Samhain Winter Moon
Great warmup yesterday, eh? I think we saw 33 here for an hour. Take that nosnowbirds.
Off to downtown Minneapolis again today. Third time this week. I often go a month 
without getting there. My first physical with Cornelia Massie, M.D. No real concerns, just another benchmark on the road to the big check-up. That’s the one when check-ups are no longer necessary.
(who’s in there?)
Listening to a lecture by Alan Watts yesterday had me wondering about the self. As you may know, I’ve been an advocate of the Self, the unique bundle of experiences, gifts, body/mind and personal history that is you. In my way of thinking, Self=Soul.
But. I think I may have to balance that with the Eastern view of no-self. Watts described each of us as the universe being conscious of itself, a game the universe plays. We float along on the flesh bag that contains us, taking in sensation as it comes, changing, always, with it.
In addition to the high Western individualist Self I can see the Eastern argument, too. When I consider the young boy who ran up the concrete slope of a neighbor’s fence to walk higher than his mom for the length of their lot, I wonder how we can share memories. We do, I know that. But his reality, his experience of the world is so different from mine today that it makes him as alien to me as a stranger. Or, an intimate for that matter.
And, if the child, then what about the adolescent? Well, there, too. That guy with the runny nose, a wet handkerchief in his pocket, going from class to class, working hard to keep up his status as the brain. How about that 60’s radical with a placard in one hand, a joint in the other? Geez, who was that guy?
And so it would go in a chain up until, well, when? What about the man who sat with his brothers at the Nicollet Island Inn on Monday? His time has come and gone, replaced with the one who types now.
Yet, I’m also dragging this ever changing body to the doctor because I feel a duty to it, to make it last as long as possible. Why? Well, I’m interested in seeing what the Self becomes.