never ending appetites for self-destruction

Was there ever a more perfect metaphor for the crumbling state of the Union than the coming demise of the  twinkie?  You have to wonder how many lives have been destroyed by the weaponry of unconquerable addictions, how many grossly overweight waddlers ballooned to their present heft by indulging themselves and their offspring's lunchboxes in high calorie, zero nutrition snackpacks, courtesy of the towering Ho-stess shelf apparently mandatory in every superbox regional servicing unit.  Just today we heard in rather sideways whispers, twinkie codone may not actually disappear, leading us to ask which investment fund headed by which overfed butterball will scarf up its profitability and keep the Union's scales squashed in favor of bloat while laying off the thousands of cake machine operators and whipped creme stuffers and chocolate corn syrup spreaders' assembly lines or the shrink wrap guys and the sell by date stamping ladies.  This might be a good investment for the bane of our existence aka Romney's bane of his laughing campaign. Bain. They say he laughs too much. It is surreal isn't it, how the candidates campaigning for jobs creation only create fear and loathing while dissing each other, it is as if the dirtiest, slimiest smears win fame and increased fortune always at the expense of others who just want to be free of interference and left alone.  And isn't it amazing any addiction at all spawns mammoth fix-it industries only to fail nearly every addict who manages to come up with the means for assistance?  You ever wonder how such giant wads of dough spent on dirty mouth campaigning and false fixes could be put to better use?  My gawd ...

They make lots of jokes, but no one is laughing, because the joke is, as usual, on us.  While I was shaking my head in abject dismay over the primaries, while Abu Ghraib rose up from the zombie crypt to dribble the golden shower upon dead men smashed into smitheens, while trying to read all the blogs on my sidebar and divert my anguish, I happened upon Visible's most recent Origami post.  Uhhhh, man....  what else is there to say?  My first instinct is to take everyone lost in love's misery into my arms, hug you and explain a few facts of life that are unfortunately best learned though self-discovery, sorry. 

I want to say I'm glad someone broke the ice on a subject we've never really examined here and yet it is the one thing over which we actually have some control.  I will also say pairing off works for awhile for most of us and then it doesn't.  God bless the child who finds his lifetime lover.  Let's definitely acknowledge them because they live a different life from you and me and from where we stand it sure looks like paradise.   All our lives we strive to achieve that kind of love and very, very few find it.  I wouldn't pay too much attention to the statistics for lifelong partnerships, it is my observation most of them are not exactly living in the mutual bliss we would imagine, although statistics stating otherwise occasionally appear proving mostly what the statistician was paid to calculate, Fukushima being just one example of implausible figures. 

It seems that when our pairings begin to show cracks, we do the worst things possible, ignore them until it physically hurts and then we go about applying patches until they come off exposing our bleeding confusion and then we fantasize about moving on, picturing a future with someone somehow more sympathetic to whatever sympathies we require be met. The whole picture reminds me of a grade school science film where cells move around in the bloodstream.  They bunch up, some break away from the group and keep moving, some few are stuck together for the duration of the flow.  Remember that?  Now enlarge it to include the physical bodies of human beings and there you have it, we are Nature and it is only right that our behavior is based in Nature.  This means ultimately, most of us won't be satisfied for long performing behaviors that are not suited to our own natures.  Our inside person has goals of its own and to ignore them or suppress them, even in the face of certain self-defeat, because in your heart you know you cannot change the downward course you are traveling, it is more self-defeating to try to make something work that is not naturally designed to work for you forever.  This "game" we play with ourselves has multitudes of applications, and all of them are metaphors for the external experience on this journey.  Look at Globalism and the global enthusiasts, it doesn't work and yet, they cling to the plan in full denial exactly as this nation clings to its failed energy policy.  It is the same with Climate Change, the legal system, foreign policy, etc.

Lately, I am of a mind that oneness, being alone, is the solution to the lifelong dilemma of pairing.  We are all going to be alone in time anyway, alone in death, alone in our minds, as we've always been alone in our innermost thoughts, and it is those innermost thoughts that drive us towards anything worthwhile, healthy and beneficial, to ourselves and especially to others.  If we did not have the capacity to hear this voice, our very survival as a species would immediately dissolve. In this economy, living alone is a luxury few can afford and there is certainly a great argument for doubling up while making ends meet, but again, it is a rare friendship living under one roof that can balance it peaceably for very long because we are, after all, critical thinking individuals with long-established requirements for just how our lives are to be lived.  It is the reason communes didn't work very well.  There is always someone with a surprisingly rigid mindset, then go with the flow flys out the window as incessant interference grates and sets limits, building fences around what can and cannot be undertaken or discussed rationally without the reliving of historical hurts distorting whatever was the original intent.

We are, if nothing else, bundles of unconscious memories constantly reminding our unconscious selves of our  lifetime total of hard-learned lessons.  All of our interactions with others are based on childhood patterns designed for self-protection which for the most part, are not recognized easily.  That is why loss in love hurts us intensely, it can make you feel crazy, it makes some people suffer so badly they act out in ways they would never do otherwise, you can even say that kind of pain is the last gasp of a dying dream into which you invested the deepest, purest parts of yourself thinking all along you were finally a part of something real, something you were trained to desire as confirmation of personal worth as far back as early adolescence, when all the while it was merely a mutual physical illusion that a manufactured false desire bore reality, the probability of impossibility would not be yours, self actualization loomed.

The truth is the ideal of romantic love is pounded into our psyche from birth, adopted and capitalized on by savvy marketeers for an expanding variety of very profitable entertainment industries.  We buy into all of it before our minds are formed and are bombarded by the fantasy from every direction, intensifying especially during the normal hormonal phase vital for procreation of the species, hitting us in so many snarky ways I won't bother to mention them, but be assured, no one escapes. 

We could avoid the tragedy in a parting of the ways by simply playing musical chairs until the music stops and then start over again.  There are lots of nice, bright people out there who would love to get to know us better.  I can personally vouch for that having traveled often and far.  Occasionally, I've found myself feeling like a mail order bride, yes, there really are many eager and lonely people oblivious to the sham of pairing off as the last answer to their suffering of the spirit.  Oh, they bunch up, feel wonderful for awhile until the very natural human flaws of the involved begin to show and then others, outsiders, gradually command their attention as "Hey, wow, there's the real answer" and the music starts all over again.  However, that band does not play for eternity.  And for more people than is acknowledged, the band doesn't play at all.  What does this tell you?

As far as I know, there is only One Love.  It is compassionate love, it knows nothing of spite or of holding secrets or half truths or complete fabrications or petty deceits or vengeance behind the curtain, it just IS and cannot be distorted into anything other than what it is.  When you accept it as it is without the malarky there is no pain.  You know it when you meet it, you know it when its in you and you can recognize its absence clearly if you listen to what your innermost voice has to say.  And to listen well, you  need silence, time and harmony with your surroundings.  You already have all the answers, they just need you to understand them.

There is nothing wrong with Nature, there is nothing wrong with us.  We are stripmined just as Nature is stripmined, our feelings are a spectacular resource and like everything else in today's extreme world, very little stands the test of time being based on vanity and illusion.  When you really get it, and I mean when you are so completely solid with your own spirituality, you do not need the opinions of anyone else to assure you that you are worthy of love because you love yourself already with the same forthright compassion you love others.