Recently, I purchased a set of earphones. Nothing fancy, just a $10 piece of junk pair. The thing about these earphones is that they fit inside your ears. I even had to figure out how big my ear holes are so I can get the right rubber pieces on the tips to fit in my ears properly. Once they're in my ears and music is playing, they're just like ear plugs. I've been riding with those instead of my plugs the past couple days and I have to say, it takes some getting used to. No longer do I just hear the rumble and roaring of the bike or the wind or all the other noise going on around me on the road. Now, music is the primary sound I hear. I've tried this before and it hasn't worked because the old earphones I had sat right up next to my ear and let in a lot of other noise. These sit IN my ears and block off all the space for other noise to get through. I don't have control, like I would with a car stereo, to change songs or stations, but still, it's new. The difference is the proximity and the volume.

Have you ever gotten inside someone's personal space? Has anyone ever gotten in your's? I like to think I don't have a bubble. Most of the time, I really don't. I'm a tactile person. I'm used to touching everything, so when I'm touched, it's not a big deal. So many people will stand there and be SO apologetic when really it's their bubble that they felt pop, not mine. I wonder, does this make me hard to reach? Day to day life has become a non-contact game. It has all these rules and regulations, the most important of which seems to have become, "look and judge, but don't touch". If we get close enough to touch, it could turn out VERY bad. But what if it doesn't? What if it's actually good? Also, can you really judge a book by it's cover. With PLASE, I intentionally try to leave Bible's that don't look like Bibles because I've discovered people pick them up more easily than if they say "Bible" on them or if they even look like a Bible. The real issue is fear and trust. To let people get that close, you have to trust that your safety won't be threatened. We've even become uncomfortable with uncomfortableness. It's silly, really. If it's mildly difficult, new, different, or dangerous we simply say no out of fear. Seriously, how many times do we miss out or pass up great possibilities out of fear of something? I do it every day. And I work at it most days too.

So, as I'm sure you've guessed, I'm not speaking of just a physical situation. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, we choose to keep many MANY things held at bay out of fear, out of awkwardness, out of complacency. Some of us might turn the proverbial radio on every once in a while for a song or two, or maybe to see what's on. We'll channel surf and eventually turn it off and go about our lives. Have you ever come up beside a car that had their stereo so loud you couldn't hear your own. They're so engrossed in their music that they love it and want to share. How about the guy that's surgically fused to an MP3 player that's always dancing to God knows what. They're both so saturated that they can't help but overflow, to live their music.

Volume, however, is also important. If outside noise gets in, it distorts the true music. Even with these earphones in, if there's no sound coming out, I can still hear the muffled sounds of what's around me. If they volume's too low, it might very well be playing, but I can't hear it for all the noise. If it's at the same level as everything else, I catch some of it, but again, most gets lost in the mix of all the other noise that's not meant to be heard during the music. At best, I'll get 50 percent of the song, and that only if I happen to know it well. Shall we discuss frequency of immersion? If the experience isn't intense enough, it will be ineffective and lost do to commitment issues. How sad.

So you see, in order to hear over all the noise, in order to make a meaningful impact, proximity AND volume are important. We have to learn to let things in and to turn them up loud enough to hear them. Sure, we can always turn it off if we decided it's not good for whatever reason. But in order to experience so many things, they require you to drop the barriers, let them in, really in, and to delve deeply for full understanding. So the next time you see a cheap pair of earphones, or whatever you think I'm talking about, remember that something seemingly insignificant and worthless could become something quite profound in a life you thought you had all figured out.

Chirp....chirp....chirp....chirp. What do they have to say tonight?

Yesterday was another splendid sunset, as was the night before. Forget painting a rainbow and sprinkling it with dew, I want to paint a sun set. That'd be WAY better. I got a big knife the other day. It's about a foot long blade with all kinds of cutting edges. Turns out I needed it. Last night I had my first kill. I was walking in the woods well after dark, which I never do unarmed or without a flashlight, and startled a few of the local deer. You'd think they'd be used to me by now, I'm out there all the time. I even got close enough to pet one once without incident. Anyway, that group wasn't the problem. About 5 minutes later, I hear this ruckus coming toward me fairly quickly. 5 seconds after that, a buck comes bounding across the path as I just nearly dodge him. No sooner had I got control of my heart than it comes bounding right at me again. This time I grab my new knife and nick it's antlers as it rumbles past me and I dodge again. Again, I calm my nerves and start walking again. Again, here comes the rumbling, thrashing noise straight at me. He's not giving up and I don't want to get run over AND I couldn't be farther from the apartment on this trail is I tried. I obviously can't outrun a deer, especially a mad 1 that can function better than me in the dark of the woods. So, I cut off my light. Still the noise. He knows where I am. I crouch down and just as it leaps over me, I lunge upward. Appearently, caught him right up through the front "legpit". He fell over sideways in the clearing to a grindding halt in the dirt. I went and retrieved my knife and went straight home. This morning when I went back out to inspect, something had picked it clean and I mean nothing but dry bone left. Such an odd happening. An offensive deer... and a clean skeleton 10 hours later...

Recently, I was straightening a turn across lanes (no one anywhere near me) and noticed the little buttons dividing the lanes. 4 lanes, different colors etc... As I thought about these small, 2 pound, colorful cement turds I came to the thought that these things control inordinant amounts of the world. Think about it. These little inanimate, unintelligent blips have a ridiculous amount of power. They control machines everywhere. Little lights too. Red, yellow, green. These little bits of metal and plastic that light up for a minute are in charge. Same with airplanes. When we're on foot, it's almost like the sidewalk controls us. Even in the woods, it's about finding the trail. So strange that we give so much power and control to such powerless things. Just think, that same cement turd that forces your car to remain on 1 path of travel and not deviate is no bigger than a rock and has no other properties either, but somehow it won the lottery and was affixed to another bit of cement and became all powerful.

Could there be another application for this idea? What was before roads? Paths. And before those? Ummmm....? The answer is open space, fields, woods, mountains. But those still exist. Do you ever go to them? No. Why not? Well it costs money to get there... on the roads... and we might have to "hike" when we get "there". So, what you're saying is that now you have these wonderful roads that rule and restrict your life to certain places, you have to pay extra to travel to see things that already existed before your roads and that would be free to see if there were no roads. That's strange. So why did you build the road? Because "_______" was in the way of making money. But now you want to see "_______"... Hmmmmm.... How about those buttons. Why do they have so much power?

What other stupid things to we give power? Money, jobs, school.... the list goes on. Here's the thing. At age 5, a little girl can control her whole world with a subtle change of facial expression. At age 15, she's whinning about boys and is slowly learning to give those cement turds on the road some power. At age 25, she's finishing school and taking on a car payment and a house payment because she's just spent $50k to learn how to make money so that at 50 (10 x 5) she will have paid to raise her children so they can spend money to go to school to learn to make money so they can raise their kids and pay so they can go to school and learn to make money..... and then at 75 (15 x 5) she's wishing she was 25 again so she could do something real and significant. If at age 5 when our priorities are survival and relationships a single being can control the world with a glance, why are 50 year old confined to cubicles fighting a losing battle to make ends meet and keep crappy relationships afloat in hurricane conditions? Shouldn't their power be multiplied by 10 and not just in a physical way? Strange that we work so hard for this "life" we live but don't really feel alive or peaceful until we take a vaction from in. Could it be we're not living the lives we were made for? Could it be that money, mortgages, jobs, etc. have become just as powerful as those little cement turds on the road even though they're just as insignificant? A 5 year old can control the world, but has no real power. Let her be. A 15 year old has 3x that, 25, 50... exponentially more. That must remain untapped. They must be controled, weighted down. Let's create peer pressure, nagging wives, bad husbands, whinny kids, money, aging.... That oughtta keep them busy...

Interesting that the monks manage to just erect a compound in the wilderness and become self sustaining. And that was before "technology" that would've charged them an arm and a leg and their way of life... What would happen if I just set off into the woods and built a home out of nothing? Someone would come along and say they own the land, even though they're doing nothing with it and I am... They might try to say I had to "pay" for it with what looks just like paper to me, but somehow has immense worth to him just because of what's printed on it. If we COULD live one way way back when, why must we live another now just because there's technology?

It's late. More for another night.

Whoever you are... I wish you were here. Know that I'm longing share the sounds of creation, the warmth of company, and these beautiful starry nights with you.

Did you know that it's possible to see the sun, moon AND stars in the same sky at the same time? I'm sure there's some scientific something or other that says no way, but science isn't really absolute fact anyway. It's only the truth at that moment. It's like history, but WAY more specific. Do you have any idea how many colors were in that sky? Blood red on the horizon, gold above that, silver, haze, midnight blue and black, and everything in between. Maybe the 1st person to call the sky "the heavens" saw the same thing. I know I never have in 21+ years and it was pretty cool.

And so the wheel continues to spin, 1 foot shuffling in front of the other, trying to remember how to run through the forest, dive into the lake. Maybe it's time to remain in the canyon and enjoy the painted hills and the wind in my hair. So maybe my quest should be to find peace. I always struggle with the delimma of living in and enjoying the moment or working toward a goal. I feel this will forever be my dilemma as I don't believe you can completely devote yourself to 1 school of thought and go through life successfully or healthfully. You'll at least not realize your full potential.

This week will be another of all the balls rolling. I'll have to start firing on all cylinders. The questions are, how many cylinders do I have and what's my fuel efficiency? These are common questions today, but we seem so concerned with fine tuning our cars and so unconcerned with fine tuning ourselves. That should change.

End Transmission