Dude

Yesterday driving over to 'The Park' to check the progress made by contractors installing temporary boiler plant the radio played Desert Island Disks. There was time to hear two snippets between the talking; Wagner: Tristan und Isolde: Dolce e calmo (5 VIII. 1957, Athens) and Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma Variations. Both very moving pieces evoking the inevitable sadness at the bottom of human existence and pointing at the same time to that deep knowing of our true home and the desire to return there. And as when any work (of art) becomes a finger pointing to the moon we see where we are and feel a gap (between heaven and earth) that is almost filled by the pointing. Almost yet not... The Lark Ascending but never quite reaching... Rothco's paintings opening a portal to an other world that we feel we could almost step through... Almost, but not quite, at least not literaly. There are of course no gaps; they are filled by experience. This experience is our appreciation of the work (of art), of our world.

There is of course, a place here to explore the connection between life and death; the most basic of all dualisms. Eros being a good place to start. For love and life force, move us with all kinds of desire (both wholesome and unwholesome) to have experience. Not the least of which is the experience of some La petite mort be it through sex or art.

And the particular shape of the gap seems to be determined by my general mood before experiencing the work. Yesterday I had a sense of purpose and attcheivement; I was making things happen and they were going well. There is a connection here between this inner longing to return home and our time here in human form, on earth, in the world, where we do 'our thing'; purpose. For me the fall of Adam and Eve points to the need to come out of the garden (of unity) in order to experience (that very unity). It is by engaging in useful meaningful work as part of the wider community of beings whilst holding an awareness of our true nature that we return home. Hell is our separation. But as ever, it is the same separation which lets us see; Samsara and Nirvana one and the same.

These were my thoughts as I drove along. I parked the car and called DC to check on how he felt about the Wagner. We've had a talk before about Wagner; Wagner was not a dude. Wagner could have been a dude but he was just too nasty. Which is a shame, because fundamentally this means that he failed to fully grasp the connectedness of life and thus the value of all beings. A dude you might have gathered is a character who is sorted, knows the (true) nature of human life, is thus happy and good to be with. Fundamentally someone at ease and aware. The application of the name dude was one of DC's during a conversation about the 'greats' of history. Bach, apparently was a dude (I'll have to check that with DC). Einstein was a dude. The Buddha of course was a dude. Yes, DC confirmed Tristan und Isolde did point in the way described... but that doesn't get Wagner off the hook, in fact it puts him on it!

Philosophising at an end I commented on my deft shift between such things and engineering skills and chalked up a few cool points. We all need a few positive strokes.

I walked up to the site and said 'hi' to the guys setting the heating plant to work. Heat was soon flowing into various buildings and warming the occupants. The archetype 'Engineer' is a dude.