the toxic harpoons of being

.
A misty-moisty morning to start the first full day of 2012. Not too cold. The zendo will be warmer than winter-usual for zazen later. Skipping through the news wires, there seems to be a collective, sluggish hangover... or maybe I am just sluggish. Yes, an earthquake off Japan and one in Ohio and a long-sought fugitive from the Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo (1995 sarin gas attack in Tokyo), turned himself in and investors in commercial real estate still look to the U.S. for safe bets ... but Brazil is vying for the top spot ... but ....

The thing that got my attention this morning was the tale of the cone snail that manufactures little harpoons within, loads them up with some of the 200 toxins it manufactures, sneaks up on its prey, ingests and then shoots coup de grace harpoons into the fish, worms and mollusks it eats for lunch.

"Snails" in the English language are similes and metaphors for what is slow, what is lethargic as a news service on New Year's Day, what is languid and distinctly un-dangerous. And yet here is a tale of a creature that underscores the impact of the wry observation, "It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature."

How much are people like the cone snail? I don't know. Maybe it's to much of a muchness to compare. And yet I cannot help but think of the ability to load up personal harpoons with the toxins of bias and judgment and belief and then shoot them at others. Not that people get a nourishing meal as a result. The satisfactions of personal ascendancy hardly qualify as a substantial repast, but still the habit of asserting our 'selves' as a means of assuring our 'selves' ... maybe there's something in it.

My harpoons and yours, my toxins and yours, my wily ways and yours... nourishing what we do not take the trouble to examine, but can assert with unending energy. To convince or overwhelm you is to assert and assure me... and never a backward glance ... what the fuck is this all about?

Did you ever notice how much religion can piss people off ... or delight them? What kind of imaginative imperative and fantasy is that? Or war or art or money or ... cone snails? Loading up the harpoons ... ready, aim, fire! ... in order to provide a meal of reassurance that is never quite filling enough or nourishing enough ... and so the harpoons need to be reloaded and refired again and again ... to convince me that I am, in fact, who I am... whoever that might be.

A strange and common and unsatisfactory pastime and yet, somehow, it seems to be the only game in town.

But it can arouse the curiosity about what would happen if I simply stopped loading up the harpoons and firing at passing prey. Would I wither away and die? Would I become a candidate for some rubber room? Would I be eternally depressed and lonely and less-alive? If 'I' withered away, what would be left ... who would be left ... and would I be content?

Everyone's got to eat. Everyone needs nourishment. Everyone wants to be happy. But isn't that why refrigerators and and pantries were invented -- so that each might have a larder that was honestly nourishing? Isn't there enough nourishment in being alive to lay toxic adventures to rest?

I dunno. As I say, this may be too-tortured a metaphor.
.