset spring peeper shingleback skink
siren skate starling sun-gazer spoonbill and suckers,
they seem to be everywhere, well it’s a live revue
random animal parts now playing nightly right here in
neurotica ...
so long ...

The lyrics capture what it is to live in the city and “rove the moving scenery” and you’ll see in the next lines where I was coming from just ahead of the YouTube clip.

Beat.

Take a beat.
Think about how you feel in the body….and know that you are no different than any other verterbrate in the lay out of your bilateral symmetry. Fearful? I don’t think it helps really. We have done everything we can to distance ourselves from our nature.

My conversation this evening hooked upon addictions - maladaptations generated by the immersion of our senses in data streamed over screens - and how recovery is a journey that we are all engaged in. It’s part of our evolution as a species.

I mentioned “Civilization Anonymous” which was/is a little society that met and may yet meet over in Georgetown at the home of a friend. We felt that civilization was trying to kill us in many ways. We’re getting pretty good at playing the game of “Beat the Reaper” and I think we’ll get even better at it as we apply our technology appropriately. We have to get past the greed, however. We have to get beyond our rather primitive hoarding mentality that is evident right on the street where I live.

It’s late now and I should close. I have to get up early and take Lynn in to have her second eye operated upon for cataracts. The first eye did well, so far. I can’t say enough about the need to bring eyesight to the blind. Anything I’m writing has that as a motivation.

Onward!

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