Intense Life

It's only half past 4 in the afternoon but its really dark and misty outside, raining on and off and the weather is certainly not a mood elevator today.

Back to my old discussion on 'meaning' with myself. Yes yes not that again I know. But what can you , some things just don't change. I guess this is one of them.

I really don't mean to be boring and certainly I don't have to write about it...then again since probably whoever reads this will want to read it (probably just me) it will not be boring. Anyway.......

'Noone expects the Spanish Inquisition' as the Monty Pythons said :-) Then again the unchanged turn of events, the days that pass and the time that floats all around us......the familiarity of everyday life which may be boring or not......it doesn't hold the intense meaning of life that one expects.

So what to expect, lightning to strike? Oh probably not a good idea but then again something DIFFERENT, out of the ordinary, something exquisite, magnificent, meaningful.

I'm sure Brunelleschi felt the same about his faboulous Dome, Sir Christofer Ren for St Peter, Michaelangelo about David, Leonardo about...well Leonardo about everything really, Byron, Keats, Burns, and then the Scientists, Darwin , Einstein, Feynman, Planck, etc etc etc ...and then some more etc.

The thing is.....the thing is I have no Dome to build, no Cosimo to fund me and certainly not Leonardo's flame of inspiration.

I'm left with an agonizing desire for a moment's proximity with experiencing Intense Life as those guys (and so many others) did. (and payed for it dearly with agonizing mental pain)

Intense Life, as described by F.S.Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (yes I'm stuck with the great American novel again its that time of the year) and Walt Whitman in his (fabulous) Leaves of Grass.


The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

Intense Life. Always connected with creativity, genious and a dash of maddness in my mind. Oh and maybe the feeling of being in love but that is a byproduct I guess.

How do you get to experience Intense Life? Do you really have to be a fictional character, living in someone's fantasy? How do you avoid Thoreau's Lives of quiet desperation? How do you find Meaning?

Well not with Oracle (sorry Larry) and not Unix (sorry Berkeley - LSD and Unix):-)

As Todd says in The Dead Poets Society 'Truth is like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. You push it, stretch it, it'll never be enough. Kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying, to the moment we leave dying, it'll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream'

G-R-E-A-T . So what is there to do?

I don't know....I'm more than 3 decades in this world and I don't know.....

I am old enough not to fool myself with the byproducts and excuses and cheap replacements others use to avoid facing the reality of the intensity of the meaning of Life as it should be experienced.

But I do feel it...as sparks in the neurons of my brain that never, absolutely never, stops thinking (uncomfortable at times but makes me....well me), heartbeats that I miss, or chills from the cold rain. Racing heartbeats from intensity of feelings or proximity with extreme creativity or genious, joy from sights that are imprinted forever in the mind to be reflected upon later and missed.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Yes John Keats, my favourite romantic poet, yes you were right but then again you were desperate were you not?

Why is the burden of Meaning and Intense Life so heavy that makes living unbearable?

I need meaning......(and sugar....I think I definately need sugar):)

P.S. I am listening to Ramstein......really? Me?

P.S.2 No, being Jack Bauer does not qualify as Intense Living either :-)

P.S.3 I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life ... to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thoreau (who else)

P.S.4 Keating: A phone call from God. If it'd been collected, that would have been daring. (and I rest my case) :-)