The Past Gathered
....and here it is:
I am running a little later than I had planned this morning as I get ready to meet the new CEO of Daily Provisions. He’ll be in the company of the Vice President of Operations. I’m looking forward to it. One never gets a second chance to make a first impression!
If it is your first time reading Harrowings, I think a good introduction to our work can be found here in this post where I’m bringing together everything from yesterday’s essay:
Family - Genetic and Chosen
As I sat down to the computer to type a bit after an abortive attempt to get our car’s AC serviced, the Pleroma (AKA YouTube’s Algorithm) served up this tune:
to one from a few days back in which I was looking back over my life:
Mind Matters
Taking stock of my life, I look back over the past several years and find myself unable to give a good account of anything other than persisting. Harrowings, this publishing arm of the LLC that I established as a memorial to my late father, is here on
That led to the next morning’s essay:
Mind Still Matters
Yesterday, I woke up at 2 AM and could not get back to sleep. My mind was reproaching me for all that I am not at 63 and all that might have been. It matters and, by that, I mean that the mind creates all of this ex-nihilo. It perceives, it classifies, it says “Good” or it says “Bad” when actually, nothing exists upon which to project these labels.
and, as you might imagine, both of these revealed how music forms the backdrop of everything I experience.
Various writers who have informed my experience are referenced here:
Good News
Some years ago, I bought one of those Taschen books on Symbols and another on Alchemy. In it, there was an illustration by William Blake depicting the forges of Los. The bellows - equivalent to our lungs, and the hammer and anvil of our heart’s four chambers, pumping away - keeping the blood in circulation. The bl…
…however, the focus is on the breathing; the very miracle that any of us are here at all, much less that we persist for any length of time. It’s all down to the breath staying with the body as we move from dawn to dusk and back again.
As time is winding down, here are a few other paths I’ve walked which you might also:
Voices
Abracadabra - I recall that this has something to do with speaking something into reality. The speech act we all engage in as we move from dawn to dusk and back again is probably one of the things that really sets us apart from the rest of our family of similar simians. We are the chatteriest of primates, I’d warrant.
Wondering after wandering through yesterday
I had not realized until a recent reading of the novel, Wonder Boys, that the title was also the title of the never-ending novel that forms the centerpiece of the novel and the movie. Part of the life I lived resembled that of “Grady Tripp” - the main character in the novel who is writing a story for which he can’t quite find the ending. The movie follo…
Practice
In my tribe, we talk often about practicing certain principles in all our a \ffairs. What are these principles? The first is that we recognize that everything we are, everything we do, is contingent on one thing that we do not do. That thing is drinking alcohol.
Life is a Continual Series of Losses
Thrown into time, we emerge from birth and continue to death. On Monday, I learned of the exit from this life of Natasha Guynes. We had discussed having her come on the “Harrowings Podcast” as a guest but we never closed the loop. Now we won’t.
Still Keeping The Dead Alive
Our effects remain long after we are gone. That’s one of the main things that Harrowings reminds us on a regular basis. I cannot help but write about those who have gone before.
Talk To Me - With Me - At Me?
Today is Odette Bianchini’s birthday and her video for “Talk to Me” launched 14 years ago just came up in my memories over on Facebook:
With that, I have just turned off the 5:52 AM alarm. It’s time to get underway.
Onward!
Click a button. Any button…