hazard

welcoming chance as my friend.

to be open to possibilities that come in the door

unbidden and yet welcome,

while immersed in features of the world that are predicated on predictability.

to have the personal and professional skillset

that not only allows the possibility of chance events

but also to embrace and apply the learning

that arrives inside those events.

to be in this world but not of it.

"the kind of association that arises from meeting hazard is like making a move in a game and once that move is made, it is made, and a new situation arises. you do not think you would somehow improve the game by playing the same move over and over, yet people often think that somehow a society would be improved if it could be perpetuated or a relationship would somehow become more merely by its continuing. so long as the situation that makes the relationship right exists, it can be right; when it does not exist, it cannot be right." anthony blake

the world like a passer-by

"newberry window" william conger 1990.

"i sit at my window this morning where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment, nods to me and goes." rabindranath tagore

there are days when the world passes by as i sit and listen to the sound of my own voice. the voice unpacks the days and nights - useless heaps of information and experience that shouldn't have happened, don't need to be there, have no value. somehow they fill an emptiness - it's the emptiness that i seek.

in that emptiness is all the fullness i've ever craved - the fullness that has occupied my every waking thought and which i have tried to fool myself into believing has been fulfilled through all the transitory distractions this world has to offer.

sometimes i just want to sit and look through the window of steven and hear nothing. nothing at all. and then allow the allness of everything to flood in.

the full value of joy

i've never really liked fences.

they divide and contain.

they separate us from experiences.

they create otherness.



even a cursory examination of my self reveals fences. fences that keep things in. fences that keep things out. fences to straddle.

it's as much work to maintain them as it is to take them down.

even a moment's thought reveals how unnecessary and harmful this all is.

so why do i need to do this?

where did i learn to be protective. to deny. to be prepared to run from my vantage point.

how do i let all of this go?