About to leave my perch by Lake Edison--been laying about, eating a bit more, working on getting into Pynchon's _Mason & Dixon_.
A memorable moment two days ago now was listening to the Librivox reading of Plato's _Apologia_. The reading by a Detroit priest and the translation I find compelling, and the personality of Socrates something I can't recall having encountered anywhere for a very long time. Ideas such as: (my attempts at paraphrasing) "Man should do what he believes right regardless of concerns for his safety or situation in life."; "To maintain a known good I will not avoid what may or may not be good (death)"; "From virtue all else follows." (Franklin does mention Socrates); "I have a sense that tells me what not to do, but never what to do; this I always obey, and so I do not enter politics, and anyway, were I to do so, with my devotion to truth, I would have been killed long ago."
The oddness of the whole scenario as well makes it compelling--I haven't finished it yet, but a man is being sentenced to death for being annoying (on the surface). This man has got the idea (from the god/oracle) that he is the most wise of all, and his mission (from the gods) is to go around verifying that. He believes this leads to the betterment of everyone due to people who thought themselves wise and perhaps deceiving others to think so too being exposed in their ignorance.
Well, that scenario is not too uncommon, except that here, the annoyer gets the best press and the powerful (and the average) are shown to be harming everyone, even if, or even partly because they still sentence Socrates to die. I can't recall any other literary/dramatic/mythic situation where the one being got rid of is still respected enough or given enough power to--with rhetoric, logic, argument--expose to their faces (and to a sympathetic court audience?) without a doubt how foolish, ungodly, wrong are the charges against him.
It is as if in power are three fools, and everyone, and they themselves know themselves to be fools, and yet everyone still gives the three fools power to kill.
--
I'm not yet done pondering the effect of Socrates's example on my feelings and ideas about how to act.
Most everyone is, as he says, doing the best they can to get on. But he is sent from the gods--As shown by his neglect of concern about wealth and retirement and a potentially untimely end.
I don't consider myself showing great virtue, but I do seem to share this sense of what not to do. But as a result, I do not act in the world, such as by acquiring property, doing/teaching permaculture, being a force for positive progress in various ways.
Most everyone is running about, concerned about getting on in ways material, familial, spiritual, ecological. I'm sort of just stopping[?]. Letting it all go by. Not even trying to develop in any way (though I did earlier mention getting out of a rut, facing, overcoming fear of unknowns).
As it happens, doing this I can grow more and more out of the realms I used to be in.
I used to, when I lived with more despair than now, imagine a [not un]happy future as [1] an old man on a park bench watching things go by--or [2] as a tree.
Now I doubt it will be that way, but rather as a grungy hobo, staying out of the way.
The cleanliness issue (of any worn garment), the weatherbeatenness of appearance, these are instant separating and distancing factors.
My friend Don and other aboriginal skills people seem to be positively--somewhat happily--acculturated modern people who have these weatherbeaten, grungy (or all hand-made garment) aspects, besides those we usually refer to as the urban/rural homeless.
So, you start acting differently than you used to, you start to become more different from the population you may have once fit into more or less. And those whom you used to know may be dismayed should they encounter you again.
A monk shaves hair, wears robe; others grow hair and if they wear clothes, those get dirty.
Because this preoccupation with cleanliness as a virtue differentiating the civilized from the savage. . . well, it seems to be a harming thing. [It seems to exist]For all but abo/origin skills & green anarchist gatherings, maybe permaculture gatherings. . .
Oh well--I wonder what it will be like to be grungy in Mexico and elsewhere.
Efforts can be made to not stand out so much as living close to the earth and pinesap--if there's reason.
--
Another point for contemplation, by the way, was my writing of the tiredness of having to choose--of the "I want to die" thought coming at the idea of always having to come out of peace or engagement to choose direction again.
Well, clearly, that's an example of being overwhelmed, out of tune with the Dao, or however you want to say it.
So I watch for that sense more. And after hearing Socrates, for some reason-- perhaps his focus on his mission from the gods, perhaps just his attitude and vigor--I began to ask, "Why choose at all?" or, at least, why get exasperated about having to choose--
[I also considered: there is no choice: I am a given; any options & variables are too; when one encounters the others, there will be one result. And got to pondering a bit about fate, free will, and Covey's "between stimulus and response their is a gap/freedom." Ultimately this just led to the idea of being more patient--I think--keeping the idea in mind that any outcome is somewhat forgone and that I need not get stressed about having to make choices.]
I can't say much more than that now, except that recently, I've been watching for the exasperation (self-caused) at some perceived choice, and then, sort of, choosing not to choose.
There are many and yet two main ways I was once considering as possible to walk once I get up.
I had not got up earlier partly due to a waning of enthusiasm for wandering isolated forests for hours on unmaintained trails.
Well none of those considerations may matter much. When the time comes, I'll get up. I'll go some way. And so on.
A recent example of not choosing that stands out was the choice of getting on the bus to Mammoth and all that happened from there. The attitude was, "well, who knows?"
I still ultimately ended my adventures with Gianni and others I met and returned to this larger chosen, constructed plan, but--well that whole thing did feel more like hopping into a flow (, then getting out, drying off).
In a way this feels like letting external things chart one's path. Or relinquishing will, the idea of identity, schemes, plans. Even "common sense," virtue.
Ceasing to be what most people (I?) think of to be a person.
Well, it's a new experiment--at least it signals more awareness about that self-induced exasperation that brings awareness of not enjoying living.
--
Last note is I may be where there's no cell reception for two weeks--the way things have been going that seems unlikely, but if nothing from me for two, even three weeks, I'm somewhere between Lake Edison and Sequioa National Park [or even Kernville--tentative end-of-September destination] living off the excess hiker food from Vermilion VR & Muir Trail Ranch and will emerge, at the latest, when that runs out.
2008-08-26-1629
Peace,
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