Balloons as a base

I tried to explain to him that some people get pretty erratic at times and have to learn to live with the strange thoughts that come to them.

I told him the story of those early men who came to America to get to Asia. Fleets of ships lost among the icebergs. Men broken to gnashing and prayers, prone, hands to the sky for fear, resorting to mad gestures at the floating cliffs white as a cloud, blue as an angel’s wing, moving on their impenetrable vectors scattering the waters before them.

Ships sailing through a maze of shifting rooms, taking passages that seem viable, exhausting themselves with choices on that mad ride. I think my mind works the very same way. The drift of logical gates that make up my thoughts are borne on millions of choices creating tendencies of intention.

The mind is the strength of that particular force of will. Mind is a volume, a capacity for engagement. The number of ships sailing in congress with icebergs.

The soul is that will alone, surfing the rough seas of mind and body, the captain watching his fragmented forces dissolve into the ice. The cruelties of that vast and penultimate other which cannot be relied upon to save itself.

Bigfoot and I share this urging of will that is always questioning that ultimate unmovable force that drives things. Say we grope for knowledge of the mind of nature. We attune our morality to the most ancient systems we can imagine.

I can’t defend us all, but I do believe that a man calling for his life crouched in hysterics, his frozen tears mounting, the ghostly shifting of the heavens ready to crush him like a bug, warrants some forgiveness.

We are human beings. We have those higher faculties that allow for transformative experiences. We are always ready to hear the punch line. We forgive each other. We can take a joke. We can endure much cruelty for the promise of mercy. We can always accept a misunderstanding. We are fallible after all. First and foremost, flawed. Pawns of history, no different than the icebergs we drift among.

And yet we have intentions that are greater than simple physics (which will not save us). We have the urge to cry out for help to the sky if we must. We think it proper a hand should appear and reset the game so we might try again some other course.

Bigfoots don’t look for help.