Squirrel's Heartbeats & other stuff

George Eliot a.k.a Mary Ann Evans wrote once:

”If we had keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life , it would be like hearing the grass grow, the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

There are plenty of squirrels where I live – I think they set up a commune here when the Hippies were on the rise in the olden days. There is quite enough noise in my world without hearing their heartbeats. Though considering how fat they are, I imagine they breath heavy and smoke cigarettes, too, so their hearts must be a mess. But this, of course, is all beside the point.

It is on the other side of silence stuff that I am getting to. For the past day, no matter what I am doing – driving, reading, running, working, you name it – I keep muttering, “hmm.” It’s like a combination of “really?” and “ok, gotcha,” all at once. What I am responding to are these ongoing… I dunno what to call them… moments of insight or revelation. It’s like a story is being read to me somewhere in the space between consciousness and sub-consciousness and once in awhile, I am responding with a vocal, “hmm.”

Who’s reading the story? Well, who do you think?

Depending on your background, you might say the divine self inside of you, or God, or the universe, or fillintheblank. For me, by virtue of the profoundly disturbing and real dynamic of relationship orientedness, it is God. And I say disturbing dynamic of relationship because for 20 years it has been that and so much more; it has been in this that the story is told. The story is not just my story but the bigger one that started long before I stepped onto the stage and will carry on long after they carry my body off stage left. Though, if I am quiet enough I hear my story so I can understand where my role is on the stage.

This is what’s been going on, I’d say. Not just what is happening right now in the story but what happened ages ago when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, when I was a young adult, (I’ve only recently accepted the fact that I am no longer a “young adult” though I am not sure what that makes me now cause I sure don’t

act like all the other people in my age bracket). It’s really fun, though. Because I am constantly surprised. It’s not what I expected. And definitely not the story I’ve been telling myself all this time.

Maybe this is part of the result of giving up my perspective on my self for Lent. No, I did not give up Chocolate, or TV, or some tangible vice as many do. I stopped that years ago after realizing I far too easily find loopholes in those kind of things and indulge anyway. So now I get to go through the days before Easter – ‘cause that’s what Lent is – in an on-going state of “hmm.”

Who knows what kind of story I will find that I was in all along and simply had the wrong perspective…

Maybe my theme song for this time should be Modest Mouse’s Never Ending Math Equation. Especially the part that says,

“Oh my God, I've gotta gotta gotta gotta move on.Where do you move when what you're moving from is yourself? The universe works on a math equation that never even ever really even ends in the end

Hmm… never know what you might hear on the other side of silence.