Monday, September 17, 2018

pitons of interest

Reading the newswires this morning (as I have for years), I find fewer and fewer points at which to hammer home a piton of interest. It is like swimming through a roomful of cotton candy. Nothing seems to offer a reliable holding point. Instead, I am merely irritated.

"Compassion" is irritating.
Thirty-year-old sexual allegations are irritating ... priest or politician or entertainer ... if it's true, then what? If not, then what?
"It is what it is" is irritating.
The Israelis have found a new way of fucking the Palestinians.
The sensitivities of these times drone on an on and I, like some supporter of Donald Trump, am merely irritated by the entire panorama.

And now I have to admit it -- the problem does not reside in others and their endless sensitivities, it lies with me. What is news needs to be handed over to the next marathoner. Pass the baton and keep my crabby mouth shut. I might like to find the piton point of interest, but I can't.

It's confusing and amorphous and ... what the hell?!

Writing too wafts into the tall pines like wood smoke from a camper's fire. Pitons fall away. Nothing fancy, nothing "Buddhist," ... whatever it is, it just ain't there.

This definitely calls for a good dirty joke.

3 comments:

  1. The world will have to learn to get along with me eventually. I'm giving them a head start on getting used to the idea.

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  2. Sounds like you’ve been letting the news lead you rather than the reverse.

    Why would such an approach lead anyone to stable interest points (Pitons? Really? And you once practice not just Buddhism but Zen Buddhism?) News feeds as you well know they never were set up to provide stable points of interests, that job is in the editorial realm.

    While simply attending to news reporting may be a way to learn about new issues, it does not necessarily help stay on top of any issue or situation even how many of today’s Trump Tweets are lies.

    Try learning how to set up topics of interest and then let Google or The NY Times or whatever send you articles about your specified topics.

    Then you can scan the news reporting and pick up on whatever else may interest you. If anything.

    As for passing a torch, which of your passionate concerns will you try to pass on? Do you think you might try to clean them up a bit?

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  3. Now here’s a good solid set of “Pitons”:

    https://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html

    While ol’ Marty may have gotten some ideas from news reports, he most certainly didn’t need a wire service or a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing, or which way the money and blessings were going.

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