Writing My Mind.com

# 232:

There is nothing quite as persistent as reality, but willful ignorance comes close.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

"Where is the doorway to eternity? Where do you enter? Think on these things and we will continue our discussion next time,” the self-proclaimed self-help guru said at the end of the two-hour class: “Finding What You Never Lost,” held at the community senior center.

The guru climbed into his car and as he was backing out of the parking space he heard a familiar scraping sound and knew his front bumper had again caught on a parking lot bumper.

He shifted into park and climbed out of his car to push the left end of his ragged plastic bumper back into place. He’d done this many times before. “I ought to get it fixed,” he thought, but his income as a local guru and Social Security recipient was of a temporal nature.

“I am but a humble creature of the Earth,” he thought as he tried to open the car door. The car was still running and somehow, he’d locked himself out. “This is going to be embarrassing,” he contemplated.

~ Story & photo painting by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

My Cat

O the quiet life of my cat,
The empty bliss of this is that.

~ Words and photograph by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 72:

You cannot show others the way on a road you’ve never traveled.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

A Worried Man

He was such a worried man, so sure something
was about to go wrong. Every time the clock
struck the hour, he counted the strikes, fearing
the clock would make a mistake.

~ Text and photo by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Seek

Seek questions, not answers.

~ Text and artwork by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 115:

Being good is different than acting good.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Youth Has An Expiration Date

It is somewhat amusing to older folks to hear pop song lyrics and see pop song videos in which handsome young men worship at the altar of beautiful young women. Oh those words of eternal passion, pledged by the young. How quickly terms and conditions come into play as familiarity grows, as obligations mount, as the marriage ties that bind, bind.

And what of the aging process, that chronological decay of flesh that robs us all of youth’s bounty? Can you visualize a wrinkled old man and woman in a pop song video, singing:

Almost paradise
We're knockin' on heaven's door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more?
I swear that I can see forever in your eyes
Paradise*

Herman, Marjorie & Bess Allison ~ Redondo Beach, California 1917

No, me either. Youth passes, passion passes and we move on. Yet I remember spending the night at my grandparents’ house many years ago when they were in their seventies. I woke up early the next morning and peeked into their bedroom to see if they were still sleeping. I just happened to see them waking up. My old, wrinkled grandfather gave my old, wrinkled grandmother a kiss and said “Good morning.”

Almost paradise.

*From the song “Almost Paradise” written by Eric Carmen and Dean Pitchford

~ by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

# 87:

The Universal Question

You have to make an effort to not do something, much less not do anything. Perhaps more properly “not doing” should be called “pre-doing.” This suggests a possible answer to the universal question: “What is the universal question?” The answer, of course, is the question.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Everyone and everything.
Everyone and everything who?
Yes!

So before the universe there was nothing. So what came before nothing? Once again we are faced with the contradictions of logic, which suggest the answer: Nothing. Perhaps then “nothing” should be called “pre-something.” Whatever created the universe, aka, something, was, I suppose, not in existence during the time of “pre-something.” So, once again we return to the question: “Where did the universe (something) come from?” Some quantum physicists may tell you that coming and going, that time itself may only exist in certain selective states. This may be true, for I was in Utah once. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in the company of a quantum physicist, whatever you do, don’t ask what time it is!

Now what I want to know is, what came before nothing, aka pre-something. (I cannot discard my sense of linear time, my sense of here and there, of before and after.) If something indeed came before nothing, then did that which created the something before “pre-something” make a conscious decision to eventually extinguish something and start over again? (There is Biblical precedent for this.) So doing must eventually extinguish not-doing in order to not do nothing.

{Blues riff into with harmonica}

I ain’t gonna do
What I’m not gonna do
Cuz I’m already doing
It.