...except yourself...
“Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.”
-James Jeans-
There comes a day. And that day was today. And today was exceptional.
It was exceptional in many ways. Let’s be clear, it was firstly exceptional because any day other than today would be that day…any other day except this day! But it was also exceptional because all days might be exceptional.
Now this doesn’t mean that every day is good. Every day might be a big fat mosquito sucking the fat out of the only spot of your back you’ll never reach. But hey, even that would be exceptional.
We share exceptionality. That bug flies from my body bite to someone else's suck home and brings its sting. The bloody needle of that pesty pucker suck spins the black vinyl beats of our brain. In the pain and annoyance of the bite, our concentration caves and we become the bite. We are bugged. We are bugs. I am a bug. I am a fly.
Except I am not really a bug, or fly, or even a mosquito. I am simply a man, acting like a man, acting like a man, acting like a man onto the infinite infinities of that which is tied to that what was. We are all the great infinity touched by the thoughts of the touching things that touch us. We share the shared, in awareness that our sharing might share ourselves.
The great unknown, in this way, is way more known than we might understand. I mean consider the possibilities that something you say right now might find itself becoming a garbled something or other at any moment past the present. Our words stretch eons to probe itchy ancient alien ears, greasing galaxies within 40 quanton quarlexes. Time takes our anything as far as it's willing to fly. I am bit, I say ouch, and the alien on its million moon porch hears me amongst the endless drones of all life moaning through this moment.
Meep, he thinks. Meep, meep. Meep, meep, meep.
Earthbound, so too can we meep.
We tell someone something. They tell someone something. That someone tells someone something. And someday the something that we told becomes someone’s anything. When that someone repeats the process our something might be anything at any time.
We are looking out there for alien life, but it is already within us. Language allows us to birth brain babies in the baby brains of babies that aren’t even born yet. I’m gonna go read something and get pregnant now. Meep, meep, meep.
Which brings me again to today. Today, which is exceptional. Except I’ve given hardly any proof of that. So what if bugs can bite me, aliens can hear me, and words might lead me to labor pains? All those things could happen any day.
But not today. Today was different because it had to be. It could have been yesterday, and might have been tomorrow but instead today was distinctly today. And even tomorrow, when today is then, that day too will be exceptional. Time provides us with exceptionality, and so too should we accept that exception.
But let’s say we don’t have the time. Let’s say I’m already wasting your time talking about this and that time. To those of us without time, we too can have exceptional times. Today we will do something different. In fact, starting today we are always going to do something different. We will do something different every day. Every today, every tomorrow and every tomorrow disguised as today. Tomorrow.
Because we are exceptional.
If you divine now to its most micro moment you have already obsessed in a way that proves out that no anything is ever alike. The contours of existence are all oddity, and the peculiarity of similarity is hilarity. Except sometimes it seems the same. So samey. So similarly samey. I sleep in the same bed. I wear my same shoes. I say the same stuff. Sometimes I go out of my way to do the same things at the same times with the same people who are similar to me in just how same they seem.
But there is no shame in being the same. Saming saminess is similar to practice, and much as practice makes perfect, saming the same makes something similar. The same is our universal. When we feel the same, we share our sentiment (and bug bites). And when bitten we say the same words to express those same feelings of annoyance. Ouch, we say. Meep, meep, meep we say.
In the ouch and the meep, we touch our when. The when holds our similar. I am me at that moment, as me as I have been with every bite before. So as the engorged skeeter sucked my crimson life essence from my angry elbow I did what I always do. I swatted and smashed it and smeared myself all over me. I hit me. And it hit me. I was stung by the moment and realized all these same feelings and annoyances were my feelings and annoyances. I was the same samer saming these similar samesations. I was bugged. I was the bug. I am the fly.
Amongst the blood and the itch oozed a new life philosophy. For ages I felt like my days, nights and eons had all started to take on the same look and feel. I was the record skipping on the player.
“I started a joke…”
…skip…
“I started a joke…”
…skip…
“I started a joke…”
…skip…
But the skip, what a skip. The skip is the beat. The skip is the bite. The skip is the moment inside of the moment where you find the moment to make another moment. The needle stopped skipping, I slapped myself and here I was a man again (or a fly, who can really tell). And even if I was a man acting like a man, acting like a man, acting like a man onto the infinite infinities, I was acting! And it feels good to act. I pull my skin with my skull. Happy face, sad face, caveman face, fly face and scene. With all manners of awareness engaged, the scratching and slapping and skeleton stretching feels meaningful and purposeful. I could do or be anything. I am a pen and a pencil. A chin and a chinchilla.
I spend so much time sunk in the same. But in that sink lie the dirty dishes of life. And while I have cosmic confidence that no same is truly similar, I am much more certain that nothing different could ever be the same. If I didn’t want to be doing the same thing at the same time and feeling the same way about the same stuff then a devotion to different is a different solution.
So I set a daily reminder. Every day at the same time I get a flash and an alarm. Today it says. And then I know. Today is exceptional. And so will be tomorrow.
Meep, meep, meep.
Believe me, the moment I get a chance to be a pelican, I'm taking it, but I'd never have said that before taking your course, cleverly disguised as a bunch of whimsical essays.
So many good videos in this one. And the MOST perfect video to end on.👌🏻