Don't
forsake
the actuality
of
Now
for
something
other
that
you
can
only
imagine.
(Thanks @zen_moments on Twitter)
Yesterday was a big day for all mankind.
Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully launched a test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket, sending the whimsical payload of his personal Tesla roadster into space, on its way to a heliocentric orbit around Mars.
I've been a Musk fan for a long time now. I think that this launch is the beginning of a whole lot of change. There are a series of technologies Musk has created which compliment one another in improving how we live and get around.
His solar roof tiles will provide cheap, plentiful power, which will come in handy, to power your self-driving electric car.
Speaking of your car, his boring machine will create a vast tunnel and tram system to eliminate surface road traffic.
Plus, surface travel without a car is going to be boosted by the near-vacuum-tube based pod hyperloop system.
Roads are going to get a whole lot less congested with this stuff. This will be further enabled by the Tesla Semi, which is not only electric but soon to be completely autonomous, self-driving.
But let's get back to that space thing for a moment. The Falcon 9 rocket isn't just stronger, bigger, reusable, and thus cheaper to run. It's not just going to get us out to the stars. It's also going to make our planet a much smaller place, by making it possible to go almost anywhere on earth in about an hour.
When I sit and ponder the potential social changes this sort of technology will bring, it astounds me. It'll lower borders, create jobs, make medicine more reliable, enlarge humanity's reach out to the stars, improve our life on earth in countless ways.
Yes, the world is filled with social ills. Yes, there's poverty, racism, sexism, misogyny, bigotry, and hatred rampant in it.
But there's also this, and I'm thrilled to be a witness to it.
This is all really happening.
So, wow, in the many years I've been writing this blog, I don't think I've ever actually had an announcement before.
But, this is a pretty big deal. So here we go!
I've started a brand spanking (heh) new Patreon page for my fiction and audio fiction!
And yes, I've already got one patron! (Thanks, Shok!)
Here's the deal on this thing:
I love writing short fiction. I love recording audio stories. I love writing novels.
But as you all know, the podcast, which is a big venue for me to do that sort of thing, hasn't been coming out very often lately. That's due to a large number of life factors, for both Spacey and myself. I've been super busy working on a side business.
But I love this stuff. And I want to give time to it. So, I've decided to embark on a brave little experiment. I'm going to be writing new fiction of multiple lengths, and posting it on my patreon page. That includes, amongst other things, recording audio versions of my existing novels, Auntie Eva's Boarder and Concerning Littleton.
It also includes work on short stories about other characters in the Littleton universe. And some brand new work I've been doing on gentle femdom characters. PLUS, I've got a 3rd novel in the works, and if this thing takes off, I'm going to let you all see it and help me write it, by letting people test read it.
I'm so excited, I can't even stand it!
I'll keep you all posted.
So, I've had some stuff going on.
I could regale you, constant reader, with a catalog of woe. But it doesn't matter. Some of the stuff is intensely private, and not about me, either. So, I'm going to mostly keep that part to myself.
Yesterday, I had a really hard conversation that I've needed to have with someone close to me, for a while. I've been dealing with some family illness issues too. And, I'm about to have a veritable tornado of dental misadventures. Heavy, right?
But this morning, I feel good. Amazing, in fact.
Why? Because of part of my mindful practice. There's this thing I do, that I learned in part from Pema Chodron, in part from Alan Watts, and in part just from my own experience: I bend.
The kind of bending I'm talking about is similar to how palm trees on tropical islands bend, during a storm.
A hurricane comes through, and it will not be stopped.
So, instead of standing tall and proud, proof against the storm, these wily things get pushed down. Then, when the storm's done, they pop right back up.
I know trees don't have a nervous system, or sentience, but I tend to personify everything, so let's just pretend they do here. I can kind of see it going like this:
Tree named Ed: "Hey Phil, looks like there's a hurricane coming. Man, these things make me so tense."
Tree named Phil: "Now Ed, we'll be all right. You just gotta relax, man. Don't have a coconut over it. It'll blow over."
The storm comes through. It's pretty terrible. Ed and Phil are blown on so hard, they are basically bent in half, just about touching the ground.
Ed: "Oh man, this hurts like hell!"
Phil: "Yeah, this sucks. Hang in there. It'll be over soon! If I had teeth, I'd be gritting them right now."
Ed: "Yeah, me too."
Then the storm gets less. The trees spring back up.
Ed: "Whew, that was a bad one."
Phil: "Sure was. Man, this sunshine sure is nice."
Ed: "Sure is."
And that's it. Me, I'm just like Ed and Phil, except I actually do have teeth, and don't have any coconuts hanging off me, or leafy fronds that I know of. Stuff happens, bad personal storms, and they hurt, and they're scary, and I dislike them. And then it's sunny again, and it feels good.
Bending. It's pretty great.
I'm pretty beat. I've got some heavy stuff on my mind, which I'm not going to get into here on the blog in detail, because Internet.
But the good news is, I've got tools to deal with my heavy stuff.
I've been engaged in my mindful practice of Taoism for over 15 years now. It's not a magic solution that solves all problems, and leaves me floating in midair. Rather, it's a discipline, a practice. And it doesn't mean that I live in a state of perpetual bliss, either. Really, it's just the opposite. I don't particularly feel any one thing all the time. Rather I'm committed to stay and feel everything.
Over the years I've been doing it, my understanding of that practice has grown and changed.
But my fidelity to it has not.
Today I'm focused on a key tool that's part of that practice, wu wei, the action of non-action. It's not laziness, or indolence. It's a kind of relaxing surrender.
Think of how water is. When you pour it into a glass, it takes the shape of that glass. It surrenders to gravity and form. And yet water is among the most powerful things on the planet.
Storms and floods can erase mankind from places. And nothing grows without water to help it along. But water's power comes from its quiet nature. True, raindrops can hollow out a canyon - but not all at once. Just over time.
This is where wu wei comes to bear. I can make myself spun up and anxious and out of sorts over things - and it will not change them. What will change them is me, being present and moving through time, one second per second, into the future.
I can obsess over how things were, or may yet be. But that's not real. Instead, I can make the conscious choice to be present, and do nothing.