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EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING

EVERY ANGEL IS TERRIFYING

Duino Elegies–Ranier Maria Rilke

Burning Ourselves Up

Burning Ourselves Up

October 15, 2026 Jerry King Comments 2 comments

Thursday is cloud covered. Rain is expected at mid morning. I always welcome news of rain. Precipitation is irregular in our segment of the Midwest.  No doubt the status quo obtains everywhere, on account of climate warming worldwide. Every place is caught in the vortex of weather patterns, whip-sawed by the release of atmospheric and ocean warming byproducts of the energy needs of our civilization. We burn up the earth. Development as we have understood it, means the premature death of a great many of us. And what about all other species? That is not yet clear.

Perhaps a catastrophe so awful awaits, that humankind will be shocked to awaken. That is, come to our senses long enough to adopt a way-of-life that recognizes cosmic co-dependency. Everything is linked to everything else. Really and truly. “This” is common, the unifying link between all of us, between all else.

I considered purchasing a copy of the Avatamsaka Sutra, the flower garland text, particular to Mahayana Buddhism. Must one subscribe to a religion, before giving oneself permission to consider any of its literature? I could not settle on a paperback from Amazon. Britannica writes, The sutra teaches that all things in the universe are mutually connected, much like the individual flowers in a woven garland. Each phenomenon contains the entire universe, and nothing exists in isolation. 

I plan to have another look to see if a pdf is available for online download. In any case my life goes on.

I intend to spend some time digging in the dirt before rain comes. Two post holes are needed for a section of wooden fence.

Then I turn to my desktop. My desk appears – just enough cleared space for my laptop computer. Small island of empty space surrounded by folders, piles of papers. I intend to examine and sort all “of that” to where it belongs.

Emptiness is the same as clearing for possibility.

A song, a song! Who could deny that music is our lifeline. This one works, every time: Eye of the Tiger by Survivor.

 

 

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2 thoughts on “Burning Ourselves Up”

  1. Tobin Fraley says:
    October 15, 2026 at 3:47 PM

    My sense is that we (at least some of us) would like to believe in a universal interconnectedness, but what happens here on Earth, pretty much stays here. Kind of like Las Vegas.

    But on this planet, yes, the environment is interwoven in a way that what happens in one spot impacts the other side of the earth 12,000 miles away. One of the first people to realize this connection was an explorer named Alexander Von Humboldt whose life one can read about in Andrea Wulf’s book, The Invention of Nature. Really fascinating stuff.

    Reply
    1. Jerry King says:
      October 15, 2026 at 4:18 PM

      The nostrum that you can act out your fantasy in Las Vegas and suffer no consequences upon departure, is propaganda. A “too cute” saying that the admen have leveraged to attract naive patrons to the Vegas play-land. Everything is connected, choose to believe whatever you will. What you did in Vegas goes home with you, full stop. Leaving Las Vegas does not transform you into someone else.

      Do we not need to “double down”, to insist upon slowing down, taking time to assess a bigger picture, a more wide view? We do!

      So AI is the latest “light at the end of the tunnel”… Are we wise to assume that light is always a good thing?

      Reply

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