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Musings Report 2021-38 9-18-21 It's OK to Have a Crumble Day
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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Thank you stalwart patron/subscriber Chad D. -- and welcome new patrons / subscribers anonymous, Birch M., Douw S., Ben B. and Richard S. -- thank you very much!
It's OK to Have a Crumble Day
One of the more mysterious phrases around our household is "everybody needs a crumble day." The saying draws upon this Rumi poem:
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground.
Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.
Try something different. Surrender.
Though I am not an expert on Rumi, I think it is fair to say his primary themes are love and vulnerability. His many poems on love are perhaps his most well-known work: "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."
But other Rumi poems speak to overcoming our defenses against vulnerability, for much is lost to the grim hardness of everyday life. Though it easy to find Rumi poems that describe the vulnerabilities of love--in modern terms, our fear of intimacy and rejection--I think Rumi is speaking about the larger vulnerabilities of being human.
For example:
You're crying. You say you burned yourself.
But can you think of anyone who's not hazy with smoke? (The Essential Rumi)
Or:
An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,
when they are held up to each other,
that's when the real making begins.
That's what art and crafting are.
A "crumble day" is time we let ourselves be vulnerable, open to questions and ruminations that have nothing to do with the day-to-day pressures of work and responsibilities.
We have all sorts of defenses: rationalizations, excuses, and avoiding dwelling on our mistakes and misjudgments, the needless ways we've hurt others and the hurt we have caused that was unavoidable.
Yet as Rumi wrote: "Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures." If we don't examine our life in a crumble day, what have we examined? Nothing but stony defenses.
A crumble day means surrendering ceaseless purpose and productivity, our desire to be right and decisive; a crumble day allows ambiguities and open questions, questions about the direction of our life that don't have ready answers *because they aren't those kinds of questions.*
Much of our lives have been shaped by chance and events over which we had no control: the place and time we were born to, unexpected meetings, losses and windfalls, and so on.
But much is still within our own control, and it is this circle we still influence that draws my attention on crumble days. Each of our lives is a narrative with multiple threads, and the stories we tell ourselves to organize and make sense of the narratives matter. For it is the way we organize all the events and decisions of our life that leads to the big question: what next?
If we don't ask that question, then what we have today is all we'll ever have, because it takes effort and planning to change the narrative of our life in a major way.
At 67, it seems my adult life naturally subdivides into roughly 20-year periods that subdivide into chunks of overlapping time spent in a relationship, locale and career. For example, the blog has endured for 16 years, and hopefully I can keep it going a few more.
Is this all I want in life? At 67, I don't have the leisure of youth to gamble a decade on some crazy venture. Each period of life comes with varying appetites for risk and adventure, and in my crumble moments I think despite the ruin of past decisions and losses, I am not yet ready to surrender to fear of risk and change.
In my crumble time, when all the errors, hopes, lessons, memories and mourning for those who are gone swirl inside me, I come back to Rumi's mysterious, profound line: "What you seek is seeking you."
Highlights of the Blog
Ministry of Manipulation: No Wonder Trust and Credibility Have Been Lost 9/17/21
The Illusion of Getting Rich While Producing Nothing 9/15/21
The U.S. Economy In a Nutshell: When Critical Parts Are On "Indefinite Back Order," the Machine Grinds to a Halt 9/13/21
The Banality of (Financial) Evil 9/11/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
We have mature (i.e. tall) coconut palms in our yard, and so one of our regular tasks is sawing the coconuts open with a Sawzall, prying the meat out of the shell and grating the meat into chips (which we bake) and finely shredded coconut.
This is a fairly laborious process and it felt good to reduce the pile of fallen coconuts awaiting our processing.
The next morning, I found six newly fallen coconuts beneath the trees. The perfect alignment of the number--six out, six in--and the timing was suggestive of many things.
That trees communicate with each other is now well-established by researchers such as Suzanne Simard, whose book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest I'm reading.
This also calls to mind an anecdote told by Danish physicist Neils Bohr:
"Near by our vacation house in Tisvilde lives a man who has a horseshoe above his door, after the old superstition that it brings luck. When a friend asked him "Are you superstitious? Do you really believe the horseshoe brings luck?" He replied "Of course not; but they say it also helps if you don't believe it."
Werner Heisenberg, Der Teil und das Ganze, 1973, p. 112/13
Lastly, it reminds me that "The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao."
From Left Field
Astronomers think they know where to find Planet Nine: A new study increases the odds that Planet Nine is real, and possibly closer to Earth than previously thought
The Top 7 Soviet Jokes – Newly Declassified -- "anecdoty"...
Long-Term Symptoms Among Adults Tested for SARS-CoV-2 (CDC.gov)
Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer (Scientific American) -- despite the gross-out factor, pee is generally sterile.... nitrogen that is usable by plants is scarce in Nature and valuable. The vast majority of nitrogen fertilizer is made by burning vast quantities of natural gas.
This Map Lets You Plug in Your Address to See How It’s Changed Over the Past 750 Million Years
We Need a Socialist Vision for Space Exploration--what, no billionaire joyrides?
The Rise of the UniverCity-- the corporatization of higher education...
Why We Need Better Cults
The Role of the Memesphere--Ugo Bardi in fine form...
The Collapse Of Complex Societies -- conversation with Joseph Tainter
I Got A 'Mild' Breakthrough Case. Here's What I Wish I'd Known-- good overview....
What I learned from living five years in a van--worth a read on multiple levels...."durable intimacy"...
"The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend." Marcus Cicero
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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