challenges

the world always forces us to confront and play with our edges and definitions. well.. let's say the 'world,' yes, but the 'world' when engaged and given the respect of being perceived thru the lens of loving open-mindedness, and an assumption of fundamental coherence and meaning, even when this coherence and meaning escapes or transcends our powers of seeing and interpretation (and, it bears pointing out, this land beyond our powers of seeing and interpretation is where old-fashioned mystery used to live).

you _can_ walk the parallel road of finding the world empty of these cues as to significance and meaning, but that's like walking among the richness of recorded poetry and viewing it with the myopic rigor of utilitarian prose conventions and lowbrow demands for literal transparency.

thing is, i have a horror of violence, i have a terror of feeling revulsion towards things, of saying no to life. yet, this fear and inability to 'kill' certain things off in the matrix of possible can actually rob you of any satisfaction, especially if you wish to be an agent for love and peace in maximal ways. in the same sense that the unchecked growth of nature (which chokes off diversity as often as it rises, free, in differentiated splendor) differs from the cultivated garden that partakes of intersecting nature and human ingenuity (an ingenuity that tries to better the vectors of nature), sometimes we must act and change outcomes by saying yes to the dance, putting on the yoke of our distinct ableness for manipulation, for violence, and the power to make difficult choices.

i have never felt more aware of the burden of being both a tool of civilization and an expression of the deepest roots of nature than i do in a current forced encounter with the asian cockroach. i am a 'trap it and deposit it outside' kind of personality. so its very interesting when the old routines of one's least-examined personality runs into a situation that, well, challenges the blanket righteousness of those old behaviours and personal commandments.

its always the most creative and character-forming challenge, when the old ways of doing things meats (sic) meets with an immovable spot beyond itself which, to be dealt with successfully, may need to be engaged with the very qualities we stealthily reject in the world and ourselves.

i remain a militant pacifist this hour. i don't think problems can be solved by carpet-bombing them, which always struck me as simpleminded, shortminded, and lazy. which makes this encounter doubly interesting, since these insects can go from a couple intruders to swarming thousands in very short order. thusly does the world goad us to make ourselves flesh by making irreversible choices, testing our constructs and mettle in a living labyrinth governed by other, incontrovertible laws.