Questions 101

¡Hola! Everybody,
It’s still cold here! LOL!

I’m experiencing a huge issue with my exec. director who now wants to hold more meetings while expecting more production. It has to stop. We either meet and talk caca, or we do the work. We can’t do both! One of the reasons I'm resposting today is that I have several meetings throughout the day! She's cutting me off at the knees.

SMDH

BTW, I’m going to disclose something though I know I will lose readership and any chance of sex with some of the loveliest women on my list ::grin:: But I can’t take it any more! I’ve been living a lie!

GAWD!! I can't take it anymore!!!

Okay. Ready? Here goes:

AMY WINEHOUSE SUCKS!

There! I said it! Whew!

I can understand Ms. Winehouse playing to her niche market of women who want to hear female angst as expressed through lyrics with throwaway lines such as, “What kind of fuckery is this… ” and titles like “Fuck Me Pumps,” but I find the whole Amy Winehouse phenomenon quite boring. Her interpretations of Jazz standards aren’t all that nuanced and her pipes aren't all that strong. In addition, that singing out the side of her neck thingee? Really bothers me. In fact the only song I can honestly say I enjoyed (however briefly) was that Rehab song. Her second album did very little for me, BTW.

I’ll have to say right out that the only way I would sit through an Amy Winehouse CD would be if there was some sex involved at the end of all that tedium. Yeah, Imma slut and would swear up and down that I love Ms. Winehouse and you were wearing a teddy and looking at me with that “come fuck me” look.

There! I feel sooo much better now!

BTW, I’m not “haten.” In fact, what I most like about Ms. Winehouse is her personal life because I can definitely identify with the obvious insanity.

* * *

"You see things that are and say 'Why?'
But I dream things that never were and say "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Why? That’s an excellent question! It's a question I have been plagued with since as far back as I can remember. I've learned to ask other questions -- sometimes looking in the dark for newer questions, or questions not asked. I am a born skeptic, a doubter, a trouble maker by nature – “un mas que jodes, un travesio.” At various times in my life I have been deemed unfit to live among the free and a bit deranged, to boot.

But along the way I have learned that questions are the very substance of who we are and what we do. I have learned that almost everything we do, every decision we make, is a response to an inner question. It’s unfortunate, I often think, that “Questions 101” is not a regular feature in our classrooms. But then again, does the status quo really want to create critical and questioning human beings?

One of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deals with this very issue of questions. In it a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate, the absolute answer, an answer that would explain “God, life, the universe, and everything.” But the computer takes seven and a half million years to do this, and by the time the computer delivers the answer, everybody has forgotten the question! (Yes this highly recommended book can be extremely funny at times). So, nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer is: 42. (what did you expect?)

This is amazing! Finally! The Answer! So wonderful is the answer that immediately a contest is held to see if anyone can come up with “The Question.” Many profound questions are submitted, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?

Reflecting about “God, life, the universe, and everything” is pretty much what my life has been about -- the unexamined life, in my book, is an unworthy one. Of course, the answer may be not as clever as “42.” Perhaps the answers deal with matter, life, mind, and spirit, and the underlying evolutionary currents that seems to unite them all in a pattern that connects. The “Web with no Weaver,” as one of my favorite philosophers, Ken Wilber likes to put it.

For some time now, I have tried to embody this spirit of questioning. I guess part of my personal mission is to prod others to question, to look for the unasked questions and to try to understand who decides what questions will be asked and why. I think that’s part of my motivation for posting my rants -- I want people to ask, to question, to investigate their lives. If I were to to die today, I would like to believe that I made some difference in the lives of the people I touch. I would want people to say something along the lines of, “he was a crazy motherfucker, but he cared, and he touched my life (or some private parts ::wink::) in a special way.” Or something like that.

In this crazy world all we can be sure of is the punch line to this grand Cosmic Joke we call life -- death. In the midst of all this uncertainty, we grope for meaning or something that gives us a foundation of sorts. Sometimes this clinging is the core of our pain, sometimes having no meaning in one’s life is a key component to pain. So then, this is my meaning -- my mission: to rattle the cage a wee bit, to ask the unasked question and to ask you, dear reader and friend:

Why not?

I hope that I can be part of a process where the curious, the apathetic, the wounded and fragmented, the lonely and the happy can meet to create meaning together. Where we can all come together and tell our stories without censure and to ask the questions that need asking and then support each other somehow when the answers are too harsh or painful to bear.

I remember a time when that was called community...

Love,

Eddie